You constantly shift issues and will not stick to the issue. In reply to the above:

1. True. No point rebutted.
2. "Intercession to God..." Exactly. Not to a person, but to God on behalf of someone. So you are on our side now?
3. True, obviously. I have shown "asking" and praying are two different concepts. Praying in Hebrew culture was to God. Still remains undisputed by you. Only rebuttal is "but definition of prayer changes". The argument is irrelevant to the Hebrew concept.
4. True. Still haven't successfully rebutted any point.
5. True in a general sense. Still have not rebutted main issue.

I understand you are arguing with numerous people. However, the main issue is prayer to Mary and Saints. You brought in veneration and is off-topic. It is not relevant to the main issue.

You post a lot of information in posts and generally most of it is off-topic or eddied in a side issue. You seem very knowledgeable but are distracted by extraneous information not quite relevant to the main issue. You have not successfully justified you're position.

The question of where in Jewish tradition was the vernation and prayers to saints is a moot point. With the exception of a few prophets there were no human souls in Heaven until the harrowing of hell after the Crucifixion. However, we do see Moses and Elijah speaking with our Lord at the Transfiguration, and were present to the apostles there. In the bosom of Abraham we see that Lazarus was aware of the suffering of Gehenna and all were aware of the sinfulness of the brothers of the rich man on earth. In the old testament we see Angels, teaching mankind and participating in heavenly worship and like wise we are told that the faithful will be like Angels when we end this earthly existence.

The early church in Acts contained the first generation of Saints and Martyrs so how exactly would they have prayed or venerated themselves in Heaven? You see later in the book of Revelation of St. John you see the elders (the aforementioned first generation of Saints) in Heaven offering the prayers of the faithful as incense to the altar of the Lamb. Part of the problem here is the error of scripture alone. If you are programmed to only accept the books of the Bible as the only source of revelation of God you have cut yourself off from the teaching of the Church which is eternal. We have been able to deepen our knowledge and understanding by the Early Fathers and the Church along with Holy Scripture which together are meant to be the source of teaching and understanding. As our Lord has said to the Apostles, disciples and their successors in Luke 10:16 "He who hears you hears Me, and he who rejects you rejects Me, and he that rejects Me rejects Him who has sent Me."

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This idea that asking someone to pray for you is the same as praying to saints is a bad analogy. I don't bow down in front of a friend and "pray" to him in order that he pray for me.

There are different verbs for "ask/request" and "pray" for a reason, both of which are used in the Bible. Prayer is more reverent. Reverence is for God alone. Prayer is not this false equivalence of "asking" a friend. Prayer in Hebrew culture was to God alone, and was reverent. Paul was Hebrew. He wrote from a Hebrew perspective. All of the New Testament writers were Hebrew.

And yes Mary is Blessed among women because God blessed her. Not because she is God. A tabernacle is unimportant under the Law of Christ. Mary was a human. No better than my mother. She was lucky to be chosen to be the human vessel to carry God, but she did not become a God herself.

The Roman hold on Catholic minds all stems from stubbornness in my humble opinion. The whole island of Ireland remained Catholic solely out of hate for the British. Arguments like "Mary is like mama, that's why we pray to her" make no sense theologically.

There are Catholic doctrines with which I disagree, that have legitimate argumentation behind them. Intercessory prayer to Mary and Saints is not one of them. Hebrew thought was completely different from the Roman conception of polytheism. Hebrews never thought of praying to anyone but God. And the New Testament writers were.... Hebrew. This is so evident it needs no further elaboration. Only stubbornness remains at this point.

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To "pray" means to ask, or request. It doesn't mean to worship. Bowing down, like Joshua did to the OT ark of the covenant, didn't mean he was worshiping it; it only meant that it is holy, like the NT ark of the covenant is. And Mary is "Blessed among women," which means she is the most blessed woman of all time, and she wasn't "lucky" to have been the living tabernacle of God..She was chosen from all time to be the new Eve, who, BTW, was also immaculately created (but threw hers away through disobedience.). You say she is a "God," Catholics do not, so I don't have a clue about your strawman argument. And you are totally wrong about intercessory prayer. Paul recommends it, and James says that the prayers of a righteous person are powerful, and who is more righteous that a LIVING person in heaven (dead in the body does not = dead in the spirit.)

Here's what 2 of the smartest Christians who ever lived thought about intercessory prayer from so-called "dead" people...

Jerome
"You say in your book that while we live we are able to pray for each other, but afterwards when we have died, the prayer of no person for another can be heard. . . . But if the apostles and martyrs while still in the body can pray for others, at a time when they ought still be solicitous about themselves, how much more will they do so after their crowns, victories, and triumphs?" (Against Vigilantius 6 [A.D. 406]).


Augustine
"A Christian people celebrates together in religious solemnity the memorials of the martyrs, both to encourage their being imitated and so that it can share in their merits and be aided by their prayers" (Against Faustus the Manichean [A.D. 400]).
"At the Lord's table we do not commemorate martyrs in the same way that we do others who rest in peace so as to pray for them, but rather that they may pray for us that we may follow in their footsteps" (Homilies on John 84 [A.D. 416]).
"Neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from the Church which even now is the kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ" (The City of God 20:9:2 [A.D. 419]).

You haven't shown that asking and praying are two different concepts or shown any evidence to support your position about the Hebrew concept of prayer.

The reason I talked about veneration and all the rest is because that's where this issue goes. I'm covering all the inevitable points.

