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(Published in The Greek Australian VEMA, February 2004)

Who is the God of the Christians?

The most fundamental claim of the Christian Church is its belief in the one true andliving God.

"Hear O Israel: the Lord our God is one God; and you shall love the Lord

your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.

And these words which I command you this day shall be placed upon

your heart, and you shall teach them to your children" (Deut.6:4)

This claim was not simply born out of any religious need to relate to something

superior out of psychological needs for security in the face of the unknown nor was it

only a result of a thirst for truth and true knowledge arising out of logical necessity.

Rather for the Christians and indeed for the Hebrew people the starting point for Godwas a concrete historical event. While it was an intimate personal encounter with

Abraham that verified God's existence to the Israelites, for the Christians it has been

the ultimate intervention God in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ.

God revealed himself to Moses and spoke with him "face to face" as one person

speaks to another person (Ex.33.11) and revealed the mystery of his name.

"God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." (Ex.3.13)

God proclaims Himself to be the one who IS, the "Existing One", the one true and

living God. This name for God, "I am who I am" means that God draws his existence

from Himself existing eternally without beginning and without end. For the Israelites,

this God whose name was "I am who I am" was the one true and living God who

remained so faithful that he formed several covenants with his chosen people

continuing to fulfil all his promises to them. According to the Scriptures, the name of

God was so sacred that it was never mentioned.

The Orthodox Christian tradition teaches that the one true God is the perfection and

super perfection of all that we know to be good, true, wise, just, all-powerful,

righteous and loving without God ever being exhausted by these attributes. These

characteristics of God cannot be compared with those of our experience since He is

beyond all these. So, for example, while it is true to say that God exists, yet He is

'above existence'. Ultimately Orthodox theology would claim that God cannot be

defined as "existing" or "not existing" since He is not a "being" who exists the way

that created human beings exist. However God offers himself to our existence with

the amazing an immeasurable intimacy in a relationship of person to person. Yet this

familiarity does not exhaust our understanding of who God is. And since we cannot

easily grasp who God is, He remains forever the cause of our wonder and

astonishment.

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It is this one and true living God who in a concrete historical framework sends His

son, Jesus Christ, who now makes the almighty God known and experienced as

"Father". Jesus continues to emphasise the uniqueness and oneness of God but also

underlines that he has a unique relationship with this God he is the Son of God.

Jesus, who is able to call God "father" because he is the only begotten Son of theFather, also allows us to relate to God with the intimate title of "abba" which means

"father". In fact even though the word "abba" is an Aramaic word meaning father it

carries with it a nuance of familiarity and intimacy bringing it close, in meaning to the

term "daddy". With Jesus, not only can we pronounce the name of God, but we are

now commanded to pray using this intimate name for God. This was unheard of for

the Hebrew people who would not dare even to pronounce the name of God let alone

refer to him as "abba".

Furthermore, by the sending of the Spirit, we can continue to this day to refer to Godas "father and therefore can dare to pray in the following manner: "Our Father in

heaven": on this way making us also sons of God.

"For when the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of

woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we

might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent

the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying "Abba! Father!". So through

God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir (of the

eternal kingdom of God). (Gal.4.4-7)

In stressing the personal dimension of God, the Church wanted to show that we

cannot draw near to God simply by learning certain facts about Him. That is to say

that since God is a person, knowing him implies much more than being able to

reiterate certain facts. Rather we approach God by means of a personal encounter

and experience with him. Since the one God is our Father a person, not an idea -

we are called to place our trust and hope in him and ultimately to love Him just like

we do other persons around us. And even though today we may not have directly

encountered the historical person of God as revealed in his Son Jesus, slowly we

surrender ourselves in trust since others before us, whom we consider trustworthy

the apostles, fathers, prophets and saints of our Church guarantee his credibility. In

this endless journey of lesser to greater trust in this personal meeting with God, the

birth of love gives rise to an absolute surrender, self-offering and uninterrupted

astonishment at the unquenchable thirst for God where intellectual and logical

certainties become superfluous.

In contemplating this mystery of who God is we therefore come to conclude that God

is personal; he is Father. And this leads us to the claim that God is at same time one

in three persons and three persons yet one God. However, how this is so we will

examine in later issues of this column.

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By Dr Philip Kariatlis

Academic Secretary

Lecturer in Theology,

St Andrew's Greek Orthodox Theological College