Hi, David —

Thanks for your questions.

You asked the very same questions I asked as Protestant Minister. Obviously, I'm now a lay Catholic, so I hope you are ready for some answers that are going to shatter both:

• What you think the Catholic Church teaches, and
• What you think the Bible says.

Let me warn you this is not going to be a short dialogue if you are really interested in getting at the truth. Let's start with some simple ones.

Regarding the Canon of Scripture:

The books Protestants call Apocrypha, and the rest of Christianity call Deuterocanonicals, were not added at the Council of Trent. (1545-1563) The Council of Trent simply restated the work of three prior Councils. Trent did so in response to Luther removing several books from his canon.

The story goes as follows. In 382 A.D., the Council of Rome was the first to give us the canon of the Bible we have today. It gave us 27 books in the New Testament and 46 in the Old Testament. You can actually find writings of Augustine (from that time period) in which he lists the exact same canon. Over the next few decades, the local Councils of Hippo and Carthage repeated the same list.  Finally, in 787 A.D., the entire Church at the 7th Ecumenical Council (Nicea II) restated the matter.

Now, look at the dates. Three Councils of the Church, prior to 420 A.D. and the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, acknowledged an inspired canon of 73 books. It took a while for the whole Church to recognize the entire Canon, but that, probably, had to do more with distances, travel, and time. Back then the word didn't get around all that quickly.  The reason I mention this is crucial.

You see, prior to Ephesus and Chalcedon, the Church was virtually undivided. At Ephesus, a group called the Nestorians went into Schism. At Chalcedon, a group called the Monophysites went into Schism. The Chaldean Christians currently in Iraq are modern day Nestorians. While Egyptian Coptic and Armenian Apostolic are modern-day Monophysite Christians. These groups went into schism in the 5th century. That's roughly 1,000 years before the Council of Trent. If the Council of Trent added these books, it would figure that these other Christians wouldn't have them in their Bibles, but the fact is, they do!

Moving on to the Second Council of Nicaea (in 787 A.D.) While Rome, Hippo, and Carthage were local Councils, the Second Council of Nicaea was an Ecumenical Council, or a Church-wide council. This was the last Church-wide Council before the Schism of 1054 A.D. which gave us the political split between the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Churches.

This Second Council of Nicaea dealt with a variety of issues and, as a matter of housekeeping or under what might be called old business, she took up the matter of the Canon. In other words, the list of books hadn't been questioned since the 5th century. It was the same list Catholics have today. The same Councils that gave us the 27 books of the New Testament, gave us 46 in the
Old Testament. If the Council was wrong with one aspect, they could be wrong with both, so if
you can't trust all 46 books in the Old Testament, you can't trust all 27 in the New Testament.
You can't have it both ways.

Returning to my point, the Second Council of Nicaea dealt with this matter almost as an afterthought. It was settled by prior local councils. It was universally settled and accepted. There was no dispute. The Bible had 73 books, Period. The Second Council of Nicaea said, well let's elevate this to the level of a conciliar decree of an Ecumenical Council rather than just sticking with the Tradition that we've accepted for several centuries.

And again, if the Catholic Church added these books at the Council of Trent, then there is no way that the Orthodox would have them in their Bible. The split with Constantinople was pretty ugly.
The Orthodox don't recognize the Council of Trent. In fact, they had their own Council at Jassy in response to Luther. At Jassy, they restated the work of the Second Council of Nicaea and a couple books which Eastern Churches had long held in high regard but that was politics. The point is they pointed to the prior work of Church Councils; they didn't point to the Council of Trent.

Before we move on from this topic, we need to mention that Luther, not only ripped (7) seven books out of the Old Testament but wanted to take out the books of:

• James
• Hebrews, and
• Revelation

from the New Testament. And he would have had his way if his fellow Protestant Reformers hadn't stopped him.

We can now move on to the Protestant heresy of Sola Scriptura. That is:

The Bible is the Sole Rule of Faith.

• If the Bible is the sole rule of faith then don't you think it ought to say so itself?

The fact is, it says quite the opposite. Given some time, we will explore those Scriptures that make it clear that Christ established a Church and Her authority to establish doctrine based on both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, but for now, I'll leave you to ponder on this.

If the Bible is the sole rule of faith, then the Bible itself ought to provide us with an inspired table of contents, but it doesn't!

Leaving aside the dispute we have over the Old Testament, let's deal with the New Testament. We all agree there are 27 books and we agree on what they are.

The problem is that none of those 27 books contains the list of New Testament books that should be in the Bible.

• Matthew
• Mark
• Luke
• John
• Paul
• James
• Jude, and
• the author of Hebrews

Not one of them says,

Attention all Christians, these are the books which belong in what you shall call the New Testament.

