I largely agree with your comments, Phil; I only differ perhaps on two points,

First, the lenses we have been given to view God are the lenses of the biblical narrative. The way in which God has chosen to relate to us is the only means we have to understand him. In addition, he accommodates himself to our understanding through these means - through language, imagery and metaphor. We can’t step out of our human experience to understand God.

The lenses point beyond narrative pure and simple, however. And here something almost inexplicable happens. Through his interaction with mankind, something new in the nature of God is revealed - which is like shining the light of the God of Israel through the prism of the events surrounding the history of Jesus, and a threefold refracted light emerges.

Further, because of Jesus’s incarnation, and earthly history leading to his ascension, there is now a man in heaven, sharing in the divine being. I don’t see that God withdrew this human identification within the nature of Jesus. So something about the nature of God has changed for ever, following the earthly history of Jesus.

So for these various reasons, we don’t have an abstract set of lenses through which to view God. The lenses we have been given are those of God’s involvement in history, in time and space. And that involvement in history itself affected the identity of the divine being - abstract theology alone would fail  to take account of the historical developments which have affected our experience and understanding of God forever.

I mentioned a distinction between God’s ‘being’ (or essence), and how we understand him through what he does, because it seems to me too that this latter is how the bible describes him. Paul’s explanations of God in the letters tend to have a practical function - how the new covenant works - rather than satisfying metaphysical enquiry. So the trinity is never presented as an abstract doctrine, but becomes a practical necessity in describing how believers are brought into relationship with God and participation in his renewed people.