I need to make a minor nitpick here – both the original Polycarp and Ignatius rather extensively use language that is either identical or nearly so to phrasings in of the Gospels and the Letters of John. It’s commonly thought that these are allusions to books respected as accurate accounts, if perhaps not yet accorded canonical status equivalent to the Tanakh.
But your point is quite valid otherwise – neither of these writers nor Clement would have a clue about the Chalcedonian definition of the two natures of Christ nor the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; they were later attempts to explicate the reality known to them – that the one God was at the same time the object of Christ’s worship and known to others through Him, and that He indwells humans who accept Christ’s salvation and commit to Him.
Today’s shared common-ground metaphysic is not a pseudo-Platonic grasp of an abstract common nature shared by things of the same ousia, and therefore the language that we convey that reality described in the previous paragraph needs to change to match what we now use as a philosophical base for our understanding of the world.
Spong is quite simply the wrecking crew; his job is to clear out the detritus of the old ruins so that we can build a new mental temple to house that reality. If I cannot explain my grasp of who God is so that David B. can grasp it in terms we share, then there’s something wrong with the vocabulary I’m using.
