I have always thought that however complicated the language, these words answer questions which the NT itself raises about the deity of Christ and his relationship to the Father and thus also the Holy Spirit but doesn’t answer itself. They therefore guard the NT’s teaching and also seek to answer the implications of what it teaching about the nature of God.
They are not part of revealed truth so theoretically if we found another way of achieving the same end they could be jettisoned but after 1500 years of the church using these concepts and their continuing use that should tell us something about their resilience and the difficulty in finding replacements

They are not part of revealed truth so theoretically if we found another way of achieving the same end they could be jettisoned but after 1500 years of the church using these concepts and their continuing use that should tell us something about their resilience and the difficulty in finding replacements
I would only question whether, in fact, their “resilience” has more to do with answering important Biblical questions, as you suggest, or whether perhaps it’s got more to do with the resilience of the church magisterial structure and its need to preserve boundaries that define the scope of its authority. What, after all, does the perception of the trinity accomplish in the way of discipleship behavior? To what extent are the propositions embodied in Trinitarianism, necessary components to faithful walk and/or witness? Other than how we beat up on each other, what effect has the refinement of this dogma had on the faith?
I am not saying it must be dismissed wholesale (though I think some careful re-examination) is in order. But I see implicit in both Scot’s summary and James’ response, an acknowledgment that at least some portion of Trinitarianism–at least the refined, precise terminology of it, is extra- or post-biblical. To the extent this is true, I remain troubled by the church’s dogmatic insistence on ascribing to the proposition.
Perhaps if we were to be a little more open in examining a biblical christology and pneumatology without superimposing the Trinitarian language upon it, we might discover depth and nuance that have been lost in the rigidity of that framework. . .without abandoning the claims Jesus himself made.

To be fair, Erasmus didn’t want to include the Johanine Comma in his Greek New Testament, but he had made a rash agreement to include it if a Greek manuscript including it could be found, one such was “produced” some time later (in remarkably good condition), and being a man of his word he included the passage in his text.