In fact, none of them knew they were writing Scripture as they were writing it. Paul was simply writing to the Churches he established. When he tells Timothy — that all Scripture is inspired —
he doesn't mention what all Scripture is and from the context of his letter to Timothy, the only Scripture that Paul is talking about is the Scriptures that Timothy was familiar with: namely the Old Testament Scriptures.

My point is this: once you accept the Bible as authoritative on any level, whatsoever, you are, by default, accepting the authority of the organization and process by which the list of books was given to you.

Hence, Sola Scriptura is a self-defeating and self-denying doctrine. The moment you say, I accept the 27 books of the New Testament, you are accepting the Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage. In other words, you are accepting as supreme authority something outside the Bible
in order to know what the Bible is!

As I said, don't expect this to be a short dialogue. We have a lot of ground to cover. As long as you are willing, we'll talk to you about it but the answers won't be short and you are going to be stretched.

You seem like an honest guy, who is going to make a great Catholic so I may as well welcome you now. You've asked good questions, very good questions. They are the same questions whose answers eventually forced me to leave the pulpit to become a Roman Catholic lay person.

God Bless,

Under His Mercy,

John DiMascio

Hi, David —

Glad to be of service.

If you have any further questions about that canon, just shoot us a line, because there is more evidence that can be discussed or, if you wish, we can move on to another question when you are ready.

John D.

Hi, David —

Thanks for your questions.

I can tell you are sincere in your inquiries and the issues you have raised are central to the differences between Catholics and Protestants. You have your finger on the right nerve.

Because I have limited time and can't do all of this in one sitting, I would like to start with one of your many topics: Salvation.

Let me begin by affirming something that was implicit in the Scripture you quoted and then we can address the crux of your question regarding the maintenance aspect of salvation. When talking about Salvation, maintaining and the maintenance aspect of salvation are not words Catholics would use. I find it probably a key to clarifying a few things but lets first address the basics.

Catholics believe that salvation is by grace alone, a work of God only possible with man's cooperation, essentially, our Yes. We deny irresistible grace. The reason for this is that, while God is omnipotent, He is love, and love respects free will. The corollary to irresistible grace is
a view of predestination that includes both predetermined salvation and condemnation.

This, unfortunately, was one of Calvin's contributions. While we, too, embrace predestination, we do so in a way where God has willed and completed our salvation without compromising our free will. The idea that God would will that anyone be damned was condemned at the Council of Trent and is simply inconsistent with Paul in 1 Timothy 2:4 and 1 Timothy 4:1. Likewise, there is no Pelagianism here <Pelagianism – a heresy of the fifth century, which denied original sin as well as Christian grace.> God even provides us with the grace to say Yes to Him — but always in freedom.

That being said, the life in grace is a response to God in the freedom of His Own Spirit acting within us. Faith, hope, and charity are inextricably linked and not able to function without the other. That is why James said, faith without works is dead:

14 What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works?
Can his faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

18 But some one will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe — and shudder. 20 Do you want to be shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, 23 and the scripture was fulfilled which says, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness"; and he was called the friend of God. 24 You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the harlot justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.

(James 2: 14-26 (RSV))

Ultimately, we are admitting there must be a quality to the life of faith that extends beyond some type of rational fiat, but is rooted in a life of obedience to God: faith in action. That is why Catholics say the theological virtues: Faith, Hope and [Love|Charity], are interconnected and mutually dependent on each other. (cf. 1 Corinthians 13 and 1 Peter 1:3). If you were to reread Romans you will find the thesis of the book is actually not pitting faith against works but highlighting the obedience of faith, which is obedience to the Will of God that transcends even the written law, namely circumcision, which the Jews were Hell-bent on adhering to.

The context of Romans is essential to understanding its intent, namely, to demonstrate that circumcision was no longer the covenantal means of Justification. In the New Covenant, justification is a work of God's grace, through the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love which attest to the life of the Spirit within us. Even most Protestants say that the quality of faith must be one that naturally would include a life of obedience and faith in action.

Where we are finding the qualitative difference usually is more central to the nature of justification itself, as a forensic verses intrinsic matter. That is a lengthy discussion in itself.

In short, the first point is this:

The faith we consider essential is tied to the other virtues, which are rooted in the grace of God, empowered by His Own Spirit. We can be obedient to God because He has graced us to be;
we merely have to say Yes. Even our weaknesses are for his strength to shine through. We come to the full stature of Christ fully justified, sanctified, and transformed inasmuch as we surrender with our Yes to God.

So, we do maintain our life of grace but it is God working in us. Only our Yes is required.
We please Him in surrendering our will to His. There is no work that we do that is pleasing to God that is apart from His Grace. Our faith, our works, our hope, all belong to the life in the Spirit.

Finally, the issue of merit is implicit in your question.  This is another lengthy topic.

