Scripture is our norming norm and tradition is our normed norm and that in a doctrinal controversy Scripture alone has absolute veto power while The Great Tradition (orthodox doctrine) has a vote but not a veto.

If the biblical writers were writing today they might spell out some things more clearly, given how easily even Christians fall into thinking in ways alien and foreign to the biblical story of God and creation.

To some of us, raised and trained in allowing the Bible to absorb the world (that is, to "see" all of reality through the biblical story), the Bible is quite clear about all really important matters.

The Bible portrays God as entering into covenants with people which, when broken, causes him grief and sorrow. The biblical prophet Hosea and God's using him as an illustration of how much Israel's idolatry costs God emotionally points to God's vulnerability. But also the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ who, even as God the Son, suffered for our sins, points to God's vulnerability.

We're creatures, so we have limits.

For Christians ultimate reality is and can only be a personal, sovereign, holy, and loving God. But even some Christians, under extra-biblical and even anti-Christian cultural influences read the Bible as pointing to something not ultimate, such as material wealth, health, happiness, power, etc.

Today, under the influences of Eastern religions and philosophies imported into the West, many Christians confuse God's Spirit with our spirit and think our spirit is a spark of the divine, "the God within everyone." That's not how the biblical writers thought about our spirits or souls.