When defending the worship of relics (i.e. offering incense and gifts to the dead), Roman Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin recently appealed to the Old Testament to justify his church’s belief. He started by referencing the burial of Jacob, how the Egyptians embalmed him over 40 days and then the Israelites transferred his bones to Israel many years later. Using this evidence, Jimmy tried to make the case for exhuming corpses and putting them on display, contrary to the church’s unanimous teaching. But here, Jimmy suddenly takes a surprising turn: he says the Israelites also used to make FOOD OFFERINGS to the dead, and that we Christians are justified in making similar offerings! These are his two proof-texts:
Deuteronomy 26:12-14 – And when you have finished tithing all the tithe of your produce in the third year—the second tithe—you shall give it to the Levite, and to the resident alien, and to the orphan, and to the widow, and they shall eat within your towns and be satisfied. And you shall say before the Lord your God: “I have brought out the holy things from my house, and I have given them to the Levite, and to the resident alien, and to the orphan, and to the widow, according to all your commandments which you commanded me; I have not transgressed your commandment, nor have I forgotten. I have not eaten of it in my affliction, nor have I set any of it aside in uncleanness, nor have I given any of it to the dead; I have obeyed the voice of the Lord my God, I have done according to all that you have commanded me.”
From this text, Jimmy (or whoever invented this argument) extrapolates proof that the Israelites NORMALLY would have offered food to the dead, and the only reason they didn’t in this instance was because it was reserved for God as a tithe. Then Jimmy tried using another verse to push his doctrine of offering food to the dead:
Tobit 4:16-17 – Give of your bread to the hungry and of your garments to the naked; from all that you have in abundance, give alms; and let not your eye begrudge you when you give alms. Break your bread and pour your wine over the tombs of the righteous, but do not give it to the wicked.
Jimmy strives to convince you that offering food to the dead is a righteous practice, using the Deuterocanonical books. But he will be refuted from the same!
Sirach 30:18 – Good things poured out upon a mouth that is closed are like offerings of food placed upon a grave. Of what use to an idol is an offering of fruit? For it can neither eat nor smell. So is he who is afflicted by the Lord; he sees with his eyes and groans, like a eunuch who embraces a maiden and groans.
As if you needed anyone to prove from Scripture or the fathers that offering food to the dead is irrational and superstitious! Only a brainless person could do something so mindless, leaving food out to rot on the ground, so that birds and insects enjoy a feast, while a rotting corpse lays motionless and senseless inside a tomb!
If anyone wonders what the correct interpretation of Tobit is, they should consult the early church fathers. But it would be absolutely insane to make offerings to the dead before investigating the church’s teaching on the subject!
It’s amazing that the Cathodox will hypocritically bash the Protestants all day long for relying on their own personal interpretations of Scripture to justify their heretical beliefs, while the Cathodox do the exact same thing, rejecting the commentary of the early church, and endorsing things they vehemently condemned! A true Christian would believe almost ANY interpretation other than the one Jimmy is proposing! The church fathers explicitly say it was a PAGAN custom.
Let us enjoy life while we live, and if our loved ones—our parents, or relatives or friends—bring remembrances to our grave after we are dead, this can only satisfy them; it has nothing to do with us! The Scripture also criticized this practice when, speaking about those who do not recognize the good things they have, it says, “As though making offerings of food at a grave.” It is obvious that this can be of no use to the one who is dead. It is in fact a pagan custom and not part of the tradition that conforms to the truth of the Patriarchs. Of them, one reads that they did solemnly celebrate the funeral rites but not that they carried sacrificial offerings to the tombs. This can also be seen in the practice of the Jews who, even if they did not preserve the fruit of the virtues of the ancestors, nevertheless did maintain the ancient custom with much solemnity. But the objection made by some from the Scripture, “Break your bread, and pour your wine over the tombs of the righteous, and do not give it to the unjust;” it is indeed not to be discussed in this way, but I say that the faithful can understand what is being said. For it is known to the faithful how the faithful do these things religiously for the memories of their own; and because these things are not to be offered to the unjust, that is, the unfaithful, since: The righteous shall live by faith, this too is known to the faithful. Therefore let no one seek a remedy for the wound, and from the Scriptures attempt to twist a bond from which he ties a noose of death for his soul. It is clear how this is understood, and this celebration of the Christians is open and healthy. – Augustine, Sermon 361.6.6.
Augustine is referring to the way the church would honor their dead in a Christian way, making memorials of them on the anniversaries of their deaths, or else distributing the goods of the recently-deceased to the poor.
