After following the Dolezal-Divine Simplicity controversy for some years now, I found this review of his book 'All that is in God' to be helpful. I have been quite open over the years that I'm not a real fan of John Frame. I remember being rather put off by his Worship in Spirit and Truth back in 1996 and yet despite my differences I'm always curious to read his works and see what he has to say. His take is often a bit different and always challenging, even when I think he's wrong.
As expected, the prefatory comments made by Frame are reflective and astute. I remain baffled by the suggestion that Aquinas was a Christian when if they encountered such a man today they would deny him the right hand of fellowship. Once again, this testifies to a progressive concept of orthodoxy, a paradigm fraught with problems that Confessionalists like Frame choose to ignore. Of course Frame like his colleague Poythress has committed himself to a Kuyperian project of addressing various spheres of thought - historiography, science, sociology, mathematics, through the lens of 'redeeming' them. In other words through the auspices of Kuyperian worldview and common grace such spheres can be in fact 'Christianised' to some extent.
While I can agree with his criticisms and somewhat negative posture toward the question (and methodology) of Scholasticism, I find that contemporary worldview-ism is but another manifestation of the same. The difference is simply in terms of what philosophical assumptions and paradigm take precedent. The older models relied on Aristotle or Ramus in some cases. Frame is building on the Idealist-coherentist models of Continental Philosophy in the Van Tillian vein. It may or may not be better than Aristotelian-influenced theology - but it's still a synthesis.
As far as Dolezal, he made quite a splash a few years back when he accused many prominent theologians of the rather serious charge of departing from Classical Theism. But to borrow a saying from another camp, we might ask - by what standard?
For Dolezal, the standard is (apparently) the theology that emerged during the High Scholastic period. Am I alone in thinking this strange coming from a Baptist?
Dolezal assumes Scholastic methodology is the 'right' way to do theology and Frame is just as right to question this assumption.
He accuses some of theistic mutualism - implying that ontological change within the Godhead is possible. And in other instances he accuses figures like Wayne Grudem of subordinationism. I have no wish to defend Grudem as I have never found anything written by that man to be of any value and it may be that he has erred in the direction of subordinationism in order to (by misapplying the doctrine) score points in the culture war. I cannot say and have little interest in spending time investigating his opinions. That said, there is a larger set of questions and debate within the scope of Trinitarian theology that is neglected and unless someone like Dolezal is prepared to denounce a number of thinkers in the Early Church, the arguments made by him have little standing. To the Eastern Orthodox, Latin Trinitarianism is modalist and the Early Church often (it can indeed be argued) sides with the East. Some of this will depend on how 'Early Church' is defined and delineated. Regardless either Dolezal has a problem with Historical Theology or he has to argue on the basis of Progressive Orthodoxy. Either way, he has a substantial problem that he either doesn't realize or has chosen to ignore.
Frame amply demonstrates that these terms are not so easily defined and this suggests that Dolezal may be guilty of generalisation and the fallacy of the slippery slope.
I'll say it again, though I am often in disagreement with Frame, no one can doubt he's an astute thinker and in particular I appreciate the way he's willing to grant that even Process and Open theologies have to be reckoned with as to opposed to be dismissed out of hand. They too can appeal to Scripture and they have some valid points that need to be considered without caving in to correlativism. I think the solutions are less about forging a philosophical theology or a metaphysic but would be found in where we differ in the realm of prolegomena. This is the actual heart of this debate - the very nature of the theological enterprise and the state of human epistemology in light of the Fall.
For my part I have long sensed a rationalist strain with Reformed Baptist thinking which often slips into Hyper-Calvinism. Many Calvinists who travel down the rationalist road end up in both the Hyper-Calvinist and Baptistic camps - they often (but not always) go together. It does not surprise me that many in this camp have grown dissatisfied with the likes of Van Til, Kuyper, Bavinck, and the entire Dutch spectrum of Reformed theology. The Anglo-American Analytic tradition is dominated by Empiricist and (generally speaking) Enlightenment thought and assumption and the Dutch are coming at things from the Continental perspective, a philosophical tradition that took a very different turn with Kant. Some would even say this school demonstrates anti-Enlightenment tendencies. This is not to say these men are Kantian any more than Empiricist-influenced theologians are slaves to Locke and Hume, but the very matrix of their thought is different.
