Who is God?

Details: 11 May 2012

Ubiquity

The infinity of God, the truth that in Him there are no limits, must necessarily apply also to His presence. To the question: Where is God?, the standard and correct catechism answer is: God is everywhere. Although completely and totally different and distinct from all His creatures, that is, from all other reality, God, nonetheless, is present to them all, by His knowledge, by His almighty power which keeps and sustains them in existence, and by His infinite love. To us human creatures also He is ever present, always closer to us than the air we breathe or the clothes we are wearing. He knows our thoughts before we think them. He knew all about us well before He created our immortal souls, and now He parcels out, second by fraction of a second, our continued existence.

The place or state of the hell of the damned, like sin itself, is fundamentally a "nothing", an emptiness, a negation, in the same way as a hole is defined by what it is not. God is present there only by His power and justice, but not by His joy, beauty, truth, and goodness. The fallen angels and human souls that are damned are suffering the torments of the inferno because God allows them to have for all eternity what they have chosen by their abusive use of their own free will. The perceived absence of God, it is said, is the worst and primary suffering of hell, the frustration of knowing that the ultimate purpose of one’s existence was the glorious happiness of union with God in the beatific vision and then the corresponding realization that this will not happen or even be possible for all eternity. The absence of God means the absence of love, which is why the hell of the damned is the permanent state of confusion and hatred where the devils and the damned souls hate God and hate each other forever.

Special Places

Although God is present everywhere, He is present and has been present, as divine revelation tells us, in certain special places and in certain special and sometimes intense ways.

In the Old Testament, for instance, there are many appearances and locutions of God speaking and acting through His Angels, Patriarchs, and Prophets. One can recall the presence of God in the Exodus episodes such as the cloud by day and the fire by night, the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions at Horeb and Sinai, the "Shikinah" or His special presence hovering over what was called the "kapporit" or "propitiatory", which was the golden slab, with the figures of the golden Cherubim, that covered the Ark of the Covenant. Devout Jews always knew from their inspired Scriptures that the Tabernacle, and later the Jerusalem Temple, was a particular location for the special presence of God (1 Kings 8:23-53). And, therefore, Mount Zion, where Jerusalem was situated, participated in this special presence. The Tabernacle, and the Temple that replaced and reflected it, had to be constructed in a way that God Himself had revealed and demanded. Jewish Rabbinic theology explained that God’s insistence on this arrangement was because that building was to be an earthly reflection or replica of the construction of the heaven of the saved itself.

In the New Testament all of that was superseded. The hypostatic union of the human nature of Jesus with His divine nature in His divine Person made Him an eternal living Temple where God was and is present in the most sublime way (John 2:21). The earthly Jerusalem sanctuary is now surpassed, overtaken, and made obsolete by "the greater and more perfect Tabernacle not made by hands" (Hebrews 9:1-14). In the New Testament also the Catholic Church, as the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ where God lives in His Holy Spirit, ( 1 John 3:24), now is the one and only Temple where God dwells and works out human salvation (Ephesians 2:19-22; 2 Corinthians 6:16). Indeed, because of this, God also makes the individual members of the Church, particularly by means of the Sacrament of Confirmation, His Temple, that is, the place of a most special divine presence. Saint Paul wrote: "Do you not know that your members are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, Who is in you, Whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?" (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Wisdom

Saint Paul also exclaims: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments and how unsearchable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor? Or who has given to Him the recompense that should be made to Him? For from Him and through Him and unto Him are all things. To Him be glory forever-Amen" (Romans 11:33-36; Isaiah 27-34 & 40:13; Job 41:11; Wisdom 9:13). Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that "some who are called the ‘intelligentia’ are merely smart aleck and arrogant people who had been educated beyond their intelligence." Evidently Saint Paul, who clearly endorsed and deeply respected the wisdom literature of the Old Testament as found, for instance, in the Book of Wisdom. the Book of Ben Sirach, etc., discovered that it was necessary for him to decry the strutting and arrogant wisdom of some of the Greek philosophers whom he encountered in his ministry of proclaiming the Gospel and who were troubling some of his recent converts.

This caused him to say quite clearly: "Has not God turned to foolishness the wisdom of this world? ....for to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.... God has chosen to put to shame the wise with the foolish things of this world.... The wisdom that we speak about with those who are (spiritually) mature is not a wisdom of this world nor of the rulers of this world who are passing away. But we speak of the wisdom of God, mysterious and hidden, which God foreordained before the world for our own glory, a wisdom which none of the rulers of this world has known, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Corinthians 1:17-31 & 2:6-16). In writing to the Colossians, Saint Paul told them, after he learned about their supernatural love in the Holy Spirit, "I have been praying for you unceasingly....asking that you may be filled with knowledge of God’s will, in all spiritual wisdom and understanding" (Colossians 1:9).

The only way to stand before God correctly in accordance with His will is to do so with profound humility and docility. He Himself says, "Learn then that I, I alone, am God, and there is no god beside Me. It is I Who bring both death and life, I Who inflict wounds and heal them, and from My hand there is no rescue" (Deuteronomy 32:39). The "Imitation of Christ" says: "Better to be the humble rustic who loves and obeys God than the proud scientist who can chart the course of the stars, but neglects his own soul. Better to experience compunction for sin than merely to know how to define it." Worldly wisdom often can be good, holy, and important, but we must never allow it to impede our growth in heavenly wisdom, which alone echoes into eternity.