Grace, salvation and the saints

The communion of saints

The Church across death - honouring the holy, asking their prayers, and where the four divide.

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The Creed says I believe in the communion of saints. All four traditions confess it. It means that the Church is one body across death: those alive on earth and those who have died in Christ belong to the same communion and are not cut off from one another.

Two things follow that everyone accepts.

The saints are alive. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. The faithful departed are more alive than we are, not less.

They are honoured. Hebrews 11 is a roll-call. Hebrews 12 opens with the image of a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us as we run. All four traditions keep feast days, name churches after saints and hold up their examples.

The disagreement concerns one practice: may we ask them to pray for us?

Catholic and Orthodox: yes, emphatically, and it is woven through the liturgy. Asking a saint to pray is the same act as asking a friend to pray, with the difference that the friend is closer to God than you are.

Lutheran: the saints are to be honoured and their example followed, and their prayers may well be offered for the Church - but Scripture does not command invoking them, and the Confessions reject the practice as lacking warrant and prone to abuse.

Anglican: the formularies reject the invocation of saints in the form Article 22 condemns, while the Prayer Book keeps the calendar and thanks God for their example. Anglo-Catholics invoke the saints in practice; evangelicals do not.

The Catholic and Orthodox distinction to have ready: veneration is honour given to a creature; adoration is worship given to God alone. Confusing them is the whole of the objection.

What the saints are

The New Testament uses saint - hagios, holy one - for all Christians. Paul addresses letters to the saints at Rome, Corinth and Ephesus, including the ones he is about to rebuke. It is not a term for the exceptional.

Later usage narrowed it to those whose holiness the Church recognises publicly. Both senses survive, and it is worth keeping both in view: the calendar of saints is not a list of a different species but a set of examples drawn from the same pool you are in.

The Church is traditionally described in three states:

The Church militant - those still on earth, still fighting.
The Church expectant or suffering - the faithful departed awaiting the final resurrection. Catholic teaching identifies this with purgatory; the East speaks of the departed awaiting judgement; Lutherans and most Anglicans reject an intermediate state of purification.
The Church triumphant - those in glory.

One Church, three conditions.

Pause and thinkPause: the objection to asking saints to pray is usually 1 Timothy 2:5 - one mediator. Before reading on, work out why that text does not settle the question, and what the objector would have to say next.

The case for asking their prayers

Stated as Catholic and Orthodox Christians would put it:

They are alive. Christ's argument against the Sadducees is that God calls Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob long after their deaths - God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Death does not remove a Christian from the body.

They are aware. At the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah appear and speak with Christ about what He is to accomplish. In Revelation 6, the martyrs under the altar cry out and ask how long. In Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-4, the prayers of the saints are presented before God as incense.

Intercession is what the body does. Paul asks for prayer in nearly every letter. If mutual intercession is the ordinary life of the Church, and death does not remove anyone from the Church, then the circle of those who may be asked does not stop at the grave.

They are nearer God. James says the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. The saints are, by definition, the righteous made perfect.

The Church has always done it. Inscriptions in the Roman catacombs from the third century ask the martyrs to pray - Petre et Paule, orate pro Victore. This predates any controversy and predates the conversion of the empire.

The case against

Stated as Lutheran and evangelical Anglican Christians would put it:

There is no command. Scripture never instructs anyone to ask a departed person to pray, and no New Testament example exists. In a matter of worship, absence of warrant matters.

There is a prohibition nearby. Deuteronomy 18:10-11 forbids consulting the dead. The four all agree this condemns necromancy rather than intercession, but the proximity counsels caution.

It requires something not established. For a saint to hear thousands of requests in many languages at once, he must have something close to omniscience, which is a divine attribute. The Catholic answer is that the saints know in God rather than by their own capacity - a coherent answer, but one that is inferred rather than revealed.

The abuses were real. By the late Middle Ages, particular saints had become specialists with their own franchises, relics were trafficked, and popular devotion frequently did treat saints as more approachable than a frightening Christ. The Reformers were reacting to something that had actually happened.

Where the four traditions stand

Catholic

The Catechism teaches that the Church's union with the saints in heaven is a union in Christ, and that because those in heaven are more closely united to Him they establish the whole Church more firmly in holiness. Their intercession is their most exalted service. Canonisation is the formal process by which the Church declares a person to be in heaven and worthy of public veneration - requiring evidence of heroic virtue or martyrdom and, ordinarily, verified miracles. Saints are named in the eucharistic prayers, given feast days, and invoked in the Litany. The Blessed Virgin Mary receives hyperdulia, honour above all other creatures but categorically different from the worship due to God, and is called the Church's advocate and mediatrix - titles which the Church insists in no way obscure or diminish the unique mediation of Christ, but flow from it. Relics are honoured; this is grounded in the conviction that the bodies of the saints were temples of the Spirit and will be raised. Praying for the dead is taught and practised, connected with the doctrine of purgatory.

