Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
Yawn.
Piety, including veneration of saints (or reading Spurgeon) does not have to be explicitly mentioned in the Bible, even though in your post you avoid several scriptural allusions to intercessory prayer known to you.
I would be somewhere in the middle. I am not a protestant and not a Catholic.
Truth be told, when you boil it down, since most proddy's still believe in infant baptism, I don't see as how the daughter feel too far from the mother tree. :-)
Matthew 1:24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:
25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
If memory serves me correctly, while tradition speaks of Mary being a perpetual virgin, I don't believe many of these documents came into being until several hundred of years after Christ and Mary.Your memory is mostly right. The earliest surviving text documenting the tradition of Mary's perpetual virginity seems to be the apocryphal Protoevangelum of James, ca 120 AD. Origen's Commentary on Matthew, ca 248 AD, is another surviving early text speaking of Mary's perpetual virginity. Many more texts survive from the fourth and fifth centuries, written by people like St. Augustine.
Besides, "dying to sin" is a figure of speech that refers to all sin, past, present or future, not merely one that has already been personally committed. In baptism we filfill the death as precondition of new life: "unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die itself remaineth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12:24-25). As a rite of initiation it is looking forward, not past.
My mother didn't like going to funerals till the day she died.
So?
How do you speak to the dead?
Is it also Paul's error?
Romans 7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
Blasphemy!
Luke 1:46 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
A lot of these differences arise from the loss of the Communion of Saints in Protestantism.
Anyone know when this loss occurred?
It means that Joseph and Mary had sex, just like it says.
Since when is it a loss to not be speaking with the dead?
Do you ever speak to someone you love who has passed away?
If so, would it be a loss to not have this?
If not, would it be a gain to have it?
I think (some) Protestants teach we are in a kind of sleep when we die. Catholics do not.
From the Catechism:
62 "We believe in the communion of all the faithful of Christ, those who are pilgrims on earth, the dead who are being purified, and the blessed in heaven, all together forming one Church; and we believe that in this communion, the merciful love of God and his saints is always [attentive] to our prayers"
They had no supernatural powers in life, why assign them any in death?
Well, that's where they were when Jesus went "down" there -- he broke the gates of Hell (not Hades) and pulled out the righteous. If they were righteous, why were they in hell?
All of this is extra-scriptural Tradition, isn't it? If so, then I can't possibly know how this idea came to be. I don't know of any evidence in the Bible that supports the idea that any of the righteous ever went to hell. There is evidence, however, of quite the opposite:
2 Cor. 5:6-8 : 6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 We live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
Paul makes no mention of going to hell first. Besides, IIRC, in the icon I saw, along side of the OT righteous in hell were standing Apostles! What were they doing in hell?
I don't do the assigning. It's also in Revelations I believe; and there's another verse about "God of the living.." But the question is an odd one to look at anyway.
As close as I could come to addressing is I would guess that being with God is quite super-natural.
I'm guessing that's a no on the question of speaking to loved one's passed away. If so, I humbly suggest you try it and see for yourself.
Yes, I did misunderstand your point.
The Apostles made decisions based upon – not oral teachings – but on what they received directly from God and from God’s guidance. However, I wouldn’t equate anyone in church history on the same level as the twelve apostles. Even the apostles didn’t fully understand God’s hand in their guidance. The Apostles, seeking to fill Judas' position, selected Matthias; yet there is very little mention of Mathias in scripture and even tradition is vague and sketchy on his accomplishments. God had selected Paul. If total authority had been given to the Apostles to past down as you suggest, then Matthias would have been God’s messenger to the Gentiles-not Paul.
Almost forgot: You also have Jesus talking to the "dead" in the Transfiguration.
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