Joe responds to objections raised in a conversation between Vlad Savchuk, Isaiah Saldivar and Mike Signorelli about relics in the Catholic Church.

Transcript:

Joe:

Even if the entire cross of Jesus was discovered intact, there would be no spiritual value to it.

CLIP:

I’ve never heard a Protestant just say, the cross is worthless like the cross. If you found it tomorrow fully intact and you knew it was the true cross, it is of no spiritual value. And that strikes me as just so outrageously un-Christian of an attitude to have. Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and today I want to look at both the biblical case for relics and some attacks on relics that have been made by three Protestant pastors, Isaiah Saldovar, Vlad Savchuk, and Mike Signor, rei. Now, when we’re talking about relics, we typically mean either something that has been touched to the body of a saint or part of that saint’s body. Now we treat these things with reverence and we believe that God can and does work through these things mightily. Now if your objection to this is just, wow, that’s weird and foreign to my background as a Protestant, I totally get it, but relics are very obviously biblical and we’re going to see this both from the positive case as well as the weakness of the cases made against relics by Isaiah, by Vlad and by Mike.

And I think you’ll see there is no good biblical argument against relics and very clear biblical evidence for it. So let’s lay out that positive case first. What is the biblical argument for relics? Well start with kind of what we know about Jesus’s ministry, that Jesus comes to heal not just souls but bodies as well, and that he does this by giving a great dignity to matter, meaning to material things. So to give just a couple examples, first you have the fact that he’s healing bodies in the first place. In Matthew four we’re told that he’s healing every disease and every infirmity among the people. This shows a dignity to the material world because your body is matter. If matter was bad, if the world was bad, then he might come to save your soul from your body, but he wouldn’t come to save your soul and your body.

We know as St. Paul says in one Corinthians 15 that he comes to save our bodies as well, that Christ rising from the dead is really just the first fruit. So we are also meant to rise from the dead. So we’re called to the glorification of the body, not the abandonment of the body. So the body is going to be really important. This is going to be a major point of contention in some of the attacks on relics. And Jesus’s healing of the body often involves these incredibly gritty kind of means. So the example I like to use is in John chapter nine where Jesus spits on the ground and he makes clay out of the spittle and he anoints the blind man’s eyes with the clay and then he sends them to the pool of sil to be healed and this anointing with spit and clay heals him.

Now, could Jesus have done that in a disembodied sort of way, but just saying the word of course he could have, but he’s showing us something by using these kind of material means he’s using the material world to heal both the material body and also to invite us to this kind of spiritual healing. And also he’s healing souls as well as bodies throughout this. But just recognize that the mission of Christ is not just one of disembodied spirituality, it is incarnate. And as a result, as that name suggests, it’s incredibly bodily. So how does this look in terms of subsequent kind of healings? Well, in James chapter five, we’re told if any of us are sick, we should call for the presbyters, the elders and have them pray over us, anointing us with oil in the name of the Lord. So you’ll notice there’s a bodily kind of element to healing even here in James five, that number one, you have the healing of the body again, and number two, you have this connection with oil with the material world.

But this is also where you get things like relics and arguably the first New Testament example of a relic is when a woman comes up and she’s suffering from a hemorrhage and she wants to be healed. And she says to herself, if I only touch his garment, I shall be made well. And so she does, and she is. Jesus turned seeing her. He said, take heart, daughter, your faith has made you. Well. There’s another event where someone touches Jesus and he feels the power go out from him, which is an incredible thing because it isn’t even just like Jesus says, oh, hey, I recognize by this physical gesture. But no, you have this encounter where someone through faith has this encounter with a physical object like the garment of Jesus and divine healing happens. That’s the entire case for relics properly understood right there. But there’s some more pretty clear biblical evidence.

So for instance, in Acts chapter five, the believers start bringing their sick out to the streets so that as St Peter walks by at least his shadow would fall on some of them. We’ll get back to this in a little bit, but it shows very clearly people believe in physical healings, not from Peter having a conversation with them or talking to them about faith, but literally just bodily passing by in his shadow, falling upon them that that is enough to bring this kind of healing. And similarly, in Acts 19 with St. Paul, we’re told that God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, and it’s not just what we might expect Paul preaching and bringing this spiritual transformation, nor is it even just like Paul doing physical miracles. It’s even more than those two things, although certainly we don’t want to deny those two things said, even handkerchiefs and aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.

