Praying TO Saints

[Standing Up]

Who does Paul dis-include from the body of Christ ?

What according to Paul separates us from the love of God ?

Finally, what is your understanding of the Holy Spirit ?

Interesting questions, but they have nothing to do with whether the living should invoke the deceased.

When Stephen was martyred (Acts 7:59), he invoked the Lord Jesus.

Luke says he fell asleep. Now I wouldn't think this refers to soul sleep, but it does suggest that the living may call upon the sleeping all they want without waking them.

Anyway, subsequent to his passing, Luke had a perfect opportunity to say to the brothers and sisters, rejoice, one of our own is now right there beside God. We should invoke him to pray for us.

No, there is no record of that from apostles or the early church or scripture.

It is the same after they martyrdom of St. James the Greater.

Really, the question to ask is why do Christians assume that the Queen of Heaven is different or is she?

 

[Standing Up]

Lazarus passes away. What does Jesus do? Invoke Lazarus to speak to God?

Jn. 11:41 So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me.

 

[Thekla]

Actually, the questions are central to the issue.

 

[Thekla]

Lazarus passes away. What does Jesus do? Invoke Lazarus to speak to God?

Jn. 11:41 So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me.

Jesus Christ is God the Son, still God.

Lazarus dies before the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

 

[Christ's_Warrior]

Philo, I do not pray to saints in heaven. I pray directly to the Father in heaven. He says in His word we can come boldly to His throne for grace in time of need. Saints here on earth may pray directly to the Father for me or our whole congregation. Not yours and mine. You belong to your local church and I belong to a non-denominational church called God's Grace Church, "The church of fire." I study the bible like some study doctrines and history of their church. Not studying all this extra stuff gives me time to study the word and occasionally learn about other churches. I do not pray for protection from angels, but I have prayed to send angels to protect others, such as when I see an ambulance go by, as well as pray in tongues, because I do not always know what to pray, so the Holy Spirit prays usually in Spanish or Italian, and sometimes Chinese. I am sorry if I got a little heated. It is hard when people assume you mean something and you did not even mean it, or you cannot find the words to explain, or people are not ready to receive it. The one line of reasoning that I see is that people think that if they pray to a saint, that saint is close to God and can relay the prayer to God. My point is that I can go directly to the Father, because He makes His residents within me. My body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. The kingdom is within us.

So when you pray in tongues, you are actually praying in different nationalities and not jibber jabber?

 

[Standing Up]

Actually, the questions are central to the issue.

When the early church decided heresy, they asked for apostolic lineage, scripture, and first practices.

Lazarus dies. But no invocations to him.

Stephen dies. But no invocations to him.

James the Greater dies. But no invocations to him.

The behaviour, therefore, is not apostolic or scriptural or practiced in The Church.

But, some reply, folks very early on invoked the Virgin Mary. Some still do. To which the reply comes, that would be a contradiction to apostles, scripture, and Christian practice. So, it needs explanation. From where did the practice arise because we know it was not from apostles or scripture?

We know of a concurrent practice of some to invoking the Queen of Heaven (see Jer. 44). That'd be from Egypt (the world). It went on then and it goes on now. But we left Egypt by the blood of the Lamb.

Since Luke and the other eyewitnesses (Paul, Peter, John, etc) had two or three perfect chances to instruct the Church to pray to the deceased, but didn't, we conclude that neither did the Church instruct the Church to invoke Mary. People are invoking the Queen of Heaven instead, while thinking it is the Theotokos. This means it is time for the Body to repent and desist and return to the apostolic and scriptural practices.

2 Tim. 2:2 And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.

 

[Thekla]

Ok, StandingUp ...

whatever you say of us, you're welcome to it ...

 

[Standing Up]

Ok, StandingUp ...

whatever you say of us, you're welcome to it ...

The Body of Christ is us.

Please provide the ECFs who speak to invoking Stephen or Lazarus or James the Greater.

Please provide the scripture that does so.

Folks are only able to do so about the old practice from "Egypt" towards the Queen of Heaven. Jer. 44.

Now if folks want to argue that, to paraphrase Ignatius, the bishop is above all, and hence can make up whatever practices and rules he wants, in order to explain this singular practice, then a different thread.

