It is very tricky, even dastardly, to ask me for a human conception of God after I have said this about confusing God with a human conception of Him. LOL Yet I am intrigued by the challenge. Lets see if I finesse my way out of the trap you set.
I am very much inclined to start with the very thing you read about how John of Damascus described God and add the word infinite as very much a part of how I conceive of God. Though I would include in God’s limitless-ness the ability to limit Himself as He chooses. It is a complaint I have in much theology that they put all the power over God Himself in the hands of theologian definers rather in the hands of God Himself, and I would say that having power over oneself is perhaps the most important power of all. Thus I would say that limitless only necessarily applies to God in the beginning.
And that brings us to a little digression on the topic of time on which I think many theologians fall into the trap of absolute conceptions of time which are no longer viable in science. It has been logical especially since we discovered that time is part of the structure of the universe to conclude that God exist outside of time, and this has led to confusing ideas about God in an unchanging “eternity” and ultimately putting all kinds of absurd limitations upon God. But once you let go of absolute conceptions of time and realize time is nothing but a ordering of events that in no way has to be singular then time just becomes something one can use in a particular way and there is no reason to think that God cannot use time also quite separate from any time we experience ourselves. This eliminates a whole mess of contradictions which makes us wonder how God can think and make decisions or even act except when he is participating in the temporal ordering of our existence of course.
So back to my description of God being limitless at the start, I would thus say the traditional attributes of omnipotence and omniscience apply in the same way, where they do not restrain God from limiting Himself as He chooses. Thus I often explain that omniscience means God can know whatever He chooses to know just as omnipotence means God can do whatever He chooses to do, within the constraints of logical consistency, which is frankly more a constraint upon our ability to put what he knows and does into the words of human language rather than a constraint upon God Himself.
And now after all this talk of God in terms of power and knowledge I would make the this warning that to know what someone is by nature is not to know the person. Consider the scene when a person walks into your place of work and you register such things as their race and sex. Do these things define the person and tell you who he is? I would say that if you really want to know him then you must find out the things which are a product of his choices rather than his birth – what he values and does with his life is more important, don’t you think? And thus I would apply the same principle to God to say that things like omnipotence and omniscience are no more God’s essence than a person’s race and sex.
Well then, we now come to my often repeated assertion that I believe in a God who chose/chooses love and freedom over power and control. It is something I think is strongly implied in His creation of life, for life serves no purpose in the making of tools for a function and purpose which is all about what they can do for you. Tools exist for an end but it is part of the very nature of life as things which exist by growth and learning, or as I would say, self-organization, that they exist as an end in themselves. And then there is the problem of morality in bringing living things into existence when death and suffering is an unavoidable part of life. I believe the only thing which can ethically justify this is when your motivation is to give your love to them. There are philosophical connections here to questions of free will and my philosophical position as an incompatibilist libertarian, but I will leave a discussion of that for elsewhere. In any case, I would say all this is leading up to an agreement with 1 John which says, “God is love,” to which I will say that it is by this identification that God becomes more knowable perhaps even than ourselves and our fellow human beings who are by contrast filled with conflicting motivations.
Another way in which I often come at the question of defining God is to ask what is the most essential feature by which I would distinguish a being to whom I can give such a label as “God,” with the implication that this is one whom I would revere and worship? In this case the most essential quality is that no righteous cause can stand against Him, or to put in other words, that He is ultimately blameless or I suppose the word most would use is “righteous.” I cannot worship or revere a God who is not wholly good and thus would not use the label God if this were not the case. A word I often hear, but which I find a bit dubious, is that of “omnibenificient.” I do believe it is possible for a person to be motivated by love alone and will even suggest that perhaps no other motivation is left for a being who has and is everything already – for what else is there but to give of your abundance to others. But just because love motivates you doesn’t necessarily means everything you do looks kind and loving from the outside and that is why I am wary of the term “omnibenificient.”
Well that will have to do for now. It is time for me to move on with other tasks this morning…