An Overview on the Doctrine of God

*Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments,” which allow us to attain certainty about the truth.
St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky....question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One who is not subject to change?”
The human person with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material,” can have it’s origin only in God.

I. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
A. Naturalistic Arguments for Existence.
1. Cosmological: The universe is an effect which requires an adequate cause, and the only efficient cause is God-Psalms 19:1.
2. Teleological: (telos, “end”)The universe not only proves a marker but also a designer (Romans 1:18-20). There is observable purpose in the universe which argues for the existence of God as it’s designer.
3. Anthropological: (anthropos, “man”). Since man is a moral and intellectual being, he must have a maker who is also a moral and intelligent being (Acts 17:29). Man’s moral nature, religious instincts, conscience, and emotional nature argue for the existence of God.


II. THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD
In no way is God in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective “perfections” of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband. (Isaiah 49:14-15; Psalms 131:1-3; Jeremiah 3:4-19).

A. Description: Most systems of classifying the attributes are based on the fact that some attributes belong to God alone (that is infinity) and some are found in a limited and relative sense in man (that being love); thus incommunicable and communicable; absolute and relative; immanent and transitive; constitutional and those pertaining to personality.
1. Simplicity: Meaning. God is uncompounded, incomplex, indivisible (John 4:24).
2. Unity: God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4).
3. Infinity: Without termination and finitude (1 Kings 8:27; Acts 17:28)
4. Eternity: Free from the succession of time (Genesis 21:33; Psalm 90:2)
5. Immutability: God is unchanged and unchangeable (James 1:17)
6. Omnipresence: God is everywhere (not everything which is pantheism) (Psalm 139:7-12)
7. Sovereignty: God is the supreme ruler (Ephesians 1)
8. Omniscience: God knows all things (Matthew 11:21)
9. Omnipotence: God is all powerful (Revelations 19:6)
10. Justice: Moral and “no respect of persons” (Acts 17:31)
11. Love: God seeking the highest good of displaying His own will (Ephesians 2:4-5)
12. Truth: Agreement to and consistency with all that is represented by God (John 14:6)
13. Freedom: Independence from His creation (Isaiah 40:13-14)
14. Holiness: Righteous (1 John 1:5)


III. THE NAMES OF GOD
God revealed himself to his people Isreal by making his name known to them. A name expresses a person’s life. God has a name; he is not an anonymous force. To disclose one’s name is to make oneself known to others; in a way it is to hand oneself over by becoming accessible, capable of being known more intimately and addressed personally.
God revealed himself progressively and under different names to his peoples, but the revelation that proved to be the fundamental one for both the Old and New covenants was the revelation of the divine name to Moses in the theophany of the burning bush, on the threshold of the Exodus and of the covenant on Sinai “I AM who I AM”.

A. From the Old Tesament
1. YHWH: Meaning Self-existent One- I AM that I AM (Exodus 3:14). Out of respect for the holiness of God, the people of Isreal do not pronounce his name. In the reading of Sacred Scripture, the revealed name (Yhwh) is replaced by the divine title “LORD” (in hebrew Adonai). It is under this title that the divinity of Jesus will be acclaimed: “Jesus is LORD”.
2. Elohim: Meaning Strong One, which was used of the true God and heathen gods. It is a plural hebrew word and is plural of majesty. The plural does allow for the subsequent revelation of the Trinity in the New Testament, but does not teach the Trinity per se.
3. Adonai: Meaning Lord-which is used by men and God which indicates the master-servent relationship.
4. Kyrios: which is Greek for “Lord”. Used by New Testament Christians before the Latin.

Please note that this is just a small study I did in searching the Bible and other documents looking into who God is and what has been said about Him. This doctrine study was done with the help of the New American Standard Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church with study notes from the Lockman Foundation (used with permission)