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His words will be in blue. Translations from the Portugese of his book will be made with Google Translate (with an occasional additional modification). I will use RSV for Bible translations.
Juan (very typically of anti-Catholic polemicists) mocks the Catholic distinctions herein outlined and dogmatically declares, “in practice, things are totally different.” Again, it is freely granted (as a truism or self-evident truth) that some individuals go astray. This will always be the case. But they are not following actual Catholic teaching, and it is a fact that distortions and misunderstandings run rampant in any Christian belief-system or community that one can name.
[T]he world grows worse as it grows older, becoming the very Satan himself, as we see that the people are now more dissolute, avaricious, unmerciful, impure and wicked than previously under the papacy. What causes this? Nothing else than that the people disregard this preaching, do not use it aright for their own conversion and amendment, that is, for the comfort of their conscience, and thankfulness for the grace and benefit of God in Christ; but every one is more concerned for money and goods, or other worldly matters, than for this precious treasure which Christ brings us. . . .*We see farmers, citizens and all orders, from the highest to the lowest, guilty of shameful avarice, inordinate life, impurity and other vices. . . . this doctrine is of a character to make godly, chaste, obedient, pious people. But those who will not gladly receive it, become seven times worse than they were before they heard it, as we see everywhere. (1533 sermon for the First Sunday of Advent [Matthew 21:1-9], from Dr. Martin Luther’s House-Postil, or Sermons on the Gospels, Vol. 1, 2nd edition, Columbus, Ohio: J. A. Schulze, 1884, pp. 8-10; this sermon was translated by D. M. Martens sometime prior to 1869 and originally transcribed by Veit Dietrich)
I confess, that I am much more negligent, than I was under the Pope, and there is now nowhere such an amount of earnestness under the Gospel, as was formerly seen among Monks and Priests. [Walch. IX. 1311] [from: Henry O’Connor, S. J.: Luther’s Own Statements Concerning His Teaching and Its Results (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1884, second edition]
Another translation comes from Catholic Luther biographer Hartmann Grisar (Luther, Vol. 3, p. 206):
“I confess of myself,” he says in a sermon in 1532, “and doubtless others must admit the same [of themselves], that I lack the diligence and earnestness of which really I ought to have much more than formerly; that I am much more careless than I was under the Papacy; and that now, under the Evangel, there is nowhere the same zeal to be found as before.” (Werke, Erl. ed., 18 2 , p. 353).
Paul Althaus’ work, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), confirms (p. 450) that the sermon is from 1532.
I treat Luther the same way that I ask that Catholics be treated: with fairness and objectivity, rather than deliberately looking for the worst possible examples of a religious belief-system. Lutheranism is defined as Luther and the Book of Concord define it: not by the rabble in Wittenberg in the 1530s. But now to the Bible.
1 Chronicles 29:20 Then David said to all the assembly, “Bless the LORD your God.” And all the assembly blessed the LORD, the God of their fathers, and bowed their heads, and worshiped [shachah] the LORD, and did obeisance [shachah] to the king.
Genesis 27:29 Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down [shachah] to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may your mother’s sons bow down [shachah] to you. . . .
This is Isaac’s blessing of Jacob.
Genesis 42:6 Now Joseph was governor over the land; he it was who sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came, and bowed themselves [shachah] before him with their faces to the ground.
In the Old Testament, the same word, shachah, that is used at least 99 times in reference to worship of God, is used many times when a person is bowing before a person or an angel. Abraham bowed before (venerated) two angels:
Genesis 18:1-2 And the LORD appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. [2] He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself [shachah] to the earth,
Two of these men were angels, as we know from 18:22: “So the men turned from there, and went toward Sodom; but Abraham still stood before the LORD.” This was a theophany (appearance of God in the Old Testament). So Abraham had venerated two angels and worshiped (?) God at the same time. Was he confused (like us ignorant “papists” supposedly are about veneration of saints and angels)? Is the Bible confused? Is it trying to mislead and confuse people with inexplicable passages like this, that drive Protestants crazy? You decide, dear reader. This sort of material is systematically destroying and pulverizing Juan’s contentions.
Lot venerated two angels:
Genesis 19:1 The two angels came to Sodom in the evening; and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and bowed himself [shachah] with his face to the earth,
Abraham “bowed [shachah] to the Hittites” (Gen 23:7). Jacob bowed [shachah] seven times to his brother Esau (Gen 33:3). His wife, maids, and children did the same (33:6-7). Joseph’s brothers bowed [shachah] to him (Gen 43:26). Joseph bowed [shachah] “with his face to the earth” to Jacob / Israel (Gen 48:12). Ruth “fell on her face, bowing to the ground” (Ruth 2:10) to her future husband, Boaz. King David “fell on his face to the ground [shachah], and bowed three times” to his friend Jonathan (1 Sam 20:41). He did the same to King Saul (1 Sam 24:8). Abigail did this [shachah] to King David (1 Sam 25:23). There are many other similar examples (look up “bowed” in a concordance. Young’s Concordance categorizes them by the Hebrew word, including shachah).
