Imagine you’re twelve years old, and someone asks you the biggest question ever: What is God really like? Not just “God is love” or “God is powerful,” but how can we even begin to picture or understand the One who made everything?

Here’s the thesis: We cannot see or know God directly the way we see a friend or know our own thoughts. Our ideas about God come through a kind of mirror that is fuzzy, dark, and indirect but still true enough to trust and love Him by. This mirror is the world He created. The beauty, strength, and goodness we see in things point back to Him, but always in a way that falls short because nothing made is exactly like the Maker.

The Bible makes this plain. It says that right now, “we see in a mirror dimly” (διʼ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι)—like looking through foggy glass (1 Cor 13:12). Only in heaven will we see God “face to face,” as He truly is, and then “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Until then, our knowing stays limited.

So how do we get any real ideas about God at all? We start with what we see around us. Trees grow strong, people show kindness, minds think clearly. these good things exist because God caused them. They reflect bits of His own goodness, like sunlight bouncing off water shows the sun without being the sun itself.

But those reflections are weak and mixed with limits. A kind person can still get tired or selfish sometimes. A strong animal can die. So we have to clean up our ideas before we use them for God. We take away every flaw (that’s the way of negation or removal) and lift them up to the highest possible level (that’s the way of eminence or super-eminence). We also remember that God is the cause of all these good things (the way of causality).

Think of it like three artists making a portrait of someone they’ve never met, only hearing descriptions.

• The painter adds colors straight from life—positive strokes that match what is there (like saying God is good because goodness flows from Him).
• The sculptor chips away everything that doesn’t belong—removing chips of stone to reveal the true shape (like saying God is not limited, not changeable, not weak).
• The poet piles on big words and exaggerations to capture something too grand for ordinary talk (like calling God “all-powerful,” “all-wise,” or “supremely good”).

All three ways work together. Scripture and the Church show us how.

First, the Bible often uses big abstract words that point straight to what God is in Himself: not just “God is good,” but God is Goodness itself (αὐταγαθότης). Not just wise, but Wisdom (αὐτοσοφία). This shows His perfections aren’t add-ons; they are His very simple and whole being.

Second, words like “all-mighty” (omnipotent), “all-knowing” (omniscient) shout that His power and knowledge have no end or gap.

Third, we add words that push beyond: God is super-good, super-wise and by these we mean that Gid is beyond anything we can measure.

Not every picture works the same way. Some fit God closely and properly, even if not exactly. Unity, truth, goodness, life, spirit are “pure perfections” (perfectiones simplices). When we say “God is spirit” (John 4:24) or “God is love” (1 John 4:8), we mean it in a real, positive way, though still raised to infinity.

Other pictures carry flaws that can’t stick to God at all. We call Him a rock for strength and safety (Ps 18:2), a lion for fierce protection (Rev 5:5), or fire for purifying power (Heb 12:29). but these are metaphors. They point to truth without being literal. The pure ones clarify the mixed ones, and the mixed ones make the pure ones feel more alive and concrete.

In the end, we end up saying three true things at once, as the early Church Fathers loved to put it: God has every name (πανώνυμος), no name (ἀνώνυμος), and a name above every name (ὑπερώνυμος). He is all these perfections really, yet beyond them. This invites you to keep looking at the world with wonder, stripping away what is small or broken, lifting up what is noble, and tracing every good gift back to the Giver. In that lifelong gaze, faith grows, love deepens, and hope reaches toward the day when the mirror clears and we see Him as He is.

Joseph Wilhelm and Thomas B. Scannell, A Manual of Catholic Theology: Based on Scheeben’s “Dogmatik,” 4th ed. rev. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.; New York: Benziger Bros., 1909), 164–66.