What Vanhoozer has tried to do throughout his Remythologizing Theology is maintain the biblically inescapable truth that God’s relationship to man is dynamic. It is characterized by communication, response, willing, faith, unbelief, receiving, rejecting, obeying, disobeying, warning, pleading, inviting, calling, etc. He has sought to acknowledge human freedom, yet he is intent upon holding to a salvific determinism by affirming an “effectual call” which presupposes unconditional election. He attempts to show that God’s predestination of a person’s salvation is logically and morally compatible with human freedom and personhood if we view God’s actions in “communicative rather than causal terms.” (RT, 28) We will have to enquire into whether this is merely a distinction without a difference, a false dichotomy; whether acting “communicatively” to predetermined ends is not the same as acting causally. And equally important, even if God acts “communicatively,” we need to ask whether the fundamental problems of determinism lay elsewhere, still plaguing the Reformed theological scheme with insurmountable problems.
I have already examined the problematic nature of the doctrine of an “effectual call” – what Vanhoozer considers to be “a microcosm of the fundamental problem: the way God relates to the human world.” (FT, 98) In that Vanhoozer holds to this doctrine he must also embrace the compatibilist approach to defining human freedom. Human freedom must be understood in a way that is rationally coherent with God working his will in and through people. The doctrine of an “effectual call” presupposes a sovereign determinism that Calvinist theologians have no qualms confessing is absolute and comprehensive in scope. God has ordained from all eternity “whatsoever comes to pass.” This is what they mean by the sovereignty of God. If this is so, what then of being human persons who seem to be free to will, choose and act from something in themselves, even deciding and acting against God’s will? How is God’s sovereign will which determines all things, rationally compatible with human willing, acting and moral responsibility?
The compatibilist approach centers upon defining human freedom as simply being able to do what one desires. It links one’s desires with the will, and as long as one is able to act according to what they desire, their will is considered to be functioning freely. As long as there is no impediment or hindrance the person acts freely according to their will. Also, they maintain that persons always act according to their strongest desires. In doing so, they still act freely because they are able to perform what they desire.
Therefore the essential issue becomes who determines one’s desires and hence their will and actions. Vanhoozer, as a compatibilist, contends that God so acts upon a person that they inevitably desire what he wills and hence do what he wills. This would seem to reduce a person’s willingness, as an aspect of personhood and “communicative” relation, to nothingness, and only highlight their willing as a faculty of their raw existence. But Vanhoozer attempts to argue that God so determines the desires of others in a way that is appropriate to human beings, that is, God is “persuasive” rather than “coercive,” “communicative” rather than “causal.” He opens their “understanding,” changing their desires so as to do his will. In that they desire to do God’s will, the compatibilist concludes that the person is acting freely because they desire and therefore will to do what they do. Rather than somehow “forcing” them to act against their will God changes their desires to accord with his will. Vanhoozer can conclude that persons are therefore act according to their free will. The person does what they now desire to do as God grants them these desires. In all this, God is “consummating” their existence. God’s will is done and people do it freely of their own will. God does this with respect to their relation to himself, Christ and salvation. This divine change of human desires and will is the “effectual call.” When a person experiences this “effectual call,” salvation and all its benefits are unfailingly realized in them. God remains sovereign in salvation and man’s free will is not “violated.” The two concepts are therefore compatible. Jerry Walls and Joseph Dongell describe this compatibilist view in their book Why I Am Not A Calvinist.
“…those who come to Christ are not forced against their will to come…God can determine people without coercing them. He does it by changing the elect internally. He enlightens their minds, renews their wills, gives them a new heart and so on. So they come “most freely” in the sense that they want to come to Christ once God has caused them to think differently and desire differently. Given these factors, they couldn’t choose to reject Christ. Again, this doesn’t mean that they want to reject Christ, but God won’t let them do so. Rather, their desires have been so determined by God that they gladly come to Christ.”[1]
Vanhoozer affirms Reformed theologian Anthony Hoekema’s definition of the “effectual call.”
