“The divine attributes are really identical among themselves and with the Divine Essence.”

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” (Deuteronomy 6:4, Douay-Rheims translation)

God is one. Often we hear this and meditate upon the Trinity, but the concept is much more extensive than that. God's oneness extends to all parts of Him, such that there is only one part of Him. The variety of words used to describe God is the result of our human condition being insufficient to fully grasp Him. We are as the blind men describing the elephant – even though we can touch many parts, we don't have one word to describe them all. We have no word to mean both justice and mercy. No word to mean both present everywhere yet uniquely present somewhere (here I am thinking of the Host). No word to mean both loving yet permissive of suffering. Our language does not afford us the word to cover all the attributes of God, so we use many words; yet God is one. God is what He does, He is not duplicitous. The justice shown so clearly in the Old Testament is the same as the mercy shown in the New Testament – not even as two sides to the same coin, but as the same side of the coin!

We learn that God is the very definition of wholeheartedness by understanding the Law of God. God wants us to be like Him. Man failed in being like God because he tried to be like God “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God” (St. Maximus the Confessor, CCC 398). To be like God with Him, behind Him, and in accord with Him one follows His Law, which is the path to being like Him. In the Old Law, we have laws about not blending species, blending fields, or blending fabrics. These pedagogical laws where intended to teach us wholeheartedness. The highest expression of this wholeheartedness is a wholeheartedness towards God (Deuteronomy 18:13). In this unwavering wholeheartedness towards God, we become like Him. The more we ourselves become one complete and undivided person, the more we become like our undivided God.

That God's attributes are the same as His Essence lets us know that God is truly one and there is no division in Him. The unity of the three in the Trinity is not the fullness of the understanding of the oneness of God – even the attributes of God are all expressions of the same attribute, which is the same as His Essence. All the words we use to describe God are synonymous in that they are describing only one attribute!

Further Reading: Peter walks on water (Matthew 14:22-33)