So some didn’t like my second point. OK. I’ll bang my head against the wall some.
- I prefer to call the sin “necromancy” because I think the typical Protestant charge of “idolatry” depends on a rather new in definition of the word “pray” as exclusively about religious communication to the supernatural world (to be generic for a moment). But “pray” just meant “ask” originally, and every time you ask another Christian for something you are “praying to” on the saints.” So while aspects of the concern about idolatry are probably supportable (see below) I don’t see it as the best approach.
- The idea that “necromancy” only obtains if one is getting information, and not when one is communicating with the dead so that they will do other favors is insupportable. Descriptive definitions are simply not enough to make summoning the dead for other purposes than foretelling the future immune to the charge of necromancy.
- The fact that Christians are united to Christ by the Spirit is true, and it is true of both the dead and the living. But unless I type words and post them on this blog. But this does not involve the ability to do telepathy. You can’t ask me to pray for you right now unless you leave a comment, get me on IM, use skype, etc. If you “pray” right now for something from me, I’ll never be aware of it. The Spirit doesn’t allow us to communicate with each other in that supernatural way. No liturgy in the world asks other living Christians in other locations to pray for us.
- So why the big exception for the dead? The Bible forbids trying to summon them. It gives us no indication that they are given new powers of awareness that just happen to resemble popular superstitions about ghosts hanging around. I think Medium is a pretty entertaining TV show. But it is not the real world. And God forbids us to try to make it so or pretend that it is so.
- And what of the living? Shouldn’t I go to real present (phenomenally present) human beings with my needs? Are we supposed to care for one another or are we supposed to delegate such responsibilities to Casper and Mary?
- And what of Jesus? If we are going to pray privately, why would Mary care more about us or be more likely to hear us than Jesus?
- Which gets us back to the idolatry problem: how does Mary hear and respond to all those petitions? I know (though don’t understand) that as God incarnate Jesus can be trusted to both care and hear any need I bring to him. But how does that work with Mary? As a human being she hasn’t even been raised from the dead yet… Oh right? One lie leads to another. But then pick St. Someone-else who is considered beneficial to talk to. Jesus is farther along as a human being than any of them.
- If Mary is not omnipresent as God incarnate, then how can we find a way to make her hear millions of prayers at once? I suppose we can hypothesized an increased brain power along with supernatural perception. But then is this even Mary whom we pretend to know? She seems more like a huge monstrosity on the other side of the door in Hellboy. We may indeed become eventually beings of amazing powers, but to make Mary, at this point in history, so alien to our present level of transformation, seems to defeat the whole purpose of imagining that she is like us now and thus a good person to approach.
- And there is no Biblical justification for any of these imaginings. It is all crap from beginning to end. Crap that gives us an excuse to both avoid interaction with Jesus and with the saints who can actually hear and pray for us.
- It seems to me that even if one was for some irrational reason attracted to the idea that praying to the dead can get them to hear us and pray for us; that some version of Pascal’s wager would still make wise people avoid it. We’re really going to act like effective polytheists when we already know 1. Jesus can hear us; 2. Jesus empathizes with us; and 3. Jesus cares about our needs?
- Of course, sin finds rationalizations so we find people acting like failing to treat Mary as omniscient is somehow an insult to Jesus’ mother. No, making her the object of superstition is what makes Jesus angry. You’ll get a chance to honor Mary when you meet her in person. You haven’t had that honor yet.
The best argument for it is the Christian unity in the Spirit, and some kind of assumption that there was a change in afterworld geography that accompanied the resurrection of Jesus, so that while OT saints shouldn’t be communicated with, it would be ok for NT saints.
That said, I recall reading recently that the church had to put a stop to serving communion to corpses late in the early church era. I would think that hard-core claims about new testament changes that would allow for necromancy should ALSO tell us to give communion to corpses. But its obvious that we shouldn’t do the latter, and therefore the argument for talking to them (because of the union we have via the spirit) is also dubious.
On communion to corpses, see point 6 here:
http://livingtext.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/prayer-for-the-dead/
Yes! It was you that I read that on, Joel
Hmm…I’m not going to be in favor of prayers to the saints, particularly of the Catholic variety (there is, in my experience a difference in kind between Orthodox and Catholic prayers to the saints) but these points don’t seem accurate.
1&2. Even if prayers to the saints are wrong, they aren’t necromancy. Even if those who have died in Christ are dead, there is a clear difference in kind between magic which seeks to command and dominate the dead, and prayers to the saints which treat those who have died as numinous. When I see my Catholic friends drawing Pentagrams to summon the Virgin I’ll believe they are guilty of necromancy. Until then, I’ll believe they’re innocent of that charge. Moreover, people who pray to the saints do not treat the saints as dead, but living–as you yourself acknowledge in your later point. And they are correct. Those who have died in Christ are not dead. They haven’t been fully resurrected yet, but it is confessional for Protestants that they are in fact alive with Christ (e.g. Westminster XXXII).
