God the Father

The Creed opens with the largest claim anyone can make: "I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth." Every later line rests on this one. It tells us who God is, and that the world is his gift.

One God

The faith of Israel, which Jesus prayed every day, begins with a single cry:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD;

— Deuteronomy 6:4

Christians inherited this faith whole. There is one God: not a family of gods, not a force spread thinly through everything, but the one living God who has no rival and no equal (CCC 200–201). When a scribe asked Jesus which commandment came first, he answered with these same words (Mark 12:29–30; CCC 202). To say "one God" is also to say what we will not worship: not money, not power, not ourselves.

One God in three Persons

Christians also believe something Israel had not yet been told in full. God revealed through Jesus that the one God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the Trinity, the central mystery of Christian faith, the one from which all the others take their light (CCC 234). It is a mystery in the strict sense: we could never have worked it out for ourselves, and even once revealed it remains beyond our grasp (CCC 237).

The Church states it carefully, and the careful words matter:

• God is one. We do not believe in three gods. The Father, the Son and the Spirit are each fully God, not a third of God each (CCC 253).
• The three are really distinct. "Father", "Son" and "Holy Spirit" are not three masks worn by one Person at different times. The Father is not the Son, and neither is the Spirit (CCC 254).
• They are distinguished by their relations. The Father begets, the Son is begotten, the Spirit proceeds. All that the three are, they share; they differ only in how they are related to one another (CCC 254–255).

You may have heard the Trinity compared to a shamrock, or to water as ice, liquid and steam. Such images can start a conversation, but none of them is adequate, and some mislead: water's three states, for instance, suggest one Person changing form, which is exactly what the Church denies. All our words about God fall short of him (CCC 42). It is better to hold the plain statement, one God in three Persons, than an analogy that seems clearer but says something false.

Why "Father"

Many religions have called God "father" as the source of all things. Israel called him Father as the one who made them his people (CCC 238). The word speaks of origin and authority, but also of goodness and tender care, and Scripture can express that care with images of a mother too. God is neither man nor woman; he is God, and the source of all that is good in human fathers and mothers alike (CCC 239).

Jesus reveals something more. God is not only Father in relation to us, as our maker. He is eternally Father in relation to his only Son, who is one with him (CCC 240). And through Baptism, Jesus gives us a share in that relationship, so that we too may call God "Abba", Father.

Creator of heaven and earth

"Heaven and earth" means everything that exists, seen and unseen. The Church teaches that God created it all out of nothing: not out of some raw material that was already there, but by his word alone (CCC 296–297). Nor did he need to. Creation is not the product of necessity, blind fate or chance; God made the world freely, to share his own goodness, wisdom and love (CCC 293, 295).

God holds every creature in being at every moment, and without him it would fall back into nothing (CCC 301). That is why a Christian can look at a tree, a child or a galaxy with wonder.

Faith and science

The Church welcomes the sciences. Discoveries about the origins of the universe, of life and of humanity invite even greater admiration for the Creator (CCC 283). Science asks how the world came to be as it is; faith asks why there is a world at all and what it is for, a question science by itself cannot settle (CCC 284). Because the same God gives both reason and revelation, a real conflict between them is impossible; where one seems to appear, something has been misunderstood on one side or the other (CCC 159).

God's providence and the mystery of evil

If God is good and almighty, why is there evil? The Catechism does not pretend there is a quick answer. It says that the whole of Christian faith, taken together, is the answer: creation, the fall, the patience of God, the Cross and the promise of glory (CCC 309).

Some things can be said honestly. God made a world still on its journey towards its final perfection, in which there is both growth and loss (CCC 310). He made angels and human beings free, and moral evil comes from the misuse of that freedom; God is in no way its cause, though he permits it (CCC 311). He can bring good even out of evil, as Joseph told the brothers who sold him (Genesis 50:20), and as he did supremely through the death of his Son (CCC 312). And much will stay dark to us until we see God face to face (CCC 314). Faith does not explain suffering away. It trusts that God is with us in it.

Going deeper

• What a creed is, on the Creed as a whole.
• Jesus Christ, the Son who reveals the Father.
• The Our Father, the prayer Jesus gave us to speak to him.
• Read next: CCC 232–267 on the Trinity, and CCC 279–314 on creation and providence.