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LESSON 1: DIVINE REVELATION

God Reveals Himself

 Our relationship to God can also be compared to “friendship”. This is how God reveals himself.
He reveals Himself in man’s history to pursue His salvific plan for him. This is what we call
“revelation”.
 Revelation – God’s personal loving communication to us of who He is and His plan to save us all
in His love.
 It is God’s reaching out to us in friendship, so we get to know and love Him.
 It is God’s way of making Himself known to us.

Ways on how God reveals Himself to us

1. Natural Signs – creation, everything we see, hear, and touch

2. Biblical Signs – Sacred Scripture’s record of salvation history
Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph
3. Ecclesial Signs – continuing presence by the Holy Spirit in His people, the Church
4. Liturgical Signs – prayer and sacramental doctrine, moral, and worship
5. Grace – day to day experiences; interior presence in our conscience; sign of the times
6. In other Religions

Does non-Christians receive God’s salvation?

- The Church, in her prophetic mission of reading the signs of the times and interpreting them in
the light of the Gospel, discerns the seeds of the Word in the History and culture of all men of
good will.
- Thus, even non-Christians who do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but nevertheless
seek God with a sincere heart and moved by grace, try in their actions to do His will as they
know it through the dictates of their conscience, may achieve eternal salvation.

Christ reveals God to us primarily through the Church, its Sacred Scripture and living Tradition, through
which the Holy Spirit comes to us.

God is not a distant God. He is a relational God and so He reveals Himself to us.

God “wants all men to be saved and come to know the truth” (1Tim 2:4)

Jesus, the fullness of God’s Revelation

 Jesus Christ is “Himself both the mediator and the fullness of all Revelation”
 Jesus Christ is the goal, the content, and the agent of God’s self-revelation
 Goal – the key, the center, and the purpose
 Content – Jesus reveals both God and ourselves
 Agent – the mediator
WHERE CAN WE FIND GOD’S REVELATION?

 Tradition
 Sacred Scripture
- collected in the Bible
- inspired record of how God dealt with His people, and how they responded to,
remembered, and interpreted that experience
- are never to be separated from the people of God whose life and history (Tradition)
formed the context of their writing and development

Scared Tradition and Sacred Scripture then are bound closely together, flowing out from the same
divine well spring, moving towards the same goal and making up a single sacred deposit of the Word of
God

Tradition can be taken either as the process by which divine revelation, coming from Jesus Christ
through the apostles, is communicated and unfolded in the community of the Church, or as the content
of the revelation so communicated.

As Sacred Scripture grew from Tradition, so it is interpreted by Tradition – the life, worship, and
teaching of the Church

Tradition depends on the Scripture as its normative record of Christian origins and identity, while
Scripture requires the living Tradition of the Church to bring its Scriptural message to the fresh
challenges and changing contexts confronting Christians in every age

The Bible was written by persons from the people of God, for the people of God, about the God-
experience of the people of God

3 Stages how the Gospel was formed

 1ST Stage
- The life and teachings of Jesus
- What Jesus did and taught for our eternal salvation until the day He was taken up
 nd
2 Stage
- Oral tradition
- The apostles handed on to their hearers what Jesus had said and done
 rd
3 Stage
- The written Gospels

God reveals Himself to us through the BIBLE

Bible – also called Scriptures, is the divinely inspired written record of how God made Himself known to
certain people in history.

2 Main Sources of Faith

1. Sacred Tradition – was handed down orally from apostolic times

2. Sacred Scripture – was written down under divine inspiration
  The Canon (list) – the final collection of books
 Nihil obstat and Imprimatur – tell if the Bible is Catholic
 Testament - covenant

2 Major Parts of the Bible (Jesus links the two)

1. Old Testament
- 46 books
- Centers on the covenant God made with the Israelites and the many consequences of
this covenant on their lives not only as individuals but especially as a nation
- Indicates the gradual self-revelation of God

Divisions of the Old Testament

 The Law or the “Torah” – contains the Pentateuch

 The Prophets – contains the writings and speeches of the prophets who reminded the
Israelites to be faithful to their God.
 The Writings – contains the remaining books of the Old Testament, which are the
Historical and Wisdom Book.

2. New Testament
- 27 books
- Deals with the New Covenant of God’s people with Jesus Christ
- Jesus’ Birth, Death, and Resurrection fulfilled God’s promises in the Old Testament

Divisions of the New Testament

 Gospels – four different accounts (Mt, Mk, Lk, Jn) on Jesus’ redeeming life, teachings,
and work. The climax in each gospel is Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection.
 Acts of the Apostles – sequel to the Gospel of Luke. It records the events in the early
Church from Christ’s ascension to Paul’s missionary to Rome.
 Apostolic Letters/Epistles – provide teachings and instructions in Christian faith and
practices
 Book of Revelation – the only apocalyptic book in the Sacred Scripture.
 BIBLE

OLD TESTAMENT NEW TESTAMENT

GOSPELS ACTS OF THE

THE LAW APOSTLES
THE PROPHETS Matthew
THE WRITINGS
Mark
Genesis Luke BOOK OF
Exodus John REVELATION
Leviticus
Numbers Joshua Hosea APOSTOLIC
Deuteronomy Judges Joel
LETTERS/EPISTLES
First Samuel Amos
Psalms 2nd Chronicles
Second Samuel Obadiah
Proverbs 1st Chronicles
Malachi Micah
Job Wisdom
1st Kings Nahum Romans Titus
Song of Songs Sirach
2nd Kings Habakkuk Philemon Hebrews
Ruth Tobit
Isaiah Haggai Galatians Ephesians
Lamentations Judith
Jeremiah Zechariah Philippians James
Ecclesiastes Baruch
Ezekiel Colossians Jude
Esther 1st Maccabees
Daniel 2nd Maccabees 1 and 2 Corinthians
Ezra Nehemiah 1 and 2 Peter
1 and 2 John
1 and 2 Thessalonians
1 and 2 Timothy
LESSON 2: FAITH: OUR RESPONSE TO GOD’S REVELATION

Faith

- is a central reality in Filipino life

- everyday “natural” factor

Faith in Human Relationships:

1. Paniniwala – we show our faith when we accept the words of others

2. Pagsunod – we show our faith when we readily obey the directions of those over us
3. Pagtitiwala – we show our faith when we entrust our welfare to others, even to strangers.

Faith – believing in God

Christian Faith

- believing in God revealed by Jesus Christ

- believing, doing, trusting

Catholic Christian Faith

- believing that Christ reveals God to us in and through the Catholic church, the body of Christ,
united in the Holy Spirit
- believing in the Holy Trinity

Believing – means that God is calling us to share His divine life – that is ‘pagpapakilala’ to us.

Characteristics of Christian Faith

1. Total and Absolute

- Only faith in God calls for a total and absolute adherence
- Passion, death, and resurrection – the best example
2. Trinitarian
- Faith is our friendship with Christ, and through Christ with the Father, in their Holy
Spirit
3. Loving, Maturing, Missionary
- Our Christian faith is truly life-giving and mature only through love
- Love of God and love of neighbor
4. Informed and communitarian
- Believing Jesus’ words and accepting His teachings, trusting that He has the word for
eternal life
- Sacred scripture and Tradition
5. Inculturated
- Manifested in the affairs of daily life especially in human relationships.