Does Matthew 27:47 support praying to the saints?

Remarkably, some Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox cite the passage to that end. Let's think about the passage from a few different angles.

Is Paul praying to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 5:25?

Obviously not, in any relevant sense. But I recently saw somebody raise 1 Thessalonians 5:25 in a discussion about praying to saints and angels. For whatever reason, it's common for Roman Catholics and those who are sympathetic to Catholicism to claim that Catholics don't pray to saints. Rather, they just ask the saints to pray for them. And I saw somebody bring up 1 Thessalonians 5:25 as an example. The passage not only doesn't support the Catholic practice of praying to saints and angels, but even illustrates one of the problems with the practice.

Did the resurrection witnesses have an opportunity to recant?

Skeptics occasionally suggest that the people who claimed to have seen Jesus after he rose from the dead may have been willing to renounce that claim, but were never given an opportunity to do so. Or it will be suggested that we should be agnostic on issues of recantation, since we don't have enough evidence to go by.

Bad design

I recently got into an impromptu debate with an atheist and evolutionist (i.e. a materialist or naturalist and neo-Darwinist). Well, calling it a debate might be too generous, since he didn't make arguments so much as assertions. One of the things he asserted was bad or suboptimal design demonstrates that intelligent design (ID) is bunk and that God doesn't exist. Or it demonstrates it's evil design from an evil designer.

My reply was along these lines:

1. As far as ID goes, the claim isn't that ID necessarily demonstrates God designed the entity (e.g. a biological organism). Rather ID makes a more modest claim: the inference is to design without necessarily identifying the designer(s).
2. Bad or suboptimal design could still be intelligent design. A Ford Pinto is just as intelligently designed as an Alfa Romeo despite the former cars being badly designed. A clunky and defective Gateway computer is just as intelligently designed as the world's best supercomputer despite the Gateway being a badly designed computer.
3. If (arguendo) bad or suboptimal design is somehow evidence of evil design, and by implication an evil designer designed it, it'd still be design. An iron maiden chamber, bamboo torture, and crucifixion might imply an evil mind designed these instruments of torture. Nevertheless there's an intelligence or mind behind them. ID doesn't make any certain claims about the moral values of the designer(s).
4. An argument from a design inference to the Christian God as the designer requires additional steps. These arguments exist. For example, Stephen Meyer's book The Return of the God Hypothesis argues for God as the designer.

The Deity Of The Holy Spirit, Especially In The Old Testament

Than Christopoulos just posted a good video on the subject.

The Poor Quality Of Skepticism

The Twitter account of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) recently linked a video of a presentation by Chris Roe, former president of the SPR, about the poor quality of skepticism of the paranormal. It's worth watching. There's a lot of valuable material in it.

The Death Of Michael Heiser

I still don't know a lot about him, and I haven't read any of his books yet, but I listened to his Peeranormal podcast for years. I'm grateful for the work he and his colleagues on that podcast did to address some issues that have been so neglected by so many Christians. He'll be missed.

When Religious Content Is Popular In Secular Contexts

I recently saw some people discussing the phenomenon of religious content being well received on a YouTube channel, television show, or some other context that's generally secular. And that raises the question of why religious content is so much less popular when it's placed in a more religious setting (e.g., a religious YouTube channel). I think the situation is multifaceted, and I'm not going to try to explain everything that's going on, but I want to mention a few of the factors that seem likely to be involved.

The Witnesses' Willingness To Suffer For Belief In Jesus' Resurrection

The issue often comes up in discussions of the resurrection, and it should, as evidence pertaining to the witnesses' sincerity. I've written a lot about the subject in the past, such as a brief overview I wrote 17 years ago here and a lengthier treatment focused on the death of the apostles that I wrote 11 years ago here. What I want to do in this post is briefly reiterate or expand upon some of the relevant points.

Rejection Of The Perpetual Virginity Of Mary Before The Reformation

We're sometimes told that nobody denied the perpetual virginity of Mary before the Reformation. Or we'll be told that only some small number of people denied it during that timeframe. It may be suggested that Tertullian and Helvidius were the only ones, for example.

Actually, the evidence suggests that the doctrine was contradicted by several New Testament authors and many extrabiblical sources prior to the Reformation. Tertullian and Helvidius were two of them, but not the only ones. See here for a thread (including its comments section) that addresses the sources most often discussed. And see here for a discussion of other sources, who are brought up less often.

Jesus' Fulfillment Of Psalm 22

One For Israel recently produced a video on Psalm 22 that makes a lot of good points. One of the issues that comes up is Jesus' use of the "brothers" language in the resurrection accounts, which probably was influenced by Psalm 22. For more on that issue, see my post here. And here's an overview of Psalm 22 that I wrote several years ago. It covers some issues not addressed in One For Israel's video. And the video covers some material I didn't discuss, so I recommend watching it and reading my two posts linked above. We should keep in mind that, under normal circumstances, a document written several centuries before the closing of the B.C. era shouldn't have been able to anticipate so many details of such unusual penal practices that would be implemented by the Roman empire and the results that would follow from one of its executions, with such close alignment with other prophecies (Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy, Isaiah's Servant Songs, etc.).

