That is perfectly OK, because Jehovah has given us that analogy/metaphor
It is in His will, and He prefers that we think of Him as "Father," as He Himself has declared it.
He has *not* declared Himself a co-equal hypostatic union. That is a tradition of men, a fanciful construct which remains unprovable (primarily because it is a false construct to begin with).
So all the language about one "substance" but three "persons" (or one "ousia" and three "hypostases" is to provide a vocabulary which allows us to say,
No, That is not it - It has become a definition of what God IS, and it has become a method of exclusion, wherein if one does not subscribe to the Roman definition of "trinity", one is outside of Christianity. It is one thing to extrapolate a theory... It is quite another to consider that theoretical extrapolation as an infallible fact, and then beat people with it.
The Bible does *not* define a Christian by his belief or disbelief in an hypostatic union. Why do you (y'all)?
[...]which allows us to say, "In the most fundamental sense 'they' are one, but in a subordinate but nonetheless real sense 'that one' is truly three."
That makes no sense. and in creating (of whole cloth) a definition that makes no sense, one invariably causes dissent... beginning with the wholesale discrediting of the Hebrew definition of YHWH which predates Rome by thousands of years.
It is best in my mind to let the Father define the parameters wrt who He is, what He is, and how He is to be worshiped. That definition has never changed, despite what His presumed agents (as opposed to true agents) have done to change it.
To be sure, there is language to build a comparison between God and a prune danish... but that doesn't make Him a prune danish.
Just a note: from the, what, “stance” of us roaming calflicks and, I’d guess, of most “orthodox” Trinitarians, the expression “hypostatc union” is used to describe the idea that two “natures”, human and divine, are united in one person, that of Jesus Christ.
Usually the “fighting words” in classical Trinitarianism are “consubstantial” or “homousios”, which is used to say that the Son and the Spirit are “the same kind of thing” as the Father.
Oh. Wait. So now we're supposed to make SENSE? Where does it say THAT in the course catalogue. I need to speak to my advisor.
;-)
and in creating (of whole cloth) a definition that makes no sense, one invariably causes dissent... beginning with the wholesale discrediting of the Hebrew definition of YHWH which predates Rome by thousands of years.
The only think I would pick at there is "(of whole cloth.)"
(NOTHING makes life more delightful than the cat puking on the rug when one is trying to condense the history of Trinitarian thought up to Nicea into a paragraph, believe me ...)
I think the 'teachers' (whoever they were) of the early Church were struggling to hold in their minds the ringing declaration of the Shema AND, for just one example, Thomas's "Ο κυριος μου και ο θεος μου."
Was Thomas blaspheming? Was he wrong? Was Jesus NOT God or was he a demigod, a created being? Or when he said, "I and the father are one," how should that be taken, especially in the context of, say, John,5:19 — Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise...."
That kind of thing was the problem, and the Gospel was being preached into a culture which for hundreds of years had asked questions about "Same and other", "The one and the many", and so forth.
Of course, the big hulking question looming over the whole thing like Banquo's ghost is the question of human reason and what, if anything, it is good for.