Posted on 04/29/2017 8:02:13 AM PDT by NYer
As we pray for the success of Pope Francis’ trip to Egypt this weekend, a perfect prayer to use is the oldest known Marian prayer, which in fact, traces back to the pope’s host country.
The oldest known Marian prayer is found on an ancient Egyptian papyrus dating from around the year 250. Today known in the Church as the Sub tuum praesidium, the prayer is believed to have been part of the Coptic Vespers liturgy during the Christmas season.
The original prayer was written in Greek and according to Roseanne Sullivan, “The prayer is addressed to Our Lady using the Greek word Θεοτόκος, which is an adjectival form of Θεοφόρος (Theotokos, or God-bearer) and is more properly translated as ‘she whose offspring is God.'” This helps to prove that the early Christians were already familiar with the word “Theotokos” well before the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus ratified its usage.
Below can be found the original Greek text from the papyrus, along with an English translation as listed on the New Liturgical Movement website:
| On the papyrus, we can read: .ΠΟ ΕΥCΠΑ ΚΑΤΑΦΕ ΘΕΟΤΟΚΕΤ ΙΚΕCΙΑCΜΗΠΑ ΕΙΔΗCΕΜΠΕΡΙCTAC AΛΛΕΚΚΙΝΔΥΝΟΥ …ΡΥCΑΙΗΜΑC MONH …HEΥΛΟΓ |
And an English translation could be: Under your mercy we take refuge, Mother of God! Our prayers, do not despise in necessities, but from the danger deliver us, only pure, only blessed. |
More commonly the prayer is translated:
Beneath your compassion,
We take refuge, O Mother of God:
do not despise our petitions in time of trouble:
but rescue us from dangers,
only pure, only blessed one.
Several centuries later a Latin prayer was developed and is more widely known in the Roman Catholic Church:
| Latin Text Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta |
English Text We fly to Thy protection, O Holy Mother of God; Do not despise our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin. Amen. |
The prayer is currently part of the Byzantine, Roman and Ambrosian rites in the Catholic Church and is used specifically as a Marian antiphon after the conclusion of Compline outside of Lent (in the older form of the Roman breviary). It is also a common prayer that has stood the test of time and is a favorite of many Christians, and is the root of the popular devotional prayer, the Memorare.
So why are they concerned in 6:9 about what's going on on earth, then?
Sure. They are in Heaven, and simply ask God, not anyone else, when judgment will come. You simply cannot get prayer to created beings in Heaven out of this, and it makes you look careless or desperate, which is understandable.
And you only know this because of writers from the 2nd century and later who talked about it, so why are you implicitly citing them but then arguing they're irrelevant when they don't support your position?
"Why?" For the same reason we can invoke the Jews by whom we have out OT texts and yet reject their conclusions on them. Because it is one thing to pass on copies of Scripture, and it is another to not be consistent with it. And have a vast multiplicity of Biblical mss testifying against fabrication.
And as Scripture is the only substantive body of Truth that is wholly inspired of God then that must be the standard, as it became as it was written.
Moreover, Rome judges the so-called early church fathers more than they judge here, and does not concur with all they wrote, nor are they in 100% concord with each others.
Well, Paul does command Christians to hold to the traditions he taught in 2 Thessalonians 2:15,
Another fallacy. A evangelical preacher can also enjoin obedience to his oral preaching, under the premise that it is Scriptural, and the Holy Spirit commends thoser lovers of Truth who subjected his preaching to testing by Scripture.
However, Paul also could preach as wholly inspired of God, and also could provide new revelation, neither of which even Rome claims to do. Thus obedience to Paul is not the same things as obedience to Rome.
In addition, Paul's "traditions" were that of known contemporary preaching, not anything like requiring belief in an even over 1700 years after it allegedly occurred, and which was/us so lacking in early testimony (where it ought to be found) that Rome's own scholars were against it being made binding belief.
Furthermore, the evidence that anything called the "word of God/the Lord" was normally written down, and Rome cannot tell us what they traditions were that Paul referred to, while it is because of Scripture that we know he did.
and he also commands obedience to church authorities
And to civil authorities as well, but which in both cases is always conditional upon absence of real conflict with Scripture.
But apart from tradition, there are various references to purgatorial fire and purification in the NT,
Extrapolating Purgatory out of "purgatorial fire" is also desperate, as it does not teach. Go ahead and try if you want.
as well as references to purgatory in the books of the OT that the radical Reformers
Wrong again, there are no references to purgatory in the deuteros 2Mac does not teach it, nor praying to created beings in Heaven.
arbitrarily excluded because they incorrectly assumed the Greek manuscript tradition was less authentic than the Hebrew manuscript tradition (something not even Protestant scholars would maintain today).
Also wrong: it was far from arbitrarily, but had significant Catholic support, and the deuteros was subject to doubts and disagreements early one and right into Tren t. Which provided the first indisputable complete canon of Catholics, after the death of Luther.
