You know, O'Darby, it seems to me you raise a pretty strong objection to the Trinity.I'm still waiting for someone to give me a convincing explanation as to how the fish-eating, resurrection-body, shaking-hands-in-heaven Jesus squares with "God is Spirit" or any sort of Trinitarian notion. If the Logos is now this Jesus, hasn't there been a fundamental change in the godhead?
The Trinity is intended to describe an ontological reality - the godhead is actually supposed to comprise a Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit. The Trinity is not simply an abstraction, a useful way of "talking about" or "thinking about" God. It's soooo real that we doubt you're a Christian if you don't (pretend to) believe it.
God is Spirit. God is immutable. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. Yes?
Whatever the Trinity ontologically was before the Incarnation, it must be now. Yes?
Before the Incarnation, the Second Person of the Trinity - the Word, the Logos - was Spirit. Yes? It then Incarnated, "became flesh" in Jesus. Yes? This in itself would seem to be a bit of an analytical problem, but we'll play along and say that the Logos somehow remained intact as the Second Person of the Trinity even though it was present in Jesus. For this to be true, it almost seems there would have to have been a "Chinese wall" between the two natures of Jesus, so the Logos remained Spirit - which was indeed one of the early analytical difficulties.
But after the Ascension, with Jesus in his resurrection body, what is the Trinity? Is Jesus part of it? If so, then God is apparently neither pure Spirit nor immutable. The Trinity seemingly now consists of two Spirits and a resurrection body. Hello? Is the Logos back to being fully intact but capable of manifesting itself as Jesus in heaven just as it did during the Incarnation? Even if this is the case, the Trinity is seemingly something different from what it was before the Incarnation.
Despite being presented as an ontological reality, I don't think this is what the Trinity really is. I think it is indeed simply an abstraction, a way of "talking about" and "thinking about" Jesus. It's not really even a way of talking about and thinking about God per se, but about how Jesus can be God because that's what our theology wants him to be. To me, it just doesn't seem to "work."
I've read huge scholarly works on the history of the doctrine. I don't ever recall seeing discussed the analytical difficulty raised above. I first saw it raised by someone else on another forum earlier this year and just about jumped out of my socks that at last someone else seemed to be troubled by the same issue.
Truly, if someone has a whiz-bang clever answer, I'm all ears.