Angels from the realms of glory,
Wing your flight o'er all the earth;
Ye who sang creation's story
Now proclaim Messiah's birth.
With the refrain:
Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn king.
The verses that follow address humans who are now deceased (the shepherds of Luke 2, Simeon and Anna, etc.), who can be referred to as saints, in a similar manner.
Do we conclude that Protestants who sing the hymn believe in prayer to angels? And prayer to saints? And time travel, since the hymn uses the language of living at the time of Jesus' birth?
Of course not. We recognize that all three of those aspects of the hymn are rhetorical devices. On what basis?
We lack evidence that angels and saints would be able to hear our prayers, and there's evidence against it. And it seems unlikely upfront that so many people, the people composing and singing this hymn, would all be believers in both time travel and their own participation in it. Therefore, we'd need evidence to overcome the initial unlikelihood that people would be praying to angels and saints and believing in and thinking they're participating in time travel.
Additionally, we know there's a lot of precedent for people using rhetorical devices of a relevant nature in contexts like hymns. Interpreting the hymn under consideration that way wouldn't be something novel, an indication of desperation, or anything like that.
Furthermore, if Protestants believed in prayer to angels and saints and time travel, we'd expect those beliefs to show up in other contexts. And the nature of the beliefs is such that we'd expect the showing up I just referred to to be highly evidenced (how often Protestants would pray to angels and saints, how explicitly the beliefs and practices would be referred to, how much attention belief in time travel and participation in it would get, etc.). We'd expect such things to show up in theology books, apologetics videos, sermons, and so on. They don't show up in those other contexts.
To the contrary, we find evidence in other places that Protestants don't believe in the concepts in question. They oppose prayer to angels and saints, express skepticism of time travel, etc.
Because of such factors, we reach the conclusion that Protestants don't believe in praying to angels, praying to saints, or time travel, despite certain qualities of the hymn in question. It would be absurd to reach any other conclusion.
So, with such considerations in mind, what should we make of the citations of passages in the Psalms, like 103:20, to support prayer to angels? Other passages address inanimate objects and other people on earth, including enemies of the people of God, as if they can hear the psalmist and are expected to respond in some manner (97:1, 97:7, 97:10, 97:12, 103:22, 148:7-12, etc.). Should we conclude, on the basis of verses 10 and 12 in Psalm 97, that we can pray to fellow believers currently living on earth? If you live in Mexico, can you pray to another believer in Russia, without a telephone or any other such device, and expect him to hear you? Does Psalm 119:115 prove that we can pray to evildoers? Does Psalm 148:7-12 prove that we can pray to snow, unregenerate kings, etc.?
We evaluate such passages in the same way we evaluate the hymn I discussed earlier. If praying to angels (or saints) was a practice the relevant Biblical figures believed in, we'd expect it to show up explicitly and often. Prayers to God are explicit and are mentioned frequently from the book of Genesis onward. The absence of prayers to angels (and saints) in the historical narrative portions of scripture, didactic passages about prayer, and other such contexts is a major problem for advocates of such prayers. The fact that people have to resort to passages like the ones under consideration in the Psalms reflects the weakness of their position. The best explanation, by far, for the prominence of prayers to God accompanied by the absence of prayers to other entities in the relevant contexts is that the view held by the relevant Biblical figures (the Biblical authors, Jesus, etc.) was that we should pray only to God.
I counted over 200 prayers in the 66 books of Scripture, and there is not one single prayer by any believer that is addressed to anyone else but God. Which is despite created beings always being in Heaven while man existed, , and there being occasions which man might call upon such beings.
ReplyDeleteAnd IIRC, any personal interaction btwn created beings of Heaven and those of earth required both to somehow be in the same location, neither was any such being that of appeal by the latter for the former to intercede to God for them, much less by mental prayers.
Thus, Catholic apologists - if they will appeal to Scripture even though warrant from it is not the basis for their doctrine nor assurance of it - must resort to unsustainable extrapolation, from the exhortation to earthy believers pray for each other, to postulating that the promise of doing greater works than Christ (John 14:12) includes the ability to hear and respond to an infinite number or oral; prayer, a uniquely Divine attribute of God (for thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men: Chronicles 6:30)
Note that elders and angels offering prayers (Rv. 5:8; 8:4,5) in memorial - like as in Lv. 2:2,15,16; 24:7; Num. 5:15; 16:9, "an offering of memorial" cf. Num. 16:9, - is not that of them being addressed in prayer, nor does it indicate that they had heard them previously, nor is it described as being a regular postal service, but it is one of the things which is a preclude to the final judgments upon the earth, testifying to the persecutions of the saints by the devil and world that it fit to be punished.
For when "He maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he forgetteth not the cry of the humble. (Psalms 9:12; cf. Genesis 4:10) and before judgment God brings forth testimony of the warrant for it, which includes the cry of those martyred souls under the altar in Rv. 6:9, and with odors representing prayer, akin to Leviticus 6:15, "burn it upon the altar for a sweet savour, even the memorial of it, unto the Lord." (Leviticus 6:15)
• The only heavenly intercessor btwn man and God is said to be Jesus Christ, (1 Timothy 2:5) and by Him believers have immediate spiritual access with humble contrite boldness into the holy of holies in Heaven to pray to the Lord God, (Hebrews 10:19) while the Spirit within believers cries out “Abba, Father,” (Galatians 4:6) and not “Mama, Mother.
Here's a post responding to more arguments about Psalms 103 and 148.
ReplyDelete"It's been suggested that the call for mountains, trees, snow, and other sources to bless and praise God in Psalms 103 and 148 are directed to angels, the angels who have charge over those aspects of life. Supposedly, those references to angels are further evidence that those psalms support prayer to angels. "
DeleteNon-sense, and which is another case of Catholic recourse to egregious extrapolation when Scripture - which is not the basis for faithful Catholic assurance of doctrine - fails to support distinctive Catholic beliefs. In this case that of the utter lack (in our 66 books) of even one prayer by any believer to anyone in Heaven but God, despite this being a common Catholic practice.
Angels are commanded by God (as Ps. 103:20 affirms) , and to appeal to them to intercede to God is not what the psalmist is doing in either psalm. And to be consistent with their desperate appeal to poetic language here then Catholic should be praying to "sun and moon, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens," "ye dragons, and all deeps: Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word: Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars: Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl:"
It remains that God, who "only knowest the hearts of all the children of men” (2 Chr. 6:30: is the only direct object of prayer to Heaven in Scripture, to whom believers have access to in Christ, the believer's high priest, and by His sinless shed blood. (Heb. 10:19-22)
And "there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus," (1 Timothy 2:5) "who is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them," (Hebrews 7:25) "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:15-16)
And thus it is to Christ that direct appeal in prayer is made, consistent with His deity and exalted Lordship overall, (Acts 2:36; 7:59; 9:14; 22:16; Romans 10:13; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 12:9)
May all "praise the name of the Lord: for his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven." (Psalms 148:2-13)