Learning Encounter 4: Intervention of the Triune God in the Life of Abraham

 What kind of love is God’s love? God is love and His love is unconditional.
• Who makes the first move between God and man
As a loving God, he makes the first move. He intervenes in our lives so we can live life to the
fullest and can unite with Him.
• What are miracles? Miracles are God’s interventions through events, people, things,
insights and feelings to show his love.
• How do human beings experience miracles? If we respond in faith to God’s initiative?
• What are examples of miracles? The call of Abraham and the events thereafter are
miracles.
• How did Abraham responded to God’s intervention? In faith.
• Gen 12:1-2 Call of Abraham
• What does God want Abraham to leave behind? What does HE want Abraham to use as
basis of his life and security? - the basis of his security and success; God and HIS promises.
• What will Abraham discover if he will not depend on his own resources but on GOD and
HIS promises?
God can be trusted
• Why was Abraham now called the “Father of Faith.?”
His faith in God’s WORD became the basis of his security, the basis of his life.
• How did God reveal himself to Abraham as a God of great compassion?
God gave them a child although Sarah was old and barren, and HE allowed things to happen so
the blessings of land and descendants can be theirs.

ABRAHAM: FATHER OF FAITH

• What is faith as a desire of the human heart?
Faith - the desire of the human heart to be connected with God and the gesture or act of going
upward to encounter God – enables the believer to meet God in his loving act of going down to
liberate human beings.
• What did faith empower Abraham to do?
Abraham’s faith enabled him to hold on to God’s promises and see them fulfilled.
 • How did Abraham exemplify this faith?
Gen 22:1-24 Not only in his act of leaving everything behind and taking the risk of journeying to
the unfamiliar and the unknown, but also in his willingness to offer his son, Isaac.
• In Abraham’s aborted act of offering Isaac to God, what should we not think of faith and
what should we not think about God?
We should not think of faith as blind obedience. We should not think of God as capricious and
sadistic, just testing Abraham’s faith. God did not tempt Abraham to do an immoral act of
murdering his own son.
• What is the ancient practice of offering human sacrifice in worship? P31,#4 killing of
infants as offering to pagan god, Moloch, prevalent among pagans
• What is the proof that GOD did not approve of human sacrifice?
In the context of God’s unconditional love that runs through the entire Bible, the angel’s
intervention which stopped Abraham from offering his son, is enough proof that GOD did not
approve the practice of human sacrifice in worship.

OUR PROBLEMS AND SUFFERINGS ARE NOT GOD-GIVEN

• Why did Abraham think of offering Isaac to God?
Abraham, influenced by the pagan culture of his time, must have thought of offering his son as a
sublime act of worship.
• What new thought about God flooded Abraham’s mind?
That God is loving and compassionate and as such does not want murder.
• How did Fr. Nil Guillemete confirm that God did not approve of human sacrifice?
“Elohim is a GOD OF LIFE, not a God of death, and he would never want a father to take the life
of a son for a religious purpose.
• What imperfect notion about God is prevalent in the Old Testament that we should not
believe?
We should not believe that problems, natural calamities, tragedies come from God. We should
not believe that these are God’s punishments for our sins.
• What is the real meaning and understanding of problems and sufferings?
Problems and sufferings are the natural consequences of the disruption of the laws of nature or
simply as effects of sins.
PROBLEMS, SUFFERINGS, CALAMITIES ARE EFFECTS OF SINS
• What does CCC says about our need to be purified from sin, even venial sins?
Every sin, even venial entails unhealthy attachment to creatures which must be purified either
here on earth, or death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from temporal
punishment.
• What is temporal punishment?
Temporal punishment follows from the nature of sin, not vengeance from God.
• What are the two temporal punishment caused by men’s sins?
Problems and sufferings that purify us from our sins here on earth.
Purgatory: a state of purification after death.

HOLISTIC OR INTEGRAL FAITH

As holistic or integral, faith has three dimensions: 1) believing, 2) trusting, and 3) doing.
Three-pronged faith as evidenced in the life of Abraham:
1. Belief that involves rational thinking which in theology is termed as faith-seeking, scientific
understanding (believing).
2. Trust in GOD, when amidst the inexplicable realities of life, the believer holds on to God
as expressed in prayer and worship (trusting).
3. Loving action or faith that seeks social justice and love for others especially the least (doing).

How did Abraham exemplify this three-pronged faith?

The first two aspects of faith were best reflected respectively in Abraham’s critical analysis of his
faith, that is:
- Not following the ritualistic practice of human sacrifice in his time.
- Setting out to a foreign land where everything was unfamiliar in order to obey God’s
commands.
- This act of risking to venture into the unknown is Abraham’s concrete act of enfleshing
his love for God and his wife who can be considered as among the “least” since being
barren is an experience of social and psychological poverty.
WORSHIP DIMENSION OF THE FAITH:
1. Prayer as an expression of deep trust in the providence of God is a “grace of God” (CFC, 1479).
2. That prayer is a gift is best expressed in Rom. 8:26 ff.: We do not know how to pray as
we ought; but the Spirit makes intercesson for us with groaning that cannot be expressed
in speech. He who...”
3. Faith is a gift of God (Eph. 2:8).

WITNESS DIMENSION OF FAITH

1. Faith as belief in God should always lead to charity for “faith without action is dead” (James
2:26)
2. In a certain sense the greatest miracle that can happen in our lives is when we accept and love
people for what they are, especially the “least”.