I appreciate many of he things shared in this lengthy thread.
Getting back to the OP, the controversy I've been following more closely is between James White and other Baptists who are into what they insist is "Great Tradition" exegesis and theology.
I see a lot of it as speaking past one another.
On the one hand there are those who are rightly pointing out that there is a well-worn doctrine of God that carried over into the Reformation.
On the other hand, some of the same just use the term "Great Tradition" and if someone (like James White) says that he's not sure that he can go with some very fine distinctions about God's simplicity then James has left the faith. The specific issue James started with had to do with whether God's attributes are really distinguishable between each other in the Godhead. He pushes back that, exegetically, this is a hard conclusion to come to and he's not willing to go there but doesn't cast out those who disagree.
I rather see that issue concerning God's attributes as crossing into archetypal theology where God is in Himself qualitatively different than we can comprehend. I'm willing, for the sake of not understanding all the issues, to see a metaphysical argument toward that end as valid.
James wasn't had had been asking for exegetical arguments. He's then accused of sort of a gross Biblicism where he throws out all of Church history if he doesn't side with Aquinas as the sine qua non on the doctrine of God.
Instead of remaining focused on this issue, what James has been doing is pointing out this sort of simple syllogism:
P1: If a man errs greatly in other areas of theology he cannot necessarily be relied upon as the final word concerning the doctrine of God.
P2: Aquinas errs regularly in other aspects of theology.
Conclusion: Let's not be too hasty making Aquinas the final word on the doctrine of God.
What James has been doing is doubling down on P2 showing how often Aquinas' theology on the Mass and many other topics is way off. He's the first one to regularly admit that Aquinas need not be disposed of, but that he errors are not inconsequential and so where does this "Great Tradition" party get the authority to judge all (even minor) departures from Aquinas as rejecting Church history.
in my opinion, there has been a lot of really childish circling of the wagons by some in response to White preferring to just mock Sola Scriptura or claiming,, baldly, that he's a Socinian.
White is not one to back down or lower the temperature either and I think many might come to the conclusion that his regular pointing out of Aquinas' well-known errors mean he rejects the value of Church history.
White, I think, rightly points out that even historical theology ultimately needs to be defended by appeal to the exegesis or GNC of Scripture, but it appears (to me at least) that others who Tweet against him as a rank heretic are not able to mount the case from a Biblical standpoint. In other words, the doctrines of the Godhead that arose over time did come about not by appealing to a "tradition" but to Scripture as their foundation. It wasn't a bald exegesis and required some use of GNC, but it did ultimately rest on Scripture.
In all of this, I'm willing to concede I haven't studied the issue on some of the finer points of simplicity to either argue for or against Aquinas on some of the specific issues that White is arguing regarding God's attributes ultimately all being the same. I do agree with those who have criticized Frame and others as departing from basic ideas of Divine simplicity but those were mounted with much greater care than I see here.
I'm not saying James is going about this in the best possible way, but it is pretty hard for anyone in his position to suddenly have fellow Baptists accusing him of things that are just not true regarding his facility with Church history whether you agree with all his conclusions. Even during the ERAS and ESS debates years ago, James has sufficient facility to see the problems inherent in that controversy and those who love Aquinas on this topic would do better to mount arguments rather than retreating behind vague ideas that there is a "Great Tradition exegesis" and the like.
