Remythologizing Theology by Kevin Vanhoozer (Review Part 6)

 Concluding thoughts

Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion and Authorship

ISBN 9780521470124 (hardback), price £75, $130.99.

by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 539pp

(Review series Part 6)

In this post I offer some concluding thoughts on Kevin Vanhoozer's  Remythologizing Theology. 

Far a start, it is interesting to see Vanhoozer's proposals on theological method as set out in The Drama of Doctrine, (WJK, 2005), put to work in  the present volume. This is a work of "first theology" i.e. the doctrine of God. By "remythologizing theology", the author seeks to configure the doctrine in terms of the communicative action of the triune God. His being is in his communicative act. It is as Author of the world rather than First Cause that God relates to his creation, especially his human image bearers. This seen above all in the mythos or dramatic plot of the drama of redemption, where we see the truine God acting to communicate salvation to lost human beings.

Vanhoozer wishes to distinguish his vision of God from classical "perfect being" theology that, at least according to him, is not sufficiently  attuned to the biblical theodrama. More seriously, he also criticizes modern "kenotic-perichoretic" theology for failing to take seriously what the Bible says concerning the Creator/creature distinction in its attempt at giving a more personalist and reciprocal account of God's relationship to the world. The God of remythologized theology is the sovereign-transcendent Creator and Redeemer, the one God who has revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Only this communicating God can save us.

Vanhoozer offers an Augustinian or Calvinistic depiction of salvation, with a strong accent on the sovereign and effective grace of God. But he rightly  emphasises that God does not ride roughshod over the human personality when he saves us from sin. The Father draws people to himself by the Spirit's effective ministry of the Word of Christ, by which the sinner is set free to respond to the gospel in repentance and faith.

Vanhoozer's stated aim in The Drama of Doctrine  was to "make the pastoral lamb lie down with the theological lion" (p. xii). He emphasised that the purpose of doctrine is to enable the people of God to faithfully play their roles in the drama of redemption. However, Vanhoozer's sometimes wordy style is calculated to make many a "pastoral lamb" run a country mile. Calling your book Remythologizing Theology and using terms like "kenotic-perichoretic panentheism" is hardly calculated to appeal to many pastors, whose main concerns are to getting two sermons prepared for Sunday and finding enough time to visit the all the elderly and afflicted members of one's congregation. I know of a fellow-pastor who is no slouch when it comes to keeping up with his theological reading who has yet to finish anything that Vanhoozer has written. I wonder how many working ministers will actually pick up and read this book, which seems to have been written more theological students and professional theologians in mind? That is a shame because there are a lot things about this present work that will prove to be of great help to ministers. The section on The triune God and the people of God: a fellowship of suffering? in chapter 9 is excellent in demonstrating that you don't have to go down the road of open theism to have a pastorally sensitive theology of suffering. Indeed, Vanhoozer shows that open theism, with its talk of divine suffering offers cold comfort to a world broken by sin. What we need is not so much sympathy as salvation.

It is said that even Homer nods, meaning that the great epic poet sometimes made mistakes. The same goes for Vanhoozer the theodramatist. On page 417 he makes a Nestorian slip in describing Jesus as a "human person", only to return the Chalcedonian fold on page 425, making it clear that Jesus' personhood is "a function of the inter-Trinitarian relations". He quite correctly goes on to say that Christ's temporal experiences are not to be attributed to "an abstract human nature, nor to the divine nature, but rather to the divine person (viz. the Son) in his human mode of existence." He calls this the "third, remythologizing, way for which I am groping", as if something new were being proposed, but what he is saying here is in effect classic Chalcedonian Christology. Also, Vanhoozer seems to contradict himself when on page 433 he writes, "The reason why Jesus cannot be tempted (or God changed) is because Jesus is the truth". In the previous pages, the theologian rightly defended the impeccability of Christ, arguing that as a divine person with a human nature, our Lord could not sin. However, as Vanhoozer pointed out, this does not mean that Jesus could not be tempted (see Hebrews 2:18, 4:15), "The temptation was no sham, for it was precisely because Jesus resisted temptation that he could 'feel' its full force." (p. 432). I assume that the statement quoted on page 432 represents the theologian's view on this matter and that what he said on the next page was a mistake. At least, I find it difficult, if not impossible to reconcile the two statements.

