God is mystery. We can never fully grasp the meaning of this mystery. The only way we can talk about God (i.e., do theology, which literally means “God talk”) is in metaphor and by analogy with what exists. Since we human beings are living beings, “persons” who “exist”, our most complete metaphor for God is that God too is a personal, living being—although God is infinitely more than that. As St Thomas Aquinas said, “God is the subsistent act of ‘to be’ itself”. God is not so much “a” being as God is the very act of being.

The Christian faith asserts that this mystery (of being-in-itself at the heart of all being) loves all beings into being. In that sense God is “creator”—God loves us into being. And because this mystery loves us, it has a “name”, it is “personal”, it has an identity by which it relates to us, reveals itself to us, and it can therefore be (in some measure) known by us (i.e., to the extent that we are capable of knowing it).

What this means is that all theology (“God talk”) is very limited when it comes to saying anything definitive about God. The most that we can do, when speaking of God, is to speak by analogy and in metaphor. As St Thomas Aquinas put it: “We can never know what God is; we can only ever know what God is not”. Or, as St Augustine said in one of his sermons, “If you understand [it], it isn’t God”.

Apart from speaking of God analogically as personal, among the most important metaphors we use to speak of God is to say that “God is love”. Now, because God is love, “God” is a verb (a “doing word”) more than a noun (the name of something). Love is something that happens between the one who loves (“the loving Father”) and the one who is loved (“the beloved Son”), united by the love they share (“their Holy Spirit of love divine”)—for which the metaphor is “Holy Trinity”, the “three” who are one in the love that unites them.

In GNFL this understanding of God is developed with the aid of these theological emphases:

• The Catholic way to speak of God is by analogy and in metaphor.
• Almost all of the books in the Bible speak of God in metaphor; and almost all Catholic theology (of the academic kind) speaks of God by analogy.
• This way of speaking of God is in our terms (in human images, ideas and language) but it is on God’s terms (the way that God wishes to reveal himself to us).
• Christians use the word “God” because we have no better one with which to point to the mystery we are trying to talk about.
• Using this poor little word saves us from falling prey to a delusion that by using bigger and more impressive words we’ve actually “got” God, that we “grasp” who and what God really is, for example, “The Supreme Being”, “The Absolute Reality”, “Pure Essence”, “Transcendent Ground of Being”. While all of these more exalted terms may have their uses, when it comes to actually defining God, all these abstractions are just as inadequate as the far more earthly biblical metaphors like “fortress and rock” (2 Samuel 22:2), “mother hen” (Matthew 23:37) and “gate for the sheep” (John 10:7).
• No definition of God’s essence or nature is possible—except perhaps the paradoxical one that deconstructs itself, and is therefore no definition at all: “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14).
• The “Christian God” is not just another god among other gods.
• The “Christian God” is rather the Christian way of speaking about this Mystery, which we experience as loving us and which is revealed in Jesus—that’s what makes it specifically Christian.
• The central Christian statement of faith is: “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16); and that love is revealed in Jesus, who loved you and me and everyone so absolutely that he gave his life for each one of us personally and for all of us collectively.

URL link to Theological Conversation chapter (PDF).