Well, that faith/works discussion seemed to steer away from rancor and defenestration and held nothing but honest discussion. So … why not touch on other Catholic/Protestant cans o’ worms? After all this is an evanglical blog hosted on a Catholic site. If this is not a place to discuss the commonalities and differences between Rome and the Protestant … then there is no place for that anywhere. Again, as last time, I’ll point out I’ve been a Christian as an adult for just over five years, and correspondingly I’m not up to speed necessarily on all the modern debate and discussions which accompany the questions I raise. So as much as anything, I’m begging your indulgence and instruction on these matters.
Mark Horne offers some arguments why “he can never be a Roman Catholic.” I might not that while not a Roman Catholic … it seems like a number of his objections 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 not just a few times. So they are not asking Saints (or Mary) to pray for them because they think it is required. Something else is going on here. I’d suggest 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 I think many of the original Reformers for that matter felt 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. On this point, church tradition is fixed in one direction but Scripture can be read either way. The second is that in our American notions of egalitarianism and equality that we Americans find the notion that we are not equal in the eyes of the Lord, a difficult one to master. This, I think this one is not supportable. For a simple offering, 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. By implication it seems to follow that the notion that we are not going be equals in the afterwards follows.
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?
November 4th, 2009 | 10:49 pm | #1
“I for one, have no clue what is he talking about here. Any guesses?”
The necessity of apostolic succession of bishops to be a valid church.
November 4th, 2009 | 10:51 pm | #2
Also, you comments about Horne’s first argument miss his point: he’s not in that point arguing that praying to the saints takes away time from praying directly to God, but that the act of praying to the saints itself is sin, the sin of necromancy.
November 4th, 2009 | 11:04 pm | #3
Andrew,
Oh, I guess I was responding to what I understood to be the common protestant objections to prayer to saints.
The necromacny charge … if necromany is “conjuring up the dead, especially for prophesying” then praying to Saints is clearly not that. By what definition of necromancy do you consider asking that Saints pray on your behalf meets?
Apostolic succession is genealogy?
November 4th, 2009 | 11:27 pm | #4
He was using genealogy in the more generic sense (i.e., about tracing history, not about parent-child succession) I think.
As for necromancy: one of the definitions dictionary.com gives for it is “The practice of supposedly communicating with the spirits of the dead in order to predict the future.” Your definition and theirs includes a purpose-condition, but that doesn’t seem to be part of the essence of necromancy, and indeed some of the other definitions are more about controlling dark spirits than using them as sources of information. In Deut 18, anyway, it seems that the common logic behind all the prohibitions is seeking/using the dead or any other supernatural spirits for any kind of help.
November 4th, 2009 | 11:34 pm | #5
whom you believe is “now” outside of time participating in God’s presence
I’m not going to get involved in this conversation, but I’m really curious about this statement. Do those who pray to saints believe they are outside of time? Why?
November 5th, 2009 | 12:26 am | #6
Mark –
I think you have missed the place where the apostle says, “God has no partiality.” (Acts 10)
I think you have also not read 1 Cor 10 very closely, nor considered the implications of all forms of idolatry as Paul warns against it.
I am intrigued, however, by your view that prayers to saints is “not required” but is “efficacious”. Can you outline the doctrine around the Rosary for me and explain whether or not that is required?
November 5th, 2009 | 12:27 am | #7
BTW, I am grateful that so far the defenestrations have been held at bey.
November 5th, 2009 | 10:34 am | #8
Considering that God is “not the God of the dead but of the living” then either you’d have to say that the dead have no God, or that there are no “dead,” at least, no dead in Christ.
Frank asks if the rosary is “required.” No, of course not. It is a devotional practice, a method of prayer that takes the pray-er through the mysteries of Christ’s life, passion and death. Various writers over the centuries suggest that we can mentally place ourselves in the scenes, or see our sufferings within His, or just reflect on the greatness of His Mercy.
Some people like it, others don’t. One great saint compared saying the Rosary to “being dragged through a lake of liquid lead” (!) so it’s not for everybody’s taste. But just as the manna that fell on the Israelites conformed itself to every different taste, so does God’s Grace in prayer.
