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sirach2v4
Guest
In his book titled Surprised by Hope, Church of England (COE) Bishop NT Wright says there is no scriptural evidence that any saint is better than any other saint, even the Blessed Virgin Mary. (He says this with fear and trembling.)Is any Saint greater than another?
The Blessed Virgin is, of course, greater than all the Saints.
She is the Queen of All Saints.
St. John the Baptist or St. Michael the Archangel comes next.
However, I think the hierarchy stops there.
How are Saints compared to one another?
And if there are several patrons of the same aspect (e.g. safe travel),
who is the greater patron and lesser patron?
Ain’t the Blessed Virgin patron of all things?
God Bless
He claims the COE doctrine is based on scripture, tradition, and reason (STR). From a Catholic perspective, the preceding is a low point of the book as well as his total renunciation of purgatory.
There is much to commend in the book about his stressing the important and significance of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.
He also jabs at the uncritical and unbiblical view that after death those worthy go to heaven, when in fact the Bible says that our final destiny is that heaven comes down to Earth, when Jesus returns, and makes all things new. Our bodies, he says, will be glorified in a way that Jesus’s body was renewed and glorified after his resurrection. He reports that one woman was concerned that she didn’t like her nose and asked him if she’d have a new nose, in that later resurrected life. Wright could offer no guarantees.
His thesis in the last part of the book, which I am still working on, is that the mission and commission of Christ to each of us, in every action of our life, is to further the establishment of the kingdom of God on the Earth. In this mission and commission, the old heavens and earth are not destroyed, but they are changed, resurrected so to speak, according to the will of the Father, in which the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.
This author and book were highlighted briefly by Dr. David Anders on the EWTN program “Called to Communion” a couple weeks ago (without going into specifics).
Wright cites statements by Catholics Karl Rahner and J. Cardinal Ratzinger playing down the Catholic view on purgatory.