Announcement! (and my entry below)
Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength: Christian Reconciliation Carnival #6: Call for submissionsChristian Reconciliation Carnival #6 is coming up fast. Entries are due by this Saturday. Please email here to submit your June posts on the topic of reconciliation, general interest, questions, or respectful disagreements.
What follows is a call a for a little friendly fire, that we might need some heat and light in the ecumenical motion.
In earlier posts in this carnival series I tried mentioned that adiaphora, differences that aren’t dogma/doctrine or necessarily, well, show stoppers need to be defined and taught to us by our theologians. But what about differences that, well, are really noticable. Now, in the Byzantine vs Western rite there are differences that would more normally be seen as adiaphora not dogma such as standing during worship, using only the human voice in praise, incense and candles, and so on. But there remain some more apparent differences which may be less regarded as adiaphora,
- Saints In Remembrance and Prayer — A few words on saints from here to start this off:
Canonization does not make anybody a saint. Canonization recognizes that someone already was, in his own lifetime, a saint. Having recognized that the Church encourages its members to follow the example, the model, provided by the life of the holy person, to pray to him, to keep his memory alive. Praying to a saint does not mean that Orthodox confuse saints with God. Praying to a saint means something very easily understood: we ask the holy person to pray for us. We can, of course, ask for the prayers of those who are not officially saints. In fact, we often ask our friends and families to pray for us. We may ask a person who has died — a mother or father or grandparent — to pray for us. But we are especially interested in seeking out the prayers of those whose lives have been wholly devoted to prayer, who are in fact, “experts” in the matter of prayer and of praying. Thus the Orthodox Christian prays to a saint by asking the saint to pray for him. The Orthodox Christian venerates ikons — he bows and kisses the ikon and in doing that he bows before and kisses the image of God which he sees in the saint. He bows to honor the image of God; he kisses to show his love for that image, and to express his hope that the image of God will also become evident and manifest in himself. In a similar way the priest censes the ikons and bow to them — again, seeing the image of God, censing it, bowing to it; and then the priest turns and censes the people gathered in the Church and bows to them, just as he did to the ikons. He also sees the image of God in the people of God who are the Church of Christ on earth. In turn, the people bow to the priest, seeing also in him that same image, that same call to be an ikon.
My parents, good Lutheran’s, recently visited and we talked some about my families movement to Orthodoxy. We tried to explain veneration and prayers offered to the saints, i.e., “we asks friends to pray for us. Why not ask holy saints, heroes of the church to pray for us?” A response was, “But they’re dead.” Well, we do believe in life after death and the resurrection of the body. What is meant by “dead”?
So if you do not pray to saints? Why not? Is my doing so adiaphora or not for you!? If so, let’s talk about it.
- Most Holy Mary Virgin and Theotokos — Protestants have decided not to reverence Mary. In contrast to Orthodoxy, and more in reaction to Catholicism, Protestants have basically forgotten her. On the other hand, the Orthodox hold: More honorable than the Cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim, thou who without stain barest God the Word, and art truly Theotokos. Catholics and Orthodox are among those “denominations” held for the opinion of women because they don’t allow women to be priests. On the other hand, they both hold the most honored, and greatest human ever was … a woman, namely Mary. But the point is, Protestants and Orthodox have a very different practice regarding Mary (the Theotokos, she who bore and gave birth to God). Is that adiophora.
If I pray to a saint here, and someone else prays to the same saint the other side of the world, then you are ascribing to that saint the powers of omniscience and omnipresence. these are of course divine powers, and so by praying to the saint you are making the saint a god. This is idolatry.
Secondly, if i adress a prayer to a saint, there is absolutely no reason why that prayer should not be adressed directly to God through Christ. By praying to the saint, you have dispplaced God from his rightful place and put something else in His place. That is idolatry.
Thirdly, the story of Lazarus and Dives shows us that there can be no communication between the living and the dead.
Fourthly, throughout the old testament, everyone who contacted the dead was condemned for doing so. i am thinking particularly of King Saul who sought the advice of the dead prophet [= saint] Samuel.