In addition, the early LXX did not contain these books, which were a latter addition to it.
Even if you overlook the context to try to prove your claim, you are left with two people who died - one in a good place and one in a bad place can talk to each other and to God.
This does not prove anything about living people on earth communicating with departed saints in heaven.
“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
Begger: dead (departed).
Abraham: dead (departed).
Rich man: dead (departed).
Your verse "proves" that dead people can talk to each other once they leave the earth.
Absolutely nothing in here about people on earth praying to departed saints.
We have prayer beads because we pray a lot. Jesus often prayed all night. Paul taught to pray continuously. The Desert Fathers adopted prayer beads to help implement this command as early as the 200s AD. Last time I checked, there was no Scriptural prohibition against counting.
I see you're misinformed about the scapular as well. You must object to God's command in Deuteronomy 6:8, too, then.
That was an interesting answer. I had to think about it. Having done so, here is my response.
If Jesus intended to stick with a physically-centered system of worship, and He merely meant to shift that center from Jerusalem to Rome, then He fundamentally and tragically misled the Samaritan woman. She asked specifically where worship should take place. Anyone who imagines this wasn’t a sincere question just isn’t reading the text. The moment the woman realized she was dealing with a prophet, she took the occasion to ask Him a fundamentally vital question.
There is no way on earth the woman could have listened to Jesus’ answer and divined the word, ‘Rome.’ If ‘Rome,’ was the correct answer, then Jesus outright lied to her. He said one thing, but meant another. No one reading His answer, right down to the present day, could arrive at the conclusion that He was telling the woman that the system of location-centered worship would continue; it would merely shift to Rome. For the first and only time in His earthly ministry, Jesus would have been guilty of intentionally misleading an honest questioner.
None of your examples parallel this situation. You mentioned the Road to Emmaus. Jesus didn’t use the entire walk to explain that the Christ was NOT to be crucified, and then rise on the third day. Rather, He cited OT Scripture to enlighten the disciples, and concluded by revealing His true identity. This bears no resemblance to telling the woman that worship henceforth will be based on spirit and truth, if what He meant was that in the future it would be Rome-centric. One is a progressive revelation, the other is an outright deception.
Put yourself in the woman’s place. Imagine that you’ve discovered yourself in the presence of a true prophet. Imagine yourself jumping on the opportunity to have a spiritually crucial question answered. How would you feel if Jesus’ answer was, “in spirit and truth,” if the actual answer was, ‘Rome,’? Can you honestly say you wouldn’t feel betrayed, misled and lied to?
I would feel bitterly betrayed. I ask honest, straightforward questions. I respect and appreciate honest, straightforward answers. If someone jerks me around by telling me A, when the actual answer is B, I’m angry, and I never trust that person again. If a person cannot or will not tell me the truth, why should I care about anything they say?
Thank you for clarifying where you were disagreeing with me. But where does Scripture say this is an issue? If asking assistance from created beings is an issue, why does Paul urge Timothy that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone?--was not Timothy a created being? I don't see how being alive or dead changes one's status as a created being.
Sure. They are in Heaven, and simply ask God, not anyone else, when judgment will come.
Why would they ask God this if they weren't already aware of what was going on on earth and concerned about it? How did they become aware of it? And no, I'm not being careless or desperate, I'm trying to get people to read the text and think through the issues more closely.
"Why?" For the same reason we can invoke the Jews by whom we have out OT texts and yet reject their conclusions on them. Because it is one thing to pass on copies of Scripture, and it is another to not be consistent with it. And have a vast multiplicity of Biblical mss testifying against fabrication.
And as Scripture is the only substantive body of Truth that is wholly inspired of God then that must be the standard, as it became as it was written.
Moreover, Rome judges the so-called early church fathers more than they judge here, and does not concur with all they wrote, nor are they in 100% concord with each others.
Nobody has pointed out any inconsistencies between Catholicism and Scripture so far in the posts I've read. Quite the opposite, it was conceded earlier that there is no Scriptural prohibition against asking the faithful departed to pray for us. The arguments have been over how to interpet what Scripture says, not over any specific prohibition. And here you are conceding that we are dependent on the Church Fathers for our NT manuscripts and our knowledge of the 1st century. I agree that the Church Fathers don't have the 100% accuracy of Scripture, but the point is, you don't even have Scripture without them, so Sola Scriptura isn't a consistent position.
Another fallacy. A evangelical preacher can also enjoin obedience to his oral preaching, under the premise that it is Scriptural, and the Holy Spirit commends thoser lovers of Truth who subjected his preaching to testing by Scripture.
However, Paul also could preach as wholly inspired of God, and also could provide new revelation, neither of which even Rome claims to do. Thus obedience to Paul is not the same things as obedience to Rome.