“…the effectual call: “that sovereign action of God through the Holy Spirit whereby he enables the hearer of the gospel call to respond to his summons.” Here as perhaps nowhere else, we see how divine sovereignty (address) and human freedom (answerability) work together for good.” (RT, 371)
But is this a biblically accurate and convincing description of what it means to be a human person who thinks, wills, chooses and acts freely? Is this what it means for God to be “sovereign” in how he has designed the dynamics of salvation? Although non-Calvinists would not object to the above description because we believe that God is active by the Holy Spirit in the preaching of the gospel to “enable” the hearer to “respond” to the “summons” of the gospel, we would add that the hearer still retains the possibility to do otherwise, that is, they retain the possibility of contrary choice that involves an action of the self as sole author of the action. This is the only context in which these words and this language make sense. This libertarian position is coherent with the meaning of the terms “enable,” “respond,” “persuasion,” “answerability,” etc. and Vanhoozer’s claims about the “personal” actions and desires of God as “dialogical,” “communicative,” desiring “communion,” etc. But I maintain that these concepts are incompatible with the unilateral, determined, causal, effectual action of Calvinism, which Vanhoozer calls “classical theism,” and he seeks to avoid in favor of a more communicative, dialogical, personal description of the God/man relation. I have already demonstrated that the doctrine of an “effectual call” presupposes and affirms a unilateral, unconditional, predetermined, causal, divine action. Therefore Vanhoozer ultimately cannot avoid this type of “classical” Calvinist determinism no matter what language he might use to describe the dynamic involved. Vanhoozer will use words like “enables,” “persuades,” “respond,” “summons,” “freedom,” “answerability,” “for good” in nuanced (and I will argue incoherent) ways, to explain the particular dynamics of the “effectual call.” But this call, as effectual, inevitably requires embracing the Reformed Calvinist doctrines of sovereignty understood as deterministic, and election as unconditional, which are inextricable linked to it and supportive of it. Are Hoekema’s and Vanhoozer’s vocabulary coherent with an effectual call? Is what is said, said as accurately as it could be? The fact that Hoekema and Vanhoozer must mean that the “hearer” will irresistibly respond to “his summons” which they state is “the gospel call,” is altogether different than saying that “he enables the hearer of the gospel call to respond to his summons.” As Reformed Calvinists, Vanhoozer and Hoekema must mean something more along the lines of “he effects the elect hearer of the ‘gospel’ to act according to his summons.” A deterministic decree and unconditional election are the source concepts behind “an effectual call” which, by virtue of being effectual, just is a ‘monological,’ unilateral, causal, divine action. The very determinism Vanhoozer is trying to avoid he embraces in the doctrine of an “effectual call.” The question is whether this doctrinal complex is logically and morally coherent with human freedom? Are we not forced back into a theological determinism that, by definition, is logically and morally incompatible with human freedom? Is the compatibilist definition of human freedom plausible, or is it an illegitimate linguistic maneuver designed to accommodate a monolithic, immutable Calvinist deterministic definition of God’s sovereignty in light of the substantial biblical and logical evidence to the contrary? Vanhoozer writes,
“The Spirit, I submit, has perlocutionary power: the capacity to bring about appropriate communicative effects. Foremost among these perlocutionary effects, as we have seen, stands persuasion. Yet just as important as persuasion is another perlocutionary effect: understanding. Understanding is a necessary though not always sufficient condition for responding to a call: one must first recognize a warning as a warning before one can heed it, or a summons as a summons before one can answer it. What the Spirit ultimately enables is the hearer’s hearing and feeling the full force of what has been said. God’s call is effectual because the Spirit ministers a word that is true, good, and beautiful: the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The effectual call is the Spirit’s ministering the word in such a way that the hearers freely and willingly answer God by responding with faith.” (RT, 374-375)
Note that Vanhoozer’s central ideas regarding an effectual call closely follow those found in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Section X of the Confession, titled “On Effectual Calling,” begins by stating,
“1. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God; taking away their heart of stone and giving them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by his almighty power determining them to that which is good; and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace.”
Point 2 of Section X reads as follows.
“2. This effectual call is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from any thing at all foreseen in man; who is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it.” [2]
We can conclude that Vanhoozer holds to the Reformed Calvinist doctrine of the effectual call.
We must therefore ask what it means to “enable” the “hearer’s hearing and feeling the full force of what has been said?” Note that being “enabled” to answer the call is different than being “made willing.” To be “enabled” is incoherent with the absolute, unfailing effect that is rooted in theistic determinism. To be “enabled” is coherent with libertarian freedom; it presupposes it and requires it. To be “made willing” may be consistent with theistic determinism in the sense of irresistibly conforming a person’s desires, will and acts to those God desires and wills for that person, but I submit that this is not coherent with human freedom. Human freedom, by any sensible definition of the word and concept requires the person to be the sole author of their actions and also have the ability of contrary choice. Neither of these find a place in the Calvinist definition of “freedom” that is beholden to its definition of God’s sovereignty as a universal divine causal determinism. So, the language of the Confession is confusing. It attempts to present a compatibilist view of deterministic sovereignty and human freedom but finds itself speaking inaccurately. Let’s examine this more thoroughly in Pt. 4.2.
Back to “The Vanhoozer Essays”
[1] Jerry L. Walls and Joseph R. Dongell, Why I Am Not A Calvinist, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 113.
[2] G.I Williamson, The Westminster Confession of Faith for Study Classes, (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1978), 88.
The Truth of the Gospel 