So people were literally going up to Paul touching something against him and taking that to sick people and the sick people were made. Well, again, everything you need for relics is completely right there, but you might say, well, what about when it’s not just something touched to the body of a saint? What about when it’s the saint’s body themselves? Is that really biblical? The answer is yes. You find that all the way back in the Old Testament, Alicia dies and they bury him. Somebody else is thrown onto his grave, and as soon as this dead man’s corpse touches the body of Alicia, the man comes back to life. This is all recounted pretty matter of factly in two kings 13. So you can see both the items that have touched the saints or touched our Lord himself as well as the bodies of the saints are these conduits for incredible divine power.

And that’s why we treat them with great reverence by preserving them as relics. So you might say, okay, given what looks, I think like a pretty straightforward biblical case, what’s the case against relics? And so in this video called the Shocking Truth about holy relics and Catholicism, Isaiah Saldovar kind of takes the lead and makes an argument against relics, but really kind of against any physical thing having a spiritual importance. And I think we’ll see that as he lays out his case against relics and icons and rosaries and anything that kind of involves the body in this spiritual work. It’s a very disembodied, and Andy, I might even call it anti incarnate kind of vision of Christianity, and I think you’ll see that as we go. So he’s going to take the lead and then Vlad’s going to go next, and then Mike Signorelli is going to come up there. There’s a fourth guy here who doesn’t, as far as I recall, say a single word throughout this entire clip, which is like 10 minutes long. So I’m just going to focus on these three guys. If you’re wondering why I’m ignoring the fourth guy, he just like all he does is strokes his beard. It’s great, alright? But Isaiah begins by launching his attack on relics, crucifixes holy water and other things that he calls objects of worship.

Joe:

And for those in the chat that are like, these guys are going to research more and convert to Catholicism, brother, the more I research, the more I realize how much heresy is in Catholicism, the more I look into it, the more I look at the objects of worship, which we’re going to go into. Number four is holy relic. So this is going to get people really mad. The rosary, the crucifix, holy water, statues of saints, the list goes on. In fact, I was looking up today on the Catholic International website, something like that, all of their objects and their holy items they call them, and guys, I went through 40 and I’m exhausted by all the items, the bells, the this, the statue of this, the statue of this person, this, there’s so many statues

CLIP:

And we’re off to a bad start because he’s conflated objects of worship and worship aids. So we’ll explain and object of worship is what you worshiped. God is the object of our worship. It sounds like we’re objectifying, but we mean object in the sense of there’s a subject and there’s an object. I worship God and the subject, the verb is worship. The object of worship is God. There are also aids to worship. So maybe you find reading scripture really helpful while you’re praying that is an aid to worship. It is a mistake to conflate an aid to worship with the object of worship. It would be ridiculous to say, oh, I noticed whenever you go to pray, you take your Bible with you, you must be worshiping your Bible. I would be conflating the aid to your worship with the object of your worship. So here he’s just asserting completely incorrectly that we think relics, crucifixes and holy water are objects of worship.

And that’s ridiculous. No one is worshiping holy water. People believe holy water, crucifixes and relics help them as they’re praying, as they’re engaged in worship. Now you might agree with that, you might disagree with that, but if your whole argument is built on the ridiculous idea that we think we should worship relics or worship holy water, then you’re off to a bad start. And so it’s pretty bad when you say you’ve done a lot of research and then your research is like you checked a website today and you can’t remember the name of it and then you get everything about it wrong. So we’re off to a bad start, but he’s then going to a quote, what he says is bible.org, I think it’s actually got questions.org, but maybe he found it on bible.org, but it’s going to be a Protestant take on Catholicism. He’s not researching from actual Catholic sources. I mean it sounds like he tried to find a Catholic website at one point, but he finds what he thinks is a good argument from what he says is bible.org.

Joe:

I found a really good excerpt on bible bible org and so I’m just going to read it quickly. And so we’re talking about holy items and then the guy that wrote the article really good said, one of the dangers in veneration of relics is the temptation to commit idolatry.

CLIP:

Okay, just notice before we go any further, that already has completely undermined his argument because his argument is it is worship, and yet he’s distinguished even in this quotation between veneration and worship. If the danger is the temptation to commit idolatry, then you’re granting that it’s not itself idolatry. I hope that makes sense. But if you say venerating relics is dangerous because it could lead to idolatry, you are sort of granting that it’s not already idolatry. You might think it’s dangerous, but you’re at least granting that it’s not idolatry. Now, I think we’re going to see that even the argument of it being dangerous isn’t a very strong argument, but we’ll continue.