 

[Thekla]

I am not interested in being told what I believe, where there is not an understanding nor interest in understanding (which is not the same as agreeing)

that misses the fundamental issue of the victory of the Resurrection and the action of the Holy Spirit. These are central to our belief, and what we believe we do. Belief is not intellectual assent; if it were that, Christianity would be an ideology. It is not an ideology.

Christ is Risen !

glory be to Jesus Christ +

 

[Standing Up]

The first instance of the formal invocation of Mary occurs in the prayers of Ephraim Syrus († 379), addressed to Mary and the saints, and attributed by the tradition of the Syrian church, though perhaps in part incorrectly, to that author. The first more certain example appears in Gregory Nazianzen († 389), who, in his eulogy on Cyprian, ... But, on the other hand, the numerous writings of Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, and Augustine, furnish no example of an invocation of Mary. Epiphanius even condemned the adoration of Mary, and calls the practice of making offerings to her by the Collyridian women, blasphemous and dangerous to the soul.795795 Adv. Haer. Collyrid.: Ἐν τιμῇ ἔστω Μαρία, ὁ δὲ Πατὴρ ... προσκύνείσθω, τὴν Μαρίαν μηδεὶς προσκυνείτω. The entire silence of history respecting the worship of the Virgin down to the end of the fourth century, proves clearly that it was foreign to the original spirit of Christianity, and belongs among the many innovations of the post-Nicene age.
History of the Christian Church, Volume III: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity. A.D. 311-600. | Christian Classics Ethereal Library

Here's Polycarp's belief/practice c150ad-

or (as it is in the old Latin translation) “nor offer up the supplication of prayer to any other person; for as for Jesus Christ, we adore him, as being the Son of God, but as for the martyrs, we love them, as the disciples and imitators of the Lord.” So that they plainly exclude the saints from any sort of religious worship, of which prayer or invocation was always esteemed a very considerable part.
Works of Dr. John Tillotson, Late Archbishop of Canterbury. Vol. 04. | Christian Classics Ethereal Library

 

[PilgrimToChrist]

Epiphanius even condemned the adoration of Mary, and calls the practice of making offerings to her by the Collyridian women, blasphemous and dangerous to the soul.

Collyridianism was an obscure early Christian heretical movement whose adherents apparently worshipped Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a goddess. The main source of information about them comes from their strongest opponent, Epiphanius of Salamis, who wrote about them in his Panarion of about AD 375. According to Epiphanius, certain women in then-largely-pagan Arabia syncretized indigenous beliefs with the worship of Mary, and offered little cakes or bread-rolls (Greek κολλυρις – a word occurring in the Septuagint) to her.

All of us could agree that adoration of Mary is blasphemous and dangerous to the soul, as it is according to a creature the status of God.

But many of us would argue that veneration and contemplation of Mary is pious and beneficial to the soul, as it is according to the status of a creature exalted by God.

Epiphanius also considered the "Antidicomarianites" (opponents of Mary), who said that Mary and Joseph had other children after Jesus. Thus we can see two heresies which bookend orthodoxy -- that of ascribing a status to Mary which she does not possess -- that of divinity -- and that of denying a status to Mary which she does possess -- that of chastity (Perpetual Virginity), though we could also include sinlessness and Queenship.

The purpose of the antidicomarianites' opposition to the doctrine of Perpetual Virginity is in order to "humanize" Mary more, to sully her by saying that she was not inviolate. Even more for those who claim that she sinned! They tarnish the image of the Virgin supposedly to exalt Christ but it never works, you don't praise a Man by insulting His Mother, you don't exalt a King by slandering the Queen.

In the same way, you do not exalt the Lord of Heaven by slanding its inhabitants. The saints and the angels work tirelessly, ceaselessly, for our savlation. They are not dead, our god is not the god of the dead, but of the liiving!

 

[Standing Up]

I had to look it up too.

Its source apparently was Arabia. But we already know that by Jer. 44. Now its simply confirmed as such.

Acorn-to-oak thinking is an argument against itself.

We simply don't see the practice in scripture or apostles or bishops. We see a verified by two sources (Tertullian and Irenaeus) bishop prohibiting it.

But, we see it coming up later. We see its source as the bible already told us, which is apart from scripture and apostles.

So, a call to the Body of Christ to 'change the mind' and direct 100% to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ the only begotten.

