Defending the Glory of God
Theological: Adding
or Subtracting from the Glory of God ?
3. Theological
overview:
“After all,” the
Protestant may say, “Don’t you Catholics believe that Jesus is God
and if He is God is that not enough for you ? Are you saying that
somehow the Saints make up for what Jesus Christ lacks ? Aren’t you
then trying to add to what Christ does ?”
Or
“Doesn’t focusing
on the Saints distract from the Greatness and the Glory of God who
alone is to be adored ? Does this devotion to the Saints subtract
from what Christ did ?”
John 14:6
“
Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No
one comes to the Father except through me.
We worship God
and only God.
The questions
above in this section might not be expressed and or even be
explicitly thought out, however even if a person is intuitively
embracing them even in a fuzzy sort of way then these issues have to be
clearly stated and answered. As long as one’s objections stay on a
fuzzy or emotional level they will not be adequately dealt with.
When we look at
the role God has given to Mary for our salvation we should not see
it as a question or a choice of either Jesus or Mary. The answer is
JESUS, JESUS, JESUS. And how Jesus works through Mary, and how
Jesus enables Mary to do truly good works. These good works that
Mary, and the other saints, do are done in and through Jesus Christ.
John 15:5.
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in
him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”
So, how are we
to understand the good things that we or the Saints do ? Does the
credit belong solely to ourselves ? Some holy Christians summed up
the principles involved as to how we can do good things as follows:
“If anyone asserts
that we can, by our natural powers, think as we ought, or choose any
good pertaining to the salvation of eternal life . . . without the
illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit . . . he is misled
by a heretical spirit . . . [it goes on to cite Jn 15:5, and 2
Cor 3:5]
“That grace is
not preceded by merit. Recompense is due to good works if they are
performed; but grace, to which we have no claim, precedes them, to
enable them to be done.”
“That a man can
do no good without God. God does much that is good in a man that
the man does not do; but a man does nothing good for which God is
not responsible, so as to let him do it.
“We also believe
and confess to our benefit that in every good work it is not we who
take the initiative and are then assisted through the mercy of God,
but God himself first inspires in us both faith in him and love for
him…”
[The Catholic
Church’s Second Council of Orange, 529 A.D. Canons 7, 18, 20, and
the Conclusion]
God is the
source of all that is good. Therefore, the goodness that
is within us is not something that we have created; rather it is
the goodness, or grace, that we have opened ourselves up to
receive from God. And so, the goodness within the Saints
in Heaven neither adds to the glory of God, nor does it subtract
from the glory of God because it is precisely God’s glory being
manifested within them because they freely choose [with the help
of God’s grace] to co-operate with it, to receive it, and to act
in conjunction with it. The good works that the
saints do are done in and through Jesus Christ. [Ephesians
2:10, John 6:28-29]
Ephesians 2:10
“For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good
works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in
them.”
John 6:28-29
“So they said to him, ‘What can
we do to accomplish the works
of God?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of
God, that you believe in the one he sent.’ ”
So, it is not a
question of needing more than what God does, but one of desiring
*all* that God does and all that He wants to do for us.
If we do not desire all the help that God wants to send to us
then we have to ask ourselves,
“Is it God
that we are truly desiring
?”
God
wants to help us through Saint Matthew, Saint Mark, Saint Luke,
Saint John, and Saint Paul. And He also wants to help us
through the Bible publisher across town, the Bible preacher down
the street, our friendly neighbors, our physical families and
our spiritual brothers and sisters, and especially those Saints
whose help has been purified in heaven. Cf.
Rev 21:27.
God Is Not
Petty
The pagans often
attributed to their gods various human weaknesses and even sins.
It is very important that we not do that to the One True God
because He is All Powerful and All Good. When the Bible
speaks about God as being a jealous God it is not the type of
petty jealously that man in his weakness sometimes falls into.
God is never petty. Nor, is God offended when we pay
attention to or when we love someone else. He even
commands that we do.
Mark 12:29-31.
When the Bible speaks of God’s “jealousness”
it is always in the context of how he does not want us to place
anyone above Him or to worship anyone else but Him. God
does not have a petty jealousy. He is like the artist who
is glad for us to notice the goodness that He does in and
through others.
Do the prayers
of the Saints distract from the work of Christ ? No. On the
contrary, they demonstrate and help explain who Jesus Christ is, and
what He is doing through them, and what it means to follow Him.
The Saints and their example point us to Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 11:1
“Be imitators of me, as I am of
Christ.”
For the answers to more
objections
concerning praying to Mary or the other Saints see
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