Vanhoozer's basic standpoint is that of historic Reformed theology, but with special attention to the divine communicative action. In a way that is typical of the theologian's work, he has attempted to re-orientate theology towards the theodrama of biblical revelation. As such, Remythologizing Theology makes a fresh, compelling and valuable contribution to the doctrine of God. The critical interaction with open panentheism  is welcome at a time when some Evangelicals (especially "post-Evangelicals" and Emergent types) seem to find such a view of God attractive. The book deserves to be read not only by theological students and theologians, but also by pastors who aspire to being pastor-theologians in order to be of better service to the people of God. But I suspect that given the price tag, many will have to wait until the work is published in paperback.

*Thanks to Cambridge University Press for the complimentary review copy of this book.

Remythologizing Theology by Kevin Vanhoozer (Review Part 5)

Impassible passion?

Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion and Authorship

by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 539pp

(Review series Part 5)

It's been a while since the last part of this review series, so it is about time that I got going again on this one. In this penultimate post on Vanhoozer's book we'll be looking at his proposals on the impassibility of God.

That God is vulnerable to suffering is axiomatic for what Vanhoozer calls "kenotic-perichoretic relational theology" (see Part 2). According to Jurgen Moltmann,

[God] suffers from the love which is the superabundance of and overflowing of his being. In so far he is 'pathetic'. (Quoted on p. 391).

Vanhoozer cites a claim that divine passibility has become the "new orthodoxy". (p. 392). He gives a number of reasons as to why this situation might have come about including: A democratising concern to emphasise human freedom over divine sovereignty. The problem of evil, 'How', ask the likes of Moltmann, 'can we believe in an impassible deity in the light of the Holocaust?'. A renewed focus on the centrality of of Jesus' passion that makes the cross definitive for our understanding of the very being of God. A reciprocal account of God's love for the world in terms that entails divine vulnerability to the rejection of his love and divine distress over the suffering of those whom he loves.

However, while noting these concerns, Vanhoozer endeavours to make a case for the impassibility of God. God is impassible because he is without passions. That is, he is devoid of irrational forces of feeling. He doesn't get irritable or lose his temper in a fit of pique. But does that mean that God is without emotions? Not according to Vanhoozer, if emotions are defined as "covenantal concern-based construals". In other words, God's emotions are geared towards his covenant people. In his compassion he acts to save them from sin and suffering. He is jealous of his people's undivided love and loyalty. These theodramatically expressed divine emotions are constant and true. They are not subject to change, (Malachi 3:6). Hence, God's emotions are impassible - without passion. But the impassible God feels. Loving his people with an everlasting love, he acted to redeem them from sin in Christ.  

So, we come to the cross, where the Son of God suffered for our sins. What does Calvary have to say to the question of divine impassibility? According to Cyril, "The Word suffered impassibly". In saying so he affirmed the impassibility of the divine Word and also took into account that the Word made flesh suffered for us in his humanity. This is where the communicatio idiomatum or 'communion of attributes' in the incarnate Son comes into play. We do not say that the Son in his divine nature was impassible, while his human nature suffered on the cross. Rather, that the impassible Son suffered for us in his human nature. In biblical terms it was the Son of God in his humanity who loved us and gave himself for us (Galatians 2:20). However, the Son did not suffer on the cross simply to show empathy with a world racked by pain and tragedy. The cross was not so much an act of divine identity with a suffering world, as the Son of God suffering in dying in the place of a guilty world. His cry on the cross was not, "Now I know how you feel!", but, "It is finished!".

