[OBW]

I would say that it is the relationship between the Father and the Son and the Son and the Spirit that is most noteworthy about the separation. Without the simultaneous interaction of the Godhead, the idea of pure modalism becomes not so far-fetched. But this relationship denies that extreme. Yet purely Three cannot be "One God" unless it is different that what we think of as being three persons.

There is the problem with Justyn (on one side) and modalists on the other. And while Lee was really somewhere in the middle, he almost had no use for the separateness revealed, which puts his teachings in a poor light for me.

There is clearly something that our limited minds cannot put in a box of logic. There is a mystery in it. And I know that you are not one of those who tries to turn every mystery into science. I am not suggesting that there is no value in thinking about the different ways to describe the multifarious traits of a God who is above our knowledge (especially our ability to reconcile it all). But since scripture goes to no length to provide explanations for it all — just the statements that are clearly made — I am quite happy not being able to reconcile it all.

I don't need to understand everything unless it actually affects my living. We can talk all we want about, and become more in awe of God. And I do not deny that we are to do that to some degree. But I wonder if sometimes we lose some of that awe when we manage to distill him down to something we can get our minds around. Somehow, if just his love could only be described by draining the ocean for ink (as the song sort of says) when we have some idea what love is, how do we distill a Three-One into just a few paragraphs?

I do not believe that I am hiding from finding some "truth" but rather avoiding limiting the vastness of God by pigeon-holing him into something I can describe. If I can describe him then (outside of actually imparting life) I can create him. (And I would then suppose that it would be in my image.)

As someone once said, God created man in His image and we've been returning the favor ever since.

As to some of your questions, such as which "I" is the one who says "I am the Lord your God" or "I Am" I wonder if figuring it out is important. As for "I Am," We know that Jesus said it in the NT. But does that force the original statement from the bush to be the Son? The problem with figuring this kind of thing is that it takes the idea of Three and pushes it closer to the separateness of a kind of tritheism. Just the opposite of the God who views himself so thoroughly and completely that his image of himself becomes another person (as the opening post suggested).

I'm not saying any of it is wrong. But I keep looking at it and when I try to apply logic, I find impasses that cannot be ignored. Last time I mentioned the one about the image being the Son yet we cannot look upon it — but we can and many did. There is a near unity in the statements (from which of the writers I do not know) that is not actually three. Now we are looking at aspects that push toward a finding of three that are hardly related (I'm over-stating it).

It takes over the mental processes into figuring out God rather than appreciating what he clearly says he is, and doing what he says to do. And he never said to figure him out. The one place that four guys sat around and tried to figure it all out, God came along and told them they didn't have a clue. I think we are sort of in that realm here. Some things are not ours to figure out.