Tag: Quick Apology

Quick Apology: Is Mary “Mother of God”?

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Objection

In today’s post I’d like to offer a quick apology to the following objection:

“Mary is the mother of Jesus, she’s not the ‘Mother of God'”

The idea being expressed here was championed by Nestorius in the 5th Century and condemned at the Council of Ephesus (AD 431). Unfortunately, this is a sentiment often expressed by many Protestants when they hear Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians refer to Mary as “Mother of God”.

Response

In responding to this objection, I simply put forward a few logical statements:

1. Jesus is God

2. Mary gave birth to Jesus

3. Therefore, Mary is the mother of God

I then ask the person with whom I am speaking to identify the perceived error. Does he deny that Jesus is God? Does he deny that Mary gave birth to Jesus? If Jesus is God and Mary gave birth to Him, doesn’t “Mother of God” seems to be an appropriately descriptive title?

To put it in terms of Scripture, in Luke’s Gospel, St. Elizabeth says to Mary “And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43). Is Elizabeth’s “Lord” God? Yes or No? If her “Lord” is God then Mary is “the mother of [her] Lord[/God]”.

One might also consider the Deuteronomic command to “Honour your father and mother” (Deuteronomy 5:16). As we all know, Jesus fulfilled the Law perfectly. So, in fulfilling this command, whom did He honour?

Contrary to what is often proposed, Mary being “Mother of God” does not make her greater than Jesus. It simply establishes her relationship with her Son and Saviour and, like the pronouncements of the Council of Ephesus, safeguards the Church’s teaching concerning the divinity of Christ.

Mother of God

Quick Apology: Chained Bibles

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In today’s Quick Apology post I wanted to turn to the subject of history…

Objection

When speaking about the Catholic approach to Scripture, some Protestants will make the following accusation:

“The Catholic Church used to chain up Bibles!”

Response

The statement is absolutely true; it was not uncommon prior to the Reformation for Bibles to be chained up. When I am told this in a discussion I concede the point, but I then ask the person speaking if they know why this was done…

It is not uncommon to receive as a response, “They chained them up to stop people reading the Bible!”. While the initial statement was true, this explanation as to why Bibles were chained is completely incorrect. In fact, Bibles were chained for completely the opposite reason. Bibles were chained up so that more people had access to the Scriptures!*

You see, prior to the Fifteen Century and the invention of the movable type printing press, Bibles were hand-written. This was an colossal undertaking and therefore extremely costly. This meant that Bibles were expensive items liable to be stolen by thieves. Therefore, in an attempt to provide people with access to the Scriptures, it was common for a Bible to be made available in or around a church building, but to prevent theft, it was chained to a heavy object. If you had a Bible worth tens of thousands of dollars, would you want to leave it unsecured and unattended in a public building?!

If you visit a post office or a bank, you will often see pens chained to immovable services. Do these institutions chain these pens because they don’t want you to use them? Of course not! They want you to use the pens, but they want to make sure nobody steals them! Why? Because if they are stolen then other people won’t have the opportunity to use the pens. It is the same logic at work concerning the chaining of Bibles.

Chained Bible

* It is probably worth pointing out that literacy rates were also extremely low even until the 19th Century. It is for this reason that the most common way of learning the Bible throughout Christian history has been the hearing the Scriptures proclaimed at the Eucharistic liturgy.

Quick Apology: You don’t believe in Thor, do you?

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Up until now, all of the “Quick Apology” posts have dealt with Catholic-Protestant disputes. Today I would like to address a Theist-Atheist issue. I wrote this post several weeks ago, but I heard this specific objection was just a few days ago…

Objection

Probably as a result of the writings of the “New Atheists”, I’ve heard with increasing regularity the statement:

“You don’t believe in Thor do you? You’re almost an atheist – I just believe in one less god than you”

Response

The suggestion here is that Christians are, in fact, basically atheists since they don’t believe in the gods of other religions. The atheist is just like the Christian except that she rejects the Christian God as well.

There’s the suggestion that, since Thor doesn’t exist, then neither does the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. However, this doesn’t really follow, does it? After all, does the existence of counterfeit money mean that real money doesn’t exist? I hope not, otherwise I’ve worked 40 hours this week for nothing! Does the existence of counterfeit love mean that real love doesn’t exist? The recently dumped may think so, but I think generally we can agree that counterfeit love doesn’t disprove real love.

So, in conclusion, the non-existence of Thor has no bearing on the existence of Yahweh. The evidence for each must be weighed independently…

Thor-the-Dark-World

captain-american-one-god

Quick Apology: You can’t pray to dead people

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Continuing in my series of brief apologetic responses, today I would like to look at the subject of Saintly intercession. As I mentioned last time, these will not be thorough, nuanced rebuttals, but simply how I typically would reply when I only have a brief window of opportunity to respond to objections to my Faith.

