Called by Triune Grace

Divine Rhetoric And The Effectual Call

Jonathan Hogland

• Publisher: Apollos
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781783595198
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783595204
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Christians confess that God calls people to salvation. Reformed Christians in particular believe this is an effectual calling, meaning that god brings about salvation apart from human works. But in what sense does God actually 'call' us? Does a doctrine of effectual calling turn people into machines that lack any personal agency?In his lucid and carefully researched study, Jonathan Hoglund provides a constructive treatment of effectual calling that respects both the Reformed tradition and non-Reformed critiques, while subjecting he doctrine to a fresh reading of Scripture with special attention given to the letters of Paul. Hoglund interprets divine calling to salvation as an act of triune rhetoric, in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work in a personal way to communicate new life. By bringing together theological exegesis, rhetorical theory, dogmatic reflection, and historical enquiry, Called by Triune Grace proves to be feast -- not only for the mind, but also also for the spirit.

Notes

Chapter 1

1. John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1.For dogmatics as testing of ecclesial witness according to the gospel, see R. Michael Allen, The Christ’s Faith: A Dogmatic Account, SST (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 3.

2. Augustine, Miscellany of Questions in Response to Simplician 1.2.13, trans. Boniface Ramsey, Responses to Miscellaneous Questions, ed. Raymond Canning, WSA I/12 (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2008), 195. “But the person on whom he has mercy he calls in such a way as he knows is appropriate for him, so that he may not reject him who calls.”

3. Aquinas, ST 1-2.113.1 ad 3.

4. Jacob Arminius presided over a disputation on calling in his final public appearance before his death in 1609. See Henk van den Belt, “The Vocatio in the Leiden Disputations (1597–1631): The Influence of the Arminian Controversy on the Concept of the Divine Call to Salvation,” CHRC 92 (2012): 542.

5. H. Orton Wiley, Christian Theology (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill, 1952), 340-42; Kenneth Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2010), 116-19.

6. By “Reformed,” I mean theological traditions stemming from the sixteenth-century Reformers and codified, representatively, in either the Westminster Standards or the Three Forms of Unity (Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism and Synod of Dort). This tradition has been variously referred to as “reformed orthodoxy” or “federal Calvinism.” In this study, “broadly Reformed” refers to any theologian or tradition self-identifying with magisterial Protestant traditions, including those who consciously revise elements of Reformed orthodoxy (e.g., Karl Barth, Friedrich Schleiermacher).

7. I am speaking here to contemporary evangelicals who self-identify within the Arminian and Wesleyan traditions. E.g., Kenneth J. Collins, The Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 1997), and the authors in Kenneth Collins and John H. Tyson, eds., Conversion in the Wesleyan Tradition (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001).

8. John Wesley, “The Scripture-Way of Salvation: A Sermon on Ephes. ii. 8,” in Sermons, II, 34-70, vol. 2 of The Works of John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), 156.

9. John Miley, Systematic Theology (New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1892), 273. The charge of mechanism is leveled at the Thomistic tradition by David Bentley Hart, “Providence and Causality: On Divine Innocence,” in The Providence of God: Deus Habet Consilium, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip G. Ziegler (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 34-56.

10. Cf. WCF 10.1-4; WLC Q. 66-68. Effectual calling also occurs in discussion of God’s eternal decree (WCF 3.6, 8) and is repeated as a necessary condition for justification (WCF 11.1), sanctification (WCF 13.1) and perseverance (WCF 17.1).

11. This typically happens when the term calling is defined using the metaphor of resurrection or regeneration. The error here is a focus on the result of God’s call to the exclusion of its means.

12. Colin Gunton, The One, the Three, and the Many: God, Creation, and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 189. “The Spirit’s peculiar office is to realize the true being of each created thing by bringing it, through Christ, into saving relation with God the Father.” Cf. John Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ [Pneumatologia], or, a Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, vol. 3 of The Works of John Owen, ed. William Goold (London: Johnstone & Hunter, 1852; repr., Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1966), 94.

13. WLC (Q. 67) assigns the call to “God’s almighty power and grace.” WCF 10.1 assigns the call simply to “God.”

14. For this argument, see John Murray, Redemption, Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 110-11.

15. E.g., Rom 8:30; 1 Cor 1:9; Gal 1:15; Eph 1:17-18. For interaction with Karl Barth’s argument that Christ calls, see chap. 9.

16. Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, trans. Olive Wyon, vol. 1 of Dogmatics (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1949), 315-16.

17. Augustine, Simplician 1.2.13.

18. John Calvin, Institutio Christianae religionis [1559] 3.24.1-2, in Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Guilielmus Baum, Eduardus Cunitz and Eduardus Reuss, CR 30 (Halle: Schwetschke, 1864), 711-14; trans. Ford Lewis Battles, under the title Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, LCC 20-21 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 964-67 (hereafter Institutes, with page numbers to this edition following the citation of the work). “Effectual calling” is not a technical term for Calvin here. For instance, he says that God “withdraws the effectual working of his Spirit from them [the wicked]” (Institutes 3.24.2, 967), implying that there are gradations of the Spirit’s “effectual” work.

19. John Calvin, Antidote to the Council of Trent, in Calvin’s Tracts, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1851), 3:1...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• ONE
• TWO
• THREE
• FOUR
• FIVE
• SIX
• SEVEN
• EIGHT
• NINE
• TEN
• Bibliography
• Search Items for Subjects
• Search Items for Scripture References
• Notes