Praying to Saints
Mark Horne offers some arguments why “he can never be a Roman Catholic.” I’m not a Roman Catholic … but it seems like a number of these reasons are not valid criticisms. I’m going to concentrate on one (and mention one more). Mr Horne offers:
Necromancy is almost as huge a sin and praying to the departed saints is necromancy. See #1 above. People raised thinking bigamy is Christian may be true Christians, but people who know better are living in sin and without hope of eternal life unless they repent of such behavior.
Praying to Saints by Catholics is not because Catholics believe that “some other intercessory agency between themselves and God” is required. Examine their liturgy and the prayers they pray. They pray to directly to Father, Son, and Spirit. So they are not asking Saints (or Mary) to pray for them because they think it is required. Something else is going on here, they do it because they think it is efficacious. My understanding of the way prayer to Saints is seen not as a required intermediary but as being equivalent to your asking a friend, acquaintance, or even some Christian you don’t really know, to pray for you. That is it. Just in the same way that Protestants (and every Christian) thinks that the prayers of others on our behalf is beneficial, likewise Catholics (the East and the original Reformers for that matter) think that the dead can pray for us … after all they are not dead but are with God. You are asking that this Saint, asleep in the Lord whom you believe is “now” outside of time participating in God’s presence (no longer seeing through a glass darkly), to pray for you. How is that akin to bigamy and living a life of sin?
There are two pieces to this that I think give the American evangelical cause to pause. The first is that the notion that a saint from a country far away and centuries removed will be aware of my request that he (or she) pray for me and that furthermore that he (or she) might do so. The second is that in our American notions of egalitarianism and equality Americans find the notion that we are not equal in the eyes of the Lord, a difficult one to master. To the latter, when the disciples were having a debate about who would be seated at Jesus right hand when he came into his glory, Jesus rebuke was not that “nobody would be sitting there” as we are equal in the afterlife, but that they were not the ones to be seated there.
Yet that isn’t really the question.
The real question is why is asking for the intercession by a deceased hero of the Church not adiaphora? And this has a counter question for the East and the Roman Catholic, why is not asking that the Saints intercede for us also not adiaphora?
A final remark Mr Horne objects:
Nowhere are Christians required to do a genealogical study to see if they are members of the true Church.
I for one, have no clue what is he talking about here. Any guesses?
Filed under: Catholicism • Christianity • Mark O. • Orthodox • Religion
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I think the main issue is asking a living person to pray for you vs asking a dead one to. Don’t see anything in the Bible that suggests dead people hear us.
Doug,
Except that the New Testament says they are not dead.
Doug,
I should add, this is why I think it is adiaphora (non essential) practice and not heresy to go either way on this.
This post suggests Revelation 5:8 for the dead being aware of us.
Eastern Orthodoxy frequently refers to those asleep in the Lord as a “cloud of witnesses”, reminiscent of the Wim Wender’s film Wings of Desire, which had a US remake with Nick Cage I think. I like the cloud of witnesses as an image.
I think that the web page you point to rests rather heavily on a vision that was full of allegorical imagery that the best theologians continue to grapple with. There is no command, suggestion or example (as far as I know) showing that this is a possibility. While the Psalmist may address the angels, this could be simply a desire expressed in the prayer.
There isn’t (again, as far as I know) any teaching on the subject. Allegory and flowery language alone do not a theology make.
This bit: “Nowhere are Christians required to do a genealogical study to see if they are members of the true Church” refers to the Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession. Rites have to be performed by a priest who was ordained by a bishop who was ordained by another bishop who was ordained by…. all the way back to Peter.
Doug,
How about a theology expressed in things like Jn 6: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” If, after death, you do not die … what happens? Are you conscious? If conscious … do you have memory? If you have memory … are you then in a place where you remember your loved ones but are cut off? If not that … then you are aware and your entreaty to prayer might not be lost.
Jeff,
“Rites have to be performed by a priest who was ordained by a bishop who was ordained by another bishop who was ordained by…. all the way back to Peter.” is not genealogy. For a discussion of first and second century episcopacy … I’d recommend Eucharist, Bishop, Church by John Zizioulas.
If, if, if. This seems like an awful lot of supposition backing this up.
Hebrews 9:27: Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment….
Die, and then the judgment? Clearly, this is talking about bodily death, because our spirits are all eternal. We’ll all be around forever; it’s just a question of address. 🙂 And Jesus certainly thinks (and I’d agree) that experiencing Hell for all eternity couldn’t be described as “life”.
Taking a promise of heaven and coming up with the idea that those who have died bodily can, as a point of fact, hear us and then assume, after that, that they take what they hear to the Lord just isn’t something I see spelled out enough in Scripture; either in teaching or example.