We believe that while Christ alone merited salvation for us, we do participate in Christ's work as His Body. Even Paul said, see how we can make up for what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ:

24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church,

Colossians 1:24 (RSV-CE)

The very idea of reward, which all Christians firmly believe in, is tied to some form of personal merit. While we may have some personal credit, it is not independent of the grace of Christ from whom we receive it. This is deeply part of the mystery of His Body, the Church.

David, I realize I am going on at length here, and I don't know if I am simply raising more questions than answering questions. There is so much to say and talk about but I've got to get to bed. Some closing thoughts for now.

There is a great book called Catholicism and Fundamentalism. It explains the topics you inquired about pretty well from a Catholic apologetical standpoint (I could send it to you) Also, anything by Scott Hahn would expound our faith very well. (He is a convert and understands that challenges you face. His and his wife's conversion story are told in Rome Sweet Home. You may find it intriguing.

Please don't give up on your girlfriend or the Holy Spirit, which I believe will continue to lead you to the truth. I have seen folks come to appreciate the completeness of the Catholic Faith after digging into these issues in a real, meaningful way. I will pray that we can have a good dialogue and
I can be helpful in sorting out our faith for you.

• Oh yeah, one more thing . . . do you have a Catholic Catechism?

That is definitely where you need to go for a Compendium of the Catholic Faith, with loads of:

• references to Scripture
• historical documents
• councils
• patristics, etc.

Peace for now in Christ,

Bob Kirby

Hi, David —

Thanks for your e-mail. I appreciate your sincerity in investigating these things; all of us should be prayerful seekers of truth, asking the Holy Spirit to enlighten us.

I'm unsure how quickly I'll be able to answer your questions — I have to prepare for a trip home for Christmas. I did want to promptly acknowledge your e-mail. In the meantime, I recommend a few things.

Your questions are very common ones and have been addressed at length, answered from Scripture, on websites such as:

• Catholic.com
• AskACatholic.com, and
• Nazareth Resource Library.

I strongly recommend going to these sites and using their search engines on these topics. Catholic.com has a number of tracts in their Library that address your questions. In fact in several cases I may just refer you to those tracts. AskACatholic.com (which I'm guessing you got my e-mail from) has a lot of questions in its knowledge base that answer these questions. I encourage you to use these resources. I'd be happy, when my schedule has died down a bit, to answer your remaining questions and dialog with you about these topics.

1. Salvation — the key answer here is that when Paul says works of Law, this is a technical term for circumcision and other Jewish rituals. It does not mean deeds of charity.
   See <Information on the Gospel and Salvation>. By the way, we can say that we are saved by faith alone, if understood in an orthodox manner, but because James 2:24 condemns the idea of justification by faith alone, we do not use that language.
   
   
2. The Bible and the Church — Basically, Scripture says the foundation of the truth is the Church (1 Timothy 3:15) and to adhere to both Scripture and Tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:15).
   
   Also see:
   
   
   • <Tradition — the Church Fathers> and
   • <Scripture and Tradition>
     (in particular the Scripture and Tradition web page.)
   
   
3. Deuterocanonical books — The issue in a nut shell is this. There was not a fixed Jewish canon in the first century. The books in question come from the Septuagint translation of the Bible used by Greek-speaking Jews. This translation was overwhelmingly the translation used by the Apostles in Scripture in quoting the Old Testament. Some places in Scripture, the books you question were alluded to by the sacred authors; for example, the story that Hebrews 11:35 cites is found in these books. Anyway, after the Jews and Christians went their separate ways, the Jews drew up their canon because these books you dispute contained some very pointed prophecies of Christ (Wisdom 2), and also in part because they only had Greek versions of them. Some, we now know, were written in Hebrew or Aramaic, though at the time the Jews rejected them. All councils of the Early Church that drew up canons of Scripture (including those that give us the New Testament canon) included the books. This notwithstanding, St. Jerome, one of the greatest Scriptural scholars, did not approve of them, probably on account of his close relationship with the Jews. That being said, he was the only one to object to them until Luther, who rejected them, together with several New Testament books, because they did not fit his theology. Luther's friends persuaded him to keep the New Testament books, but not the Old Testament ones. For more info, see:
   

• The Old Testament Canon
• Information about the Canon of Scripture
• "Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger", a book by Gary Michuta

4. Infant baptism — the explanation for this is rather lengthy, but it's rooted in the radically different assumptions about the meaning of Baptism between Catholics and Protestants
   (or at least Evangelicals).
   
   You said:
   — the Bible says that people who have placed their faith in Jesus need to get baptized as a public testimony.
   
