"It is only when we know God the Father in and through his Son who belongs to his own being as God that we may know him in any true and accurate way - that is, know God strictly in accordance with his divine nature." (T.F. Torrance)
To know God 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 we must know God in and through the LORD Jesus Christ.
I deeply believe this - and so much of the theological conflict throughout my life has been based on this: I refuse to acknowledge any god or any definition of god that is not all about God the Son, the LORD Jesus, eternally begotten of His Father, filled with the Spirit.
Any attempt to define "what" God is that is not all about the Father, Son and Spirit is alien to the Christian Faith: we don't know anything at all about God apart from the Father sending the Son in the power of the Spirit (or the Most High sending His divine Angel/Word and His Holy Spirit).
In the Nicene creed the one God is defined as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The reason we are all so joyful in our confession of the Nicene Creed is that we are dealing only with the Father, Son and Spirit from beginning to end - and so we are caught up in the Gospel and Church life together even as we confess the deepest nature of the Living God.
The Creed, and the surrounding discussions, are incapable of talking about God without talking about the Father, Son and Spirit.
Whenever I read the Nicene and Post-Nicene Church leaders, especially the Cappadocians, I am always struck by how they incessantly talk about Jesus, the Father and the Spirit - and how they are full of Christian devotion and Church life.
For the Nicene Church, it is inconceivable to try to define the nature of God apart from confessing the Father, Son and Spirit.
When we are talking about the Living God of the Bible, doesn't our starting point have to be God the Son, sent from His Father, in the power of the Spirit?
Don't we have to define the very nature of God as Father, Son and Spirit BEFORE we try to say anything at all about the kind of eternal, almighty, unchanging life that these Three share together?
How do we know anything at all about the divine life shared by the Three unless we are focussed on the Three who show off the divine life?
"The basic decision taken at Nicaea made it clear that the eternal relation between the Father and the Son in the Godhead was regarded in the Church as the supreme truth upon which everything else in the gospel depends.
Jesus Christ is himself the content of God's unique self-revelation to mankind.
It is on the ground of what God has actually revealed of his own nature in him as his only begotten son that everything else to be known of God and his relation to the world and human beings is to be understood.
It is only when we know God the Father in and through his Son who belongs to his own being as God that we may know him in any true and accurate way - that is, know God strictly in accordance with his divine nature.
In order to know him in that way, however, we must enter into an intimate and saving relationship with him in Jesus Christ his Incarnate son, for it is only through reconciliation to God by the blood of Christ that we may draw near to him and have access to him.
The Lord Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Son of God, is the Way, the Truth and the Life, apart from whom no one has access to the Father.
His Incarnate reality has been made the supreme principle of all God's ways and works within the order of creation and redemption alike, and the controlling principle of all our understanding of them."
T.F. Torrance - "The Trinitarian Faith", page 3.