This week, Jimmy has an update on Protestant apologist James White and his claim that the Virgin Mary has no idea that people on Earth are asking for her intercession (originally dealt with in Episode 17).
Jimmy and James had a discussion on X about this topic, and although James stopped responding when Jimmy asked him to confirm his understanding of James’s position, James did provide at least some kind of case for his claim.
In this episode, Jimmy looks at the discussion and considers the arguments James used. He steel-mans them to give them the best possible chance of working, but do they? Are they consistent with the evidence we have from the Bible? Has James White finally provided a compelling proof that Mary does not know people are asking her to intercede? Or does James’s position actually conflict with Scripture? Watch this episode and find out!
Previously . . .
Previously, on The Jimmy Akin Podcast
JIMMY: Recently on X, someone suggested that Protestant apologist, James White asked the Virgin Mary for her intercession in heaven, and he responded, “Mary has no power on earth, has no idea you or anyone else is praying to her. And hence, that would be an utter waste of time and breath. Jesus’s king, there is no queen, and we are told to pray to God and let our desires and petitions be known to him.”
There’s a number of things here that I could respond to, but what I’m interested in at the moment is his claim that Mary has no idea you or anyone else is praying to her. That’s a very strong statement, and even if I were Protestant, I would wonder, wait a minute, how do you know that?
Let’s get back into it!
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Update!
Today I have an update for you!
In my previous video responding to James White’s claims about Mary—which was Episode 17 of The Jimmy Akin Podcast, I was—as I confessed—at something of a disadvantage since James didn’t give any reason for his claim that Mary was completely unaware that anyone is asking for her intercession.
So I had to imagine what his argument might be, and I freely acknowledged that I might be mistaken.
You can check out Episode 17 if you’d like to hear the arguments I went through.
Well subsequently, White elaborated a bit more about the reasons he holds this position, and so today I’m able to give you an update! Yay!
A Conversation on X
I’ll therefore go through a conversation that he and I had on X. It began on December 24, 2024, Christmas Eve.
Responding to a person who was advocating the idea that Mary intercedes for us in heaven, James responded:
There is nothing that illustrates the importance of sola scriptura more than Rome’s Marian dogmas. It is simply self-evident that the Apostles of Jesus Christ never dreamed of the things Rome binds upon the consciences of men about Mary. And, sadly, it is likewise self-evident that Mary takes the place of Christ as the central focus of devotion for millions and millions of Roman Catholics around the world. As I have said many times, I am so thankful she has no idea what is done in her name on earth. Her heart would indeed be broken.
To be playful, I then responded by saying:
Yeah. It’s a good thing that they keep Mary in solitary confinement in that sensory deprivation tank up in heaven. It really shields her from a lot!
James then said:
Thankfully, the saints in heaven are absorbed in the perfect worship of their redeemer.
What a horrific idea Rome has developed over the centuries. The redeemed saint, Mary, made the object of the prayers and pleadings of sinful human beings, as if she has been made the “neck through which all grace flows.” You know full well no Apostle of Jesus Christ ever dreamed of such a concept. And surely there is not the first reason to believe that she has been empowered to undertake such a position, as if it was needed in the first place. Those who have peace with God know they do not need a mediator with the Mediator Himself.
James raises a number of issues here, but I was interested in following up on his assertion that Mary has no idea anyone is asking for her intercession, so I kept things focused and said:
Are you claiming that the saints in heaven are so mentally absorbed in the worship of God that they have no mental bandwidth for anything else?
James said:
You know better, or, at least, you once did.
I will not waste my Christmas Eve explaining the fact that those who have entered into their rest are no longer plagued by the sinfulness of the human condition which, of course, Mary would have to be suffering, every minute, every second, of every day, as millions of benighted souls, led astray to think that she could in some fashion help them, pour out their requests to her in their sinful ignorance.
I totally understand James not wanting to get into an apologetic discussion on Christmas Eve, so I replied:
I’m genuinely curious what your claim is. If you don’t want to devote time on Christmas Eve, I totally understand! Have a blessed and Merry Christmas!
I’ll check back after Christmas about whether your claim is that the saints are so absorbed in the worship of God that they have no mental bandwidth for anything else. That’s something I’d like to understand about your position.
I then waited a couple of weeks to let the holidays go by, and on January 7th, I wrote:
Howdy, James! (@HwsEleutheroi) I hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Just following up on our discussion from Christmas Eve. I’m trying to understand the basis for your claim that the Virgin Mary has no knowledge of the fact people are asking for her intercession. Why do you think this is impossible?
