Our Lady of Zeitoun (Egyptian Apparition, Coptic Church) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Christianity has a long and fruitful history in Egypt, and when witnesses reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary at a Coptic church in Cairo suburb of Zeitoun in 1968, thousands of people came to see. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli discuss what happened there and whether the apparitions were genuine.

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Testing Ellen Gould White (Seventh-Day Adventist Prophetess) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Seventh-day Adventist founder Ellen White reported receiving more than 2,000 visions from God and that her writings were divinely inspired. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli ask whether Ellen was a genuine prophetess and if her visions were really from God.

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Will God Give Me Whatever I Want? (Prosperity Gospel, Word Faith, Write Your Own Ticket with God)

The Gospels contain some remarkable statements about prayer. They’re found particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, though there are parallels in Mark and Luke.

These statements sound very positive—as if you can ask God for anything you want, and he’ll give it to you so long as you believe.

When people take these passages in isolation—apart from other things the New Testament says—they can develop a false theology of prayer.

In Protestant circles, there is a movement known as prosperity theology (also known as the prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel), according to which God wants all his people to be healthy, wealthy, and highly successful.

If a Christian does not have these blessings, then he either hasn’t asked for them or he hasn’t asked for them in faith. Either way he is at fault.

But a careful reading of the New Testament indicates this view is distorted.

One encouraging prayer text is found in the Sermon on the Mount:

Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened (Matt. 7:7-8).

Jesus doesn’t mention limits on what you may ask for, and you might suppose you could ask for absolutely anything and receive it.

But he also doesn’t give examples. He doesn’t say, “Ask for fabulous wealth, health, and success, and it will be yours.”

He thus may have something more modest in mind, and he may mean this primarily as asking for spiritual rather than material blessings.

In both Matthew and Luke, Jesus immediately gives an analogy based on fathers giving their children things to eat. In Matthew, Jesus concludes that God will give “good things” to his children (7:11), and in Luke he says that God will give them “the Holy Spirit” (Luke 11:13)—suggesting the passage may be primarily about spiritual “good things.”

When we look at the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, we do not find Jesus encouraging dreams of a lavish lifestyle.

In the Lord’s Prayer, he teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (6:11), suggesting a daily, hand-to-mouth reliance on God—not fabulous riches.

Jesus goes on to explicitly state:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (6:19-21).

He thus indicates earthly riches can be a spiritual distraction from God, and we shouldn’t set our hearts on them. He also says:

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (6:24).

He also tells us:

Do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well (6:31-33).

Jesus thus wants us to focus “first” on spiritual values and treat material needs as secondary. Rather than encouraging people to “dream big” about what God could give them, he encourages humble, ongoing dependence—asking God for what we need, not what we dream.

He certainly does not encourage us to imagine a success-filled life with no troubles, saying, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day” (6:34). Again, the goal is living a trusting, spiritual life—not one of runaway success.

Another encouraging prayer text occurs when the disciples ask why they failed to cast a demon out of a boy, Jesus says it was:

Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you (17:20).

This seems paradoxical. Jesus says the disciples have “little faith” but then says that if they had “faith as a grain of mustard seed,” they’d be able to accomplish amazing miracles. If so, shouldn’t their little faith have been enough?

The solution is found by considering who really performs miracles—God—and God’s power is unlimited. Therefore, it ultimately doesn’t matter how big your faith is, because God is the one who performs the miracle.

The reason the disciples failed is that they had inadequate faith and weren’t properly trusting God. Perhaps they thought they had been endowed with magical exorcistic abilities and had lost sight of God when using them.

Another text ripe for abuse occurs in the next chapter:

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven (18:19).

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Agree on anything, ask God for it, and it will be done.

But not so fast. This statement is introduced by the word “again,” telling us that we need to examine the context, because Jesus is restating a thought he has already been exploring.

When we check the context, we find that it isn’t accumulating property for oneself but Church discipline. Jesus has been telling the disciples how to deal with a fellow Christian who sins. He says that if the offender won’t listen to others, take him to the church, and if he won’t listen to the church, excommunicate him. He then says:

Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (18:18).

The statement about agreeing “on earth” is in the context of exercising the power of binding and loosing, which deals with matters of spiritual discipline—not material prosperity.

When Jesus assures the disciples “again” of what will happen when they agree, he’s assuring them of the ability to bind and loose.

The final passage we should consider occurs when the disciples asked how the fig tree withered so quickly. Jesus replies:

Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and never doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and cast into the sea,” it will be done. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith (Matt. 21:21-21; cf. Mark 11:22-24, Luke 17:6).

This is essentially the same point we saw with the failed exorcism: It doesn’t matter the size of what you’re asking for, because God has the power to do anything. And Jesus puts the matter positively, saying that “whatever you ask” will be received.

But there is an unstated assumption that Jesus expects us to understand—that what we ask is in accordance with God’s will.

First century Jews knew not every prayer request is something God wills, and God’s will is the controlling factor.

Jesus himself bore witness to this in the garden of Gethsemane when he prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (26:39).

If the Son of God himself recognized that God does not will to grant every request, we’d better recognize it, too!

Jesus wants to encourage us to pray, and he may not mention this exception every time, but he expects us to recognize it.

It’s certainly found elsewhere in the New Testament. James warns those who boast of their business plans that they need to take God’s will into account, saying, “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that’” (4:15).

He also identifies one of the causes of unanswered prayer: “You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (4:3).

Asking for unlimited wealth and success would be precisely the kind of prayer that won’t be answered.

And that may be a good thing, for Jesus also says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matt. 19:24).

Practical Tips for Being Charitable with Others

A correspondent writes:

I’ve never seen you treat someone uncharitably in a conversation, so my question is, how can I grow in that area so that I’m not allowing my approach to be a stumbling block to my interlocutor?

I have the intention to not stand in the way of truth with my approach but sometimes I fail and could use some practical tips.

Thank you very much! You are too kind!

Regarding being uncharitable, this is something we all have to wrestle with, and we all fail sometimes. “We all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man” (Jas. 3:2).

I try, in any statement destined for the public (whether spoken or written) not to say anything that I would not say to a person’s face.

Getting in the habit of speaking charitably even when a person is not there probably has a spillover effect even when the person is there–i.e., I learn to keep the charitable speech filter on all the time, rather than turning it on and off. At least that’s the goal.

I also try to put myself in the other person’s position as much as possible. If I wouldn’t want something publicly said to me, I don’t want to say it to or about the other person.

In some cases, it may help to think in terms of other, closely related parties as well. For example, suppose I was in a conversation with a man and his wife and children also were present. There are certain things I would not want to say to him in front of those he cares about, lest I undermine him as a husband and father (the same thing would apply with the sexes reversed).

If I wouldn’t want something said about me in front of my loved ones, I shouldn’t say it to another person in front of his loved ones. Nobody should be mocked in front of those they hold most dear.

