By Living Waters

I have friends who are members of the Roman Catholic Church. I have friends who have become Roman Catholic. I even have some friends who recently have reverted to Catholicism.* I dearly love and respect each of these Christian siblings, though I’ve not been able to follow them in their treks to Rome. I appreciate some of their reasons for moving in that direction (or for staying put), though I’ve not felt the draw they have. What I’d like to discuss in this post is the practice of praying to saints. What motivates my thoughts is a recent article by the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, Richard J. Mouw. The article, “Communion with the Saints” (The Christian Century, 15 May 2007), brought to the surface many questions I’ve long had about this practice. Perhaps these are not the most insightful of questions, but they are my questions about this practice.

In the article Mouw recounts a public dialog with a Catholic priest in which the priest proffered the analogy of asking our Christian siblings on earth to pray for us. As Mouw recounts:

Properly understood, he [the priest] argued, praying to a saint in heaven is nothing more than a conversation with another Christian, in which the person on earth is asking the saint to intercede with God on his or her behalf. Surely, the theologian remarked, Protestants should have no fundamental objection to that kind of thing. When we Protestants are facing some special sort of crisis, are we not inclined to ask our friends to pray to God on our behalf? Well then, he asked, what is wrong with also asking friends who are already in heaven to take up our cause before the divine throne? After all, given their location, they are likely to be in a better position to get through to God than even some of our most pious friends here on earth.

As an avenue of escaping the charge of idolatry, this analogy is useful. But the same line of reasoning, to my mind, gives rise to other problems. Simply put, suggesting that praying to a saint in heaven is comparable to speaking to my Christian friend on earth glosses over a number of assumptions and disanalogies (some of which Mouw notes as well).

For instance, I know of no biblical basis for supposing Christians should, or even have the right to, seek to communicate to (and with!) departed Christians, though there is plenty of biblical precedent for asking saints on earth to pray for us (e.g., Paul asks for prayer in his epistles). So, firstly, I see no obvious biblical motivation for doing this. I can think of no command, no illustration, and no narrative encouragement for such a practice.

Also, doesn’t the practice assume that departed saints have a newfound capacity to entertain innumerable prayers at the same time (assuming there is no shortage of clients engaging in the practice)? I know of no biblical reason to hold that departed saints gain such extraordinary cognitive abilities to equip them for this task. (Not to mention an assumed ability that they can read our prayerful thoughts, though thoughts that go unspoken.) Perhaps we could speculate, yet I am aware of no biblical reason for supposing that departed saints are granted such abilities, or such tasks. Nor do appeals to the scenes of Revelation 5:8 or 8:3-4 produce adequate support for such conjectures. These texts, while perhaps according with such a practice (in a very limited and qualified sense), provide neither a motivational nor an ethical basis for it.Some have suggested that the key is that the heavenly saints are now timeless, and thus have no difficulty entertaining any number of verbal requests. This maneuver comes off to me as ad hoc. Why should we suppose they are timeless? I know there is a strong philosophical tradition here, but I can’t think of a biblical basis for such a belief. Nor do I feel a desire to infer that disembodied saints, allegedly being immaterial, are thus not constrained by space or time. This seems a trajectory of thought rather alternative to divine revelation.

Simply put, praying to people in heaven in so many ways isn’t like asking people on earth to pray for us. I can call a friend with my telephone (or, with Skype, on my computer), but we don’t even know the area code for the saints in heaven. I can email friends, or chat live with them, even using a webcam, though I cannot do the same with departed saints. I can even embrace my earthly friends and whisper my thoughts to them. This is not how one prays to the departed saints (unless one has contact with the dead). And what of non-verbal prayers? The situation appears so different that I can conclude nothing other than that the analogy is allusive, if not illusory.

And what of the fact that these heavenly saints are dead, in the sense of being disembodied? How are we to distinguish praying to disembodied saints from the biblical prohibition of necromancy? If one retorts that these saints are very much alive and not dead, then I can only infer that there is no such thing as death for anyone, given that disembodied non-saints remain alive (in this sense) as well.

Then there’s the case of Jesus’s transfiguration, where Moses and Elijah appear and converse with Jesus. Surely this was a profound and glorious event. But there is nothing that I see in the recording and retelling of the event that encourages such contact with the saintly dead. Besides, this is recounted as a rather public (there were others present) event, one rather different than supposing that Moses and Elijah can otherwise hear and pass along thousands or tens-of-thousands of prayers directed to them. I’m simply queasy to think that this is a sort of WWJD opportunity for us to imaginatively infer that we are to go and do likewise.