Fifth, the verse usually used about the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ doesn’t mean a great cloud of witnesses observing us or in communion with us: it means a great cloud of witnesses who through their writings and recorded prophecies witness TO us about God.
In summary, nothing in the Bible supports praying to saints: everything in the Bible is against it.
Re Mary, You are right that the position of Mary in Protestantism has been an OVER-reaction to Roman Catholic idolatry of her as per the ‘saints’ bit above. She does deserve a higher profile than we tend to give her. We agree that Mary was Theotokos – God bearer ie God carrier, but we object to the title ‘Mother’ of God because that wrongly implies He has his origin in her. It also wrongly implies that she has authority over Him. Our objection is not a gender issue, it is a God-to-human relationship issue. We also reject the unscriptural notion of her sinlessness – if she as a human was sinless it negates the need for Christ’s coming to save the race at all. The Bible says we have all sinned, and the only exception it makes is Christ himself.
We do not reject praying to Saints and to Mary just to be awkward and separatist: We look at the Scriptures to find what we should do, and do it. Praying to anyone but God himself is actively excluded by the scriptures. We find these things to idolatry, and choose not to offend God by giving to others what is rightfully his.
Simon,
If I post a prayer request on this blog people all over the world hear me. This is not omniscience. The saints, in the Eastern term, are saved and are in communion with God, i.e., theosis. What that entails we believe includes being aware of those entreaties.
Of course there is no reason why you might not address a prayer directly to God (after all, we do), but do you not have friends pray for you? Why? After all, you could bypass them and just pray to God yourself.
“Contacting” the dead, which is condemned, always refers to seeking communications from the deceased. Not entreaties to them.
Veneration of saints and martyrs happened very very early in Christian tradition. You are almost 2000 years removed, why do you suppose your view more accurate?
Sinlessness of the Theotokos is a RCC not Eastern tradition. The Eastern church holds to her continued virginity after Jesus’ birth, not her sinlessness. The empty mercy seat in the tabernacle is the Theotokos and he who sits in it is the Lord Incarnate, as the icon teaches.
It also has a different notion than the west of the fall and the sin inherited form Adam. The result of the fall is that we are no longer in communion with God.
Prayer means “entreat” or “request”. Should you stop those idolatrous prayer lists and chains?
But are we not community? Why exclude those “asleep with the Lord” from that same community?
I’ll resist indulging ina a tit-for-tat response to the individual points above.
We recognise that Eastern Orthodoxy has a better claim to Apostolic Succesion than Rome. But in general, just because people did it in the patristic period doesn’t make it right – at that time there was a wide range of opinion and practice on a wide range of topics, much of it seriously heretical. What is more, we only see them through the distorting lens of history. The only constant is the Scripture, which contains all that we need for salvation, and to which we must always return to validate our doctrines. We don’t feel veneration of saints passes the test of validation – it is not commanded, commended, practiced, or endorsed in the Scriptures.
More of a query – you say you don’t believe in the sinlessness of Mary, yet your own post says “without stain”. If you do not mean sinless, what do you mean?
Simon
The “without stain” refers not to sin but virginity, I think. For the Orthodox believe that Mary by a miracle of God’s hand was restored to virginity after giving birth.
Veneration and “prayer to” the saints are different things I think. Venerating is an sign of love and respect. Americans venerate the memory of Washington, but it is not their custom to show that by kissing his image. We kiss icons of saints to show love and respect … to venerate. Prayer is an request that the Saint to whom we direct it, pray for us.
I guess my point is, I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong not to pray to Saints (although. On the other hand, do you think it is heresy for me to do so?
Thanks a lot for stopping by and commenting. I appreciate it greatly. Next week I think I’ll try to pen an “Orthodox response to Sola Scriptura.
On this site, in a guest post I wrote:
How do you feel about that remark in light of your comment on the patristic era?
Hi Mark
Thanks for responding to my queries and comments. I spend far to much time blogi8ng when I should be working, and so I regert that this will have to be my last contribution to this conversation.
