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Michael Ewing
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| First Name: | Mike | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Cradle Catholic, spiritually left the Church during late teens, dabbled ... |
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Posted: Tue Jan 1st, 2008 05:03 am |
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We were having a discussion in one of the other threads, and the subject of saints began to play a role. It was suggested that maybe we should discuss it in another thread of it's own.
I believe I asked for input on the Catholic concept of the Communion of Saints vs. some of the evangelical protestant perceptions of the definition of the word "saint (lower case s)."
There are some of the mainstream protestant denominations that seem to share our understanding of the Communion of Saints, and recognize these Canonized folks, but many sects do not.
The topic of praying to saints has come up a bunch in conversations I've had over the years, and there was some confusion about the definition of being a "saint."
There are those who believe that when the word "saint" is used in the Bible, it is merely a generic term referring to all of us who are saved, and not a title or rank that various people have been given in the Canonical (I think that's the right word, it's LATE!) sense.
Any input would be appreciated! 
____________________
"Jesus said to him : I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" - John 14:6
"Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up" - Gal 6:9
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David W. Emery
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Posted: Tue Jan 1st, 2008 01:33 pm |
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Catholics have no difficulty with “saints” who are still living. The idea is biblical, after all. (Cf. Colossians 1:2, Ephesians 1:1, Romans 15:25–26, 2 Corinthians 9:1, Revelation 8:3–4, Acts 9:13 and many more passages. The book of Psalms has perhaps more instances of the word than any other. I’m referencing the RSV-CE, which can be searched online at the EWTN website.)
But the usage is different. We prefer the words “justified” and “in the state of grace” to “saint” because we have sort of reserved the name “saint” for those who are canonized.
So really, I see it as a matter of semantics. No real disagreement with Protestants.
The part that bothers most Protestants is that we also accept those in heaven as saints and make a big deal of them. This is merely the difference between the Catholic both/and and the Protestant either/or.
David
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MichaelStEdmund
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| First Name: | Michael | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Convert from pentacostal/charismatic/holiness background |
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Posted: Mon Jan 7th, 2008 12:41 pm |
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Michael Ewing wrote:
We were having a discussion in one of the other threads, and the subject of saints began to play a role. It was suggested that maybe we should discuss it in another thread of it's own.
I believe I asked for input on the Catholic concept of the Communion of Saints vs. some of the evangelical protestant perceptions of the definition of the word "saint (lower case s)."
There are some of the mainstream protestant denominations that seem to share our understanding of the Communion of Saints, and recognize these Canonized folks, but many sects do not.
The topic of praying to saints has come up a bunch in conversations I've had over the years, and there was some confusion about the definition of being a "saint."
There are those who believe that when the word "saint" is used in the Bible, it is merely a generic term referring to all of us who are saved, and not a title or rank that various people have been given in the Canonical (I think that's the right word, it's LATE!) sense.
Any input would be appreciated!
As is usual, much of the misunderstanding IS semantic in nature, simply because after 500 years Protestants and Catholics don't speak the same language anymore and because suspicion tends to remain fairly high.
We believe in saints, therefore we are not supposed to believe in "living" saints. We have priests, therefore we aren't supposed to believe in a general Christian priesthood. In Protestantism, we're dealing with a black-and-white approach that tries to force us to pick one option or the other. Catholicism knows that life is not that simple, and that quite often we can/should embrace not just one option but BOTH.
I think another thing that bothers Protestants is how "official" it all is, as if the Church gets a vote on who is and who isn't in Heaven's "Rock & Roll Hall of Fame," etc. Like the very fact that we have creeds and dogmas, this is troublesome to them and quite extra-biblical from their point of view.
If you ask them if they have "Heroes of Faith," you'll find out that they idolize a great many people - Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Finney, Moody, Sunday, Wigglesworth, etc. These are their "saints," their role models, their heroes. They'll probably include them in the "cloud of witnesses" that Hebrews chapter 11 speaks about - just as we use the same passage to talk about the saints.
