What about prayers to the dead, in hope that they could better present the case before our Lord?
This is not intended to be an attack, I just never understood it.
Thanks.
"What about prayers to the dead, in hope that they could better present the case before our Lord?"
This question, formulated in this fashion, seems to have come up quite a bit lately around here. The prayers you refer to are to the Theotokos or to various saints which The Church has recognized as such. They are intercessory in the sense that we ask that they intercede for us before Christ. To us, they are not at all "dead" but in fact more alive, alive in Christ, than we are. In many ways, our prayers to them are in the same vein as asking a friend to pray for you. For most of us, our connection to particular saints, and for all of us to the Most Holy Theotokos, is deep and abiding.
I have been most interested in the role that the perspective of "dead" has in the increasing horizontalism in the the world. That is, the loss of perspective of God and our future with Him. The idea that the dead are "dead" as in terminated seems to have become pervasive and feeds the relativism that afflicts us. Because we don't have an eternal future, things don't matter, particularly morality.
However, if you believe we have an eternal future. Then there really is no praying to the dead. Although praying to someone in Hell wouldn't help much here, would it? Therefore it only makes sense to pray to the living in Christ, especially those who have left this veil of tears.
"#4 was blatantly silly, but as a Protestant, I do have an honest question.
What about prayers to the dead, in hope that they could better present the case before our Lord?
This is not intended to be an attack, I just never understood it.
Thanks."
Enosh, I will answer your honest question with an answer that is honest. Whether it is accurate or not is limited to my understanding. As a Protestant, I know that you favor Scripture above all (and as a Catholic, I am particularly reverential towards and focused upon the Gospels). With those things in mind, here is your answer.
Do you pray for living people?
Have you ever asked any living person to pray for you?
Almost certainly yes to the former, and perhaps even yes to the latter. Protestants (most of them, there are many flavors, I am assuming you are mainstream) DO pray for living people, and DO ask for prayers from other living people.
Do you think these prayers do any good?
When you pray for somebody else, or somebody else prays for you, is this merely a gesture on your part to remember someone, or do you believe that God hears those prayers, and sometimes finds favor in prayers not just for a living person himself, but also prayers made FOR that living person by some other living person.
Once again, I don't think that as a Protestant you could have any objection to this.
Right?
Jesus tells you this is a good thing, to pray together. At Matthew 18:19-20
Alright, now I am going to refer you to the Gospels, to a specific, hard lesson that Jesus gives to the Pharisees when they ask to whom the widow is married in paradisethat the God of Abraham and Isaac is not the God of the dead but of the living: Abraham and Isaac are not dead. They live. The dead are not dead. They live. Elsewhere.
That is why it is licit to ask for the prayers of the dead. They aren't dead.
It's based on Revelations (and strictly speaking it's not doctrine that they go strait to the 'dead', the method whereby these prayers reach their destination isn't known).
In revelations the prayers for the saints intercede at the final judgement; that's why apostolic churches ask them to pray for us...
It's based on Revelations (and strictly speaking it's not doctrine that they go strait to the 'dead', the method whereby these prayers reach their destination isn't known).
In revelations the prayers for the saints intercede at the final judgement; that's why apostolic churches ask them to pray for us...