Now, do we really have reason to suppose that the location of the heavenly saints makes they more likely to be heard by God? As Mouw commented (though I cannot tell if this was intended to be Mouw’s thoughts or a recollection of the priest’s continuing argument):

After all, given their location, they are likely to be in a better position to get through to God than even some of our most pious friends here on earth.

“…to get through to God…”? That seems an odd way of approaching our contemplation of the Deity’s posture toward the prayers of his people. I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that since the saints are in heaven, they get God’s ear either more frequently or more effectively. Nor am I content with the belief that since Mary is female, she’s more likely to be sympathetic to feminine needs and trials than either the male Jesus Christ or our male-like (if not patriarchal, as some would accuse) Father in heaven; and as more sympathetic, she’s more likely to be willing to pass along our concerns in a more effective manner than we could, if not actually answer our prayers. Which leads me to the next point.

Later in his article, Mouw recounts that a person who prayed to St. Francis also received a response from St. Francis. This wasn’t a prayer through St. Francis to God; it was a prayer to St. Francis. And St. Francis answered that prayer. This is discomforting. This would not be mere praying to (through?) heavenly saints that they may pass along our messages to God. This would be praying to saints that they may in turn respond to us. As such, we’d be having a conversation with them. Is this not one step further than what often is conceived of as prayer to/through the saints. And it is precisely this kind of practice, it seems to me, that begs to be distinguished from necromancy, if in fact it can be.

The anecdote suggests that the person praying was otherwise informed on St. Francis’s life. As such, I would suggest that perhaps this person’s pondering of such a life was graciously answered by God pointing up Francis’s gracious approach to the unapprochables. If so, it is a wonderful illustration that we can learn from our forefathers and foremothers of the faith. But as a support for praying to, even conversing with, departed and disembodied saints, it comes off as less than encouraging. Mouw expresses a different sort of response, though he does so in a guarded way. He notes a statue of St. Francis in his garden, reminding him of that embrace of the unlovable. I believe we can and should learn from those who have trod the path of faith before our time. But I see no biblical motivations or allowances for seeking to communicate with these departed pathfinders.

Prayer in Scripture, it seems to me, is an expression of worship. Yes, it is a form of entreaty, and we may entreat earthly folk. But liturgical prayer in Scripture is a centerpiece in biblical worship. And I know of nowhere where it is legitimately directed to anyone other than God . . . and also commended (explicitly or implicitly) when it is so directed. As an expression of our worship of God, and of our utter dependence upon him, it is rightly seen within the context of our theology: our understanding of God.

Many years ago I was struck by something I came across in the book of Deuteronomy. At 4:7 we read,

What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way Yahweh our God is near us whenever we pray to him?

This struck me because it reoriented my understanding of prayer. So often we see prayer as an act in which our words are somehow carried across the vast universe and deposited in God’s inbox near his throne. He then hears us and responds from afar. (While such an image is not without biblical support, it is not the only vision found in biblical resources.) Here in Deuteronomy 4:7 we find that God is near his people when we pray. Perhaps we could relate this reality God’s omnipresence and omniscience: he is always near us; he always knows what we need. But here in Deuteronomy 4:7 we encounter not only the nearness of Divine presence but the posture of God: our Father leaning forward that we may praisefully entreat him. God is with us when we pray. It seems distinctly out of accord with biblical theology to suggest that God’s posture typically is otherwise, such that saints in heaven may gain his ear more effectively, either due to their nearness to God or their heavenly holiness.

True, the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective (James 5:16). But Elijah was a righteous man on the earth, and James’s point pertains to those living upon the earth. James is instructing us in our praying. And it is perhaps instructive that he fails to mention or encourage prayer to disembodied saints as somehow more effective, or even permitted. I suspect he had a good opportunity here to provide such instruction. Alas, it is absent from James’s epistle.

That God is omniscient implies that he would have no difficulty being fully aware of the prayers of millions or billions of people. But given the lack of biblical support, to suggest that heavenly saints have a comparable ability comes off as a distraction and, perhaps, even an infringement.

*I also have friends who once were members of the Roman Catholic Church.

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