Unlatched Theism

There is no doctrine in Christian theology more fundamental or more important than the doctrine of the triune God. The very word theology is a combination of the Greek word theos, which is translated “God,” and the word logos, which can be translated “word” or “discourse.” Theology is a discourse about God, a word about God, and that means it involves the knowledge of God. Theology is the doctrine of God, and our concern in theology is the true knowledge of God.

The doctrine of God is fundamental because every other subject studied in systematic theology is connected to the doctrine of God and understandable only in relation to it. Scripture is the Word of God. Man is created in the image of God. Sin is a transgression of the law of God. Redemption is the salvific work of God. The church is the people of God. Eschatology is the final goal of God. And so on. If our doctrine of God is off, everything else will be off. This is why the current debates among evangelical and Reformed theologians regarding the doctrine of God are profoundly important. These are not debates over nonessentials. These are not debates over secondary or tertiary doctrines. These debates involve the nature of God Almighty, the One who created the universe and everything in it, who reveals Himself to us, who redeemed us, and who calls us to worship Him in spirit and in truth. A false doctrine of God results in idolatry. The stakes in these debates, therefore, could not be any higher.

Enter James Dolezal. Dr. Dolezal is a professor of theology at Cairn University. He received his Ph.D. from Westminster Theological Seminary, writing his dissertation on the doctrine of divine simplicity. The dissertation has since been published under the title God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Pickwick, 2011). It is an outstanding work, but also a very technical and academic work because of its origin as a dissertation. In July 2017, Dolezal’s first popular-level book, All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism, was published by Reformation Heritage Books. I had the privilege of reading the manuscript prior to publication, and I also wrote a brief summary review of the book after it was published. The first time I read the manuscript, it became abundantly clear within only a few pages that the book was going to create some waves. Why? Because in this book Dolezal argues that a number of contemporary evangelical and Reformed theologians, whether wittingly or unwittingly, have rejected and/or wrongly redefined elements of classical Christian theism. In other words, they have rejected and/or wrongly redefined elements of the Christian doctrine of God. That is a serious charge, and if accurate, a devastating one that cannot be ignored or brushed aside. Not only does Dolezal argue that many evangelical and Reformed theologians have abandoned classical Christian theism, he also names names. Because some of these names are the names of very popular and influential figures in the contemporary evangelical world, it was inevitable that this book would ruffle some feathers.

Enter John Frame. Dr. Frame is now retired after teaching theology at several seminaries over the course of an almost fifty-year career. Frame has written extensively on the doctrine of God in a number of works, including his Systematic Theology (P&R, 2013) and The Doctrine of God(P&R, 2002), one of four volumes in his Theology of Lordship series. Frame is also the author of No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (P&R, 2001). Dr. Frame is loved by his students and respected by his former colleagues and critics. In fact, many of his former students, colleagues, and even critics contributed to Speaking the Truth in Love, the 1,200-page Festschrift published in his honor in 2009. Frame is one of the most popular and influential Reformed theologians writing today, and yet he is one of the men named by Dolezal as holding to significant errors regarding classical Christian theism. That is no small matter. If Dolezal is wrong, he has misrepresented the work of an important theologian. If Dolezal is right, then Frame’s widespread influence and popularity over the course of many decades may have had a profoundly negative theological influence on the church’s doctrine of God. Frame has, not surprisingly, written a lengthy response to Dolezal’s book in an online article titled “Scholasticism for Evangelicals: Thoughts on All That Is In God by James Dolezal.” Having read both Dolezal and Frame, I am convinced that there are some serious problems in Frame’s response that must be addressed. However, before examining Frame’s response more closely, we need to understand the issues that concern Dolezal as well as the charges that he has made.

All That is in God

The original advocates of the sola Scriptura principle were all classical Christian theists. They worked within the boundaries of orthodox doctrine. Click To Tweet In one sense, there is nothing remarkable about Dolezal’s book. Much of it is merely a restatement of the doctrine of God believed, confessed, and taught by orthodox Christians from the earliest centuries of the church onward—the doctrine of God they believed to be revealed by God Himself in Scripture. It is a restatement of the biblical doctrine of God found in the great creeds of the church. Furthermore, and equally relevant for our purposes, it is the biblical doctrine of God defended by the Reformed theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it is the doctrine found in the Reformed confessions of those centuries. The Westminster Confession of Faith, for example, clearly and concisely states the classical Christian doctrine of God in the following words:

Chapter II: Of God, and of the Holy Trinity.

I. There is but one only, living, and true God: who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

II. God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto, and upon them: He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever Himself pleaseth. In His sight all things are open and manifest; His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to Him contingent, or uncertain. He is most holy in all His counsels, in all His works, and in all His commands. To Him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience He is pleased to require of them.

III. In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding: the Son is eternally begotten of the Father: the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.