Vanhoozer suggests that modern attempts at rendering God passible might make him seem more appealing to our "touchy-feely" postmodern world, but they fail to capture the grandeur of God's free and loving self-determination to be the the "Lord (and servant) of covenant grace". God's love for his people is  not a vulnerable love that by its very nature entails suffering pain and rejection, but  a "lordly love" that effects salvation through the substitutionary suffering of Christ and transforming power of the Spirit . As such, Calvary is the definitive revelation of God's love for sinners. In Christ God is not a "fellow-sufferer who understands" (Whitehead), but "a sovereign sufferer who withstands" (Vanhoozer). That is the impassible compassion of our God.

Remythologizing Theology by Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Review Part 4)

Divine communicative sovereignty and human freedom

Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion and Authorship

by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 539pp

(Review series Part 4)

One of the big issues for Christian theology is the relationship between the sovereignty of God and human freedom. If God is indeed sovereign and everything that happens is according to his eternal purpose, how can human beings be regarded as free actors in his world? The problem is exacerbated if God is regarded primarily as the First Cause and his relationship to the creation is construed primarily in terms of cause and effect. When applied to human beings it can sound as if humans are little more than cogs in the machine of the world. This is where Vanhoozer’s communicative theism comes in. For him, God is not so much the First Cause, as the Author of creation. His relationship with the world is personal and communicative, not simply causal. He enters into a dialogical relationship with human beings. But this does not mean the God and humans are equal dialogue partners. God is the sovereign Creator and we are his creatures. He writes the script in which we live, move and have our being. Yet as those who bear the image of God, human beings are capable of entering into genuine dialogue with their Maker. As the Author of our being and life, God does not coercively override the freedom of his human image bearers. Rather, our freedom to be human is only perfected in communion with the triune Lord God. Human freedom in this context is not the freedom of self-determination, but the freedom to say “Yes” to the divine address, Psalm 27:8.

But what happens when the dialogical relationship between God and human beings is disrupted because of sin? In the ultimate act of divine communicative action, the Author entered the theatre of the world and became a man to bring us back to himself. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God communicates his light, life and love to sinners through Jesus Christ. It is  Jesus the Son who sets us free from sin so that communion with God may be restored. However, not everyone receives the Word and accepts the salvation he accomplished, John 1:11. The Holy Spirit enables us to receive Jesus Christ by making the Holy Scriptures that testify to him internally persuasive. Again, this is not an act of coercion, but liberation.

The Author completes heroes, not be forcing them into a mold, but by releasing them so that they freely respond to the word that simultaneously constitutes them. The purpose of the gospel is to persuade, yes, but in persuasion is truth, goodness, and beauty. The Author’s word is furthermore a liberating word that sets the captive free (Gal 5:1). Accordingly, where and when the Spirit ministers this word, there will be freedom indeed: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). (p. 366).

This involves more than the Spirit simply addressing the persuasive words of Scripture to the human mind. Due to the noetic effects of sin, the mind is closed to the truth of the gospel and heart is hardened against the Lord. Which brings us to a discussion of the effective call as an expression of the communicative action of God. The effective call is to be distinguished from the general call of the gospel. As its name suggests, this call actually effects something, namely that God calls the sinner to salvation in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, John 6:44-45. But the language of effect should not be understood as an act of causation on God's part that rides roughshod over the human personality. In the text just cited the Father draws his people to Christ by teaching them. Those who learn from the Father come to Jesus. The effective call is not an act of divine manipulation, but the effective communication of grace,

The effectual call is the Spirit’s ministering the word in such a way that hearers freely and willingly answer God by responding with faith. Remember Lydia: “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14). God’s calling is his restoring and reorienting those spiritual and cognitive capacities taken captive to an unclean spiritual and cognitive environment. (P. 374-375)

Those who have been effectively called to faith in Christ by the Spirit’s ministry of the Word are free to enjoy dialogical communion with God. Prayer is the human response to God’s prior word of grace and salvation. Through prayer the believer gladly consents to the will of God in which there is perfect liberty. What we pray for must be determined by the Scriptures, “In praying the Scriptures, we pray as Christ taught us, in Christ’s name, with Christ’s body, for Christ’s coming.” (p. 385). In answer to their scriptural prayers God conforms his people to the image of Christ by the communicative presence of the Holy Spirit.

