How to defend John14:13-14?

[Kirk_O]

In a discussion with an atheist and he brought up how can God be real if Ge doesn’t answer all of our prayers when according to the Bible He will. I told him that God answers our prayer not like wishes that we receive everything what we ask for but with Grace which truly takes cares of our prayer/need. But he refers to John 14:13-14. Which I could see how that could be a stumbling block for someone trying to believe in God.

 

[ChurchSoldier]

If your tradition was to give a child “whatever they asked for” as a birthday present, and the child asked for a pet rattlesnake would you give it to him? Sort of the same thing.

We have to remember Romans 8:28 as well and this sometimes means we do not know the greater context of God’s plan.

As an example, early in Acts the Apostles healed several people and even brought them back to life. In the later Epistles we do not read of this. It is thought God performed miracles through them early on to give credibility to their work but at some point this left them. Doesn’t mean God couldn’t have done it, it just no longer was needed for his plan.

 

[Kirk_O]

Yes but he doesn’t believe in any of the Bible so all he sees is it saying one thing and us changing it to fit into our box.

 

[Anthony_V]

Yes but he doesn’t believe in any of the Bible so all he sees is it saying one thing and us changing it to fit into our box.

Tell him there is a dense and rich theological tradition of 2000 years behind the Bible. The people of this tradition were no dummies! The Bible is not self-referential. What he is arguing against is his interpretation against that of the Church. In fact, it is HE who is fitting the Bible into his own box just as well in his own position. The Bible has multiple interpretations when apart from sacred tradition and a divinely instituted authority. That is why we believe the Church has an organ of infallibility. If he wants to understand what we believe, he has to put down his weapons and stop coming to conclusions before he even asks the question. Otherwise, his attempt at dialogue is insincere and he is guilty of intellectual dishonesty.

That should do him in

 

[John_Martin]

In a discussion with an atheist and he brought up how can God be real if Ge doesn’t answer all of our prayers when according to the Bible He will. I told him that God answers our prayer not like wishes that we receive everything what we ask for but with Grace which truly takes cares of our prayer/need. But he refers to John 14:13-14. Which I could see how that could be a stumbling block for someone trying to believe in God.

Asking “in His Name” does not mean praying “in Jesus’ Name” at the close of a prayer.
Jesus gave his Name to the Church. He is telling them, whatever you ask “as the Church”, whatever you ask as my body on earth, that I will do. These verses are not about personal or private wishes, these verses are about the whole people of God, asking with one voice.

John Martin

 

[Steveabrous]

A couple of things here. one we need the infalible teaching of the church to truely understand the meaning of scripture.

Let’s look at the verse:

“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

Who was he talking to? Did he mean every person everywhere ever? Or Just Christians? Or Just the right Christians, no heretics? Or just the clergy on matters of faith and not the laity? Or just those who were there when he said it?

If it is the latter then if no one ever got a prayer answered who wasn’t there then the verse would still be true.

It isn’t clear on the surface who and under what conditions this verse is meant for. That is why we need the Magisterium.

My personal experience is (coupling this one with other verses like it) It requires faith. And of course there are somethings of limits. It can not interfere with someone else’s free will, and quite frankly everyone dies.

Also I believe it goes for Christians only with faith who’s will is subject to the will of God. i honestly can say I have recieved all I have asked for from Jesus. It may not have happened as quike as I wanted it, or the way I wanted.

So if someone were to ask me about it I would say yes it is true if you have faith and what you ask for is not contrary to gods will, and in God’s time and way not your’s.

 

[Kirk_O]

Tell him there is a dense and rich theological tradition of 2000 years behind the Bible. The people of this tradition were no dummies! The Bible is not self-referential. What he is arguing against is his interpretation against that of the Church. In fact, it is HE who is fitting the Bible into his own box just as well in his own position. The Bible has multiple interpretations when apart from sacred tradition and a divinely instituted authority. That is why we believe the Church has an organ of infallibility. If he wants to understand what we believe, he has to put down his weapons and stop coming to conclusions before he even asks the question. Otherwise, his attempt at dialogue is insincere and he is guilty of intellectual dishonesty.