It is obviously well beyond the scope of this article to define and defend all of the elements of the classical doctrine of God found in this confessional statement. Such an attempt would turn this post into a multivolume book. For those who are interested in the full biblical and theological case for the classical Christian doctrine of God, the great Reformed theological works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not to mention those of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, remain readily available. The point is that Dolezal’s book is saying nothing that was not believed and defended by every orthodox Christian up until recent centuries. And yet, his book is a controversial one at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Why? What has changed?

As Dolezal explains, our theology has changed. More specifically, our doctrine of God has changed, and Dolezal argues that this change has not been for the better. His book, therefore, begins by defining the basic differences between classical Christian theism and what he calls “theistic mutualism.” He argues that theistic mutualism has infiltrated evangelical and Reformed theology, gradually displacing classical Christian theism. But what are classical Christian theism and theistic mutualism, and what are the differences between these two doctrines of God? Here, we can only summarize the main ideas explained more fully in Dolezal’s work. As he explains, classical Christian theism “is marked by a strong commitment to the doctrines of divine aseity, immutability, impassibility, simplicity, eternity, and the substantial unity of the divine persons. The underlying and inviolable conviction is that God does not derive any aspect of His being from outside Himself and is not in any way caused to be” (All That Is in God, p. 1). We see this doctrine expressed, for example, in chapter 2 of the Westminster Confession of Faith quoted above.

The original advocates of sola scriptura had no difficulty teaching doctrines that were deduced from Scripture by good and necessary consequence such as divine simplicity. Click To Tweet Theistic mutualism, in contrast with classical Christian theism, tends to reject many of these teachings as defined historically. As Dolezal explains, “In an effort to portray God as more relatable, theistic mutualists insist that God is involved in a genuine give-and-take relationship with His creatures” (pp. 1–2). There is a tendency to reject or radically redefine divine attributes such as simplicity, eternity, immutability, and impassibility. John Frame, for example, is clearly not satisfied with the classical doctrine of immutability. He writes:

Theologians have sometimes described God’s relenting as “anthropomorphic.” There is some truth in that description, for divine relenting is part of the historical interaction between God and his people, an interaction in which God’s activity is closely analogous to human behavior. (Systematic Theology, 376–77)

Frame then goes on to reject the classical theistic understanding of divine eternality, immutability, and simplicity:

But the historical process does change, and as an agent in history, God himself changes. On Monday, he wants something to happen, and on Tuesday, something else. He is grieved one day, pleased the next. In my view, anthropomorphic is too weak a description of these narratives. In these accounts, God is not merely like an agent in time. He really is in time, changing as others change. And we should not say that his atemporal, changeless existence is more real than his changing existence in time, as the term anthropomorphic suggests. Both are real. (377)

This is radically different from the classical theistic doctrine as expressed, for example, in the Westminster Confession.

Dolezal continues his explanation: “Theistic mutualism is committed to univocal thinking and speaking with regard to God and the world and thus conceives God as interacting with the world in some way like humans do, even if on a much grander scale” (p. 2). Dolezal observes that such ideas have been expressed in their strongest form by process theologians and in a slightly weaker form by open theists of various stripes. Dolezal recognizes that conservative evangelical and Reformed theologians who teach theistic mutualism rightly reject process theology and open theism. He argues, however, that despite their differences with process theology and open theism, they still share a similar divine ontology (3–4). Classical theism is the biblical doctrine of God, and that is why it is the doctrine of God that one finds in our creeds and confessions. Click To TweetAll allow for some measure of change and/or duality in the very being of God. Frame expresses such change and duality of existence in the sentences quoted above and seems to recognize the point Dolezal has made when he says, “My approach bears a superficial resemblance to process theology, which also recognizes two modes of existence in God, transcendent and immanent, sometimes called the ‘primordial’ and ‘consequent’ natures of God” (Doctrine of God, 572, emphasis mine). It is important to emphasize that Frame says that the resemblance is only “superficial.” He clearly states that process theology is unbiblical and notes the differences between it and his own view (572–73). We cannot downplay these differences. They are real. Dolezal, however, observes that since both claim that there are “two modes of existence in God,” there are also troubling similarities. The remaining chapters of Dolezal’s book are devoted to defending the various elements of the classical Christian doctrine of God against the criticisms of the theistic mutualists.

I share Dolezal’s commitment to classical Christian theism. Classical theism is the biblical doctrine of God, and that is why it is the doctrine of God that one finds in our creeds and confessions. That is why it is the doctrine defended by orthodox Christian theologians from the early church to the twentieth century. I also believe that Dolezal has demonstrated conclusively that the doctrine of God taught by many contemporary evangelical and Reformed theologians is a departure from classical Christian theism. I think that is made clear even in Frame’s response to Dolezal.

Continue reading this article here.