Called by Triune Grace

Divine Rhetoric and the Effectual Call

Jonathan Hoglund, Vanhoozer, Kevin J., Daniel J. Treier, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Treier, Daniel J.

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780830848812
• eBook ISBN: 9780830891542
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Christians confess that God calls people to salvation. Reformed Christians, in particular, believe this is an effectual calling, meaning that God sovereignly 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 this lucidly written 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 the 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 inquiry, Called by Triune Grace proves to be a feast—not only for the mind, but also for the spirit.

Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture, edited by Daniel J. Treier and Kevin J. Vanhoozer, promotes evangelical contributions to systematic theology, seeking fresh understanding of Christian doctrine through creatively faithful engagement with Scripture in dialogue with church.

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The Call to Salvation

It is so powerful that it cannot be overcome, and at the same time it is so lovely that it excludes every form of compulsion. Its power is so excellent that the depraved nature is renewed by it, and, at the same time, so friendly and winsome that it fully respects a person’s rational and moral nature.

Herman Bavinck

Christians recognize that God calls his people to salvation. This conviction arises from Scripture, particularly from the Pauline epistles that use the verb “to call” as a description of God’s action in individual conversion. Despite various conclusions about the results of God’s work in applying salvation to individuals, Christians cannot avoid the task of integrating “calling” into a theology of salvation.

I set forth here a dogmatic account of the call to salvation. That is, I ask after the relation of God’s call to other loci in the doctrine of salvation and offer a constructive account based on the scriptural descriptions of God’s action in conversion. A dogmatic account, following John Webster’s use of the term, seeks to understand what it means when the church confesses that God calls, primarily in language drawn from “the triune God’s saving and revelatory action.”1 A dogmatic account employs doctrinal language in an effort to clarify the church’s witness to God’s work in Christ.

Specifically, I engage the Christian tradition that utilizes the vocabulary of effectual calling. While earlier theologians such as Augustine2 and Thomas Aquinas3 understood calling as a way to describe God’s operative grace, only in the Protestant Reformed tradition did the addition of effectual clarify the certain results of the call. Although the Remonstrants4 and later Arminian traditions refer to God’s action as calling, they distinguish it from the effectual call with other modifying terms in order to deny that God’s action is irresistible.5

The Reformed term effectual calling provides the basis for this study because it best upholds a core biblical insight—that God works salvation on behalf of and within his people. I reappropriate voices from the Reformed tradition because I believe they best follow the grain of the biblical text when asking how God brings about salvation.6 Such a move from Scripture to theology cannot be separated completely from the apologetic task of answering objections and discrediting alternatives to the doctrine as it has found its home in the Protestant Reformed tradition. Nevertheless, several factors make the effectual call worthy of a second look for evangelicals of all sorts.

An Evangelical Call: Common Ground

Calling as a locus within the doctrine of salvation (as distinguished from “calling” to spheres of life and ministry) addresses two primary concerns of non-Reformed Protestants.7 First, Wesleyan authors in particular emphasize God’s personal address to individuals in the call to faith. They speak of God as a lover wooing his beloved.8 God displays his radical love for the beloved by the use of means that are meant to produce repentance and faith. There is no one-size-fits-all divine call. I present a doctrine of effectual calling that agrees with this emphasis. As will be shown, the quest of Reformed theologians to generalize about God’s work in calling does not militate against the individualized nature of God’s action. God addresses us in dialogue, through our thinking and processing capacities, and this process is unique to each individual. A reworked doctrine of calling maintains the Wesleyan emphasis on personal engagement with God.

Second, non-Reformed theologians seek to avoid imagining God’s work as mechanistic.9 If God’s call is effective, this may imply that God treats human beings as machines. In such a conception, the proper input is given to a person—namely, the regenerative motion of the Holy Spirit—and this inevitably leads to the output of repentance and faith. If God works on human beings as a person works on machines, Christian theology not only cheapens human value but also makes the process of salvation much less interesting. There is a qualitative difference between talking to one’s car while changing the oil and speaking with a friend as a way to provide counsel. It is precisely this difficulty that calling probes. Wesleyans are right to ask whether conversion has become mechanized. Calling, a word that indicates a type of discourse, invites Christians to examine how individual salvation is more than a physical process of repair.

