Protestants pray to the Virgin Mary? (or even seek Mary's intercession on one's behalf?) The easy, short answer is that it would not usually even occur to Protestants to do this, they not being taught to do so either in the New Testament or in their Churches
Is praying to Mary and the Saints different from praying for others?
Christians who pray to Mary and saints in heaven to intercede for them sometimes say that praying to Mary and the saints is no different than asking living fellow believers to pray for them. They say that the Scriptures tell us to uphold each other and intercede for each other in prayer ( Matthew 5:44; Ephesians 6:18; James 5:16 ).
What do Protestants believe about Mary?
Some Protestants are aware that there is more to the story of Mary than American Protestantism often lets on. Some might know that the Protestant reformers, for example, held views on Mary different than most Protestant churches today. Martin Luther affirmed Mary’s divine motherhood, perpetual virginity, and immaculate conception.
Do evangelicals have a special place for Mary?
On the other hand, evangelicals, by and large, do not find enough warrant in scripture to condone a privileged place for Mary. She is the mother of Jesus Christ, so she is special, but she must not get in the way of a personal relationship with Jesus and personal acceptance of him as Lord and Savior.
Does the Bible tell us to uphold each other in prayer?
They say that the Scriptures tell us to uphold each other and intercede for each other in prayer ( Matthew 5:44; Ephesians 6:18; James 5:16 ). Though Scripture doesn’t affirm it, it is conceivable that friends and loved ones who have preceded us to heaven are able to pray for us.
Does the Protestant church believe in Mary?
Had I been asked at that time what the significant differences were between Protestants and Catholics, I likely would have said something along these lines: Protestants do not worship Mary, and we do not think we need a pope telling us what to believe and how to live.
Who do the Protestants pray to?
GodThis veneration is also categorically by the Protestant Church as unbiblical. According to Reformation views, every person may and should pray directly to God.
Is it a sin to pray to Mary?
The simple answer to your question is “Yes, you should refrain from praying to Mary and to the saints.” Catholics pray to Mary (or to the saints) because, like the rest of us, they recognize their need for someone to help them bring their requests to a holy God.
Do Protestants do the rosary?
Almost everyone has heard of the Catholic rosary, which is a vital element of Catholic worship. What many don't realize is that Protestants also have prayer beads in the form of the Anglican rosary.
Why can't Protestants take Catholic Communion?
Because protestant churches deliberately broke the apostolic succession of their ministers, they lost the sacrament of Holy Orders, and their ministers cannot in fact change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
What is the main difference between Protestant and Catholic?
Generally speaking, Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers in the 16th century espoused the belief that salvation is attained only through faith in Jesus and his atoning sacrifice on the cross (sola fide), while Catholicism taught that salvation comes through a combination of faith plus good works (e.g., living a ...
Why do Catholics worship Mary instead of Jesus?
What does the bible say about worshiping Mary? The Catholic Church teaches that Mary is the Mother of God, that she is to be venerated as the Mother of God, and that she intercedes for us to secure our salvation. This is why Catholics love and respect her and pray to her as the Mother of God.
Should you pray to Jesus or God?
1:403:14Do we pray to the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit? (Ask Dr. Stanley)YouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipThey're also ultimately one-one Godhead and so when we think in terms of our prayers. We can prayMoreThey're also ultimately one-one Godhead and so when we think in terms of our prayers. We can pray Heavenly Father or we can pray Lord Jesus or I can tell you how I feel personally about it.
Does Christianity believe in the Virgin Mary?
In Christianity, Mary is commonly referred to as the Virgin Mary, in accordance with the belief that the Holy Spirit impregnated her, thereby conceiving her first-born son Jesus miraculously, without sexual relations with her betrothed/husband Joseph, "until her son [Jesus] was born".
How do Protestant pray?
Be thou our Father, our Captain and Defender in all temptations; hold thou us by thy merciful hand; that we may be delivered from all inconveniences [i.e. hardships], and end our lives in the sanctifying and honouring of thine holy name, through JESUS CHRIST our Lord and only Saviour. Amen.
Do Protestants believe in the saints?
