This is in response to Catholic Light’s favorite Protestant, Ken Shepherd, who commented on a previous post about praying to the saints.
Ken, I have to take issue with your assertion that “asleep” in the NT is anything other than a euphemism for bodily death. Is our God the God of the living, or the dead? In Revelation, are the saints who cast their crowns before the Lamb “asleep”? No: “…they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them” (Rev. 7:15)
Or Revelation 4, which describes the worship of the Lamb that goes on “day and night”?
Are the saints indifferent about what happens on Earth? “…I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?'” (Rev. 6:9-10) That sounds like they’re tremendously concerned with enacting justice on earth.
You don’t cease to be a member of the Church merely by dying. There is one body in the Lord, not separate bodies for the physically living and the dead. “From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (Eph. 4:16) Some do the work in heaven, others do it on earth. There’s nothing we can do for the saints in heaven; they have attained perfection. However, since they have been transformed into “little Christs,” they have the ability to pray to the Father and intercede on our behalf, just as Revelation says they do.
I think it’s best to leave the question of imputed righteousness for another day. (For now, I’ll point out that Christ himself commanded us to “be perfect, even as my Father in Heaven is perfect,” and I think he meant it!) What I’d like to do is ask, if you don’t mind, when and where you think prayer to the saints originated? Because I can show you references to that practice that are contemporary with Scripture, and in the decades following. To my knowledge, that wasn’t even a significant point of controversy within Christendom until Martin Luther reacted against the real, scandalous, and devil-inspired abuse of relics and other saint-related devotional practices.
If the practice is wrong, it was wrong almost from the very beginning, since as I mentioned before there are ancient accounts of the earliest Christians venerating the graves of the saints and building altars over their bodies. And why didn’t Jesus step in to stop it? What was the Holy Spirit doing for 1,500 years, if it wasn’t guiding the Church? Why would he allow his children to persist in such gross errors for so long?
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Gross doctrinal error has and will continue to persist among believers until Christ’s return.
I think there is nothing added by veneration of saints that I already have with my relationship with Christ. Therefore, I won’t engage in any prayer to saints. If you wish to, and can in good conscience justify it by Scripture, by all means do so.
However, having read the aforelinked Novena to St. Joseph, it just strikes me as too much resembling ancestor worship and in other ways contravening sound doctrine.
Say I shall pray in the Spirit and the understanding, as the Apostle Paul wrote of in his epistles.
And my asleep reference does not refer to the false doctrine some Protestants hold of “soul sleep.” By this I mean that they are dead to the world (no pun intended) and are in the presence of God, worshipping Him.
I don’t see the role of intercession as you see. I merely see those who are absent in body and present with the Lord to be present with the Lord solely to glorify and worship Him, not to pray for the needs of those still living on earth.
I’d also rebut your assertion that the saints in Heaven have “achieved perfection.”
This is untrue.
Perfection is achieved when Christ returns and those in Heaven are reunited with their resurrected, incorruptible bodies, and those believers on earth and transformed “in the twinkling of an eye.”
Those is Heaven are enjoying the presence of the Lord, but they are not yet made perfect in the tripartite salvation of the human individual (spirit, soul, and body).
For our spirits are saved, regenerated and reborn with the infilling of the Holy Spirit upon our confession of faith in Christ and repentence from sin, our souls are “being saved” by mortification of the sinful dead works of the flesh and by the washing of the Word, and our bodies will be saved/redeemed at the Second Coming.
So are the saints in Heaven “perfect” or complete in their salvation? Not quite. That happens simultaneously for all believers at the Second Coming of our Lord.
And as I’ve stated, I don’t see Scriptural justification for the intercessory dialogue of the saints in Heaven for those of us on earth.
It is conceivable and not unscriptural that those present with the Lord would not continue to lift up in supplication those still on earth, but I don’t see scriptural justification for them being recipients of supplication.
Paul wrote that “to live is Christ, to die gain,” and that it would be “more profitable” for him to remain in the flesh and shepherd the Church than to go on to be with the Lord.