XLII. Let the third day of the departed be celebrated with psalms, and lessons, and prayers, on account of Him who arose within the space of three days; and let the ninth day be celebrated in remembrance of the living, and of the departed; and the fortieth day according to the ancient pattern: for so did the people lament Moses, and the anniversary day in memory of him. And let alms be given to the poor out of his goods for a memorial of him. – Apostolic Constitutions, book 8, chapter 42
We take also, in congregations before daybreak, and from the hand of none but the presidents, the sacrament of the Eucharist, which the Lord both commanded to be eaten at meal-times, and enjoined to be taken by all alike. As often as the anniversary comes round, we make offerings for the dead as birthdays for them. – Tertullian, The Chaplet, chapter 3
Christians don’t make offerings TO the dead, but offerings to OTHERS in memory of the dead on the anniversaries of their deaths/martyrdoms. This is the Christian way of honoring the dead, by giving to the poor in their name. John Chrysostom is a witness to this pious custom:
What do you say? Are you making a remembrance of Christ, and do you despise the poor and tremblest not? Why, if a son or brother had died and thou were making a remembrance of him, you would have been smitten by your conscience, had you not fulfilled the custom and invited the poor: and when you are making remembrance of your Master, do you not so much as simply give a portion of the Table? – John Chrysostom, Homily 27 on 1 Corinthians
When reading Tobit in light of this passage, it becomes clear that it’s not an endorsement of offering food TO the dead, but rather to the poor in honor of the dead, which is why both the preceding AND following statement mention almsgiving to the poor:
Tobit 4:16-17 – Give of your bread to the hungry and of your garments to the naked; from all that you have in abundance, give alms; and let not your eye begrudge you when you give alms. Break your bread and pour your wine over the tombs of the righteous, but do not give it to the wicked.
There is no definitive proof that Tobit was offering food to the dead, but even if he had done such a thing, the teaching of the church is decisive on the matter. After giving a funeral oration for his brother Caesarius, Gregory Nazianzus had this to say about offering food to the dead:
This, Caesarius, is my funeral offering to you. These are the first fruits of my oratory. You who often complained of its concealment were destined to uncover it through its application to yourself. This is your adornment at my hands, and it is to you, I well know, the dearest of all adornments. It is not the soft flowing folds of silk, in which, even while alive, you did not delight after the manner of most men, since you were adorned with virtue alone; nor woven robes of transparent linen, nor outpourings of costly perfumes with their fragrance lasting but a single day, which you had long since left to the women’s apartments, nor any other trifles or things valued by triflers, all of which this bitter stone would have concealed today along with your beautiful body. Away with pagan games and fables, whereby ill-fated youths are honored, garnering petty prizes from petty contests! Away with libations and first fruits and garlands and freshly plucked flowers, with which they honor the departed, following ancestral law and unreasoning grief rather than reason! My gift is a speech. Perhaps even future time will keep it, and it will continue to live and will not suffer the departed to be utterly gone, but will ever preserve our honored brother in men’s ears and souls, setting forth more clearly than pictures the image of our beloved. – Gregory of Nazianzus, On His Brother Caesarius, chapter 16
Again, Augustine addresses this pagan custom, saying it is sometimes found among professing Christians, but always condemned:
But, nevertheless, we do not build temples, and ordain priests, rites, and sacrifices for these same martyrs; for they are not our gods, but their God is our God. Certainly we honor their reliquaries, as the memorials of holy men of God who strove for the truth even to the death of their bodies, that the true religion might be made known, and false and fictitious religions exposed. For if there were some before them who thought that these religions were really false and fictitious, they were afraid to give expression to their convictions. But who ever heard a priest of the faithful, standing at an altar built for the honor and worship of God over the holy body of some martyr, say in the prayers, “I offer to you a sacrifice, O Peter, or O Paul, or O Cyprian?” For it is to God that sacrifices are offered at their tombs — the God who made them both men and martyrs, and associated them with holy angels in celestial honor; and the reason why we pay such honors to their memory is, that by so doing we may both give thanks to the true God for their victories, and, by recalling them afresh to remembrance, may stir ourselves up to imitate them by seeking to obtain like crowns and palms, calling to our help that same God on whom they called. Therefore, whatever honors the religious may pay in the places of the martyrs, they are but honors rendered to their memory, not sacred rites or sacrifices offered to dead men as to gods. And even such as bring there food — which, indeed, is not done by the better Christians, and in most places of the world is not done at all — do so in order that it may be sanctified to them through the merits of the martyrs, in the name of the Lord of the martyrs, first presenting the food and offering prayer, and thereafter taking it away to be eaten, or to be in part bestowed upon the needy. But he who knows the one sacrifice of Christians, which is the sacrifice offered in those places, also knows that these are not sacrifices offered to the martyrs. It is, then, neither with divine honors nor with human crimes, by which they worship their gods, that we honor our martyrs; neither do we offer sacrifices to them, or convert the crimes of the gods into their sacred rites. – Augustine, City of God, book 8, chapter 27