While these people may not be physically present for a conversation, in the age of the Internet, a person’s loved ones could see the conversation–either live or after the fact–and even if they don’t, the person’s fans will see it, and people care about how they look and are made to look in front of their online followers.

So, the Golden Rule continues to apply: If I wouldn’t want something publicly said about me, I shouldn’t say it about someone else.

All of those are considerations that deal with the reasons not to be uncharitable, but there are also positive reasons to be charitable, which relate directly to one’s own self-interest.

For example, my interlocutor himself is more likely to take me seriously and thoughtfully if he can see I’m being friendly and fair minded toward him.

And, if I’m in a public conversation and those observing it see that I’m clearly being charitable, they will think more positively of me and be more open to what I have to say.

(Conversely, if my interlocutor comes off as less charitable or uncharitable, the audience will correspondingly take a negative view of him and what he is saying.)

There are thus multiple reasons that favor a charitable approach, and by keeping these factors in mind and putting them into practice, the discipline of taking a charitable approach becomes a habit and second nature, though (especially with certain individuals) it can be a challenge and there can be lapses.

Of course, all this deals primarily with how one says something rather than what one says. It is a false charity if one shies away from telling truths that need to be spoken in a given conversation.

Going into minor or tangential matters can display a lack of charity (e.g., you can look like you are beating someone up or going down rabbit trails, even if you remain pleasant and calm), but the main truths that are relevant to a conversation need to come up, even if they are uncomfortable. Yet, with practice and discipline, they can still be spoken in a charitable way.

This is the first time I’ve tried to articulate some of these thoughts, but I hope they are helpful.

How Not to Fight About Words

In his final letter, St. Paul gives Timothy an important exhortation for those under his pastoral care:

Remind them of this, and charge them before the Lord to avoid disputing about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers (2 Tim. 2:14).

In his previous letter, Paul gives an even more strongly worded warning:

If anyone . . . does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit, he knows nothing; he has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling among men who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth (1 Tim. 6:3-5)

As you can see, Paul is not a fan of fights about words.

Yet Paul’s letters are filled with arguments about various issues. How can we square these two facts?

The basic resolution is that Paul cares about substance—that is, what a person believes—and he’s willing to argue about that. But he doesn’t want to argue about expression—that is, how a person phrases his beliefs. Paul is concerned about substance rather than style. As long as the substance of what a person believes is correct, Paul doesn’t want to quibble about how expresses himself.

I’m sure there would have been limits to this. I can imagine situations where Paul would have thought a person was expressing a true thought in a manner that was so misleading that he would have considered it worth discussing.

However, the principle remains: We shouldn’t be quarreling about words in the Christian community. We should recognize that a true belief can be expressed in more than one way, and the mode of expression is not what we should be concerned about.

This is especially true in discussions among different groups of Christians. Because language naturally changes over time, it is only to be expected that different Christians will develop their own ways of using language and their own nuances for terms.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of arguing about words in the Christian community today, and a good bit of it comes from not recognizing how flexible language can be.

People have a natural tendency to assume that words are just meant to be used the way they use them, and if somebody is using them differently, that person must be wrong.

So, let’s look at how some terms have changed over time, and see what conclusions we can draw.

We may learn something about how not to fight about words.

 

Words that Change Meaning in the Bible over Time

Though it may be surprising, there are terms that shift in their meaning even during biblical history.

That’s what you’d expect, since the Scriptures were written over a period of about 1,100 years, and nobody should expect a community’s mode of expression to stay static over that length of time. (Just look at how English has changed since the year 800!)

The matter is complicated by the fact that, not only did terms change meanings over this period, but the language itself shifted, with God’s people first speaking Hebrew, then Aramaic, and then Greek.

Nevertheless, we can track changes in meaning across biblical vocabulary:

Salvation: The basic meaning of this term is “to rescue” or “to make safe,” but there is a dramatic shift in how it is used between the Old and the New Testaments.

In the Old Testament, salvation is connected almost exclusively with being rescued from temporal dangers—ones we encounter in this life, like war, defeat, famine, plague, or death.

However, in the New Testament, the focus has shifted from this life to the next, and the salvation that is primarily under discussion is being rescued from the consequences of sin so that we can share eternal life with God.

One way of expressing this is that the Old Testament is principally concerned with “temporal” salvation, while the New Testament is principally concerned with “eternal” salvation.

Forgiveness: A corresponding shift is the way forgiveness of sin is understood.

In the Old Testament, being forgiven of a sin principally means not being punished—or fully punished—for it in this life. In particular, it means not dying as a result of the sin.

Thus, when David repents of having brought about the death of Uriah the Hittite, we read:

Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against Yahweh!”

Nathan said to David, “Yahweh has also forgiven your sin; you shall not die. But because you have utterly scorned Yahweh in this matter, the son born for you will certainly die” (2 Sam. 12:13-14, LEB).

David had been forgiven in that he would not die, but that doesn’t mean he would escape all punishment. He would be forced to witness the death of his son.

Notice that both of these penalties—David’s death and the death of his son—are temporal rather than eternal.

By contrast, when forgiveness is discussed in the New Testament, it is principally in connection with being forgiven the eternal consequences of our sins, so that we can be eternally saved.

 

Words that Change Meaning in Different Biblical Passages

Even within a single time period, words can be used in different senses in different biblical passages.

Faith/Belief: A classic example is the term “faith” or “belief” (Greek, pistis). In many New Testament passages, this concept involves trust in God. Thus, when Jesus has rebuked the wind and the waves, he turns to the disciples and says, ““Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” (Mark 4:40).

However, a different sense of the term is on display in James, who informs us that “Even the demons believe—and shudder” (Jas. 2:19). Here “faith” is understood as a purely intellectual one. Demons know the truths of Christian doctrine, but they lack the more robust faith that involves trust in God.

Still a third usage is found in St. Paul, where he says, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). Here we have faith formed by love (Latin, fides formata caritate), which combines intellectual assent, trust, and charity—the three theological virtues (1 Cor. 13:7).

 

Words that Change Meaning Between the Bible and the Fathers

Of course, language did not stop developing with the close of the apostolic era, and so we find terms continuing to change in meaning:

Witness/Martyr: The Greek term martus originally meant “witness,” and in this sense we find St. Paul writing:

For God . . . is my witness [martus], how constantly I make mention of you, always asking in my prayers if somehow now at last I may succeed to come to you in the will of God (Rom. 1:9-10).

However, this term came to be associated with those who served as witnesses to the truth of the Faith by giving their lives for it and so being “martyred.”

Following the age of persecutions in the early Church, the term became so associated with being killed for the Faith that people who were not killed became known by other terms, such as “confessors” (those who confessed the Faith under persecution, even though they were not killed).

Today, a popular Christian audience would never understand the term martyr to refer simply to a person who bore witness to something.

Sacrament: The term sacrament (Greek, musterion, Latin, sacramentum) originally meant “secret” or “mystery,” and it occurs in this sense in the New Testament, as when Jesus tells the disciples, “To you has been granted the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside everything is in parables” (Mark 4:11).