November 5th, 2009 | 10:34 am | #9
Frank,
“God has no partiality” … OK … but impartiality and equality are not the same thing.
I think Catholics are aware of the dangers of idolatry. Clearly it is not idolatry to have a friend pray for me … but you seem to be stating that it is idolatry to ask a deceased person to pray for me. Why is one idolatry and the other not?
This blog started out with a discussion of modern athletic heroism and how it is not necessarily against Christian life to use it for inspiration. Are you suggesting remembering and being inspired by past Christian heroes is necessarily idolatry?
Rebecca,
That may be my assumption not generic. But for myself, Inasmuch as God is outside of time … and the Christian departed as they are those asleep in the Lord participating in His presence how can they not also be also outside of time?
November 5th, 2009 | 11:19 am | #10
Mark,
On time: Where do you get the idea that the departed are in God’s presence in a sense that requires us to share God’s timelessness?
I suspect that’s one of those unexamined assumptions we sometimes have, which turn out to be relatively unsupported. Consider: You don’t think it will require us to share God’s omnipresence, do you? Or his without-beginning-ness?
By way of comparison, Moses did not become timeless when God revealed His glory to him–and being in Christ’s presence did not require timelessness. I expect that we will be in God’s presence more intensely than those examples when we die, but I don’t know why we should assume that this implies timelessness.
This subject recently came up at Michael Patton’s blog. He discusses some problematic aspects of the idea of us becoming timeless.
November 5th, 2009 | 11:31 am | #11
Mark –
Why does Peter say this in Acts 10, Mark? What is God’s impartiality in reference to?
Because by defintion, praying to the dead is idolatry.
Of course, this is a pyrotechnical assertation — one which will bring fire, I am sure. But the singular example of seeking out a dead man for one’s own advantage is Saul seeking out Samuel through the witch at Endor — and it is unquestionable that seeking to speak to the dead here is a sin on Saul’s part in spite of the surpassing virtue and position of authority and (yes) favor Samuel held in this life in the faith life of Israel.
Another way in which these two things are different is that the NT explicitly says that we should pray for and ask for prayer from those who are in fellowship with us. It’s odd, I think that we can receive Heb 10-11-12 and see the distinction the writer there makes between the living and the dead — that is, the disctinction in uses or relationship — and then sort of blank out on that subject when we start thinking about prayer.
There’s also the question of what is happening in Rom 8 when the Holy Spirit is the one who helps our prayers. It’s the Spirit who knows our intentions who then makes groanings for us deeper than words — not other people who went before us in the faith.
The Bible is pretty clear to us about how we should use prayer, and in some sense “how it works”. Pleading out case to the Prophets or the martyrs just doesn’t happen to be in the list of things to do — and it seems to be explicitly forbidden.
I’d have to be a bit of a blockhead to suggest that, I think. But there is a vast difference between “remembering and being inspired by” what we can rightly say is the great cloud of witnesses that have come before us, and praying to them as if we cannot pray to God Himself who is, in the end, the author and finisher of our faith.
November 5th, 2009 | 11:46 am | #12
Interesting presentation and discussion.
As far as timelessness, In Rev 6:10 the martyred saints cry out “How long, O Lord?” indicating they experience progression of time. Whether they are aware of events on earth or are capable of or interested in praying for us is debatable.
Asking for someone to pray for you is one thing; praying to that person for their help (“St. Jude, please help me with [insert your request]“) and promising to make the saint’s name great (“Help me in my present and urgent petition, In return I promise to make your name known and cause you to be invoked”) is something else — not necromancy, but not certainly not as innocent as asking your friend to pray for you.
“Betty, pray for my upcoming surgery and help me to recover, and I will make your name known so that others will invoke you.”
Would we be okay doing that with a living neighbor?
November 5th, 2009 | 11:51 am | #13
I have long heard the modern Roman Catholic argument that requesting prayers from the deceased saints is not essentially different from asking a living brother or sister in the faith to pray for you. This makes sense on a certain level, except for the following:
1. There is no biblical foundation for this and there is no record of anyone in the pages of scripture praying in this fashion.
2. There is precious little scriptural evidence of the exact state of believers between their death and eventual resurrection on the last day. Are they conscious? Do they sleep? Trying to answer this brings us into the realm of speculation, with its attendant dangers.