Joe:

This is exactly what happened in ancient Israel. God told Moses, make a bronze serpent in order to save the Hebrew people from a plague of poisonous snakes. That’s numbers 21. The bronze serpent was kept by the Israelites as a reminder of God’s goodness and salvation. However, by the time the king has a kayah, the relic had become an object of worship. Hezekiah’s reform included breaking the bronze serpent in two that was made up by Moses because the Israelites had been burning incense to it.

CLIP:

So again, I think this argument is pretty self-refuting, right? If the argument is venerating, a relic could lead to idolatry. Therefore it’s bad to have any physical objects in the first place. And your example is the bronze serpent. The obvious counter is God ordered the creation of the bronze serpent. Are you saying God sinned by creating the bronze serpent? Because yeah, it’s true. People later, the bronze serpent, they later made a demon like got out of it, but the bronze serpent itself was a prefigurement of the cross of the crucifix. Jesus says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. And you see right there in Numbers 21 that God orders Moses make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live.

So you can’t say just because someone could. And in the case of the Israelites did misuse this physical depiction, this serpent on a pole that therefore the serpent on the pole was itself an evil thing. Unless you’re going to say God commit idolatry and God ordered Moses to create a idol. If that’s your argument that God aired by like he sinned in the Bible, that’s a much worse argument. And so otherwise you have to say, well, clearly the bronze serpent wasn’t inherently evil. Clearly even the bronze serpent was good. It was divinely ordained, it was created at the explicit instruction of God and it created great amount of spiritual good later. It’s true, it was misused, but it was misused not because people were using it as a worship aid to worship the true God. No, it was misused because people treated it as a false God.

They created a whole personality for it and everything else. So here in two Kings 18 that the people had started burning incense to it and had named it, nah, hush 10. Now you won’t find number one people burning incense to the relics or to holy water. You’re not going to find anything like that. You’re not going to find them creating some fictional God like nah, Huan and saying, oh yeah, when we’ve got the relics of the saints, we’re really recognizing this is our real God. Now, huan, that’s not happening at all. The problem is you find these passages in the Old Testament where people are actually committing idolatry and Protestants will say, aha, this is the exact same thing Catholics are doing. And the obvious counter is that people in Israel were openly worshiping a false God. They called naan. And that is not what’s happening in Catholicism.

You might think it somehow amounts to the same thing, but if you can’t recognize there’s a pretty obvious, pretty glaring difference between people saying, we’re worshiping naan rather than God. And someone saying, say the bronze serpent on a pole helps me remember God and pray to him better. One of those is good and one of those is evil. And if you can’t tell the difference between those, that’s a much bigger problem than your case against relics. But so far, this isn’t even really about relics. This is just about physical objects in worship. And so that’s why I say it seems like it’s a much deeper problem that Isaiah and Vlad have than just with relics itself. And I think that becomes very obvious in what you’re about to hear.

Joe:

And then two kings, that’s two kings 18, four physical aids to faith if not commanded by God are unnecessary and lead to idolatry. And the last thing I want to say, there’s absolutely no power in Christian relics. Even if the entire cross of Jesus was discovered intact, there would be no spiritual value to it. Relics do not in any manner whatsoever enable us to get closer to God.

CLIP:

I was genuinely shocked when I heard that because I’ve never heard a Protestant just say the cross is worthless like the cross if you found it tomorrow fully intact. And you knew it was the true cross is of no spiritual value. And that strikes me as just so outrageously unchristian of an attitude to have. I don’t know how you can believe that Christ makes peace by the blood of his cross. As Colossians one says that Christ actually redeems the world with the outpouring of his blood, blood that is soaked into the wood of the cross and believe you are saved by that blood and simultaneously believe that the blood soaked cross is powerless and worthless. It is a shocking and frankly blasphemous assertion. Additionally, the idea that he just says, I mean he’s quoting, got questions here, but it’s shocking that physical aids to faith if not commanded by God are unnecessary and even are going to inevitably lead to idolatry.

That’s an outrageous kind of assertion with literally no support offered for it. So I am just struck by how much that sounds like gnosticism rather than Christianity. Now here I want to turn to the work of Christopher Hall who is a Baptist, I believe a theologian and historian who had a book called Worshiping with the Church Fathers. And he explains briefly what gnosticism is if you’re not familiar. He said it was a constant threat to the ancient church’s understanding of Christ’s person and work gnostic teachers taught for example, that matter could not be saved or redeemed. It was by definition evil. He goes on to say agnostic cosmology. The body indeed matter in all its manifestations can only be a hindrance to a human being’s relationship with the divine matter weighs us down, gnostic teachers proclaimed. That seems to be the argument God questions is making and Isaiah Saldovar is making that No, this can never be a helpful spiritual aid to have any physical object unless it’s directly ordered by God.

