Scott Oliphint's Covenantal Properties: Divine Simplicity Under Attack?

Oddly enough, Dr. Scott Oliphint was the doctoral advisor for James Dolezal who did his doctoral work at Westminster Theological Seminary.  I have read the laity version of Dolezal's book on divine simplicity, and I am now reading his doctoral thesis as well.  Recently, Dr. Scott Oliphint has been charged with violating his ordination vows and taking an unconfessional view of the doctrine of God, so I went out and bought a copy of Oliphint's 2011 edition of God with Us.  This book is where Oliphint makes his controversial remarks that seem to lead in the direction of Open Theism and God's mutability.

I have been critical of the Van Tilian view that God has emotions and feelings because to reject the  proposition that the Bible contains anthropopathisms would imply that God is not immutable after all.  God cannot be subject to emotions because He has no body.  And if one rejects the doctrine of divine immutability--the doctrine that God is not a composite being composed of parts--a doctrine of complexity and finitude in regards to the doctrine of God soon follows.  The doctrine of divine simplicity means that God is all that He is.  Honestly, I had not studied this doctrine in detail prior to reading Dolezal's work.  Personally, although Dolezal is not a Clarkian in his theology or philosophy, I find Dolezal's book to be a refreshing recovery of a classical doctrine that all believers in God's sovereign grace should uphold.  I highly recommend both of Dolezal's books, and I also recommend that fellow Clarkians read them along with Oliphint's book, which has gotten him into trouble.  Unfortunately, Oliphint's book has been purchased back from Crossway by Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia because, apparently, most of the faculty there is in support of Oliphint and wishes that he was not on trial with his presbytery.

I cannot comment in-depth on the books I have mentioned, but I will be reviewing Dolezal's two books and Oliphint's book as well.  Fortunately, Oliphint's book is still available for around $10 at the Barnes and Noble website in Nook format.  I would advise you to purchase your copy before the book is taken down.  You can purchase Oliphint's book here:  God with Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God.  I have only read the first three chapters, but I have some significant criticisms of the book that go beyond just what Dolezal and others are saying because I am also a student of the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  It seems to me that Oliphint wants to downplay the differences between Open Theism and the traditional Reformed view that God is simple and immutable.  He speaks in almost glowing terms of Open Theists like the Greg Boyd and the late Clark Pinnock, who made the change from Calvinism to Arminianism and then to Open Theism.  Part of the problem is that Westminster Seminary agrees with the theology of paradox and with John Murray's rejection of the doctrine of anthropopathisms in the Bible.  Murray said that God has feelings.  But this would imply that God in not immutable after all and that God has emotions that can be manipulated by human interaction.  (Malachi 3:6; James 1:13-17).  In fact, in a chapel sermon delivered on March 27th, 2019 at WTS, Dr. Peter Lillback defended Oliphint and even cited John Murray's defense of God's emotions:  

Westminster Shorter Catechism Question #4 asks, “What is God?” The Answer is “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” Here we see the connection and distinction between what have been well termed the communicable and incommunicable attributes of God. God in His aseity is infinite, eternal and unchangeable. Yet these properties of absolute deity inform his communicable properties, as we see in the phrase, “in his”. This phrase modifies the entire list of the seven identified communicable attributes. Clearly there are not two Gods—an absolute God and a God who relates. There is one God who has attributes uniquely His own attributes which in turn fully inform these attributes that He has given to his creation. Thus we love because God loves. But God’s love is far different from our finite, temporal and changeable love. His love is an infinite love, an eternal love, an immutable love.

This complex of attributes are more fully identified in Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter II, paragraph one that tells us that

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 those 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.

This passage is clear that this “one only, living and true God” who is “immutable” and “most absolute” is simultaneously the same God who is “working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will”. Thus in His working with His creation and His creatures, He is “most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering abundant in goodness and truth.” He is “forgiving”, and a “rewarder” yet also “terrible in His judgments.” This “most absolute” and “immutable” divine being who is “without body, parts or passions” is nevertheless revealed as the One God who can be characterized by both emotions and actions. Thus He is characterized as “hating all sin” and One “who will by no means clear the guilty”.