3. Even if deceased believers are conscious in the so-called intermediate state, they are still creatures of God and subject to creaturely limitations. God can hear and make sense of scores of millions of people praying to him simultaneously. We certainly cannot make sense of even two or three people trying to speak to us at the same time. It’s not clear why the saints would be able to do this, as they are still human beings.
November 5th, 2009 | 11:56 am | #14
Frank,
“praying to them as if we cannot pray to God Himself”
That’s unfair and slightly dishonest. No one has said that Catholics ask for the saints’ intercession because they can’t pray to God themselves. The analogy out forth is that one asks for the saints’ intercession in the same way that we ask for our neighbor’s intercession.
I think that’s wrong on two counts – first, because in practice, Catholics are doing more than simply asking for the saints’ intercession; they are praying as though the saints have power themselves to aid us, and promising to make the saints’ aid known, instead of Christ; and second, there’s no biblical evidence that praying to saints is either appropriate or effective, nothing in Scripture that models that kind of intercessory request, and instead biblical evidence that the practice is questionable if not wrong.
But the argument is not that Catholics can’t pray to God directly. Let’s discuss the issue on its merits.
November 5th, 2009 | 12:00 pm | #15
Personally, I think that for the redeemed before the throne of God prayer is a not even a category of thought or experience. They are in the immediate presence of the Lord, they rest from their labors, and they are caught up in the glory of God such that worship is the appropriate and joyful response.
The idea of being in the presence of God, beholding his overwhelming glory, and then asking for something seems ludicrous, almost blasphemous, to me.
November 5th, 2009 | 12:24 pm | #16
But for myself, Inasmuch as God is outside of time … and the Christian departed as they are those asleep in the Lord participating in His presence how can they not also be also outside of time?
But God isn’t only outside of time. He transcends time, but His presence is here in time and space, too.
Isn’t God’s timelessness related to his eternality? And only God is eternal. Creatures aren’t.
November 5th, 2009 | 1:18 pm | #17
I’ve heard it suggested that the problem between Catholics and Protestants (most Protestants, anyway) over the relationship between saints on earth and saints in heaven is one of definition, particularly our differeing definitions of prayer.
Catholics seem to treat prayer as a conversation. While this has a unique aspect to it when entered into with God, it is not something unique to God.
Protestants seem to treat prayer as worship. That is, it is not just a conversation with God (though it is that), but one that carries with it an acknowledgement of God’s holiness, authority, power, and graciousness in providing salvation on the Cross.
If this is an accurate distinction, then I think the different approaches to the saints might be a bit more understandable. If prayer can be conversation alone (though again, when engaged with God it is more), then it makes sense to include saints in its scope. If it always has a component of worship, then such inclusion would be idolatry, though I’m not sure I’d say “necromancy.”
November 5th, 2009 | 5:05 pm | #18
Is it necromancy if they aren’t “dead”?
November 5th, 2009 | 7:08 pm | #19
“Is it necromancy if they aren’t “dead”?”
Based on what I’ve seen in the movies, it’s only “necromancy” if they come back as zombies. And I’ve never seen Catholics even try to do that…
Seriously, “necromancy” is just a horrible word choice all around, bringing up unnecessary connotations of bearded guys chanting in black robes around a bonfire at midnight and obscuring issues that need to be discussed.
November 5th, 2009 | 9:53 pm | #20
Jeff –
Here’s what I’d like, as a former Catholic. I am not interested in an opinion in what the above text means. I am not interested in what it means to someone else when he recites those words.
I am interested in what that text is by definition, whether one is required to recite them ever, and for what reason those words are ever recited — that is, what benefit or use are they?
And I am only interested in the authoritative teaching of the Church about those words — not some apologetic web site’s interpretation, not some useful but non-binding source. As a Catholic, one must believe what one is taught to believe about those words. Please tell me what that is.
Because I think we need some clarity about what it means to pray to those who are not with us bodily.
November 5th, 2009 | 9:56 pm | #21
It is also a LOT disappointing that the example of Saul and Samuel has been completely ignored. I wonder why that example of seeking the help of dead people doesn’t get any attention?
