All That Is in God

James Dolezal discusses his book All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Theism (Reformation Heritage Books, 2017). Dr. Dolezal serves as associate professor in the school of divinity at Cairn University in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.
In this conversation, and the book that guides it, Dolezal addresses the doctrines of classical theism as well as contemporary models of theology proper, which reject, compromise, or otherwise diminish the classical formulations. Interacting with primary sources from theologians such as Bruce Ware, John Frame, and K. Scott Oliphint, Dolezal charitably offers a critique while reaffirming that all that is in God is God.
This is Christ the Center episode 638 (www.reformedforum.org/ctc638)
10:00 Confessional Language
16:50 Theistic Mutualism vs Classical Theism
21:13 The Absolute God Relates
26:15 Doctrine of Immediate Creation
46:25 Hartshorne’s Dipolar Theism / Ware’s Relational Mutability
1:08:00 Barthian Actualism
1:15:25 John Frame’s Two Divine Existences
1:34:52 Scott Oliphint's Essential/Covenantal Model of Theology Proper

[@robertosoriano9617]

Dr. Dolezal is always full of edifying theological knowledge. I have watched the first two episodes of simplicity and impassibility more than a dozen of times and can't get enough of them. Thank you for teaching these orthodox Christian doctrines that would otherwise become less known with overtime.

[@randybrown1801]

Thank you Brothers for grappling with this!

[@cjfoster4179]

There’s such a Spirit filled passion when these men speak.

[@tabithadorcas7763]

Great discussion! Thanks!

[@StevenLascombe]

1:48:09 I'm wondering if Lane isn't born Canadian for being so polite. 😆 I wish you guys had discussed the questions that people could have when we talk about simplicity, immutability, impassibility, regarding worship and prayer. The joy or pleasure that the Bible says God takes when we worship him, pray him, put our trust in him, wouldn't it be considered as a change in God? How do we define pleasure or joy of a being that doesn't lack anything ? Can this being even take any pleasure in anything if It is all knowing and possessing everything already. I'm just trying to understand better this doctrine. Also Frame would answer that if the Bible is anthropomorphic throughout the whole Bible, as Bavinck would say, how can we not say that Christ anthropomorphically died for our sins or was anthropomorphically raised from the dead ? That raises a good question, of when do we know read the text "anthropomorphically" and we don't.

[@davidacharles1962]

Chist is not *like* a human (anthropomorphic) Chist *is* human. As to differing emotive states in Scripture attributed to God, these are speaking "improperly" of God and not "properly." God is pure and perfect joy, love or as Scripture states it: He is the ever-blessed God!

[@nigelhunter4230]

Superb edifying discussion by three great christian scholars. Thankyou gentlemen from the UK. I have bought the book and it's an excellent read.

[@s3cr3tandwh1sp3r]

I would love to hear Dr. Tipton and Dr. Dolezal talk about other topics together, especially presuppositional apologetics and infant baptism.

[@petersenben32]

Me too! But I think that you could presuppose their disagreement 😊

[@davidacharles1962]

Classical theism is not really hospitable to Van Tillism.

[@s3cr3tandwh1sp3r]

I disagree (and so do Lane and Camden and many others). But that is why I would love to see the conversation happen.

[@petersenben32]

@@s3cr3tandwh1sp3r I agree with you on that point. I would love to see that debate too...

[@PaDutchRunner]

@@davidacharles1962 Untrue.

[@marilynmelzian7370]

I wonder if the mutualists understand transcendence, ironically, in a purely Aristotelian sense, in which the ultimate cause of the world is unaware of the world and simply contemplates its own being. The ancient fathers and many of the medieval Christian theologians do not at all understand God‘s transcendence as being a barrier to God‘s intimacy with the world. Whatever they used of Greek philosophical categories, they did not see transcendence as putting God in an inaccessible box. I get the feeling that mutualists simply do not understand either realist metaphysics or classical theism.

[@leepretorius4869]

Would love to hear what Dolezal thinks is good from Muller’s dictionary of Latin and Greek scholastic terms…

[@bradwalton3977]

I wish that Dolezal would undertake an explicit critique of Process Theology from the point of the DDS, showing why the basic tenets of Process Theology are nonsensical.

[@davidacharles1962]

Dolezal making Baptist theology great again!

[@JPPAD52j]

What is the difference between Baptist theology and biblical theology like in Vos book on," Biblical Theology ?" Are we now creating different degrees or types of theology?

[@davidacharles1962]

@@JPPAD52j Baptist theology *is* Biblical theology fully matured. And, there are different types of theology though not all theologies are Biblical or faithful to the full scope of Scripture.

[@Tanjaicholan]

Did Dr. Dolezal say anything other than that the doctrine in discussion is classical, catholic, Reformed and orthodox? I didn’t think so,! Thank you.

[@treyb2608]

Tbh, hearing you describe these ideas from Oliphint and Frame, it brings to mind the gnostic demiurge. That God, in His perfection, required to create an intermediate god to do His dirty work.

[@TheExastrologer]

Every Christian should see this and/or read his book "All That Is In God"

[@michaelgonzalez9058]

I AM

[@Zombiefann]

Lemme get this straight. WTS bought up God With Us, and burned the hard copies? I love Reformed Forum and WTS but that seems a little medieval to me.

[@nathanualcooper]

I don’t get it ? Didn’t van til solve all this immutability but the phrase that Scripture is the clothing of Gods naked revelation. Isn’t that what van tils great contribution and fixture that presuppositional apologetics finds its non circular rest in. Wasn’t Benjamin b warfield a trojon of puzzles that helps visualise and realise even greater still that foundational concept of what and how God is to us in all that is ? I just feel like? Are we hunting here with the knowledge of presuppositional pitfalls instead of recognising the only non presuppostional grounds that van til knew elaborates the foundation for all presuppositional existences ? I must be missing something here . I haven’t got the memo . I’ve over assumed this position . Some how.

[@Parks179-h]

you cant apply the communication of properties to God... that would imply he has two natures. wow!

[@michaelgonzalez9058]

U don't kare