Three Things You're Probably Getting Wrong about Praying to the Saints

Shameless popery ^ | April 20, 2015

[NYer]

As Christianity Today acknowledges, prayers for and to the Saints date back to the early Church (in fact, these practices date back far earlier, even to Old Testament Judaism, but I'll talk more about that tomorrow). Nevertheless, these practices are controversial within Protestantism. Today, I want to look at just one of them -- prayer to the Saints -- and show why the opposition to it is grounded in a faulty view of life after death. Tomorrow, I'll look at the Biblical support for both prayer to the Saints and prayer for the Saints.

First, a word on why Protestants tend to object to prayer to the Saints. For some people, such prayers are sinful, since they think it gives glory to someone other than God, or that it's equivalent to “consulting the dead.” Others view it simply as impossible, since they think that the Saints can't hear us, or are unconcerned with what's going on here below. But almost all of these arguments are built upon the same three misconceptions about the souls of the Saints who have gone before us. Given this, let's present the Biblical view on each of these three major points:

Johann Michael Rottmayr, Intercession of Charles Borromeo supported by the Virgin Mary (1714)

1. The Saints in Heaven are Alive, not Dead.

The first mistake in opposing “prayers to the dead” is assuming that we're praying to “the dead.” One of the most frequently cited passages against prayer to the Saints in Heaven is Isaiah 8:19,

And when they say to you, “Consult the mediums and the wizards who chirp and mutter,” should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?

Those who oppose prayer to the Saints present a straightforward argument: the faithful departed are dead, and it's sinful to “consult the dead.”

But the first premise -- that the faithful departed are dead -- is false, and directly contrary to Scripture. Jesus actually denounces this view as Biblically ignorant (Mk. 12:24). He reveals the truth about the Saints when He says, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26). And in response to the Sadduccees, He says (Mark 12:26-27):

And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.”

So the Protestant view that says that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are “dead” is “quite wrong.”

Read the literature written against prayers to the Saints, and see how frequently they're mischaracterized as “the dead.” This isn't a harmless mistake. The passages warning against “the dead” simply don't apply to the question of the Saints. Indeed, a great many popular assumptions about the afterlife are built on the idea that verses like Psalm 115:17 (“The dead do not praise the LORD, nor do any that go down into the silence”) apply to the Saints in Heaven. They don't, and Christ tells us that they don't.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent (12th c. icon)

2. The Saints in Heaven are Witnesses, not Sleeping or Ignorant.

Related to the first mistake is the idea that the departed Saints are cut off from us on Earth, and that it's therefore immoral (or at least futile) to communicate with them. This belief takes two general forms: first that the souls of the just are “asleep” until the Resurrection; second, that the souls are isolated in Heaven.

First, soul sleep. The United Church of God argues against praying to “dead” saints:

In addition to all this, praying to dead saints today assumes the doctrine of the immortal soul, which many people are surprised to find is not taught in the Bible. The Bible teaches that death is like sleep that lasts until the resurrection at Jesus Christ's second coming (1 Thessalonians:4:13-16 ).

Now, United Church of God aren't mainstream Protestants by any stretch: they are Sabbatarians (meaning that they reject Sunday worship) and they reject the Trinity. But this notion of soul sleep can be traced to Martin Luther, who wrote:

For the Christian sleeps in death and in that way enters into life, but the godless departs from life and experiences death forever [...] Hence death is also called in the Scriptures a sleep. For just as he who falls asleep does not know how it happens, and he greets the morning when he awakes, so shall we suddenly arise on the last day, and never know how we entered and passed through death.

Even Luther's most militant supporters concede that he held some sort of confused and often-contradictory notion of “soul sleep.” So, too, did many of the Radical Reformers. In this view, the souls of the Saints aren't “conscious,” and so it would be futile to ask them for prayers.

The second camp rejects soul sleep, but thinks that the souls in Heaven are isolated from us. For example, the website “Just for Catholics” acknowledges that the first half of the Hail Mary comes directly from Scripture, but says that these Scriptures aren't permitted to be used as prayer:

Even though the first two sentences are taken from the Bible, it does not mean that it is right to use them as a prayer. Mary could hear the salutations of the Gabriel and Elizabeth because they spoke in her immediate presence. Now Mary is dead and her soul is in heaven. She cannot hear the prayers of thousands and thousands who constantly call upon her name. Only the all-knowing God can hear the prayers of His people.

