However, there is nothing in the NT saying they are. The evidence we have in the NT is that we do not communicate with fellow believers in Heaven nor they with us. As much as I'd love to talk to my mom and dad I cannot.
Do you realize that the members of the Body love each other and share spiritual gifts?
Yes. The spiritual gifts noted in the NT were to be used to build up each other and the church.
Do you think death is strong enough to stop us from loving and sharing, when we are with Christ in heaven?
Again, we have no examples of this in the NT. I know Rome says otherwise, but Rome has a lot of non-Biblical practices.
What is noted in the NT is fellowship/communication or whatever you want to call it, between believers and God as far as believers here.
That in itself is or should be sufficient.
Consider: WE have access to the sovereign Creator of the universe and He wants to have fellowship with us.
If you understood that, you would understand about Mary, whose interventions on our behalf are a consequence of her being a member of Christ's Body, which we are as well. Or do you say she is not?
Again, this is not a NT teaching. Mary simply cannot intervene for the believers on earth. Only God has that capability. This is why Christianity rejects the RC positions on Mary as Mediatrix, Co-redemptrix, Auxilatrix.
They run counter to Scripture.
But that's the key thing. Mary is *not* a rival to Christ, a competitor to Christ, a peer to Christ, an equivalent to Christ, or a mediator "by the side of" Christ.
Yet that is how Roman Catholic writers have positioned her. I know you don't like Ligouri(sp) and others, but that is what they've written. Now, if you are willing to say those "Doctors of the Church" are wrong, that's a different conversation.
Is that what you're saying?
She is *in* Christ and Christ is in her. As in you. As in me. As in the Church. As in all the saint, both in this world and in the world to come.
Yes...except Mary is in Heaven as are all departed believers and we simply cannot communicate with them or vice versa for all the reasons aforementioned. There is NO purgatory.
Is this audacious? Probably even more audacious than you realize.
The Roman Catholic position is in error again for the reasons mentioned.
Because you can say, like Mary can say, with the Apostle Paul: "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
Yes....believers in Christ can say this.
But Roman Catholicism's writers say we have to do this through Mary which is not found anywhere in the NT.
It is through Christ and Christ alone that we are saved. Only Christ.
Are we not in Christ?