There is perhaps no more intrinsic attribute of human nature that to ask the questions that transcend us: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Why is it so hard to love and be loved? What is my destiny? These question are the stuff of human existence and for time immemorial they have lead us to thing beyond us and our existence and ask the question about God. It is our nature – we are wired for God.
Required Reading
- Chapter 1: My Soul Longs for You, O God (Ps 42:2), pages 1-9 USCCA (United States Catholic Catechism for Adults)
- God Is Love , Pope Benedict's First Encyclical in Condensed Form
“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny. In the same verse, St. John also offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.”
We have come to believe in God’s love: In these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. John’s Gospel describes that event in these words: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should...have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel’s faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth. Since God has first loved us (see 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere “command”; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.
The remainder of this page is an expansion of the other attributes of God and our relationship to God. It covers the topics of
- Our belief in One God
- The Implications of that belief
- Our relationship to God as Trinity
- Scripture’s Revelation of the Divine Fatherhood of God
Optional Links and Reading
An Introduction to God and God’s Revelation About God’s Self
The required reading (above) introduces the idea of our inner longing for God in a very easy to read essay. Additional reading materials are available in the on-line Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) for the following topics
In brief
- God is the Creator of all that is – human beings, animals, vegetation, the land masses, the oceans, the skies and all the heavenly bodies – all that is seen and unseen.
- We come from God, we continue in this life in God, and out destiny as a human person finds its completion in God. We live a fully, authentically human life in relationship with God. We are by our very nature a religious being.
- We are made to live in communion with God. As St Augustine wrote. “When I am completely united to You, there will be no more sorrow or trials; entirely full of You, my life will be complete (St. Augustine, The Confessions 10: 28, 39).
- Through the natural world and the voice of conscience, we can arrive at moral certainty about the existence of God, the cause and the end of everything.
- The Catholic Church teaches that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty from his works in the world using the natural light of human reason.
- While we give name to God, our limited language cannot exhaust the mystery of who God is.
I Believe in One God (for CCC content see here)
Scripture testifies to the oneness of God and that God alone is the One who saves:
- “You are my witnesses, says the LORD, my servants whom I have chosen To know and believe in me and understand that it is I. Before me no god was formed, and after me there shall be none. It is I, I the LORD; there is no savior but me” (Is 43:10-11).
This oneness is clearly asserted in many places in Scripture, but perhaps most clearly by the prophet Isaiah:
- “Thus says the LORD, Israel's King and redeemer, the LORD of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; there is no God but me. (Is 44:6)”
This revelation of God had consequences for the believing person and their family
- “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today. Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest” (Dt 6:4-7)
As the one, true God, He is the eternal being who created the universe and all that is, in other words the Creator. In addition the philosophers have spoken of God in terms of the attributes of holiness (separate from evil, sin and what is corruptible), justice (fair, right, and true in all his judgments), omnipotence (all powerful), omniscience (all knowing), omnibenevolence (all good), omnipresence (all present) and immortality (eternal and everlasting). The Bible never speaks of God in an impersonal sense. Instead, it refers to him in personal terms—as one who is, who speaks, who sees, hears, acts, and loves. God is understood to be a personal god, with a will and personality. He is represented in Scripture as being primarily concerned with people. Where the “God of the philosophers” is impersonal, God’s own self-revelation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is very personal.
Many religions give their supreme deity the title and attributions of Father. In many forms of polytheism, the highest god has been conceived as a "father of gods and of men". In Judaism, to whom the revelation of the oneness of God was given, God is called Father because he is the creator, law-giver, and protector. In Christianity, God is called Father for the same reasons as Judaism, but especially because of the mystery of the Father-Son relationship revealed by the relationship with Jesus Christ. “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
The Implications of Faith In One God Believing in the personal God of Scripture, and loving him with all our being has enormous consequences for our whole life.
- It means coming to know God's greatness and majesty – and in that knowing to willingly serve God
- It means living in thanksgiving: if God is the only One, everything we are and have comes from him. What do you have that you did not receive from God? And thus how will you serve and worship God for all that he has already done?
- It means knowing the unity and true dignity of all peopel: everyone is made in the image and likeness of God.
- It means making good use of created things: faith in God, the only One, leads us to use everything that is not God only insofar as it brings us closer to him, and to detach ourselves from it insofar as it turns us away from him:
- It means trusting God in every circumstance, even in adversity. A prayer of St. Teresa of Jesus wonderfully expresses this trust:
Let nothing trouble you / Let nothing frighten you
Everything passes / God never changes
Patience / Obtains all
Whoever has God / Wants for nothing
God alone is enough.
Poem 30, in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila
God in Relationship: The Trinity
Our God is one of relationship and it is the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity that most startlingly and mysteriously reveals the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian life. God alone can make it known to us by revealing himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Incarnation of God’s Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is in the Father and with the Father the one and the same God.
The mission of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father in the name of the Son (Jn 14:26) and by the Son “from the Father” (Jn 15:26), reveals that, with them, the Spirit is one and the same God.
By the grace of Baptism “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, we are called to share in the life of the Blessed Trinity, here on earth and after death in eternal light
Inseparable in what they are, the divine persons are also inseparable in what they do. But each shows what is proper to him in the Trinity, especially in the divine missions of the Son's Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
God the Father
In the whole of Scripture, God’s role as Father has always had an emphasis on the act of creation. Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate that the world was created for the Glory of God. St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things “not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it”(St. Bonaventure, In II Sent. I,2,2,1) for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: “Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand.” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Sent. II, Prologue). The First Vatican Council explains that God created the world and humanity, all that is seen and unseen, out of nothing, in order to manifest the goodness and divine benefits he has bestowed up his creation. We say “for the greater Glory of God,” yet God’s glory is not increased or enhanced. Yet the glory of God is manifested.
The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created. God made us “to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph 1:5-6), for “the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man's life is the vision of God: if God's revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word's manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God.” (St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 4,20,7) The ultimate purpose of creation is that God “who is the creator of all things may at last become ‘all in all’, thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our beatitude.”(cf. 1 Cor 15:28)
“God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27) Humanity occupies a unique place in creation:
- we are "in the image of God";
- in our own nature there is a union of the spiritual and material worlds;
- we are created "male and female"; and
- God established us in His friendship.
For more information from the CCC see the following topics:
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