Later that same day, James replied:
Well, Jimmy, my recollection is that you were once a Presbyterian, so l assume you would know that the Reformed believe that upon death we enter into the presence of Christ, perfected and free from corruption, glorified and focused upon the worship of the Triune God. Given that Mary is a redeemed sinner, as she herself testified, and has no continuing role in redemption, having accomplished her role in bearing the Messiah, she, too, is in perfect peace in the adoration and worship of God. Obviously, burdening her with the often sinful, selfish requests of hundreds of millions of people on earth, over the course of a thousand plus years, soaking her in the pitiful sinfulness of mankind, would be to rob her of her reward and her peace. Most especially the requests based upon the horrifically false teachings of men like Liguori, a “doctor of the church,” who taught that she was a mediator with the Mediator, would utterly break her heart, knowing how unbiblical such calumnies are.
So as is always the case, the issue is not the hypothetical “impossibility” of such a situation, but the impossibility for those who follow Jesus’ teaching to have Scripture as one’s touchstone. It is impossible because Scripture does not teach it, not because of some hypothetical concept.
But honestly, Jimmy, I do not know why you would engage with the topic.
As you put it a few months ago, any and all actual exchange on such theological issues can be thrown in the category of “quarreling over words” (2 Tim. 2:14) and as you said, you will not engage in such activity!
In that last bit, James is referring to a debate that he and I had last year on justification, where I pointed out that Paul warned against quarreling about words, and so I said we didn’t need to be divided by how our theological schools articulate points that they agree on in substance.
However, James’s reply wasn’t as helpful as it could have been since he included a bunch of stuff that wasn’t directly on-point regarding his argument about Mary not knowing of people asking for her intercession. So I took the text he wrote, highlighted the parts that were relevant to his argument, and lowlighted the rest of it. I then wrote back and said:
Thanks! Yes, I am a former Presbyterian.
Also, it appears you misunderstood what I said regarding “quarreling about words” (2 Tim. 2:14). I hold that something goes in that category if the parties agree on the facts but express them in different language.
Here that does not apply, as you and I have a disagreement regarding facts.
I asked the basis for your claim that the Virgin Mary has no knowledge of the fact people are asking for her intercession–a claim that I would have questioned even when I was Protestant.
You then responded (thanks!), and to make sure I was understanding you and get to the essence if your reply, I highlighted the core of your response in yellow and put the other words in blue. (1 of 2)
I included a screenshot of what he said in his previous post with the relevant claims highlighted, and I followed up with another post, in which I said:
Speaking from the viewpoint I had when I was Presbyterian, I take it that your case for Mary not knowing that people are asking for her intercession is the following:
P1: After death, the redeemed are in perfect peace and focused on the worship of God.
P2: Mary is dead and among the redeemed.
C1: Therefore, Mary is in perfect peace and focused on the worship of God.
P3: If Mary were aware that people are asking for her intercession, it would rob her of peace.
P4: If Mary were aware that people regard her as a mediatrix, it would rob her of peace.
C2: Therefore, Mary has no knowledge of the fact people are asking for her intercession.
You then make a second argument, which appears to be:
P5: Scripture does not teach that Mary knows people are asking for her intercession.
C3: Therefore, Mary has no knowledge of the fact people are asking for her intercession.
I don’t want to waste your or my time commenting on these if I have misunderstood your position, so could you let me know of anything that needs adjustment in them?
In particular, could you flesh out the second argument further? As stated in your original post and in my reconstruction, it needs something more.
Thanks very much! (2 of 2)
All that happened on January 7th, but James didn’t write back.
So I let a week go by and then reposted both comments.
No response again, so I let a second week go by and reposted them again. To make it clear these were new and not just old item, I wrote at the top of the first:
Howdy, James (@HwsEleutheroi)! Just bumping this up since you haven’t responded yet.
And at the top of the other, I wrote:
- @HwsEleutheroi Bumping this one also.
No response again, so I let a third week go by and wrote:
Howdy, James! (@HwsEleutheroi). Hope you’re doing well! It’s been 3 weeks, and if you’re not going to respond, could you let me know?
Thanks, and God bless you!
Still no response, so I let a fourth week go by, and on January 31st, I wrote:
Okay, I give up! It’s been over 4 weeks, I’ve tried multiple times, and James White (@HwsEleutheroi) still hasn’t responded. He hasn’t shown that Mary is unaware that anyone is asking for her intercession, but based on his lack of response, there is no evidence that JAMES is aware I’ve been speaking to him.
This prompted snarky comments by many of the X users, who had long been skeptical of whether James would respond to me. For example, BigHatNate wrote:
Really funny how good questions that expose how bad his arguments are just never get seen and aren’t responded to. Must be stuck in a memory loop replaying his debates from the 90’s.