But Scripture doesn't present the Saints in Heaven as isolated or spiritually asleep. Rather, even in their “rest,” they're presented as alert and aware of the goings-on of Earth (Revelation 6:9-11):

I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne; they cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before thou wilt judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

Perhaps the clearest description of the relationship between the Saints in Heaven and the saints on Earth is in the Book of Hebrews. Chapter 11 is a litany of Saints who lived by faith, leading immediately into this (Heb. 12:1-2):

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

The spiritual life is compared to competing in a race, an image that Paul uses elsewhere (1 Corinthians 9:24-27; 2 Timothy 4:6-7). Here, the imagery is fleshed out to show that the Saints in Heaven are a great crowd of witnesses in the stands. Obviously, this idea of the heavenly Saints as “a crowd of witnesses” is incompatible with the idea that they're either asleep or unavailable to see us.

Matthias Gerung, John's Vision, from the Ottheinrich Bible (1531)

3. The Saints in Heaven are Still Part of the Church.

The Biblical depiction of the Saints as the heavenly witnesses in the grandstands of our spiritual race rebuts a third view: namely, that the Saints are enjoying God's company so much that they've stopped caring about us. For example, a Christian Post column on the subject seems to suggest that the Saints don't do anything for us once they're in Heaven:

So yes, they are not really dead. But that doesn't mean they hear our prayers, or provide even the slightest bit of assistance in answer to our prayers, regardless of how noble their lives may have been while on earth. God doesn't use saints in heaven to bless saints on earth. Instead, God utilizes His holy angels to minister to His children on earth. 

Such a view gets things entirely backwards. Rather, their holiness and their enjoyment of God means that they love us and care for us all the more. That's why they're witnesses to our spiritual race; that's why the martyrs in Heaven are still concerned with justice on Earth. The more we love God, the more we love our neighbor. And the Saints love God with a perfection impossible to us here below.

One way to think about this is to remember the shocking fact that the Saints are still part of the Church. The Bible describeds the Church as both the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ. For example, St. Paul tells us that the Church is the Body of Christ (Colossians 1:18, 24), and the Body of Christ is the Church (Ephesians 5:23). The Saints aren't somehow cut off from Christ in Heaven, which is why we see the Holy Spirit presenting the Bride of Christ in Heaven (Revelation 21:9, 22:17). That membership in the Church helps to explain their heavenly intercession (1 Corinthians 12:24-26):

But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member of suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

So both perfect Christian charity and our union in the Body of Christ help to account for why the Saints intercede for us. 

Conclusion

Scripture repeatedly calls for us to pray for one another (e.g., 1 Thessalonians 5:25; 2 Thes. 3:1; Colossians 4:3; Hebrews 13:18), to make “supplications for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18), and for “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings” to be made “for all men” (1 Timothy 2:1). Neither in praying for one another nor in asking one another for prayers do we risk offending God in the slightest. Quite the contrary: “This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3-4).

The Catholic position simply applies these Scriptural teaching to the entire Body of Christ, while the standard Protestant position says that these teachings don't apply to the parts of the Church that are already in Heaven. The view goes awry in calling for us to ignore an entire portion of the Body of Christ: urging us not to pray for the faithful departed, and not to ask the Saints in glory to pray for us. Scripture calls for us to “have the same care for one another,” to suffer and triumph with the other parts of the Body. The Saints' glory is ours; our struggles are theirs. 

As you can see from the above post, many of the most popular arguments against praying to the Saints are based on false ideas about what happens to the souls of the just after death: thinking that the Saints are dead, or asleep, or isolated, or apathetic, or outside the Church. In fact, they're alive and before God, yet still connected to us, witnessing our triumphs, failures and struggles, all the while rooting for us and praying for us. 

With a correct view of the state of the glorified Saints and their role in the Church, most of the arguments against seeking their intercession simply dissolve. There's simply no good reason to cut the heavenly Saints off from the rest of the Body. You're surrounded by Heavenly witnesses who are supporting you in your spiritual race. What's more, they're your brothers and sisters in Christ. Given this, by all means, ask for their spiritual help and encouragement!

[Elsie]

Please understand when it's the other way around, that we Catholics defend our beliefs against attack.

Yes; we've ALL seen how effective your tactics are; too.

[Elsie]

Second Step:

Conjuring up the dead, as Saul with the Witch of Endor, is forbidden.

[Elsie]

Later on will come the ubiquitous post that we Catholics are damned to hell with all the non-Christians.

G2G: you are confused...

"One indeed is the universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved, in which the priest himself is the sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread (changed) into His body by the divine power of transubstantiation, and the wine into the blood, so that to accomplish the mystery of unity we ourselves receive from His (nature) what He Himself received from ours." — Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV (A.D. 1215)

Therefore, if anyone says that it is not by the institution of Christ the lord himself (that is to say, by divine law) that blessed Peter should have perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole Church; or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema. — Vatican 1, Ses. 4, Cp. 1

[af_vet_1981]

Some may engage in that sort of projection (of their own faults upon others) but by and large they can hardly hold a candle to what occurred within Roman Catholicism for long centuries.

