[OBW]

I'm convinced that this kind of analysis is just as faulty as the "three persons with one essence" analysis. It looks at it form one angle.

If three persons is the starting point, the connection is something short of literally one. If a single God is the starting point, you end out short of the full recognition of the three that scripture provides.

It is a problem of understanding. And we don't. Unless one of the shorthand versions is simply correct (and the verses that it doesn't explain are ignored), reality is not fully describable with human experience. We can separately describe parts. And once we have those parts, we can fashion ourselves a doctrine. But it can only get sketchy because we understand some of the different parts as (at least) sort of contradictory, therefore the whole as described is problematic.

I realize that it is not this simple, but the God described in the opening post could not declare that only the Father knows something because the Three are too entirely one to really be enough Three to get there. But then going to the "persons sharing essence" argument has its problems.

The better answer is to recognize One God who is Three. Appreciate the leading and filling of the Spirit, the sacrifice of the Son, and the headship of the Father. (Don't bother suggesting what I forgot. We all forgot more than we remembered. These are just examples.) The revelation of the specific things is meaningful in an important way while figuring out how it all fits together is not. That is the reason that there is no doctrine of the Trinity in scripture. We can argue that it is there — just between the lines. But just like the "ground," it isn't really.

It is much more important to believe in the sacrifice of the Son, obey his teachings (as they lead to righteousness that is demanded by the Father), relying on the leading and filling of the Spirit to accomplish this. Understanding it is not needed for action. How did the Jordan stop flowing and become dry for the crossing? Is there some natural explanation? Doesn't matter, especially if you are one of the group that is about to cross. You just obey and cross. God did it. Did he use some natural phenomenon or break the laws of physics? Doesn't matter.

We are trapped in a mindset that requires completely logical explanations or we cannot continue. There is mystery in God that is not revealed. The sooner we understand that, the sooner we can get back to the parts that are not mysterious. And there are a lot of them.

Funny now we manage to turn the mystery into science and then ignore the literal as metaphor and "OT law."