Who is God? - I

Many millions of Catholic children in the United States, over more than a century in the past were required to memorize one of the first questions and answers in the Baltimore Catechism: "Who is God? God is the Supreme Being Who made all things and keeps them in existence." The answer, of course, is correct, but is only partially so. It is, as all such answers to such a question must be, wholly inadequate. This is because God cannot be defined. A definition means to surround something with words that set forth its limits and boundaries. However, God is infinite, utterly transcendent, and totally "Other", and, therefore, has no limits or boundaries. Human beings might be able to come up with some partial descriptions of Almighty God and speak, though weakly, about His attributes, but to "define" Him would be as absurd as trying to reduce Him to a mathematical formula or placing Him in a test tube! For any creature attempting to "define" God would mean succumbing to the primordial lie and temptation of Lucifer in the Garden of Eden, with the arrogance and consequences of what happened to Adam and Eve. The Devil told them, and they believed him, "No, you shall not die. For God knows that on whatever day you eat thereof your eyes will be opened, and you shall become like gods, knowing (defining) good and evil" (Genesis 3:5).

According to Saint Thomas Aquinas God is the Unmoved Mover of all motion. By this the Angelic Doctor does not merely mean the physical motion of material beings (stars, planets, elements and parts of our universe or perhaps other universes, etc.), but most importantly the philosophical movement from potency to act. In God Himself, there is not and never could be any potency. He is pure and absolute Act. All beings, except God Himself, are a combination of essence and existence. God is the Purest of pure spirits, and His mysterious and most sacred name (Exodus 3:13-14; John 8:58) tells us that His essence is identical to His existence ("I AM WHO AM"- in Hebrew "YAHWEH"). God is also the Uncaused Cause of all causes. Saint Thomas followed Aristotle in asserting that there seems to be in all beings, except the Supreme Being, internal causes (a material cause and a formal cause) and extrinsic causes (an efficient cause and a formal- or ultimate purpose- cause). Some students of Saint Thomas also talk about an "exemplary cause", but most scholars reject the term.

Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has remarked that God is the Supreme Reason and Intellect behind the design, the laws, and the order of the universe. He says, "The more we know of the universe the more profoundly we are struck by a Reason Whose ways we can only contemplate with astonishment. In pursuing those ways we can see anew that creating Intelligence to Whom we owe our own reason. Albert Einstein once said that ‘in the laws of nature there is revealed such a superior Reason that everything significant which has arisen out of human thought and arrangement is, in comparison with It, the merest empty reflection.’ In what is most vast, in the world of heavenly bodies, we see revealed a powerful Reason That holds the universe together. And, we are penetrating ever deeper into what is smallest, into the cell and into the primordial units of life. Here too we discover a Reason That astounds us, such that we must say with Saint Bonaventure, ‘Whoever does not see here is blind. Whoever does not hear here is deaf. And, whoever does not begin to adore here and to praise the creating Intelligence is dumb.’ God Himself shines through the reasonableness of His creation (Romans 1:18-23; Wisdom 13:1-19). Physics and biology and the natural sciences in general have given us a new and unheard of creation account with vast new images, which let us recognize the face of the Creator, and which make us realize once again that at the very beginning and foundation of all being there is a creating Intelligence. The universe is not the product of darkness and unreason. It comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with love. Seeing this gives us the courage to keep on living, and it empowers us, comforted thereby, to take upon ourselves the adventure of life."

The First Vatican Council explicitly taught that human beings have the capacity to come to a knowledge of God’s existence by the simple and natural use of their human reason. However, that Ecumenical Council also taught that it was "the good pleasure of His wisdom and goodness to reveal Himself..." The Council said that God decided not to leave the knowledge of His existence solely to human reason but made it part of His divine revelation, in order that it could be known more easily by every human being, could be known with solid certitude, and could be known with no fear of error. In this matter the First Vatican Council issued three condemnations: "1- If anyone says that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty with the natural light of human reason by the things that have been made, let him be anathema. 2.-If anyone says that it is impossible or useless for man to be taught through divine revelation about God and about the service (religious adoration) to be rendered to Him, let him be anathema. 3.-If anyone says that man cannot be elevated by the divine power to a knowledge and perfection that surpasses natural knowledge and perfection, but that he can and should by his own efforts and by continual progress eventually arrive at the possession of every truth and good, let him be anathema."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "Our profession of faith begins with God, for God is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End of everything. The words ‘I believe in God’ constitute the first affirmation of the Apostles Creed and are also the most fundamental. The whole Creed speaks of God, and even when it also speaks of man and the world, it does so in relation to God. The other articles of the Creed all depend on the first..."

The Fourth Lateran (Ecumenical) Council teaches: "We firmly believe and confess without reservation that there is only one true God, eternal, infinitely immense, unchangeable, incomprehensible, all powerful, and ineffable. He is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, three Persons indeed, but one essence, substance, and one divine nature entirely simple."

The Catechism says, "Jesus Himself affirms that God is the one Lord (Mark 12:29-30) Whom we must love with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. At the same time Jesus gives us to understand that He Himself is the Lord (Mark 12:35-37). To confess that Jesus is the Lord is distinctive of the Christian Faith. This is not contrary to belief in one God, nor does believing in the Holy Spirit as the Lord and Giver of life introduce any division into our concept and belief in the one God."