Posted on 07/29/2014 4:02:28 PM PDT by Faith Presses On
Jessa Duggar is currently courting Ben Seewald, a very strong Christian with very strong views on things. His views on the Catholic faith, however, recently caused a social media scandal and Seewald deleted the comments he had posted to his Facebook page.
"Where Catholics depart from Scripture, I will in no way support, but will call them out because I love them and desire that they be turned from their deadly errors," Seewald wrote. He also noted that he disagreed with the claim that Jesus' mother Mary was a "sinless being. I have nothing against individuals who are Catholic," he continued. "I know a lot of Catholics who are great people. What I DO have a problem with is the teaching that man can merit God's favor through his own works or the works of other fallen men."
Seewald was still not through expressing his disappointment with the Catholic tradition.
"I DO have a problem with the teaching that man can come to God through Mary or any other person besides Jesus … I DO have a problem with the deification of Mary as a sinless being. Mary herself admitted her need for a Savior. If she had no sin, she would need no Savior," he concluded.
(Excerpt) Read more at christianpost.com ...
There is more than one interpretation of the Bible.
Luke 1:28Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
28 And he came to her and said, “Hail, full of grace,[a] the Lord is with you!”[b]
Footnotes:
Luke 1:28 Or O favored one
Luke 1:28 Other ancient authorities add “Blessed are you among women!”
Also: Luke 1:28King James Version (KJV)
28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
Also: Luke 1:28Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)
28 And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
I didn't say "all the various translators have used this wording," I said this is what Greek grammar would indicate.
Here's the necessary Greek grammar link.
There are, of course other grammarians who point out the same grammatical significance --- not being an independent expert on Koine Greek, I rely on scholarly testimony.
Notice these translators' notes. The first is an explanation of the difference between "Pleres Charitos" (a more common form of being highly favored) and Kecharitomene (or Kekaritomene), a term not used anywhere else in the New Testament, the LXX, or any other Greek text, Classical, Koine or Modern. It is simply one-off, unique:
"The reason Luke didn't choose PLERES CHARITOS for Mary is that the phrase cannot, in itself, distinguish time, agent or continuity, whereas KEKERITOMENE can. Being a perfect, passive, participle that is applied on a titular basis, KEKERITOMENE denotes that: (a) the state of grace began in past time, (b) it is a completed and accomplished action, (c) its results continue into the present, (d) that the verbal title is received by Mary from an outside agent.
Although these four grammatical characteristics do not prove the Immaculate Conception, KEKARITOMENE is the best Greek word that could have been chosen to coincide with it. Any other Greek word would have been inadequate or even faulty. That is all we can really say, grammatically speaking."
"It is permissible, on Greek grammatical and linguistic grounds, to paraphrase kecharitomene as completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace." (Blass and DeBrunner, Greek Grammar of the New Testament)."
The ongoing scholarly discussion about how to best translate this word, is due to the fact that the word is unique in the world, used only in the Gospel of Luke. It has the characteristics of being a title with a feminine ending, and also of being the past perfect passive verb form. The root verb is "charitoo," to fill with grace. The "past, perfect, passive" form means that it was done ab initio, from the beginning, it was done fully, and it was done TO her (it was not something she did herself.)
It's hard to fit all his into an English phrase, because that is a tense of verb we don't even have in English; nor do we have verb forms rendered as personal names or titles.
(I'm thinking the nearest English analogy would be something like if a gal won a competition for dressing well, somebody might address her as "Hey, Miss Best-Dressed" --- but only if somebody else had dressed her!)
And as for "Chaire", grammatically it is followed by a name or title, and thus the word following it should be capitalized, as in Χαῖρε ὁ βασιλεὺς. If the translators do this when the word is followed by King or Rabbi (as they do according to this Biblical Concordance), they SHOULD also have done it before Mary's title, which was given her by the angel.
As always, the translator parses it out as well as he can.
This is not, as I said, a mathematical proof. It's something that lends a certain weight as evidence. It prompts the legitimate question, "Why would Luke use a completely unheard-of word like "Kecharitomene" (instead of "pleres charitos")?
How would you answer that question?
We --- you and I ---DO share the belief that the Gospel is Divinely-inspired. See my point? (I'm asking whether you "see" my point. I'm not asking if you agree with it!)
I read this verse in about 30 different translations (isn't the Internet a wonderful tool?) They are all remarkably consistent. But none of them are translated in a way that would imply that Mary was sinless throughout her life, which seems to be the point of disagreement here.
I look at it this way. There is nothing in the New Testament to indicate that my salvation is dependent upon my venerating Mary or in praying to dead saints. On the other hand, there are clear prohibitions in the Old Testament against communing with the dead. So my choice is to skip the middle man (or woman) and talk directly to my Father when I pray, since He is the only One who can answer my prayers anyway and since He is the One that Jesus instructed us to pray to. If others choose differently, I'll let that be between them and God.
