You talk down to people and don't explain what you're thinking. You dismiss Buzzard because you're "familiar with him." OK, can you give a bit more info on what it is that you don't like about him?
Whatever I have posted is relevant to the ongoing discussion. I made points about the trinity doctrine which could have been responded to by some member here who has one or two thoughts that go below the surface. I don't "slap" a wall of text up just to busy myself. I carefully choose points from the discussion in the book and present them to the members here to get their thoughts on them. I have seen plenty of discussions about some author's work or some saint's ideas, etc.
Yes, I say again, "YOUR unsupportable doctrines," though of course they are, unfortunately, shared by others. This has got to be the most ridiculous idea that I have run across today---that Jesus is somehow saying that HE is the true God by saying to the Father, "YOU are the only true God." What kind of mental gymnastics do you do to convince yourself of that??
You take two ambiguous verses out of John and use them to support your incredible theology, while ignoring HUNDREDS of other verses! How can that be? Those two verses are not "the rest of the gospel of John." They are the EXCEPTION to the rest of John. The one verse that cannot be fully explained is Thomas' exclamation. ONE VERSE. The rest can be clearly and nicely explained. John 1:1 has been taken apart ad nauseum and shown to be actually an attempt by John to differentiate between God and the Word. The God whom the Word, Jesus, was with is accompanied by a definite article which identifies that "God" as THE God---the one and only almighty God. The god whom the Word is is not accompanied by ANY article, so therefore it is understood to be someone OTHER THAN the "God" that he was with. That is the way the rules go, from Greek to English. The rules of grammar dictate that it makes a difference who has the definite article and who is referred to WITHOUT the definite article.
The conclusion can only be that the Word was NOT the God that he was with.
I love God and His Son so much that I can't stand someone saying untrue things about them. The only "fighting" I do is FOR God and Jesus, with the sword of the Spirit, the Bible.
Ephesians 6:11-17
THE FATHER is the true God, and Jesus couldn't have been more clear. (Read all of John chapter 17.)
Kingdom, I can tell that you are passionate and have a lot of energy that you willing to commit to this subject. Unfortunately the nature of this type of forum is that one occasionally gets worn down and worn out. What was said and hoped to have been established yesterday is all but forgotten today and vanished beneath the sea of inevitable bickering from third parties that flows in a whelming flood. We get tired of covering the same ground again, and again. I apologize if I seemed snappy or excessively dismissive.
To clarify, I have read little of Anthony Buzzard directly, and as such when I refer to "Anthony Buzzard" I am speaking of what he represents. By this I can refer to a couple years of various contact (conversations and communications) with different Unitarians.
What you posted was not relevant to the
current discussion. It was on the tread topic, granted, but it wasn't on the sub-questions that people were busy with at the moment or the current bickering and name calling of the day. With the way you entered, it comes across to me as if you were looking for a fight, but there was already a different fight in progress and so no one paid attention. So even if you are right in some aspect, that's not the way to introduce the topic to obtain a decent (or fair) hearing.
I have a good friend that used to be Unitarian. By used to be I mean that he was Unitarian when we met. We started discussing this topic (nature of God and Christ) and after several months I found that he had changed his position. By found I mean that he didn't tell me initially. He used that time to throw pretty much every Unitarian argument in the book at me (or at least he made sure he covered everything on a very comprehensive website that he later told me he used for reference.) If you think this forum is lengthy, this was far more in depth, and we weren't using name calling or abuse. Frustration sometimes perhaps, but not like you see here. His synopsis afterwards was that "Biblical Unitarianism isn't very biblical."
I did not
win a friend by aggressively arguing unsupported doctrine, nor was my friend someone who was
unfamiliar with his own position from where he was starting. I cannot guarantee that anyone will agree with the same set of givens that someone else will, but believe me when I say that I am somewhat familiar with these arguments already, and if I respond in short to something, it is possible it's not because I am ignorant of what you are about to say, but it might even be because I now know what you're about to say and I'm three steps ahead, having been put through all this before (by my friend, who didn't tell me he'd already changed his mind so that he could continue to test me.)
The sum of the matter is that Jesus is our God, and there is no other God. That's the beginning of John, that's the end of John, it's what is woven throughout the scriptures of the Old Testament and forwards, it's what's spoken of by the apostles, it's in the words of Jesus in his Revelation. You probably don't see it right now because of your current perspective or a bad assumption.
I know that I have said nothing to persuade you yet. That wasn't my intent right now. Would you like to talk by private message? Because frankly speaking these forums sometimes resemble an insane asylum. Just drop me a quick note if you are interested. Thanks.