 

[Christ's_Warrior]

The first instance of the formal invocation of Mary occurs in the prayers of Ephraim Syrus († 379), addressed to Mary and the saints, and attributed by the tradition of the Syrian church, though perhaps in part incorrectly, to that author. The first more certain example appears in Gregory Nazianzen († 389), who, in his eulogy on Cyprian, ... But, on the other hand, the numerous writings of Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, and Augustine, furnish no example of an invocation of Mary. Epiphanius even condemned the adoration of Mary, and calls the practice of making offerings to her by the Collyridian women, blasphemous and dangerous to the soul.795795 Adv. Haer. Collyrid.: Ἐν τιμῇ ἔστω Μαρία, ὁ δὲ Πατὴρ ... προσκύνείσθω, τὴν Μαρίαν μηδεὶς προσκυνείτω. The entire silence of history respecting the worship of the Virgin down to the end of the fourth century, proves clearly that it was foreign to the original spirit of Christianity, and belongs among the many innovations of the post-Nicene age.
History of the Christian Church, Volume III: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity. A.D. 311-600. | Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Here's Polycarp's belief/practice c150ad-

or (as it is in the old Latin translation) “nor offer up the supplication of prayer to any other person; for as for Jesus Christ, we adore him, as being the Son of God, but as for the martyrs, we love them, as the disciples and imitators of the Lord.” So that they plainly exclude the saints from any sort of religious worship, of which prayer or invocation was always esteemed a very considerable part.
Works of Dr. John Tillotson, Late Archbishop of Canterbury. Vol. 04. | Christian Classics Ethereal Library

An important early source on the veneration of martyrs is the Martyrdom of Polycarp (c. 135 AD), which explains:

...it is neither possible for us ever to forsake Christ...nor to worship any other. For we worship him indeed, as being the Son of God. However, as for the martyrs, as disciples and followers of the Lord, we worthily love them on account of their extraordinary affections towards their own King.
​

The Martyrdom of Polycarp also mentions that the relics of the martyrs were treated "as precious stones" and that the church celebrated the martyr's day of death as their "birthday into heaven." Similarly, around 250 AD St. Cyprian wrote:

Take note of their days on which they depart, so that we may celebrate their commemoration among the memorials of the martyrs... There are celebrated here by us oblations and sacrifices for their commemorations.


The problem we have with each other is understanding that we do not worship Saints, we honour them as they provide an example to us of how we should live in Christ. I myself being from the Assyrian Church of the East do not pray to saints but i would hope that they pray for me.

​

 

[Christ's_Warrior]

Psalm 103 we pray, "Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers that do his will!" (Ps. 103:20–21). And in the opening verses of Psalms 148 we pray, "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host!"


Looks like praying to Angels was an ancient practise.

 

[Christ's_Warrior]

Hermas


"[The Shepherd said:] ‘But those who are weak and slothful in prayer, hesitate to ask anything from the Lord; but the Lord is full of compassion, and gives without fail to all who ask him. But you, [Hermas,] having been strengthened by the holy angel [you saw], and having obtained from him such intercession, and not being slothful, why do not you ask of the Lord understanding, and receive it from him?’" (The Shepherd 3:5:4 [A.D. 80]).

Clement of Alexandria


"In this way is he [the true Christian] always pure for prayer. He also prays in the society of angels, as being already of angelic rank, and he is never out of their holy keeping; and though he pray alone, he has the choir of the saints standing with him [in prayer]" (Miscellanies 7:12 [A.D. 208]).


Origen


"But not the high priest [Christ] alone prays for those who pray sincerely, but also the angels . . . as also the souls of the saints who have already fallen asleep" (Prayer 11 [A.D. 233]).

Cyprian of Carthage


"Let us remember one another in concord and unanimity. Let us on both sides [of death] always pray for one another. Let us relieve burdens and afflictions by mutual love, that if one of us, by the swiftness of divine condescension, shall go hence first, our love may continue in the presence of the Lord, and our prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the presence of the Father’s mercy" (Letters 56[60]:5 [A.D. 253]).

Cyril of Jerusalem


"Then [during the Eucharistic prayer] we make mention also of those who have already fallen asleep: first, the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, that through their prayers and supplications God would receive our petition . . . " (Catechetical Lectures 23:9 [A.D. 350]).


Ephraim the Syrian


"You victorious martyrs who endured torments gladly for the sake of the God and Savior, you who have boldness of speech toward the Lord himself, you saints, intercede for us who are timid and sinful men, full of sloth, that the grace of Christ may come upon us, and enlighten the hearts of all of us so that we may love him" (Commentary on Mark [A.D. 370]).