Can you support your point that prayer means something different than ask, wish, entreat? It doesn't in Greek or English until very recently, as I showed you.

I'm not convinced by writings of Augustine or Jerome. Augustine is where Calvinism originated. Would you support that too? I'm guessing you would not.

K2, I will not list every time someone prays to God in the Bible as proof that prayer is only for God. Too many examples. But every time someone does pray in the Bible, it is to God. And I can't "prove" the inverse negative of the argument, namely, that no one in the Bible ever prayed to anyone BUT God.

Too prove me wrong, you must have an example from the Bible of someone praying to someone other than God. Otherwise, intercessory prayer (as you understand it) originated with man and not scripture.

Intercessory prayer is to God on BEHALF of another.

Thaddeus has come closest to a valid argument in my opinion, in that departed individuals are not "dead" so in essence you are "asking" them to pray for you like you would a living individual. But if you can't "ask" an individual because they are not living on earth, then you are closing your eyes and "asking" by communicating outside of time where God and Heaven reside. But if you are going to "ask" for prayer in this manner by crossing the uncrossable, why not pray directly to God instead of "asking" across the abyss.

There still has never been an example of someone in the Bible "asking" a friend in this manner, who has "crossed the abyss", for that person to pray to God for the requester.

This is a kind of vocabulary tautological argument. You say that the definition of prayer is to God because in the bible it says people pray to God.

The problem is, the word for prayer in the scriptures does not carry the connotation of "to God" that it does today.

In other words, you need to show that all of the times the word for ask, entreat, wish, plead, etc are used NOT to God, that those are a different word than the word for prayer. Translation can bring errors, or if not outright errors, certainly implications that may not be in the original text.

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Too prove me wrong, you must have an example from the Bible of someone praying to someone other than God. Otherwise, intercessory prayer (as you understand it) originated with man and not scripture.

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Actually that's not really correct. What you need to show is that:

1. The word for prayer in Hebrew (and/or Greek in the Septuagint) in the OT is used exclusively for requests to the Divine, and a form of worship. And that other words that could be translated correctly by the English word payer are not, because they're fundamentally different - not artifacts of translation.
2. The words for prayer in Greek in the NT are used in the same way.
3. The word prayer in English is being used in the same sense consistently.

If we translate a word as prayer sometimes and request in others based on context, all you're going to discover by looking for the word "prayer" is find translation bias. That proves nothing. For what its worth that doesn't make the translation bad, it just means you're asking the wrong question of it. And, this sort of translation judgment happens all the time - we translate a word one way in one context, and a different way in another, to best convey the sense of the passage.

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Intercessory prayer is to God on BEHALF of another.

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Yes. That's what we're asking the saints to do, to pray with us, to our God.

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Thaddeus has come closest to a valid argument in my opinion, in that departed individuals are not "dead" so in essence you are "asking" them to pray for you like you would a living individual. But if you can't "ask" an individual because they are not living on earth, then you are closing your eyes and "asking" by communicating outside of time where God and Heaven reside. But if you are going to "ask" for prayer in this manner by crossing the uncrossable, why not pray directly to God instead of "asking" across the abyss.

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This is just an argument against asking anyone to pray for you instead of praying to God directly. Since the scriptures tell us to pray for one another and to ask each other to pray for us, this is a bad argument.

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There still has never been an example of someone in the Bible "asking" a friend in this manner, who has "crossed the abyss", for that person to pray to God for the requester.

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That proves nothing. The scriptures carry no claim of completeness, theological OR liturgical. The canon wasn't set when many of the examples I gave of intercessory requests were written. What then?

To illustrate.

When Shakespeare wrote "I pray, sir, tell me, is it possible
That love should of a sodaine take such hold?"

Is that person praying to God? Are they offering worship to the person they're praying to?

I dont have any problems with any thing they are saying, but they also don't talk about specifically asking a certain saint to find your keys for you.

I suppose my concern is different than the other protestants.

I have no problem with the concept of intercessory prayer. I believe that the saints, all of them, are praying for the Church. what level of awareness they have of the specifics of our lives... no clue. We dont get a good glimpse of that but it's likely we will find out eventually

When I was a child and I prayed, I would ask God to put my Meme on the line so I could tell her about my day. I know she prays for me, my mother, the whole Church. I dont know that she has the ability to watch my daily life and know what is going on.


My problem usually gets into the idea of how present is Christ in these prayers and how far into pagan superstition does the subject of patron saints and whatnot get.

If that is your rebuttal, no use debating. That is a flat out ridiculous argument. I was going to post a long explanation using Hebrew and Greek definitions, which is overkill, but that post shows you are not attempting to argue in good faith.

I'll just take that as a concession that you can't prove the point. Rad.

jrico2727 said:

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To put this in the most relatable terms possible, go to Mama. If you got in trouble at school or got a bad grade who do you tell first dad or Mom? Who is the person most people would never refuse? That would be their mother. Mary has a relationship with God we could never imagine. She is the Mother of the son, the spouse of the Spirit and the daughter of the Father. James 5:16 states "The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful."

The reason I said a all of us uniting our prayer with Mary would be powerful and miraculous is because miracles through her intercession have happened before and our sure to happen again, look at the battle of Lepanto for example. We are taught that at the cross Jesus gave Mary to all of us to be our spiritual mother. Think how moved she would be if all her sperated children got together for the first time in 1000 years. Our Lord taught us that a house divided cannot stand, if we all could unite as the body of Christ there would be an abundance of miracles and we would be a sign for the world.

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I wanna say something about the Wonderful Counselor...