I would think it would be remarkable even to someone who believed it's true...
And that turns out to be about the role and nature of reason and especially the degree to which reason is corrupted by the Fall.
I don't think I'd blame it on the Fall...Adam and Eve were obviously very deficient in their reasoning before the Fall...You can't trust your own reasoning when it comes to the word of God...
Similarly, we can never hope to understand the Bible. Our role is to say, "Yessir!" without comprehension.
That's a pretty narrow view...Jesus says He brings understanding to those who are in Him...
ANYWAY, Whitehead to the contrary notwithstanding, we find that God, when contemplated by reason alone, is found to be outside of time or timeless, while comprehending time.
Why would a justified, sanctified Christian try to contemplate God based on his own reasoning when the scriptures that reveal God to us are readily available???
Therefore, to be glib, Mary (and all the blessed) have "all the time in the world" to hear, sort, and process petitions.
Under that premise when the final judgment takes place, Mary and the saints will be so far behind that those at the end of the line are out of luck...Their prayers will have never made it to God...
Under that premise when the final judgment takes place, Mary and the saints will be so far behind that those at the end of the line are out of luck...Their prayers will have never made it to God...
Nah. They have all the time in the world between this instant and the next. They're always caught up. (It helps if you've done a little imagining about transfinite numbers.)
Why would a justified, sanctified Christian try to contemplate God based on his own reasoning when the scriptures that reveal God to us are readily available???
Wow! What a great question? it's kind of related to someone's question which was ALMOST, "Would Mary be an awesome theologian?" TO which I would answer, "I never read anatomy books when I'm making love. Mary has something BETTER than theology. She has the beatific vision. To do theology in that case would be like turning away from your lover to read a book on the physiology of sex."
Some of us just do it (philosophy and theology, not the other "do it"), and we find it beautiful and it prompts praise of and wonder at God.
Another way is that, though it's kind of a specious distinction, The Bible, Prayer, our Life with Christ tell us WHO God is. Theology tells us What God is.
And the utility, almost the only REAL practical justification (and the reason Dominicans and Franciscans, the great evangelical orders of their time, were so involved with the universities of medieval Europe) is that good theology under-girds the proclamation of the Gospel and its defense against its opponents.
Once it was suggested to me that sex was original sin. No, really. To know the Biblical affirmation of creation generally and procreation more specifically, that the command to multiply was given man "in the time of his innocency," that certain Platonists and Neoplatonists and Gnostics build their world system on the split between body and soul (rather than on the union, as we do), and so on and so forth, that's useful stuff to have under your belt when you're going up against someone who thinks sex is intrinsically sinful.
And, similarly, when you read Dawkins, who evidently persuades some folks, it's good to be able to show, without even cracking a Bible, that Dawkins's account of God and his account of Christian thinking about God is just completely, 100% WRONG!
That is the kind of thing that can get people back to looking in their Bibles.
You know, when I'm talking to a Dawkins junkie, I really don't care what denomination we're talking about. Just to get somebody to take seriously the idea that God could become a Man and that there might be a need for such a thing because what we do REALLY matters, just to get him to think for a minute that thoughtful people believe this stuff with their minds as well as their hearts ... that's a good thing.
If my imagined interlocutor as a result of our conversation decided to become a Baptist Of course I'd shoot him be delighted that he had welcomed the Lord Jesus into his heart and into his life. Clearly I'm a committed Catholic and I think it's the shizzle and all that. But I'll still call it a win if someone's heart is touched by the amazing and life-changing love of Jesus.
Maybe its just a certain quirk some people have, the theology/philosophy quirk. I know that compared to at least two guys I converse with a lot, I'm by no means expert. But I know of one of those guys that it was philosophy that led him to crack a Bible and it was theology that led him to say, "I need you in my life, Lord." So that makes it worthwhile, as far as I'm concerned.