Anonymous is not pleased.
You can read the comment at the end of my last post. This is the last post I will make regarding this topic. Rather than commenting on the content of Anonymous' comments, I simply want to comment on the importance of presuppositions, those assumptions about the world we all bring to our understanding of anything, especially the Bible and theology. Presuppositions are difficult to avoid, and sometimes they are not bad. They are bad if they do not allow a person to view a subject any other way than thier presuppositions allow.
Anonymous belongs to a church that believes (I hope I'm being accurate here) that there is only one God, Jesus. There is no Father and no Holy Spirit, at least not as separate persons of the Godhead. They are all manifestations of Jesus. All of the Old Testament names for God are names for Jesus. The OT says there is one God, one Lord. The NT says Jesus is God. Therefore, they claim, every Scripture that mentions "God" refers to Jesus and Jesus alone. These are their presuppositions. They will claim that they are inferences or direct teachings straight from Scripture, not the teachings of men.
The problem is, that's what everyone says about their beliefs.
I claim that God is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each of whom is rightly called God, but none of whom fully expresses God. They are eternally coequal, coexistent, and are the perfect expression of fellowship, community, and truth. I, too, do not base these assertions on traditions, but on Scripture. Hence, the problem between Anonymous and me: our presuppositions are contradictory, yet we both base them on Scripture.
The problem deepens: if we both accept the law of noncontradiction (that something cannot be and not be at the same time in the same way), then one of us is wrong. Anonymous will say that I am wrong, and I say that Anonymous is wrong. I believe Anonymous' presuppositions are faulty and not based on Scripture but on a creative interpretation of Scripture that is not warranted by the text itself. So many verses mention the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as separate, yet all are called God, and there is only one God. This is somewhat paradoxical, and many have labored to describe it. Welcome to orthodoxy.
Anonymous and I have too many disagreeing presuppositions ever to come to agreement. The end of it, though, being as this is my blog and if you don't like it, start your own blog, is this: I'm right, my understanding is more orthodox and historical than yours, and you are not honestly dealing with the wealth of (especially NT) texts that explicitly list (sometimes in the same verse!) all three persons.
That's my blog, and I'm sticking to it.:)
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