God in Christianity

In Christianity, God, also referred to as Yahweh, Jehovah, or the Lord, is the eternal, supreme being who created and preserves all things. Christians believe in a monotheistic conception of God, which is both transcendent and immanent. Christians believe in a singular God that exists in a Trinity, which consists of three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Christian teachings on the transcendence, immanence, and involvement of God in the world and his love for humanity exclude the belief that God is of the same substance as the created universe but accept that God the Son assumed hypostatically united human nature, thus becoming man in a unique event known as "the Incarnation".
Early Christian views of God were expressed in the Pauline epistles and the early Christian creeds, which proclaimed one God and the divinity of Jesus. Although some early sects of Christianity, such as the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, protested against the deification of Jesus, the concept of Jesus being one with God was accepted by the majority of Gentile Christians. This formed one aspect of the split of early Christianity and Judaism, as Gentile Christian views of God began to diverge from the traditional Jewish teachings of the time.
The theology of the attributes and nature of God has been discussed since the earliest days of Christianity, with Irenaeus writing in the 2nd century: "His greatness lacks nothing, but contains all things". In the 8th century, John of Damascus listed eighteen attributes which remain widely accepted. As time passed, Christian theologians developed systematic lists of these attributes, some based on statements in the Bible, others based on theological reasoning. The "Kingdom of God" is a prominent phrase in the Synoptic Gospels, and while there is near unanimous agreement among scholars that it represents a key element of the teachings of Jesus, there is little scholarly agreement on its exact interpretation.
Although the New Testament does not have a formal doctrine of the Trinity as such, "it does repeatedly speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit... in such a way as to compel a Trinitarian understanding of God". Around 200 AD, Tertullian formulated a version of the doctrine of the Trinity which clearly affirmed the divinity of Jesus. This concept was later expanded upon at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and a later definitive form was produced by the Ecumenical Council of 381. The Trinitarian doctrine holds that God the Son, God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit are all different hypostases of one substance, and is not traditionally held to be one of tritheism. Trinitarianism was subsequently adopted as the official theological doctrine through Nicene Christianity thereafter, and forms a cornerstone of modern Christian understandings of God—however, some Christian denominations hold nontrinitarian views about God.

Background

Christians, in common with Jews and Muslims, identify with the biblical patriarch Abraham to whom God revealed himself. It is believed that Abraham was the first to affirm monotheism and had an ideal relationship with God. The Abrahamic religions believe that God continuously interacted with the descendants of Abraham over millennia; both Christians and Jews believe that this covenant is recorded in the Hebrew Bible, which most Christian denominations consider to be the Old Testament. In the traditional interpretations of Christianity, God is always referred to with masculine grammatical articles only.

Development of the conception of God

Overview

views of God are reflected in the Apostle Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 8:5–6, written, about twenty years after the crucifixion of Jesus, and 12–21 years before the earliest of the canonical gospels was written:

...for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

Apart from asserting that there is one God, Paul's statement includes a number of other significant elements: he distinguishes Christian belief from the Jewish background of the time by referring to Jesus and the Father almost in the same breath, and by conferring on Jesus the title of divine honor "Lord", as well as calling him Christ.
In the Book of Acts, during the Areopagus sermon given by Paul, he further characterizes the early Christian understanding:

The God that made the world and all things therein, he, being Lord of heaven and earth

Paul also reflects on the relationship between God and Christians:

...that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us for in him we live.

The Pauline epistles also include a number of references to the Holy Spirit, with the theme which appears in 1 Thessalonians 4:8 – "...God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit" – appearing throughout his epistles. In John 14:26, Jesus also refers to "the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name".
By the end of the 1st century, Clement of Rome had repeatedly referred to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and linked the Father to creation in 1 Clement 19.2, stating: "let us look steadfastly to the Father and creator of the universe". By the middle of the 2nd century, in Against Heresies, Irenaeus had emphasized that the Creator is the "one and only God" and the "maker of heaven and earth". These preceded the formal presentation of the concept of Trinity by Tertullian early in the 3rd century.
The period from the late 2nd century to the beginning of the 4th century is generally called the "epoch of the Great Church" and also the Ante-Nicene Period, and witnessed significant theological development, and the consolidation and formalization of a number of Christian teachings.
From the 2nd century onward, western creeds started with an affirmation of belief in "God the Father " and the primary reference of this phrase was to "God in his capacity as Father and creator of the universe". This did not exclude either the fact the "eternal father of the universe was also the Father of Jesus the Christ" or that he had even "vouchsafed to adopt as his son by grace". Eastern creeds began with an affirmation of faith in "one God" and almost always expanded this by adding "the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible" or words to that effect.
Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and other Christian theologians have described God with the Latin term ipsum esse, a phrase that translates roughly to "being itself". God's aseity makes the Christian God not "a being" but rather "being itself", and can be explained by phrases such as "that which is with no reliance on anything external for its being" or "the necessary condition for anything to exist at all".
As time passed, theologians and philosophers developed more precise understandings of the nature of God and began to produce systematic lists of his attributes. These varied in detail, but traditionally the attributes fell into two groups: those based on negation and those positively based on eminence. Ian Ramsey suggested that there are three groups, and that some attributes, such as simplicity and perfection, have a different logical dynamic which from such attributes as infinite goodness since there are relative forms of the latter but not of the former.