In addition, Paul's "traditions" were that of known contemporary preaching, not anything like requiring belief in an even over 1700 years after it allegedly occurred, and which was/us so lacking in early testimony (where it ought to be found) that Rome's own scholars were against it being made binding belief.
Furthermore, the evidence that anything called the "word of God/the Lord" was normally written down, and Rome cannot tell us what they traditions were that Paul referred to, while it is because of Scripture that we know he did.
The traditions Paul was referring to were written down by the post-NT writers. Some were recorded even within the NT, as with the early Christian creeds Paul occasionally quotes. I do agree that we must test traditions against Scripture and that Rome is not free to make up new revelations which do not have early and widespread historical attestation.
And to civil authorities as well, but which in both cases is always conditional upon absence of real conflict with Scripture.
We agree on this.
Extrapolating Purgatory out of "purgatorial fire" is also desperate, as it does not teach. Go ahead and try if you want.
Okay, I'll cite two verses in the NT. What does Paul mean by "one escaping through the flames" on the day of judgement in 1 Corinthians 3:15? And who are the "spirits of righteous men made perfect" in Hebrews 12:23?
Wrong again, there are no references to purgatory in the deuteros 2Mac does not teach it, nor praying to created beings in Heaven.
Why would you bother praying for the dead--which 2Mac does mention--if there were no purgatory?
On the canon, no, the Council of Trent was preceded by over 1,000 years--by the Synod of Hippo, for instance. And the books of the Apocrypha are found in the oldest surviving copies of the LXX. The theory that these were a later addition is not supported by the manuscripts we now have.
I think I've spent about half the day on this thread now, so I will need to pick this up another day if you're inclined. Thank you for the discussion.
I’ll have to come back to this another day because of the amount of time I’ve spent on this thread today, but meanwhile, briefly, I am certainly not suggesting Jesus misled the Samaritan woman! I am saying that I think he was addressing a different topic than the one we’re debating here. Also, I think the woman had a sincere question, but she also had some incorrect assumptions Jesus is challenging her to reconsider. Thank you for your own sincere response. May God bless you in your study of Scripture and your walk with the Lord.
If Catholics or Orthodox want to have their own special traditions, relics, statuary, icons, prayers, songs, liturgies, etc., I really don't care. I'm not a member of their ecclesial community. But when some try to assert that "they" are the only true church and whatever they believe or teach about such extra stuff MUST be accepted by anyone who calls themselves a Christian, I think we should speak up if for no other reason than to say WHY we don't accept some of those extra things. Catholics shouldn't get offended when an OPEN Religion Forum thread is posted like this and people add their thoughts on a topic. I'm pretty sure if a non-Cath posted a thread discussing why we don't pray to dead "saints", there'd be plenty of Catholics defending why they do. Those with thin skins don't need to be on OPEN threads anyway. It's too bad that it takes threads like this to expose them.
Isn't that more commonly called necromancy?
Would that include me, even ALL the way over here? 😃😃😀😄😂
How do we even know for sure, if these so called "Saints" are even saints? Some of them might actually be in Hell. We don't know for sure.
Thank you! I was wondering when someone was going to bring that up. Trying to contact the dead is a no-no:
When someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? Consult God’s instruction and the testimony of warning. If anyone does not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. (Isaiah 8:19,20)
King Saul paid a heavy price for seeking out Samuel from the dead. I don't recall God revoking that command anywhere.
Best to accept that even your side is full of errors also.
Thank-you for this posting and God Bless.
You think 'Abraham's bosum' was talking explicitly of Heaven? To take on a view such as that one would need to have converted a compartment of Sheol --- a "place of waiting" said to be part of and within the underworld --- into being Heaven itself. Wowza.
Did you know that a portion of present-day Catechism of the Catholic Church rather supports the notion of an underworld separated into differing parts -- and one of those parts, it is related there, to have been "Abraham's bosum"?
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1R.HTM;
Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell" - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into "Abraham's bosom": "It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Saviour in Abraham's bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell." Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.
In the example that you had cited from Scripture, what is being discussed involves a man in a place of torment -- in hell, could it be said? --- who was not praying to anyone then presently at that time, necessarily in Heaven, at all(!), and perhaps more importantly, if we are to reference the same passages seeking guidance for how to pray, it should be noticed that the prayer entirely failed. Not exactly the kind of scriptural support & recommendation that would be required in order for yourself to falsify a statement made by daniel1212. That statement here again, was;
It may have been more than simply only "a story".
af_vet_1981's own rather snarky reply;
So you'd like to play it that way, huh?
Ok, how about yourself [af_vet_1981] do something of the same thing (a not unreasonable request, since you had just demanded from another something similar) and show from scripture where the passage you cited that included Jesus Christ's own mention of such place as "Abraham's bosum" ---should be interchangeably considered that he was talking about Heaven ---instead of Abraham's bosum, at that time anyway, be some place of Sheol?
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