Again, Augustine condemns the practice:
After awakening their attention by bringing forward the subject of immoderate indulgence in wine, I myself also read this chapter, and added to it an argument to prove with how much greater anger and vehemence our Lord would cast forth drunken revels, which are everywhere disgraceful, from that temple from which He thus drove out merchandise lawful elsewhere, especially when the things sold were those required for the sacrifices appointed in that dispensation; and I asked them whether they regarded a place occupied by men selling what was necessary, or one used by men drinking to excess, as bearing the greater resemblance to a den of thieves. – Augustine, Letter 29 (A.D. 395), paragraph 3
Moreover, as passages of Scripture which I had prepared were held ready to be put into my hands, I went on to say that the Jewish nation, with all its lack of spirituality in religion, never held feasts, even temperate feasts, much less feasts disgraced by intemperance, in their temple, in which at that time the body and blood of the Lord were not yet offered, and that in history they are not found to have been excited by wine on any public occasion bearing the name of worship, except when they held a feast before the idol which they had made (Exodus 32:6). – Augustine, Letter 29 (A.D. 395), paragraph 4
After reading which, I more especially begged them to remark that not even innocent and temperate feasts were permitted in the church: for the apostle said not, Have ye not houses of your own in which to be drunken? — as if it was drunkenness alone which was unlawful in the church; but, Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?— things lawful in themselves, but not lawful in the church, inasmuch as men have their own houses in which they may be recruited by necessary food: whereas now, by the corruption of the times and the relaxation of morals, we have been brought so low, that, no longer insisting upon sobriety in the houses of men, all that we venture to demand is, that the realm of tolerated excess be restricted to their own homes. – Augustine, Letter 29 (A.D. 395), paragraph 5
Next morning, however, when the day dawned, which so many were accustomed to devote to excess in eating and drinking, I received notice that some, even of those who were present when I preached, had not yet desisted from complaint, and that so great was the power of detestable custom with them, that, using no other argument, they asked, “Wherefore is this now prohibited? Were they not Christians who in former times did not interfere with this practice?” On hearing this, I knew not what more powerful means for influencing them I could devise; but resolved, in the event of their judging it proper to persevere, that after reading in Ezekiel’s prophecy that the watchman has delivered his own soul if he has given warning, even though the persons warned refuse to give heed to him, I would shake my garments and depart. But then the Lord showed me that He leaves us not alone, and taught me how He encourages us to trust Him; for before the time at which I had to ascend the pulpit, the very persons of whose complaint against interference with long-established custom I had heard came to me. Receiving them kindly, I by a few words brought them round to a right opinion; and when it came to the time for my discourse, having laid aside the lecture which I had prepared as now unnecessary, I said a few things concerning the question mentioned above,
Wherefore now prohibit this custom?saying that to those who might propose it the briefest and best answer would be this:Let us now at last put down what ought to have been earlier prohibited.– Augustine, Letter 29 (A.D. 395), paragraph 8Lest, however, any slight should seem to be put by us on those who, before our time, either tolerated or did not dare to put down such manifest excesses of an undisciplined multitude, I explained to them the circumstances out of which this custom seems to have necessarily risen in the Church — namely, that when, in the peace which came after such numerous and violent persecutions, crowds of heathen who wished to assume the Christian religion were kept back, because, having been accustomed to celebrate the feasts connected with their worship of idols in revelling and drunkenness, they could not easily refrain from pleasures so hurtful and so habitual, it had seemed good to our ancestors, making for the time a concession to this infirmity, to permit them to celebrate, instead of the festivals which they renounced, other feasts in honour of the holy martyrs, which were observed, not as before with a profane design, but with similar self-indulgence. I added that now upon them, as persons bound together in the name of Christ, and submissive to the yoke of His august authority, the wholesome restraints of sobriety were laid — restraints with which the honour and fear due to Him who appointed them should move them to comply — and that therefore the time had now come in which all who did not dare to cast off the Christian profession should begin to walk according to Christ’s will; and being now confirmed Christians, should reject those concessions to infirmity which were made only for a time in order to their becoming such. – Augustine, Letter 29 (A.D. 395), paragraph 9
To summarize Augustine’s view, the Israelites once offered food to the dead as a carryover of Egyptian customs, but Christians are prohibited from doing this. Rather, Christians interpret Tobit’s reference to breaking bread and pouring wine at the tombs of the righteous as a reference to the Eucharist, which we partake of on the anniversaries of the martyrs. But Augustine rejects the practice of having a feast in church on these annual memorials (even a feast with no wine), but only allows a modest memorial of the saint just before partaking of the Eucharist. He says this practice of having a festival in honor of a martyr is a pagan custom that crept into the church after Constantine legalized Christianity, and that bishops allowed new converts to hold banquets in honor of the saints as a replacement for the pagan banquets they used to celebrate.
