Various titles or names are given to the Mystery underlying all that exists–e.g., the Divine, Supreme Being, the Absolute, the Transcendent, the All Holy-but all of these are only “pointers” to a Reality beyond human naming and beyond our limited human comprehension. Still, some conceptions are taken to be less inadequate than others within a given tradition founded in revelation. Thus Jews reverence Yahweh (a name so holy it is not spoken, but rather an alternative name is used), and Muslims worship Allah (the [only] God).
Christians conceive of the one God as “Trinity,” as having three “ways of being”–(1) Creator and covenant partner (from Hebrew tradition) or “Father” (the “Abba” of Jesus’ experience), (2) “Son” incarnate (become human) in Jesus, and (3) present everywhere in the world through the “Spirit.” Ignatius of Loyola* had a strong Trinitarian sense of God, but he was especially fond of the expression “the Divine Majesty” stressing the greatness or “godness” of God; and the 20th century-Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner could talk of “the incomprehensible Mystery of self-giving Love.”
The reluctance of some of our contemporaries to use the word God may be seen as a potential corrective to the tendency of some believers to speak of God all too easily, as if they fully understood God and Gods ways.
