Is John Mcarthur guilty of heresy?

[Servus]

Okay. Thank you for letting me know about this. I'm sorry that my posting style is difficult to process given the disabilities you are dealing with. I don't want to add to your difficulties. I had no idea of this before, but now that I do, I am happy to modify my posting to make it easier to digest. I hope you will consider the quoted portions from St. Gregory and the others to see what a few of the saints have said about the Theotokos, since that's what really matters.

I'm not sure of which quote you're referring to.

 

[Mark Quayle]

I have to confess I am with @dzheremi on this one, because as a fellow Orthodox Christian, as I grew in the faith, I reached a point where I found the Christology of Nestorius and certain other Nestorians to be literally nauseating, for example, a particular hymn of Mar Narsai that attributes different deeds of Christ to His divinity and humanity respectively that I find absolutely sickening. I would argue that Nestorianism is extremely theologically and Christologically dissonant, indeed, its beyond dissonant, almost like someone scratching a chalkboard with a rusty nail. It breaks communicatio idiomatum, Theopaschitism, and all of the five soteriological models simultaneously embraced by the Orthodox, leaving only a form of penal substitutionary atonement which looks particularly cruel since God isn’t the one who suffers, but rather a human being who happens to be in a union of will or a union of personal identity with the Logos. And in so doing it clashes with the Scriptural model of Christ our God, who entered the furnace with the three youths condemned by Nebuchadnezzar, keeping them alive, and who calms us by His mere presence, because He is God and Man, the greatest Man and the only begotten Son and Word of God, born of a woman in 1 AD yet begotten of the Father before all ages, who puts on our mortal human nature in order to restore it to immortality thorugh His own death and resurrection, who sacrifices Himself voluntarily to free us from the ultimate self-inflicted penalty of our sins, and who then descends into Hell to save those who had died before His incarnation who were willing to hear Him; a God-man of ultimate humility by whom the universe was both created countless ages ago, and recreated in His passion and resurrection, the uncontainable logos contained in the womb of the Theotokos and in the Holy Sepulchre, before rising again in glory and ascending to Heaven, trailblazing the path that we will follow.

Nestorianism is incompatible with what the most ardent defender of the Incarnation against Arius taught, that God became man so that man could become god, or as Fr. John Behr expresses it, that God died in order to show us what it means to be human.

This is why I find the Christology of Nestorius, especially as expressed by some Nestorian poets such as Mar Narsai, to literally upset my stomach. It makes me queasy and I suspect I would throw up if I dwelled on it for too long.

That said, I love the Assyrian Church of the East, but I pray that eventually they will stop venerating Nestorius just as they long ago discarded his fundamentally broken Christology.

BUT, once again, Brother, John MacArthur is not Nestorian.

God knows how often things any of us say, can come across to detractors, as heresy!

I think MacArthur is due a little grace on our part. And I will try to be more gracious to the more liturgical denominations and the RCC in particular.

 

[dzheremi]

I'm not sure of which quote you're referring to.

Here are the three quotes from that post:

"But we, O my friends, resorting to the garden of the Saviour, let us praise the Holy Virgin; saying along with the angels in the language of Divine grace, 'Rejoice thou and be glad.' For from her first shone forth the eternally radiant light, that lighteth us with its goodness. The Holy Virgin is herself both an honourable temple of God and a shrine made pure, and a golden altar of whole burnt offerings. By reason of her surpassing purity [she is] the Divine incense of oblation, and oil of the holy grace, and a precious vase bearing in itself the true nard; [yea and] the priestly diadem revealing the good pleasure of God, whom she alone approacheth holy in body and soul. [She is] the door which looks eastward, and by the comings in and goings forth the whole earth is illuminated. The fertile olive from which the Holy Spirit took the fleshly slip (or twig) of the Lord, and saved the suffering race of men. She is the boast of virgins, and the joy of mothers; the declaration of archangels, even as it was spoken: 'Be thou glad and rejoice, the Lord with thee'; and again, 'from thee'; in order that He may make new once more the dead through sin."

-- St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (c. 213 - c. 270)

“It is essential for us to confess that the holy Ever-Virgin Mary is actually Theotokos, so as not to fall into blasphemy. For those who deny that the Holy Virgin is actually Theotokos are no longer believers, but disciples of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

-- St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306 - 373)


"The prophets, the apostles, the martyrs & the priests who were gathered together, also the teachers & the patriarchs & the righteous ones of old!

In heaven, the watchers; & [in] the depths, man; in the air, glory: when the Virgin Mary was buried as one deceased.

A light shone on that company of disciples, also on her neighbors & her relations & her kindred.

The heavenly company performed their “Holy, Holy, Holy,” unto the glorious soul of this Mother of the Son of God.

Fiery seraphim surrounded the soul of the departed & raised the loud sound of their joyful shouts.

They shouted & said: 'Lift up, O gates, all your heads, because the Mother of the King seeks to enter the bridal chamber of light.'"

-- St. Jacob of Serugh (c. 451-521)

 

[Servus]

Here are the three quotes from that post:

"But we, O my friends, resorting to the garden of the Saviour, let us praise the Holy Virgin; saying along with the angels in the language of Divine grace, 'Rejoice thou and be glad.' For from her first shone forth the eternally radiant light, that lighteth us with its goodness. The Holy Virgin is herself both an honourable temple of God and a shrine made pure, and a golden altar of whole burnt offerings. By reason of her surpassing purity [she is] the Divine incense of oblation, and oil of the holy grace, and a precious vase bearing in itself the true nard; [yea and] the priestly diadem revealing the good pleasure of God, whom she alone approacheth holy in body and soul. [She is] the door which looks eastward, and by the comings in and goings forth the whole earth is illuminated. The fertile olive from which the Holy Spirit took the fleshly slip (or twig) of the Lord, and saved the suffering race of men. She is the boast of virgins, and the joy of mothers; the declaration of archangels, even as it was spoken: 'Be thou glad and rejoice, the Lord with thee'; and again, 'from thee'; in order that He may make new once more the dead through sin."

-- St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (c. 213 - c. 270)

“It is essential for us to confess that the holy Ever-Virgin Mary is actually Theotokos, so as not to fall into blasphemy. For those who deny that the Holy Virgin is actually Theotokos are no longer believers, but disciples of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

-- St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306 - 373)


"The prophets, the apostles, the martyrs & the priests who were gathered together, also the teachers & the patriarchs & the righteous ones of old!

In heaven, the watchers; & [in] the depths, man; in the air, glory: when the Virgin Mary was buried as one deceased.

A light shone on that company of disciples, also on her neighbors & her relations & her kindred.

The heavenly company performed their “Holy, Holy, Holy,” unto the glorious soul of this Mother of the Son of God.

Fiery seraphim surrounded the soul of the departed & raised the loud sound of their joyful shouts.

They shouted & said: 'Lift up, O gates, all your heads, because the Mother of the King seeks to enter the bridal chamber of light.'"

-- St. Jacob of Serugh (c. 451-521)

What I was asking / looking for was anything from the apostolic and early church fathers, specifically talking about praying to Mary and the saints in the afterlife. If there isn't any, that's fine. It just means the practice started happening later on. I'm not anti-Catholic or anti-Orthodox.

 

[The Liturgist]

How about "the mother of God Incarnate"? Does that work out alright?

While one could say that, it would be redundant, because it is clearly taught in the liturgy of the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglo Catholic Church that God the Father is unoriginate and God the Son and God the Holy Ghost are uncreated, all three persons existing eternally in an indivisible union of absolute love, so there is no risk of someone who has been raised in the Orthodox church and attends and understands the services, and who is mentally competent, coming to the conclusion that the Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to the Holy Trinity or to God the Father. And as for those who are mentally incompetent to the point where they could become confused about this, we believe they are saved anyway, since they are not accountable for their actions, much like infants.

Also on that point the Eastern Orthodox generally believe that demon-possessed individuals are innocent of behaviors that would ordinarily be sinful, that are caused by the demon. However, there are some sins that do have the effect of substantially increasing the risk of demonic posession, such as dabbling in the occult or otherwise engaging in conduct that alienates one from the Christian faith. Thus apostates who return to the Orthodox Church are, as far as I am aware, usually re-Chrismated. Chrismation is the sacrament performed in the Eastern churches analogous to Confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church, however, it is performed on infants as it is immediately beneficial on a noetic level, as the seal of the Holy Spirit. All traditional churches including some traditional Protestant churches also perform what the Roman Catholic Church calls a minor exorcism, which is not the lengthy exorcism prayers written by St. John Chrysostom, but rather is a simple prayer included in the baptismal liturgy. And the same also occurs in Chrismation.

 

[The Liturgist]

What I was asking / looking for was anything from the apostolic and early church fathers, specifically talking about praying to Mary and the saints in the afterlife. If there isn't any, that's fine. It just means the practice started happening later on. I'm not anti-Catholic or anti-Orthodox.

Well we definitely have material from both the Apostolic and Early Church Fathers. The earliest reference is in the Shepherd of Hermas, which is dated to the late first century., and which is by no means heretical - St. Athanasius of Alexandria officially approved of the use of this book for edification and moral instruction of catechumens (converts awaiting Baptism), alongside the 27 book New Testament canon that he introduced in his 39th Paschal Encyclical in the mid 4th century, which we still use today. Indeed the 27 book New Testament canon and the Nicene Creed are both largely attributable to St. Athanasius, whose importance to the preservation of the Apostolic faith cannot be overstated. He also wrote two very important books, On The Incarnation, which defends the doctrine of the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ against Arianism, and which is spectacularly well written and brilliant (for instance, it anticipated a limitation of the Big Bang theory that physicists still have not conclusively solved, that being the non-uniform distribution of matter and energy in the universe), and The Life of Anthony, which is a biography of the Coptic (Egyptian) Christian hermit St. Anthony the Great.

Most of the Patristic references however start in the 3rd century, presumably because of the tremendous expansion of the Church in the third century and the dramatic increase in the number of martyrs and confessors, but there are some references in various works from the second century, for example, the apocryphal Acts of John, which falls into a category of early church literature that is somewhere in between the heretical Gnostic gospels and pious fan-fiction, and in church inscriptions, and other sources, and also very significantly we do not see the intercession of the saints mentioned as a heretical practice in the exhaustive second century catalogue of heresies, Against Heresies, by St. Irenaeus of Lyons. We also see the non-veneration of the Theotokos by a sect called the Antidicomarians, and the inappropriate worship of the Theotokos by a sect called the Collyridians, condemned as heresies in the even more exhaustive fourth century encyclopedia of heresies, the Panarion (a Greek word that literally translates as “medicine chest”, but which for practical purposes means “First Aid Kit”), by St. Epiphanius the bishop of Salamis, and we see this reiterated in the cataolog of heresies in the Fount of Knowledge of St. John of Damascus, written in the eighth century AD.

Most importantly, however, we have the earliest surviving manuscripts of the oldest Eucharistic liturgies that have survived in continuous use, the traditional Holy Communion service used in Alexandria and the Egyptian church, known to the Greek Orthodox as the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark and to the Coptic Orthodox as the Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril (because in the fifth century, St. Cyril the Great translated the liturgy into the Coptic language in order to evangelize the remaining adherents of Egyptian paganism, who for the most part, with the exception of a few wealthy neo-Platonists such as Hypatia, were rural peasants further up the Nile from Alexandria, or in the desert, who did not speak Greek or benefit from much in terms of education). We have an actual second century fragment of the Greek version of this liturgy, the Strasbourg Papyrus. And this liturgy does feature the customary intercessory petitions to the saints one finds in Orthodox liturgies. The same is also true of the Divine Liturgy of Addai and Mari, which has been authoritatively dated by scholars of the liturgy to no later than the second century, with some arguing for a first century dating, based on the manner in which the liturgy is structured after a Jewish table blessing. This liturgy is the traditional liturgy of the Church of the East, and is the most widely used of the four extant liturgies of the East Syriac form.

Additionally intercessions of the saints are included in the ancient Divine Liturgies of St. Basil and St. James, and the sample liturgy in the Apostolic Constitutions, not to be confused with the oft-misunderstood liturgy in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, which appears to be extremely minimalistic, until one realizes that it contains only the parts of the liturgy said by the bishop, and is the main liturgy used by the Ethiopian Orthodox, but in a more complete form, where it is known as the Liturgy of the Apostles. It is related to the traditional liturgy of Antioch, because a group of seven priests from the region of Antioch travelled to Ethiopia after that country converted to Christianity shortly after the conversion of the Kingdom of Armenia and the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire under St. Constantine (who had a Christian mother, St. Helen). This liturgy, as well as its Antiochene relative, also feature intercessions of the saints, and we also see this in the fourth century derivative of this liturgy, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which is now the main liturgy in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Divine Liturgy of St. Basil was probably adapted by the great fourth century theologian for use in Constantinople and in Egypt (for there are two separate versions of it, a Byzantine version and an Egyptian version, the latter now being the main liturgy in the Coptic Orthodox Church), and the source for it is most likely the Divine Liturgy of St. James, which is the traditional liturgy associated with the Holy Land, which is also given a very early dating, however, unlike the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, we do not have any second century papyri to confirm the date, and it is also now considered possible the Divine Liturgy of St. James was actually derived from the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil. Either way, these are very early liturgies.

We also have enough evidence to date the traditional Roman Mass, which probably has more intercessory petitions to the saints than any other ancient liturgy, to at least the fourth century, with some indications it was used at least since the translation of the liturgy and the Bible from Greek to Latin under Pope Victor in the second century. And given the large amount of Greek phraseology in the Roman Mass that was not translated, it seems quite possible that the Roman Mass was directly based on an earlier Greek liturgy that was slowly phased out. However, the most common liturgical form in antiquity was that used in Antioch, for this was the form used in Byzantium, and as far as we know, most of Greece, and this was also the form exported to Armenia, Georgia and Ethiopia, and also the Divine Liturgy of St. James follows the Antiochene pattern, so it makes sense that St. Hippolytus, in his work The Apostolic Tradition, would include an Antiochene liturgy as the exmplary form. The Roman church however was historically regarded as the most conservative of the ancient churches, with the only major change from the time of St. Clement of Rome in the first century until the controversial Pope Leo in the Fifth Century being the translation of the Bible and the Liturgy into Latin by Pope Victor, since only the upper class spoke Greek.


Now, it is in the third century where we really start to see a lot of references to the practice of intercessory prayer; indeed it would not be an overstatement to say that every major third century theologian endorsed the practice.

I myself also count as Early Church Fathers the fourth century Fathers, both Ante-Nicene and post-Nicene, and also the Fifth Century Fathers, indeed, I personally regard the period up to the Council of Chalcedon and the persecution of the Oriental Orthodox by Justinian as representing the Early Church, basically, the first 500 years, and then the next 500 years I regard as the adolescent blossoming of the Church, still in the Patristic era, to be sure, indeed, the Orthodox do not regard the Patristic era as having ended and still conduct theology in the Patristic manner, in contrast to the Roman Catholics, who regard St. John of Damascus as the last Patristic theologian, since after that point Roman Catholic theology changed course dramatically and entered into what is now called Scholastic theology, which is epitomized by the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, which is an interesting work, but in my opinion it was not really needed, since everything it covered had been previously addressed in a more succinct form by St. John of Damascus and in earlier works of dogmatic theology, including works by the aforementioned heresiologists (theologians specializing in the study of heresy) St. Irenaeus of Lyons and St. Epiphanius of Salamis. I am of the opinion that all great works of dogmatic or systemic theology start with the study of heresy, and include material refuting heresy; this is even true of works that I disagree with, such as Calvin’s Institutes.

That said, I gather you are more interested in Ante-Nicene material, and a substantial amount has been curated on this Eastern Orthodox article, which is academically rigorous.

Prayers to Saints in the Pre-Nicene Era

It is commonly claimed that the practice of praying to departed saints and to angels is a late development in Christianity, probably post-dating the Council of Nicea. In this post, I will try to ar…

energeticprocession.wordpress.com

If you want more quotes, there is a Catholic.com article I can link you to, but I am searching for a better supplemental article as frankly the academic quality of the catholic.com article is not what it should be, to the point where I am surprised it managed to get an imprimatur. Additionally there are several quotes I recall which are missing from that article, and I want to find an article that includes more of the remarks on this subject which I studied at length in seminary as I became progressively more fascinated with Patristics.

 

[The Liturgist]

By the way @Ordinary Christian I do apologize for the length of the post I just wrote; it is the best I can do, as that is my writing style, but if you have difficulty reading through it I would be willing to go over it with you via private message in a conversational and interactive manner.

God bless you, and thank you for your prayers.

 

[Servus]

Well we definitely have material from both the Apostolic and Early Church Fathers. The earliest reference is in the Shepherd of Hermas, which is dated to the late first century., and which is by no means heretical - St. Athanasius of Alexandria officially approved of the use of this book for edification and moral instruction of catechumens (converts awaiting Baptism), alongside the 27 book New Testament canon that he introduced in his 39th Paschal Encyclical in the mid 4th century, which we still use today. Indeed the 27 book New Testament canon and the Nicene Creed are both largely attributable to St. Athanasius, whose importance to the preservation of the Apostolic faith cannot be overstated. He also wrote two very important books, On The Incarnation, which defends the doctrine of the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ against Arianism, and which is spectacularly well written and brilliant (for instance, it anticipated a limitation of the Big Bang theory that physicists still have not conclusively solved, that being the non-uniform distribution of matter and energy in the universe), and The Life of Anthony, which is a biography of the Coptic (Egyptian) Christian hermit St. Anthony the Great.

Most of the Patristic references however start in the 3rd century, presumably because of the tremendous expansion of the Church in the third century and the dramatic increase in the number of martyrs and confessors, but there are some references in various works from the second century, for example, the apocryphal Acts of John, which falls into a category of early church literature that is somewhere in between the heretical Gnostic gospels and pious fan-fiction, and in church inscriptions, and other sources, and also very significantly we do not see the intercession of the saints mentioned as a heretical practice in the exhaustive second century catalogue of heresies, Against Heresies, by St. Irenaeus of Lyons. We also see the non-veneration of the Theotokos by a sect called the Antidicomarians, and the inappropriate worship of the Theotokos by a sect called the Collyridians, condemned as heresies in the even more exhaustive fourth century encyclopedia of heresies, the Panarion (a Greek word that literally translates as “medicine chest”, but which for practical purposes means “First Aid Kit”), by St. Epiphanius the bishop of Salamis, and we see this reiterated in the cataolog of heresies in the Fount of Knowledge of St. John of Damascus, written in the eighth century AD.