   In Romans 6:3-4, the Bible says,
   
   

   3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

   You see, we draw completely different conclusions from this. You say that people need to get baptized as a public testimony but I see none of that at all in this verse. There is nothing about being public, and nothing about a testimony. If it were so, Philip would not have baptized the Ethiopian eunuch in private by the side of the road. (Acts 8:26-40)
   
   The purpose of Baptism is, as it says, to be buried into death with Him and be raised with Him from the dead. It confers grace, in other words, it communicates the divine life of God through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Also, we see John 3:5 as referring to Baptism (water and the Spirit, just like Jesus's Baptism). So you must be baptized to be saved (1 Peter 3:21). For more details see:
   
   
• Sacraments of the Church, and
• Questions on Baptism
  
  
5. Mary — this is a huge topic. Generally it's best to work through the other issues first and then return to Mary. For something to chew on, go to each of these three sites for more:
   
   
   1. Catholic Answers
   2. AskACatholic.com, and
   3. The Nazareth Resource Library
      
      
• Tracts on Mary and the Saints,
• Web postings on Mary and the Saints, and
• Questions on Mary

6. Prayer — the Latin word for pray is the same as the one to ask.
   In Catholicism, prayer is not worship per se. It's simply addressing God or a saint.
   See:
   
   
   • Praying to Mary and the Saints
   • Praying to Mary and the Saints, and
   • Praying to Mary and the Saints
   
   
7. Papacy — another big topic, for now I'll refer you to:
   
   
   • Peter and the Papacy, Peter and the Papacy,
   • Peter and the Papacy, and
   • Questions on the Pope
   
   
8. Rigid worship — the verse you quote (1 Timothy 4:1-3) referred to the Gnostics who thought marriage was intrinsically evil and were vegetarians. This is very different from some individuals voluntarily giving marriage up for the Kingdom of God as St. Paul
   (1 Corinthians 7:1, 38) and Jesus (Matthew 19:12) recommended. The purpose of not eating meat is to discipline oneself according to 1 Corinthians 9:27.
   
   
   • Yes, St. Peter was married, so what?
     

   The fact that we have a discipline of celibacy now has no relevance to St. Peter's marital state when he was called. There are married clergy in the Catholic church now; it is a discipline, not a doctrine. I'll address some of the other points later.

9. Transubstantiation — First, the Eucharist is not a re-sacrificing of Jesus. It is the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ made present for us today; we are, in a mystical sense, transported to Calvary so that we may receive the fruits of that once-for-all sacrifice.

I think you'd agree with me that the Jewish Passover prefigured the sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the Cross. But the Passover consisted of two elements:

1. the actual killing of the lamb, and
2. the eating of its flesh.

• The Cross satisfied the first, but what satisfies the second? <The Eucharist!>
  
  You do not participate in the Passover unless you eat the flesh of the Lamb. For more information, see:

• Tracts on the Sacraments this also covers some of your other points.
  
• Also see: Is Catholicism Pagan? This doesn't address your Mithraism point directly but it addresses the myth that we got all this stuff from pagan sources.

By the way — your Mithraism charge is vulnerable to John 6. Whether you do or do not interpret John 6 symbolically, it's still God offering his flesh and blood to eat for salvation which, by the way:

• If it's clear from John 6 that Christ our God offered his flesh to eat for salvation, and we take Him at his word and believe it, why on Earth would you accuse us of getting it from Mithraism?
• Think about it: Does that not seem utterly absurd?

Now you have some homework to do. :-) I hope you won't mind me referring you to online resources but you've asked a lot of (really good) questions which cover a very large area that deserve really good answers; it would exhaust me to re-do what's already been done.

Thanks, and have a Merry Christmas.

Eric

Hi, Dave —

I had a chance to sit down and go through some of your questions in detail.

You wrote:
Mary — there are two issues here:

• The adoration/worship of Mary and
• The Perpetual Virginity of Mary.

That's unquestionable — we don't argue with that.

You wrote:
All the followers of God refused to be worshiped in the Bible, including the Apostles. Acts 10:25-26 says,

"As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. But Peter made him get up. 'Stand up,' he said, 'I am only a man myself.'"

Well, it is clear that what he means is that he is not to be worshiped — he says, I am only a man myself, that is to say, I am not God, so honor me as you would honor a man, not as you would honor God. We would never suggest that someone honor a man as God Himself should be honored. That doesn't mean, though, that he's not entitled to some degree of honor.

If you didn't see it, this article is helpful for this issue:

• <Saint Worship?>

Also the Catechism of the Catholic Church, an official presentation of Catholic teaching, speaks on this:

• <"You shall love the lord your god with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind">

You wrote:
When the Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 A.D., he wanted to unify the Roman Empire but soon found that not everyone agreed to forsake their pagan beliefs and embrace Christianity. As a result, Constantine allowed pagan beliefs to be injected into the Church to attract the pagans and this is where the adoration/worship of Mary comes from.

