IV. God the Father
a. “I believe in God.”
There is only one God and a person's faith ought to be placed entirely in him. We know him through both faith and reason. By reason we are able to surmise of his existence and such necessary qualities of him as omnipotence and omniscience, but it is by faith through his revelation to humankind that we know him as truth and love. He revealed himself to Moses as the great “I AM” (Ex 3:14), the only thing which necessarily and truly exists of its own accord. Everything else exists because God exists. In the New Testament, through the person of Jesus Christ and the words of the apostle John we have learned that God is love (1 Jn 4:8) and that he loves every person with a passionate, undying, and unimaginable love and wishes for every person to know him and enjoy his own divine life through Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 4:9-10, 2 Pt 4:9).
b. The Father
Christians, along with Jews and Muslims, the other worshipers of the one true God, regard God as the universal Father. The Catholic Church teaches that the Heavenly Father is the first person of the Blessed Trinity. Though the other two persons of the Trinity were prefigured in the Old Testament through various means (cf. Gn 1:26,18:2, Ex 3:6.15-16,4:5, Ps 33:6, Is 6:3,34:16,48:16,61:1), only the Father revealed himself explicitly. The Son was only revealed in the Incarnation of Christ, and the Holy Spirit by his teaching. It is the Father who is commonly called God, and rightfully so, but this in no way diminishes the divinity of the Son or Spirit. All are God and all of God's works are the works of the Holy Trinity which always remains perfectly undivided in absolute unity. God the Father holds a special place as the person to whom we usually direct our prayers, especially the most important prayer of all time: the Mass (more about this in a future essay). Like our earthly fathers, God loves us dearly and wants to protect us from evil and harm, but also like an earthly father he lets us make our own decisions and allows us to suffer pain for the sake of discipline and growing in love (cf. Rom 5:3). Though all humans are God's children and he their father in the sense that he created us all (Is 63:16,64:7), he becomes Our Father and us his children in a most profound way through baptism into Christ Jesus (Gal 3:26-27). We become his adopted sons and daughters with Jesus Christ as our older brother “through which we cry, Abba, `Father!'” (Rom 8:14-17).
The Most Holy Trinity
c. The Almighty
There is nothing God can't do; he is absolutely omnipotent (cf. Gn 17:1, Jb 9:13,11:10,23:13, Prv 21:30-31, Wis 11:22-23,16:13.15, Sir 43, Is 44:24). This does not, however, mean that he can do things which make no logical sense, such as make himself cease to exist or create a rock so heavy he can't lift it. Such things are logical fallacies and have no real existence except as mistakes in limited human reasoning. Though that God is all-powerful is readily apparent, so is that he allows the existence of evil, though he does not create evil. This is a great mystery but can be marginally understood when one realizes that the source of evil comes from our own free will, a great gift from God which we have repeatedly misused. The Catholic Church rejects the Calvinist proposition that humans has no free will and that God willed men to be sinners, predestining some to heaven and others to hell. On the contrary, God loves all and takes no pleasure in death (Wis 1:13). Rather, God allows evil for the sake of our free will and always brings a greater good from it. For instance, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was the greatest evil ever to be committed, yet from it God, in his omnipotence, brought the greatest good: the redemption of humanity. It is only in the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection that we can adequately behold God's omnipotence and goodness in the face of evil. Because God is Almighty, we should never cease to ask for his help in our lives, for if only we ask, he will answer (Mt 7:7-8, Mk 11:24, Lk 11:9-10, Jn 16:24).
d. The Creator
God created the universe and everything in it, both the physical and the spiritual, out of nothing (cf. Gn 1:1.31,2:4, Pss 33:6-7,74:16-17,148:4-6, Is 37:16,45:18, Jn 1:3, Acts 17:24, Heb 3:4,11:3, Rv 4:11). In this sense, only God is Creator, because only he creates out of nothing. We participate in God's creation through procreation, for which God creates new human souls. Although creation is attributed in a special way to the Father, it was done through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit (Col 1:16). God's sole purpose in creation was to further his own glory (cf. Is 43:7). As his creation, it is our mission to glorify him and in doing so find glory and perfect happiness for ourselves. God's plan began with creation and will be culminated at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. God's plan for the cosmos includes unique, personal plans for the lives of every human being, plans which can be followed through grace, resulting in eventual, unassailable happiness for the person who chooses to do so.
