Rose I love Proving you wrong.
And the personal wild tales, unethical and un-Christian Protestant fabricated statements that you come up with, it's astounding.
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10/21/2015 Biblical Evidence and Reasoned Arguments for Relics. (Part 2)
Dave Armstrong.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2015/10/biblical-evidence-for-relics.html http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2006/07/books-by-dave-armstrong-catholic_31.html Then he took hold of his own clothes and rent them in two pieces. And he took up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan.
Then he took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, ‘Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?’ And when he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other; and Elisha went over.”
Acts 5:15-16: “. . .
They even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and pallets, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them.
The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed.”
Acts 19:11-12:
“And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul,
So that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.”
(cf. Mt 9:20-22)
1. Elisha’s bones were a “first-class” relic: from the person himself or herself.
2. These passages, on the other hand, offer examples of “second-class” relics: Items that have power because they were connected with a holy person.
(Elijah’s mantle and even St. Peter’s shadow)
3. And third-class relics: Something that has merely touched a holy person or first-class relic (handkerchiefs that had touched St. Paul).
Surveying a few examples of Protestant commentary on these verses, we find again that no real substantive objection is raised, so that, therefore, the Catholic basis for relics, grounded in these passages, stands unrefuted.
Thus, Matthew Henry refers to Elisha taking up Elijah’s mantle “not as a sacred relic to be worshipped.”
Catholics do not worship relics, but venerate them, because they represent a saint who in turn reflects the grace and holiness of God.
Henry offers no essential disproof that this is indeed a relic, only a potshot against a straw man.
God ultimately performs all miracles by His power, but in this case and many others He uses physical objects to do so.
(e.g., Moses’ staff, a Temple made of stone and wood).
Belief that God can use something in His creation for a miraculous purpose does not in any way, shape, or form imply that God is not responsible or the cause.
Adam Clarke cynically comments on St. Peter’s shadow, offering seven “disproofs” of relics:
A popish writer, assuming that the shadow of Peter actually cured all on which it was projected, argues from this precarious principle in favour of the wonderful efficacy of relics! . . .
Now, before this conclusion can be valid, it must be proved:
1. That the shadow of Peter did actually cure the sick;
2. That this was a virtue common to all the apostles;
3. That all eminent saints possess the same virtue;
4. That the bones, of the dead, possess the same virtue with the shadow of the living;
5. That those whom they term saints were actually such;
6. That miracles of healing have been wrought by their relics;
7. That touching these relics as necessarily produces the miraculous healing as they suppose the shadow of Peter to have done . . .
No evidence can be drawn from this that any virtue is resident in the relics of reputed or real saints, by which miraculous influence may be conveyed.
I shall briefly reply to Clarke’s seven points of contention:
1) That St. Peter’s shadow was instrumental in healings is at least as reasonable and plausible an assumption from the text as its denial.
2) and 3) Whether all the apostles and saints possessed this characteristic is logically irrelevant to the fact that it occurred with Peter and thus sets a biblical precedent for Catholic belief in second-class relics.
4) This is a non sequitur. The evidence for bones also potentially having such power is proven from the example of Elisha.
5) Whether a person was a saint is a matter of rigorous historical inquiry in the Catholic Church (usually taking many years).
6) Whether miracles have occurred historically as a result of relics is also a matter of historical substantiation. They certainly have, but proof of that is beyond our purview here.
7) Catholics are not saying that healing necessarily follows from contact with a relic, only that it may, and that this is one legitimate means that God may in some instances use to heal and otherwise bestow grace upon sinful men.
Clarke’s case against relics based on this Scripture passage is nonexistent (and mostly merely declarative, to the exclusion of substantive rational argument):
A combination of irrelevancies, straw men, wrongheaded analogies, conclusions that don’t follow, unwarranted demands, and outright skepticism of the occurrence of the supernatural.
(many Protestants – called cessationists — believe that all miracles ceased with the apostles).
Matthew Henry, in his commentary on Peter’s shadow, is not nearly so skeptical as Clarke:
If such miracles were wrought by Peter’s shadow, we have reason to think they were so by the other apostles, as by the handkerchiefs from Paul’s body (ch. xix. 12),
No doubt both being with an actual intention in the minds of the apostles thus to heal; so that it is absurd to infer hence a healing virtue in the relics of saints that are dead and gone.
This is excellent and no different from the Catholic view, except for the last clause, which does not at all logically or biblically follow.
Rather than recognize this instance as a clear proof of the principle of relics, Henry belittles relics as “absurd” with one portion of a sentence – itself containing an altogether unproven assumption:
hat in order for a healing to occur, it must be the intention of a person performing it (thus ruling out miracles as a result of relics, by definition).
But whence comes this “criterion”?
To the contrary, Elisha was dead but his bones still raised a man from the dead.
He certainly had no intention of healing that person (unless he did so from heaven).
By Henry’s reasoning, then, that clear biblical example would be absurd.
He himself grasps the implication when commenting on Elisha’s bones, but contradicts himself here and can’t bring himself to admit anything that might have a “Catholic odor” to it.
Catholics, however (like the overwhelming number of those in the early Church), are not limited by this bias against matter as a purveyor of grace and the notion of relics itself, and so can accept the Bible’s teaching, wherever it leads.
Likewise, John Calvin’s “argument” against relics in his commentary on
Acts 19:11-12
Contains plenty of mockery, straw men, and sophistry:
The Papists are more blockish, who wrest this place unto their relics;
As if Paul sent his handkerchiefs that men might worship them and kiss them in honor of them;
As in Papistry, they worship Francis’ shoes and mantle, Rose’s girdle, Saint Margaret’s comb, and such like trifles.
Yea, rather, he did choose most simple things, lest any superstition should arise by reason of the price or pomp.
But Calvin’s exegesis does not overthrow the fundamental principle illustrated by these texts, which form a strong biblical basis for the Catholic conception of relics –
Which belief suffers no harm whatever from all the above Protestant commentary.
(End Part 2)