Now there’s no thoughtfulness of if all these physical aids are unhelpful, why is God ordering them in the first place? If they’re just going to lead to idolatry, why is God ordering them? Remember, God orders the physical age of the bronze serpent even though he knows it will eventually be misused for idolatry. So it’s not like God ordering it is going to prevent people from potentially misusing it. So if there’s not a real spiritual good coming from having these kind of physical aids, why is giving them when there is a possibility they could be misused for idolatry? I don’t hear even a little bit of thoughtfulness of what is God up to here. If your own worldview would say Matter just weighs us down, it’s only going to get in the way. Now in contrast to that view, which again is gnostic, it is not Christian, I would point you to Cs Lewis’s great explanation in mere Christianity where he explains that the new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and holy communion.

It’s not merely the spreading of an idea, it’s more like evolution of biological or super biological fact. And he warns there’s no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That’s why he uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life in us. We may think that rather crude and unspiritual God does not. He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it. So I would just point to that, that if your spirituality doesn’t make sense of why Christ would, number one, take on flesh, number two, heal bodies. Number three, use material means to heal bodies. Number four, give physical aids to faith things like the bronze serpent. Then it probably is closer to gnosticism than it is to Christianity. And you should watch out for that. And I stress this because it is literally the theology of antichrist.

And I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but if you listen to what scripture actually says about the antichrist, it’s not like left behind the actual biblical case that antichrist is those who undermine and deny the incarnation as two John one seven says, for many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. And again, I’m sure that sounds like strong language, but if you think about it, this idea that spirits are good and bodies are bad, which is very prevalent in much of modern Christianity, particularly in some maybe shallower strands of Protestantism. This is coming not from God because remember, the devil doesn’t have a body and Jesus does. So if you say pure spirits are good and bodies are bad, that is a denial not just of relics, right, to just say spirit, good matter bad spirit, good body bad.

That’s not just a denial of relics and preserving the bodies of the saints. It’s not just a denial of the use of something like icons and your prayer and worship. It’s ultimately a denial of Christmas and of the cross. And it’s an affirmation of the evil one. We’ll get more into this shortly because this is going to be kind of a recurring theme that at the heart of particularly I think Isaiah’s attacks against relics is him not understanding the role of both the body and of creation and the glorification of God. Okay? But I’m going to let him have the next word.

Joe:

Relics should not be prayed to. They should not be worshiped in any way or used to connect with God. Using relics in such a talismanic way is blatant idolatry. That’s Exodus 20 verse three and Isaiah 42, verse eight.

CLIP:

I’m going to get more into this shortly, but just notice right now that he is connected, and again, he’s I think indebted to gut questions argument here. He’s connected as idolatrous, number one, praying to relics, which we don’t do. Number two, worshiping relics, which we absolutely don’t do. And number three, using relics to connect with God, which is perfectly good. He’s declared all three of those things idolatrous without any explanation for why the third one is idolatrous. So again, think about the bronze serpent. If the bronze serpent is being prayed to and worshiped, particularly worshiped, that’s a problem. And in fact, that was explicitly the problem in two kings 18. They were offering incense to it. They’re making sacrificial worship offerings to it, and they had not been using it to connect with God. They had named it in a huan. It was a false God.

It was to draw away from God towards this false God that they could see. Now, in contrast, when God originally calls for the creation of the serpent on a poll that later becomes known as nahin, it was originally to connect them with God, to declare both of those things idolatrous. What God did and what the idolater Israelites did is again blasphemous to declare that I don’t even know how one would defend this claim, that using a physical aid to draw close to God is talson and idolatrous. Think about it. The Bible is a physical aid. Hopefully we can all agree the Bible, the physical book you have in your home is not the eternal God. It is created. It’s created first by the inspirational Holy Spirit. And even if it’s telling eternal truths, the Bible is not itself eternal. I shouldn’t have to explain that, but I’ve had people deny that.

So just want to make sure we’re clear. The Bible is not eternal. It is not the capital w word of God. The eternal word of God is Jesus Christ. The lowercase w word of God is the God-breathed, written record of God’s self revelation. And this happens over time and is preserved. And so if you have a physical Bible in your house that is not God and you don’t worship it, I think we’re probably on the same page about that. But nevertheless, it is helpful for drawing you to God. So it is a physical object, a book that draws you closer to God according to the argument that Isaiah just made. That’s idola... Read more on Catholic.com