In the creeds, the first and most fundamental article of faith that Catholics profess is belief in one God. Likewise, the First Commandment mandates belief in only one God.
The God of Christianity is absolutely one God but mysteriously in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Because He is not part of the universe that He created, God cannot be defined or completely understood. He is not bound by laws of physics, time, or space.
He chooses to reveal some things about Himself, allowing certain qualities to be known while others remain a mystery.
We know that God is love and is perfectly good. He is both just and merciful at the same time.
He knows everything, He can do anything, and He exists eternally; in the present, in the past, and in the future all at the same time.
God is greater than the human mind:
Beyond what we can say or know in human language:
God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God–“the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable”–with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 42
The necessary attributes of God:
God is not simply a being. He is pure being itself:
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.
Psalm 147: 5
Jesus reveals Who God is:
Our image of God can be distorted:
We believe that this only God is absolutely one in his infinitely holy essence as also in all his perfections, in his omnipotence, his infinite knowledge, his providence, his will and his love. He is He Who is, as He revealed to Moses; and He is love, as the Apostle John teaches us: so that these two names, being and love, express ineffably the same divine reality of Him Who has wished to make Himself known to us, and Who, “dwelling in light inaccessible,” is in Himself above every name, above every thing and above every created intellect.
Pope Paul VI, Solemni hac Liturgia, June 30, 1968
The Bible reveals the complexity of God:
Nothing that God created can be God:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
When I read the Bible…:
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