It gives us no indication that they are given new powers of awareness.
Actually this isn’t true. Why would I believe the Mother of God can hear our prayers? Because her son can. And her son can as a man. If the one we pray to is not the Man Jesus Christ, as man; but some God who uses Jesus Christ, Hebrews has no force, for we do not have an advocate who can sympathize, and we are in fact, not Christians. We know Glorified Humanity has the ability to hear prayers, for precisely this is the Gospel. Humanity precisely is “in the image of Christ” and Christ hears our prayers. Precisely in that the saints are in the image of Christ we have reason to believe the saints hear our prayers; and moreover, a skecepticism over whether the ability to hear and answer prayers is humanly possible is simply a skecpticism over whether the Incarnation is possible.
And we have qite explicit reason to believe at the very least that language is no longer a barrier.
Similarly your argument that “to make Mary, at this point in history, so alien to our present level of transformation, seems to defeat the whole purpose of imagining that she is like us now and thus a good person to approach.” cuts equally against prayers to Christ. If that argument against prayers to Mary is sound, so is precisely the same argument (found perhaps on the lips of Christopher Hitchens) against prayers to Christ.
Mary is not omnipresent as God incarnate
You’re a Calvinist, not a Lutheran. You don’t believe the One who hears our prayers, in his capacity as one like us who hears our prayers, is omnipresent either. You deny the ubiquity of the Body. But even if you were to assert it, we shall be like Him.
But still, why pray to a saint? Isn’t Christ sufficient?
Well, in a very real sense, no. Christ is not sufficient. He says so Himself. A better question would be “Is the Trinity alone sufficient?” And the answer is, of course, yes. But the Trinity is, in his very nature, and in his manifestation here in this world, the Lord of Hosts. Christ without the Church is not Christ. And moreover, Christ is known in and through His saints.
Regarding prayers for the dead: It’s rather commical to see a practice attested to in Macabees traced to the fourth century AD. But the only warrant we need for prayers for the dead is the Bible’s. “Commit your cares to the Lord.” When someone dies, we care and hope that they will be prospered. The only proper response is to turn to Christ in prayer for them. And we may have confidence that our prayers will be answered because we pray according to His promise.
The problem with prayers to the saints is that it can very easily be idolatrous.
Not that prayer to the saint is in ipse (for that we’d need Biblical warrant, which there isn’t), but that it is sacerdotal, and hence idolatrous. It can very easily become “pray to Mary because she is very close to Christ and her prayers are efficacious.” In such prayers to Mary the devote does not enter into the presence of Christ, and there find the saints, rather he enters into the presence of the Theotokos, and hopes she will enter into the presence of Christ for him. It is thus analogous to the tendency to have the laity not receive communion, and to the doctrine that the Mass is an efficacious sacrifice, cleansing the congregants merely because it is said, and not because they are communicants (even perhaps with a warning that they not be communicants).
And (the relatively mild sin of) presumption that the current extent of the glorification of the saints extends to the ability to hear our prayers. We know that in the resurrection they shall be so glorified, but are they now.
Matthew:
You didn’t really give an argument as to why these acts should not be classified as idolatry, besides adding some different adjectives in front of the acts.
Also, there is clearly a mystery involved in Jesus, with regards to his knowledge, that is simply not the case with regards to any other person.
“Precisely in that the saints are in the image of Christ we have reason to believe the saints hear our prayers; and moreover, a skecepticism over whether the ability to hear and answer prayers is humanly possible is simply a skecpticism over whether the Incarnation is possible.”
This ignores Mark’s argument about how all of this would equally apply to other living saints.
Andrew,
I didn’t try to argue that it shouldn’t be classified as idolatry.
Regarding your second point: if the Man Jesus Christ can hear our prayers, then it is humanly possible to hear prayers; for humanity is not this or that, but conformity to the image of Christ.
Of course we don’t pray to absent Christians on earth, and likewise we wouldn’t have prayed to absent Jesus while he was on earth. It is true that they haven’t been resurrected, and perhaps they still cannot hear our prayers. But there is reason to believe they can. Catholics and Orthodox aren’t just running off into nowhere, or into complete presumption. It is easy to question whether they can hear, and as I said, it seems to be presumptions; but still, they aren’t making wholly unfounded or wholly unbiblical assumptions.
I thought Jesus taught us to pray to the Father. What’s all this about praying to Jesus?
Stephen prayed to Jesus when he was dying.