The thing is, no one likes contradictions, and everyone has the concept of =, and knows the indiscernibility of identicals. And that's really all the philosophy that is at issue here. The project is finding a charitable and plausible interpretation - one which is seemingly consistent (charitable) and plausible - so it can't require any really out there thesis which only mathematicians or logicians or metaphysicians or physicists can grasp. Unitarian readings are just of this sort - they read the NT as self-consistent, and don't attribute anachronistic ideas to the authors. This is in sharp contrast to some (not all) Trinity theories.
Ironically, Jeremy Piece begins with a similar premise, but draws the opposite conclusion. For Pierce, a charitable reading which avoids imputing inconsistency to the NT writers will in fact be a Trinitarian reading.
It's pretty similar to other statements about Jesus having something that only God would be expected to have, especially when you combine it with the repeated statements in the prophets about God not sharing his glory with any other. That really does seem to lead to a contradiction unless you move somewhere in the direction of classical trinitarianism. My contention is that the doctrine of the Trinity developed to avoid contradiction in the biblical texts.
Sorry, don't see any irony here at all. Yes, charity requires that we try to interpret a speaker or text in a way which is self consistent (for starters). That doesn't give you really any guidance on *how* to interpret any case. So, it's no surprise that different hearers may come up with different interpretations - in this case, Jeremy and me. Still, charity in this sense is a good thing, and there's no replacement for it.
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