Paidion wrote:If revelation is that plain, then there should be agreement among Christians as to what has been revealed. But there is considerable disagreement.
It is not that God is a poor communicator, but that man is inadequate in his ability to receive that communication. For example, I understand God to have been revealed in and by Christ as being pure LOVE, while others, while agreeing that He is a God of love, affirm that He is also a God of vengeance. I see no way that love can express itself as vengeance. We would never recognize vengeance as an expression of love when carried out by a human being. But somehow some find it rational to attribute both love and vengeance to God while, at the same time, denying that He is schizophrenic.
I doubt we disagree much on this subject. I was responding to your choice of the word MUCH in the original post. Given God's revelation, there are clear boundaries to what we should believe about God. In other words (in line with my second post in this thread), it wouldn't make sense given revelation to believe that God was boring, impersonal, stand-off-ish, hateful, and weak. I agree with you that we are left to debate definitions of words, but its not a free-for-all what words are chosen!
It's like with any given passage of Scripture... There are a thousand things it couldn't mean and a few things it could mean.
And even with your picture. It seems like a spiral, but we can entertain the notion that it is circles (and find out for sure that it is). But it'd be off the wall to wonder if maybe it is a series of triangles or squares or, worse yet, guitars or scooters.