If anyone doubts that this is truly the origin of these festivals, and they consider accusing Augustine of making this up, they should consider well that Augustine’s teacher, Ambrose, was once a pagan himself, and was even elected to be bishop by the pagan citizens of Milan while yet unbaptized, during a time when Christianity was becoming popular and pagans were intruding into the church. Ambrose would have firsthand knowledge of all these things taking place.
Who could ever demand a more compelling piece of evidence to demonstrate that the post-Nicene bishops were failing to uphold the ancient laws of the church, and that paganism truly did begin to creep in because of gross negligence and condescension! This is not a conspiracy theory, but an acknowledged fact. As we can all see in the Catholic and Orthodox sects, these concessions were never truly lifted, contrary to Augustine’s hopes. The pagan practices kept getting a deeper foothold in the church over the centuries, until it reached catastrophic proportions at Nicaea II.
The Cathodox are so shameless that when they desperately scrounge for affirmation from the early church fathers, they even rely on stories that explicitly condemn them! One such example is the story of Monica, Augustine’s mother, providing wine for a festival at the monument of some martyrs. They use this as proof that such things had always existed in the church, but what they don’t mention is that her custom is rebuked by Ambrose of Milan as a pagan custom, and she’s forbidden from entering the church because of it:
2. When, therefore, my mother had at one time — as was her custom in Africa — brought to the oratories built in the memory of the saints certain cakes, and bread, and wine, and was forbidden by the doorkeeper, so soon as she learned that it was the bishop who had forbidden it, she so piously and obediently acceded to it, that I myself marvelled how readily she could bring herself to accuse her own custom, rather than question his prohibition. For wine-bibbing did not take possession of her spirit, nor did the love of wine stimulate her to hatred of the truth, as it does too many, both male and female, who nauseate at a song of sobriety, as men well drunk at a draught of water. But she, when she had brought her basket with the festive meats, of which she would taste herself first and give the rest away, would never allow herself more than one little cup of wine, diluted according to her own temperate palate, which, out of courtesy, she would taste. And if there were many oratories of departed saints that ought to be honoured in the same way, she still carried round with her the selfsame cup, to be used everywhere; and this, which was not only very much watered, but was also very tepid with carrying about, she would distribute by small sips to those around; for she sought their devotion, not pleasure. As soon, therefore, as she found this custom to be forbidden by that famous preacher and most pious prelate [Ambrose], even to those who would use it with moderation, lest thereby an occasion of excess might be given to such as were drunken, and because these, so to say, festivals in honour of the dead were very like the superstition of the Gentiles, she most willingly abstained from it. And in lieu of a basket filled with fruits of the earth, she had learned to bring to the oratories of the martyrs a heart full of more purified petitions, and to give all that she could to the poor; that so the communion of the Lord’s body might be rightly celebrated there, where, after the example of His passion, the martyrs had been sacrificed and crowned. But yet it seems to me, O Lord my God, and thus my heart thinks of it in your sight, that my mother perhaps would not so easily have given way to the relinquishment of this custom had it been forbidden by another whom she loved not as Ambrose, whom, out of regard for my salvation, she loved most dearly…. – Augustine, Confessions, Book 6, Chapter 2, She, on the Prohibition of Ambrose, Abstains from Honouring the Memory of the Martyrs
So at the end of the day, Jimmy Akin and the rest of the Cathodox openly endorse pagan practices, condemned by the church from the beginning, as if they were approved by the church! And they do this with such boldness and fearlessness because they know their followers will never do any research, but will happily follow these blind guides straight into the pit of hell.