God is thought to be a spiritual being with no physical form. Different religions have a varying representation of God. In most religions, God is defined with masculine terms for he is thought to be male. Theism, which is a belief in the existence of a supreme being or beings, God is believed to be the creator of the universe and the sustainer. In atheism, there is no supreme being, while in pantheism God is the universe itself. With the contradicting understandings and imaginations of God, there has been the development of Omnitheism. Omnitheism is of the idea that all religions in the world worship the same God but with different ideas and different imageries. Macquarrie displays the capacity of life in natural theology by combining speculation reasoning of God and the mystical spirituality to construct a universal conception of God. To come up with an explanation or a satisfying conception of God we can look at his attributes, understand the idea of him as the creator and his relationship with humankind
God is not just another object in the world but he is all powerful and the sustainer of everything in the world. According to Macquarrie, God is the source of everything and he remains outside the world. From the book of Genesis, it can be concluded that God created the universe and everything that is in it through word of mouth, this still leaves many readers with the question of how God created the universe. It cannot be that word of mouth created the buildings. Instead, the buildings and the houses came into existence through the effort of constructors and builders. According to the book of Colossians chapter one, all things were created by God through Christ. This answers the question asked by many Christians of how things came into existence. Some creation came into existence through Christ or other people hands, but with materials that trace their origin from God.
There has also been Biblical evidence to prove that God is the creator. Other than the book of Genesis, other multiple books in the Bible continue to emphasize on God as the creator. This is evidenced in the book of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Malachi, and John. In Exodus 31: God commanded the Israelites to obey the Sabbath day as He also rested on the seventh day after creating heaven and earth for six days. In the book of Deuteronomy 4: the Bible says that God created everything that is in the universe and He also created man, and He should be obeyed. In the book of Malachi 2: the bible says that people should not go against each other as they are God’s creation. The book of John 1 says that God was in the world, and he made the world, but the world did not recognize him. From this, we can understand God as the creator of the universe.
God can be said to be the origin and the end. This can be concluded from the attributes that God possesses. God does not change. God as the creator is the same God as He was when He was creating the world, God is not subject to change He remains the same as his creation mutates. God is holy, according to the Bible; Holy means set apart, God is unique from everything else because of his attributes and for his pureness. His Holiness proves how perfect He is. God is sovereign, God is powerful, and He is not subject to anyone, He is absolute in authority, and anyone cannot judge his actions. In Isaiah 40 and Job 38, God is the leader and the absolute ruler because He created the world. He is also eternal. God is all powerful or omnipotent. God’s power is evident in his works of creation where He created the universe by word of mouth. There is no limit to Gods power, and God can accomplish whatever He wants to accomplish. Lastly, God is omniscient. This can be defined as God is all knowing, and His power is unfathomable. God is said to know the innermost desires, and He knows the destiny of all individuals according to the book of Hebrews 4. According to the Psalms 147, it says that nothing can be hidden from God. From this attributes of God, we can conclude that God is the beginning and the end.
According to theism, God continues to sustain the world after creating it, but deism does not share the same thought. According to deism faith, God is the creator of the universe but not the sustainer. God continues to sustain the universe and it is evident from the relationship that we have seen between God and the world. Many have tried to describe the relationship between God and the world some saying that the relationship between God and the world is similar to a relationship between the soul and the body. The relationship has also been compared to a moving body’s relationship to the one who caused the movement. God relationship with the world can be said to be a deep relationship that is inseparable, and it is seen to be one thing yet they are not similar. God’s relationship was best compared to the body and soul, the body cannot be separated from the soul, yet the body and soul are not the same. God is different from the world, but at the same time, his relationship with the world is inseparable. Some people have continued to argue that, God cannot be compared to the world because of his uniqueness and his attributes. God is all-knowing while the world is not. God is not subject to death while the world is. God is far much better than the world that He created heaven. This has been thought to be the relationship between God and the world by most thinkers.
God is the origin and the end. From His nature and attributes, He possesses His relationship and the world and is the creator. God is the beginning and the end. He is the creator of the universe, is all powerful, and His relationship with the world cannot be separated. Even with the overlapping beliefs in dialectical theism most people have come to agree on the nature of God and acknowledged him as the beginning and the end.
- Abrams, N.E., 2015. A God that could be real in the new scientific universe. Zygon, 50(2), pp. 376-388.
- Aquinas, T., de Molina, L., Wolterstorff, N., Swinburne, R. and Davies, B., 2015. 16 The Nature of God. OCR Philosophy of Religion for AS and A2, p. 418.
- Burrell, D.B., 2016. Aquinas: God and action. Wipf and Stock Publishers.
- Chan, M.H., 2017. The fine-tuned universe and the existence of God.
- Macquarrie, John. “In Search of Deity.” (1985).
- Sandelands, Lloyd E. Man and nature in God. Routledge, 2017.
- Silverman, G.S., Johnson, K.A. and Cohen, A.B., 2016. To believe or not to believe, that is not the question: The complexity of Jewish beliefs about God. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8(2), p. 119.
- Sölle, D., 2016. Thinking about God: An introduction to theology. Wipf and Stock Publishers.
- The Holy Bible, New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zodervan Publishing House, 1984.
- Wood, N.R., 2017. The Secret of the Universe-” God, Man and Matter”. Youcanprint. Reason is contrary to the Nature of God.