Thanks for clarifying your views on Mary. I am much more comfortable with this than the Roman position. We believe that after the birth of Christ, Mary had a normal relationship with her husband. Anything else might have rendered their marriage null. The apostle Paul teaches husband and wife not to with hold their bodies one from another – would the mother of our lord have had a disfunctional marriage? Also Matthew 13:55 and Acts 1:14 teach us that jesus had brothers – I realise that many interpret this in the wider sense, ie cousins, but i don’t think the Greek text supports this interpretation. We don’t see any reason or benefit in her being perpetually virgin – it does not affect the doctrine of salvation one way or the other.
Regarding the role of tradition and whether time is progress or degeneration….
I am not entirely opposed to your view that we are going downhill. I think the church has become corrupted over the ages, and that the rot set in very very early. I will listen to the early church fathers with respect, but subject to the sciptures. Consider baptism. The practise of the apostles was to baptise people at the time of their conversion or coming to faith, whether they were pagans or circumcised Jews. in the patristic period they moved away from this: there were times when the baptism would be delayed allowing for catechism, times when it was delayed until Easter, and times when it was wrongly believed that post-baptism sin could not be forgiven and so it was delayed until the deathbed. After constantine, when Christinaity became the state religion and baptism and citizenship became associated, infant baptism became the rule. I want to get back to the Biblical, apostles’ practice, of baptising people when they come to faith without delay, and not before they have faith.
But while trying to return to this pristine uncorrupted faith, I also believe that it is the will of Christ to make his bride pure and without blemish or spot in time for the second coming, and so there must be improvement as time goes past.
I am late for my next meeting – must go.
Love in Christ
Simon
A combined majority of Christians revere saints in some way, so it is appropriate to slam the shoe onto outlyer’s feet.
I don’t venerate saints because I see nothing like it in scripture. Nothing. Nothing even similar.
I would expect to see Paul or John encouraging the saints to request the prayers and assistance of the martyrs. We know there were highly honored martyrs of the faith before the first Christian book was written, be it Thessalonians or Galatians or whatever. We know there is advice given to Christians in those books about how to deal with life. We are explicitly told to make our supplications known, and the silence is deafening. Our supplications are to be made known to God.
Why this silence?
God has given us relatively few commands, but one of them is not to call any man father or reverend. To call someone “saint” is thoroughly wrong when it implies that others of God’s children are not saints. Paul applies the name saint to many people to whom no church would apply that term. And nowhere in scripture is there some sort of distinction between saints and Saints. Yes, there are those who were filled with the Holy Spirit, and those who had less of Him, but the focus is never on “those” but on “the Holy Spirit.”
The silence is because there is already One tasked with helping us pray. The Spirit is vastly superior at this job than St James the camel kneed, even.
We find that we are equipped to boldly approach the throne of grace, and that the Spirit will help us with groanings that cannot be uttered, and that we have a Mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus. To this panoply of support you would add Mary or Paul or John? May it never be.
To me this is not adiaphora, though it’s not heresy, either.
I see no example of God wanting to deal with anyone by proxy, but that it was swept away in Christ. “Look unto ME all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved.”
And ditto all the more logical points of Simon. While I understand your answers, Mark, I don’t believe they moved his points aside.
codepoke,
The saints are not mediators. Do you have prayer lists at your church? Do you, in times of trouble, hope others pray for you. It’s more like that. Why would you ever ask anyone else to pray for you … after all you already have a Mediator?
Veneration of Saints (and the use of icon in worship) predates the canon of Scripture.
Presbyter and Bishop were established in the church as well before the end of the first century. So I’m not sure what to make of your remark about “father or reverend”.
To quote the Incredibles “calling everyone special is just a way of saying nobody is.” People are named Saints (as opposed) to saints because they are special. It certainly does not mean that only they are saved, which is what you seem to be implying.
On the “majority” view, it seems to me that the majority of Americans or even readers of god-blogs are Protestant.
The point is … you don’t have to pray for others or ask others to pray for you. We do. Why?
Why does the answer for the prior question not hold for Saints?