In another sense - to borrow from Whitehead, these too are footnotes to Plato, yet another debate between Platonic and Aristotelian tendencies and the types of reasoning and epistemology they entail. This (I think) is a problem but to break free from this cycle also requires a willingness to break (to some extent) with historical theology. But even historically-rooted arguments are not easy to parse as the history is long and complicated. Are Protestants required to follow the Roman Catholic or Thomist line?
What we really have is a Calvinist epistemological tradition developed in the Anglo-American sphere and it was rocked by the arrival of Dutch-Continental influence and thought in the early 20th century. One could almost date it to Kuyper's Stone Lectures in 1898 - his 'life view' language was quite foreign to his Princeton audience. While Kuyperian influence was more easily felt and openly embraced in CRC circles, it had not yet been felt in the Anglo-American Reformed world of Presbyterians and Baptists. A generation later the likes of Van Til and Vos were on the scene and it sparked something of a revolution - not just with apologetics but with hermeneutics, epistemology - and the very nature of theology itself. It's always been controversial for some in the American Reformed world but in recent years there's been a more determined reaction - all the more with the culture wars heating up. This was after all RC Sproul's primary concern with presuppositionalism and its rather Continental reliance on transcendental arguments. He states us much in the opening of his apologetics debate with Greg Bahnsen. He didn't believe it could stand up in the face of modern Scientism and the claims of secular humanism.
And so with Dolezal we find the reaction intensified and the embrace of Scholasticism absolutized. Again it is in the realm of these fundamental questions or prolegomena that the real debate is to be found. This is where the divergence finds its origin. There's a basic disagreement on the very nature of theology. I don't agree with Frame (or Bahnsen, or Van Til) either but far more so than someone like Dolezal.
When your logic won't allow for the dynamism of Scripture - of what God Himself has revealed then you have a problem. We need not fear to express what God Himself has said. And to think we need to (or even can) tease this all out and dissect its precise meaning indicates a commitment to theological method that I would argue Scripture itself does not support.
Frame runs down a list of considerations which I'm sure someone like Dolezal on the basis of Aristotelian logic can find a way of effectively explaining away. The problem with Process and Open theologies is they take certain of these dynamisms and absolutize them by means of the same process, creating a new theological framework. In the cases of Hyper-Calvinism, Process and Open theology, and even Scholasticism the problem is effectively the same - rationalism. There are different varieties of rationalism and different methods it can employ but it always undermines and subordinates revelation. This is what Dolezal is doing.
And yet here's where I also differ with Frame. There's another Continental road to rationalism, one more Platonic and Idealist. They end up more or less in the same place but by different roads. Or in this case, there's a real debate but (I would contend) by examining the roads (back to prolegomena) we discover that both roads lead to wrong destinations and the whole debate is revealed as somewhat farcical. Whether one believes that reason is somehow less fallen or that the regenerate can employ right reason - on a practical level it's not always that different.
But again, if forced to choose or perhaps more accurately 'lean' to one side or the other, I would definitely choose Frame over Dolezal. And for the record both would accuse me of fideism if not outright Pyrrhonism in keeping with the likes of Ockham, Montaigne, Bayle, Pascal, and Kierkegaard. They would certainly reject the notion that Tertullian also belongs to this camp.
Frame is right to raise the issue of Docetism. Dolezal of course doesn't believe in it, but this demonstrates another truth - that all philosophies implode in the end and philosophical theology is no different. Church History and a study of Historical Theology teaches us that. The attempt by Confessionalists to 'lock' or 'arrest' this process (which they also embrace and rely on) is unconvincing, though for those in those circles, it remains compelling.