"Remember me, you heirs of God, you brethren of Christ; supplicate the Savior earnestly for me, that I may be freed through Christ from him that fights against me day by day" (The Fear at the End of Life [A.D. 370]).

These people worked miracles in Christ, they achieved a spiritual level most of us can only dream of in this westernized secular world.

 

[Christ's_Warrior]

If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.


We follow in the footsteps of the sheep and they lead us to the LORD JESUS CHRIST, who alone is worshipped. As for the fallen sheep, honour and respect is due, we hold a belief that the Kingdom of Christ is not divided and death is not victorious.

If Saints and those who have fallen in Christ's name are rotted corpses, what were Elijah and Moses doing with Christ at the Transfiguration? Seems as though they are alive in Christ and serving him until the new heaven and earth come to pass.

 

[Standing Up]

An important early source on the veneration of martyrs is the Martyrdom of Polycarp (c. 135 AD), which explains:

...it is neither possible for us ever to forsake Christ...nor to worship any other. For we worship him indeed, as being the Son of God. However, as for the martyrs, as disciples and followers of the Lord, we worthily love them on account of their extraordinary affections towards their own King.
​

The Martyrdom of Polycarp also mentions that the relics of the martyrs were treated "as precious stones" and that the church celebrated the martyr's day of death as their "birthday into heaven." Similarly, around 250 AD St. Cyprian wrote:

Take note of their days on which they depart, so that we may celebrate their commemoration among the memorials of the martyrs... There are celebrated here by us oblations and sacrifices for their commemorations.


The problem we have with each other is understanding that we do not worship Saints, we honour them as they provide an example to us of how we should live in Christ. I myself being from the Assyrian Church of the East do not pray to saints but i would hope that they pray for me.

​

Glad you bring up Polycarp.

or (as it is in the old Latin translation) “nor offer up the supplication of prayer to any other person; for as for Jesus Christ, we adore him, as being the Son of God, but as for the martyrs, we love them, as the disciples and imitators of the Lord.” So that they plainly exclude the saints from any sort of religious worship, of which prayer or invocation was always esteemed a very considerable part.
Works of Dr. John Tillotson, Late Archbishop of Canterbury. Vol. 04. | Christian Classics Ethereal Library

So great. We're in agreement. No invoking the deceased. What those asleep in Christ may or may not do, we may leave as a mystery because we do not know.

I'd like the rest of the Body of Christ to agree as well.

 

[Standing Up]

-snip-I myself being from the Assyrian Church of the East do not pray to saints but i would hope that they pray for me.

Your group was one of the first of the Body to 'distinguish' itself, splitting off, as did OO and EO and RC and P.

When was that?

 

[Christ's_Warrior]

Your group was one of the first of the Body to 'distinguish' itself, splitting off, as did OO and EO and RC and P.

When was that?

I don't think we split off, we were labelled heretics and persecuted for our Christology (whole different topic), if you know anything about our Church, our people have been persecuted for our beliefs in Christ for the past 2000 years (it continues today in Iraq). No other Church has as many martyrs for our belief in Christ, I wish i was worthy enough to receive the same honour.

Yes I agree with you that we do not need to invoke the prayers of the saints, but as I have demonstrated with many quotes and Bible verses, it was a common practise and as long as the fine line of honour to worship is not crossed then I believe it is fine to do so.

Another thing, we are disrespectful towards one another and we do not show love towards one another and this is from Satan himself.

I would like to rebuke you all with love and ask you all in Jesus' name to love one another, respect one another and edify one another. Some people here have been boasting about their gifts, but if you have not love you are dead.

I love you all, God bless you all and may our Lord and Saviour be with you always.

 

[PilgrimToChrist]

Your group was one of the first of the Body to 'distinguish' itself, splitting off, as did OO and EO and RC and P.

When was that?

Because "Christ's_Warrior" wasn't clear about the separation of the Assyrian Church of the East from the rest of Christendom, I shall explain a little. They have been often called "The Nestorian Church", they rejected the Council of Ephesus (431) and thus the title "Theotokos". Though they say they are not Nestorian, and there have been more recent Christological agreements between their Church, the Catholics and the Orthodox, they still venerate Nestorius as a saint.