I find the gist of your argument undermines the legitimacy of Protestantism on two fronts
1. It acknowledges Catholicism is, essentially, visible Christianity for 15 long centuries.
2. It acknowledges Protestantism was, and presumably still is at least in chunks, antiSemitic, ignoring the experience of Jewry under predominately Protestant Germany in the Holocaust.

And now here it seemed to myself that you had been engaging in "projecting" antisemitism onto "protestants" while failing to recognize what there was of that commonly enough among [Roman] Catholics!

Just wowza' man. The pointing finger has multiple friends curled back pointing towards it's master.

This line of argument reminds me of the proverbial man who said he never beats his wife, and if she dares to say otherwise he will really beat her bloody.

[Elsie]

listen to the Pope when he says...

EVERYTHING!!!!

Oh; I'm sorry. A lot of what popes say or do fails to meet many of our FR Catholic's exacting standards.

[Gamecock]

** Trying to blame Catholicism for Protestant antisemitism is unpersuasive. **

Ducking and avoiding historical facts is, shall we say, typical of the FRoman Catholics.

Care to address the Bulls provided?

[af_vet_1981]

Ducking and avoiding historical facts is, shall we say, typical of the FRoman Catholics.

"we" ?

Do you mean like the founder of Protestantism being an unrepentant and vicious antisemite whose Seven Step Program Against the Jews led directly to the Holocaust ?

Care to address the Bulls provided?

Perusing your list, and assuming it is accurate, I see a very mixed bag, so to speak, with Gregory I in 598 CE saying of the Jews "they should in no way suffer a violation of their rights" to Sixtus IV in 1482, after first prohibiting the Inquisition in Spain against the Jews, then folding under pressure (Moslems at war and Catholics needed Spain's army to stop Moslems) and authorizing it.

[Gamecock]

Like I said earlier, Luther’s Roman Catholics roots were showing.

And he certainly didn’t persecute Jews, like the Papists of his day did.

[BlueDragon]

I'll look at one part of your assembled claims;

It acknowledges Protestantism was, and presumably still is at least in chunks, antiSemitic

No, I acknowledge no such thing. We may as well throw out the rest of what you claim I am acknowledging while we're at it, too.

"American" styled Protestant ethic was most chiefly the ethic that a nation was formed under who's laws precluded persecution based upon religion.

It is not mere coincidence that Jews have flourished in the United States.

This line of argument reminds me of the proverbial man who said he never beats his wife, and if she dares to say otherwise he will really beat her bloody.

Still desperate to make the charges of antisemitism stick on "Protestants", while excusing the past offenses prescribed and allowed under Roman Catholicism, eh?

Where's the Protestant Father Coughlin? The KKK maybe? Those latter are less "Protestant" than Coughlin was always a Catholic being as the latter were not formally part of mainstream "Protestant" Churches and were in fact much opposed by a majority. Coughlin, in comparison, kept his official RCC collar regardless if some portion of RCC hierarchy were opposed to (by degree or extent?) some of Coughlin's rhetoric.

Meanwhile, in past history Catholics have at times, with the support of their church --- beat their wives Jews bloody and to death. .

There's not much of that in comparison among American, or else English Protestants.

In Germany, although on highest levels both the Lutheran Church and the RCC were both co-opted by the Nazis, men such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer did more with less (if compared to RC popes) in the end being murdered by the Nazis for his opposition to Nazism.

[af_vet_1981]

Where's the Protestant Father Coughlin? The KKK maybe? Those latter are less "Protestant" than Coughlin was always a Catholic being as the latter were not formally part of mainstream "Protestant" Churches and were in fact much opposed by a majority. Coughlin, in comparison, kept his official RCC collar regardless if some portion of RCC hierarchy were opposed to (by degree or extent?) some of Coughlin's rhetoric.

Yes, I'll grant you the KKK is in the domain of Protestantism, and I notice the similarity where its objects of hatred were both the Catholics and the Jews; odd that. As for Caughlin, well, he kept his collar but lost his show and his audience. There is a judgment, which point Protestantism often muddles, saying, in essence, works do not matter.

[Grateful2God]

Read my post, Elsie. I already anticipated the outdated material and put in the Vatican II position.

[af_vet_1981]

Meanwhile, in past history Catholics have at times, with the support of their church --- beat their wives Jews bloody and to death. .

There's not much of that in comparison among American, or else English Protestants.

In Germany, although on highest levels both the Lutheran Church and the RCC were both co-opted by the Nazis, men such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer did more with less (if compared to RC popes) in the end being murdered by the Nazis for his opposition to Nazism.