Hmm. I’m afraid I don’t know why you’d think that.
JAMES WHITE: My first debate in August of 1990 was with Catholic Answers Representative Gerry Matatics at St. Cyprian’s Roman Catholic Church in Long Beach, California. . . .
When I debated Mitch Pacwa on this subject. . . .
Actually, I just realized this is my sixth debate on this subject. . . .
I’ve debated Roman Catholic apologists who have said you have as much warrant to believe in the bodily assumption of Mary as you have to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And he worked for Catholic Answers, by the way, at that time. . . .
I just invite you to go back and listen to any debate I ever did with Catholic Answers representatives. . . .
As I’ve debated Tim Staples, Robert Sungenis, on these issues. . . .
And I’ve been asking Roman Catholics for a long time, especially since I debated Gerry Matatics of Boston College in 93.
And all of that was from just one debate I did with him . . . and he does that in basically every debate he participates in . . . so yeah, I guess I do know why you’d think that.
Figuring Out James’s Arguments
In any event, our conversation on X gave me additional insight into James’s claim that Mary has no idea that people have been asking for her intercession.
So even though he decided to start ignoring our conversation—without even saying, “I’m sorry, but I’d prefer not to continue this for now”—let’s see what we can glean from what he said.
He began by saying:
Thankfully, the saints in heaven are absorbed in the perfect worship of their redeemer.
He then clarified this by saying:
those who have entered into their rest are no longer plagued by the sinfulness of the human condition which, of course, Mary would have to be suffering
If she knew people are asking for her intercession.
James then gave his most forthcoming reply, but he also said a bunch of stuff that was not relevant to his argument, so I highlighted the relevant material and eliminated the rest.
I then structured this material as two more formal arguments, sticking quite closely to his original words so as not to accidentally distort his thought. I asked White to clarify if I’d misunderstood anything.
Unfortunately, it was at this point he chose to stop responding, but let’s proceed to look at the arguments on the assumption I understood him correctly.
Steelmaning James’s First Argument
Here’s James’s first argument:
P1: After death, the redeemed are in perfect peace and focused on the worship of God.
P2: Mary is dead and among the redeemed.
C1: Therefore, Mary is in perfect peace and focused on the worship of God.
P3: If Mary were aware that people are asking for her intercession, it would rob her of peace.
P4: If Mary were aware that people regard her as a mediatrix, it would rob her of peace.
C2: Therefore, Mary has no knowledge of the fact people are asking for her intercession.
We can actually make this argument more efficient, because it still includes material that is not relevant to the case James is trying to make. I didn’t initially eliminate this material because I was trying to stick close to the words he had used, but now let’s steelman his argument by making it as efficient as possible.
The first thing we can simplify is the initial part of the argument.
Premise 1 is that after death the redeemed are in perfect peace and focused on the worship of God.
We don’t need the last part of that, because that just tells us what they are doing while they are at perfect peace. James’s argument actually hinges on the idea that the dead have perfect peace.
Bringing in the fact they are worshipping God is a distraction, as illustrated by the fact that I initially took James to be saying that they were so focused on the worship of God that they didn’t have the mental bandwidth to do anything else.
Furthermore, it’s debatable that they are spending all of their time worshipping God, because various Bible verses like 2 Timothy 2:12 and Revelation 20:4, 20:6, and 22:5 speak of human saints reigning with Christ. And 1 Corinthian 6:3 speaks of us judging angels.
Well, doing things like reigning and judging are not the same thing as worshipping God, so it’s debatable whether they spend all their efforts doing nothing but worshipping God.
So we’ll eliminate that bit and just have Premise 1 state that after death, the redeemed are in perfect peace.
P1: After death, the redeemed are in perfect peace.
Premise 2 can encounter problems since it asserts that Mary is dead and among the redeemed. She’s definitely among the redeemed, but a Catholic would say that she’s actually not dead today.
The majority opinion among Catholics is that she did die but then she was raised to life again when she was taken to haven.
As a Protestant, James believes she is dead, and I believed that, too, when I was Protestant.
I’d be happy to leave this premise the way it is since I was seeking to show that—even from the viewpoint I held when I was a Presbyterian—I would question James’s argument.
However, I want to make James’s argument as strong as possible, so that it doesn’t immediately include a premise that a Catholic would disagree with, and there is a way to do that.
We don’t have to get into the issue of whether Mary died, whether she is still dead, or how she was taken to heaven. Both Catholics and Protestants agree that she is in heaven now.
So let’s modify Premise 1 and Premise 2 to simply refer to being “in heaven.” In other words,
P1: People in heaven are in perfect peace.
P2: Mary is in heaven.
