What is God?

Brad Sullivan

Trinity Sunday, Year C
Sunday, May 30th, 2010
Emmanuel, Houston
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Canticle 13
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

I glanced at an interesting article earlier this week, regarding Trinity Sunday, and this article referred to God as a thing. Rather than ask the question of who God is, the article raised the question of what God is. I find this both an interesting and a helpful question on Trinity Sunday. Today, we’re specifically celebrating God as Trinity, one God in three Persons. How can God be three and yet one? We don’t know. It’s a mystery. At the heart of the Trinity, however, is person: God as one in three persons, not one in three things. Asking the question of what is God seems rather antithetical to an understanding of God as three persons.

One essential thing the trinity tells us about God is that loving relationship is part of God’s very nature. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is this unity of persons bound together so tightly in love that they are one. So, “who is God?” seems a much more appropriate question than “what is God?”.

Even before there was ever any doctrine of God as Trinity, there was an understanding of God as person in some way. God spoke in creation, on Mount Sinai, through the prophets, and many other ways. God cared for his people like a mother or a father. In God’s interactions with our forefathers, with Israel, God seems much more like a who than a what.

Still, I find the question, “what is God?” to be a helpful question to ask from time to time. We understand God as a person and largely experience God as a person. Our doctrine tells us that God is three person united perfectly into one. We have some understanding of God based on scripture’s and our experiences of God, and yet, we don’t want our understanding of God to go unquestioned.

“What is God?” is a useful question because it helps prevent us from feeling like we know or understand God better than we do. I’ve got a pretty good grasp of the concept of the Trinity. God is three and yet one doesn’t bother me. I can deal with that. I love that understanding of God. When I consider, however, the enormous lack of understanding that I truly have of God, then what seems like a better question than who. Consider the answers to the questions.

Who is God? God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What is God? I don’t know.

We need to keep some mystery in our understanding of God lest we become haughty in our understanding of truth. Perhaps you’ve known some people who have God all figured out, and they just can’t wait to tell you or anyone else how right they are. Perhaps some of us have been those people at times. It’s good that we have some understanding of God, but Paul tells us we are justified by faith, not by knowledge. Faith, by it’s very nature requires some uncertainty. As Paul also reminds us, “now we see in a mirror dimly…then we will see face to face.”

We aren’t going to know God fully in this life, and that’s ok. Faithful, incomplete understanding of God has been humanity’s M.O. presumably since the beginning of humanity. Perhaps we can’t or shouldn’t know or understand God entirely. Consider what God said to Moses when he was about to go to the Israelites and he asked God for his name. “I AM WHO I AM,” God said. God’s response can also be translated “I AM WHAT I AM.” So, again, we have a who and a what for God, and we have a response from God that leaves us with a lot of mystery as to who or what God is.

The next thing God said to Moses, however, was “The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” While God did not grant Moses enormous understanding as to what he is, God did give his some answer as to who he is by way of memory. The God who called Abram and made a covenant with him, the God who continued that covenant with Abram’s sons and walked with them, that was the God who was sending Moses to the people of Israel.

The memory of God in history was more important for Moses to understand than some other transcendental knowledge of God. For us too, our understanding of God as Trinity is good. We believe the Spirit of truth has guided the church into our understanding of God. Perhaps more important, however, than our complete understanding of who or what God is, is our memory of God in history.

Why do we call God father? Because we remember the stories of God creating all that is. We remember the cries of the prophets, speaking God’s lament for his children. We remember Jesus speaking of God as father.

Why do we call God son? Because we remember, among other stories, Jesus’ baptism when the heavens were torn apart, the spirit descended on Jesus, and God said, “This is my son, my beloved.”

Why do we call God holy spirit? Because we remember, among other stories, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We remember Jesus’ words about the spirit. We remember the spirit moving over the waters of creation and speaking through the prophets.

Like Moses and the people of Israel, we know who God is largely through his actions in history. Regarding the question, “who is God?” God is the God of our ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the God who sent his Holy Spirit to dwell among us. We believe his Spirit has led us to understand him as Trinity, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God.

Regarding the question, “what is God?”, we simply go with the answer God had given. “I am what I am,” God told Moses. God is what God is. Amen.