That should do him in

I did kind of start off that way by saying this “the Bible says many things that can be taken many ways, that is why Jesus established a Church not a Bible” and then he came back with John 14:13-14. The thing is he seems open to maybe believing in God but he just needs some evidence. He seems to need to see that everything in the Bible is literally accurate to order to believe. I blame that on the misrepresenting of Christianity from our Protestant friends.

 

[Kirk_O]

A couple of things here. one we need the infalible teaching of the church to truely understand the meaning of scripture.

Let’s look at the verse:

“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

Who was he talking to? Did he mean every person everywhere ever? Or Just Christians? Or Just the right Christians, no heretics? Or just the clergy on matters of faith and not the laity? Or just those who were there when he said it?

If it is the latter then if no one ever got a prayer answered who wasn’t there then the verse would still be true.

It isn’t clear on the surface who and under what conditions this verse is meant for. That is why we need the Magisterium.

My personal experience is (coupling this one with other verses like it) It requires faith. And of course there are somethings of limits. It can not interfere with someone else’s free will, and quite frankly everyone dies.

Also I believe it goes for Christians only with faith who’s will is subject to the will of God. i honestly can say I have recieved all I have asked for from Jesus. It may not have happened as quike as I wanted it, or the way I wanted.

So if someone were to ask me about it I would say yes it is true if you have faith and what you ask for is not contrary to gods will, and in God’s time and way not your’s.

I agree but what about someone with no faith and reads what the Bible says and then concludes it all must be hogwash. I know Satan steals people’s faith in God by inserting these doubts and then makes them require hard facts to overcome the doubts.

 

[Kirk_O]

Asking “in His Name” does not mean praying “in Jesus’ Name” at the close of a prayer.
Jesus gave his Name to the Church. He is telling them, whatever you ask “as the Church”, whatever you ask as my body on earth, that I will do. These verses are not about personal or private wishes, these verses are about the whole people of God, asking with one voice.

John Martin

I know but he doesn’t believe the Church is a good source of authority with all of the lies about Her past and the resent sex scandals.

 

[Aloysium]

Scripture or other Church teachings do not require defense.

Your friend does not appear to be asking for an explanation, but lacking in understanding, is using his confusion to justify his lack of belief.

If he believed, according to John14:13-14, asking the Father, he would grasp its meaning.

When you surrender your will to God anything is possible.
If He wills it, you will move mountains. If you ask, He will grant it because it is what you need

God is not ever going to be your friend’s errand boy;
if that means that your friend has no use for God, it is his decision.

 

[Steveabrous]

I agree but what about someone with no faith and reads what the Bible says and then concludes it all must be hogwash. I know Satan steals people’s faith in God by inserting these doubts and then makes them require hard facts to overcome the doubts.

A marriage of cult is very difficult to live with. Someone who is atheistic is not going to have the same values as we do. This is why the church advises against these marriages. The only thing you can do is pray. Look at the lives of the saints to give you hope. Saint Monica prayed for years before her son saint Augustine finally converted.
Everyone suffers, but we Catholics understand that we can offer up our sufferings for the conversion of sinners. So offer your sufferings to God for the conversion of your husband. Also do penance for him. It may take years of prayer, suffering and penance but God will show himself to your husband. but realize that even if Jesus himself appears before your husband, shows him his wounds, and say “I’m real.” Your husband could still say “No your not, your just a figment of my imagination.”
God will honor a persons choice not to believe in him.

 

[Steveabrous]

A marriage of cult is very difficult to live with. Someone who is atheistic is not going to have the same values as we do. This is why the church advises against these marriages. The only thing you can do is pray. Look at the lives of the saints to give you hope. Saint Monica prayed for years before her son saint Augustine finally converted.
Everyone suffers, but we Catholics understand that we can offer up our sufferings for the conversion of sinners. So offer your sufferings to God for the conversion of your husband. Also do penance for him. It may take years of prayer, suffering and penance but God will show himself to your husband. but realize that even if Jesus himself appears before your husband, shows him his wounds, and say “I’m real.” Your husband could still say “No your not, your just a figment of my imagination.”
God will honor a persons choice not to believe in him.

