This study transitions from axiomatic understandings about God's identifying himself to us in unity and diversity into our coming to more structured study on the basics of the nature and attributes of God. I have found it important first to know what set of things we categorize as names or attributes so as to organize among them. I used to try to make one attribute or set more basic than others, but that seems futile. Rather, there are many attributes that flow together and organize themselves in predictable ways without any having automatic primacy. The only exception that allows us to reject attributes we observe in experience is if we reject everything: nihilism. Technically, one always has the option of believing that nothing exists: there is something or there is nothing. But nobody wants to be a full nihilist (desire betrays nihilism), and those few relatively consistent practical nihilists still hold onto enough concepts of existence as to remain inconsistent at core.
Though I began analysis with the concepts Absolute, Relative, Both, and Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, what I have to add is no less foundational. I find the repeating trend that any one thing implies a Monad, a monad implies a Dyad, a dyad implies a Triad, and a triad often reconciles back as an expression of the one thing, in just the ways these other triads of words imply. God formed man (Genesis 2:7); man alone is not good, God made woman (2:18, 22); man and wife become one flesh (2:24); be fruitful and multiply, God appointed offspring (1:28, 4:25); people call upon the LORD, God named them Man (4:26, 5:2). The entire pattern is present in seed form. (Remember Three is a Magic Number?)
Hebrew nouns have a singular, a dual plural (used only for pairs), and a mass plural (usually implying at least three). How strange that in the Bible's first three words we have a mass plural ("Elohim", God as a mass noun), a singular verb ("bara", created), and a unifying context ("bereshith", in the beginning). Paul makes it a basic philosophical concept that the human body demonstrates a perfect reconciliation of unity and diversity without contradiction, in extended metaphors in Romans 12:3-8 and 1 Corinthians 12:4-27.
A Scripture that expresses this reconciliation of unity and diversity practically is Ecclesiastes 4:7-12, although it focuses more on dyads and makes application to triads only suddenly without transition: "Again, I saw vanity under the sun: one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, “For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken." (One fighting against another is a he-said she-said impasse, but two witnesses establish a matter, Deut. 17:6. Compare John 8:16, 29, 12:24, 16:32.)
Therefore the patterns of One, Two, and Three among attributes are not imposed from outside but flow naturally from inside the attributes themselves whenever we experience or discuss them. A very basic Scripture of belief about God's attributes is Heb. 11:6: "Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." One God is sought, two complementary beliefs are enjoined, three concepts are included (Exist, Seek, Reward). Existing is an attribute of a monad; Seeking is an attribute of a dyad, from one to another; Rewarding is an attribute of a triad, from one to another in a third, the reward itself.
(I began by emphasizing God's self-expression in all kinds of numbers because we are so used to hearing trinitarianism as foundational Christianity, which it is; but we are not to understand this as if God's nature is dependent upon the particular numbers one and three, but as our understanding gravitating more often to these numbers rather than others in apprehending him. True trinitarianism also permits there being two that testify within God (and three that testify), and there being seven spirits within him (and indeed ten fingers within Christ's two hands). As already noted, God frequently associates himself with tetrads (though not usually in terms of identity), so often as to need separate analysis. The controversy of trinitarianism, however, is really a facet of the broader quest to understand how God reconciles contrasting attributes within himself, codified by the particulars One and Three. The study so far is intended to equip us to resolve these attributes like any other paradoxical tension: by realizing that God is the ultimate meaning of both unity and diversity, which never refer contradictorily within him to the same thing in the same way, but harmonize in the end.)
Thus within God, and applying his core rule to himself, we can consider him as existing; as seeking himself; or as rewarding himself with himself. Yet God does not seek or reward "as though he needed anything", Acts 17:25. Rather, "I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me" (John 5:30): the Son seeks not of himself but of the Father, and does so by making his will identical to that of the Father, without self-consciousness it could almost be said. "I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it" (John 8:50): the Father seeks the glory he shares with the Son, which could even be considered as the Father seeking the Spirit. As seeking is generally a two-way transaction, rewarding is generally a three-way transaction: "For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand" (John 3:34-35). The Father gave the Son the Spirit. So I regard that Being by which he exists, that Identification by which he seeks himself, and that Relation by which he rewards himself with himself to be another fundamental triad (just as in math some of the first principles are Existence, Equality, and Possession).
