When someone is dead and his body lying in a grave, it is natural to refer to him as “asleep.”
But is it justified, philosophically and theologically, to assert that their SOUL is literally “asleep”?
Was it St. Paul’s intention to make that assertion? Is there any evidence that St. Paul held to the proposition that the SOULS of the dead are as inert and inactive as their bodies?
It’s not clear to me that he indicated anything other than that they were ‘asleep”.
This is further evidenced by a complete dearth of mention that there was anything to be gained by prayer to the deceased in the Epistles of Paul.
Surely he would have exhorted Believers to do so, were there spiritual benefits to be derived...
You all can do as you wish; I don’t pray to the dead.