Catechesis · Inquirer
God is One
Catechesis · Inquirer
God is One
The Creed begins: "I believe in one God." This is not simply a count. It is a statement about the kind of God He is. The God of Christian faith is not one member of a class of div…
Question
What does it mean to say God is one?
The Creed begins: "I believe in one God." This is not simply a count. It is a statement about the kind of God He is. The God of Christian faith is not one member of a class of divine beings. He is the source of all being, the one in whom all things exist, and outside of whom there is nothing.
Monotheism is the inheritance of Israel. The Shema — "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one" — is the confession the Church received and carries forward. Christianity understands that oneness in a new way, in light of the revelation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The teaching
One God — not one among many, but the source of all
The ancient world was full of gods. Israel's confession — one God — was a radical claim. It meant that the God who called Abraham was not a tribal deity competing with others. He was the God of all peoples, the maker of heaven and earth, the one to whom all nations would ultimately answer.
The Church inherits this confession and deepens it. The God who is one is the God who is Trinity. These are not three gods. They are one God in three Persons. How this is possible is the central mystery the Church has spent twenty centuries exploring.
We do not speak of three Gods, for we are not polytheists. We speak of one God, for He is one divinity, one power, one essence.
Gregory the Theologian is holding two things together: the real distinction of Father, Son, and Spirit, and the absolute unity of God. The mystery of the Trinity is not a contradiction — it is a description of who God actually is, arrived at through careful attention to what the Church has experienced and taught.
St. Gregory the Theologian
Oration 31 · 380 AD
Holy Scripture
"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one."
Deuteronomy 6:4
"For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist."
1 Corinthians 8:6
The Trinity
One God in three Persons — not a contradiction but a revelation
The doctrine of the Trinity is the Church's answer to the question: who is the God that Jesus revealed? He prayed to the Father. He sent the Spirit. And yet He said "I and the Father are one." The Church's task over four centuries was to find language precise enough to say all of this without distortion.