November 5th, 2009 | 10:23 pm | #22
The Church prays as Christ taught her to pray. Nowhere did Jesus teach the Church to pray to the departed. If Jesus had taught an “Our Mother” in addition to the “Our Father,” we would gladly pray it and many more prayers to Mary besides. But he did not teach this. It is absolutely illegitimate for the Church to try to invent its own worship. In this case, the pope has declared that through its own cleverness and philosophy, the Church has deduced many additional beings we may address in prayer besides God. It ultimately comes down to whether the Church learns to pray by Christ’s word, or whether the Church learns to pray by philosophy.
Also, if you look at the theology of the canon of the Mass, the cult of the saints revolves around the idea that the saints, because they are pure, are able to placate God and make him more amenable to hearing our own prayers. The litany of the saints is part of the propitiatory prayers of the Mass. So as with so many other things, this comes down to the Catholic doctrine of justification–God really doesn’t think all that highly of you, so you need to get someone he likes to put in a good word for you.
November 5th, 2009 | 10:25 pm | #23
^^ Regarding the above, when a Catholic says it’s just like asking a friend to pray for you, either he doesn’t understand Catholic doctrine very well, or the reason he asks his friends to pray for him is because he believes they are more righteous than he is and able to placate God.
November 6th, 2009 | 11:02 am | #24
Frank,
That’s a more helpful set of questions. I can’t answer them, not being a Catholic. And my guess is that with centuries of pronouncements from different popes, there probably isn’t one clear “official” teaching or understanding.
My criticism of your earlier comment was simply that I think it’s better in general to stick to the argument as presented and deal with it fairly. I’ve outlined above why I believe prayer to the saints is not only unnecessary but also inappropriate, based on the justifications given. It seemed to me unfair to reject out of hand the argument given by your opponent and simply assert what his motives must really be. You may be right, but proving that requires more than your assertion.
For example, Fearsome Tycoon writes:
if you look at the theology of the canon of the Mass, the cult of the saints revolves around the idea that the saints, because they are pure, are able to placate God and make him more amenable to hearing our own prayers.
If true, that’s significant and troubling, and needs to be addressed by Catholics in response. But even that’s not the same as saying Catholics act as if they can’t approach God directly.
As far as Saul and Samuel, I think there are lessons and warnings there which are relevant to the discussion, but at the same time, people are not using witchcraft to call up the spirits of the dead to foretell the future.
November 6th, 2009 | 4:23 pm | #25
Of course Catholics can approach God directly, it’s just that it might not be all that good an idea, or at least you should try to butter him up before you do. This is what happens when you deny that believers are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. If you look at Luther’s theology of prayer, for example, we pray on the basis of God having declared us righteous in the Gospel, baptism, absolution, etc. We pray because God has promised to hear us for the sake of us his Son, who died for us and covers us with his own righteousness.
Since Rome denies the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and teaches only the cultivation of the believer’s own righteousness through Christ-infused grace, they can’t pray on that basis. Thus in the canon of the Mass, they ask God to protect and defend them for the sake of the “merits and prayers” of the saints. The saints have far more merit than you, ergo God is more likely to be propitious on their account.
Modern Catholic apologetics varies on this theme by saying, “Wouldn’t you want someone praying for you who is much closer to God than you are? And who is closer to God than the departed saints?”
November 6th, 2009 | 5:29 pm | #26
Fearsome Tycoon,
I agree joyfully and gratefully with all that you’ve written about the Protestant understanding of Christ’s imputed righteousness, and the confidence it gives me to boldly approach the throne of grace.
Your points about the Catholic understanding of merit and approach to God are important and should be brought into the discussion.
And your last lines about most Catholic apologists may be true, but that’s not how the argument was presented here. That’s all I was trying to get at in terms of how we approach issues like this. If an opponent is hiding something in his presentation, we have a right to point that out, but not to put words in our opponents’ mouths by asserting what they must believe based on their actions.
November 7th, 2009 | 12:38 pm | #27
“Nowhere did Jesus teach the Church to pray to the departed.”
Nowhere did Jesus condemn necrophilia, abortion, or downing shots of tequila before breakfast, or even suggest a theocracy (which Horne and his co-author George Grant have supported for years). So, what’s your point?
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact