Is Prayer/Veneration/Worship to Mary Biblical?

self | 12-14-14 | ealgeone

[ealgeone]

The reason for this article is to determine if the worship/veneration given to Mary by the catholic church is justified from a Biblical perspective. This will be evaluated using the Biblical standard and not man’s standard.

[CynicalBear]

>>You know, if Jesus Christ came back to earth and read all your posts, he’d never stop throwing up.<<

Did Jesus tell you that Himself or are you simply making something up as Catholics are prone to do? I find it interesting that you would purport to know what Jesus would do "if He came back to earth". What about His view of Catholics assigning to Him the sin of eating blood? How would He react to that do you suppose?

[CynicalBear]

>>They are also making Peter out to be a great liar.<<

And the rest of the apostles. I find it interesting that all of the apostles would agree that all should be admonished not to eat blood all the while knowing (according to Catholics) that they expected people to eat blood.

[rwa265]

Happy New Year to you, too, Elsie.

[PeterPrinciple]

Going back to my own logic,

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And there is the difference. God wants us to think, but there has to be a touchstone for truth and that is why he has given us his Word. I can tell from your comments that you don’t read the Bible much, I would encourage you to spend more time there, at least as much as you do at these other places you read.

Truth has to be worked out and sparks fly.

Now your Fatima Comments. You want to believe those are real, I won’t argue with you. But lets look a little deeper. If you believe there is a God, do you also believe there is a Satan and demons? Can Satan and demons do supernatural things? What is the focus here, God? Would they love to distract us from God and the truth?

Are you willing to take a risk and read the Bible a little more instead of listening to what others tell you about it?

I will repeat to you, the Holy Spirit points to Jesus and Jesus points to the Father. Do not get distracted by the Shiny.

[metmom]

I will repeat to you, the Holy Spirit points to Jesus and Jesus points to the Father. Do not get distracted by the Shiny.

BTTT

[PeterPrinciple]

I’m trying to understand Mary using both logic and what I’ve learned about the supernatural world.............

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Reflect on your above words.

You spend a lot of time focusing on miracles. So did the people in the Bible. but still the people didn’t believe in Jesus or God. He raised the dead, fed them, gave them freedom, but they kept asking for MORE miracles as proof. Jesus tells the Pharisees you search the scripture for eternal life but the scriptures point to Me. It isn’t about Mary, it isn’t about Elisha, it isn’t about Abraham and it isn’t about................., it is about God.

Again, where do you test things for the truth, our own understanding or the Bible, where God has revealed himself.

Again, I challenge you to start reading the Bible..........

You are by all evidence an intelligent thinking person, do not rely on secondary sources, when the primary source is right in front of you.

[GBA]

In life I've both observed and experienced two forms of knowledge.

We can learn and amass a great amount of data about a subject, but without understanding gained through application and contemplation that data has no real value beyond its potential.

For example, I've known many people with advanced degrees and many others with no formal education beyond high school or a few semesters in college.

Yet, it's often those with little formal education who have the greater understanding than those who have the advanced degree.

Not only that, without the understanding gained through application and contemplation, all that data can just cause problems. We too easily miss the warnings that the experienced but "uneducated" clearly see.

See Malcolm's rant in Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990, pp.305-307) I quoted on my homepage here to get an idea of what I'm trying to say.

I think that difference in knowledge is why some people, no matter what they say or quote, seem to believe that supernatural only applies to Satan and his demons and that God officially suspended operations here on Earth with Jesus' death and won't begin again until He comes back.

[Springfield Reformer]

The so-called spiral argument has been dealt with many times before.  Here is a rather good and concise deconstruction of it:

One common attack used by the apologists of Rome is to assert that a Protestant's ultimate authority is private judgment or, as they sometimes pejoratively label as being "protestant personalism" or a person being his own "mini-pope." Supposedly, this problem of private judgment is solved by referring to an infallible magisterium. In fact, however, the recourse to the infallible magisterium is just further application of private judgment.

This argument against private judgment can take various forms. One form of the argument is a syllogism in the form:

1. If God gave us a way to know the truth, that way would give us knowledge of the truth with reasonable certainty.

2. Private judgment doesn't provide reasonable certainty, because reasonable people differ in the application of private judgment.

3. Therefore, private judgment is not the way God gave us to know the truth.

There are several problems with this argument. The number one problem is that it employs the fallacy of skepticism. The way that it employs the fallacy of skepticism is in establishing the minor premise, i.e. private judgment doesn't provide reasonable certainty.

This is a logical fallacy for a couple of reasons. The most obvious reason is that private judgment is necessarily used to deny that private judgment provides reliable conclusions. If the conclusion is correct (i.e. that private judgment does not provide reliable conclusions) then the conclusion itself is not reliable since it obtained by private judgment.

Second, this is a logical fallacy in the sense of simply being a universal denial of knowability of information. That is to say, this argument lacks uniqueness. It is not particularly a criticism of the "Protestant" position. It is a modus tolens argument that can be applied mutatis mutandis to any epistemology.

Specifically, this same argument can be applied to the epistemology of Catholicism, because Catholicism too requires, at some link in the chain, one to use private judgment. This is illustrated in the attempt of certain of Rome's apologists to escape the apparent circularity of Rome's epistemology.

The apparent circularity is this:

1. The Bible is right because the Church says it is.
2. The Church is right because the Bible says it is.

There, the circularity is obvious. It is bigger than the circle of:

1. The Bible is right because the Bible says it is.

... but it is still a circle.

To try to escape this circle, some apologists for Catholicism use what they call a "spiral argument" that was apparently developed by Karl Keating, one of the more prominent apologists for Catholicism (although I cannot recall him debating anyone from the Reformed side of the Tiber river in a long time).

Here's one presentation of the argument:

A Spiral Argument
Note that this is not a circular argument. We are not basing the inspiration of the Bible on the Church’s infallibility and the Church’s infallibility on the word of an inspired Bible. That indeed would be a circular argument! What we have is really a spiral argument. On the first level we argue to the reliability of the Bible insofar as it is history. From that we conclude that an infallible Church was founded. And then we take the word of that infallible Church that the Bible is inspired. This is not a circular argument because the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired) is not simply a restatement of its initial finding (the Bible is historically reliable), and its initial finding (the Bible is historically reliable) is in no way based on the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired). What we have demonstrated is that without the existence of the Church, we could never know whether the Bible is inspired.

(link to source) (Notice how, unlike Mr. Patrick Madrid, we're not afraid to let the reader see the writings to which we're responding.)

Let's assess this argument. The core of the argument is:

1. [W]e argue to the reliability of the Bible insofar as it is history.
2. From that we conclude that an infallible Church was founded.
3. And then we take the word of that infallible Church that the Bible is inspired.

We could reasonably expand this argument to the following:

1. The Bible is an historically reliable document.
2. The Bible records the founding of a church.
3. The Bible indicates that this church is infallible.
4. This infallible church is the church headed by the pope.
5. This infallible church teaches that the Bible is inspired.

It could probably be expanded even further, but this is enough for the purposes of illustrating the problems with this supposedly spiral argument.

Problem 1: Private Judgment Vastly Multiplied

Rather than simply accepting the Bible as Inspired Word of God based on one private judgment, this "spiral" argument requires one to employ private judgment over and over and over again.

First, one uses private judgment to answer the question of historical reliability.

Second, one uses private judgment to decide the meaning of Scripture as to whether a single, institutionally unitary church or many institutionally separate churches were founded.

Third, one uses private judgment to decide that this single church is taught as being infallible rather than as being fallible.

Fourth, one uses private judgment to identify this single church as the Roman Catholic church instead of, say, the Eastern Orthodox church or the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Fifth, one uses private judgment to decide that the Roman Catholic church teaches that the Bible is inspired, as opposed to teaching that the Bible simply contains God's word.

This is a vast multiplication of private judgment over, for example, simply accepting the Bible on historical grounds and then accepting that the Bible says that the Bible is inspired, or simply accepting the Bible's claim of inspiration as true in the first and only step of the process.

If private judgment is inherently bad, the "spiral argument" uses more of it.

Problem 2: Bootstrapping Error

The Spiral argument attempts to avoid the obvious "jump" from nothing to accepting the Bible's claim of inspiration by steps. But each (or at least several) of the steps are "jumps" in themselves.

There is a jump from nothing to accepting the historical method as providing reliable conclusions.

There is a jump from using the historical method to confirm the general reliability of the Bible, to accepting a particular historical account in the Bible.

There is a jump from accepting an account as historical to accepting the doctrine taught in the event as truth.

There is a jump from accepting the general idea that a church was founded to accepting that a particular church is that church.

If making jumps is bad, breaking up a big jump into several smaller jumps doesn't solve the problem, it just distributes it.

Problem 3: Inspiration Smuggled Back In

In fact, the "spiral argument" is circular, because inspiration is smuggled into step 3 of my expanded formulation of the argument, or step 2 of the original formulation of the argument. That is to say, the teaching of an "infallible church" is accepted allegedly because the Bible as a historically accurate document is accepted. But the claim of infallibility is a theological claim, not an historical claim, and it is accepted either because of the authority of the Bible or the person speaking in the Bible.

Problem 4: Church Infallibility Smuggled Back In

Furthermore, the "spiral argument" has a second circularity, in that the infallibility of the church is smuggled back into the argument twice. It is smuggled back once in telling people which church to accept as "the church," and again (more importantly) in interpreting Scripture as teaching an infallible church in the first place.

Specifically, the claim that the Scriptures disclose the founding of "an infallible church" requires loads of eisegesis - of reading into the text, rather than of obtaining teachings from the text.

Problem 5: Scripture Promotes Private Judgment

Worse (for Catholicism) than the issue simply being a matter of silence, Scripture actually encourages the use of private judgment. For example, the Scripture many times and in various ways encourages people to apply personal judgment to arrive at the truth. For example, the Bereans are commended for using private judgment and Scripture to judge Paul, and Paul tells Timothy that the Scriptures are able to make one "wise unto salvation." Furthermore, John tells us that his gospel was written so that we would believe it and have life through faith in Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.

Conclusion

So, next time a person tries to tell you that the difference between Protestant interpretation and Romanist interpretation is that the Protestant makes himself his own ultimate authority, be prepared to challenge that deceptive claim. Everyone uses private judgment. If private judgment is inherently untrustworthy, the Roman position is actually worse off than the "Protestant" position.

Furthermore, while it might be nice to hand over one's brain to the church, so that one doesn't have to think about the meaning of Scripture, that's just not how God ordained things. The fact that it would be convenient or handy doesn't make it so.

Instead, God provided fallible churches with fallible elders over them. These fallible teachers are to teach the Scriptures to their people, but the unchanging Scriptures serve as the rule and measure of the Christian faith, with the fallible churches serving as guides.

-TurretinFan

The short form, for those busy executives unable to ponder the full article, is that there is no spiral here.  RC epistemology, in this form, is actually a  set of many circles strung together with a series of unfounded leaps in logic.  Remember, in a true spiral, like the famous slinky toy, one expects a smooth progression along the curve, not abrupt jumps when you return to the period of the circle. But as TurretinFan above points out, each step in Keating's so-called spiral requires multiple separate acts of private judgment, and as private judgment is the big scary boogie man the RC epistemology is supposed to discredit, it fails utterly.  

And what are we left with?  That the Ecclesia, like Israel before them, had arrived at an informal consensus, by faith, that certain books were Scripture, well before any councils had so decided; that this consensus developed as a result of the Holy Spirit working amongst all believers everywhere, the truly universal church, or better, Ecclesia; that those today who wish to know and interact with the revelation of the mind and heart of God may do so in the pages of Scripture; that God has given us natural and supernatural gifts which we are obligated to use to apprehend His word to us, which gifts culminate in a private act of faith, that we believe God and His word, and choose to live by it, no matter where it leads; that in the exercise of this necessary private judgment, we are but clay, and prone to error, and so must lean on God's Holy Spirit and on each other to remain honest and faithful stewards of His word.

That is how it was during the early years of the church.  The Roman schism did not develop for about 160 years, though there were early stirrings of the faction that would later emerge as political Rome's favorite flavor of Christianity.  But generic Christianity, the Ecclesia that Jesus is building, is not irrevocably bound to that or any other human institution. It is God's work, not man's, a work of God's Spirit, and not the arm of flesh. And it is that Ecclesia who was at the beginning, now is and ever shall be, the true steward of God's Holy word. The Lord knows those who are His, and what it takes to feed the sheep of His pasture:

Matthew 4:4  But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Peace,

SR

[GBA]

In answer to your post, I ask you to read and contemplate the following quoted from the message Scriptures Are A Mirror That Reflect Me from November 13, 2001:

I solemnly ask everyone: what have you done with Scriptures? Scriptures are a mirror that reflect Me; how is it, if you say you know the Scriptures, you do not recognise My speech? how is it you so easily contradict the truth? I tell you, if you do not recognise Me in My sayings now, it is simply that you do not know nor understand the Scriptures that are a key of the Holy Spirit;

if some of you say: "we do not need this prophetic revelation, we are not obliged to listen to it or read it because Scriptures are enough for us and we can learn all knowledge from them;" I ask you in your incredulity: "do you know why you do not believe and do you know why you are so indifferent and determined to close your heart? do you know why you do not seek anything beyond it?" it is because you have not the Holy Spirit who could have risen you from darkness into His Light enlightening your soul to see the Son together with the Father manifesting themselves to you; the Holy Spirit would have breathed in you a resurrection breath invigorating you, giving you life in Me; can a soul who is dead understand Scriptures and put them into practice if he is not alive?

if you would have understood the Scriptures that are as a mirror, reflecting My Image, you would not have said: "Scriptures are enough for me;" no, My friend, Scriptures are not enough if you do not possess the Holy Spirit; it is through the Light of the Holy Spirit that Revelation can be understood and all that seemed then impenetrable mysteries in Scriptures, and sealed, would become knowable and clear because the key of knowledge would be given to you by the Spirit;

yet, I tell you truly: anyone who has willingly accepted Me, even now when I am speaking, is blessed, because through Me he receives knowledge and Wisdom in such a prodigious way that it is as though he has read all of the Scriptures! he himself will be like a loud book bearing within himself the divine inspirations one obtains through grace; then, My daughter, when he reads Scriptures he would see, not only the words, but, as you have experienced, Vassula, he would see the deep spiritual meaning of its context with his spiritual eye;

I have found the messages in True Life In God to be of ineffable value to me and my understanding, faith and belief.

That which draws you to the Holy Trinity and deepens your understanding, trust, faith and belief in Jesus, our Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit, is not a demonic thing of Satan.

Even Satan isn't stupid enough to work against himself like that.

[terycarl]

Paul was converted instantly, once it was God’s time. I imagine you were too :-)

God converted Paul to Catholicism, He does not, ever, convert someone from Catholicism.....that would be counter productive.

[terycarl]

I’ve had several FR Catholics tell me once you’re a Catholic you can’t change. It seems you are a Catholic forever.

That would be correct, in fact, once you are validly Baptized, you are a Catholic forever.....maybe not a good one, maybe not a practicing one, but a Catholic nevertheless.

[PeterPrinciple]

Again, I get the feeling you read everything BUT Scripture. Go to the original source....................

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“God converted Paul to Catholicism, He does not, ever, convert someone from Catholicism.....that would be counter productive.

The “catholic” church began in the ad250 time frame.

Paul was converted to Christ - not a church.

Today, hundreds of millions of Catholics need eternal life and conversion to Christ. If I can help, I’m available.

It is always about Him.

If you would like to make a fact-filled, logical argument, have at it. If not, I will file this under Terycarl’s Opinion Comments... I would very much prefer you support your assertions instead. How great that would be!

[GBA]

Again, I get the feeling you read everything BUT Scripture. Go to the original source....................

Feelings can be helpful sometimes, other times not so much.

Which Scripture do you recommend? Which translation? I have several myself, including a parallel Bible, and no two are exactly alike.

What is alike is that each person thinks theirs is the only translation that is the real truth and then the fight is on over details and meanings and who is "right". Lol...

What makes the messages so interesting to me, is that they make the claim that they are from the original Source(s). Not something transported over thousands of years and through multiple translations, but right here, right now, in our language and times in this critical hour.

I've not yet finished reading TLIG and sorting through all of the Scripture it quotes and the questions it raises within me.

However, from the changes within me and my point of view so far, along with my growing understanding of the world around me and how God works, I tend to feel and believe that the messages in TLIG are as they claim.

Just my humble opinion...

[boatbums]

You can have an intelligent conversation with a protestant. Prots give one liner replies, frequently in the form of a joke that does not address the issue.

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You mean like that Catholic who kept posting “You are wrong?”

Or the one who has this as his Tagline?:

Debating with a protestant is like playing chess with a pigeon..

That's how easy it is to spot a person's true intentions. Eventually, one's true feelings get exposed and their duplicitous nature is revealed.

[metmom]

Feelings can be helpful sometimes, other times not so much.

Feelings are almost useless. Emotions can lie to you.

What is alike is that each person thinks theirs is the only translation that is the real truth and then the fight is on over details and meanings and who is "right". Lol...

That's not true.

I don't know of anyone on this board who says that only their translation is THE Truth.

There are some that are better than others, but if you have parallel translations, they you can clearly see that the subtle differences in words are not really significant.

I prefer the English Standard Version. The ESV. It's easy to read and is not written at an 8th grade level.

What makes the messages so interesting to me, is that they make the claim that they are from the original Source(s). Not something transported over thousands of years and through multiple translations, but right here, right now, in our language and times in this critical hour.

Most of the translations available are translated from the original source documents. If they're not, you ought to avoid them as doing translations of translations passed down through thousands of years, are very subject to error.

The important point is to get INTO the word and pray that God would direct your reading and open your eyes to the truth contained therein.

And it points to Jesus. He's what it's all about.

[MamaB]

Where is the book, chapter, and verse where the Bible teaches that?

[Rides_A_Red_Horse]

That’s how easy it is to spot a person’s true intentions. Eventually, one’s true feelings get exposed and their duplicitous nature is revealed.

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They argue like my liberal/teamster/socialist/”progressive” brother and sisters. They tend to accuse you of what they themselves are doing.

[CynicalBear]

To those who do not hold God’s word as supreme the word of some fallible man takes precedence. Among those are Mormons, Muslims, and Catholics. Once they are so indoctrinated into those cults it has been my observation that it would take a major intervention by God Himself and I fear that by that time it will be too late.

[MamaB]

When I was growing up, I only knew 3 catholic families and we never talked about their beliefs. I am amazed at the junk they believe when they should be reading the Bible. I have learned a lot on these threads. Thanks y’all. Happy, Blessed New Year.