Posted on 09/15/2013 1:37:28 PM PDT by matthewrobertolson
Is God too busy to hear all our prayers that He has to delegate that out?G-d too busy? Yes, I think maybe He is...
>>I answered that in the post.
>>“Because the saints have reached perfection (they are in Heaven), their prayers are more effective than the prayers of those that are less righteous, so that’s why one might ask them to pray instead of asking another Christian on earth or simply doing it themselves.”
They may have reached perfection, but they fall far short of omniscience. If a perfect Jesus Christ, who is part of God cannot answer my prayers, then why would St. Someone be able to answer them?
Furthermore, God knows that we are not perfect, yet Jesus tells us to pray to the Father. Was Jesus mistaken? Should prayers really be handled with an eye towards “process improvement” as you claim? As a member of the “holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9), are my prayers really so meaningless to God that I would need an intercessor other than my High Priest?
Luke 15:10 says that “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” So, obviously, the angels know what’s going on here on earth.
Luke 20:35-36 teaches us that those that are “[resurrected] from the dead” (aka those that reach Heaven) “are like angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” This indicates that the angels and heavenly saints are generally equal. So, it seems that Luke 15:10 would also apply to the heavenly saints.
As for your examples...
James says to call on elders to pray because we need all the prayers that we can get, especially when we are sick and in danger of “death” (I put “death” in parentheses because our souls are eternal; it’s an important point in this context, and I want to be careful on this thread).
Jesus taught us the Our Father because it’s a great standard prayer and because it contains some good basic theology about our relationship with God.
At the time of St. Stephen’s death, he probably wasn’t very sure of who was in Heaven and who wasn’t; additionally, he was quite desperate and didn’t have much time to seek anyone else’s help.
Jesus prayed to the Father because that’s the only one He could really pray to — how unbecoming it would be for God-incarnate to request the intercessions of a lower being.
Like I told WilliamIII...
The passage itself is not “infamous,” but the way Protestants frequently use it (at least in this context) certainly is.
I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use strawmen. Your use of them helps no one. -BlogpimperMatt
...which could most easily be done through the traditional, historical testimony, if my position were somehow indeed false...BlogpimperMatt
They're dead, Jim.
Hahahahahahahaha....
There is only one Mediator between God and man and that is Jesus Christ. The author's misquotation and declaration of the Roman error as fact adds nothing to make the point of this diatribe against Christian believers.
What is a Logical Fallacy?
A logical fallacy is, roughly speaking, an error of reasoning. When someone adopts a position, or tries to persuade someone else to adopt a position, based on a bad piece of reasoning, they commit a fallacy. I say “roughly speaking” because this definition has a few problems, the most important of which are outlined below. Some logical fallacies are more common than others, and so have been named and defined. When people speak of logical fallacies they often mean to refer to this collection of well-known errors of reasoning, rather than to fallacies in the broader, more technical sense given above. ...
Straw Man Fallacy
A straw man argument is one that misrepresents a position in order to make it appear weaker than it actually is, refutes this misrepresentation of the position, and then concludes that the real position has been refuted. This, of course, is a fallacy, because the position that has been claimed to be refuted is different to that which has actually been refuted; the real target of the argument is untouched by it.
*****
Equivocation Fallacy
The fallacy of equivocation is committed when a term is used in two or more different senses within a single argument. For an argument to work, words must have the same meaning each time they appear in its premises or conclusion. Arguments that switch between different meanings of words equivocate, and so don’t work. This is because the change in meaning introduces a change in subject. If the words in the premises and the conclusion mean different things, then the premises and the conclusion are about different things, and so the former cannot support the latter.
Fallacy of Composition
The fallacy of composition is the fallacy of inferring from the fact that every part of a whole has a given property that the whole also has that property. This pattern of argument is the reverse of that of the fallacy of division. It is not always fallacious, but we must be cautious in making inferences of this form. ...
No one goes to the father except through me... said Jesus Christ.
Praying to dead mortal humans is not Christian.
I would certainly ask a Godly person to pray for me, but I would NEVER pray for help or give thanks to anyone else except my Dad in heaven or my King, or the Holy Spirit. NEVER. God receives ALL the glory. Period.
bump
Maybe Jesus has so much paperwork he can’t answer the prayer phone? lolz
Who determined that Saints reached perfection?
humans?
Not good enough.
How many Catholic Churches are named after Jesus?
Uh, the saints are dead.
>>Maybe Jesus has so much paperwork he can’t answer the prayer phone? lolz
Obamacare paperwork?? Maybe he’s going to have to cut the number of disciples next.
lol
**It’s Biblical to Ask Saints to Pray for Us**
Of course it’s biblical. All one has to do is read the Book of Revelation about the saints with bowls of incense — our prayer rising upward to them — and they passing them on to Jesus.
wrong thread
Don’t people realize that the body dies, but the soul is alive and is judged istantly by Christ — going to heaven, hell or Purgatory?
The souls of the saints are very alive!
They share in the divine omniscience, as I mentioned in my explanation of Luke 15:10 and Luke 20:35-36.
“St. Someone” can’t answer your prayers, but can pass them along with a greater degree of righteousness. And as I demonstrated in the post, with God, the prayers of the wicked are ignored and the prayers of the righteous are effective.
Of course we should pray to God. We should never lose sight of Him, lest we damage our personal relationships with Him. However, like I’ve mentioned, the prayers of the more righteous are more effective, so if we urgently desire our requests to be fulfilled, it couldn’t hurt to invoke the intercession of a heavenly saint.
Just started reading the thread. My thoughts also. You explained it most eloquently.
blessings, bobo
Certainly its acceptable to recognize people. That really isn’t the question though is it?
Are Saints recognized through earthly canonization the equivalent of Saints named in the Bible?
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