While staffing the theology booth one day last week at the University of Otago’s tertiary open day, a prospective student asked me a simple question. She asked, "Is God created?"
In response, I said that God is uncreated, meaning that God has no beginning and end. Created beings like ourselves are finite and temporal, whereas God does not depend on anyone or anything in order to be.
As our brief conversation continued, I articulated a basic conviction of Jews and Christians. That is, the one God is supreme and all-sufficient life. I also emphasised that our intellectual powers are dramatically limited. Humility is key. God cannot be measured by human standards.
I encouraged her to keep asking such important questions, and to see that her questions are not new.
This semester I am teaching a paper on the Christian doctrine of the trinity. As part of that paper, we read bits and pieces from one of the most important books ever written on God, namely St Augustine’s (354-430) treatise titled On the Trinity. Writing during the early years of the 5th century from his diocese in North Africa, St Augustine contemplates questions that Christians have wrestled with for centuries.
St Augustine talks movingly about how God is "wholly everywhere without place, everlasting without time, without any change in himself making changeable things and undergoing nothing".
St Augustine emphasises the limits of human knowledge, and our indebtedness to the Bible if we are to truly know God. As a teacher of scripture, St Augustine communicates the importance of having an open heart and mind to God’s truth as it is shown in scripture.
Understanding God is not for the faint of heart. It involves a life of discipleship, and of learning to have thoughts about God that are worthy of God. Such thoughts as are in keeping with God’s revelation in the history of his people Israel and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
St Augustine is realistic. He recognises that in this life we will not "discover altogether" what God is. But that is not a counsel of despair. Rather, God delights in those who seek him in the face of Jesus Christ. Through Christ, we can genuinely know and love God.
The God to whom Christians pray is infinitely greater than we can ask or imagine. The appropriate response to such greatness is praise and blessing. We know that we can never think of God as God deserves, but we can nonetheless offer praise and thanksgiving to God, given God’s goodness.
The quest for God is ultimately anchored in something that St Augustine calls "faithful piety". What is piety? Piety refers to a mind fired by "the grace of our creator and saviour, and not inflated by arrogant confidence in its own power". Piety, for Augustine, is similar to humility.
It’s a matter of approaching the scripture’s testimony to God with an open heart and mind.
Good questions demand careful answers. The young person with whom I spoke last week was asking an important question, Is God created?
She was asking about whether God is contingent on some other reality. That would entail that God is not sovereign; God is not finally in control of the world’s ultimate purpose and destiny.
Following the teaching of scripture, however, we learn that God is creator of all that is. The good news of the gospel, furthermore, is that all people are deeply loved by this God who is the maker of heaven and earth and seeks only our good.
In the pages of the Old and New Testament, we learn who this God is and what God is like.
Such learning involves a lifetime of contemplation and trust. Difficult as it may be, the quest is entirely worthwhile.
Each and every day I join with St Augustine, as have countless others, in trying to think thoughts about God pleasing to God. For this reason, I listen in faith to the scriptures. There I’m confronted with the greatness and majesty of God.
"For God, it is the same thing to be as to be great," St Augustine wrote.
■Christopher Holmes is professor of systematic theology in the theology programme at the University of Otago.