However, in the era of the Church Fathers, the term came much more to be associated with various rites of the Christian faith, such as baptism and the Eucharist.

Eventually, this usage came to predominate, and today nobody would know what you meant if you translated Jesus as saying, “To you has been given the sacrament of the kingdom of God.”

 

Words that Change Meaning Between the Fathers and the Scholastics

The Middle Ages also saw shifts in terminology that had been present earlier in the tradition:

Anathema: Though this term is found in the Greek New Testament (Gal. 1:8-9) and even has roots in the Old Testament, it shifted meaning over time, and by the Middle Ages it had come to refer to a special form of excommunication.

This form had to be performed by a bishop, who imposed it with a special ceremony. (There was a parallel ceremony for lifting the anathema once the offender had repented—which was a key goal of excommunicating him, to prompt him to repent of sin and come back to God.)

Unfortunately, knowledge of this meaning has been lost in many circles, leading to enormous confusion about the meaning of the phrase anathema sit (Latin, “let him be anathema”) in Church documents.

For example, many in the Protestant community understand anathema to mean something like “damned by God,” and take anathemas to be something that takes effect automatically and is pronounced upon all Protestants.

None of these things are true. In ecclesiastical usage, anathema referred to a special, ceremonial form of excommunication. Because it involved a ceremony, it did not take place automatically, and it was not applied to non-Catholics. Eventually, it was abolished, and it no longer exists in current canon law.

Elect/Chosen: By the Middle Ages, the term elect came to be used for a specific group of people—those who will be saved on the Last Day.

This meaning has been inherited by most contemporary doctrinal traditions, including both Catholic and Protestant ones.

However, this is not how the term is used in the Bible or the earliest Church Fathers—as I document in a study I did of this question. Instead, the primary meaning of elect was being chosen to have a special, intimate relationship with God, but not one that implied salvation on the Last Day.

The model was Israel’s status as God’s “elect” or “chosen people,” which implied a special relationship between them and God but not the final salvation of every single Israelite.

 

Words that Change Meaning Among Doctrinal Traditions

The fragmentation of Christendom into different doctrinal traditions—especially the fragmentation that occurred following the Protestant Reformation—has led to further developments in how terminology is used:

Law and Gospel: For example, while Law and Gospel are important concepts in the Bible, they have taken on unique usages in the Lutheran tradition. Thus, the Lutheran Book of Concord states:

Anything that preaches concerning our sins and God’s wrath, let it be done how or when it will, that is all a preaching of the Law. Again, the Gospel is such a preaching as shows and gives nothing else than grace and forgiveness in Christ.

It is certainly possible to go through the Bible and identify passages which speak of sin and divine wrath and compare them to passages that speak of grace and forgiveness in Christ, but these are not the primary ways that the biblical authors use the terms law and gospel. They are distinctively Lutheran usages.

In the Bible, the primary conceptualizations of law are either as divine principles given to guide human conduct or, specifically, the Law of Moses (Gen.-Deut.). Similarly, the principal focus of the gospel is God and his actions through his Son, especially Christ’s death and resurrection.

While law is related to sin and wrath, and while the gospel is related to grace and forgiveness, Lutheran theology has developed its own uses for these categories that do not map directly onto the thought worlds of the biblical authors.

Justification: A notable difference has developed in how the term justification is often understood in Protestant and Catholic communities.

The Catholic community uses justification to refer to “not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man” (CCC 1989). It also uses the term justify to mean “to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” (CCC 1987).

Two elements are thus found in the Catholic use of justification:

1. The remission of sins/being cleansed from sins

2. Inward sanctification/renewal/reception of righteousness from God

For the most part, the Protestant tradition has focused on justification as involving the first of these (with a corresponding understanding of justification as the impartation of legal righteousness), but not the second.

Instead, Protestant schools frequently refer to the inward renewal of the Christian using a second term: sanctification.

 

Words that Change Meaning Among Theological Traditions

Even within a given doctrinal tradition, different theological schools develop their own nuances for terms:

Regeneration/New Birth: For example, in Protestantism the term regeneration has taken on several meanings.

In Calvinist circles, regeneration is used to refer to a transformative reception of grace that occurs prior to the expression of personal faith and which makes explicit personal faith possible.

In Lutheran circles, regeneration is used to refer to a transformative reception of grace that occurs in baptism, regardless of whether explicit personal faith is present.

In Baptist circles, regeneration is used to refer to a transformative reception of grace that occurs when a person makes an explicit act of personal faith.

Predestination: Similarly, in both Protestant and Catholic circles the term predestination is understood in different ways among different theological schools.

Thus, in the Protestant tradition, Calvinists understand predestination differently than Arminians.

And in Catholic circles, Thomists understand it differently than Molinists.

 

Some Conclusions

Having gotten a sense of the ways religious terms change across time, what conclusions can we draw?

Principally, we’ve seen that there is no single way to use terms, which is the fundamental reason for Paul’s dictum not to engage in word fights.

The Bible itself shows different usages, both across times and by different authors living in the same time.

Given this diversity in Scripture itself, we should not expect doctrinal vocabulary to be frozen at any given moment in history.

What is normative is the fundamental doctrinal substance of the Faith, which was frozen with the end of public revelation at the conclusion of the apostolic age.

Even then, that fundamental content remained to be meditated upon and further elaborated, with its implications being fleshed out through the process of doctrinal development (which any accurate understanding of the history of Christian doctrine and theology must recognize).

But what are we do to about the different usages that have grown up in the Christian community?

Lest confusion result, each communion should in general retain the usages that have developed within it, though even these are not frozen and are subject to further development with time.

For the sake of accurately understanding of the Bible, of history, and of each other, there also should be an awareness of the way terms have shifted and continue to shift.

  • Exegetes need to be aware of how terminology is used in the Bible and how to translate it into the vocabulary of their own traditions—without forcing their tradition’s meanings back onto the biblical text.
  • Patristic scholars need to do the same thing with respect to texts from the Church Fathers.
  • Historians of doctrine and theology need to do it with the historical texts they study.
  • And Christians in dialogue among different doctrinal and theological traditions need to be able to do it across the biblical, historical, and contemporary texts.

Part of learning how not to fight about words is learning to translate between these vocabularies.

For example, when it comes to the terms like justify and justification, we should not suppose that there is only a single way that these can be used—or that Scripture uses them in only one sense (it does not; Scripture has multiple uses for them).

Instead, we should be able to explain how our tradition uses the term and what we mean by it—and be prepared to explain the basis for what we believe.

Catholics and Protestants typically believe in both the forgiveness of sins with an accompanying legal status of being righteous—and a renewal of the inner man by God’s grace.

We do not need to be divided by the terminological issue of whether our community uses justification to refer to just the first of these or to both, as long as we agree on the substance—the fact that both occur.

When it comes to the biblical texts, we need to be prepared to recognize that Scripture may or may not use terms the way that they have developed in our communities. We should not force our doctrinal or theological uses back onto the text.

Instead, we should seek to determine—as best we can—what the biblical authors meant, regardless of whether it corresponds to later uses.

Sometimes, it will. The different uses of faith that are emphasized in different schools today are all found in Scripture. But the conventional meaning of the term elect is not.

It is good—to the extent possible over time—to steer our vocabularies so that they correspond to the way terms are used in Scripture, but language change requires time and cannot be suddenly imposed without causing tremendous confusion and dissension.

Such dissension is precisely what St. Paul sought to avoid by prohibiting quarrels about words. As long as we agree in substance, precisely how we express that substance is a secondary matter, and—even if we think another school is departing from the language of Scripture in how they express themselves and it would be better if they didn’t—we should still be able to recognize it when they are correct in substance.

What Does the Church Actually Say About “Praying to the Saints”?

Any informed, English-speaking Catholic will tell you that the Church says it’s both permissible and beneficial to pray to the saints.

But is he right? Is that what the Church actually says?

The answer is not what you might expect.

 

Discussions with Protestants

The topic of “praying to the saints” most commonly comes up in dialogue with Protestant Christians.

In the older branches of Christianity—Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and other forms of Eastern Christianity—it is common to ask the saints in heaven for their intercession.

However, in the 1500s, the emerging Protestant movement rejected this practice, and it is still widely rejected in Protestant circles today.

One key argument goes like this:

  1. Prayer should be directed only to God.
  2. The saints are not God.
  3. Therefore, one should not pray to the saints.

The key premise in the argument is the first—that prayer should be directed only to God.

How might one support this?

 

A Biblical Argument

One way of supporting the premise would be to mount a biblical case, which might go something like this:

  1. When we look in the Bible, we find that the word “pray” is used in connection with God rather than the saints.
  2. We should model our language on the way the Bible uses language.
  3. Therefore, we should use the word “pray” in connection with God rather than the saints.

One thing we need to be careful about when evaluating the first premise of this argument is what language we are talking about.

Just checking to see what an English translation for the word “pray” isn’t enough. All that will tell you is how the English translators thought the word should be used, not how the biblical authors used the equivalent vocabulary.

We need to check the original languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek—to see what language the biblical authors used, and how.

To keep this post short(ish), we’ll focus on the Greek. In biblical Greek, the main verb for “pray” is proseukhomai, which appears 102 times in the Greek Bible, and the equivalent noun for “prayer”—proseukhê—appears 61 times.

It so happens that in Greek, these words are used exclusively to refer to communication with God or the gods. They even have that meaning in the secular Greek of the period.

In this, the Greek is like contemporary American English, which also associates prayer exclusively with God or the gods.

The initial premise of this argument thus looks good!

What about the second? In other words . . .

 

How Closely Must Our Language Follow the Bible’s?

In general, I think it’s a good thing to model our language after the usages found in the Bible—at least when it comes to concepts related to the Christian faith.

I don’t think we have any obligation to follow Greek usage on other terms.

For example, color terms often vary significantly from one language to another, and in dialects of ancient Greek, honey could be described as “green” (khlôros), but I don’t think that creates an obligation for English-speakers to call honey green rather than yellow or golden.

However, it is generally a good idea to model the use of faith-related words to their biblical counterparts. Thus, we’re fortunate that the English word “God/god” broadly corresponds to the Greek word theos (it corresponds less well to the Hebrew word elohim, which can refer to things we wouldn’t call gods).

Despite my sympathy for the second premise, it has limits.

The fact that languages change over time is an unstoppable phenomenon, and even when Christians try to conform their usage to what’s in the Bible, terms inevitably take on new usages over the centuries.

If we had to model our religious vocabulary strictly on biblical usage, one term we’d have to eliminate immediately is “Bible.” The Greek term this is based on is biblion, which originally referred to a sheet of papyrus and then came to mean things like “letter,” “document,” and “scroll.”

In no case did biblion mean what we refer to as “the Bible.” That’s a post-biblical usage.

Similarly, every theological community has developed religious vocabulary that differs from biblical usage in various ways.

Thus, in both Catholic and Protestant circles, the term “the elect” has taken on a theological meaning that refers to “those people who will be saved on the last day,” despite the fact that this is not how the term is used in Scripture.

In Lutheran theology, the terms “Law” and “Gospel” have taken on technical meanings that differ significantly from the way these terms are used in Scripture. (To somewhat oversimplify, Law is conceived of as any divine command, while Gospel is understood as any divine promise; but in the New Testament the most prominent usage of “Law” is for the Mosaic Law or even the Old Testament more broadly, while “Gospel” is used for the message of what God has done through Jesus.)

One may regret that these usages have developed, but the fact is that they have—and that communities are using them.

Language change over time is inevitable. The question is what to do in response.

 

Avoiding Word Fights

On two occasions, St. Paul warns us against “quarreling about words”:

Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers (2 Tim. 2:14).

If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain (1 Tim. 6:3-5)

For St. Paul, the most important thing is what is true, not the language that is used to express it.

Therefore, when a community of Christians has developed a theological usage that differs from the biblical usage, one should not fight about the terminology itself.

Complaining about an established usage is not going to change that usage. It’s only going to generate heat rather than light.

Of course, it’s fair to point out that the usage differs from what’s in the Bible.

Pointing that out can actually be helpful! It can help people remember that they need to control for the fact their theological vocabulary is different and should not be read onto the biblical text.

But once the biblical text is correctly understood, we must allow each group of Christians to express that in the language that has become established in their community.

So what about English-speaking Catholics and “prayer to the saints”?

 

“Prayer” in English

Following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, numerous French words entered English, and one of them was what became “pray” in the early 1200s.

French is based on Latin, and so the term “pray” comes from Latin roots. Specifically, it comes from the verb precare.

Precare means things like “to ask,” “to beg,” “to implore,” “to entreat,” “to supplicate,” etc.

In Latin, it is used in religious contexts—like when you’re asking God or the gods for something—but it is also used when you’re asking human beings for something.

Both usages carried over into English. Prior to the Protestant Reformation, English-speaking Christians would use “pray” to refer to making requests of God and of other human beings—including the saints.

In the latter case, what they were doing was asking the saints to intercede with God on their behalf—to serve as their “prayer partners” in heaven.

When the Reformation occurred, English-speaking Protestants objected to asking the saints for their intercession, and so the verb “pray” came to be more associated with requests directed to God.

In colloquial American English among Protestants, “pray” came to refer exclusively to speech directed toward God.

Still, the other usage survived in British English. If you read Shakespeare or watch period dramas set as late as the early 20th century, you’ll see characters saying things to each other like, “I pray you,” and all they mean is “I ask you.”

So, if a young gentleman in a British drama says to a young lady, “I pray your hand in marriage,” what it means is that he’s asking her to marry him—not that he’s worshipping her as a deity.

This is also where the word “prithee” comes from. It’s a contraction of “I pray thee.”

The human-directed usage even survives in American English in at least two contexts.

One is in legal settings. If you have a lawyer file a motion with a court, the motion will contain language that says, “My client prays that the court will do thus-and-so.”

It doesn’t mean that the client is worshipping the court. It means that he’s asking the court to do something.

The other context in which the human-directed usage survives in American English is among Catholics.

They have simply retained a usage that was around before English-speaking Protestants started narrowing the verb to only God-directed communications.

Thus, it is natural for English-speaking Catholics to talk about “praying to the saints”—meaning asking for their intercession.

So, how should the two groups deal with this in conversation?

 

Back to the Word-Fight Issue

Per St. Paul’s dictum, we should not fight about the usage of the English word “pray” and whether it should be associated only with God-directed communications.

Words mean what communities use them to mean, and the English-speaking community originally used “pray” to mean “ask,” regardless of who was being asked.

Even though the Protestant influence on English has associated the verb exclusively with God-directed communication in many contexts, other established usages remain.

A Protestant might think it would be better for those to go away, but they remain for now, and spending time complaining about them will generate heat rather than light.

To generate light, we should recognize the different usages and what they mean and, having done that, talk about the underlying truths.

For example, a Protestant might say, “In my community, ‘prayer’ is a form of worship reserved to God. When you talk about praying to the saints, are you giving them more honor than they should have as human beings?”

Of course, an informed Catholic should say, “No, and here’s why . . .” The discussion might then turn to what kind of honor human beings—especially saintly ones—should have.

Or, a Catholic might say, “In my community, ‘praying to the saints’ means asking them for their intercession. We teach that this is both permissible and beneficial.”

And, rather than getting hung up on the word “pray,” the discussion might then turn to whether it is permissible and beneficial to ask the saints for their intercession.

(As a side note, we also shouldn’t quarrel about the word “saints.” In various biblical and post-biblical usages, it can refer to the holy angels, to all Jews, to all Christians, to those Christians who are especially holy, to those Christians who are in heaven, and to those Christians who have been canonized as being in heaven. As before, we shouldn’t fight about the usage of the word but correctly note which usage is being employed and continue the discussion on that basis.)

 

Responding to Our Two Initial Arguments

With all this in mind, we can respond to the two initial arguments that were made—and do so in a way that generates light rather than heat.

Concerning the biblical argument, it’s true that the Greek term proseukhomai was used exclusively for God-directed communications, but that doesn’t finally determine the way “pray” is used in English.

As a result, if you want to say—as in the first argument—that “Prayer should be directed only to God,” you’ll need to clarify what you mean by “prayer.”

“Praying” to the saints is an established usage among English-speaking Catholics that means asking for their intercession.

The real question is not the term but whether it’s permissible and beneficial to ask the saints for their intercession.

So much for discussions about the English verb “pray.”

But there’s a noteworthy fact that will surprise English-speakers, both Catholic and Protestant alike.

 

The Language the Catholic Church Actually Uses

This is the kind of thing that you won’t notice unless you really live and breathe Church documents and think carefully about the language they do and don’t use.

It took me a while to notice and then confirm it, but if you read the documents of the Catholic Church’s Magisterium, they don’t actually talk about “praying” to the saints.

Ever.

At least not in the documents that come from Rome. (I can’t answer for every individual bishop and what he might write.)

To illustrate this, here’s a screen cap of what you find when searching the Vatican web site for “prayer to the saints”:

And here’s what we find for “praying to the saints”:

In both cases, we get no results. Zero.

It turns out that these expressions are used by English-speaking Catholics, but they are not used in official Church documents, and when those documents are translated into English, the translators are careful enough not to use colloquial English expressions like “prayer to the saints” or “praying to the saints.”

So, what do they say instead?

One thing they do is speak of “the intercession of the saints,” where the key Latin verb is intercedere (“to intercede”).

Thus, in the sections of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that an English-speaking Catholic would turn to for information about “praying to the saints,” you don’t find that phrase. Instead, you find “intercession of the saints” (cf. CCC 956, 2683).

However, “intercession” refers to what they do for us. What language does the Church use for what we do with respect to them?

It speaks of “the invocation of the saints,” where the key Latin verb is invocare (“to invoke,” “to call upon,” “to appeal to”).

So, we invoke (appeal to) the saints to intercede (pray for us) with God.

That’s the language the Church actually uses. “Praying to the saints” is just something we say colloquially in English.

A logical next question is: What term does the Church use in its official documents for when we talk to God?

There can be a number of them, but the key ones are the verb orare (“to speak,” “to plead,” “to supplicate,” “to pray”) and the noun oratio (“speech,” “oration,” “prayer”). These are the words you’ll find if you look in the Latin edition of the Catechism in its section on prayer.

Interestingly, in Latin these terms don’t have to be used just for communications directed to God, but they are often used that way—especially in ecclesiastical (i.e., church) Latin.

It’s thus interesting that ecclesiastical language has a preferred set of terms for God-directed communications and a different set of terms for saint-directed communications.

In that respect, it’s similar to Protestant American English.

 

One Last Thing About Word Fights

Given this, it could be tempting for some from the Protestant community to tell Catholics, “Hey! Your own Magisterium has a separate term for prayer that is directed to God and doesn’t use ‘prayer’ with respect to the saints! You should change your usage to fit official ecclesiastical-speak!”

Except . . . if the Magisterium was concerned that this needed to happen, it would mandate the change, and it hasn’t.

The Magisterium recognizes the organic way languages change over time, and—per St. Paul—it’s not concerned about quarrelling over every linguistic usage.

The English “praying to the saints” is a historical usage with a long pedigree—going back to when the term “pray” first came into the English language, and the Vatican isn’t concerned about it.

On the other hand, it’s fair for Catholics—in discussing the overall issue with Protestants—to say, “You know, I understand why you might want to have a term for communications directed to God that’s different from those directed to others. Both biblical Greek and ecclesiastical Latin have similar usages. English is different. ‘To pray’ originally just meant ‘to ask,’ and English-speaking Catholics have preserved this usage when it comes to the saints. But rather than quibble about English terminology, let’s go to the real issue instead: Is it a good idea ask the saints in heaven to be our prayer partners? Let’s not quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers (2 Tim. 2:14).”

Arranging Debates with James White

In a recent video, James White responds at some length (about 49 minutes) to my interest in debating him on the topic of sola scriptura.

In the course of his response, he makes a number of factually inaccurate statements (including about me), but to keep matters focused, I will let those pass.

 

Sola Scriptura

White says he is not reluctant to debate me on sola scriptura.

Good! I take him at his word, and I look forward to arranging a debate on this topic, which Matt Fradd has offered to host (in fact, he made the initial request of both of us).

White refers to his desire to wait until he has configured a new studio that will allow debating at a distance with high sound and video quality.

That’s fine with me, and Matt has indicated it’s fine with him also. We’ve got the holidays coming up, and it’s no problem to wait until it’s convenient for all three of our schedules.

White is skeptical regarding my claim to have anything new to offer in this debate.

I would never claim to have thought of something that no one has thought of in the last 2,000 years of Catholic history.

What I can—and do—say is that I have developed arguments that I have not seen used by the current generation of Catholic apologists or tested in debate with the current generation of Protestant apologists.

White invites me to identify where I have published these arguments and wonders if I might be holding them back until the time of the debate.

I have no interest in setting up “gotcha” moments that surprise a debate opponent. For a quality debate to occur, both parties should be able to think about their opponent’s key points ahead of time.

I have presented my arguments numerous times, including on Catholic Answers Live, and they are found, in summary form, in my book The Bible Is a Catholic Book.

If White will privately send me his current mailing address, I will send him this book, as well as my book Teaching With Authority, which is a theological manual on how the Magisterium works. If he prefers electronic copies, I’ll send them to him if he lets me know his preferred email address.

In fact, if he will do the same for me, I will send him an advanced copy of my entire opening statement (and any other planned statements), so he’ll know exactly what I plan to say.

 

The Canon of Scripture

White says that the topic of the canon of Scripture would be a good subject to debate, and I’d be happy to debate that with him as well.

I’ve checked with Matt, and he would be happy to have us do several debates, as long as they’re scheduled a month or more apart, which is fine with me.

White objects to the use of the canon that other apologists have made in debates on sola scriptura.

I agree with him that the subject should not be sprung on an opponent who has no time to respond. In fact, no subject should be brought up without the opponent having time to respond to it.

The canon of Scripture is relevant to the issue of sola scriptura, but it is not essential to making the case against the latter.

Consequently, I’d be happy to avoid this subject in a debate on sola scriptura and do a second debate on the canon, instead.

The principal arguments I’d use are covered in my book The Bible Is a Catholic Book, and I’d be happy to exchange advance copies of planned statements with him.

 

The Catholic View of Authority

White says that Catholics need to step up and defend the positive epistemological claims that they make.

In other words, they should be willing to mount a positive defense of the model they propose for doctrinal authority, which is Scripture + Tradition + the Magisterium.

Fine! That’s quite fair. If Protestants need to mount a positive case for their view of authority (sola scriptura), then Catholics should be as well. And I am.

I’m not interested in a debate focused on irrelevant issues such as actions by Pope Francis that don’t even attempt to engage the Church’s infallibility—for reasons explained here and here.

But I am quite willing to debate the overall Scripture + Tradition + Magisterium paradigm.

 

A Slate of Debates?

I therefore propose a slate of three debates: one on the Protestant view of authority (sola scriptura), one on the canon of Scripture, and one on the Catholic view of authority (Scripture + Tradition + the Magisterium).

I have no interest in “gotcha” moments. Both presenters should know and be able to think about what arguments they will need to respond to.

I therefore propose that we exchange advance copies of opening statements (and any other planned statements, depending on the format Matt wants us to use).

There’s no hurry on these. The debates would be scheduled at the convenience of all three of us, with at least one month between them, per Matt’s request.

Sound good?

“Changing the Sabbath” and the Antichrist

Recently I was contacted by someone who seems quite openminded and who asked me some questions about why we worship on Sunday rather than the Sabbath.

In particular, this person was wondering why that should be the case if the only person in the Bible who seeks to change the Sabbath is the Antichrist.

I responded as follows . . .

When you refer to the Antichrist changing the Sabbath, I assume that you’re referring to Daniel 7:25, where a coming king will “think to change times and seasons.”

Concerning this prophecy specifically, I’d make several points:

1) It does not specifically mention the Sabbath, but this is almost certainly included in the meaning of changing times and seasons, for reasons we will see below.

2) Prophecy can refer to more than one thing (i.e., have more than one fulfillment). Thus in Revelation the Beast from the Sea’s seven heads are both seven mountains and seven kings (Rev. 17:9-10).

We see the same thing in other prophecies, which can have more than one fulfillment. For example, Isaiah’s prophecy of Emmanuel had a near-term fulfillment in the birth of a child in the time of King Ahaz–something that is obvious because the sign was given to him as a sign that the alliance of kings against him would not succeed in toppling him from his throne (see Isaiah 7:1-16).

For Ahaz, the child Emmanuel would be a sign that God was with his people against this alliance of kings. But the prophecy also has a later fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who was God with us in an even more literal sense.

3) Because prophecies can have more than one fulfillment in history, it is important to identify the original historical fulfillment before exploring possible later fulfillments.

4) In the case of Daniel 7, scholars of multiple persuasions (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, other) hold that the most likely original fulfillment of this vision is to be found in the kingdoms leading up to the triumph of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. (who is also clearly in focus in chapter 8 of the book) and the kingdoms that came about in the wake of his empire. This does not mean that it does not also have one or more later fulfillments, but this is what the original fulfillment involves.

5) In particular, Daniel 7:25–and other passages in Daniel–appear to be referring originally to the post-Alexander king Antiochus IV (i.e., Antiochus Epiphanes). He was king of the Seleucid Empire, which was one of the kingdoms that grew out of Alexander the Great’s conquests, and he persecuted the Jewish people in the 160s B.C.

Specifically, Antiochus tried to compel them to give up the Jewish faith and adopt the Hellenistic (Greek) religion. This meant compelling them to give up celebrating Jewish feasts, including the Sabbath, and this is what Daniel 7:25 apparently is referring to when it says this king will “think to change times and seasons.”

The “think” is important, because Antiochus did not succeed. The Jewish people resisted him, won their freedom, and retained their ancestral faith and its practices–as chronicled in the books 1 and 2 Maccabees.

6) It is possible that a future dictator may also try to compel the Jewish people to give up their faith–including its holy days–and this future dictator may be the same as the final Antichrist, but we must be careful about such speculation as the prophecy is not repeated in the New Testament and not every prophecy has a later fulfillment.

At least, I couldn’t prove that they all will have a fulfillment at the end of the world, so I have to leave this proposal as a possible speculation but only a speculation.

So, you may well be right that the final Antichrist will attempt to force the Jewish people to drop the Sabbath, but I can’t say this for certain, myself.

However, this is an independent issue of what liturgical calendar Christians, and especially Gentile Christians, should follow.

The Sabbath–along with the monthly New Moons and the annual feasts (e.g., Passover, Tabernacles)–was part of the liturgical calendar that God gave to the Jewish people before the time of Christ.

It was never binding and was never meant to be binding on Gentiles, as Jewish scholars have always held. (In fact, Gentiles were even positively prohibited by Jewish law from being able to do things like keep Passover, as circumcision was required for eating the Passover lamb.)

The uniqueness of the Sabbath to the Jewish people is due to the fact there is nothing in natural law/human nature that demands that one day in seven (as opposed to one day in five or one day in ten) be set aside for rest and worship or that it must be the seventh day in particular (rather than the first or the third). Since God did not build this into human nature/natural law, such a law could only come from a divine mandate, and God only mandated this for the Jewish people, not for all peoples.

When the early Church began making significant numbers of Gentile converts, one of the questions that arose was whether they needed to be circumcised and become Jews in order to be saved (cf. Acts 10-11, 15, Gal. 1-2). The answer was that they did not.

The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) ruled on this question, and even though it involved a few points to help Jewish and Gentile Christians live together (Acts 15:29), you’ll note that keeping the Sabbath was not one of these. The Jerusalem Council thus recognized that Gentile Christians did not need to be circumcised and adopt Jewish practices. Though a few points were asked of Gentiles for the sake of harmony with Jewish Christians, observing the Jewish ceremonial calendar was not among them.

St. Paul sheds even more light on the subject, indicating in his letters that–even though he is a Jew–he is not bound by the Jewish Law (1 Cor. 9:19-23), because Christ has fulfilled the Jewish Law and so put an end to it. He indicates this in various passages, such as Romans 14:1-6, where he writes:

As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand. One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

Here Paul takes up two examples of practices that could affect different groups of Christians: keeping kosher laws (not eating unclean foods) and observing the Jewish calendar (honoring certain days). He characterizes some–who believe that they cannot eat certain things and must observe certain days–as “weak in faith,” and others–who recognize they are not bound by these laws–as strong in faith, by implication (for they recognize Christ has eliminated the need for such things by his fulfillment of the Jewish Law).

Rather than trying to get people to abandon their positions, Paul urges peace among Christians by letting everyone do what their conscience says they need to do to honor God.

Paul could not argue in this way if the “weak in faith” position was correct and it was mandated that Christians keep kosher and observe Jewish holy days. It is only because we are not bound by these things that he can allow those who are “weak in faith”–i.e., who have scrupulous fears that Jesus might not have freed us from these things–to continue to practice them rather than violate their consciences.

If everybody was bound to avoid certain foods and keep certain days as a matter of divine law, Paul would have said so–as he does with other things that are matters of divine law. Thus, in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, he warns that people who practice a variety of sins will not inherit the kingdom. He doesn’t say, “You get to do these sins if your conscience tells you it’s okay.” He says “This is a sin; don’t do it!”

Therefore, in Romans 14 the allowance of both positions–eating and not eating certain foods, observing and not observing certain days–is because neither is a violation of divine law. We have the liberty of eating all foods and treating every day alike because God has not mandated that we do otherwise.

Paul is even more explicit in Colossians 2:14-17, where he writes that God has “canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”

He thus indicates that the various regulations of the Mosaic Law concerning food and liturgical days (the annual feasts, monthly New Moons, and weekly Sabbaths being the three kinds of days on the Jewish liturgical calendar) were shadows that pointed forward to Christ, but now that Christ has come and fulfilled the Jewish Law, “nailing it to the Cross,” even Jewish Christians–such as himself–are no longer bound by these, for God has “cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands.”

Consequently, he says “let no one pass judgment on you . . . with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath.”

The Sabbath thus is not binding, even on Jewish Christians, because of what Christ did on the cross.

In the first century and for a time thereafter, many Jewish Christians did continue to observe the Sabbath, as Paul indicated was possible for them in Romans 14. However, this was not the day that Christians held their religious gatherings on.

Instead, they observed the first day of the week, because it was the day on which the Lord Jesus rose. Thus, we see Paul recommending that collections be taken up in the church of Corinth on this day:

Now concerning the contribution for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come (1 Cor. 16:1-2).

This day soon came to be known as “the Lord’s Day,” because it was the day on which the Lord Jesus rose. Thus, we see St. John writing:

I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet (Rev. 1:10).

And from the first century forward we see the early Christians continuing to celebrate the first day of the week–the Lord’s Day–rather than the Sabbath, as illustrated by the quotations from early Church documents listed here:

https://www.catholic.com/tract/sabbath-or-sunday

In time, the Church used the power of the keys that Christ had given to Peter to “bind and loose” (Matt. 16:18) to institute a new Christian liturgical calendar, built around the weekly observance of the Lord’s Day.

It is this exercise of the keys that is the reasons Christians today are bound to observe the Lord’s Day–not because one day intrinsically requires observance compared to other days.

However, the Church did not “change” the Sabbath. The Sabbath is when it always was: the seventh day of the week. It’s just that Christians are not required to observe it, as it was something that pertained to the Jewish people prior to the time of Christ. Instead of celebrating the Sabbath, Christians celebrate the first day of the week in honor of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

For more on the Church’s official teaching, see here:

https://www.ncregister.com/blog/did-the-catholic-church-change-the-sabbath

I hope this helps, and God bless you!

Jude 3 and Sola Scriptura: The Faith Once for All Delivered

Periodically, I’m asked to name a doctrine that is not found in Scripture.

This comes up in discussions about the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura, which holds that we should use “Scripture alone” to form our doctrine.

Knowing that Catholics base their teachings not only on Scripture but also on apostolic Tradition, supporters of sola scriptura ask Catholics to name a doctrine that we know by Tradition rather than Scripture.

It certainly would be possible to name distinctively Catholic teachings, but since these aren’t accepted by Protestants, it’s more helpful to name some that Protestants do accept.

Typically, I name three:

  1. The fact that there are to be no more apostles (being an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry was a requirement for membership in the Twelve—cf. Acts 1:21-26—not being an apostle; Jesus appeared to St. Paul and made him an apostle, and if he chose, he could have continued to appear down through the centuries and appoint people as apostles)
  2. The fact that there are to be no more books of Scripture (you didn’t have to be an apostle—Mark and Luke weren’t—and the Holy Spirit could have chosen to inspire new books of Scripture down through the centuries)
  3. There is to be no new publicly binding revelation before the Second Coming (God could have chosen to give this, as illustrated by the previous two examples)

Attempts have been made to prove these doctrines by Scripture alone, but none of the arguments are successful. The verses cited simply do not require any of these three doctrines to be true, though they are accepted by Protestants.

This reveals how our Protestant brethren are, at least in practice, willing to accept doctrines that are based on Tradition rather than Scripture alone.

Here I’d like to look at a verse sometimes cited as proof of the third teaching—that there is to be no more public revelation.

 

Jude’s Plan

The text is found in Jude 3, and for context, here are verses 3 and 4 of the book:

Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ

Based on the Greek text, scholars have generally understood Jude to mean that although he had been eager to write his audience concerning “our common salvation,” he found it necessary to set that plan aside because they had been infiltrated by certain ungodly and immoral people.

Therefore, he is writing them a different letter, in which he warns them against the ungodly people.

 

The Faith Once for All Delivered

For our purposes, the key part is Jude’s exhortation “to content for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

This is the part that interests advocates of sola scriptura: If the Faith has been delivered once for all to the saints, does this mean that the whole of Christian teaching has been revealed, and so there is to be no new public revelation?

There are a number of problems with this idea.

 

Not the Last Book?

First off, if Jude were saying that all public revelation had ended, then—since Scripture is itself public revelation—the book of Jude itself would have to be the last book of Scripture to be penned.

But we don’t know that at all.

Scholars differ on when the book of Jude was written. My own estimate is that it was written around A.D. 64-65, though it could have been later.

The fact is, we don’t know its date with confidence. Neither can we establish the exact dates of many books of the New Testament, so we don’t know which was last.

For example, if—as often supposed—Revelation was the last book to be written, then Jude would require us to eject it from the canon (with all its newly revealed prophecies), as well as any other books written later than Jude.

 

Not the Last Part of the Book

There’s another problem with the idea that Jude 3 is saying that public revelation is closed, which is that it’s speaking of this as having happened in the past—as a completed act (“delivered once for all”).

As we’ll see below, this happened quite some time in the past, but even if we ignored that, the moment that Jude said that the faith had been delivered once for all, that would have been the last bit of public revelation—if he was speaking about the closing of public revelation.

In other words, not only would Jude need to be the last book of the Bible written, Jude 3 would need to be the last verse of Scripture written.

If Jude were talking about the closing of public revelation, you would need to delete the remainder of the book (vv. 4-25) from the canon.

 

“Delivered to the Saints”

It’s worth noting that when Jude speaks of the Faith being “delivered” to the saints, he uses a special term in Greek: paradidômi.

This is the verbal form of paradôsis, which means “tradition”—the term that Paul uses to refer to his own teachings when he commends and commands his audience to keep the traditions that he has given them (1 Cor. 11:2, 2 Thess. 2:15, 3:6).

The verb paradidômi (“deliver”), together with its companion verb paralambanô (“receive”), were used to communicate the giving and receiving of tradition, as in St. Paul’s famous statement:

I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-4).

Jude is thus conceiving of the Faith as having been given to the saints as a matter of Tradition.

But when was it given?

Here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, “the saints” refer to the Christian community, and of course “the Faith” refers to the Christian faith.

So, who gave the Christian faith to the Church? Depending on who Jude is thinking about, it would either be Christ himself or at least the apostles.

The latter is perhaps more likely, since later in the letter Jude tells the readers, “You must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 17)—so we know he was thinking about the apostles as he wrote the letter.

Either way, when did Christ and his apostles deliver the Christian faith to the Church?

No later than A.D. 33. That’s when the Faith was delivered: Right at the beginning.

But even though the Faith had been delivered, that did not mean all public revelation had ceased. There would be many more items of public revelation given, as illustrated by all of the books of the New Testament that remained to be written.

And, as Jesus himself said at the Last Supper:

I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come (John 16:12-13).

So, even after Christ had made the first Christians—and thus delivered the Faith to them—there was more public revelation to come.

 

“The Faith”

It’s worth discussing what Jude means by “the Faith” a little further. When we read a text in the New Testament, we cannot simply assume that it means what we want it to.

We must first ask what the possible range of meanings a term or text has—and then look at the evidence to see which it best supports.

While it is possible to use the phrase “the Faith” to refer to the entirety of the Christian faith—every single doctrine that Christians are expected to believe—this is far from the only meaning of the term.

It also can be used to refer to the substance or core of the Faith—what is often called “the gospel.”

This is the sense in which “the Faith” can be said to have been delivered by Christ and the apostles, since there had been Christians—and thus members of “the Faith”—ever since the first converts accepted the message of Jesus.

If we knew nothing else, we would have to say that Jude 3 could be referring to either of these meanings and, not having decided between them based on evidence, we could only safely assert that Jude was making the more modest claim—i.e., that he at least meant that the gospel had been delivered to the saints.

However, we could not, without evidence, claim—and we certainly could not claim to have proved—that he had the more expansive meaning in mind, which is what the advocate of sola scriptura would need to show.

But, in fact, the evidence points in the other direction: We have already seen, based on the context, that Jude is talking about the Christian Faith having been given to the saints at some point in the past. In fact, decades in the past, by Christ and/or his apostles.

That points us to the more modest understanding of “the Faith” as simply the gospel. The same is indicated by the fact that—as Jesus himself indicated—there would be ongoing public revelation even after he taught the gospel to his disciples

Jude himself would have acknowledged that public revelation was still being given in his day. Certainly he would have acknowledged this if he recognized his own letter as inspired Scripture (cf. 2 Pet. 1:21).

And even if he didn’t automatically recognize his own letter as Scripture, as some have suggested, we do. Therefore, we must acknowledge that public revelation was still being given when Jude wrote.

All of this points to Jude 3 simply meaning that the substance of the Faith—the gospel—had been definitively delivered to the saints, not every item of public revelation that God would eventually give.

As the (Protestant) British scholar Richard Bauckham notes in his volume on Jude in the Word Biblical Commentary:

[T]here is no reason to suppose that Jude means by pistis [“faith”] anything other than “the gospel.” It need not refer to confessional formulae, though such formulae were already known in Paul’s time, nor does it imply the idea of a defined body of orthodox doctrines. . . . Jude’s readers are to contend, not for some particular formulation of Christian belief, but for the central Christian message of salvation through Jesus Christ (at v. 3).

Further, Jude is thinking in particular of the moral demands of the gospel, since he is warning his readers against immoral people. As Bauckham also notes:

Jude’s concern is especially with the moral implications of the gospel (not with doctrinal orthodoxy; hence the idea that “the faith” means a set of doctrinal formulae is quite inappropriate). No doubt he has in mind particularly the instruction in Christian conduct which accompanied the gospel in the initial teaching given by the apostles, but he refers to the gospel itself, hê pistis [“the faith”], because it is the gospel itself for which his readers will be fighting when they remain faithful to its moral demand and resist the antinomianism of the false teachers.

 

Implications for Sola Scriptura

Jude 3 thus does not prove what advocates of sola scriptura need it to prove. For all the reasons covered above, it does not show that Jude thought public revelation had ceased.

And once we recognize that Jude is simply talking about the substance of the Christian faith—the gospel—it becomes clear that, when he says the faith has been delivered “once for all,” Jude is simply saying that the gospel itself cannot change (cf. Gal. 1:8-9), not that new public revelation cannot be given.

In fact, public revelation—including additional Scripture—was given, as illustrated by the fact Jude does not stop at verse 3. It’s also quite likely that other whole books of Scripture—including, especially, Revelation—remained to be written.

This verse thus does not support sola scriptura.

In fact, even if Jude had meant that public revelation was closed, he doesn’t say anything about all of public revelation being written down. One would thus have to take seriously the possibility that some public revelation continued to be passed on—and preserved by God’s protective guidance—in the form of oral Tradition.

Catholics forthrightly acknowledge that this is what happened—and the fact there is to be no new public revelation before the Second Coming is one of those items of authoritative, apostolic Tradition.

Protestants have, historically, also accepted this teaching, but without an awareness that it is based on Tradition rather than Scripture.

If we were to go by Scripture alone, we would not be able to prove that public revelation has ceased, and thus we could not show that no new Scriptures are to be written and that the canon is closed.