When we look back in time to the early days of the Church, we'll find "sainthood" beginning with the veneration of martyrs - people who had lived lives of heroic virtue to the very end and had given their lives to the cause of Christ. These were people who had, as St. Paul would say, fought the good fight and had finished the course, in a way that was above and beyond the norm.
You could ask without the least bit of sarcasm, "Do you think God's holy martyrs (or others who may not have been martyrs but who lived lives of heroic virtue) deserve the overcomer's crown that Revelation speaks of? These people didn't just squeak into Heaven. They stormed its gates." You might meet a difficult person who would say no, but an honest Christian of practically any stripe would have to say yes.
This is pressing toward an uncomfortable issue, because most Protestants I've met believe that "everyone is special so no one is special," to borrow an idea from "The Incredibles." We're all equal and God is no respecter of persons, etc. I'm reminded here of the story of the elderly woman who stubbornly insisted that she was "just as much of a saint as the apostle Paul." Well, if she's simply talking about being justified before God, then yes, on principle she's right. If she's talking about holiness and laying down her life for the faith, then she's dead wrong.
That is our "parting of the ways," then. Sainthood as being one of the saved or sainthood as having lived a life of heroic virtue. The Catholic definition goes back to the root of "Saint" - "sanctus" - HOLY. I'll go out on a limb here - St. Paul used the word "saint" regarding his rough brood of young believers in a way that often seems to be truly "forward" thinking ... a bit like the elementary school teacher who might, without sarcasm, refer to her class as "bright students" as a way to encourage them to step up to the plate and be everything they can be.
I'm sure there's more ... I know there is ... but I've reached the end of this post ...
____________________
"Faith seeking understanding" - St. Anselm of Canterbury.
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Michael Ewing
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| Joined: | Mon Dec 24th, 2007 |
| Location: | Iowa USA |
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| First Name: | Mike | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Cradle Catholic, spiritually left the Church during late teens, dabbled ... |
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 03:35 am |
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Great stuff, Michael, thank you!
I think alot of protestants, especially evangelicals, believe that we believe that those who we call Saints have "worked" their way into heaven, and that by praying to them and asking them to intercede for us is blasphemy, because Christ is the only intercessor or whatever. Any thoughts on this?
Once again, very good stuff, thanks!
Mike
____________________
"Jesus said to him : I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" - John 14:6
"Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up" - Gal 6:9
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DrDave
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| First Name: | Dave | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Cradle - Lapsed - Renewed Catholic |
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 04:17 am |
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James 5:16 says "... pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."
If we follow this command, then we are interceding for others. By this action we become mediators between them and God.
The verse that many Protestants use to justify their denial of asking the saints in heaven for their intercession is "For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" 1 Tim 2:5
Ultimately however this verse, used in this way end up proving more than they want it to. If the saints cannot mediate between God & man, then neither can we, and obeying James 5:16 becomes an exercise in futility.
What we believe as Catholics is not that we, or the saints supersede Christ role as the one perfect mediator between Man and God, but rather that we, alongside the saints participate in Christ's role as mediator. Sometimes I imagine this like an hourglass with Christ as the neck through whom our prayer, and ultimately ourselves must pass on our journey toward the beatific vision
Regards Doc
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David W. Emery
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 09:11 am |
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DrDave wrote:What we believe as Catholics is not that we, or the saints supersede Christ role as the one perfect mediator between Man and God, but rather that we, alongside the saints participate in Christ's role as mediator.
Spot on. This is the difference between the Protestant either/or and the Catholic both/and. MichaelStEdmund describes the same difficulty at length above. The refusal to allow for both parts of reality — the positive and the negative, the intellectual and the affective, the active and the passive, the human and the divine — to penetrate their thinking leaves them unable to comprehend the simplest of God’s dealings with man.
