I don't know what significance you think there is in the fact that saints are alive. So is a friend who lives a thousand miles from me. That doesn't mean I can pray to him or that it's permissible to do so. If you're thinking of the prohibition of contacting the dead in the Old Testament, those passages are about physical death, not spiritual death. The Israelites and others who wanted to contact the dead weren't just interested in contacting the spiritually dead. They also had interest in contacting those who were spiritually alive (e.g., Saul wanting to contact Samuel). They were commanded to not attempt to do it, and they seem to have had no concept that they could contact the dead through prayer. Pointing out that dead saints are spiritually alive doesn't change the fact that they're physically dead, which is what the prohibition of contacting the dead is about.
You bring up "venerating martyrs", which likewise isn't relevant. You make a vague reference to The Martyrdom Of Polycarp without citing any passage within it. I've read the document, and there's nothing in it that supports praying to saints or angels.
Your appeal to catacomb inscriptions is inadequate. You'd have to cite particular ones you have in mind and the relevant argumentation for their dating. These are disputed issues. You can't just assume your conclusion without supporting arguments. As a general principle, the appeal to catacomb inscriptions is inconclusive. There are common rhetorical devices - in poetry, on gravestones, and elsewhere - of addressing an entity as if you're speaking to it when you actually aren't. For example, we just celebrated Christmas. A popular Christmas hymn is Angels From The Realms Of Glory. It would be absurd to take the first verse of that hymn as evidence that Protestants believe in praying to angels (or the following verses as evidence of Protestant belief in praying to saints). The address to angels in that verse is a rhetorical device that's not an effort to contact angels. Similarly, the book of Psalms in the Old Testament sometimes addresses inanimate objects, like trees and mountains, but it doesn't follow that it's acceptable to pray to such objects. There's a common practice of writing gravestone inscriptions, like the catacomb inscriptions, as if they're addressed to one or more deceased individuals when no intention of contacting the dead was involved. Protestants are among the people who do that. It doesn't follow that the people doing it are thereby praying to saints or support the practice. If they did support the practice, you'd expect to see it evidenced explicitly and often in other contexts, such as in historical narratives and in places where they're discussing prayer. But the same Protestants who use such rhetorical devices don't pray to saints or angels in those other contexts, and they condemn the practice. The same is true of the earliest Christians. Citing catacomb inscriptions to argue to the contrary is like citing Angels From The Realms Of Glory or a Protestant gravestone to prove Protestant belief in prayer to saints and angels.
Concerning development of doctrine, you've ignored most of what I said. You mention the issue of simplicity [that praying to saints and angels is much simpler than the canon and, therefore, shouldn't need so long to develop], but don't address it. Rather, you just move on to a different appeal to development, Trinitarianism. But changing the subject to Trinitarianism doesn't address what I said about simplicity.
If there is scripture (e.g., all of the references Jesus makes to scripture in the gospels, references to scripture elsewhere in the New Testament), then there has to be a canon. We arrive at a particular canon by means of making probability judgments about the books involved, based on a combination of internal and external evidence. You keep bringing up widespread agreement about a list of books, but that isn't the only way of arriving at a canon. You can also arrive at a canon piece by piece. If the majority who accepted 2 Peter early on is different than the majority who accepted Jude early on, I can accept the canonicity of both books without having one source to appeal to who accepted both, much less majority support for accepting both. Or when a list of all of the books is involved (e.g., Origen's in the third century), we can make a probability judgment about that list that doesn't depend on popularity. The evidence for the canon is a distinct issue from when the list of all of the books reached a certain level of popularity. You seem to be confusing categories.
And there's no evidence against the canon comparable to the evidence against praying to saints and angels. When prayer to God is present explicitly and often from Genesis onward, whereas prayer to saints and angels is absent (even when the people involved demonstrably had an interest in contacting such beings), there's nothing comparable with the canon. It's not as though we'd expect something like the canonicity of 2 Peter or the canonicity of Revelation to be mentioned in Genesis, 2 Kings, or Matthew. Or with regard to the prohibition of attempting to contact the dead, it's not as though we have some comparable prohibition of the canon. When the earliest extrabiblical Christian sources not only don't pray to saints and angels, but even repeatedly condemn it (as I've argued elsewhere on this YouTube page and in other places), there's no comparable situation with the canon. You can find a minority of Christians agnostic about or opposed to the canonicity of a minority of books, but that's not comparable to the far more widespread absence of and contradiction of praying to saints and angels. Furthermore, some of the categories of evidence involved in the canon don't exist for prayer to saints and angels. It's not as though we have internal evidence for the earliness of prayer to saints and angels comparable to the internal evidence for the earliness of the canonical books, for example.