In his attempt to develop an account of divine sovereignty and human freedom that is based on the communicative action of the triune God, Vanhoozer has avoided depicting human beings as mere puppets in the hand of an omnipotent deity. Neither is it the case that God is robbed of his sovereignty in order to make space for human freedom. God is indeed all-powerful and absolutely sovereign, but his power is not coercive or manipulative. He enters into a dialogical relationship with human beings in order to perfect human freedom in communion with himself. Where sin has disrupted that communion, Vanhoozer envisages salvation in thoroughly Augustinian fashion. God saves by effectively calling the sinner to union with Christ through the Spirit’s infallibly persuasive witness to the word of the gospel. Rather than the sovereignty of God compromising human freedom, according to Scripture it is only through the sovereign grace of God that sin-enslaved human beings can be truly made free. (See Westminster Confession of Faith 10:1, here).

In the final part of this review series I plan to have a look at Vanhoozer's proposals on divine impassibility and wrap the series up with some concluding thoughts on Remythologizing Theology.

Remythologizing Theology by Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Review Part 3)

The Triune God whose being is in his communicating

Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion and Authorship

by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 539pp

(Review series Part 3)

So, Vanhoozer finds classical theism insufficiently attuned to biblical revelation and charges open panentheism with failing to do justice to the sovereign transcendence of the Creator (see Part 2). What does he propose in place of these two visions of God? His remythologizing project attempts articulate the metaphysics that are implicit in the biblical mythos (dramatic plot). What we say of God’s being and identity must be subject to his theodramatic action as revealed in Holy Scripture. In other words, first theology or the study of God is an exercise in biblical reasoning.

Vanhoozer sketches out what he calls a “post-Barthian Thomism”. He recognizes Karl Barth as a fellow remythologizer. According to Barth, God’s being is in his act, and God’s being in act is expressed in the event of Jesus Christ. God speaks in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word. But we are not to regard Scripture as divine speech. The Bible bears witness to God’s self-revelation in Christ, but it would be a contravention of the divine freedom to tie his speech to the words of Scripture. This is where Vanhoozer differs from Barth. He agrees that Jesus Christ is the full and final revelation of God and that the incarnate Word is the apogee of divine speech. But he protests that the incarnation only makes sense in the context of Yahweh’s speech to Israel in the Law and the Prophets,

God’s speech in Jesus Christ may be definitive, but it presupposes prior divine communicative action. The God whose nature is displayed in the history of Jesus Christ is the same as the God who declares his nature by his name in Exodus 3:14 and 34:6-7, merciful, gracious and steadfast love. (p. 215).

Remythologized theology pays careful attention to the self-revelation of God in Holy Scripture. It is the One who at various times and in various ways spoke to the fathers by the prophets, who has in these last days spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1-2).

By “post-Barthian Thomism” Vanhoozer has in mind Aquinas’s insight that being is not a static substance, but a dynamic act. Hence, God’s being is in his communicative act. He is the God who acts by speaking to create and sustain the universe and bring his human creatures into fellowship with himself. Human beings as created in the image of God are uniquely capable of having communicative relationship with their Maker. This relationship, disrupted by sin, is  restored by the redeeming work of Jesus, the Word made flesh. Vanhoozer hopes that this vision of “communicative theism affords new resources for understanding participation in Christ (union) and the life of the triune God (communion)”. (p. 240).

God’s being is in his communicating not simply in the relation he sustains to his creatures. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are communicative agents in the imminent Trinity, enjoying a blessed communion of life, light and love. In the economic Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit act to savingly communicate life, light and love to a world that lies under judgement in death, darkness and hatred. The Father sent his Son to save lost human beings from condemnation by his atoning death and resurrection. The Spirit communicates the truth and life of Jesus to the people of God.

