The scriptures do not tell us to pray to saints!

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MariaG said:
As already stated, Catholic Christians do not pray to saints in heaven as if they were God.

With language shifts that have occurred, “prayer to saints” is better said “ask the saint to pray for you”.
And until you can show the scripture that says that the saints in heaven are dead and not alive, or where it says that we should stop asking the saints in heaven for their prayers, your beliefs are just not scriptural and contradict the interpretation of the Catholic Church and practice of the early Churches understanding of “communion of saints” which is part of the apostles’ creed.

God Bless,
Maria
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The issue is not if the saints are alive but can they hear your specific requests and do something about them. That is the primary issue. Since the Scripture never teach such a thing except to pray directly to God alone, then such a teaching by the catholic church is speculation since the Scriptures don’t teach it.
The secondary issue is: how do you the state of a catholic who has died? If they are in purgatory, can they hear your prayers to them from there?
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Jerry-Jet said:
Peter prayed to Tabitah when she was dead in Acts and she arose from the dead so it had to be God’s will for Peter to pray for her when she was dead.
If God was a Sola Scripturaist He would have let Tabitha remain dead to show that Peter was doing a wicked thing.
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What saint did Peter pray to so she would be raised?
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justasking4 said:
What saint did Peter pray to so she would be raised?
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SHE herself was a saint, was she not? A holy woman, member of the body of Christ? And he asked her (prayed to her) directly to get up - from beyond the grave she heard and answered his request.
 
Mimi said:
Also, “The prayers of a righteous man avails much”.

Have you looked up the context for this verse in James 5:16? It says nothing about those who have died praying.
Who are more righteous than those who have attained Heaven, i.e., the Saints? They are our heroes; they gave everything up for the sake of the Kingdom. Isn’t that what Christ did?
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Even if that is the case, that does not mean they can hear your prayers. To believe that, you must read into the Scriptures what is not there.
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LilyM said:
SHE herself was a saint, was she not? A holy woman, member of the body of Christ? And he asked her (prayed to her) directly to get up - from beyond the grave she heard and answered his request.
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Peter was not praying to her but giving a command in the power of Christ to be raised from the dead.
 
LilyM said:
SHE herself was a saint, was she not? A holy woman, member of the body of Christ? And he asked her (prayed to her) directly to get up - from beyond the grave she heard and answered his request.
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Does your church say this was a prayer?
Also when Jesus raised Jarius daughter from the dead, was He praying to her?
 
MariaG said:
I do. I would not be in the Catholic Church today if I had not been convinced of the absolute scriptural truth of the Catholic Church.

In fact, if any one were to show me one dogma of the Catholic Church that contradicted scripture, I would leave immediately.

Respectfully,
Maria
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How about Mary’s supposed sinlessness? That contradicts that all men are sinners.
 
davidv said:
Why not?
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My thought exactly. It certainly doesn’t rule it out. And since we can demonstrate that the Greek word for “all” (*pas) *in many biblical examples does not mean “absolutely every single one, without exception” the “all have sinned” prooftext against the IC is no prooftext at all.
 
davidv said:
Why not?
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Get a greek lexicon and see how these words in this verse are defined. They do not support the idea of being without sin. Secondly, these words “full of grace” is also used of the saints in Ephesians. Should we also believe that all believers are without sin?
The third reason is that Mary herself admits the need for a savior which means she saw herself as a sinner in need of a savior.
 
So, my point is “Why not?” and further, if Mary was held to be kept from sin in Orthodoxy (differing somewhat from without original sin) and impeccable in RCC, who are the founders of your church to argue?
 
justasking4 said:
Get a greek lexicon and see how these words in this verse are defined. They do not support the idea of being without sin. Secondly, these words “full of grace” is also used of the saints in Ephesians. Should we also believe that all believers are without sin?
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Yes, all believes are without sin at the moment they are sacramentally baptised and immediately following absolution in a sacramental confession. But, given the effects of original sin we don’t remain that way for very long.
The third reason is that Mary herself admits the need for a savior which means she saw herself as a sinner in need of a savior.
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Where in scripture do you find that she sees herself as a sinner?
 
justasking4 said:
The issue is: do the Scriptures teach us to pray to the saints. As i’ve said and shown there is no such exhortation in scripture to do so. This tells us the NT church did not since we have no record in scripture for the claim. Now, if what you mean by the “early church” after the apostles died, then maybe they did. That would not mean though it was to be considered scripture.
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Do you really honestly believe that, if you don’t see something in scripture, it did not exist? If it is not written about, it did not happen?

Do you really think that the scriptures contain ALL truth?

As a matter of fact, we do have records from the early church that do claim prayers were made to the saints. Some of them have been posted on this thread.
justasking4 said:
It is the Bible alone that is inspried-inerrant and not oral traditions. We have no documentary support what these oral traditions were of the apostles anyway.
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Prove that the Bible teaches the Sacred Oral Traditions are not inspired and inerrnant!

We do have documentary support about the oral traditions. They exist in the early church fathers, the liturgies, and the teachings of the church. None of these sources of Apostolic instruction were ever meant to be separated from the Bible, which was drawn from them in the first place.
justasking4 said:
Your right. However the issue at this point is: do the scriptures exhort Christians to pray to created beings? Do they teach us to pray to the dead? They do not. What they do teach us is to pray only to God.
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I think you are just misunderstanding the application of the word “prayer”. It means to supplicate, or ask. We ask for their prayers, just like we would ask prayers of a godly person in church.
justasking4 said:
The ECF’s are but mere men who had beliefs that were not grounded in the Scriptures.
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Prove that the ECF’s had beliefs that were not grounded in scripture.

Explain how, since they were mere men with antiscriptural ideas, they were able to sort through all the documents of the first three centuries, and determine which ones of those should make up your New Testament!
justasking4 said:
Not so. If your church is claiming that praying to saints is biblical, then the burden is on their shoulders to show this.
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Please show where the Catholic Church has claimed this. I have never seen this in a Catholic document. I think you made this up.
justasking4 said:
There is not one verse in the NT for example of anyone shown praying to a dead person or exhorted to ask for the intercession of a dead christian. Not even Paul in his farewell address claims that he can be of help to the church after he dies.
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No, there would not be, since we believe the Saints are alive, and that is what the NT teaches us.
justasking4 said:
Even if this is the case, that does not make it biblical.
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No, it does not, especially since the practice began long before the Bible was compiled. this is one of the shortcomings of rejecting Sacred Tradition, one only has part of the revelation.
justasking4 said:
The issue is not if the saints are alive but can they hear your specific requests and do something about them. That is the primary issue. Since the Scripture never teach such a thing except to pray directly to God alone, then such a teaching by the catholic church is speculation since the Scriptures don’t teach it.
The secondary issue is: how do you the state of a catholic who has died? If they are in purgatory, can they hear your prayers to them from there?
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Fortunately we have the reliable authority of the Apostlic Succession so that we don’t have to speculate! We don’t know the state of any person who has died. Those about whom it has been revealed, we know they are in heaven. otherwise, we don’t know. I don’t know, if I ask you to pray for me tonight before you go to bed if you will actually do it, or not!
 
davidv said:
Yes, all believes are without sin at the moment they are sacramentally baptised and immediately following absolution in a sacramental confession. But, given the effects of original sin we don’t remain that way for very long.

Where in scripture do you find that she sees herself as a sinner?
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In Luke 1:47.
 
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