Part 2: https://www.solasacramentum.com/post/the-lutherans-ain-t-the-only-ones-with-daddy-issues-part-2
Part 3: https://www.solasacramentum.com/post/the-lutherans-ain-t-the-only-ones-with-daddy-issues-part-3
I've been passionate about the topic of prayer to the saints for a while now, as I believe it is probably the clearest place where unbiblical and errant practice is in the more traditional church bodies. First, I will go through what I believe are some of the best scriptural arguments against the practice, and from there I will go through the matters of the church fathers on the topic. As a final note, much of this will be copy and pasted from my Anti-Non-Protestant prooftext google doc, which you can find under the resources tab.
The first piece that I think is most important to establish is that scripture itself says that worship must flow from the certainty of the scriptures themselves. We see this first in Christ's discussion with the Samaritan woman at the well. In defending the practice of worshipping at the well, she appeals to patristic tradition: "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship," to which Christ responds, "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews." (John 4:20,22) We see here, Christ is appealing to the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, which the Samaritans lack, for the approval of the Jews' worship. Now, technically, Christ doesn't appeal to scripture itself, but he does appeal to the fact that the Jews "know" the one they worship. How do they know them? Through their traditions? Obviously not, for they "break the commandment of God for the sake of [their] tradition." (Matt 15:3) But the Jews are the one who God revealed the scriptures which prescribe their worship. Another text that portrays a similar theme is James 1:6-8, which says that the one who prays must do so "in faith, with no doubting" and that the one who doubts "must not suppose he will receive anything from the Lord." From this we see that the method of prayers must be one which God has promised to receive, that is, all our prayers given to Him, as the apostle says in 1 John 5:14: "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us." However, prayer to the saints and angels is not prescribed nor even described in the Old or New Testaments, except for being described possibly negatively and neutrally or positively in some inter-testamental literature (which will be discussed later).
Much of the argument between the two parties often shifts to a discussion of right worship, and the west makes a distinction between latria and dulia, that is, worship proper only to God and worship proper to man as well. The issue with the distinction is that it's fairly arbitrary. Much of the discussion seems to be "practice I like is dulia, practice I don't like is latria" with no further discussion of what that entails. Unfortunately, much of the Protestant response is to look at the examples of such prayers and say "well this is obviously latria." This tactic is misguided, however. That concedes the distinction, rather than calling it out for its arbitrariness. Instead, I would argue that the distinction, though not entirely wrong, is useless for such a debate as it has nothing really by which we can measure. I have heard some say that it is about sacrifice, but prayer is also called a sacrifice in scripture (Ps. 141:2, 116:17, Heb 13:15), and what's more, they actually offer incense as a sacrifice to the departed saints and angels! As is written in the definition of Nicaea 2: "Further, people are drawn to honour these images with the offering of incense and lights, as was piously established by ancient custom. Indeed, the honour paid to an image traverses it, reaching the model, and he who venerates the image, venerates the person represented in that image." While I don't disagree that the honor towards an image is meant for those who the image portrays, and thus certain kinds of veneration are allowed, offering sacrifices or offerings to an angel or saint is the definition of idolatry, and is forbidden in 2 Kings 22:17: “Because they have forsaken me and have made offerings to other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore my wrath will be kindled against this place, and it will not be quenched.” Just to note, the word for "gods" there is elohim, which is often used as simply the word for spiritual being, including the disembodied spirit of Samuel in 1 Samuel 28:13.
From there, a comparison is often made between us asking our neighbor to pray for us and asking the saints in heaven to do the same. We do not dispute that it is permissible to ask your neighbor to pray for you, ask scripture both describes and prescribes this positively. However, there is a huge leap between asking one's neighbor to pray for you and asking one's dead neighbor, namely, death. I am hesitant to call this necromancy, as there is no real spellcraft involved, but I do think this illicit attempt to contact the dead is at least unhelpful. In addition, asking something of a dead person, even if it's intercession, does seem to still fall into a kind of idolatry, especially as the actions performed towards those beings mirror those which we rightfully give to Christ. Though our neighbor can be a fellow mediator, we do not go into our icon corner with a picture of our neighbor and ask them to pray for us while in a dark room an offering them incense. We intuitively understand that to be odd at best, and yet, some are perfectly comfortable doing that with the angels or those departed. Some will also say that it is not idolatrous by virtue of the fact that it is intercession being asked for. Assuming that is true, which is untenable with the Roman view of merit and questionable with some of the Eastern examples, that doesn't change the fact that doing so is nonetheless asking for a work which we are only prescribed to ask of in the divine realm from Christ or the Holy Ghost (1 Tim 2:5, Heb 7:25, Rom 8:26-27, 34, 1 John 2:1). Many in the Eastern church respond that the saints are, through theosis, more like Christ and thus the honor we give to them is honor to Christ. One apologist put it with the example of the emissary of a king. If one disrespects the emissary then they disrespect the king, and vice versa. However, that isn't true of the emissary in all ways. For example, if you were to take the kings's son or brother, for example, and give him something that belongs more rightfully to the king, like his wife or a robe and crown, then it would rather be an affront to the king. Like in the case of Bathsheba the queen mother asking for Abishag to be given to Adonijah, this is rather seen as an affront to the king's rule. I would also say that this scene is a typological condemnation of prayer to the saints, though I understand typological argumentation is tricky. Finally, this view also muddles the distinction between the creature and the creator, as Romans 1:21-25 describes.
As a side note, it is strange to me how the Eastern Orthodox community has been more inclined to lean into the accusation of polytheism. For example, on the Lord of Spirits podcast, which I love but would recommend listening to with discernment, the hosts talk about how the pagan gods were identified with stars, hence why astrology was a thing, and thus when the Lord says that the children of Abraham will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, he is foretelling a replacement of the pagan gods with the saints, hence why we pray to them for intercession and why saints can be patrons of a given thing. Jonathan Pageau has said similar, going so far as to say that the main difference between our veneration of the saints versus the gods is that the saints also worship the one true god while the gods don't. Again, this is aside from my main point, but I do think it's at least slightly problematic.
But even more damning, metaphorically speaking, the scriptures do not go into great detail about the experience of the dead waiting for the resurrection, but the image it paints does seem to be one where the dead have a limited knowledge of the specific goings on of those alive in the body. The first passage, taken up by Protestants and Augustine in his treatise On Care to Be Had For the Dead, is Isaiah 63:16: "For you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name." The passage is in the context of a prayer for mercy from the Lord, and in in, Isaiah seems to say that at least Abraham and possibly Jacob do not know what is going on with the nation of Israel, contrasting it with the Lord's knowledge and fatherly love. It is also possible that the passage is talking about the two disowning Israel, as that would make sense of Jacob's lack of "acknowledgement" of Israel (though that could just as easily be explained by the fact that he can't observe them), but that also paints a strange picture of the saints. In that case, we would have to say that thought God has infinite mercy, the saints are less merciful and can disown us so that the Lord is our last resort. This is certainly not the picture of the saints which Revelation paints of their prayers, which leads me to believe that the lack of knowledge is more likely. In addition, at the departure of Elijah, the prophet says to Elisha, "Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you," (2 Kings 2:9), which implies Elijah will no longer be able to do anything for Elisha, or at least answer his requests, after he is "taken." In addition, in 2 Kings 22:20, the Lord tells kings Josiah through a prophetess, "Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place,” which also says that he cannot see the disaster on the earth from heaven.
I have gone through what I think are the best biblical arguments against the doctrine, and in my next post on the topic, I will rebut the biblical arguements in favor of the practice as well as address the intertestamental period, which I think also is a rather large problem for the prayers for the saints.
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