Jesus Repudiates Mariolatry

Speaking to "the Dead in Christ" as if they can hear and answer prayers. (I could refer to this as a seance -- but I think prayer is closer to it -- since that is what THEY call it)

I have some sample prayers to Mary that I can post if examples are needed.

in Christ,

Bob

 

Your statement assumes that we cannot talk to members of the Church Triumphant as we can the members of the Church Militant. In this sense, 'praying' to Mary is strictly speaking the old-fashioned meaning of the word, viz to ask eg: "I pray thee", and should not be confused or conflated with praying to God Himself.

 

Could you enlarge on this please? I don't necessarily disagree with your premise but I'm not sure what you mean by application of OT practice to NT religion. An example perhaps?
Also, let me join the ranks of others on complimenting you on your avatar, although it would have a lot more appeal in my part of the country if you painted the tail brown.

 

The Catholic church itself denies that anyone is allowed to "pray to the living" -- since they originated this idea of praying to the dead for Christians and even THEY can not equivocate to the point of allowing Christians to pray to BOTH the living and the dead (as if these really are the same thing) -- why in the world should that argument hold sway here??? It doesn't even work with Catholics!

in Christ,

Bob

 

No, actually I'm personally fine with saying "Blessed be Mary, the Mother of God". There is 'no' separation between "Christ" or "God". Jesus Christ 'is' God, period. At least, in my faith... He is our Creator in the beginning and He will be our Judge on the Last Day and Mary's fiat is a very good reason to rejoice for she was the One Who served as it were as the ladder for the Son of God, Who descended from heaven. To strike a blow at Her veneration means to strike Christianity at the root, to destroy it in its very foundation.

I can appreciate your venom toward this belief but you are standing against 1800 years of Christian teaching.

She is the Mother of God, defined at the Council of Ephesus, 431 AD; She is perpetually virginal, defined by the First Lateran Council, 649 AD, under Pope Martin I, and confirmed by the ecumenical Second Council of Constantinople.

One need not be Roman Catholic to recognize the consensus of these teachings throughout the early Church concerning Mary. Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Coptic Christians as well as Maronites all agree with these universal teachings. These are not simply an Roman Catholic thing although I might agree that Roman Catholic Dogmas teach a unique evolution of this original Church teaching which may be discussed and perhaps criticized separate from the early Church teaching.

Since Jesus is our brother, Mary is our mother.

"Mary is the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of us all... There where He is, we ought also to be; and all that He has ought to be ours, and His Mother is also our mother" (Martin Luther: Sermon, Christmas, 1529 AD).

"And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord." ~ Luke 1:45

As Elizabeth observed, Mary heard the word of God and kept it in her heart and in her womb.

"And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it." ~ Luke 11:27-28

Perhaps, a better translation of the Greek might be "Yes, but blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!" Jesus does not deny Mary's blessedness, He confirms that she is even more blessed because of her acceptance and obedience than because of her physical motherhood. Remember, what the John the Theologian says that Jesus speaks to Nicodemus, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit." Flesh is ultimately not of primary importance to that which is Spiritual. We see this clearly taught in all three of the Synoptic Gospels:

And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. ~ Matt. 12:49-50

And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother. ~ Mark 3:34-35

And it was told him by certain which said, Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee. And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it. ~ Luke 8:21

As much as you or Skypair might desire to use these passages to arm your criticism of Mary as the Mother of God and of us who share in the divine nature you are failing to recognize that Mary actually fulfills these 'spiritual' requirements just as she fulfills the physical requirements in motherhood. The two requirements aren't opposed in the case of Mary as you might suggest. In fact, Jesus insists we understand; Mary is our spiritual mother. She is not to be called blessed simply because she physically gave Him birth, but because she hears the word of God and keeps it always.

This assertion is simply not true for anyone who understands the truth of the matter.

Peace and God Bless.

 

Bound, Amen! And one might add that this is the consensus shared by many Anglicans, too.

If you mean by 'pray' petitioning God alone, then you are correct; I know of no Christian group who permits anyone to pray in this sense to anyone except God. But if you mean 'ask someone to pray to God for you', then I see no distinction between the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant on this score.

 

Bound,

Well, what these various "Councils" say is as irrelavant as whet the Catholic church says. What matters is what the scriptures say.

Then they are wrong.

"Criticized" is putting it mildly.

And there is perfect evidence as to what I am sharing. That Council was flat out wrong. What they declared about Mary is rubbish. The scriptures contradict them. Mary had sexual relations with Joseph after Christ was born. She had other children after Christ was born.

Nonsense. I have a mother in heaven now, and her name is not Mary. Mary was Christs earthly mother. It goes no further than that. She was a sinner in need of a savior. She confessed it herself. She was not "assumed" miraculously into heaven, she is no kind of "Queen of Heaven", she is not omnipresent as Catholics consider her to be. She grants no apparitions. Those are demons. We are not to "entrust the whole world into her care" as the Catholics indoctrinate its victims into believing, as they engage in their goddess worship.

Mike

 

Quoth Mike:

Maybe they were wrong about other things too, then, like the Trinity, the nature of Christ and which books to put in the NT.