How would this be so if in fact dying would grant him “perfection” before the throne of God to offer supplication for the Church on earth. And certainly Paul knew that God would in any rate send other teachers and apostles and prophets to aid the church in his bodily absence?
Reading Hebrews you find Christ is the High Priest of the new covenant and is our Intercessor before the throne of God. He alone stands at the right hand of the Father interceding perpetually on our behalf.
Christ is ALWAYS attentive to the needs of his Church on earth and hears ALL the prayers of the righteous, even those whom you consider second or third stringers in comparison to the big leagues (the saints in Heaven).
On a lighter and non-argumentative note:
I thank you kindly for the title “Catholic Light’s favorite Protestant.”
Texts showing that the saints in heaven pray for us does not equal proof that we are to pray to them.
Early, even possibly contemporaneous (citations?) bone-collecting, and religious devotions to mere men isn’t proof that it is orthodox per se. What did the surrounding culture do? What are the earliest textual references, etc.?
Of course as an Evangelical, I believe that the NT -is- the paradosis, -is- the didaskalia.
So any claimed additional material would have to meet the test of Scripture, and valid historiography. Some material might pass the test. But it still would not rise to the level of inerrant Scripture in terms of teaching authority.
As it is written “do not commit the error of going beyond what is written” ;-)
I agree with Puzzled.
Plus, another thought on the Transfiguration. The transfiguration wasn’t a normative indicator of worship to be observed under the new covenant in Christ’s blood.
As evidence, I point to Peter asking “shall we make booths” for Elijah and Moses and Jesus, signifying Peter’s question to Jesus about whether they should venerate those who have preceded us in death to the heavenly kingdom of God as well as our Lord. No answer is given to Peter, probably because it was a stupid question, as the gospels relay, Peter didn’t know what he was saying. Also, after this question, Elijah and Moses disappear and left remaining is Jesus, in effect answering the question.
Certainly you could argue that the desire to build those booths was a desire to venerate long-dead saints who had appeared in this glorious vision with Jesus.
Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets respectively, which Jesus taught that he came not to abolish, but to fulfill. Certainly the transfiguration was a testifying example and sign to Peter, James, and John of that fact: Jesus is the Word (in its totality: Law, Prophets, and Gospels) made flesh, and he completes and ratifies the Law and the Prophets in his teaching, his ministry, and life. He is the Word (Law, Prophets, and Gospels) made flesh and tabernacled among us. Hence the question about building “tabernacles” to the Law and Prophets and the Gospel (Elijah, Moses, and Jesus) is a stupid question, answered shortly thereafter by the sole remaining figure being Jesus, the totality of the Word made flesh and tabernacled among us.
Puzzled: “do not commit the error of going beyond what is written”
When Paul wrote/said that, the NT was not yet in existence because it was still being written. Does that mean that we should disregard the entire NT? ;)
Ken, I don’t take your words as argumentative — after all, it was John and I who used the Power of the Blog to answer your objections, instead of using the little comment boxes. I hope you don’t think we’re picking on you, just taking you seriously as a sincere brother in Christ.
Puzzled says, “Texts showing that the saints in heaven pray for us does not equal proof that we are to pray to them.”
Ken says, “It is conceivable and not unscriptural that those present with the Lord would not continue to lift up in supplication those still on earth, but I don’t see scriptural justification for them being recipients of supplication.”
Excellent points. You will be pleased to know that I cannot answer them by quoting scripture. Perhaps some other, more clever person can find a passage that says we ought to ask the saints to pray for us. The best we can do is say that there is no scriptural prohibition against it.
So that settles it, right? Not exactly. Just because there is no scriptural “warrant” for something doesn’t mean the practice is illicit. Otherwise, that would rule out Protestant practices like contemporary Christian music, choirs dressing in monk-like robes, seminaries, wooden crosses, Christmas trees, and the Bible as the sole rule of faith.
