The Nature of God and the Trinity
What Do Christians Believe About God?
Christianity is a monotheistic religion — Christians believe there is only one God. Yet describing who that God is requires several key terms. Each attribute shapes how Christians think about God, how they pray, and how they live. The specification asks you to know these terms and what they mean for Christian life and worship.
The Attributes of God
Christians believe God is benevolent — all-loving and wholly good. This means God cares for every person and acts in love. It connects closely to the Christian understanding of God as a forgiving father who desires a relationship with humanity.
God is also omnipotent — unlimited in power. Christians believe God created the universe from nothing and sustains it. Jesus taught in Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” — a verse pointing to God’s total moral excellence. The idea of omnipotence is tied to trust: if God is all-powerful, Christians believe he can act in the world through miracles and answered prayer.
God is omniscient, knowing all things past, present and future. For many Christians this is reassuring: nothing is hidden from God, and nothing can surprise him. It also raises questions about free will, since if God knows what humans will do, in what sense are they truly free?
God is described as eternal — without beginning or end, existing outside time. He is also transcendent, existing beyond and outside the created world, and immanent, present within creation and personally involved with people. Christians hold both truths together: God is far above humanity, yet close enough to hear prayer. God is also understood as a judge — evaluating human behaviour — and as forgiving, offering a path back to relationship through repentance.
Key attributes Christians use to describe God: benevolent (all-loving), omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), eternal (outside time), transcendent (beyond the world), immanent (present within the world), personal (in relationship with people) and forgiving.
The Trinity: One God, Three Persons
The most distinctive Christian belief about God is the Trinity. Christians do not believe in three gods; they believe in one God who exists in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is expressed in the creeds of the Church and is central to Christian worship, baptism and prayer.
The term “Trinity” does not appear in the Bible, but Christians draw support from passages such as Matthew 6:9–15, where Jesus addresses God as “Our Father” in the Lord’s Prayer, and John 14:16–17, where Jesus promises the disciples that the Father will send “another advocate,” the Spirit of truth. The incarnation — God becoming human in Jesus — and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost both contributed to the Church’s Trinitarian understanding.
Philippians 2:5–8 captures how Jesus, who was “in very nature God,” took on human form as a servant — a passage central to Christian thinking about the relationship between the Father and the Son.
The Trinity: God the Father (creator and sustainer), God the Son (Jesus, incarnate redeemer) and God the Holy Spirit (counsellor and guide). The doctrine was formally defined at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and is expressed in the Nicene Creed.
The Creeds and Sources of Authority
The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed are the principal statements of Christian belief. Both affirm belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ his Son, and the Holy Spirit. Most denominations — Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist — use one or both in their worship.
Different denominations place different emphases on God’s attributes. Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians often stress God’s immanence — his closeness, availability and power to act in daily life. Catholic and Orthodox traditions tend to balance immanence with transcendence, using formal liturgy to express the distance and holiness of God as well as his nearness. Liberal Protestant Christians sometimes emphasise God’s benevolence and forgiveness, finding in the loving Father of the Lord’s Prayer the dominant image of God.
All mainstream denominations affirm the Trinity, though they may differ in how they explain the relationship between the three persons. Some traditions — particularly those influenced by Eastern Orthodoxy — prefer to describe the Trinity as three distinct persons who share one divine essence, while Western Christianity has sometimes begun from the unity of God and then explained how he is three.
Unitarians and Rejection of the Trinity
Not all who call themselves Christian accept the Trinity. Unitarian Christians, such as the Christadelphians, hold that God is strictly one person — the Father alone — and that Jesus was a fully human being, not divine. They argue that the doctrine of the Trinity was a later addition and is not found in scripture. This places them outside the mainstream of Christian teaching as defined by the historic creeds.
Belief in the Trinity shapes almost every area of Christian practice. Baptism is carried out “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The Gloria (a liturgical doxology) praises all three persons. Many Christian prayers are addressed to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Spirit. The Trinity also grounds the Christian understanding of love: because God is three persons in relationship within himself, love is not a later addition to God’s character — it is what he eternally is.
For Christians, knowing God as Trinity means prayer is never just speaking into the unknown. It is a relationship with a Father who knows them, a Son who shared their humanity, and a Spirit who lives within them.