Article 199 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church talks about our belief in God. Our belief in God is described as the “first affirmation of the Apostles’ Creed” in the Article under review. The Church sees God as the end of our faith. He is the eternal creator spirit that alone exists of himself and is infinitely perfect in every possible way. Because God is transcendent of material reality, we can speak of him only analogically, and we first do this apophatically, by identifying what he is not. From this prism, we can then proceed to adduce cataphatic attributes for him. Anselm has seen God to be that than whom nothing more perfect can be conceived. Aquinas in turn has seen God to be the First Cause, whose reality puts paid to the otherwise infinite regress in the accumulation of efficient causes for effects we experience in the universe that God created out of Love.
Furthermore, the Church sees God as the father of Jesus Christ; the first person of the Trinity that consists of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all living in impenetrable light and deserving of eternal worship and praise. The Elohistic School sees the Trinity as a participatory relationship responsible for the creation of all there is, when God said to his Son and his Spirit, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” and subsequently gave him dominion over all of creation (Gen. 1:26). This God is the one that calls us into communion with him and desires to communicate himself to us in his Son, so that we can participate more fully in his divinity. This he accomplished in the Incarnation, which refers to the coming as man of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus son of Mary, savior of all of humankind. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the same God today, the Alpha and the Omega; the First and the Last; the eternal and true, transcendent of all reality there is.
Faith in God is almost as old as humanity. It is impossible to conceive of human beings as devoid of a sense of the divine. The presence of reason in us is a sign that we can potentially know and enter into communion with God. Philosophers tell us that we can know God by natural reason, and they consequently have tried to prove his existence in many philosophical ways. Some of the thinkers that have tried to prove the existence of God include: Aquinas, Bonaventure, Scotus, Anselm, Augustine, and Descartes. They have all affirmed that it is impossible to properly conceive of a universe without similarly conceiving of the God that inspires its existence.
Christianity similarly allows for the possibility of the dependence of knowledge of God on pure reason, but goes further to assert that such knowledge is more eminently derivable from revelation also, of the sort we encounter in Tradition and Scripture. In these divine communications, God reveals himself to us as all we conceive of him to be, in such a way that we need not depend on reason alone to supply us with a depiction of God. We see God in the Old Testament speaking to Abraham, to Moses and to the Prophets, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Daniel, Amos, and so on. We see him calling them to his service and performing signs and wonders through them, such as: the parting of the red sea; the receipt and handing on of the Decalogue; the bronze serpent erected at his command to save the Israelites from death at the hands of snakes, and many other such portents of the power of God.
In our day, we know about God in a fuller sense from the example of Christ, and from the Church that is his body; we know who this God is, and we show him to others in the way we demonstrate love and compassion to all of creation. And the all-important need to show love and care for all of creation is felt even greater today than ever before, because we live in a rapidly changing world, where people no longer pay as much attention to God as they should. We live in a world that needs to redirect its sights to the divine and, as ministers of word and sacrament, we have a responsibility to the world to be models of faith, models that will help to point people toward lasting communion with God.
Furthermore, the Church sees God as the father of Jesus Christ; the first person of the Trinity that consists of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all living in impenetrable light and deserving of eternal worship and praise. The Elohistic School sees the Trinity as a participatory relationship responsible for the creation of all there is, when God said to his Son and his Spirit, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” and subsequently gave him dominion over all of creation (Gen. 1:26). This God is the one that calls us into communion with him and desires to communicate himself to us in his Son, so that we can participate more fully in his divinity. This he accomplished in the Incarnation, which refers to the coming as man of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus son of Mary, savior of all of humankind. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the same God today, the Alpha and the Omega; the First and the Last; the eternal and true, transcendent of all reality there is.
Faith in God is almost as old as humanity. It is impossible to conceive of human beings as devoid of a sense of the divine. The presence of reason in us is a sign that we can potentially know and enter into communion with God. Philosophers tell us that we can know God by natural reason, and they consequently have tried to prove his existence in many philosophical ways. Some of the thinkers that have tried to prove the existence of God include: Aquinas, Bonaventure, Scotus, Anselm, Augustine, and Descartes. They have all affirmed that it is impossible to properly conceive of a universe without similarly conceiving of the God that inspires its existence.
Christianity similarly allows for the possibility of the dependence of knowledge of God on pure reason, but goes further to assert that such knowledge is more eminently derivable from revelation also, of the sort we encounter in Tradition and Scripture. In these divine communications, God reveals himself to us as all we conceive of him to be, in such a way that we need not depend on reason alone to supply us with a depiction of God. We see God in the Old Testament speaking to Abraham, to Moses and to the Prophets, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Daniel, Amos, and so on. We see him calling them to his service and performing signs and wonders through them, such as: the parting of the red sea; the receipt and handing on of the Decalogue; the bronze serpent erected at his command to save the Israelites from death at the hands of snakes, and many other such portents of the power of God.
In our day, we know about God in a fuller sense from the example of Christ, and from the Church that is his body; we know who this God is, and we show him to others in the way we demonstrate love and compassion to all of creation. And the all-important need to show love and care for all of creation is felt even greater today than ever before, because we live in a rapidly changing world, where people no longer pay as much attention to God as they should. We live in a world that needs to redirect its sights to the divine and, as ministers of word and sacrament, we have a responsibility to the world to be models of faith, models that will help to point people toward lasting communion with God.
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