Introduction to the Christian view of God – what is God like?

"Mr Big" is how some people see the Christian God - a figure in flowing robes with a white beard. We shall look at images of God later, but for a modern (and humorous!) depiction of God as a remote "grandfather" figure in the sky, look up these two Monty Python clips:

We shall see in the Visuals section that the Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam was literally drawing on a famous image of God as the "Ancient of Days", in this clip asking the Knights of the Round Table to look for the cup that Jesus used for the Last Supper - the Holy Grail.

Once again in this clip, God is a mysterious and remote figure who comes down and tries (unsuccessfully) to intervene in the course of nature - with disastrous results!

Maybe Karen Armstrong (a former nun) is right - God is not easily accessible to us. Christians believe that God himself has addressed this question - He comes to us in three ways: revelation (how God shows himself to us), experience and through nature or philosophical arguments. We shall look at each of these in turn, and then examine what it is that makes the Christian view of God different from Muslim or Jewish views of God - namely the idea of God as three persons or the Trinity.