 

"Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why is it granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:42-43)

Mary was indeed 'blessed' among "women". Bearing the Saviour was the dream of every Israeli girl. That blessing was special, but carried no further weight. Mary is no different than any other person of the day, subject to sin, and saved by grace, through belief in God's truth revealed at the time. She and her family would have a special insight into Christs life, and perhaps more information to solidify their belief in Him, but to sit at the Lords right hand? Nope.

 

Mary probably had some questions when her Son's Kingdom, wasn't established as was supposed/prophesied. She and Joseph were both unequivocally cognizant of who Christ was, as no other man could have been.

 

You can't have it both ways, Matt! If the Roman Catholics and/or Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, and/or Coptic Christians and/or Maronites were responsible for which books went into the New Testament, it seems odd that they did not choose books which reflected what they apparently believe about Mary. In some of the books that are not in the canon, known as "The New Testament Apocrypha", one could read a supposed account of her birth, stories of Mary performing miracles, see her referred to as "Our Lady", "Saint Mary", and "The Virgin of the Lord", and read referrences to her supposed sinlessness, all things which seem common in Roman Catholicism, but none of which is even mentioned in the canonical New Testament.

 

That presupposes a sola Scriptura position, to which I do not subscribe - and neither do the groups you named.

 

Mary had no other children after Jesus was born. She remained a virgin her entire life. I came to this conclusion in the 7th decade of my life after a careful search of the Scriptures. However, I was unable to reach this conclusion until I opened my mind to the possibility and actually looked at the overwhelming evidence of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Here are some of the things I found.

1. Scripture never says that Mary had other children. We can only infer this on account of Scriptural references to brothers and sisters of the Lord.

2. Reference to brothers and sisters would certainly include the possibility that these people were "half siblings", i.e., children of Joseph. In fact, this belief prevailed in the early church until the time of Jerome (d. 420). Jerome concluded that these brothers and sisters were in fact cousins. In Hebrew and Aramaic there was no word for "cousin" and the relationship was either designated "brother" or it was shown by language such as "son of my father's brother", etc. For example, Genesis 14:14 (KJV) refers to Lot as Abram's brother; in Genesis 29:15 (KJV) Laban calls Jacob his brother; in 2 Kings 10:13-14 (KJV) the 42 captives of Jehu call themselves brothers of Ahaziah. Indeed it is possible that some of the "brothers" of Jesus were half-brothers and others were cousins.

3. When the angel announced the coming birth of the King of Israel, Mary's response was, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" The implication here is that Mary had already committed herself to remain a virgin. The angel did not say when this birth was to take place and Mary was espoused to Joseph at that time. If she had planned on having sexual relations, she would be doing so shortly and it would not be a mystery how the birth was to occur. However, if she planned on remaining a virgin all her life, her question to the angel was perfectly reasonable.

4. None of the early church fathers advocated that Mary had other children. On the other hand, many of them advocated her perpetual virginity. Of particular note among this group were Jerome, Ambrose of Milan (d. 397) and Augustine (d. 430).

5. The early reformers, including Martin Luther and John Calvin, advocated the perpetual virginity of Mary.

6. The strongest indicator that Mary had no other children is contained in John 19:26-27, where Jesus places the care of his mother with John. If Mary had other children, this would have been unthinkable at every level imaginable. In fact, it was when I really thought about this event that I decided Mary did not have any other children.

The only difficult Scripture for those who advocate the perpetual virginity of Mary is Matthew 1:25 ("but [Joseph] kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son"). The implication is that Joseph had sexual relations with his wife after the birth of Jesus. But the language of the Bible does not bear this out. For example, consider 1 Corinthians 15:25, "For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet." Should we infer that He ceases to reign after He has put all His enemies under His feet? Likewise, we need not infer that Joseph had sexual relations with his wife after the birth of Jesus.

 

Excellent point.

in Christ,

Bob

 

Hot air duly noted.

 

...to which I've responded...

 

Scripture does indeed state that Mary had other children.

Matthew 13:55-56 Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
56 And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?

The context indicates that they were speaking of the immediate family of Jesus, the son of Joseph, the carpenter. From where did this man come from. He came from the house of Joseph, the carpenter, and these are his other children that he had through his wife Mary: James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas, and his sisters are all with us also. Note that they were astonished at his teaching becauce he came from such simple origins (so they thought), just the son of a carpenter. How little they knew of his true origins. They didn't even realize that he was born in Bethlehem. They just assumed that he was a Galilean. They were totally ignorant of the true origins of Jesus. These were to them his actual full brothers, when indeed they were his half-brothers.

There is no evidence that Matthew was first written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek. That is not even a viable argument here. The inspired Word of God, that revelation that God gave to mankind is in the Greek langauge, and that is the language that we must go by. In that inspired Scripture the word "adelphos" is used. It means "brother" not "cousin." There is a word for cousin that is used elswhere is the Greek, but not here. Ther word for brother is specifically used by the Holy Spirit to point out to us that these were the actual half-brothers of Jesus, and that Mary did have other children. To say that she was a perpetual virgin is to deny Scripture on this passage alone, let alone the other Scripture that also indicate that she was the husband of Joseph and had other children by her.

 

Matt,

No, the scriptures make clear that The Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are all God. Gods triune nature is taught in the scriptures.

The scriptures make clear that Christ was God in human form.

The scriptures were written and considered scripture long before they were called "the Bible". And regarding that point, the Catholic Church has never gotten it right. There are several books in their bibles that should not be there.

Mike