We might stumble over the Confession’s statement that affirms hatred in God. Yet, Westminster’s great founding theologian insisted that this was thoroughly biblical. John Murray wrote,

p. 22 “We must, therefore, recognize that there is in God a holy hate that cannot be defined in terms of not loving or loving less. Furthermore, we may not tone down the reality or intensity of this hate by speaking of it as “anthropopathic” or by saying that it “refers not so much to the emotion as to the effect”. The case is rather, as in all virtue, that this holy hate in us is patterned after holy hate in God.”

p. 35 “. . . It is unnecessary, and it weakens the biblical concept of the wrath of God, to deprive it of its emotional and affective character . . . Wrath is the holy revulsion of God’s being against that which is the contradiction of his holiness . . . To question the reality of wrath as an “attitude of God towards us” and construe it merely as “some process or effect in the realm of objective facts” is to miss the meaning of God’s holiness as he reacts against that which is the contradiction of himself.”

John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, vol. 2, The New International Commentary on the Old and New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1968), 22, 35.

And of course, God’s love is a real act of the “most absolute” and “immutable” God who has chosen to act in history. The stalwart defender of the Westminster Standards, Charles Hodge put it this way as he spoke about the absolute God of the universe and His engagement with His creatures through prayer:

The God of the Bible, who has revealed Himself as the hearer of prayer, is not mere intelligence and power. He is love. He feels as well as thinks. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. He is full of tenderness, compassion, long-suffering, and benevolence. This is not anthropomorphism. These declarations of Scripture are not mere “regulative truths.” They reveal what God really is.

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 699.

From:  Statement from Dr. Peter Lillback on The Doctrine of God and Westminster Theological Seminary.

The rejection of God's divine simplicity and divine immutability by Charles Hodge and John Murray does not remove the fact that these serious errors lead eventually to the Arminian and even the Open Theism error.  This is why Scott Oliphint is genuinely troubled by the arguments of the Arminians and Open Theists.  He wants to reconcile the contradictions by appealing to covenantal properties as a way to sidestep divine simplicity and God's timeless immutability.  In addition, I think that WTS has had Arminian tendencies for many decades because of the emphasis on the three points of common grace, a Thomistic emphasis on the twofold view of truth as analogical, ectypal, and archetypal.  What we are seeing now is the chickens coming home to roost.  It began with Van Til's rejection of Gordon H. Clark's view of truth as propositional, and that the Bible can be summarized in a propositional system of truth deduced from Scripture. 

The best summary of the system of doctrinal truth in the Bible is the Westminster Confession of Faith.  Because of Van Til's theology of paradox and the complete inscrutableness of God there can be no coincidence between the theology in God's mind and the theology in the Bible other than by analogy.  But if two parallel lines have no contact into infinity, it logically follows that ectypal theology knows nothing of archetypal theology and vice versa.  It is by means of Van Til's rejection of logic and propositional revelation that Oliphint has begun to turn WTS in the direction of Open Theism.  While Oliphint himself rejects Open Theism, his theology is opening the door for future generations of ministers at WTS to embrace that heretical path.  Common grace inevitably leads to accepting empiricism and general revelation as corrections on special revelation in Scripture.  You can see how Oliphint himself places general revelation on equal par with special revelation in this video:  AP213 Principles of Christian Apologetics. 

Gordon H. Clark, on the other hand, consistently held that Scripture alone is the word of God.  (2 Timothy 3:16).  Furthermore, Clark said that truth is univocal in that the Bible is directly, not indirectly, truly and verily the words of God.  If God cannot know anything we know, and we cannot know anything God knows at any single point, then it logically follows that the Bible is not God's written word but only a weak reflection of it.

Ironically, the Van Tilians accused Clark of violating the Creator/creature distinction and of prying into God's secret being.  Now we see Oliphint prying into the secret being of God and contending that God has added covenantal properties to His being, so that He can now interact with creation mutably.  Additionally, I would add that I wonder how Hodge, Murray, Van Til, and Oliphint know that God has emotions?  If the Bible is not archetypal revelation, then how do they know that God has emotions?  Are they prying into God's secret being?

I will, as time permits, try to review the three books in question in the near future.  You can purchase Dolezal's books at Amazon in either paperback or ebook format for Kindle.  The links are:  James E. Dolezal, All That Is in God:  Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Theism.  The second book is:  God without Parts:  Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God's Absoluteness.

For a posted critique of Oliphint's book by James Dolezal see:  Objections to K. Scott Oliphint's Covenantal Properties Thesis.

Anyone who would like to see a PDF copy of the charges against K. Scott Oliphant can contact me by email and I will gladly email that to you.  My email address is cranmer1959@gmail.com.