Videos Of Demon Possession

Cameron Bertuzzi recently interviewed Richard Gallagher, a psychiatrist who's worked on a lot of what he believes to be cases of demonic possession or something closely related (e.g., demonic oppression). The issue of video footage was brought up by somebody in the audience. Go here to watch the relevant segment. Gallagher says that he's seen some videos, but that they're "generally" not "unequivocal" in terms of their evidential value. I haven't done much research on videos of alleged demon possession, but I've seen some, and none of the ones I've seen have the sort of evidential significance that I'd expect to change the mind of the typical critic. However, I'm more familiar with video footage of some other types of paranormal phenomena. See the cases discussed in a post I wrote a few years ago, which includes links to where the videos can be viewed for free online.

I want to expand on some of the other comments Gallagher made. I'll begin with something he said in the context of video footage, then move on to something else.

Is your citizenship on earth or in heaven?

"This world never looked like a friend upon you: Ye owe it little love. It looked ever sour-like upon you. Howbeit ye should woo it, it will not match with you; and therefore never seek warm fire under cold ice. This is not a field where your happiness groweth; it is up above….set your heart on the inheritance. Go up beforehand, and see your lodging. Look through all your Father's rooms in heaven" (Samuel Rutherford, in Faith Cook, Grace In Winter [Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1989], 33, 56)

Lydia McGrew's New Book

It's largely a reformulation of her earlier books on the historicity of the gospels, intended for a more popular audience. There's some new material in it as well. I'm about 50 pages into it, and it's good so far. You can order it here. She recently appeared on Than Christopoulos' YouTube channel to discuss the book.

What should we make of alleged problematic parallels within Christianity and between it and other belief systems?

Michael Jones recently produced a good video that makes a lot of significant points about allegations of supposedly problematic parallels between Christianity and other belief systems (e.g., pagan accounts of a virgin birth, dying and rising gods in paganism). I've written some posts on issues like these over the years. See here and here, for example.

The History Of Belief In Justification Apart From Baptism

We've written far too much on the subject for me to link everything here. But I want to provide links to some examples of our more important posts on the topic. I plan to supplement this post with more links in the future when warranted. You may want to periodically return here to check for updates.

The Early Development Of Baptismal Beliefs And Practices

Advocates of baptismal justification and some other views of baptism (e.g., infant baptism) often speak of their views as if they were universally agreed upon in earlier centuries. Some of the groups involved even claim that they belong to an institution that's always held all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession throughout church history, that the institution is infallible, that all or a large percentage of the church fathers were part of their institution, and so forth. So, it's significant accordingly if we see early baptismal theology being more developmental and varied than claims like the ones I just mentioned would suggest. And for those who think there was an early departure from apostolic teaching on one or more baptismal issues, evidence of development and variation in early views of baptism can provide significant evidence for their position accordingly.

Baptism And Justification In The Odes Of Solomon

The Odes Of Solomon is more difficult to judge than other sources in some ways. It's a songbook, consisting of poetry, and poetic language is often less exact and more difficult to interpret. And the speaker in the odes sometimes seems to change, even within a single ode, and it's sometimes hard to tell who's doing the speaking. For reasons like those, we have to be more cautious than usual in interpreting the document accordingly.

Baptism And Justification In Aristides

Aristides is one of the most neglected of the earliest church fathers. He seldom gets mentioned in patristic discussions, and I don't remember ever seeing anybody bring him up in the context of soteriology in particular. He didn't write much about soteriology, but he did make some comments of significance that are worth discussing.

Baptism And Justification In Polycarp

It's often claimed that belief in justification through baptism was universal among the church fathers, that everybody between the time of the apostles and the Reformation held that view, or something similar. I've periodically responded to that claim over the years, such as here, and I added some other posts on the subject last year. I want to add a few more this year before collecting links to some of these posts in one place for future reference.

Polycarp's Letter To The Philippians occasionally discusses soteriological issues, but not in a lot of depth. For example:

"'In whom, though now ye see Him not, ye believe, and believing, rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory;' into which joy many desire to enter, knowing that 'by grace ye are saved, not of works,' but by the will of God through Jesus Christ….If we please Him in this present world, we shall receive also the future world, according as He has promised to us that He will raise us again from the dead, and that if we live worthily of Him, 'we shall also reign together with Him,' provided only we believe." (1, 5)

The focus is on faith, but he requires works in some sense as well, probably in the sense of works being the fruit of justifying faith. Just before what I quoted in section 1 of the letter, Polycarp refers to how "the strong root of your faith, spoken of in days long gone by, endureth even until now, and bringeth forth fruit to our Lord Jesus Christ". He had noted that justification is "not of works". He connects that comment in section 1 of the letter to 1 Peter 1:8, which refers to believing in Jesus. In that passage, Peter is addressing the present faith of people who are already Christians, so he doesn't have some sort of combination of faith and baptism in view. Polycarp refers, in section 1, to how people want to "enter" the joy referred to in 1 Peter 1:8, so his references to faith and the exclusion of works probably are focused on the beginning of the Christian life at that point. Near the end of Polycarp's letter, he refers again to those who "shall believe in our Lord Jesus Christ" (12). There's no reference to being justified through baptism, being justified in the context of baptism, or anything like that anywhere in the letter. The most natural reading of the references to faith is that they're meant in an unqualified sense, not in the qualified sense of faith accompanied by baptism, faith at the time of baptism, or some such thing.

The letter isn't long, and there isn't much relevant material in it. But what's there leans against baptismal justification rather than in favor of it.