My God is T.E.B.O.P.A.C.
No, this is not some obscure pagan deity, nor some new “Political Action Committee”. T.E.B.O.P.A.C. is an acronym for the list of attributes of my God, namely, Transcendent, Eternal, Benevolent, Omnipotent, Personal, Approachable, and Creator.
TRANSCENDENT: My God transcends the world, i.e., he is beyond the world of space, time, and matter. I am a bit dissatisfied with this locution. It tries to define God in terms of his relation to the world. If God is supreme, if the world is dependent on God, rather than vice versa, then it is not fitting or accurate to define God in terms of his relation to the world. We ought rather to define the world in terms of its relation to God. God as “transcendent” is a shorthand, or a corollary, to the actual truth about the world, namely that the world exists only in relation to God.
ETERNAL: God is outside time. This overlaps my above definition of transcendence. It bears special emphasis. Time is a created quality. God exists outside of time, and we cannot say when he began to be or when he will cease to be. Time is a concept known only in the world, in which we are trapped. (By “trapped” I do not mean to imply any negative connotation, for such would be inconsistent with the benevolence of God, to be treated next)
BENEVOLENT: What is “benevolence”? For us human beings, it can only be quality defined as what we perceive as favorable to our happiness. I apply this quality to my God because that is at the emotional core of my faith. It would be counter to what I have learned in the Bible to want to serve a god who is not benevolent, that is to say, one who is malevolent. Faith involves an emotional commitment. How can I commit to the service of a malevolent being? I may serve such a one with my body out of fear, but I cannot serve such a one with my heart out of love. My God is love.
OMNIPOTENT: God is all powerful. That is an absolute. I remember talking to a campus priest one time, and the priest asked me (perhaps rhetorically), “How omnipotent is God?” Immediately I pointed out to him that the question contains a logical contradiction which makes it meaningless to ask such a question. There are no degrees to omnipotence. One is either omnipotent or not. God is omnipotent, and that coupled with his benevolence makes him the God whom I choose to serve.
PERSONAL: God is personal. He is a being something like me, or more accurately, I am a being something like him. This negates the idea that “God is what is”, or that “God is everything” That kind of God is really nothing but a tautology. If “God” is whatever “is”, in other words, if we believe in pantheism, then we can just forget about God, because he makes no difference. That may be valid, but it is not what I believe.
APPROACHABLE: If God is personal, benevolent, and omnipotent, he is surely a person that I would like to get to know. He is by his very nature awesome, forbidding, and fearsome. But he has revealed himself as approachable. He encourages our prayers. Our faith in his benevolence and omnipotence and approachability makes prayer possible.
CREATOR: Nothing exists that God is not the cause of. This leads to a whole boatload of philosophical problems, but that is my God for you. He doesn’t make faith easy.