God

“Taken in its subjective sense, the word God refers to whatever is the object of one’s ultimate concern. Thus one might judge about a person, “Money or power is his god.” But one can also ask whether his “god” really is God, whether what he treats as god possesses the properties one would expect in an object of ultimate concern. In this second or more objective sense, then, God refers to whatever is truly ultimate: the greatest being, the highest object of belief, the ground of all being. Most often, to believe in God means to believe that the ultimate reality is personal. That is, the divine possesses all the positive features that one associates with “mind” (intellect, will, self-consciousness, and perhaps emotions), but possesses them in an infinitely higher and more perfect form than humans do. For virtually all theists, God is understood as the creator of all things. For most theists, God is also understood as providentially involved in guiding the world subsequent to its creation.

Two major sources have added more specific content to the notion of God. The various religious traditions have developed extensive beliefs about the nature of God, the actions and self-revelation of God in the world, and the sorts of ethical and moral principles that most correspond to the divine nature. In a similar fashion, but not always in lockstep, the philosophical traditions have reached conclusions on what most appropriately count as attributes of God, how (if at all) the divine could be known, and why an infinite God could never be fully comprehended by finite knowers. Theologians have combined features from both of these approaches. They draw on beliefs from one or more of the religions, while analyzing and reformulating these beliefs using conclusions and conceptual tools developed by philosophers over the centuries. The result is a spectrum of positions on whether there are many gods or only one, on what it means to say that God is personal, and on how God is related to the world.”
~ encyclopedia.com

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