• According to whom?
  
• What are your references?

There are some bogus/unsubstantiated claims circulating. Marian devotion can be traced back to before Constantine. For example, a prayer known as the Sub Tuum Praesidium dates from 250 A.D.:

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.

Sub tuum praesidium from Wikipedia

A Church was erected in honor of Mary in the late third century by Theonas, who was consecrated Patriarch of Jerusalem c. 285 A.D. Also, in Nazareth, there is a 12th century Basilica built over a fifth century Byzantine Church built over a no later than third century place of worship.

Underneath these structures are catacombs even older still (dated to 90 A.D.). These catacombs were apparently used for worship at one time and have a distinctly Marian influence on them. Another source of Marian devotion is the Sibylline Oracles, Book 8. It dates probably to the second century.

Here are a few more early references:

• Epitaph of Abercius (2nd century): This early Christian inscription was found in Phyrgia in 1883. It was self-composed by Abercius who was apparently bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor. The inscription refers to a spotless virgin (parthenos agne)
  
  
  "took in her hands and gave to her friends to eat forever, having sweet wine and giving the mixed cup with bread."
  
  There has been a great deal of scholarly debate as to whether parthenos agne refers to Mary or to the Church at large. The most recent, exhaustive monograph by B. Emmi, O.P. (in Italian for those can read it and would like the title) "considers these and other arguments in detail, examines the opposing interpretations, and from a collation of all relevant contemporary texts, notably the Sibylline Oracles, wherein parthenos agne is found, affirms the entire validity of the Marian interpretation."
  
  
• The earliest known apparition of Mary is an account of Mary's appearance to St. Gregory the Wonderworker (d. c 270 A.D.) from an account by Gregory of Nyssa (335-394 A.D.) Mary appeared with St. John the Apostle, and she tells him to make known to the young man the mystery of true piety to which the Apostle replied that he was willing in the matter to give pleasure to the Mother of the Lord since she so desired.
  
  
• Burial inscriptions in the Roman Catacombs and graffiti in the underground recesses of
  St. Peters apparently refer to Mary as a protectress of the dead and a mediator with Christ. She is honored with Christ and St. Peter. The frescoes in the Catacombs of
  St. Priscilla, are especially rich in Marian pictures.

You wrote:
For example, the cult of Isis, an Egyptian mother-goddess religion, was absorbed into Christianity by replacing Isis with Mary. Many of the titles that were used for Isis, such as Queen of Heaven and Mother of God, were then attached to Mary and she was given a more exalted role. In fact, the first hints of Catholic Mariology occur in the writings of Origen, who lived in Egypt, the focal point of Isis worship.

Not true. Try the writings of St. Justin Martyr in 155 A.D., St. Irenaeus in 190 A.D., and Tertullian in 210 A.D. See:

<The Key to Understanding Mary by James Akin>.

The concept of Mary as Queen of Heaven comes from a few places in Scripture. The most obvious one is in Revelation chapter 12, where the mother of the Messiah is seen in glory in the Heavens with a crown of twelve stars with the moon and sun under her feet.

• You've got a crown, you've got Heaven, what more evidence do you need that she is Queen of Heaven?

Then on the subject of queenship there is Psalm 45:9, which calls her the queen on the right hand of the Messiah. Verse 17 echoes the Magnificat, and verses 12 and 16 suggest both her intercessory power and maternal relationship with the faithful (the latter is also more explicitly stated in Revelation 12:17).

Just a point about the term Mother of God: The point of the title Mother of God has more to do with Jesus than it has to do with Mary. It's a term that concisely proclaims and defends the orthodox teaching about Jesus. This was very important during the 4th and 5th centuries when many heresies arose. It was the custom then and now in the Church to use terms in its liturgy and prayer that reinforced its doctrine; this principle is called lex orandi, lex credendi (as we pray, so we believe, or literally, the rule of prayer, the rule of belief). This makes sense because what people hear and use will sink in and teach them and be hard to dislodge.

• The problem was if you referred to Jesus as the Son of God, it left open the question of whether Jesus was God by nature or whether He was adopted; after all, we all are, in a certain sense, sons of God.
  
• If you called him God, that left the door open to Docetists, who believe he wasn't human.
  
• If you called him Christ, that was an incredibly vague term. Jesus, of course, was worst of all.

But when you call Mary: the Mother of God, you are making an assertion that deftly excludes many current heresies during that period:

If Mary was the Mother of God, then Jesus was totally human, but he was also totally God. He was also God from conception, not adopted, since she would not be the mother of God, but the mother of the man who became God; and he was one person, a divine one.