As we will see, the Reformed tradition on converting change (usually called regeneration) may be open to these criticisms unless it remembers the nature of God’s work as a call. As rearticulated here, the effectual call satisfies Wesleyan concerns that God’s action be seen as personal and nonmechanical. That God calls people into “the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 1:9) “through our gospel” (2 Thess 2:14) is an evangelical doctrine that displays common ground among evangelical Protestants.

A Definition of Effectual Calling

The results of this study are twofold: a definition of effectual calling that highlights it as an instance of God’s speech, and a statement on how effectual calling relates to regeneration, the primary alternative term used within the Reformed tradition to describe God’s action in converting change.

First, a definition:

The effectual call is an act of triune rhetoric in which God the Father appropriates human witness to Christ the Son in order to convince and transform a particular person by ministering, through the presence of God the Spirit, understanding and love of Christ.

For the purpose of this study the use of calling in the Synod of Dort and in the Westminster Standards will serve as a basis for discussion. Question 31 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks: “What is effectual calling?” It answers:

Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.10

My definition intends to be in continuity with previous definitions such as this while making explicit the personal and communicative dimensions of calling. First, my definition associates human proclamation of the gospel closely with divine action. This aims to clarify that calling is not a distinct inner voice, but rather the transforming power of a personal, dialogical encounter that occurs within speech. I further maintain that the effectual call is a description of God’s literal, though analogical, speech. I criticize some Reformed views for making the call purely metaphorical. In such a conception, the term calling marks an action of God so distinct from speaking and hearing that it is difficult to discern what if any elements of a “call” are appropriate to God.11 Second, I specify how the call can be an act of the entire Trinity. The Shorter Catechism assigns primary agency for the call to God’s Spirit. This reflects a common Christian judgment that the Spirit is especially responsible for bringing about the ends or perfections of God’s creatures.12 By assigning the primary role in calling to the Spirit, however, the Shorter Catechism might portray God’s call as purely metaphorical, since the mode of the Spirit’s agency is often untraceable (Jn 3:8). But the diversity among the three documents associated with the Westminster Assembly suggests that the choice of the Spirit here is not definitive.13 In order to make plain that the ad extra works of the Trinity are indivisible, it may be helpful to assign to the Spirit the power behind the call’s efficacy, as do the two other Westminster documents when they state that God works “by his Spirit.” My own definition assigns the origination of the call to the Father,14 both because of the traditional designation “from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit,” and because the New Testament consistently refers to “God” as the one who calls distinct from Jesus Christ.15 Finally, the proposed definition confesses the effectual call as a divine communicative act in which God, in a way only analogous to creatures, literally speaks so as to transform human affections and elicit faith in Christ. I call this triune rhetoric to emphasize that God’s unique persuasion takes place within human discourse and understanding.

A second dogmatic question for the effectual call is the relationship between calling and regeneration. I argue that some Reformed accounts overemphasized the latter to such an extent that the former was not given appropriate place in descriptions of converting change. Regeneration, understood as the instantaneous creation of a distinct form of spiritual life in a person, highlights a discontinuity between the individual’s life before and after converting change. Emil Brunner criticized this view of regeneration because it imports “causal” categories where “personal” categories are more fitting for the interrelation between God and humans.16 The continued presence of calling as a dogmatic locus in the Reformed tradition, however, indicates that theologians felt compelled to describe God’s action as personal. I ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 The Call to Salvation
• 2 God’s Call as Speech
• 3 Calling in Paul
• 4 The Content of the Call
• 5 Divine Light and Conversion
• 6 Illumination and Testimony
• 7 New Birth and Resurrection
• 8 Resurrection as Culmination of the Call
• 9 Triune Rhetoric and Converting Change
• 10 God’s Call and the Church
• Notes
• Bibliography
• General Index
• Scripture Index
• Praise for Called by Triune Grace
• About the Author
• The Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture Series
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright