PreachersWife2004 said:
There's no such connections that can be made for praying to the saints.
There is.
But first one must get past the bad blood between Protestantism at large and Catholicism.
GregoryTurner said:
Hello? Do you spend so much time reading writings of men that you have not read your Bible?
The Bible is the writings of men. Men wrote the books and men put the books together.
It did not just appear and fall from the sky.
PreachersWife2004 said:
I realize that trying to come up with the right proof for your position is tiring. Too bad you can't just point out in the bible where it says that we are to even ask the saints to pray for us.
Point to where it says we must pick and choose our practices and beliefs from what the Apostles gave us.
PreachersWife2004 said:
No, it's not. The scriptures point quite clearly to the Trinity. The sciptures point quite clearly to praying to God. The scriptures do NOT point to the saints at all for prayers. No where is it even suggested that we are to ask the saints in heaven to pray for us.
An Arian would say otherwise about the divinity of Christ.
What ultimately resolved the Arian heresy? All the Scripture verses in the world or Tradition?
Hentenza said:
The biblical reality is that Christians pray for each other to the Father not to the saints.
Who said we were praying to the Saints?
St. Paul said that we are to keep what he taught them whether by his actions, words or letters. The veneration of the Theotokos and the saints goes back to the Apostles. St. Luke, who wrote one of the Gospels, also wrote (painted in Western thought) the first icon which was of the Theotokos with child.
The Theotokos is the greatest of all humans for her obedience and other virtues as well as living a life of not sinning (even though she had the potential to do so, so to say). We can not compare her to Christ because she is just human. Christ is human and God.
From the Orthodox Study Bible's article about Mary.
For two thousand years the Church has preserved the memory of the Virgin Mary as the prototype of all Christians - the model of what we are to become in Christ. The tradition of the Church holds that Mary remained a virgin all her life (see note on Matthew 12:46-50). While lifelong celibacy is not a model for all Christians to follow, Mary's spiritual purity, her wholehearted devotion to God, is certainly to be emulated.
Mary is also our model in that she was the first person to receive Jesus Christ. As Mary bore Jesus Christ in her womb physically, all Christians now have the privilege of hearing God within them spiritually. By God's grace and mercy we are purified and empowered to become like Him.
The honor we give to Mary also signifies our view of who Jesus is. From early times the church has called her Mother of God (Greek Theotokos, lit. "God-Bearer"), a title which implies that her Son is both fully man and fully God. As His Mother, Mary was the source of Jesus' human nature; yet the One she bore in her womb was also the eternal God.
Therefore, because of her character and especially because of her role in God's plan of salvation, Christians appropriately honor Mary as the first among the saints. The archangel Gabriel initiated this honor in his address to her: "Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!" (Luke 1:28). This salutation clearly indicates that God Himself had chosen to honor Mary. Her favored status was confirmed when she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was then six months pregnant with John the Baptist. Elizabeth greeted Mary with these words: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:42,43). And Mary herself, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, predicted the honor that would be paid her throughout history: "For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed" (Luke 1:48).
In obedience to God's clear intention, therefore, the Orthodox Church honors Mary in icons, hymns, and special feast days. We entreat her, as the human being who was most intimate with Christ on earth, to intercede with her Son on our behalf. We ask her, as the first believer and the Mother of the Church, for guidance and protection. We venerate her - but we do not worship her, for worship belongs to God alone.
In Matins, Vespers, and all the services of the hours of prayer, we sing this hymn, which expresses Mary's unique place in creation.
"It is truly right to bless you, O Theotokos, ever-blessed and most pure, and the Mother of our God. More honorable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim, without defilement you gave birth to God the Word: True Theotokos, we magnify you."
Martin Luther skewed the view of saints. Calvin killed it and Luther's predecessors, as well as Calvin's, have declared any bit of honor for another human being to be idol worship.
Paul said that we are all saints, I'm reminded of this again and again by Protestants, and also asked the people he knew to pray for him and vice versa.
The saints and the people on this earth all have the Holy Spirit within them. He is God and connects us. The sad part is that while Eastern Orthodoxy has never changed, all of Western Christendom has. Paul said to Timothy to guard the deposit. The deposit is the Faith in which the Apostles taught us. Nowhere did Paul say to take from or add to the deposit.
To take veneration of saints away from the Faith is to change it; to take from the deposit. That came about because a few people had a grudge and could not forgive.
Do not dare misrepresent our Orthodox faith. We are not "popeless Roman Catholics" so the anti-Rome "apologetics" do not work. We are not Protestants so the "that's your interpretation" does not work.
We are the Church of the New Testament, the one which Sts. Peter and Paul gave their lives for and the one which trillions of martyrs have died for. The one that has been going and growing since Pentecost in 33AD as described in Acts. And the one which the West had left in 1054 and neglected since.
Do not dare misrepresent our Faith.