Michael makes another remark that I see weighing heavily on the Protestant view of Catholicism:
I think another thing that bothers Protestants is how "official" it all is, as if the Church gets a vote on who is and who isn't in Heaven's "Rock & Roll Hall of Fame," etc. Like the very fact that we have creeds and dogmas, this is troublesome to them and quite extra-biblical from their point of view.
Many Protestants have been told that the Catholic Church is full of legalism, so they just assume that this is how everything is with Catholics. If it isn’t “official,” if it isn’t laid out in fine, legalistic detail, it couldn’t possibly be Catholic. And when they discover that Catholics don’t really think that way, nothing fits. They must be “bad Catholics.” It just cannot be that the Holy Spirit is moving within the Catholic Church.
As has been intimated here, the frequent Protestant dichotomy of official doctrine (rejection of the communion of saints in favor of a virtual this-world-only view of salvation) and personal practice (the yearning for eternal life and communication with those in heaven) is yet another exemplification of how devastating this intellectual trait can be. It leaves them, ultimately, in doubt as to whether life after death can exist.
David
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MichaelStEdmund
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 09:54 am |
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Michael Ewing wrote:
Great stuff, Michael, thank you!
I think alot of protestants, especially evangelicals, believe that we believe that those who we call Saints have "worked" their way into heaven, and that by praying to them and asking them to intercede for us is blasphemy, because Christ is the only intercessor or whatever. Any thoughts on this?
Once again, very good stuff, thanks!
Mike
I'm glad that I was able to hammer a few concepts together, and that they made sense to you.
As I think I mentioned in a recent post, Catholics and Protestants have very different ideas about death:
One of the beautiful things about Catholicism is that we realise that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Looking back on my evangelical life, I realize that although we told ourselves that our loved ones were in Heaven, in a practical sense we might as well have believed in annihilation. We never thought of them as being part of the same living Church that we were - somehow they were beyond knowing or caring about us, hidden away, shut behind the massive door of death, with their tears wiped away and their memories wiped clean.
Part of this "gap" in understanding is caused by having II Maccabees torn out of their Bibles. As a result, "Bible Christians" just don't have the basic information to work with. The most famous passage in Maccabees deals with prayers for the dead, but there's another passage that shows the prophet Jeremiah (who was long dead) praying and interceding for his people (15:14). So it's not a "Catholic thing," it's a Jewish thing and it's an Old Testament thing - at least if your Old Testament hasn't been vandalized. It's a passage like this that makes the passages in Revelation (such as 5:8) in which the angels and saints are offering our prayers to God understandable.
Some Protestants will lean on the warnings against necromancy in the Old Testament, as if what we're doing is practically holding a seance or something, when it's nothing of the sort. Others with a background in anthropology might accuse us of a novel form of "ancestor worship" that slides toward a Hinduistic cluttering of demi-gods, each one with their own power or specialty (patron saint of this or that, etc.).
At the same time time, you've probably known many Protestants who would go to a cemetary and say a few words to their loved ones there. Or if you have a loved one who has died, a Protestant friend might say, "I'll ask Mom to put in a few good words for her" or something like that. The formal belief in praying to the dead isn't there, but the need and the tendency to certainly is.
____________________
"Faith seeking understanding" - St. Anselm of Canterbury.
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Michael Ewing
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| Joined: | Mon Dec 24th, 2007 |
| Location: | Iowa USA |
| Posts: | 58 |
| First Name: | Mike | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Cradle Catholic, spiritually left the Church during late teens, dabbled ... |
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Posted: Wed Jan 9th, 2008 04:53 pm |
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Thanks Michael.
I made mention in another thread about starting yet ANOTHER thread to ask some questions about the canon of the Bible. The so-called Apocryphal books will be the subject line. I would appreciate any insight from you and anyone else as I'm trying to put together a set of arguments (first in my own mind and heart) and then later with my protestant brothers.
Thanks again.
Mike
____________________
"Jesus said to him : I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" - John 14:6
"Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up" - Gal 6:9
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