But is there a clear example of the veneration of an angel? Yes, using the same word, shachah:
Joshua 5:13-15 When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man stood before him with his drawn sword in his hand; and Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” [14] And he said, “No; but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and worshiped [shachah], and said to him, “What does my lord bid his servant?” [15] And the commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Put off your shoes from your feet; for the place where you stand is holy.” And Joshua did so.
We are not to – must not! — adore and worship anyone but God. This is what the Catholic Church has always taught. But we can and should also honor and venerate saints and angels. This goes beyond even the Catholic distinction between dulia and latreia, that John Calvin roundly mocks as absurd, since the same word is applied to fundamentally different actions: thus potentially leading to far more confusion than Calvin thinks Catholic distinctions of words and actions lead to. Why, then, do Calvin (and Juan) not go after the inspired Bible writers with the same vehemence that they reserve for Catholics in their anti-Catholic zeal?
King Saul venerated [both shachah and qadad] – and talked to and made an intercessory request of — the prophet Samuel after his death:
1 Samuel 28:14 . . . And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed [qadad] with his face to the ground, and did obeisance [shachah].
This is almost the most explicit conceivable biblical evidence (from Hebrew words and what is described in the passage) for veneration of creatures that can be imagined. He is venerating a dead prophet (not even an angel this time), and the two Hebrew words used to describe what he did are both applied many times to adoration of God.
King Nebuchadnezzar “fell upon his face, and did homage to Daniel” (Dan 2:46; cf. 8:17). The Philippian jailer “fell down before Paul and Silas” (Acts 16:29). Men (apostles) are venerated in the New Testament. The Greek for “fell down before” in Acts 16:29 is prospipto (Strong’s word #4363). It is also used of worship towards Jesus in five passages (Mk 3:11; 5:33; 7:25; Lk 8:28, 47). So why didn’t Paul and Silas rebuke the jailer? I submit that it was because they perceived his act as one of veneration (which is permitted) as opposed to adoration or worship, which is not permitted to be directed towards creatures. Note that the word “worship” doesn’t appear in the above five passages, nor in Luke 24:5 or Acts 16:29. When “worship” [proskuneo] does appear in connection with a man or angel, it isn’t permitted, as in Acts 10:25-26 (St. Peter and Cornelius).
Thus, we see the same in Revelation 19:10 and 22:8-9, because St. John mistakenly thought the angel was Jesus, and so tried to worship / adore the angel. The same thing happened when men thought that Paul and Barnabas were Zeus and Hermes and “wanted to offer sacrifice.” They were rebuked, as mistaken (Acts 14:11-18).
Another passage with a different word used, implies possible veneration of an angel:
Luke 24:4-5 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; [5] and as they were frightened and bowed [klino] their faces to the ground . . .
Both fear and a bowing or prostrating gesture are, in the Bible, presented as characteristic in encounters with angels. Once again, proskuneo is not present in the passage, and here, as in Acts 16:29, the women were not told to get up, as if they had done anything improper. This is (arguably, plausibly) because they were venerating the angel and not adoring or worshiping, which would be impermissible.
Is all that idolatry, according to the prohibitions of “bowing down” (Ex 20:5; Lev 26:1; Dt 5:8-9; and Mic 5:13). No. All of those passages are strictly about conscious “graven image” idols, meant to replace God. One mustn’t bow to them. But this is obviously not a prohibition of all bowing and veneration, or else the passages above would be presented in the Bible with disapproval (there is not the slightest hint of of that).
We thus can rightly conclude, in light of all these fascinating passages, that God (unlike Calvin) doesn’t seem to think that human beings are so breathtakingly stupid and ignorant that they can’t (or very often cannot) tell the difference between creatures and God, or between veneration and adoration / worship.
Therefore, He didn’t see fit (in inspiring those who wrote his revelation to man) to even bother to use a different word for the two in Hebrew; and even in the New Testament, the gesture (falling down) was no different for veneration than it was for adoration. According to Calvin, this causes confusion and idolatry, but according to Catholicism and the Bible, people generally have enough discernment to know the difference between the two.
The dichotomy that God is concerned about is between the true God (Himself) and false gods (as represented by material idols); not between veneration (where it is properly due) and worship reserved for Him alone: as if the former is completely forbidden and wicked.
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When that happens, it’s the devil’s victory, not God’s, and is an instance of our fellow Christians and separated brethren being unwittingly “captured by” the devil “to do his will” (2 Tim 2:26). Please pray for Juan and those who think like him; that they may be freed from such spiritual bondage and spiritual error, and to eventually be given the grace to see and accept the magnificent fullness of spiritual and theological truth that5 can only be found in the Catholic Church.
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Summary: Brazilian Protestant Juan Roberto de Oliveira says that Catholics confuse veneration of saints and worship of God. I refute this through massive use of Scripture.