Re: Round Three

When you instruct me as to what I cannot do, you impose a restriction. For example, you state "You cannot indiscriminantly interchange Father for God". Of course I can.
There is no proof of the trinity as of yet. I conceded the duality concept in recognition of your view. You however will not concede my point of view, which by definition is reasonable to conclude, based on the offered scripture. There is no need of further scriptural reference at this time, as we are debating the offered scripture, as it pertains to the very being of Jesus Christ.

What I'm telling you you can't do is according to sound exegesis, not anything I just made up. So no, you cannot indiscriminantly interchange Father for God whenever it suits your preconceived ideas. Context decides the meaning. And there is plenty of proof of the Trinity. In just that passage in Hebrews alone we have seen that God is at least Two, and you have not refuted that. In fact you conceded it in your previous post. You keep saying that your view is "reasonable by definition", but I've already shown that to be false. Again, presuming your view to be true and reasonable does not make it so. Scripture decides God's nature, not man's view of what is reasonable.

And there certainly is need of further scripture as pertains to the person of Jesus Christ, the subject of this debate. The debate is not this one passage of scripture, but all the scriptures that pertain to the Godhead. Not only have you ignored the passage in Isaiah, but I'm sure you'll want to ignore this one as well:

Zechariah 12:10
"And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

If you check the context, the speaker here is YHWH or Jehovah, God the Father. It is a clear prediction of the future mourning of Israel at the realization that they crucified their Messiah, Jesus Christ. So here we see YHWH, God the Father, equated with Jesus, the one who was pierced.

You go on to appeal once again to man's "common sense", as if this is the way to exegete a passage of God's Word. Loving those who hated Him is not reasonable, nor it God becoming man to save sinners. The whole gospel message is unreasonable! I marvel that you've never understood this before, but your sense of reason is not the judge of God's Word nor the standard by which it is to be understood or interpreted. If you consider proper exegesis to be unreasonable and restrictive, then you can make the Bible say whatever you want-- which is probably your goal. But I can assure you that I will not allow you to write the Bible as you see fit.

I have placed no restrictions on you that I am not under myself. You want an uneven playing field and are whining because I won't let you get away with it. "The process by which you have drawn your conclusion" must bow to what God has actually said, as applies to me as well. I am not concerned with your idea of common sense here, but with how anyone can read the Bible and claim that Jesus was ever an angel or was not God, as I have shown by quoting Scripture. You, on the other hand, have done nothing but whine and hurl accusations.

Your idea of context has no resmblance to any rules of textual criticism I've ever seen, and I'm sure you've not studied that. Even so, the Isaiah and Zechariah passages are so crystal clear about the divinity of Jesus and his being the Creator of all, including angels, that you have not even attempted to comment on them. You also seem unable to comprehend the meaning of "breadth" even by Biblical context alone. Check all instances of the use of the word in the Bible and you will see that it means the same as "width". Unless of course you want to argue for Biblical support of a fourth dimension.

Not only is my understanding not encumbered by the trinity doctrine, it is derrived directly from scripture alone. You are obsessed with not wanting to see what the scriptures plainly say about the nature of God. You cannot see your own guilt in your claims of my being "condescending". "Get out of my head!!!" is hardly reasonable or calm, and your constant claims that I am "encumbered" aren't helping your case at all. Then you go on to claim that if I dare to point out that you've done nothing but whine, you want me to concede the debate! I am under no obligation to RESPECT whining.

Really, Mr. Steve, so far you've only proved that you have little or no training in exegesis or debate, and that you have no case for your claim that Jesus was ever an angel or was not always God. I think instead of listening to more of your whining and non-attempts to focus on the subject of the debate, we should stop here and ask the moderators to decide whether the debate should continue. I'll leave it up to them. You need to exhibit a desire to deal BIBLICALLY with the passages I've quoted from the Bible that clearly prove my case. If you continue to evade those points and instead keep complaining about being under the same restrictions I am under, you are just wasting everyone's time.