Most importantly, however, we have the earliest surviving manuscripts of the oldest Eucharistic liturgies that have survived in continuous use, the traditional Holy Communion service used in Alexandria and the Egyptian church, known to the Greek Orthodox as the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark and to the Coptic Orthodox as the Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril (because in the fifth century, St. Cyril the Great translated the liturgy into the Coptic language in order to evangelize the remaining adherents of Egyptian paganism, who for the most part, with the exception of a few wealthy neo-Platonists such as Hypatia, were rural peasants further up the Nile from Alexandria, or in the desert, who did not speak Greek or benefit from much in terms of education). We have an actual second century fragment of the Greek version of this liturgy, the Strasbourg Papyrus. And this liturgy does feature the customary intercessory petitions to the saints one finds in Orthodox liturgies. The same is also true of the Divine Liturgy of Addai and Mari, which has been authoritatively dated by scholars of the liturgy to no later than the second century, with some arguing for a first century dating, based on the manner in which the liturgy is structured after a Jewish table blessing. This liturgy is the traditional liturgy of the Church of the East, and is the most widely used of the four extant liturgies of the East Syriac form.

Additionally intercessions of the saints are included in the ancient Divine Liturgies of St. Basil and St. James, and the sample liturgy in the Apostolic Constitutions, not to be confused with the oft-misunderstood liturgy in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, which appears to be extremely minimalistic, until one realizes that it contains only the parts of the liturgy said by the bishop, and is the main liturgy used by the Ethiopian Orthodox, but in a more complete form, where it is known as the Liturgy of the Apostles. It is related to the traditional liturgy of Antioch, because a group of seven priests from the region of Antioch travelled to Ethiopia after that country converted to Christianity shortly after the conversion of the Kingdom of Armenia and the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire under St. Constantine (who had a Christian mother, St. Helen). This liturgy, as well as its Antiochene relative, also feature intercessions of the saints, and we also see this in the fourth century derivative of this liturgy, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which is now the main liturgy in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Divine Liturgy of St. Basil was probably adapted by the great fourth century theologian for use in Constantinople and in Egypt (for there are two separate versions of it, a Byzantine version and an Egyptian version, the latter now being the main liturgy in the Coptic Orthodox Church), and the source for it is most likely the Divine Liturgy of St. James, which is the traditional liturgy associated with the Holy Land, which is also given a very early dating, however, unlike the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, we do not have any second century papyri to confirm the date, and it is also now considered possible the Divine Liturgy of St. James was actually derived from the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil. Either way, these are very early liturgies.

We also have enough evidence to date the traditional Roman Mass, which probably has more intercessory petitions to the saints than any other ancient liturgy, to at least the fourth century, with some indications it was used at least since the translation of the liturgy and the Bible from Greek to Latin under Pope Victor in the second century. And given the large amount of Greek phraseology in the Roman Mass that was not translated, it seems quite possible that the Roman Mass was directly based on an earlier Greek liturgy that was slowly phased out. However, the most common liturgical form in antiquity was that used in Antioch, for this was the form used in Byzantium, and as far as we know, most of Greece, and this was also the form exported to Armenia, Georgia and Ethiopia, and also the Divine Liturgy of St. James follows the Antiochene pattern, so it makes sense that St. Hippolytus, in his work The Apostolic Tradition, would include an Antiochene liturgy as the exmplary form. The Roman church however was historically regarded as the most conservative of the ancient churches, with the only major change from the time of St. Clement of Rome in the first century until the controversial Pope Leo in the Fifth Century being the translation of the Bible and the Liturgy into Latin by Pope Victor, since only the upper class spoke Greek.


Now, it is in the third century where we really start to see a lot of references to the practice of intercessory prayer; indeed it would not be an overstatement to say that every major third century theologian endorsed the practice.

I myself also count as Early Church Fathers the fourth century Fathers, both Ante-Nicene and post-Nicene, and also the Fifth Century Fathers, indeed, I personally regard the period up to the Council of Chalcedon and the persecution of the Oriental Orthodox by Justinian as representing the Early Church, basically, the first 500 years, and then the next 500 years I regard as the adolescent blossoming of the Church, still in the Patristic era, to be sure, indeed, the Orthodox do not regard the Patristic era as having ended and still conduct theology in the Patristic manner, in contrast to the Roman Catholics, who regard St. John of Damascus as the last Patristic theologian, since after that point Roman Catholic theology changed course dramatically and entered into what is now called Scholastic theology, which is epitomized by the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, which is an interesting work, but in my opinion it was not really needed, since everything it covered had been previously addressed in a more succinct form by St. John of Damascus and in earlier works of dogmatic theology, including works by the aforementioned heresiologists (theologians specializing in the study of heresy) St. Irenaeus of Lyons and St. Epiphanius of Salamis. I am of the opinion that all great works of dogmatic or systemic theology start with the study of heresy, and include material refuting heresy; this is even true of works that I disagree with, such as Calvin’s Institutes.

