Catechesis · Inquirer
God the Father
Catechesis · Inquirer
God the Father
God the Father is the first Person of the Holy Trinity. He is unbegotten, receiving His existence from no one. He is the eternal source of the Son and the Spirit. He created all t…
Question
Who is God the Father?
God the Father is the first Person of the Holy Trinity. He is unbegotten, receiving His existence from no one. He is the eternal source of the Son and the Spirit. He created all things through the Son in the Holy Spirit. When Christ taught us to pray "Our Father," He was revealing who God eternally is.
The Father, Son, and Spirit are eternally one God. The same God who spoke to Abraham and Moses is the Father whom Christ reveals. The Incarnation reveals who God has always been.
The teaching
Unbegotten — the Father's personal property
What distinguishes the Father from the Son and Spirit is not His nature — all three share one divine nature — but His personal property. The Father is *unbegotten*. He does not come from anyone. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. The Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father. These are not subordinations — they are the eternal relations that constitute the Trinity as Trinity.
The Creed names the Father as "Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." All creation comes from the Father through the Son in the Spirit. The Father's almightiness is not domination — it is the inexhaustible generosity of the source of all being. He gives existence to all things without diminishing Himself.
No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.
Christ's words in Matthew 11:27 are a claim about His own identity and about the knowledge of God. The Father is known through the Son. The Incarnation is the definitive disclosure of who God is.
Matthew 11:27
The words of Christ
Holy Scripture
"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible."
Nicene Creed · First Article
"See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are."
1 John 3:1