e. Heaven and Earth
God's creation doesn't consist merely in the things of this “earth,” which should be understood in the biblical sense to include the entire universe, but also things invisible, mainly heaven. As a spiritual plane, heaven consists of more than just God, but includes angels and all the saints in glory. God created angels before he created humans and their existence is certain. They serve to glorify God in heaven (Rv 7:11-12) and to assist us on earth by bringing our prayers to God (Rv 8:4, Zec 1:12) and ministering to us. Jesus himself was assisted by angels as part of God's plan (Mt 4:11). Angels are distinctly different from humans, and humans do not become angels after death. All of the angels were created at once and do not procreate nor do they require redemption or salvation. They are sinless and beautiful servants of God for whose prayers, patronage, and protection we humbly ask.
Earth
f. Man
Humans are the chief creation of God and he loves his creation passionately. Made in his own image, we are the culmination of all of his creative work (Gn 1:26, Ps 8:6, 1 Cor 11:7). Everything else was created for us (Gn 1:26-30, Ps 8:7-9). Each person is made up of a body and soul in perfect union. Though they are separated at death, at the end of the world they will be reunited (cf. Rv 20:12-13). Each of us is made to be either male or female and most are ordained to find lifelong partnership with a member of the opposite sex and become “one flesh” (Gn 2:23-24). The existence of two sexes is part of the divine plan and cannot be changed (Gn 1:27). Consequently, homosexual relationships are contrary to the divine plan as the scriptures and sacred tradition frequently affirm (cf. Gn 19:5-7, Lv 18:22,20:13, Rom 1:26-27, 1 Cor 6:9, 1 Tim 1:9-10) and cannot constitute the sanctity of holy matrimony in which one man and one woman become one flesh. Humans were originally created to live in paradise where there would be no pain, evil, suffering, or death; it was human folly which created these things (Wis 2:23).
g. The Fall
Before the fall, some angels, led by Satan, chose to rebel against God, fell from heaven, and became demons (cf. Jb 4:18, Is 14:12, Lk 10:18, Jude 6, Rv 12:4,20:9). Demons are beyond redemption, having already made their definitive choice against God, and serve only to promote evil and ruin and bring as many souls with them as they can before they are condemned to “the pool of fire and sulfur,” which is eternal separation from God (Rv 20:10). It was Satan himself who tempted Eve into eating the forbidden fruit which resulted in the fall of humanity and loss of original grace and justice (Gn 3:1-7, 2 Cor 11:3). As created, our first parents were immaculate (Gn 1:31,2:25, Eccl 7:29) and enjoyed the presence of God face-to-face. It wasn't until they chose to rebel against God, as symbolized in the story of the forbidden fruit recorded in the Book of Genesis, that sin, suffering, and death entered the world (Gn 2:17, Wis 2:24). Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden for their rebellion and failure to believe God and found their new lives difficult and imperfect (Gn 3:16-19). As their children, we too live in a difficult and imperfect world, a fallen world. We are conceived in sin and suffer from concupiscence, an inordinate desire for self over God and others (cf. Gn 8:21, Rom 5:12.17,6:23,8:6-8.11.13.17, Gal 5:17, Eph 2:3). This is the effect of original sin, which is passed on to each new generation of humans (cf. Jb 14:4,15:14, Ps 51:7, Sir 8:5, Rom 3:9.23,5:12). Were it not for original sin, we would be able to choose goodness in our lives and never commit any actual sins, nor would we be subject to pain, disease, hardship, suffering, death, hell, or any of the other unfortunate difficulties of our existence. Fortunately, as he promised immediately after the fall (Gn 3:15), God has provided a way out of this mess through Jesus Christ and his holy Catholic Church. For those in Christ, God's omnipotent will is manifested as he uses sin as an opportunity for abundant grace (Rom 5:20-21), uses suffering to unite us to himself through Christ, the suffering Messiah (Rom 8:17, 2 Cor 1:4-6, Phil 3:10), and transforms our death into a gateway to eternal blessedness in his presence forever (1 Cor 15:55-56).
The Fall, by Michelangelo