Founding
Father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
The
people of Israel trace their lineage back to Abrham. If their Exodus from Egypt
was the birth canal through which they passed to their freedom, and their
encounter with God on Mount Sinai the moment of their birth, their conception
was the covenant God made with Abraham When God passed through the separated
parts of Abraham’s sacrifice with his fiery torch ( Gen. 15 ), he conceived a
new people who would develop through the stages of gestation for four hundred
years, through Isaac, his son Jacob, and their children, down to the call of
Moses. All Jews look to Abraham as both the biological and the spiritual
beginning of their life as a people. They trace their lineage through Abraham’s
son Isaac, his son Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons, who where the founders of
Israel’s twelve tribes.
The Gospel of the new testament
underscore that Jesus is a son of Abraham. Tracing his lineage through King
David and back to Abraham, the evangelists accentuate the Judaism of Jesus and
his messianic roots. As Israel’s Messiah, Jesus brought the history of
Abraham’s descendants to a peak. Yet his saving mission was not limited In
scope to only the children of Israel. The universal dimension of God’s plan
begun in Abraham, a plan to bring blessing to all the nations, began to be
realized in Jesus and was spread through the evangelizing mission of his
disciples. For the world’s Christians, Abraham is their spiritual father, the
one in whom God’s history of salvation began. By belonging to Christ,
Christians see themselves as Abraham’s offspring, a multitude as uncountable as
the stars of the sky. For Christians, a family tree is less important than
faith; blood is less important than belief.
In the Qur’an of Islam, Abraham ( Ibrahim,in Arabic ) is the primary
example of what it means to be a Muslim, “one who submits to God.” He is viewed
as the true founder of islam, and Muslims invoke him daily in prayer. The
accounts of Abraham’s offspring begin with a conflict between two women, one
from Mesopotamia, his beloved wife Sarah, the other from Egypt, Sarah’s servant
Hagar. Abraham’s first child, Ishmael, is born from Hagar; later Isaac is born
from sarah. The biblical stories of the two sons are strikingly balanced. Though Ishmael is
expelled from Abraham’s house at the insistence of Sarah , he is not excluded from
Abraham’s affection and paternity. Though Isaac receives the inheritance of
Abraham, Ishmael is also abundantly blessed by God. There is no victor and
loser here. Ishmael later marries and Egyptian and fathers twelve tribes and
becomes the leader of a great nation. According to both Jewish and Islamic
tradition, this great nation descended from Ishmael is the Arab people.
The Bible and the most essential
traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam demonstrate that the God of
Abraham is not the possession of any single race or people. Abraham lived
before the historical expression of each of these religions and is looked upon
by all as their founding ancestor. Today the truth that Abraham discovered
about God is dispersed to every corner of the world. When the descendants of
Abraham look back to their origin, they discover that they are all offspring of
the same father, members of the same family. The carefully balanced message of
the stories of Abraham is that God cares for all of his children.
Could not , then, the father
of all believers be a source of healing and reconciliation for the divided
children of God ? what if religion began to be seen as a source of unity and a
bearer of peace rather than a force for division and strife among people ? what
if Abraham could save the world from the cultural clash between the East and
the West that defines the violent world of the twenty-first century ? what if
we could truly realize what the ancient Scriptures proclaim about Abraham:
“Through him, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”
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