Posted on 12/06/2006 6:18:21 AM PST by NYer
Actually, the Hebrew word translated "honor" in "honor thy father and thy mother" translates directly to "glorify," so your premise is flatly wrong.
Those newspapers ads glorify some saint, converting those unwilling dead saints into glory thieves
That's that "finite pie" theory you claim FourtySeven embraces, when it's really you who embraces it. If a newspaper ad thanking a saint is stealing glory from God, then a newspaper ad thanking a living person is also stealing glory from God.
Would it be so that the LDS could come and baptize their corpses by immersion into their church? No? (Sorry, bad joke)
Thanks General. It's nice to be back.
Proverbs 9:8, "Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you."
Thank you!
OK, I'm confused, does that mean that you hate us? (164) because I haven't read anything from any wise man.
Wise guy, yeah. Wise man, no.
Sp just because I read what Paul wrote and HENCE know that he would not want this any of this, now I am rejecting Christ??!! Don't be absurd!
You're slow today. I expected an diversionary snipe-attempt much earlier.
(Annual Campion reply quotient is now met.)
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
Sorry, but there are some things God reserves for Himself--at least this side of heaven.
Re: "the pie"--I can receive love from a person who can also fully love God. It's not inherently a competition. Yet it can be (earlier illustration of Muslim father).
But with glory--who gets the credit?--competition is built in to the very concept.
The closest you can get to folks receiving "glory" is "glory" being an interchangeable word for "heaven"--in which case it's a gift given by God, not merit they've earned or something accredited to them by folks by earth.
Isaiah 42:8: "I will not give my glory to another." Isaiah 48:11: "I will not yield my glory to another."
then a newspaper ad thanking a living person is also stealing glory from God.
Actually, what you say here is true. (Just not necessarily true). A newspaper ad thanking only a living person (and not God) may indeed be an actual case of "stolen glory" from God.
This also gets us back full circle to the issue at hand. This issue really boils down to (a) trusting God and His word; or (b) trusting in as you called it, a "folk" tradition or ritual. Who do we believe God works through?
It's at least possible that if I thank a living person in a newspaper ad who God really did use, I am not being inconsistent so long as I believe God worked through that person. I am simply reflecting reality.
But if I have no evidence that any given being was used by God to perform something on my behalf, then an ad would simply reflect the imaginations of my mind. These "ghost" entities would receive credit for merely gaining a reputation for being the "go-to" saint for that situation.
God is a "go-to" God. Jesus is a "go-to" mediator (1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 4:16). Why all the go-betweens? Why go gossip to a corpse when you can pray to a living God?
""He who hears you hears me; and he who rejects you rejects me; and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me" (Luke 10:16). And: "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven" (Matt. 18:18)."
Sounds to me as if you, along with the other cultists who began their sects a mere 500 years ago, are rejecting the previous 1500 years of Christian tradition.
I hope and pray that you eventially will discover and accept the fullness of Christianity.
The glorying (is that even a word?) isn't done in Christ; the person is in Christ, so by venerating that person, you are really venerating Christ. That's my point.
Reminding me of the statute of St. Peter in the the church in Rome. Except it is the toe that is rubbed shiny.
The problem lies with assuming that every tradition accumulated in those 1500 years were imbedded there for all 1500 years.
Many traditions, such as the selling of indulgences, were late add-ons.
"Many traditions, such as the selling of indulgences, were late add-ons."
Selling indulgences is an abuse, not a tradition, and was condemned by the Church.
There is much evidence that veneration of the saints existed from the times of the catacombs and is certainly not a "late add-on".
To God! That's what we are saying. Did you see this in #115 - ...is a special act of honoring a dead person who has been identified as singular in the traditions of the religion, and through them honoring God who made them and in whose image they are made.
just as keeping the commandment to "honor your father and mother" honors God.
Descartes reduced man to intellect, when he said cogito ergo sum. Kant carried the matter a step further by denying that men can grasp truth.
However, one construes their philosophy, the fact that each man was physically frail. Can't help thinking that led them to disparage the physical. Hobbes, a robust sort, reduced everything to the physical. The Christian view is in between.
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