> Veneration of Saints (and the use of icon in worship) predates the canon of Scripture.
Proving?
> Presbyter and Bishop were established in the church as well before the end of the first century.
And the words presbyter and bishop meant something very pedestrian in Greek. Nobody wants to be called “watcher” or “old dude,” though. They want to be called cool-sounding greek things. But that’s a throw-away point, really.
> People are named Saints (as opposed) to saints because they are special.
Again, there’s not one scriptural example of anyone calling someone a Saint, but Paul called lots of weak people saints. Weekend Fisher took this apart last year here: http://weekendfisher.blogspot.com/2006/05/childrens-movies-and-misguided.html
> The point is … you don’t have to pray for others or ask others to pray for you. We do. Why?
For exactly the same reason I don’t venerate the dead. Scripture tells me explicitly to have the elders pray for me, and to pray for the saints around me. At precisely those points where scripture could tell me to venerate the saints, it is utterly silent. You can try to bridge that gap with logic, but it’s too wide for the logic I’ve heard so far. Absolute silence is a huge obstacle to me.
codepoke,
That veneration of the Saints predates Scripture shows that it is a well established and established Tradition of the Church. If it was dissonant with Scripture wouldn’t the gospels have spoken against it more plainly? Silence does not necessarily have the import you think. Those that compiled the canon followed those practices which you claim are dissonant with scripture.
John Zizioulas in Eucharist, Bishop, Church wrote extensively on Bishop and church in the first four centuries. I think your tossing aside the term Bishop is not well founded. See this post.
But it looks like the part of the discussion with Simon over viewing the first centuries and progress vs decline is key here. You view your ecclesiastic praxis as closer to what was intended than those practices in place by the apostles and period immediately after that. Why do you see Reformation innovations as better practice than the first centuries. Why?
> That veneration of the Saints predates Scripture
Ambiguity alert. Your first statement was that veneration predates the canon. This statement says that veneration predates the scripture. There’s 1-3 centuries between those two dates depending upon your point of view. If veneration started in 40AD, your point is vastly more valid than if it started in 140AD. I would be shocked if a proof of veneration before the scripture actually exists, and more shocked if it actually happened.
> If it was dissonant with Scripture wouldn’t the gospels have spoken against it more plainly?
Not if it wasn’t happening. And never in the gospels anyway. There was no church until the second chapter of Acts.
> Those that compiled the canon followed those practices which you claim are dissonant with scripture.
Again, proving much, much less to me. Those who officially “accepted” the canon carry much less weight with me than those who composed it. That they had slipped into error by that time is hardly unimaginable to me.
> I think your tossing aside the term Bishop is not well founded. See this post.
As I said, that was a throw-away point, but I read your very brief summary of the Metropolitan’s book. From the little I see, it seems to me to be pushing a lot of assumptions back on a very white sheet of paper. When you read a history that looks very much like the historian’s own matrix, the historian has probably not done so good a job of separating himself from his subject as he believes. Eusebius was guilty of the same thing.
> Why do you see Reformation innovations as better practice than the first centuries. Why?
Hehehe. You’re barking up the wrong tree with this one. I take issue with everything required, but not found in scripture, and the Reformers did a seriously patchy job of reforming.
> You view your ecclesiastic praxis as closer to what was intended than those practices in place by the apostles and period immediately after that.
Hmmmm. I don’t see clear evidence that the apostles engaged in or taught veneration, so you accuse me of thinking I’m better than them? You swing a heavy hammer, friend.
cokepoke,
Gosh, I don’t mean to swing a heavy hammer, at anyone much less yourself.
On the first, I think you make a very very good point. I was confusing in the above the dates for writing of Scripture and compiling canon. As well as my sloppiness in including Acts with the gospels. (But those men compiling that canon, by that time were praying to saints and venerating Saints and Martyr’s I think, e.g., St. Polycarp.)
All I’m saying is that while the first century was closer to the apostolic teaching and Christ than the fourth. The fourth is closer than we.