Other Protestantism Many Protestants consider intercessory prayers to the saints to be idolatry, since what they perceive to be an application of divine worship that should be given only to God himself is being given to other believers, dead or alive.
Which religion uses rosaries?
In Roman Catholicism the rosary became a popular method of public and private prayer. The most common rosary is the one devoted to Mary, the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin, the prayers of which are recited with the aid of a chaplet, or rosary.
What is Protestant worship?
In Contrast to the Catholics (see Catholicism), Protestants generally celebrate only 2 sacraments (baptism and the Lord's supper) and they emphasize preaching and relative informality in their services of Sunday worship. Protestant congregations often sing in harmony.
What is the Protestant version of the Lord's prayer?
"Pray then like this: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
What are Protestant beliefs?
The chief characteristics of original Protestantism were the acceptance of the Bible as the only source of infallible revealed truth, the belief in the universal priesthood of all believers, and the doctrine that a Christian is justified in his relationship to God by faith alone, not by good works or dispensations of ...
What are some Protestant prayers?
Let thy mighty hand and outstretched arm, O Lord, be still our defence; thy mercy and loving-kindness in Jesus Christ, thy dear Son, our salvation; thy true and holy word our instruction; thy grace and Holy Spirit our comfort and consolation, unto the end and in the end.
Who did the Christians believe should pray to?
They believed Christians should pray to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Mary was a historical person upon whom God’s favor shined, and she should be admired and perhaps imitated. But anything more is a serious problem.
What does Pentecostalism believe?
The focus, Pentecostals believe, should remain on Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit.
What has changed since the Reformation?
Since the Reformation, Protestant traditions have been shifting and changing. The present day is no exception. With migration and exchange between cultures and religious faiths, it is no wonder that the role of Mary is just as varied.
Is Mary the mother of Jesus?
She is the mother of Jesus Christ, so she is special, but she must not get in the way of a personal relationship with Jesus and personal acceptance of him as Lord and Savior. More importantly, she has no role in the larger work of God’s salvation through Jesus. Advertisement.
Do evangelicals find enough warrant in scripture to condone a privileged place for Mary?
Evangelicals, by and large, do not find enough warrant in scripture to condone a privileged place for Mary.
What then, in your opinion, is the special importance of Mary for our time?
But this Redemption has to come about in time and history. Here, Mary plays a crucial role, as the new Eve and the spiritual Mother of all humanity. In Genesis 3:15 God says to the serpent, ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman…’ This image stands at the beginning and at the end of holy Scripture. Creature against creature. In Genesis it is the serpent, the dragon, that gains victory over Eve. In Revelation the roles are reversed. Here, it is the new Eve, ‘the Woman, clothed with the Sun’, who gains victory over the dragon. In this vision of John from the book of Revelation, we recognize the Church, but primarily Mary, like the early Fathers of the Church did. As the dragon rises in our times, so too must the Woman.
Why do we pray to Jesus?
We, of course, pray directly to Jesus all the time, and to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, but it is very biblical to also invoke the intercession of other humans to pray for us. In Luke 7, for instance, we read how the Roman centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant, who was very dear to him. Jesus answered his prayer. He healed the servant, not because of the servant’s faith, but because of the faith and the prayer of his master. In the same way, the daughter of the Canaanite woman was healed, not because of her faith – she even was under the power of evil spirits – but because of the prayer and the faith of her mother. And so we can go on.
What does the Lord call his mother?
Indeed, at central scenes, like Cana and Golgotha, the Lord calls his Mother: ‘Woman’ . This is often misunderstood, as if he wanted to take some distance from her, and even a kind of disrespect. The opposite is true. “Woman” was a name of honor in the original Paradise. In Genesis, it was Adam and “ the woman.”.
What is the Magisterium of the early Church?
Guided by the Holy Spirit, the Magisterium of the early Church selected the writings, letters and gospels they considered authentic and inspired, that make up the Bible as we know it today. We believe the Holy Spirit keeps guiding the Church to attain in time an ever deeper understanding of Scripture.
What is the Mother of All Peoples?
Mother of All Peoples is an international lay organization that seeks to spread knowledge of and devotion to the Virgin Mary, and works for the papal definition of our Lady as Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate.