That said, I gather you are more interested in Ante-Nicene material, and a substantial amount has been curated on this Eastern Orthodox article, which is academically rigorous.

Prayers to Saints in the Pre-Nicene Era

It is commonly claimed that the practice of praying to departed saints and to angels is a late development in Christianity, probably post-dating the Council of Nicea. In this post, I will try to ar…

energeticprocession.wordpress.com

If you want more quotes, there is a Catholic.com article I can link you to, but I am searching for a better supplemental article as frankly the academic quality of the catholic.com article is not what it should be, to the point where I am surprised it managed to get an imprimatur. Additionally there are several quotes I recall which are missing from that article, and I want to find an article that includes more of the remarks on this subject which I studied at length in seminary as I became progressively more fascinated with Patristics.

Between yours and dzheremi's posts I have about a week's worth of reading material . I downloaded a PDF of Shepherd of Hermas and using Ctrl+F I was able to locate where prayer is mentioned and saw at quick glance there's something about interactions with an old woman during prayer (I'll dig deeper whenever I have the time). Anyways based on the volume of text I've gotten, it's obvious the answer to what I considered a simple straightforward question, is that it's very very complicated. Complicated to the point of perhaps being a rabbit hole. Now not meaning to be ungrateful, I thank you all for the effort you all put into those gargantuan posts. I fear it may have been wasted on me, but hopefully someone else got something out of all it.

 

[Servus]

By the way @Ordinary Christian I do apologize for the length of the post I just wrote; it is the best I can do, as that is my writing style, but if you have difficulty reading through it I would be willing to go over it with you via private message in a conversational and interactive manner.

God bless you, and thank you for your prayers.

That's perfectly alright, I understand now that it's extremely complicated and that there's probably no short or for dummies version

 

[ViaCrucis]

How about "the mother of God Incarnate"? Does that work out alright?

Sure. But not instead of "mother of God". Otherwise we couldn't say that Jesus is God unless we add the qualifier "incarnate" all the time. Jesus is God (the Son) incarnate. But He has always been God (the Son).

Mary gave birth to He who has always been God. Which is what Theotokos and mother of God convey. That Mary's Child is the Eternal God.

As has been said, the "problem" some keep imagining arises from the term "mother of God" isn't something that's ever been a problem. It's an imaginary heresy. Nobody, as far as anyone is aware, has ever believed that Mary gave rise to the Divine Essence; she is mother because the Divine Essence, in the Person of the Son and Word, was united to humanity in her womb. Which is what it's always meant, and how it's always been understood. Hypothetical problems with that only exist in the imagination of those who create the problem in the first place.

Additionally, there are terms--good terms--we use that sometimes do get genuinely misunderstood by some, especially by those outside the Church. But we don't abandon those terms, instead we defend them and explain them. So, for example, when we speak of the Divine Persons of the Trinity, and someone misunderstands what Person means in this context we don't abandon the language, we explain and clarify it, defending it as appropriate. That's simply part of what we are told we should do in Scripture, to "give answer to the hope that is in [us]" and to "earnestly contend for the faith".

We explain, we clarify, we give answer.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[dzheremi]

What I was asking / looking for was anything from the apostolic and early church fathers, specifically talking about praying to Mary and the saints in the afterlife. If there isn't any, that's fine. It just means the practice started happening later on. I'm not anti-Catholic or anti-Orthodox.

I guess I'm not quite understanding what you mean here. It seems that you have a very specific idea in mind of what 'praying to Mary and the saints in the afterlife' entails, but I'm not sure what that is. I would think that for any traditionally-minded Christian from a church that embraces the invocation of saints in prayer, reading St. Gregory Thaumaturgus' exhortation that we praise St. Mary, or St. Jacob's description of the heavenly assembly singing "Holy Holy Holy" to the soul of St. Mary, is itself evidence that we are following their footsteps when we do the same.

Maybe it will help to point out that in the Orthodox conception of what we are doing in liturgy or really any kind of corporate prayer (so also in Matins and Vespers, Midnight Praises, or any other kind of prayer where we are gathered together in His name), it is a reflection of what the saints and angels themselves are doing with us. Thus there is a specific section in the Matins prayers during annual time in the Coptic Orthodox Church which is conveniently known as "The Prayer of the Angels" that begins explicitly: "Let us praise with the angels saying..."

Many other prayers are likewise written in such a way to keep in the forefront of our minds the united nature of our prayers (including those invoking the Theotokos), which is in keeping with the quotes already shared that show that the early church itself saw prayer to the saints as normative for everyone involved -- from the everyday worshiper on Earth to the highest of Heaven.