Name

In Christian theology, the name of God has always held deeper significance than purely being a label, considered instead to have divine origin and be based upon divine revelation. The Bible usually uses the name of God in the singular, generally using the terms in a very general sense rather than referring to any special designation of God. However, general references to the name of God may branch to other special forms which express his multifaceted attributes. The Old Testament reveals YHWH as the personal name of God, along with certain titles including El Elyon and El Shaddai. When reading the Hebrew Bible aloud, Jews replace the Tetragrammaton with the title Adonai, translated as Kyrios in the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. Jah is an abbreviation of Jahweh/Yahweh/Jehovah. It is often used by Christians in the interjection "Hallelujah", meaning "Praise Jah", which is used to give God glory. In the New Testament, Theos and Pater are additional words used to reference God.
Respect for the name of God is one of the Ten Commandments, which is viewed not only as an avoidance of the improper use of the name of God, but also a commandment to exalt it, through both pious deeds and praise. This is reflected in the first petition in the Lord's Prayer addressed to God the Father: "Hallowed be thy Name".
In the theology of the Early Church Fathers, the name of God was seen as representative of the entire system of "divine truth" revealed to the faithful "that believe in his name" or "walk in the name of the Lord our God" In Revelation 3:12, those who bear the name of God are "destined for Heaven". John 17:6 presents the teachings of Jesus as the manifestation of the name of God to his disciples.
John 12:27 presents the sacrifice of Jesus the Lamb of God, and the ensuing salvation delivered through it as the glorification of the name of God, with the voice from Heaven confirming Jesus' petition by saying: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again", referring to the Baptism and crucifixion of Jesus.
Other theologians state that God has no name. Justin Martyr stated both that God has no name, and that God's name is Jesus.

Attributes and nature

The theological underpinnings of the attributes and nature of God have been discussed since the earliest days of Christianity. In the 2nd century, Irenaeus addressed the issue and expounded on some attributes; for example, Book IV, chapter 19 of Against Heresies states: "His greatness lacks nothing, but contains all things". Irenaeus based his attributes on three sources: Scripture, prevailing mysticism and popular piety. Today, some of the attributes associated with God continue to be based on statements in the Bible, such as the Lord's Prayer, which states that the Father is in Heaven, while other attributes are derived from theological reasoning.
In the 8th century, John of Damascus listed eighteen attributes for God in his An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. These eighteen attributes were divided into four groups based on time, space, matter or quality and the list continues to be influential to date, partially appearing in some form in various modern formulations. In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas focused on a shorter list of just eight attributes, namely simplicity, perfection, goodness, incomprehensibility, omnipresence, immutability, eternity and oneness. Other formulations include the 1251 list of the Fourth Lateran Council, which was then adopted at Vatican I in 1870 and the Westminster Shorter Catechism in the 17th century.
Two attributes of God that place him above the world, yet acknowledge his involvement in the world, are transcendence and immanence. Transcendence means that God is eternal and infinite, not controlled by the created world and beyond human events. Immanence means that God is involved in the world, and Christian teachings have long acknowledged his attention to human affairs. However, unlike pantheistic religions, in Christianity, God's being is not of the substance of the created universe.
Traditionally, some theologians such as Louis Berkhof distinguish between the incommunicable and communicable attributes of God. The former are those attributes which have no unqualified analogy in created things, in other words, attributes that belong to God alone. The latter attributes are those which have some analogy in created things, especially humans. Thus, following the classic definition of God in the Presbyterian Westminster Shorter Catechism, God is infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. For example, he is wise, but infinite in his wisdom. Some such as Donald Macleod hold that all the suggested classifications are artificial and without basis.
Although there is no formal distinction in the Confession, Reformed authors have interpreted in it a specifically Reformed distinction between incommunicable and communicable attributes; the former being those which have no unqualified analogy in created things, the latter being those which have some analogy in some created things such as humans. The relationship between these two classes is such that the incommunicable attributes qualify all the communicable attributes, thus, God is infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth, following the classic definition of God in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Thus, Article 1 is said to begin by enumerating the incommunicable attributes, but from 'almighty' to 'good' enumerates the communicable attributes.
There is a general agreement among theologians that it would be a mistake to conceive of the essence of God existing by itself and independently of the attributes or of the attributes being an additional characteristic of the Divine Being. They are essential qualities which exist permanently in his very Being and are co-existent with it. Any alteration in them would imply an alteration in the essential being of God.
Hick suggests that when listing the attributes of God, the starting point should be his self-existence which implies his eternal and unconditioned nature. Hick goes on to consider the following additional attributes: Creator being the source of all that composes his creation and the sustainer of what he has brought into being; personal; loving, good; and holy. Berkhof also starts with self-existence but moves on to immutability; infinity, which implies perfection ''eternity and omnipresence; unity. He then analyses a series of intellectual attributes: knowledge-omniscience; wisdom; veracity and then, the moral attributes of goodness ; holiness and righteousness before dealing finally with his sovereignty.
Gregory of Nyssa was one of the first theologians to argue, in opposition to Origen, that God is infinite. His main argument for the infinity of God, which can be found in Against Eunomius'', is that God's goodness is limitless, and as God's goodness is essential, God is also limitless.