I think you cast aspersions unneedfully on the Metropolitan Zizioulas work (save that for my poor summary). He draws few conclusions, notes as you have that there is little text to go on and does bring up ambiguities where necessary. Largely he’s tracing to find what there is that can be said about the development of the meaning of Church, Eucharist, and Bishop through the first few centuries and that the meaning of those words changed as the church grew.
From
:
Scripture compiles the kerygma at the time of its writing. Dogma moves to kerygma as required by the age and events. But why do you necessarily lose or set aside oral traditions from the apostolic age merely because at the time of the writing of scripture that teaching was dogma?
If you draw “everything” from Scripture and use it has your only guide, how do you worship, I wonder?
But, I’m confused also by something you wrote earlier: To me this is not adiaphora, though it’s not heresy, either. Could you amplify that point. What does it mean for a practice to be not adiaphora and not heretical?
My father (Lutheran) doesn’t think much of requesting (praying) that the Saints pray to us, because in his words, “They’re dead.” But the point is, they’re not dead. They’re alive in Christ beyond death experiencing theosis with the Creator.
Fun discussion, Mark.
I’m intrigued by the whole dogma/kerygma thing, but not nearly informed enough to comment on it. It seems like you are saying that veneration was present, but stayed secret for as long as possible. I don’t find that possibility persuasive, but I may totally be missing your point.
> What does it mean for a practice to be not adiaphora and not heretical?
Mostly, that I’ve never heard the term adiaphora before so I don’t know how to use properly.
[Deleted 4 paragraphs of wandering, because I finally found my point.]
Veneration is something I could never do in faith without some serious convincing. Today, I would purely sin to venerate, because at my current level of faith it is white necromancy to me. The vegetarians in Romans 14 would have called eating meat “white idolatry,” though, so I accept myself as possibly weak in faith in this area.
I can only call veneration adiaphora on blind faith in your testimony.
> If you draw “everything” from Scripture and use it has your only guide, how do you worship, I wonder?
I simply don’t worship the way I feel most comfortable any more. It is painful for me, but I worship in a standard protestant assembly. For 10 years I worshipped in a living room, and was much happier.
The issue is not the liturgy nor the building but knowing God. You have mentioned before that we can only know God by his energies, not in essence. That is sad to me. The whole point of the book of John is that Christ broke that boundary. Take me anywhere that people worship as if every member knows God truly, and I’ll be happy.
cokepoke,
dogma is secret only in the sense of unpublished and available to all of the laity but not pronounced to the outside world, i.e., unlike the Gnostic secrecy. Epiclesis was cited by Lossky as an example.
I think your mixing ‘veneration’ and ‘prayer’. I see them as related by not identical. ‘veneration’ of Saint’s at the minimum is remembering them as the heroes of our Faith. The best of what it means to live (or die) in the Christian faith. Examples. Every calling that I know of has similar practices, it’s very human. An good example might be how baseball treats its “hall of fame”. In the Eastern tradition, this veneration is displayed by kissing (of icon … which is completely different topic). Last week for example, we venerated and remembered the example of St. Mary of Magdala. At Chrismation the Orthodox take a name-saint to use personally guiding light in the ordering of their life. Veneration (to my understanding) is not a sacramental act. It is a way of affirmation that the individual being venerated was heroic. My Chrismation saint is Saint Ephraim the Syrian (of whose psalter I’ve transcribed a few times see the “category” on the left).
Prayer to a saint a little different as taken from an Antiochan prayer book:
There is the notion that the Saints, angels, all the departed form that cloud of witnesses unseen at liturgy. I think by this prayer it is clear that it very much like praying (requesting) that your friend or neighbor pray in turn for you.
I took a stab at the essence/energy distinction here. I think taking it as a boundary Christ broke misses what is made in that distinction.
> I think by this prayer it is clear that it very much like praying (requesting) that your friend or neighbor pray in turn for you.
Yes, I understand what you are saying. I just don’t agree.
> I took a stab at the essence/energy distinction here.
I have not forgotten our discussion. I doubt we will get even remotely close to each other on that subject.