With this understanding in mind, perhaps you can see why we maintain that the saints are alive (in addition to the more obvious fact that it literally says so in the scriptures, as has been pointed out earlier). They are active participants in our lives and prayers as a Church and as individuals. They are not dead. When the priest in Church commands us "Pray!", it is a command that we join in the the prayers of myriads and myriads gathered in heaven before the throne of the Most High in endless praise. And so we do. This often involves invoking their names and requesting their intercession, but even when it doesn't, it's still "praying to/with the saints" in the sense we believe as a fundamental principle that we join our prayers to theirs. There really no sense of prayer outside of this paradigm, as though we even can be off our own and yet still a part of the Body, the Israel of God.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Certainly not Anglo Catholics. I would be interested to know how @Via Crucis and @MarkRohfrietsch , our high church Evangelical Catholic Lutheran friends, feel about this. To my surprise I’ve discovered that the high church Lutherans agree with the Orthodox on most things.

Certainly not Anglo Catholics. I would be interested to know how @Via Crucis and @MarkRohfrietsch , our high church Evangelical Catholic Lutheran friends, feel about this. To my surprise I’ve discovered that the high church Lutherans agree with the Orthodox on most things.

I would agree with

@dzheremi, they are inseperable.​

 

[OldAbramBrown]

So, it can be pretty easily established that MacArthur is not Nestorian, 1

and did not mean anything against the Scripture, 2

nor did he use private interpretation of Scripture. 3

He had a good point to make, and in context it is pretty obvious he made it. 1

1 agreed
2 we don't know what Rev Macarthur means on most issues
3 he uses the same "private" (i.e commonplace) interpretations as lots of others

 

[dzheremi]

If he's the leader of a congregation, why is it acceptable/exculpatory to say "we don't know what he means on most issues", or to allow that he uses private/commonplace interpretations that are popular? Neither of those things are the slightest bit reassuring in this context. Anyone who looks to you for guidance should know what you mean on whatever you are talking about, and there is no room for "private" anything in traditional Christianity (no matter how popular it is) -- particularly from among the clergy, given the importance of their roles. Lord have mercy.

 

[Mark Quayle]

If he's the leader of a congregation, why is it acceptable/exculpatory to say "we don't know what he means on most issues", or to allow that he uses private/commonplace interpretations that are popular? Neither of those things are the slightest bit reassuring in this context. Anyone who looks to you for guidance should know what you mean on whatever you are talking about, and there is no room for "private" anything in traditional Christianity (no matter how popular it is) -- particularly from among the clergy, given the importance of their roles. Lord have mercy.

I'm guessing @OldAbramBrown to whom you are replying, is not a fan of MacArthur. No need to get bent out of shape.

 

[dzheremi]

With respect, Mark, I think you're reading something into my post that is not there if you think that asking these questions is me getting "bent out of shape." I know tone is hard to convey via text, but there are entirely sound reasons to ask such things. That clergy in particular should be expected to speak clearly to the best of their ability (not forgetting that everyone is a person, and we are all fallible), and not engage in 'private' interpretations when teaching publicly, is not some kind of radical idea. The rest of this thread is evidence enough of what can happen when good shepherds go (theologically) bad, because they have a bugbear that they can't help but focus on, forgetting or discarding in the process the boundaries of the common faith as it has been received. That's how we wound up with men such as Arius, Nestorius, Montanus and his two 'priestesses' (a particularly interesting case to look at for those who believe in 'private' revelation), Marcion, and so on in the first place.

By contrast, when everyone is accountable to the faith itself (no matter who they are in a hierarchical sense), we do not need to rehash controversies that were definitively settled 1500+ or however many years ago. That is why in the liturgy, the celebrant prays "from the mouths of the three hundred and eighteen assembled at Nicea, the one hundred fifty at Constantinople, and the two hundred at Ephesus." The point is not "hey, you have to accept these councils" (though we would say as a communion that you do, as we all do), but rather "nothing we are proclaiming or teaching is coming from us; we are rather preserving the faith as handed down to us by these ancient and venerable Christians."

That this is a better way to act as a church than having a charismatic but doctrinally and historically shaky pastor/priest (or whatever they're called in modern churches) is not really even arguable; or rather, you can argue for it, but in the process you are effectively arguing for the 'right' to embrace heresy and teach it to those whose spiritual nourishment you are responsible for, which is fine as a secular perspective (no one can stop anyone from making a statement about 'freedom of thought' or whatever in that kind of avenue) , but has absolutely no business in the Church ever.

If eternal life is knowing God (and it is, according to Jesus Christ in John 17), then it follows that those things which act as roadblocks to experiencing that knowledge -- like heresies -- ought to be fought as though our lives depend on it, since they do.

