What is the nature and personality of God?

God's nature and personality are revealed as a harmonious union of dual characteristics—internal character and external form, masculinity and femininity—centered on Heart, the irrepressible impulse to love an object partner. Scripture shows a personal God who thinks, feels, grieves, and rejoices. Created in His image, we can know Him not as an abstract concept but as our Heavenly Parent.

To truly know, love, and relate to God, we need more than abstract theology about Him; we need to understand His nature and personality. The Bible presents God not as a distant philosophical concept, but as a personal being with character, emotion, and purpose—a being we can actually come to know. Grasping who God is in His essence transforms faith from mere belief about God into a living relationship with Him.

The Biblical Foundation: One God, Yet Relational

Scripture begins by affirming God's absolute oneness and sovereignty: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD" (Deuteronomy 6:4). He alone is Creator, and there is none besides Him (Isaiah 45:5). Yet, within this unity, the Bible consistently reveals a God who is internally rich and relational. At creation, God speaks in plural terms: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26). The Spirit of God moves upon the waters (Genesis 1:2), and the Word through whom all things were made was "with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). Jesus declares, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30), and promises to send "another Comforter... even the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16-17).

Even more striking, the Bible portrays God as possessing deep emotion and personality. God rejoices over His people "with singing" (Zephaniah 3:17), is grieved in His heart (Genesis 6:6), burns with love and jealousy for His children (Exodus 34:14), and weeps through His prophets over a wayward people (Jeremiah 9:1). This is no impersonal force. God thinks, feels, wills, plans, and relates. As Jesus taught, we address Him as "Our Father which art in heaven" (Matthew 6:9)—the language of family, not philosophy. For "God is love" (1 John 4:8), and this divine attribute permeates all His actions and interactions with humanity.

The Divine Principle Perspective: Harmonized Dual Characteristics

The Divine Principle illuminates the nature of God by reasoning from creation back to the Creator, just as Romans 1:20 teaches: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." Since every created being manifests paired characteristics, the Creator, who is their common source, must Himself be the harmonious subject of dual essential characteristics.

First, every being possesses an internal character and an external form—a mind-like, invisible aspect and a visible, embodied aspect, existing in reciprocal relationship. God, as the First Cause, is the original being of the harmony between original internal character and original external form.

Second, everything in creation exists in pairs: man and woman, male and female animals, stamen and pistil, positive and negative charges. Genesis 1:27 records that God created mankind "in his own image... male and female created he them." If both masculinity and femininity reflect God's image, then God Himself is the harmonious subject of original masculinity and original femininity—perfectly united within one being. Because God stands in the masculine, subject position toward creation, we call Him our Heavenly Father; yet, the fullness of His nature includes the maternal heart that comforts, nurtures, and gives life.

Third, God's internal character contains the faculties of intellect, emotion, and will, whose most essential core is Heart—the irrepressible emotional impulse to seek joy through loving an object partner. Heart is the wellspring of God's personality: it is why He created, why He pursues fallen humanity through history, and why He grieves when His children suffer and rejoices when they return. As it is written, "The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy" (Psalm 103:8).

The Parental Heart of God

To know God, we must understand His Heart. God did not create out of need or boredom; He created because of the explosive desire of love—the longing to have object partners with whom to share total joy. This means God's personality is fundamentally parental. Every human emotion of love, every parent's tears over a child, every longing for intimacy reflects something that exists originally and perfectly in God. Knowing God's nature, then, is not a theological puzzle to be solved but a relationship to be entered: we were made in His image precisely so that we could resemble His Heart and relate to Him as children to a Parent.

Living the Principle

Knowing God's nature and personality invites us to relate to Him personally, as children to a Heavenly Parent. Reflect on how God's harmonized dual characteristics—masculine and feminine, intellect, emotion, and will—are expressed in His creation and in your own life. Seek to embody His Heart of boundless, parental love in your relationships, joying in giving rather than receiving, and comfort His grieving heart by becoming a person through whom He can finally experience the joy for which He created the world.

These answers explain the Bible in the light of the Divine Principle, the teachings of Reverend Sun Myung Moon. .

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