What is the time of spiritual preparation?
Now is the time of spiritual preparation, a time of waiting for the Lord to come in the power of his Spirit, a time for persistent prayer with and around Mary, like before the first Pentecost. In Amsterdam, she gave a short and timely prayer that calls for the Holy Spirit to come:
Why is Mary called the Co-Redemptrix?
Of course, Christ is our sole divine Redeemer, but in the human sense, Mary truly deserves to be called Co-redemptrix with Jesus, not only because she is his Mother, but again, because she is the Immaculate Conception. Mary certainly had an important place in God’s plan of salvation.
What is the worship of Mary?
To this day the worship of Mary is one of the principal points of separation between the Graeco - Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism . It is one of the strongest expressions of the fundamental...error of unduly exalting the human factors or instruments of redemption, and obstructing, or rendering needless, the immediate access of believers to Christ, by thrusting in subordinate mediators.
Who was the heretic who opposed the dignity of Mary?
Epiphanius, in his seventy-eighth Heresy, combats the advocates of the opposite view in Arabia toward the end of the fourth century (367), as heretics under the title of Antidikomarianites, opposers of the dignity of Mary, i.e., of her perpetual virginity.
What is the apocryphal gospel of Mary?
In striking contrast with this healthful and sober representation of Mary in the canonical Gospels are the numerous apocryphal Gospels of the third and fourth centuries, which decorated the life of Mary with fantastic fables and wonders of every kind, and thus furnished a pseudo-historical foundation for an unscriptural Mariology and Mariolatry.
What did Augustine say about Pelagius?
Augustine went a step farther. In an incidental remark against Pelagius , he agreed with him in excepting Mary, "propter honorem Domini," from actual (but not from original) sin. This exception he is willing to make from the sinfulness of the race, but no other.
Who said Justina besought the Virgin Mary?
The first more certain example appears in Gregory Nazianzen († 389), who, in his eulogy on Cyprian, relates of Justina that she besought the Virgin Mary to protect her threatened virginity, and at the same time disfigured her beauty by ascetic self-tortures, and thus fortunately escaped the amours of a youthful lover ( Cyprian before his conversion).
Is Mary the Mother of Jesus?
On the contrary, true to the genuine female character, she modestly stands back throughout the gospel history, and in the Acts and the Epistles she is mentioned barely once, and then simply as the "mother of Jesus;" even her birth and her death are unknown. Her glory fades in holy humility before the higher glory of her Son .
Is Mary holy in the New Testament?
But, on the other hand, it is equally unquestionable, that she is nowhere in the New Testament excepted from the universal sinfulness and the universal need of redemption, and represented as immaculately holy, or as in any way an object of divine veneration.
How Do We Think about Mary Today?
What does this biblical and historical information mean for us today? Allow me to make three suggestions:
Which Protestant reformers affirmed Mary's virginity?
Some might know that the Protestant reformers, for example, held views on Mary different than most Protestant churches today. Martin Luther affirmed Mary’s divine motherhood, perpetual virginity, and immaculate conception. Likewise, John Calvin affirmed the perpetual virginity and espoused (with qualifications) a view of Mary as the “mother ...
How to honor Mary?
Honor Mary. Show the Blessed Virgin honor and respect in accordance with her personhood and position. In practice, I have found it helpful to ask myself how I honor other people in like positions of importance, and trying to grant Mary the same sort of honor. Very often, honoring someone today means remembering them, thinking about them, talking about them, and showing them respect in thought, word, and deed. Most practically for me, this has meant being willing to think and talk about Mary using her honorific titles (e.g., Blessed Mother, Blessed Virgin, and Holy Mother).
Is it dangerous to talk about Mary?
Talking about Mary can feel dangerous , especially if you are a Protestant who adheres to Protestant orthodoxy. Sure, we sing about Mary at Christmas, feel her pain on Good Friday, and maybe even read a little about her in the gospels. But for most American Protestants, almost any other interaction with Mary is borderline Catholic.
Do Protestants talk about Mary?
So we don’t talk about Mary, we don’t engage with Mary, and we don’t think about Mary. Life seems easier that way. But in truth, this approach is historically and theologically problematic.
