CCC 199-227 I Believe in One God 1. Christians believe in the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  They also profess belief that “Jesus is Lord.”  Do they, therefore, believe in three gods, or perhaps four? 2. According to the Catechism, what’s in a name?  What’s the importance of God revealing His name? * NB: God revealed Himself progressively, under different names. The Living God 3. Oddly, though this section of the Catechism has the title indicated above, it doesn’t discuss what it means for the people of the Old Testament to call their God “the living God”?  Why do you suppose they refer to Him by that name? 4. God reveals Himself to Moses by two names.  What are they?  How are they related? * I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Significance: the One who had called and guided the patriarchs in their wanderings.  He is the faithful and compassionate God who remembers them and his promises.  He is a provident God.  Compare this with: “I am the God who destroyed all before me.  I am the God who crushed my enemies.  You and the people shall obey, because I am more powerful and terrible than Pharaoh.”  Not what he says. * I Am Who Am.  I Am He Who Is.  (The sacred tetragrammaton.)   In Hebrew, the sacred revealed name is replaced by the divine title “Lord.”  He is also the hidden God, above everything that we can understand or say.  And yet He is the God who makes himself close to men.  I am always there.  I am the God of being-there, of being-there-for-you-and-yet-always-simply-being.  He is always there for His people, merciful and gracious; faithful: despite the faithlessness of men’s sin and the punishment it calls for, he keeps steadfast.  He remains true to His promises.  Thus, in Jn 8.28, we read: “When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will realize that “I am.”  (I am who?  I am who am.  I am He who is.  I am for you.) * Over the centuries, Israel’s faith was able to manifest and deepen realization of the riches contained in the revelation of the divine name.  God is unique; there are no other gods besides him.  He transcends the world and history.  He made heaven and earth: (Ps 102): They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear out like a garment . . . but you are the same, and your years have no end.” [How can God always BE THERE for them unless He always IS?  Unchanging?  With an unchanging will?  And unchanging BEING?  “You are the same yesterday, today, and forever.”  In God “there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jms 1.17) It necessarily follows, as the early Church understood, then, that God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end.  All creatures receive all that they are and have from him; but he alone is his very being, and he is of himself everything that he is.  (His being is not received from anywhere else.  He is the source and Creator of all that is.) 5. Why do you suppose it would be that, as the Catechism says, “Faced with God’s fascinating and mysterious presence, man discovers his own insignificance”?  Why, in other words, would encountering the “God Who Is” cause man to have to face his own limitations? God is Truth 6. According to the Catechism, in what ways can we understand the saying that “God is truth”? God is love 7. Why, according to the Catechism, has God revealed Himself?  What Has God revealed Himself to be? The Implications of Faith in One God 8. What, according to the Catechism, are some of the implications for our lives of having faith in one God?