Orthodox

The saints are present throughout Orthodox worship in a way that is hard to overstate. Every liturgy commemorates them; every church is filled with icons through which the faithful venerate those depicted - and the Seventh Ecumenical Council settled that the honour given to an image passes to its prototype, so that veneration of the icon is not veneration of wood and paint. The Theotokos is invoked constantly, above all in the phrase Most Holy Theotokos, save us - which Orthodox theology is clear means by your prayers, and which is among the practices Protestants find hardest; Orthodoxy replies that the same idiom appears in Paul, who says he became all things to all men that I might by all means save some. Glorification (the Orthodox term for canonisation) is less juridical than in the West and often follows popular veneration. Orthodoxy prays for the dead extensively - memorial services, panikhidas, the offering of koliva - while declining to define an intermediate state of purification, and it explicitly rejects purgatory as a Latin doctrine. Relics are venerated, and incorrupt relics are regarded as a sign of holiness.

Lutheran

Article 21 of the Augsburg Confession gives the Lutheran position with precision, and it is more positive than it is usually reported to be. Concerning the veneration of saints, the Confession teaches that the memory of saints may be set before us, that we may follow their faith and good works according to our calling - so the saints are honoured, remembered and held up as examples, and Lutheran calendars retain their days. But the Confession then denies that Scripture teaches the invocation of saints or asking help of them, since it sets before us Christ alone as mediator, propitiation and intercessor. The Apology expands the argument: the Confessions concede that the saints in heaven pray for the Church in general, and even that angels pray for us, but hold that it does not follow that they are to be invoked, and that invocation has in practice transferred to the saints the honour due to Christ. Luther kept the feasts of Mary, preached on the Magnificat with great warmth, and objected not to honour but to invocation.

Anglican

Article 22 condemns the Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardons, worshipping and adoration as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, as a fond thing vainly invented, grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the word of God. The wording repays attention: it condemns the Romish doctrine - the late-medieval system as the Reformers encountered it - rather than every conceivable form of asking prayer, and Anglo-Catholic theologians have argued that distinction for two centuries. The Prayer Book retains a calendar of saints with red-letter days for the apostles and evangelists and black-letter commemorations for many others, provides collects thanking God for their example, and asks in the Communion service that we may be given grace to follow their good examples. In practice Anglo-Catholic parishes invoke the saints, keep shrines and observe Marian devotions; evangelical parishes commemorate without invoking; and both remain within the Church of England. Most Anglicans pray for the dead in some form, and the Prayer Book's commemoration of the faithful departed makes provision for it without endorsing purgatory.

Where modern denominations differ

Who differs: Baptist, Pentecostal, non-denominational and Reformed churches reject the invocation of saints entirely, and most reject prayer for the dead and the veneration of images and relics along with it. Many will describe the practice as idolatry or as necromancy. Methodists commemorate saints mildly and generally do not invoke.

What they hold: That 1 Timothy 2:5 establishes one mediator and excludes any other intercessor; that Deuteronomy 18:10-11 forbids contacting the dead; that the saints cannot hear prayers without divine attributes; that no Scripture commands or exemplifies the practice; and that the honour given to Mary in Catholic and Orthodox devotion has crossed into worship in practice whatever the theory says.

How to answer:

On the one mediator, take the ground rather than defending. Ask whether they have ever asked someone to pray for them. Every Christian has, and Paul asks for it constantly. If asking a living Christian to pray does not violate 1 Timothy 2:5, then intercession is not what the verse excludes. Christ's mediation is of a different kind altogether: He reconciles God and man by His blood. Nobody claims a saint does that.

On necromancy, the distinction is clean and worth stating plainly. Necromancy is summoning the dead to obtain hidden knowledge or power - the witch of Endor. Asking a fellow member of Christ's body to pray is not consultation, not summoning, and seeks no information. And note that the departed in Christ are not the dead in the sense Deuteronomy means: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

On whether they can hear, concede that this is the strongest objection and that the answer is an inference. The Catholic and Orthodox reply is that the saints know what they know in God, not by an independent faculty, so no divine attribute is being attributed to a creature. Point to Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-4, where the prayers of the saints are presented before God, and to Revelation 6:9-11, where the martyrs are aware of events on earth and petition about them. This does not amount to a command, and an honest exchange will acknowledge that.

