The God of the Judeo-Christian tradition is profoundly distinct from the so called Gods described in the ancient civilizations of Human history. A “short list” of the Revealed Attributes of (the Nature or Essence of) God are that He is:
Incomprehensible and Unknowable to human reason(I Timothy 6:16) !! Yet He revels manifestations of Himself to us. Human knowledge of God is limited and unable to grasp the transcendent essence of God. It is the height of human folly and impertinence to imagine that one can “know God.”
Inaccessible – He can’t be “known” in any comprehensive way(Isaiah 6:9-10 & Psalm 145:3).
Ineffable – He can’t be expressed in words. God’s essence is beyond the limitations of the human mind or the descriptor of human language(Isaiah 40:28b).
Incommunicable – His being or nature can’t be expressed and therefor it can not be communicated.
Infinite – boundless, limitless(1 Kings 8:27 & Revelations 4:8).
Immaterial – God is not a physical or material thing(John 4:24).
Impalpable – Since God is immaterial He also can’t be touched or felt.
Invisible – If God is immaterial then He is certainly not able to be seen(Colossians 1:15).
Unchangeable or Impassible (apatheia) – God does NOT change(Malachi 3:6 & James 1:17).
Omnipresent – He is everywhere(Psalm 138:6-9).
Omnipotent – He is all powerful. For example, God spoke and the entire cosmos came into existence(Genesis 1:3 & Rev. 1:8).
Omniscient – God is all knowing; this includes his infinite foreknowledge of all things(Psalm 146:5 & Romans 11:33).
A Most Perfect Being – However God is not a creature (i.e., He is not a created thing) and he is formless. Even though “he is,” He was not created and is, in that sense, ontologically beyond “being.”
Eternal and Ever-Existing – He existed before time, and will never cease to be; He is NOT mortal. He existed before he made the cosmos.
Singular – Only He is God, there are no others; He IS the unity of the divine Holy Trinity.
A Self Existent Transcendent Being – God exists because of God. Of course he is not actually a “being” in the sense that he transcends the concept of “being.” For example, when Moses was standing before God in the form of the “burning bush(Exodus 3:2)” (i.e., the uncreated light of God, the shekinah glory of the divine presence of God, the true “light of the world“) and he asked God “who shall say sent me?” God replied “Tell them I am that I am(Exodus 3:14)” !! That is God told Moses to tell them that I exist! I am is the ancient Hebrew tetragammanton of YHWH (Yahweh) which is so holy the ancient Hebrews would not even say the word.
God is Spirit – He is spirit in the sense that He is NOT a created physical being(John 4:24). Again, He is beyond the ontological concept of “being.”
God is All-Good, and All-Righteous – He is not the author of evil, though He allows man a free will divinely knowing full well that the freedom He gives to mankind (and to angels) will lead to evils. Evil is not “a real thing”, it is the absence of good(Psalm 9:8, Psalm102:8 & I John 4:16).
God is Self-Sufficing to Himself and “All-Blessed” – See Romans 11:33-36, Acts 7:25 & I Timothy 6:15.
God is the Great Creator of All Things – The entire cosmos exists because God spoke it into existence and it was the most unimaginably gargantuan flash of all times(Genesis 1:3)! Again, the entire cosmos came into existence some 14 billion years ago (i.e., the big “flash;” it could not have been a bang as sound require a medium through which the acoustic wave can pass).
God is Outside of Time – God exists everywhere and at all time simultaneously (not in the sequential sense that we created ones experience time).
The fact that created human beings can NOT describe or understand who or what God is, in part, because all cataphatic descriptors (positive or affirmative statements) fall short of and therefore fail to describe the absolute transcendence of the divinity and infinity of God led the ancient Hebrew patristic fathers to use many apophatic terms (the terms or language of negation) to describe what He isn’t. Because the meanings of descriptive words have limitations to their meanings, it would be fatuous (foolish or silly, especially in a smug or self-satisfied way), or blasphemous to try to describe God using cataphatic descriptive words for him.
Even an apparently basic statement like “God is Good” or “God is the Good the True and the Beautiful” is, at least in some sense, delusional because God is a great deal more than good and true and beautiful, and goodness is an inadequate concept for the transcendent infinity of God.
The semantic ambiguity of the concept of goodness (or any similar term) also implies that one can understand God’s ontological being with such terms (thereby categorizing God, i.e., putting God in a “box”), which is also, at least in some sense, blasphemously disrespectful of God.
Solomon admonished, “God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.” This is the sense of the piously respectful attitude in which the Hebrews would not presume to speak or even write the name of God, and it is also the sense in which God can’t be portrayed in drawings, paintings, Icons or statues. When Moses asked God “who shall I say sent me?” God replied “Tell them I am that I am(Exodus 3:14)” !!
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