voices of faith Q & A

McClatchy Newspapers

Q. What is God like?

The Rev. Justin Hoye, pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Kansas City, North:

A. God is unique, and this thwarts attempts to try and encapsulate what God is like.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Whatever can be understood or thought about God is less than God himself.”

God is not a being in the world and so can’t be compared to other realities.

“Since creatures have received everything they are and have from God, only God in himself is the fullness of being and of every perfection.

For Christians, the Incarnation — God in the flesh, in the divine person of Jesus Christ — is the constant source of reference in revealing to us what God is like.

God with us is revealed as relationship — subsistent relations, to be precise — transcending the gap between plurality and unity.

The Rev. Duke Tufty, pastor of Unity Temple on the Plaza:

A. What is God like? Who knows? God is a mystery, far, far beyond the most brilliant or imaginative mind.

To describe God is to reduce God to some woefully inadequate definition that actually does a disservice to us.

The most and the least I can say is, God is the spirit, the divine energy, the power and creative force that is the essence of “it all.”