So how do we decide if praying to the saints is all right? For most things, you guys would say, “Look in the Bible.” But the Bible gives no definitive answer. To whom shall we go?
A lot of ancillary issues not specifically addressed by Scripture are guided by conscience.
Paul wrote that the spiritually stronger brother in the Lord should sacrifice that which he is comfy with in order to prevent his brother from stumbling.
So, you could use that to justify your veneration of saints, although perhaps sacrificing that liberty when in the ecumenical presence of your Protestant Christian brethren.
You may point to the authority of the teaching of the Church as definitive in rightly divining Scripture and to the extent that the mysteries of Scripture are unlocked and unfolded to explain and teach those things, I have no problem with you citing church authority. If veneration of saints can’t be defended by Scripture, even if that defense is made by the lips of very gifted, anointed ministers of the Gospel within the Catholic Church, it lacks the authority that I can put faith in as sound doctrine.
Suffice it to say, I have some First and Second Commandment issues with veneration. I’m not completely prepared to say veneration is violative, but at the very least it comes awfully darn close.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt make no graven image.
Certainly you can’t deny that there are Catholics who go overboard in saintly veneration and make saints as “gods” before the Lord.
Another argument I’d use for praying only through the name of Jesus and eschewing saintly veneration is Jesus’s gift to the church of the Lord’s Prayer, which is both a beautiful prayer in itself but also a model by which we see what our prayers should include, focus on, etc.
Look at Romans 8:14-16 and Galatians 4:5-7.
We are sons and heirs to the kingdom of God and God has given us His Holy Spirit who cries “Abba, Father.” The Holy Spirit bears witness with our own spirit as to our adoption as sons of God, co-heirs with Christ, having been purchased with His blood and adopted into God’s family.
Now consider the Lord’s Prayer. “When you pray, say, ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven…'” Obviously, in public worship, there is a plurality of individuals in agreement whereby it makes sense to use the possessive first person plural pronoun “Our.” Yet Jesus was in solitary prayer at the time his disciples were asking him to “teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples to pray,” (Luke 11:1).
“Our Father,” it is my theory, points to the individual praying in agreement with Jesus, the Son of God, our Intercessor and High Priest. So if Jesus taught his disciples to pray in His Name to the Father for the furtherance of the authority of His Kingdom on earth as in heaven, how much more should we follow that example?
all I have to say is
“Any friend of God’s is a friend of mine”
I ask my friends to pray for me a lot – some of my friends are living on earth, others are living in heaven.
I honor my parents as commanded. I carry pictures of them. The old Anglican wedding vows include the phrase “With my body I thee worship”. Any of these practices could, and have, been considered idolatry.
Me, when I became Catholic after a long study of the history of Christianity, I decided that the issues are really more about authority. If the Church is what she claims to be, then no amount of abuse can deny that truth. If she isn’t, if she is not the bride of Christ, then (in the words of Flannery O’Connor) I say, “The Hell with it!”.
Ken, I don’t pray to the saints when I’m in the presence of either side of our family, which is wholly Protestant or Mormon, because it would indeed make them uncomfortable.
I’m sure that there are Catholics who have an excessive devotion to the saints — but the saints don’t like that, either. Veneration of the saints has been perverted among many Cubans and Haitians, but the Church has worked strenuously to educate them out of their superstitions. I see the opposite tendency among Americans: to think that the saints are “just like us” and unworthy of our attention, because we’re all so wonderful anyway.
The saints aren’t pleased when anyone gives them the reverence that is only due to God. The Church Fathers distinguished between dulia, the veneration given to saints and angels, and latria, veneration given to God alone. It would be like someone addressing you as “Senator” — you would feel bewildered by the title, and would want to correct that person.
The Lord’s Prayer has always been held in the highest esteem by the Catholic Church (St. Thomas Aquinas called it the greatest and most perfect prayer.) It’s an essential part of the Mass and the Rosary. But it can’t be held up as the template to which all prayers must measure — otherwise, we could not pray to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, and surely you would agree that we can address other members of the Trinity?