Sorry, wrong thread. I thought this was another thread from a woman who is married to an atheist. But the answer is the same. The reality is you can not prove God exists. If they wont accept the most obvious proof (creation it’self) then ?

 

[Hat4]

If he bases his atheism on a passage from the Bible then he isn’t a very honest or intelligent atheist. Assuming he is comfortable with the idea that he is the world’s greatest Bible scholar and no Christian in 2,000 years ever found this obvious proof of Christianity’s falseness then he still has to wonder why he would discount Theism in general by not believing in Christianity. There are so many problems with this argument that it looks more like bigotry against Christianity than any sort of well thought out personal philosophy on whether God exists or not. This sounds more like personal issues, I wish you luck trying to use reason with someone trying that hard to be atheist.

 

[Anthony_V]

I did kind of start off that way by saying this “the Bible says many things that can be taken many ways, that is why Jesus established a Church not a Bible” and then he came back with John 14:13-14. The thing is he seems open to maybe believing in God but he just needs some evidence. He seems to need to see that everything in the Bible is literally accurate to order to believe. I blame that on the misrepresenting of Christianity from our Protestant friends.

Warning: This reply is long and somewhat dense.

Evidence? Of what, God’s existence? The very essence of that question misses the point. Tell him God, though he is a subject, isn’t a particular. Rather he is, as the great 20th century Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich mentioned several times, “the ground of being” or “being-in-itself”. The question shouldn’t be “does God exist?” but rather “is God existence?”. Or, to ask it another way, “is existence God?” God is simply a name we give to that pure act of being-in-itself. It carries no baggage. It simply is.

Now, is that entity the Christian God? That is a different matter. If God is the ground of being, for sake of being eternally “first” and necessary, then everything that we know to exist as a particular (this hydrogen atom, that quark) exists as an effect of the cause who is God. Or, to say it another way, exists be-cause of God. The act of bringing a particular into existence, ex nihilo, requires either an omnipotent act of randomness or an omnipotent act of the will. Because existence is constant (I would not cease to exist on account of existing, but rather on account of ceasing to participate in existence), we can safely discard the prior. God is, in this sense, an uncreated and omnipotent subject who/which can “will” particulars into being.

Because we can only speak in human terms, and we cannot exhaust the “personality” of God without trying to anthropomorphize her/him/it, I must speak in a balanced apophatic and cataphatic way. God is both creative (by virtue of being a creator) but only because I can say he is unchanging (by virtue of being-in-itself). What kind of human person is creative, but unchanging? None! Only God. Already, we can see how logic is developing into theo-logic. It makes no sense in terms of particulars, but it somehow isn’t illogical, because you watched how we logically got there. We could also say God is Truth: statements about things or ideas are true because they are real. God is reality-in-itself, which renders him Truth-in-itself, and reality is a creative expression of that truth. At the same time, God is unknowable in essence, because she is uncreated and not a particular for sake of being-in-itself. That is to say, we cannot fit her in any single category because we only know of particulars. We can talk about him, but we talk of him, so to speak.

Insofar as existential experience is concerned (the experience of being conscience, as a single person), we can speak of existence as the basis of life. Participation, in a very specific way, in the being-ness of God elicits life. We are alive in a very specific way, beyond the experience of animals, and certainly beyond the abiotic “life” of inanimate objects (which have none). But even further than that, God could be considered life-in-itself, as it is the super-universal subject of being-in-itself. That is to say God is, theoretically, so infinitely far above our experience that she transcends experience itself as a particular. He is the transcendent life-in-itself, while being the immanent source of it. God is life, soul, pneuma, etc. The Greeks knew this several thousand years ago. They were no dummies.