For more about development of doctrine, see the links on the subject here. For more about the history of beliefs about who we should pray to, go here.
a Catholic said:
ReplyDeleteJob 33:23-26
[23]If an angel is found near him, one intercessor among a thousand, to teach him what he should do,
[24]have mercy on him and say: Spare him from going down to the grave, I have received the ransom of his life;
[25]His flesh will regain the vigor of its youth, it will return to the days of its adolescence.
[26]He prays, and God is gracious to him, he contemplates his face with joy. (God) announces to man his righteousness;
An angel interceding and the word still says
"One intercessor among a thousand"
In Hebrews it is about the priestly office, it is not about prayer.
Priestly intercession is for the remission of sins through a valid sacrifice offered and ordained by God.
It has nothing to do with prayer
How would you refute his claims and his interpretation of Job?
The passage is addressing a subject that isn't relevant. If it were relevant, the presence of a relevant subject would need to be accompanied by an argument that this portion of Job is expressing something that's true. Much of the counsel Job received was false, and even Job was wrong about some things. Then there's the issue of whether angels or messengers more broadly are being referred to. And the translations of this passage I've seen begin with "if". So, we'd need to consider the possibility that a hypothetical that can't be actualized is what's being referred to. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the passage is referring to something the speaker thinks can be actualized and that he thinks we should try to actualize, and let's assume he thinks what we should try to actualize involves praying to angels. Given the widespread absence of and contradiction of prayer to angels elsewhere, as I've documented on the YouTube and Triablogue pages linked above, the best way to reconcile that evidence with an affirmation of prayer to angels in Job 33:23 would be to see that Job passage as bad counsel.
DeleteBut the passage isn't referring to praying to angels. The Catholic you cited seems to be focused on the issue of whether angels intercede for us, which is a different issue than whether we pray to them. I've had many discussions with many advocates of prayer to saints and angels over the years. They frequently confuse categories like that. One of the first things you have to do in a discussion about this subject is ask whether what your opponent is saying is even relevant. Unfortunately, that's often a step that needs to be taken, and, unfortunately, it's a step that Protestants often fail to take. Furthermore, not only is whether angels intercede for us a different issue than whether we pray to them, but there's also the issue of the context of the angel's activities. If the angel is thought of as entering the earthly realm when we communicate with him, like Gabriel appearing to Mary in Luke 1, then that's an irrelevant context. Similarly, the reappearance of Moses and Elijah in the earthly realm on the Mount of Transfiguration, for example, is irrelevant to issues of prayer. For more about this topic, see here. The distinction I'm making is found in one of the earliest church fathers, Hermas, who lived in Rome, ironically. He tells us that we shouldn't try to initiate contact with angels, but that we can respond to them if they appear to us on earth. For more about Hermas, see here and the other thread referenced there.
Thank you very much for the answer my brother, I'm still trying to assimilate this subject because I had never seen them use the book of Job for this.
DeleteDo you have articles that address the objection that Catholics make, on the subject of the Church Fathers and Sola Scriptura?
They say: sensus catolicus, since it is an authority that is not scripture.
creeds were indispensable for the preservation of correct faith.
If this other authority is a requirement for "preserving" and "interpreting" the scriptures, then the scriptures are not self-sufficient. They are part of a larger package that must be taken as a whole to be used.
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Maybe you have an article or a debate with someone on this topic.
We have a policy against off-topic posts, since they're disorderly, waste the time of people reading a thread for information on the topic of that thread, etc. We have a lot of material about sola scriptura in our archives, such as under the Sola scriptura post label and some highlighted posts in our collection of Reformation resources here. With any argument you encounter, about prayer to angels, sola scriptura, or whatever else, you need to begin with questions like whether the argument is relevant and whether it's being applied consistently. I'm not participating in the discussions you're having, so I don't know what all of the background assumptions are, how certain terms are being defined, and so on. But the argument you've presented about sola scriptura seems to be making multiple false assumptions and relying on reasoning he wouldn't apply to his own belief system. You'll have to take what you know of the person you're interacting with and the context of the discussion and work through the issues. There are far too few people doing that sort of work, which is why we're where we are in the world today.
Delete