On the absence of a command, this is the Lutheran objection and it is the most serious. The Catholic and Orthodox answer is the practice of the early Church: the catacomb inscriptions asking the martyrs to pray date from the third century, before Constantine, before any of the abuses. That is evidence of what Christians did, which is a different kind of argument from a proof text - and where you stand on it will depend on where you stand on Tradition, which is the section behind this one.

On Marian devotion in practice, do not simply recite the dulia and latria distinction and consider the matter closed. The distinction is real and defensible. But the fair form of the objection is empirical: whatever the theology says, does popular devotion in some places treat Mary as more approachable than Christ? A Catholic or Orthodox Christian can grant that this happens, deplore it, and point out that the remedy is catechesis - exactly as with any abuse of a good thing. Conceding the observed fact while holding the doctrine is far more persuasive than denying what your interlocutor has seen with his own eyes.

Work with it

Check yourself

What distinction did the Second Council of Nicaea (787) formalise?

Check yourself

What is the strongest form of the objection to asking saints for their prayers?

Check yourself

What does Article 21 of the Augsburg Confession actually say about the saints?

Objection drill

Praying to saints is idolatry, plain and simple. There is one mediator between God and men. And asking the dead to do anything is necromancy, which Deuteronomy forbids on pain of death. Dress it up in Latin all you like - dulia, latria - but when a woman on her knees before a statue asks Mary for help, she is worshipping a creature.

Write your answer first. You will remember it far better than one you only read.

A model answer

Three charges. The third is the one that actually persuades people, so it deserves the most care - but take them in order.

On the one mediator. Grant 1 Timothy 2:5 completely; no tradition covered here disputes it. Then notice that the verse cannot be doing the work the objection needs, because the same letter, three verses earlier, urges that supplications and intercessions be made for all men - and Paul asks the churches to pray for him in nearly every epistle he writes. If asking a Christian to intercede violated Christ's unique mediation, Paul violated it constantly.

So Christ's mediation must be something else, and it is. He reconciles God and man by His own blood. That is unique and unrepeatable, and no one claims a saint does it. Asking a saint to pray is asking for intercession, which is what members of a body do for each other.

On necromancy. The distinction is clean. Necromancy is summoning the dead to obtain hidden knowledge or power - Saul at Endor, which is the case Deuteronomy has in view. Asking a fellow Christian to pray summons no one, seeks no secret knowledge, and gives no power to a spirit. It is a request, addressed to someone who is with God.

And the premise deserves challenging, not just the inference. Christ's argument against the Sadducees turns on precisely this: God calls Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob centuries after their burials, and Christ's conclusion is God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. In the Christian account, the departed faithful are not the dead. They are the most alive people there are.

On the woman before the statue. This is the part that should not be met with Latin vocabulary, because that answer is technically correct and pastorally deaf.

Here is what is fair to concede. Popular devotion is not always well catechised. There have been times and places where Mary and the saints functioned as more approachable than a Christ presented chiefly as a judge - and the late-medieval situation the Reformers attacked was real, with specialist saints, trafficked relics and devotion that had genuinely become disordered. A Catholic or Orthodox Christian who denies that any of this ever happens is not being honest, and will not be believed.

Here is what should not be conceded. The abuse of a practice is not an argument against the practice, or the Corinthian Eucharist would have ended the Lord's Supper. And the observation she looks like she is worshipping is not decisive, because externals do not determine the act. A man who kneels to propose and a man who kneels to pray are doing different things with the same knees. What makes an act worship is what is being attributed - and what the woman is asking Mary for is prayer.

Ask her. That is the honest test, and it is available. Ask a rosary-praying Catholic whether she thinks Mary can forgive her sins, or saved her, or is God. She will be startled by the question. The prayer she has just said ends pray for us sinners - which is a request for intercession, in the words of the prayer itself.

And the strongest thing to leave with them, if the conversation is a serious one: the practice is very old. Inscriptions in the Roman catacombs from the third century ask the martyrs to pray for the living - written by Christians who were being killed for refusing to offer worship to anyone but God, and who would have understood the charge of idolatry rather better than we do. Whatever else this is, it is not a medieval invention, and the people who began it had unusually well-tested instincts about what does and does not count as worship.

Memory work

Turn each card over, then say honestly whether you knew it. Cards you miss come back sooner.

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