CTF 2025 - Who are the 2025 Speakers? Dolezal, Renihan
CTF 2025 - Preview
So we have Dr. Dozal and Dr. Renahan Jr., I guess we should call him. Or Sam Renahan. Dr. Sam. Yeah, Dr. Sam. Dr. Sam the Younger. Yes. So however you want to split it up, but maybe give a brief summary of who they are, any works that they've written, and how that would apply to this conference and how we're all going to benefit from their expertise. Go ahead. Yeah, well, maybe beginning with James Dolezal, reaching back a number of years, I believe his doctoral dissertation was on divine simplicity. So, he wrote a book called God Without Parts, which essentially is that doctoral dissertation. And in that particular book, it's a very good book, it's very technical, it's an in-depth, discovery and exploration of the doctrine of divine simplicity, which is in chapter two of our confession of faith, and which was a doctrine that the early church and throughout the following generations vigorously defended as a doctrine essential to our understanding of God and simply an entailment of monotheism. And so, Dr. Dolezal really is specialized in that particular doctrine that God is without parts. There's a clause in our confession that says God is a most pure spirit without body, parts, and passions. And so, that without parts He picks up, that God is not comprised of things. He's not made up of His attributes. He's not made up of things more absolute than Himself or things that precede Him, but rather, as the old boys would say, all that is in God is God. And in fact, that's another one of Dr. Dolezal's books is All That Is In God, which is a treatment not only of that topic, but a treatment of other divine perfections and his triunity, a work that came out of his lectures at one of the Southern California Reformed Baptist pastors conferences. That is a mouthful. But he has really, You know, not that he is not well-versed in other topics, but he has really been prominent in the doctrine of God and recently as well in the doctrine of Christ, specifically at the point of the incarnation and the assumption of our humanity by the Son of God. And so, a wonderful young, contributor to the Reformed doctrine of God and really a defender of classical theism and what, again, what we used to call Christianity. Who is God? God is one. God is three. And what does that mean for Christians to confess that? And how does that build us up to the point of doxology and worship of that God who is one in nature and being, but three in subsistence? or person. And speaking of perfections, we also have God without passions. And from what I understand, there was a good associational inquiry into what that actually means in order to ward off error. And Pastor Jim, you were involved with that. Do you mind speaking a bit about the history of that and the conclusion and explain it a little? Well, let's just continue. I mean, you mentioned the speaker, so Cam mentioned James Dolezal. The other one is Dr. Sam Renahan, so he's the son of Jim Renahan, who spoke on Chapter 1. And Sam Renahan is a pastor in Southern California at the Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in La Mirada, to sort through all the different names out there. But a faithful brother, a young brother, looks very young, but a sound mind and a good pen. And I would amen everything Cam said about Dr. Dolezal, just a very wonderful gift to the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sam is also, and Sam has an uncanny ability to popularize truth. And by that, I don't mean reduce it or make it not truth. I think R.C. Sproul was a good popularizer, taking heady things and putting them there for, you know, the simple folk, and I count myself one of them. The law of the Lord makes wise the simple. I always lean on that. Not that James Dolezal doesn't, but Sam does have a unique ability to do that. So he wrote a couple of books in response to that debate that took off in Arbka over divine impassibility. a little primer called God Without Passions, a Primer, and then God Without Passions, a Reader. And in that Reader, he just basically quotes everybody that's ever spoken on impassibility in terms of the church. And so, very helpful brother, both men. are, I would say, experts in their respective fields, and I think that anybody who comes and sits under their preaching and teaching is going to greatly benefit. Now, in terms of that debate that you ask about, it started, I think, in 2014-ish. Basically, somebody within the context of ARBCA had reworked, perhaps, or retooled the doctrine of divine impassibility in a series of blog posts, and that unleashed, you know, a pretty large-scale debate amongst the churches that were involved in ARBCA. There's a lot of details and a lot of nuts and bolts that I think probably, I don't want to get buried in the weeds, but basically, what I think the endgame was with reference to that debate in ARBCA was, it caused a lot of us to start reading in these areas, you know, not that we hadn't, but we hadn't in the best ways. And so, I think it was a great impetus to really ask questions, what does God without passions mean? And when you start to ask that question and then you start to look at the Bible and you look at the early church, you look at the medieval church, you look at the Reformed church, they're all saying the same thing. And it was not what we were being told impassibility meant. So, that debate was a good impetus to get us to read, to study, to work through some theology proper. And I only will ever count it as a blessing in my life. It set me on a path where that's all I want to read is who is God in terms of His nature, in terms of His triunity, who is Christ and the glory of the incarnation, the assumption of our humanity. It's just, it's an endless and wonderful venture to stimulate the mind and the heart and to provoke worship and hopefully obedience to this God. Amen. Amen.