But what is so interesting about Christianity? The one thing that really secures it for me is the Trinity: that amusing, uncanny, and ultimately satisfying play of dynamic and static which we are always looking for. Stubbornly one in substance and essence (such as God is a unity of being-in-itself), but also craftily three in the act of subsistently relating (such as God is a community of love-in-itself): the Lover (Father), the Beloved (Son), and the Love (Spirit). Summa link here.
But there are really many more things. Check out C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.

 

[Anthony_V]

I know but he doesn’t believe the Church is a good source of authority with all of the lies about Her past and the resent sex scandals.

The Church doesn’t profess her members to be perfectly holy. Whether or not someone is a dastardly sinner has nothing to do with whether or not they may possess knowledge of the truth (and simply ignoring it to pursue their own agenda). Lies about her past? What do you mean?

 

[Anthony_V]

I agree but what about someone with no faith and reads what the Bible says and then concludes it all must be hogwash. I know Satan steals people’s faith in God by inserting these doubts and then makes them require hard facts to overcome the doubts.

We only need to overcome our desire to possess the “hard facts” insofar as we profess the fullness of God is above our intellectual capacity, and yet stubbornly before us. Von Goethe, a German philosopher and believer in God, complained heavily about the aggressive tactics used to try and “test” the divine, as if it were some natural experiment. He used the analogy (from his scientific studies, as he was a scientist as well) of a botanist who ripped the plant from its soil and placed it under a microscope to examine it. He instead proposed a type of philosophical “botany” in which the botanist sit with the plant and let is ask and answer its own questions, so to speak. The same can be said of spirituality.

And certainly that is very fitting. If I God understand the essence of God in his totality, he would only be as great as I could conceive, and it wouldn’t be God we are talking about would it? No, God is always greater, yet always here. Stubbornly transcendent, but stubbornly immanent.

 

[Kirk_O]

The Church doesn’t profess her members to be perfectly holy. Whether or not someone is a dastardly sinner has nothing to do with whether or not they may possess knowledge of the truth (and simply ignoring it to pursue their own agenda). Lies about her past? What do you mean?

Lies like, that the Church killed many people who didn’t believe in Christ and that they where the cause of all the wars. Yes I know but this is what atheists throw at you. The Internet is filled with tons of this garbage and most of today’s youth belive that over western History because of course It was all made up to control the people.

 

[Kirk_O]

We only need to overcome our desire to possess the “hard facts” insofar as we profess the fullness of God is above our intellectual capacity, and yet stubbornly before us. Von Goethe, a German philosopher and believer in God, complained heavily about the aggressive tactics used to try and “test” the divine, as if it were some natural experiment. He used the analogy (from his scientific studies, as he was a scientist as well) of a botanist who ripped the plant from its soil and placed it under a microscope to examine it. He instead proposed a type of philosophical “botany” in which the botanist sit with the plant and let is ask and answer its own questions, so to speak. The same can be said of spirituality.

And certainly that is very fitting. If I God understand the essence of God in his totality, he would only be as great as I could conceive, and it wouldn’t be God we are talking about would it? No, God is always greater, yet always here. Stubbornly transcendent, but stubbornly immanent.

The question that arises is: how do you get someone to see spiritually when they won’t look at it as a possibility?

 

[Anthony_V]

Lies like, that the Church killed many people who didn’t believe in Christ and that they where the cause of all the wars. Yes I know but this is what atheists throw at you. The Internet is filled with tons of this garbage and most of today’s youth belive that over western History because of course It was all made up to control the people.

I am quite aware of the status of today’s youth, as I am one of them I’ll be 19 later this month! But in all seriousness, it is a very sad situation indeed.

 

[snarflemike]

I would suggest that the situation regarding the answering of prayers is exactly the same as that of binding and loosing. The Church is given the power to bind and loose heaven itself, but that doesn’t mean that the Church can bind heaven to say that sin is not sin. The Church is guided to remain within the limits of what in heaven can actually be bound or loosed - that is, what is consistent with God’s will.

So it seems obvious (to me) that the answering or prayers verses reflect the same concept. God will answer those prayers and at the same time God will guide the Church to only pray for those things which are consistent with his will.