It is a marvelous term that vanquishes many heresies. So that's why we call her the Mother of God. Note: Of course Mary is not the mother of the Trinity, nor of the Father, nor of Jesus's divinity. What is meant by Mother of God is that:

• God the Son was conceived in her womb and developed there
• God the Son was born from her in Bethlehem
• God the Son suckled at her breasts, and
• God the Son was raised by her.

With respect to Isis worship, it should not surprise you that certain themes tend to surface simultaneously in multiple cultures. Motherhood is *the* dominant idea in every family.

Motherhood is absolutely and utterly universal. The fact that the idea of motherhood, with respect to the gods, arose among the Egyptians should therefore come as no surprise; it would be surprising if no culture had a concept of divine maternity.

You wrote:
the Perpetual Virginity of Mary — the Bible tells us that Mary had other children after Jesus was born. When Mary was pregnant with Jesus, Matthew 1:25 says that Joseph "did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son." In fact, while Jesus was preaching in a synagogue one day, Matthew 13:55-56 tells us that several individuals asked,

"Is this not the carpenter's Son? Is not His mother called Mary? And His brothers James, Joses [Joseph], Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us?"

Catholics could claim that this refers to Jesus' spiritual siblings, but Matthew 12:46-50 says that:

"While He was still talking to the multitudes, behold, His mother and brothers stood outside, seeking to speak with Him. Then one said to Him, "Look, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with You." But He answered and said to the one who told Him, "Who is My mother and who are My brothers' " And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, "Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father in Heaven is My brother and sister and mother."

• If it was already understood that the group who wanted to speak with Jesus was His spiritual family, why did Jesus need to clarify this?

We do not claim they are his spiritual family. We claim that they are either his close relatives or possibly step-siblings. By the way, even Luther believed that Mary was a perpetual virgin.

Briefly, Scripture tells us that the mother of James and Joseph was another Mary (see below). Abraham called his nephew, Lot, his brother at a certain point, so they were loose with the terms.

When the angel came to Mary and told her she would conceive, she said How is this to happen, since I do not know man? Presumably if she intended to have relations with Joseph in a short span of time, she would assume how she was to have children. Traditionally, I do not know man is understood in the indefinite sense, revealing a vow of virginity.

For example, if I said, I do not eat meat, you'd understand that I have no intention to eat meat for the foreseeable future. Also, it would be unthinkable for Jesus to entrust his mother at his death to someone outside his family if several brothers were still alive to take care of her (including an Apostle).

This is a big cultural disconnect to people in the U.S. because we don't live in the Middle East. Families are so close-knit there that I've heard stories even today of extended families living together where children are so close they can't or won't distinguish between their siblings and their cousins. It's a very different culture.

For more info see:

• <"Brethren of the Lord">
• <Mary: Ever Virgin>
• <The Perpetual Virginity Of Blessed Mary: Against Helvidius by St. Jerome>

You wrote:
Prayer — there are three issues here:

• The Form of Prayer
• Praying to Mary and Saints, and
• Praying to and worshipping Idols.

The Form of Prayer — Catholics have a lot of prayers for various things, including prayers for certain days or months, prayers at certain times of the day, prayers for certain occasions, etc. The prayers are very mechanical and contradict what Jesus said in Matthew 6:7:

"And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathens do."

Prayer should be genuine and sincere, not perfunctory and scripted.

Hmmm.

• Why then did God write the Book of Psalms which, for thousands of years, has been used as a scripted text for liturgical prayer?
• Why did Jesus give us a scripted prayer, the Our Father? (Matthew 6:9-13)
  

And by the way, the first century document, the Didache used to teach pagans coming into the Church, related the Lord's Prayer verbatim and said, Pray this three times a day. So the early Christians believed in praying scripted prayers several times a day.

• Also, did the Jews have it wrong when they prayed scripted prayers?
• And why, my friend, do you sing songs in worship, when all a song is a scripted prayer set to music?
• Why do scripted prayers have to be intrinsically insincere and ungenuine?

It's only perfunctory if you make it such. It is entirely possible to pray a scripted prayer with great devotion, fervor, genuineness, and sincerity. Scripted prayer is very useful when you don't know what to pray, don't feel particularly articulate, or are too groggy to compose long and florid prayers off the top of your head. I've learned this from experience.

There is nothing wrong with impromptu or ad lib prayer when you are praying to God alone or with your friends and family. Sometimes it can be a problem in public prayers because, due to the fact that it is unedited and unreviewed, heresies or misunderstandings can arise either intentionally or unintentionally. I vividly remember my first time leading a prayer meeting. I prayed an ad lib prayer something to the effect of praying for people to be reborn (or perhaps I referred to rebirth), having in mind John 3:5 and the grace of being born again, but some people didn't understand and thought I was referring to reincarnation. Oops. There are hazards in ad lib prayer. Also, because of what we believe about the rule of prayer being the rule of faith, prayer has to be carefully and prayerfully determined to ensure that right doctrine is not only ensured but faithfully proclaimed.

Pertaining to your point about vain repetitions, the first thing that I'd point out is that it refers to vain repetitions. The condemnation refers to repetitious prayer that is vain, not to repetitious prayer. This may seem to be a disingenuous distinction but consider Psalm 136.

His love endures forever

is a refrain repeated many, many times in this Psalm.

• Is this wrong?
• Again, what about your songs?
• Are the refrains vain repetitions?

I don't know what your background is, but Pentecostals and charismatics will often pray repetitiously, like Praise the Lord, or Thank you Lord, or Jesus.

• Is this prayer displeasing to God?

The answer to these questions, I maintain, is No.

• What is vain repetition then?

Well, there was a superstition among the pagans that if they knew the name of a god, they could wield control over that god, and the more they repeated that name, the more control they could gain. They used the name of their god as a kind of magical talisman by repeating it mindlessly over and over. This is very different from praying the same prayer every day, especially if we do so sincerely and devoutly (which we always should do, to the extent of our ability). I maintain that any prayer that is sincere and genuine is acceptable to God.

You wrote:

Praying to Mary and Saints — in 1 Timothy 2:5, the Bible says:

"For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus."

• Consequently, how can Mary and saints be mediators between us and God if the Bible says that Jesus is the only One?

Because Jesus is the only mediator between God the Father and man, but all of us can mediate between others and Christ. This is demonstrated by the verses that precede this one:

 1 I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone — 2 for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."

1 Timothy 2:1-4

To be an intercessor is synonymous with being a mediator
(Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002).

You wrote:

• And who is a saint?

Romans 3:23 says:

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

• Are some people less sinners than others and if so, where do you draw the line?

In the most basic sense, a saint is a holy one — a member of the Church (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 823) The term comes from the Latin word sanctus meaning holy.

In a more restricted sense, a saint is a person in Heaven who has been perfected in righteousness. In the usual sense, typically capitalized, a Saint is a reposed Catholic who has received the honor of being recognized with public devotion by the Church (i.e. St. Peter, St. Augustine, etc.)

Whether some people are less sinners than others depends on what you mean by sinner.
There are varying degrees of righteousness. Everyone on Earth is subject to sin (concupiscence).
Some commit more sins than others. Some are more pleasing to God than others.

You wrote:
Most Romans believed in many gods, but focused primarily on one god or considered one god supreme over the other gods. When the Catholic Church absorbed Roman paganism, it simply replaced the pantheon of gods with saints, i.e.:

a god or saint of love, a god or saint of peace, a god or saint of war,
a god or saint of strength, a god or saint of wisdom, etc.

To be honest, I suspect you really don't have a clue. You're grasping; making stuff up. I've never heard of these so-called saints. I don't even know what Greek/Roman gods you're referring to in a few cases. On the off-chance these alleged saints exist, they certainly don't have the popularity they would have if your theory is true.

Patron saints arise for very logical (and sometimes amusing) reasons completely independent of pagan gods, usually pertaining to the skills, loves, deeds, and circumstances of the person in question.

• For example, St. Nicholas of Myra is patron saint of sailors because he raised a sailor from the dead when he was alive and rescued by his prayers more than one vessel. He's also the patron saint of children because he raised some children from the dead while he was alive and rescued many of them from harm. There is no pagan god he was patterned after.
• St. Dymphna is patron saint of mental illness because she rejected her mad father's incestuous advances and he killed her. Again, no pagan god involved.
• St. Lucy is the patron saint of eyes because her eyes were gouged out.

I could go on ad nauseam. A lot of patron saints were assigned long after the Roman gods were dead and gone.

You wrote:
Also, just as many Roman cities had a god specific to the city, the Catholic Church provided patron saints for cities.

21 Test everything. Hold on to the good.

(1 Thessalonians 5:21)

There is this fallacy among Protestants that just because the pagans did something, it is irredeemably contaminated and all Hell will break loose if you so much as touch it.

St. Paul had a different attitude. To him, it didn't matter whether it came from paganism. What mattered is whether it was good. He even identified Christ with a pagan statue of an unknown God. (Acts 17:23). He appropriated their culture for the sake of the Gospel. It all belongs to Christ anyway.

• So what if the early Christians looked at the pagan custom and thought it was a cool idea to ask certain saints to intercede for their cities?
• Is there anything intrinsically evil about this?
  

See Jeremiah 15:1!

Hope this helps,

Eric

Hi Dave,

My previous reply only obliquely addressed some of your questions and I felt moved to make a bit of a possibly unsolicited commentary on Scripture.

First, let me profess that we believe, and I believe, that Scripture is the inspired, inerrant, written Word of God which is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16) but note that I said the Written Word of God.