I read a mixing of metaphors, so to speak. The argument of American Protestantism is rather exceptional, and not the experience in other Protestant majority nations, whereas the argument again admits that Catholics span two thousand years, in most of those the only historically viable and visible Christianity.

To not mix, one would compare them in their generations, and see, in the Holocaust that, Protestant America closed its doors to the Jews so they could not escape, German Protestants disproportionally supported the Nazi party, while other Protestants, German or not, saved some Jews by hiding them, and Catholics hid Jews in religious buildings as well as private homes probably doing the most. Some Catholics and Protestants did good works, while others did bad works. The theological difference is, whereas Catholicism requires a state of grace evidenced by works, much of Protestantism rests on but a profession.

[BlueDragon]

Yes, I'll grant you the KKK is in the domain of Protestantism

Actually, it is fully outside of Protestant confessions, and has long been condemned by majority of the same.

Though most members of the KKK saw themselves as holding to American values and Christian morality, virtually every Christian denomination officially denounced the Ku Klux Klan.

As for Caughlin, well, he kept his collar but lost his show and his audience.

Coughlin did not lose his show due to anyone from within hierarchy the RCC having taken it away from him.

[af_vet_1981]

And he certainly didn’t persecute Jews, like the Papists of his day did.

He most certainly did persecute the Jews. It seems to me logical you would defend the vulgar and vicious antisemite, sonce he is foundational to the Reformation.

[metmom]

Comparing Protestants to the KKK is the same as playing the Nazi card.

Time to invoke Godwin’s Law and declare victory.

[BlueDragon]

I read a mixing of metaphors, so to speak.

You were the one who mixed in bloody wife beatings.

"...whereas the argument again admits that Catholics span two thousand years, in most of those the only historically viable and visible Christianity."

Whereas my foot.

I'm not the one who is effectively blaming Jesus for what Roman Catholics have in past centuries done (and done wickedly) in His name.

Protestant America closed its doors to the Jews so they could not escape,

Protestant America is not spelled "Roosevelt". Besides, how can you have forgotten Coughlin so quickly? That was his heyday -- when he blamed the Joo-os for communism (like the Nazis did also) etc.

Some Catholics and Protestants did good works, while others did bad works. The theological difference is, whereas Catholicism requires a state of grace evidenced by works, much of Protestantism rests on but a profession.

The profession on which Protestant theology rests has place for "works", for one being called By God to good works and to perform those same, albeit not including consideration for those as making one worthy of salvation itself.

Is there anything which you get --->right? I'm tiring of needing to correct your each and every statement while battling also your assumptions as to what I confess to for those statements of your own which I do not bother with...

So far here, your statements to myself have been twisted distortions, omissions, wholesale blame-shifting one after another, apparently coming from *thick* biases comparable to Christian Identity/Stormfront ways of thinking, just Romish/Romanism flavored, instead.

[BlueDragon]

Comparing Protestants to the KKK is the same as playing the Nazi card.

Time to invoke Godwin’s Law and declare victory.

You how they like (when they are not bashing us) to effectively say that every Christian is "a Catholic", and anyone who has faith in the God of Abraham is thus under themselves and their "pope" yadda-yadda-yadda?

[af_vet_1981]

So far here, your statements to myself have been twisted distortions, omissions, wholesale blame-shifting one after another, apparently coming from *thick* biases comparable to Christian Identity/Stormfront ways of thinking, just Romish/Romanism flavored, instead.

Am I reading something from Luther here ?

[Grateful2God]

God doesn’t always expect us to succeed, He expects us to try. It’s Him we choose to please.

[Burkianfrombrklyn]

The Council of Jamnia was in a way similar to the Council of Trent. Both were set up by an organized religion in a time of intense crisis to deal with the situation at hand. It is Biblical Studies 101 to understand that the Council of J was in fact designed to understandably re-set the state of Judaism after tremendous upheaval - not just the destruction of the Temple, but of the large numbers of Christian conversations. Indeed, the Council specifically rejected Christian writings as Biblical, as of course at the time many Jews were also believers of Our Lord - seems such a thing today would be absurd, but not so in 90 A.D. Finally, all evidence points to the Septuagint being the largest translation effort in Biblical history (and I’d say even to this day). I doubt they messed up and included Macabees. The Council rejected it, which is their business, but the idea that they were simply “codifying what was in existence” is not true and if it were the council wouldn’t merit a footnote in history.

Back to Trent - of course many of the doctrines in Trent were in direct response to the Protestant growth - for example, not be understated, the inclusion of the “Confiteor” and the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar - all emphasized to counter the idea of Faith alone etc.

God bless,