Objection

I often see on internet forums the following common objection to Saintly intercession:

“You can’t pray to dead people”

Response

In response to this objection I point out that the Saints are not dead:

“…have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” – Matthew 22:32

If Jesus says that the Saints (“Abraham…Isaac….Jacob”) are alive and well, then I think it’s pretty safe to assume that they are indeed alive. Last week we had the Feast of the Transfiguration when Jesus speaks with Moses…a “dead” man (Matthew 17:1-4). Therefore, it is incorrect to call those Christians who have passed away “dead”. They are more alive in God than they have ever been!

Abraham-Isaac-and-Jacob-610x350

Quick Apology: The Deuterocanon

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A couple of days ago I posted some of the important dates concerning the setting of the Biblical canon. Closely related to the subject of the canon is the issue of the deuterocanon, the books referred to by Protestants as “the apocrypha”, which were removed from the canon at the time of the Reformation.

I haven’t done a “Quick Apology” post this week, so here goes. However, rather than dealing with just one objection in this post, today I’m going to provide a series of brief rebuttals of the top ten most common objections raised….

Tobit

Protestants typically say that the deuterocanonical books shouldn’t be included in the Bible because…

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Quick Apology: Why not go to the source?

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Today’s “Quick Apology” is a sequel to an earlier post, Quick Apology: You can’t pray to dead people. In that post I explained how those who have died in friendship with Christ are not “dead”, but are in fact more alive than we are. On Facebook, one of my friends responded with this question…

Objection

“But why would you want to pray to a Saint? Why not just go to the source, Christ?”

Response

This question is a reasonable one and makes sense until we consider everyday Christian practice…

When I meet up with my closest Christian friends, I will almost always ask them for their prayers concerning particular things going on in my life. However, if the above objection were valid, shouldn’t I being going directly to Christ? Why would I ask others to intercede for me when I could just instead make my requests to the Source directly?

To be certain, Christ has a special kind of mediation (1 Timothy 2:5), but that doesn’t preclude other kinds of mediation. In fact, we’re told in Scripture that we should intercede for each other (1 Timothy 2:1). So, the reasons why one would ask the Saints for their intercession are the same reasons why one would ask for the prayers of close friends. As my friend Steve said:

I’ve never seen a man in a true emergency when, for example, a car wreck requires emergency surgery for his young child, opt out of having others pray with him because he’d rather go straight to the Source.

It’s not an either/or proposition. Praying to the Lord directly is a good thing. Asking for the intercession of others is also a good thing. These two things don’t have to be in competition.

“We are taught by the Catholic faith that we may pray not only to God himself, but also to the Blessed in heaven, though in different manner; because we ask from God as from the Source of all good, but from the Saints as from intercessors” – Pope Leo XIII (Augustissimae Virginis Mariae 9)

So, back to the question: why would you want to pray to Saint? Well, when we are baptised, we become part of a very large family, a “great cloud of witnesses”, all united together in Christ. What do good families do? They pray for each other.

When we ask friends to pray for us, I think it’s safe to say that we particularly request intercession from those whom we esteem as being strong in faith since “the prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects” (James 5:16). Who is more righteous than those standing before the throne of God, those in “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…just men made perfect”?

Cloud of Witnesses

PS – I’ll endeavour to do a more thorough post in the future as to what mean when we speak of “prayer” to the Saints. Don’t let me forget…

PPS – Joe over at Shameless Popery also blogged about this topic yesterday. Go check it out 🙂

Quick Apology: Why confess to a priest?

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Objection

Today’s “Quick Apology” concerns a very common objection heard by Catholics from Protestants…

“Why do Catholics confess their sins to a priest? He’s just a man. Why not confess your sins to God directly?”

Response

Obviously, a question like this truly deserves thorough theological treatment. However, since these are quick apologies, these are the points I typically try to make:

1.  Nowhere in the Bible is confession to God through a priest explicitly forbidden. In fact, Scripture explicitly encouraged to confess to other humans (James 5:16).

2. In the Old Covenant, God set up a priesthood for the forgiveness of sins (Leviticus 5).

3. Following this pattern, in the New Covenant Jesus grants His apostles the particular grace and authority to forgive sin:

“He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whoever’s sins you forgive they are forgiven, whoever’s sins you retain, they  are retained'” – John 20:20-23

Why grant this power unless it is to be used? Through exercising this gift, Church leaders are entrusted with a “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18) and to act “in persona Christi” (2 Corinthians 2:10).

However, in addition to these points, when answering the above objection, I try to include a little testimony about the healing I’ve received through the Sacrament Confession. I’ve often found this more effective and lead to more productive conversations than simply giving above the arguments.

confession

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