Protestants tend to assume that the Word of God is synonymous with Scripture but nowhere does Scripture testify to this. In fact, it testifies to the contrary. John 1:1 tells us that the Word, primarily, is the Second Person of the Trinity but it is also Oral Tradition.

• 25 The grass withers and the flowers fail, but the word of the Lord stands forever. And this is the word that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:25)
• 13 And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe. (1 Thessalonians 2:13)
• 34 He whom God sends speaks God's word, for God gives the Spirit without limit.
  (John 3:34)

In fact, if you carefully examine Scripture, while admittedly it is called God-breathed, Scripture never expressly says that Scripture is the Word of God. Now don't get me wrong, we believe that it is but we believe that 1.) by tradition and 2.) by inference, not because Scripture says so. Nevertheless, it is interesting that Scripture always speaks of the Word of God as an oral concept.

And this makes sense, given their world. Books hadn't been invented yet, and neither had paper. Texts were written laboriously on scrolls. Scripture was priced out of the range of your average person, assuming they could even read. The culture was by far more oral than written.

It isn't for no reason that the Reformation quickly followed on the heels of Gutenberg's printing press. This image of the Apostles expecting every Christian to pick up his Bible so he could read and ascertain his own doctrine is an anachronism.

But let's consider another angle, that of the purpose of Scripture. When I first gave my life to Christ, I was determined to do three things:

• Reason what I believed from Scripture alone
• Reject whatever preconceptions I had, and
• Challenge what anyone else told me I should believe.

Now, I think my attitude gave me a unique perspective because my experience revealed that a lot of people trust a lot more in their Church's traditions than they think they do. I took Sola Scriptura to a radical degree. Scripture said that Jesus said, I and the Father are one, so I proposed a duality rather than a Trinity. The Trinity was clearly wrong because it taught that Jesus was equal to the Father but Scripture said that the Father was greater than Jesus. Jesus could not be God, since he himself said, Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. The Holy Spirit seemed to be more of a force than a Person, so that's what I believed. Exodus 23:13 said that the names of foreign gods shall not even be on your lips, so realizing that our calendar is based on names of foreign gods, I adopted the Jewish calendar. (I actually wrote dates such as 14 Nisan 5747 on my checks.) So were the names of the days of the week, so I made up my own.

As I grew older and studied Scripture more, I began to see that my overzealous approach was overly simplistic. New verses seemed to contradict verses I encountered earlier, and I had to reconcile them.

The importance of context became clearer. I saw that terms did not have consistent meaning throughout Scripture. The hodgepodge structure of Scripture began to appear:

• You've got the Jewish part with the Law, the Prophets, the wisdom books, the historical books, and so forth.
• You've got the four gospels which are eyewitness testimonies of the life of Jesus.
• You've got Acts, which is historical;
• a bunch of Epistles, most of which are like eavesdropping on one side of a conversation between a leader and a congregation discussing pastoral problems; and
• Revelation, which is apocalyptic.

What I originally saw as a kind of manual of doctrine, a Catechism, I realized wasn't.

What I mean to say is not that doctrine shouldn't be based on Scripture, but that if you took the greatest evangelist or the greatest teacher in the world and said,

"Sit down and write something for pagans who want to convert to study so they can learn the Christian faith",

the structure would bear no resemblance to Scripture. There is no systematic theology in Scripture, nothing that starts at first principles and logically reasons through everything we believe in an organized and coherent fashion. In order to prove certain principles of the Christian faith, even basic ones such as the Trinity, you:

• not only have to go all over the place to accumulate evidence to support it, but
• you have to refute verses that appear to disprove it.

As my experience proved, to send someone ignorant into Scripture and say Believe what you read, is a recipe for disaster because you really have to know all of Scripture before you can properly interpret any of it (and how many people take the time to know all of Scripture before drawing any conclusions from it?). It's not surprising that there are tens of thousands of denominations with conflicting doctrine, all of which are sincerely convinced that they are the biblical ones.

I love people who claim that Scripture is perspicacious (clear and easy to understand) and then go on to learn Greek so they can read it in the original language. If it's so darn perspicacious,
you shouldn't need to learn Greek to know what it says!

• So what is my point?

My point is, this idea that all you have to do is pick up Scripture and read a few verses and you'll have a conclusive God-breathed answer to your question, is bogus. We need the context of tradition and the guidance of the teaching office of the Church.

I think when I started from ground zero, determined to reason for myself from Scripture what to believe, I captured the essence of Sola Scriptura. And in doing so, what I missed out on was building on 2,000 years of work. Instead of trusting what Jesus handed down, learning it, and being that much further ahead, I started from scratch and had to reinvent the wheel and make the same mistakes thousands of others made.

Eric