God is love, and the redemptive love of the Father, displayed in the cross of Christ, is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. However, contrary to "Rahner’s rule", we cannot say that “the economic Trinity is the imminent Trinity”, reducing God’s being to what he does in history. Rather, as Vanhoozer puts it, “the economic Trinity communicates the imminent Trinity”. (p. 294).  The focus of drama of redemption is the communicative action of God, where the Father brings sinful human beings into union with Christ and communion with himself by the power of the Spirit.

Vanhoozer is to be commended for his attempt to make biblical revelation definitive for developing a metaphysical account of the identity, being, and ways of God. In doing so, he has avoided the pitfalls of open theism, which fails to do justice to the Creator/creature distinction, and “perfect being theology” that gives too much weight to human ideas about God at the expense of scriptural reasoning. A distinctly Christian metaphysics is a work of faith seeking understanding of the Triune God whose being in communicative act is revealed in the mythos of the biblical theodrama.

The theologian's thoroughgoing trinitarianism is  most welcome. In many works on the doctrine of God, consideration of the doctrine of the Trinity is tacked onto the end, almost as an afterthought. For example, in John M. Frame’s massive 864 page, The Doctrine of God, (P&R, 2002), discussion of the Trinity is reserved until the sixth and final part of the book, following extensive coverage of the being, attributes and lordship of God. Not so Vanhoozer, where his communicative theism is explicitly trinitarian from beginning to end.

In the next post in this review series I hope to give attention Vahoozer's attempt to probe the relationship between the commutative sovereignty of the Triune God and human freedom.

Remythologizing Theology by Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Review Part 2)

Panentheism, or God (not) Transcendent

Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion and Authorship

by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 539pp

(Review series Part 2)

Vanhoozer does not reject classical theism out of hand. He wishes to retool the tradition to make it more attentive to the biblical theodrama. But there are some contemporary understandings of God that he finds altogether more problematic. He gives a thoughtful critique of open theism, or “open panentheism” as he calls it. Panentheism attempts to offer a more personal account of God’s relationship to the world, but it robs God of his sovereign lordship and fails to do justice to the Creator/creature distinction. Also, in the thinking of panentheists such as Jurgren Moltmann, the imminent Trinity (God as he is in himself) is collapsed into the economic Trinity (God as he is for us).

In classic orthodox theology, perichoresis denotes the mutual indwelling of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the godhead. Moltmann makes perichoresis a model of how God relates to the world in a state of mutual action and interaction. The self-emptying of Christ at the incarnation, where the divine Son took a human nature becomes a model of God’s kenotic relationship with the world. Accordingly, creation entailed an act of divine self-emptying in which God limited his infinite knowledge and power in order to make space for the autonomy of the creature. God’s very being is determined by his relationship to the world. His love for the world made him vulnerable to suffering when human beings rejected a lovingly reciprocal relationship with their Maker.

As Vanhoozer points out, panentheism surrenders the transcendence of God and places illegitimate limits on his sovereign freedom. Neither perichoresis or kenosis may be used as models of how God relates to the world in general terms. The former is unique to the imminent Trinity and the latter is unique to the incarnation of Christ. God is the transcendent Lord, totally sovereign in all his works and ways. God's love for the world cannot be depicted in reciprocal, perichoretic language. Such a construction forgets that God is independent of his creatures and that he loves this fallen world in self-giving freedom. His is a love that effects salvation and consummates communion, rather than a love that helplessly suffers rejection and disappointment. In so far as human beings share in the perichoretic fellowship of the Trinity, they do so, not simply as creatures, but as saved sinners, (John 14:10, 20-21). The biblical idea of kenosis (Philippians 2:5-8) is a singularity that belongs solely to the incarnation of the Son, who took a human nature to save the world from sin and death. Kenosis cannot be broadened out and used as a key to understanding God’s relationship to his creation as an act of divine self-emptying.

Ironically, in reducing God to his relationship to the world in the name of a more personalist account of Creator/creature engagement, panentheism has succeeded in compromising the divine personhood. Persons cannot be reduced to their relationships with others. Relationships do not constitute persons, rather persons have relationships. God's personhood is not constituted by his relationship to the creation. His triune personhood existed and found its full expression in the perichoretic communion between Father, Son and Holy Spirit before ever the world was made.

