My involvement on this thread and others has been to demonstrate the stages of theological development. The Trinity was not the result of divine 'revelation' nor was it a shocking pagan deviation from Jewish thought. No, it was neither. Jewish conceptions of God had for centuries included ideas that God was not alone. In some sense God had partners in his activity, partners that bridged the material word for him, in some cases partners that were actually God themselves. The sophistication of this idea reached new heights under the Alexandrian school represented by Philo. This is the same community that created the LXX.
When the sect that became called Christianity declared that this 'partner' in God's works had come to earth and died, they were creating a new arrangement to an old tune.
Joey....The paradox you are describing is not unique to the Trinity Doctrine. As I just tried to show, the same seemingly contradictory language was within Philo's work. The Logos was God, the Logos was the creator, and at the same time the Logos owed his existence to the Father and the Logos expressed adoration for the Father of all. Natural language fails to convey what Philo was trying to describe, so he, like the later Christian theologians, resort to apophatic language. For both parties it was deemed easier to understand the Logos in terms of what it was not. It was not like us, it was not a relationship like anything or anyone else. It is not logical; it is 'obscure' 'similitudes and images'.