“I Am Who Am Love” 

In Exodus 34:4-9, Moses had asked God, “Show me your glory.” God did:  

The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love….” 

“Steadfast love” is perhaps the best translation of the Hebrew hesed and emet—also rendered as “kindness and fidelity” or even “grace and truth.” It appears 171 times in Scripture. Scholars call it a “virtual definition of God.” 

Earlier, when Moses asked him his “name,” God defined himself as:  

“I AM WHO I AM…. Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you’…. This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.” (Exodus 3:14-15; 34:6. See the Jerome Biblical Commentary on John 1:14.) 

It took the revelation of the Trinity—God as Father, Son, and Spirit, three Persons in one Nature—to show us how and why these two definitions are one and the same. “I AM WHO AM” is identical with “God is love.” 

When God said, I AM WHO AM, he was saying that he is Being Itself. God doesn’t have being, like we creatures do. God is Being.  

If I can “see the hand in front of my face,” I know there is nothing in it that says it has to be there. It is pretty obvious my hand doesn’t have within itself the cause of its own existence. It doesn’t have to exist. Neither do I. If I had never begun to exist, the world would make just as much sense as it does now. In fact, there was a time when I did not exist, and there will come a time when I no longer exist on earth as I do now. There is simply nothing in me that says I have to be. 

This is true of everything we see. But if so, then we know already that for what exists to make sense, there must be somewhere Something or Someone whose existence is self-explanatory. Something that has within itself the cause of its own being — whose Being differs from ours in this, that, if we could see it as it is, we couldn’t even ask, “Where did this come from?” It would be something whose existence would be so obviously self-explanatory that we would just say, “Of course!” 

In other words, someone who, if asked, “What, who are you?” could answer, “I AM WHO SIMPLY AM.”  

We cannot imagine such a Being, but we know there is one. Otherwise, there is no explanation for anything else that exists, and we can give up thinking right now. Or confine our thinking to figuring out how things “work” without trying to understand what things “are.” This is to focus on “physics” and ignore “metaphysics” (what is “beyond physics”). And, in fact, that is the prevailing option in our culture. We settle for technology, the science of how things work, and just don’t think about philosophy (“love of wisdom”), which is the science of what things are. The truth is, our discoveries in technology are so fantastic and add so much to our lives here and now that we may not even notice a need to ask the ultimate “why.” 

Not, at least, until the inevitability of death makes us wonder about what life really is in the first place! That leads us to think deeply about being. And that leads inevitably to God. 

Starting with the fact that in God, what he is and that he is are one and the same—his “essence” explains his “existence,” because it is simply his nature to be—we can reason to all sorts of other necessary conclusions about God which would constitute a course in metaphysics. It is enough to just state one: if God is Being Itself, God must be One in himself without any differentiation that comes from the addition of parts, because there is nothing outside of Being Itself but non-being, and adding what nothing is cannot make any difference! 

 So how is it possible to have three Persons in one God if none can have anything, any quality or power, another doesn’t? How does that make sense?  

The answer is that what makes the Persons different is not that one has something the other does not, but that they differ in their relationship to one another. Skipping what could involve hundreds of pages and hours of reflection, let us just say that the reality of any relationship consists of interaction. (My relationship with anyone is as deep, inclusive, etc. as my interaction with that person and defined by it). So Father, Son, and Spirit are defined by the way they interact with each other. This interaction is what makes them what they are as distinct Persons. It is of the very nature of God to be three Persons interacting with each other.  

This means that when God said “I AM WHO AM,” he was saying, although we did not know it yet, “I am the One whose very Being consists in an interaction between different Persons.” To “see God” is to see three Persons in an ongoing interaction with one another that defines them as Father, Son, and Spirit. And what is that interaction? In a single word, it is Love. 

The Father sees his own Goodness and Being and utters what he sees in a “word” of knowledge. From all eternity, the Father has been saying, “God!” That Word, the Truth of the Father, is the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son.  

The Goodness of God perceived and expressed as Truth inevitably involves Love. The Spirit of Love “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” They would be unthinkable without the Spirit. The Spirit would be impossible without them. Love depends on, implies, goodness recognized as truth. The Being of God, of the Trinity, is three Persons interacting with each other in mutually recognized Goodness, Truth, and Love. Shorthand: “God is love.” 

Conclusion: that Being who has to be, who has within Itself the cause, the source, the inevitability of its own existence, is a Being whose reality involves relationship. What does this tell us about human beings created “in the image of God”? Does “being human” require “being in relationship”? 

We can speculate all we want about life and being — and grow in wisdom through it — but God has simplified things. John 3:16-18 tells us: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” To believe and accept Baptism is to give up whatever our contingent, temporary life holds for us in order to let Jesus Christ live with us, in us, and through us as his risen body on earth. This makes us sharers in his divine, eternal life, and in the relationship he has with the Father and Spirit. And calls us to have the same relationship with other people that Jesus chose to have. To be fully human is simple: it is to “become Christ.” 

2Corinthians 13:11-13 makes things practical: “Live in harmony and peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.” The Father, Son, and Spirit’s relationship with each other is harmony and peace. So union with God and seeking union with each other are required for authentic human life. 

Prayer Prompt: Do I really need deep philosophy to accept that God is love? As a practical response to the Love of God, how can I look for Goodness, Truth, and Love in all my experiences

— Fr. David M. Knight

View today’s Mass readings, Lectionary #164, on the USCCB website here

Fr. David M. Knight (1931-2021) was a priest of the Diocese of Memphis in Tennessee, a prolific writer, and a highly sought after confessor, spiritual director, and retreat master. He authored more than 40 books and hundreds of articles that focus primarily on lay spirituality and life-long spiritual growth.