These words also give us the power to reflect attributes upon themselves by recognizing that the attributes have attributes too. Since God possesses Existence, Existence also possesses Existence, and God also possesses Possession. But this can get overly technical and philosophical, and really only has application when discussing the practical meaning of these attributes, an important case of which is the distinction between being and equaling. The attribute is the attribute itself ("I AM WHO I AM", Ex. 3:14), but the attribute also has equality with other attributes than itself. But one name is not perfectly identical with another, even if identified or equal with it, unless they are the same name; there is always a distinction between one name and another. Therefore we have the common ambiguity in the word "is", sometimes meaning perfect identity, and sometimes meaning equality of essential attributes with distinctions evidenced by the distinct names.
Properly resolving this ambiguity is often essential for understanding. The statement "A is B" might mean "all A's attributes are B's and all B's attributes are A's" (bilateral, being), but it might only mean one half of that proposition (unilateral, equaling). Ordinary "children" are "offspring" and vice versa, but sometimes we need to make a distinction: "not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring" (Rom. 9:6-9). Paul shows that the attributes of spiritual children ("children of the promise") do not always flow to become attributes of physical offspring ("not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel"); it's not bilateral. The fact that textual markers indicate when to use "is" for equality rather than perfect identity of being will assist us greatly in resolving what some see as contradictions. Often the word "is" does not express the relation between attributes, but the word "of" almost always does in one way or another, leading to our saying "of" when "is" becomes more controversial.
The attribute of Unity or One also has two distinct cognates, "alone" and "unique". When we say "God is one" (Rom. 3:30, Gal. 3:20, James 2:19) we conceive of the One who is God as "alone". But when we say "there is ... one Spirit" (Eph. 4:4) we conceive of the One who is Spirit as "unique" rather than alone, in the same way the Only-Begotten ("monogenes") is unique. Again cautious explication resolves the ambiguity.
This all shows that attributes often group themselves naturally into such clusters as monads, dyads, triads, and tetrads, and that these attributes can also interact with each other and describe each other, as can the groups. When we come to discuss Deity (God) as a name or attribute, we will need to understand it to see its relation to other attributes. As noted, all names come from within our partial experience and thus are either shared with creation or unshared and negations of creation principles. "Deity" or "God", as elohim, is a name shared with created beings such as angels, who have the various attributes of elohim without being the Creator Elohim; but Paul informs us that we are seeking the nature not of elohim in general but of the only one who fully embodies the meaning of Elohim.
A difficulty commonly found in approaching him is to fixate on some name or cluster (God the Father, or Ein Sof the Infinite, or Yahweh the Self-Existent) as if it is both positive and unshared revelation of God's character. But he has not granted us this: either the name has meaning within our partial experience of creation (e.g. Father) or the name has meaning by negating all our shared experience of creation (e.g. Infinite). However, by assuming this ability to conceive of God ineffably, many have then looked at Jesus and proposed that he does not have the ineffable attribute perceived in God, because Jesus too is subject to the same limitations on our experience as describing him positively only in created terms. Instead, we should take such affirmations as "his Son [is] the exact imprint of his nature" (Heb. 1:2-3) at face value and say that God possesses a nature ("his") and the Son possesses that nature ("is of"), where the word for "nature" is "hypostasis". That directs our quest as to determining in what distinct ways the Father and Son possess the same nature.
In summary, whatever name can be used, including "God" itself, must be used within a universe of meaning that associates it with other attributes. A calling by name itself is a relation of unity (calling) and diversity (name to creature). How much more should we anticipate that our statements about God involve words with fluid ability to accompany multiple senses and yet solid certainty of the sameness of concept upholding each sense. While controversy can hardly be avoided, it is hoped that these remarks prepare us well for true and edifying consideration of attributes of Deity.