Our prayers may very well be eternal. The Bible says elsewhere that our tears are bottled in Heaven. We are getting a glimpse here into the ternal, and both our prayers and our tears may never cease to exist, and really can’t cease to exist to God, who is outside of time.
Though you will not respond, I will reply anyway, since I think you are misinterpreting or misrepresenting the verses you reference.
You seem to be saying that John is referring to Christians who had been martyred by the time John was on Patmos in his account in the chapters you mention. However, I think most theologians would agree that the chapters in question are John’s description of the events surrounding the Great Tribulation. It is speaking of the four horsemen, the seal judgments, the bowl judgments, etc. Unless you are contending that these have already occurred, I don’t see how your comments line up with the Scriptures you reference.
You are making a BIG stretch here to support your position, one that does not appear to be supported by the text or the context of the passages you quote. But I think most compelling to me and to most non-Catholics is that when Jesus talked of prayer, He always spoke of praying to His Father, not anyone else. If praying to others for assistance was important to our ability to live victorious lives as His disciples, I do not believe He would have left it to be divined by a group of men 300 years after His death and resurrection. I’m sorry, but praying to anyone other than God smacks of idolatry, which is clearly prohibited. Since nothing in the Bible clearly commands us to pray to the dead for help, I will take the Scriptural prohibitions against idolatry and against communing with the dead seriously, and will choose not to pray to anyone other than God. You are free to choose differently.
You are using an argument that most would not agree is true to support your claim, namely that the popes claim a direct line of succession from the apostles. And that is a key difference for Catholics and non-Catholics. And keep in mind that the doctrines concerning Mary came about almost 300 years after Christ.
That argument only works if you first concede that the dead saints are still able to pray. You are making a huge assumption that cannot be supported with Scripture to support your argument.
Who are you? Clinton's attorney? We're gonna start parsing what pray means??
Good grief....this is about the lamest argument I've ever heard.
In the examples cited for King or Rabbi, those were specific individuals and those were their titles....recognized titles.
The reason NONE of the translators have given Mary the title "Favored with grace" is that it is not a title.
Not even the Douay-Rheims Bible uses caps for full of grace.
Folks a lot smarter than you and I who translate the Greek know this.
Catholic doctrines have not typically been formally defined on day 1. They are usually formally defined after a heretic rejects what the church already believes.
PRAY MEANS 1. “ASK” and 2. worship God.
Catholics would never worship Mary but they would ask her to intercede with God on our behalf. There is more than one mediator between God and man and scripture says so.
Who is Jessa Duggar? Why should her bf be important?
No where in the NT are we told to pray to Mary.
There are not to be statues you bow down to and pray to. If that's not worship, I don't know what is.
It says there’s one mediator between God and man, who is Jesus. Where does it say otherwise?
This parable does not have those implications.
Pray can simply mean asking in the natural sense, such as, “I pray, sir, could you tell me how to get to such and such?” It’s antiquated in English, however but is found used that way in older Bible translations. It does not mean “prayer” as we understand “Lord, teach us to pray,” as the disciples asked Jesus.
Prayer in the biblical sense means people in this world asking those outside this world, in the invisible spiritual realm, for things, and the Bible teaches that we are only to pray to Living God, not other created beings. Angels certainly appear to bring prayers to God like messengers, but they aren’t shown to have the authority to answer them themselves.
In this parable, the rich man is no longer in this world and addressing Abraham, but with him in the afterlife although there is an impassable gulf between them. So the rich man isn’t praying to him, but talking to him. And it’s natural he would. He is an unbeliever, and he knows by Cont’d
now that God won’t answer him, so he turns to someone around him whom he knows God accepts, and he tries him out. We see from his request that Abraham send Lazarus to him that he doesn’t know what Abraham can and can’t do, and much about the place He’s come to or no doubt spiritual matters either. He rejected the spiritual in his life. The next request and response, though, allows on the face of it the interpretation that he could send Lazarus back to the rich man’s brothers, but it in no way necessitates it. Jesus’ parables leave many aspects of what they talk about unaddressed, often it seems because the answer is something the Lord doesn’t choose to reveal to us right now. I do believe that this parable has to be a glimpse of the afterlife, but from what’s given, you can make an equally good but insufficient case both for and against Abraham’s ability to send Lazarus to someone in this world, and one reason why we would be kept in the dark is that it would be too hard for us to understand, reveal things we shouldn’t know now, create confusion, including more prayers to the dead as what was said could be twisted, and because the Lord’s point was about unbelief and its relationship to greed.
Me too!
Oh no, Catholics certainly DO deify Mary and pray to her. Don’t even pretend they don’t.
That being said, my disagreement is with the Church, not members of the church.
Thank you!!
exactly. Only Jesus Christ can.
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