The panentheism found in writers such as Moltmann is haunted by Feurbach’s ghost. Panentheists have re-imagined God in terms better suited to the spirit of the age, with its profound dislike of authority and control. They have succeeded in making a god in their own image, stressing interdependence over transcendence and the autonomy of the creature over the sovereignty of God.

Vanhoozer has exposed some of the fundamental flaws in open theism and panentheism. At a time when such views of God are attracting support amongst Evangelicals (like Clark Pinnock and Steve Chalke), we should pay careful attention to his quietly devastating critique of kenotic-perichoretic relational theology.

The subject of Vanhoozer's remythologized theology is not the product of human projection, but divine self-revelation. He is the Lord God Almighty, one true and living God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The triune God whose being is in his communicating is the focus of the next section of this remarkable work.

Remythologizing Theology by Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Review Part 1)

What is Remythologizing Theology?

Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion and Authorship

by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 539pp
(Review series Part 1)

To date most of Kevin Vanhoozer’s published theological work has been in the area of method. In his The Drama of Doctrine, (WJK, 2005), he proposed a “canonical linguistic approach to Christian theology”. Theology, he argued is not first and foremost about systematising the data of biblical revelation. The aim of theology is to enable the people of God to play their roles in the great drama of redemption. His focus was not simply on the words of Holy Scripture, but the communicative action of God who acts by speaking to accomplish his purposes in the world.

The present work sees Vanhoozer put his methodological proposals into practice in this full-length study on the doctrine of God. The book’s title immediately calls for explanation. What exactly does the author mean by, “Remythologizing Theology”? Bultmann endeavoured to demythologise the Bible. He regarded the supernatural and miraculous content of Scripture as mythological. Who, he asked, in the age of the electric light bulb, could believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, walked on water, or rose from the dead? The Bible had to be stripped of these "myths" in order to get to the core spiritual and ethical message of the Christian faith.

The trouble with Bultmann’s demythologising project was that he rejected the possibility that God intervenes in the phenomenal world of space and time. His actions take place in the noumenal world of the human consciousness. This Kantian depiction of God’s action robs revelation of its objective character and places the focus on subjective human awareness of the divine. The German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach took his one step further, arguing that god is simply the projection of human consciousness. The demythologising of theology is the high road to atheism.

By remythologizing Vanhoozer is not suggesting that we need to put the miraculous “myths” back into the Bible. What he has in mind in “remythologizing” is not “myth”, meaning a sacred story with little relation to the real world, but “mythos”, meaning “dramatic plot”. He offers this definition of remythologizing theology,

It is a way of viewing God, Scripture and hermeneutics in terms of their mutual implications, all coordinated by the notion of communicative action: the triune God is the ultimate communicative agent of Scripture; Scripture is an element in the triune God’s communicative action; interpretation is the way the church demonstrates her understanding of what God is saying and doing in and through Scripture by right theodramatic participation. (p. 30).

By remythologizing theology, Vanhoozer puts the accent on God's own self-projection, the communicative action of the triune God as revealed in the dramatic plot of biblical revelation. “Communicative action” are the key words here. The writer wishes to reconfigure God’s relationship to the world in terms of divine communicative action rather than the causal account of God’s interaction with the world favoured by classical theism.

Classical theism tends to view God as the supreme and perfect being and the metaphysical First Cause of the universe. For Vanhoozer, God’s being is in his communicative act. He is not so much the One to whom limitless perfection might be attributed by human beings, as the God of Abhraham, Isaac and Jacob, who is revealed in his word-acts as disclosed in Holy Scripture. He is better described as the Author rather than First Cause of creation. This emphasis on divine self-revelation safeguards theology from Feuerbach’s suggestion that God is the projection of human ideas of infinite perfection. In addition, in shifting the focus from God’s causal relation to the world to his communicative action, Vanhoozer hopes to provide a more deeply personal account of how God interacts with his human creatures.