The Creed – God’s Nature

After a short pause during the Christmas holiday season, I would like to resume my sharing about the doctrines of our faith, that we proclaim, so that you may be enlightened about what we believe. I am now going to share with you about the Nature of God and how He exists. Since our knowledge of God is limited, we can try to understand Him by taking the created world as our starting point (Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church No. 40).

Succinctly, we can say that the nature of God is transcendent, omnipotent, eternal, personal and perfect. He is also truth and love. Let me explain what each term means:

1. From the Bible we learn that God exists even before the world came into existence and that it was God who created the world. As its Creator, the created world is dependent on Him. In other words, God is above the entire created world and so He is transcendent.
2. God exists infinitely by Himself and not created by any super-power. His existence is not time or space bound. He has no beginning and no end. He exists forever. Hence, He is eternal.
3. God created the world according to His Will with love. Therefore, the Bible says that He found everything good. As far as God has the supreme power to create and to regulate systematically the functions of the created world, He is omnipotent. God saw all that, He created, as good, and so no evil can came from Him. If the evil is not from God, then evil is the consequence of the misuse and abuse of our freedom. with His infinite power, He sustains and protects the creatures.
4. In the Book of Exodus 3:14, God said to Moses, “IAM WHO I AM…and he said, ‘say to the people of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.” This statement of God reveals that God is a personal being, who acts with freedom and love.
5. God, the creator of heaven and earth, loves us personally and passionately. The Salvation history gives evidences to the fact that God has been faithful in His covenant and inexhaustible in His mercy. In every way, history has proved that God has been ever perfect in His love, fidelity and mercy, while the humankind was imperfect in their response to the love and mercy of God.

The created world reflects in one way or other some aspect of God’s infinite perfection of Goodness, Beauty, life and love. Since the creatures share in the infinite perfection of God, their beauty, goodness, love etc. point back to Him and tells us something about Him. Thus, we believe that God is the infinite source of everything beautiful in the created world.

May our faith be deepened,

Fr. Arul Joseph V.