 

[Mark Quayle]

With respect, Mark, I think you're reading something into my post that is not there if you think that asking these questions is me getting "bent out of shape." I know tone is hard to convey via text, but there are entirely sound reasons to ask such things. That clergy in particular should be expected to speak clearly to the best of their ability (not forgetting that everyone is a person, and we are all fallible), and not engage in 'private' interpretations when teaching publicly, is not some kind of radical idea. The rest of this thread is evidence enough of what can happen when good shepherds go (theologically) bad, because they have a bugbear that they can't help but focus on, forgetting or discarding in the process the boundaries of the common faith as it has been received. That's how we wound up with men such as Arius, Nestorius, Montanus and his two 'priestesses' (a particularly interesting case to look at for those who believe in 'private' revelation), Marcion, and so on in the first place.

By contrast, when everyone is accountable to the faith itself (no matter who they are in a hierarchical sense), we do not need to rehash controversies that were definitively settled 1500+ or however many years ago. That is why in the liturgy, the celebrant prays "from the mouths of the three hundred and eighteen assembled at Nicea, the one hundred fifty at Constantinople, and the two hundred at Ephesus." The point is not "hey, you have to accept these councils" (though we would say as a communion that you do, as we all do), but rather "nothing we are proclaiming or teaching is coming from us; we are rather preserving the faith as handed down to us by these ancient and venerable Christians."

That this is a better way to act as a church than having a charismatic but doctrinally and historically shaky pastor/priest (or whatever they're called in modern churches) is not really even arguable; or rather, you can argue for it, but in the process you are effectively arguing for the 'right' to embrace heresy and teach it to those whose spiritual nourishment you are responsible for, which is fine as a secular perspective (no one can stop anyone from making a statement about 'freedom of thought' or whatever in that kind of avenue) , but has absolutely no business in the Church ever.

If eternal life is knowing God (and it is, according to Jesus Christ in John 17), then it follows that those things which act as roadblocks to experiencing that knowledge -- like heresies -- ought to be fought as though our lives depend on it, since they do.

My point in saying what I did, is because your response to @OldAbramBrown sounded like you needed to dampen his enthusiasm, when actually, he was opposing the excusing of MacArthur, while you seemed to take him to be supporting MacArthur (as I do, though I'm not a fan of his sometimes hyperbole).

 

[dzheremi]

My point in saying what I did, is because your response to @OldAbramBrown sounded like you needed to dampen his enthusiasm, when actually, he was opposing the excusing of MacArthur, while you seemed to take him to be supporting MacArthur (as I do, though I'm not a fan of his sometimes hyperbole).

Ah, I see. Re-reading the post, I see that I missed the numbering of the quoted statements, so it seems that I did probably misread the reply. Sorry to both you and OldAbramBrown on that account. I will try to be more careful in the future.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

If he's the leader of a congregation, why is it acceptable/exculpatory to say "we don't know what he means on most issues", or to allow that he uses private/commonplace interpretations that are popular? Neither of those things are the slightest bit reassuring in this context. Anyone who looks to you for guidance should know what you mean on whatever you are talking about, and there is no room for "private" anything in traditional Christianity (no matter how popular it is) -- particularly from among the clergy, given the importance of their roles. Lord have mercy.

We don't much know why Rev Macarthur, in person, takes the various lines he does on various matters mostly centred around rationing Holy Spirit belief. It perhaps appeared to start partly with aversion to excesses of the Kansas City / Toronto kind (themselves rationing of truth, and dominant), and finding that he hasn't resources to help people affected by those (such as me), falls back on such rationing, in a tradition of other dominating preachers.

As Mark points out, exculpation across the board doesn't suit his range of teachings as a whole; while as you point out it's not reassuring when so many alongside him water down the Gospel likewise. Half a Holy Spirit = eternal subordination of the Son = we are the most wretched of creatures. The real remedy to bad Holy Spirit teaching is not more bad Holy Spirit teaching or deficient Holy Spirit teaching.

The meanings in Mariology coincide with those in distinct Pneumatology and in Christology as I think we are realising. The weak Holy Spirit teachings and dominant style of Rev Macarthur existed before his day; but he has acquired one of the foremost positions in those camps, which is why he appears in a thread title..

 

[OldAbramBrown]

Ah, I see. Re-reading the post, I see that I missed the numbering of the quoted statements, so it seems that I did probably misread the reply. Sorry to both you and OldAbramBrown on that account. I will try to be more careful in the future.

The only thing that seemed to catch you unawares was how widespead a phenomenon rationing of belief from dominant pulpits has become. This is the opposite of Prov 21: 10-21 and the feedings of the thousands. A good many of Jesus' parables and utterances of the prophets warn on this matter.