You said, "I am confused, since I thought you were saying we could not make helpful analogies to understand God. And if we can only say what God is not, how can we say he is like a father?" -- We cannot perfectly know God in this life, but we can know something of God in this life, because our purpose is to love God, and we cannot love someone we do not know. Therefore, our purpose is to first know God, so as to love God, so as to serve God in this life, and thereby be happy with Him forever in the next life. We are not required to know God perfectly in this life. We are only supposed to do the best we can.

One thing that might help you in your struggle with the person-hood of God, would be that His aspect of personality is most important. We are separated from the brute animals by their lack of personality. You cannot make a contract with a goat or a fish or even your favorite and loyal dog. Brute animals do not have free will nor do they have intellect. But man is like God in that man has person-hood, and this is what makes man tied to God, even in eternity. When we sin, we offend the person of God, and when we seek forgiveness we seek it from His person. We are given our family, government and society to witness this relationship with other persons so we can better fathom our relationship with God. Angels are persons, men and women and children are persons, and God is three persons in one substance. We cannot know that in its fullness, but we do know it is true because it has been revealed to us. Those of us who go to heaven will know it without limitation and in its perfection -- even those of us who are blind, for our imperfect vision here on earth will be perfect in eternity.

The way I try to understand it is to consider the paradox between a universe which from our perspective is eternally contracting but which from the perspective of its inhabitants is eternally expanding. For us the universe is contracting closer to the boundary from infinity, yet for them it is expanding away from the boundary towards infinity.

The creation of an eternally expanding universe full of galaxies teeming with inhabitants necessitated a particular uniquely configured low entropy boundary, since any change in its parameters would have altered the nature of that universe. Yet a universe expanding to eternity from such a boundary is also a universe contracting from eternity towards that boundary.

Just as the nature of the eternally expanding universe has been determined by the unique low entropy of its past, so too is the nature of the eternally contracting universe determined by the unique low entropy of its future. Just as its nature is fixed, so too is its future, making that precise future inevitable.

Is it inevitable or is it a brute fact? If it's inevitable, I'd like to see how. If it's a brute fact, then it can be a brute fact for Hartle-Hawking as well.

You claim that the timeless state has to have low entropy. How low? What is the value of the entropy of the steady-state for AG? How is that entropy calculated? Are there no free parameters in the calculation, and if not, how did they manage to avoid any free parameters?

Even though the Hartle-Hawking universe creates itself, the question remains as to why it creates itself with a unique low entropy instead of any other entropy level.The fact that the model allows for conditions which could have been different means that according to the model the initial low entropy conditions are not an inevitable brute fact.

In my example based on the Aguirre -Gratton model, the unique low entropy boundary cannot have been different because the universe contracting towards it is eternal. Therefore the inevitable outcome of a unique low entropy boundary has been eternally decreed or, if you like, established from eternity, rendering it a brute fact.

I don't find the brute fact explanation satisfying. I'd like to find out what physical cause, if any, there could be for that timeless low-entropy state.

But maybe I ask too much. Maybe I should be more easily satisfied. In that case, I would still stay with Hartle-Hawking, because the brute fact explanation works just as well. I just argue that the single Hartle-Hawking universe must have had a low entropy state because otherwise we wouldn't be here to complain about it. The initial conditions:

[need] no explanation because it is a brute fact associated with the [finite] past ... of the universe.

"Doesn't Aguirre-Gratton (AG) basically have a multiverse?"

Probably, but it also explains one universe, ours, and that's what I find intriguing.

The only naturalistic solution for our universe - if it is to avoid Kalam supernaturalism - is to be eternal. And the only way it can be so without breaking physical laws is to be past eternal and future eternal, where there is a minimum entropy boundary from which the arrow of time begins in each direction.

If the boundary conditions were any different there would not be a universe like ours which could be explained naturalistically. But there is and the only way it can be explained without invoking supernaturalism is with precisely the low entropy boundary conditions we observe.

Doesn't Aguirre-Gratton (AG) basically have a multiverse? To my understanding, the eternally inflating space-time cannot be our own universe, because it cannot explain the evidence of the big bang (cosmic microwave background, Hubble constant, etc.). For this reason, AG is not a model for our universe but rather a framework wherein (multiple) big bang cosmologies can live. It seems more like a multiverse generator. Am I mistaken?

AG is an interesting idea, but how does it account for the very low entropy at our big bang? Wouldn't it be more likely for our big bang region to be filled with a bunch of black holes and no stars?

That is why I prefer the elegant Aguirre-Gratton model which also assumes one universe. On the one hand it has a beginning of the arrow of time, forward and reverse, from a low entropy point where time equals zero, while, on the other, the resulting contraction of the universe culminates in a low entropy point where time equals zero.

This naturalistic and simultaneously reciprocative self-creation is more satisfying than the spontaneous beginning of a universe with mysteriously inbuilt low entropy which demands an explanation and encourages Kalam supporters to suggest that it was supernaturally configured that way. This is big bang creationism, no different in principle from ID or young earth creationism.

It is a firm doctrine of the Church that time had a beginning, but no-one stipulated in which direction. The Aguirre-Gratton model is a naturalistic approach which satisfies that requirement.

Edit: I have referred to a Hindu orthodoxy, which I intended to be a
reference to the trinity of Hindu gods: creation, destruction and
sustenance.. I would like to give a link to the articles on this
subject which I have read that discuss the many forms of worship that
are taken within the community, and I just wished to contrast the term
'orthodox' with such practices as would conform even to Buddhist
tradition.which do not recognize the Hindu gods, per se.

What "Hindu orthodoxy" are you referring to?