When Reformed thinkers started structuring theology around the covenants, they made a huge breakthrough. We see a further breakthrough in the idea of speech-acts. As Reformed people we should welcome this idea, since we hold to the priority of the Word.
As Horton notes,
There is your Filioque, if you are interested.
Locution: Speaking
Illocution: the act performed by the speaking.
Perlocution: the effect performed by the speech-act.
Effectual Calling as a Case Study
While I hate reducing the entirety of Reformed dogmatics to a mnemonic device, if there is any point that should be maintained at all costs, it is effectual calling. Quite simply, it is the only way to make sense of the God-world relation. How does God relate to the world? Descartes brutally pressed this on the modern world and people, Christian or not, could really only respond "causally."
But we say communicatively. Divine speech is the "nexus" of the God-world relation.
As Horton notes,
The Father’s speaking is the locutionary act; the Son is the content or illocutionary act that is performed by the speaking, and the Spirit’s work is the perlocutionary effect (157)
There is your Filioque, if you are interested.
Locution: Speaking
Illocution: the act performed by the speaking.
Perlocution: the effect performed by the speech-act.
Effectual Calling as a Case Study
While I hate reducing the entirety of Reformed dogmatics to a mnemonic device, if there is any point that should be maintained at all costs, it is effectual calling. Quite simply, it is the only way to make sense of the God-world relation. How does God relate to the world? Descartes brutally pressed this on the modern world and people, Christian or not, could really only respond "causally."
But we say communicatively. Divine speech is the "nexus" of the God-world relation.
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