From that, Conclusion 1 follows, and it now simply states that Mary is in perfect peace—since we eliminated the bit about being focused on the worship of God.
C1: Therefore, Mary is in perfect peace.
We now come to Premise 3, which is that if Mary knew that people were asking for her intercession, it would rob her of peace. In substance, this is fine, but let’s rephrase it so that it functions better in a formal argument. It now becomes
P3: Mary would not have perfect peace if she knew people are asking for her intercession.
We can do the same thing with Premise 4, which becomes:
P4: Mary would not have perfect peace if she knew people regard her as a mediatrix.
Now, we could leave this premise in the argument, but it’s actually another unnecessary bit.
The term mediator is ambiguous. In one sense, everyone who is asked to intercede can be understood as a mediator—so if I ask you to intercede for me, I’m asking you to function as a mediator in this sense, and if you take the premise this way, it’s just restating the previous one.
On the other hand, the term mediator can mean something more than just an intercessor. It could mean something like an extra good or extra special intercessor. It might even have more involved than that.
But if you take Premise 4 this second way, it becomes irrelevant to the argument at hand. I asked why Mary would be unaware that people are asking for her intercession, and James would be talking about what people believe about her, which is not the same thing.
Rather than get into a discussion about Marian titles and what they mean, we’ll thus remove this premise from the argument, because it doesn’t change anything, and the same principles apply.
If it could be established that the idea of Mary as a mediator is a false doctrine and if Mary being aware of people believing false things about her would deprive her of peace, then the conclusion would be the same.
We’ll thus keep the argument focused on the actual question that was asked, which is the idea that Mary doesn’t know people are asking for her intercession.
So, given that Mary is in perfect peace and that she would not have this peace if she knew people were asking for her intercession, we can infer Conclusion 2, which becomes:
C2: Therefore, Mary does not know that people are asking for her intercession.
We thus have a steelmanned, more efficient version of the argument, with all the irrelevant or distracting bits removed so that it’s directly focused on my question. In its new form, the argument goes:
P1: People in heaven are in perfect peace.
P2: Mary is in heaven.
C1: Therefore, Mary is in perfect peace.
P3: Mary would not have perfect peace if she knew people are asking for her intercession.
C2: Therefore, Mary does not know that people are asking for her intercession.
Evaluating the Argument
Now that we have James’s argument stated in a more formal way, with clear premises and conclusions, we’re in a position to evaluate it.
The first thing, I would say is that this is a logically valid argument. I could put the argument even more formally—in terms of symbolic logic—to demonstrate this, but the argument’s current form will do for our purposes. It’s valid.
What validity means in logic is that the argument has a proper logical form, so that if the premises are true then the conclusion will also be true.
So the question of whether James’s argument actually works comes down to whether its premises are true.
When it comes to Premise 1—that people in heaven are in perfect peace—that’s definitely true.
The book of Revelation says of God’s people that in the heavenly city New Jerusalem,
[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away (Revelation 21:4).
Now, this is referring to a future reality—since death has not yet been destroyed—but I’m happy to concede that the other principles are true of what it’s like to be in heaven right now. There is no mourning nor crying or pain there.
I thus regard Premise 1 as true.
What about Premise 2—that Mary is in heaven?
Speaking from my present, Catholic perspective, I would definitely agree with that. The Catholic Church infallibly teaches that Mary was assumed into heaven at the end of her earthly life.
Speaking from my former, Presbyterian perspective, I would also agree with this premise. I couldn’t be as sure of it since the only infallible authority I would recognize—Scripture itself—never says that Mary ended up in heaven. That’s something that a person who believes in sola scriptura or “by Scripture alone” couldn’t say with absolute confidence.
However, as a Protestant, I—personally—would feel no hesitancy asserting that Mary is in heaven, and James definitely agrees with that, so we may agree that Premise 2 is also true.
From these two premises, Conclusion 1 naturally follows: Therefore, Mary is in perfect peace.
The Crucial Part of the Argument
This much basically all Christians would agree on. We therefore come to the crucial part of James’s argument, which is Premise 3:
P3: Mary would not have perfect peace if she knew people are asking for her intercession.
James would regard this premise as true, but what evidence would he offer for why we should think this? In the X discussion, he said:
Obviously, burdening her with the often sinful, selfish requests of hundreds of millions of people on earth, over the course of a thousand plus years, soaking her in the pitiful sinfulness of mankind, would be to rob her of her reward and her peace.
Here James is envisioning Mary being aware of the individual requests for intercession from numerous people, and that doesn’t fully engage the issue. Speaking as a Protestant, I might not have granted that Mary was aware of each individual request for intercession that someone makes, but I would have still challenged the claim that Mary has no ideaRead more on Catholic.com