If “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” does not reveal who God is but only how he manifests himself, how he appears to us along the way, then we cannot know God as he is. All we can know is the mask he dons at any given time. We must always wonder who he really is.
Moreover, if God is not triune within himself, then we cannot know if relationships are ultimate or only contrivances for some other, higher end.
It is not true that “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” is a strategy by which God relates to us. The truth is, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” describes the relational glory which God is within himself. Within the Trinity, “each says I, and each says Thou, to either of the others” (Hodge, Systematic Theology, I:459).
The God we encounter everywhere in Scripture, though mysterious to us, though we strain at the leash of language to describe him faithfully, though we know he is more than our small thoughts can achieve – still, God is truly knowable according to his own self-revelation. We can receive his testimony to himself at face value without fear of missing who he really is. And in the Triune God we find that relationships are not metaphors but realities.
Following Scripture humbly and attentively, we can know God without having to peel off an outward layer or get past any barrier other than our own sins and evasions, covered for us at the cross.
