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CTF 2025 - Who are the 2025 Speakers? Dolezal, Renihan

Jim Butler · 2024-12-20 · 1,076 words · 8 min

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.