Moses and Elijah had returned to life on earth. No prayer is involved. And the only one who spoke with them was Jesus. Peter, James, and John didn't speak to them. Even if we were to conclude, without good reason, that Jesus had been praying to Moses and Elijah, Jesus isn't merely human. He's also God. To cite his conversation with Moses and Elijah as justification for Christians to pray to the dead is to assume that anything Jesus did must be acceptable for Christians to do. But it's possible that praying to the deceased, if Jesus had ever done such a thing, was done through his unique attributes as God or other attributes we don't have. We'd have to take other evidence into account to make a judgment about the best explanation. Given the large amount of evidence against praying to the dead, which I've outlined above, any prayers to the dead on Jesus' part (if he did such a thing) would be best explained as exceptional rather than normative. The more significant point here, though, is that interacting with people who have returned to life on earth, as Moses and Elijah did, isn't equivalent to praying to the deceased who aren't known to have returned to life on earth. It was wrong for Saul to try to contact Samuel in 1 Samuel 28, but once Samuel had returned to the earthly realm, it became acceptable for Saul to interact with him (as reflected in Samuel asking Saul questions, which implies that it would be acceptable for Saul to answer those questions, as well as Samuel's assumption that Saul would listen to what Samuel was saying). So, your citation of the Mount of Transfiguration is faulty on multiple levels, and it leaves the other points I made untouched.
For a collection of posts arguing against the practice of praying to the deceased, see here. You can find other relevant posts in our archives. The collection I just linked isn't exhaustive.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteHow does a human being communicate with a disembodied immaterial mind? Or two disembodied minds with each other? Is it a kind of telepathy?
Hi,
DeleteYes, there would have to be telepathy or whatever equivalent. Stephen Braude has a chapter that's relevant in a recent book (Dangerous Pursuits [San Antonio, Texas: Anomalist Books, 2020], 199-215). He argues that a soul separated from the body would have to utilize things like telepathy and clairvoyance in order to have experiences analogous to sight, hearing, etc. I suspect that much of what happens in paranormal contexts involves interactions between the paranormal capacities of embodied souls and souls that are disembodied or are in the process of becoming disembodied. H.H. Price, Gregory Shushan, and others have proposed a sort of dream model of the afterlife that involves souls constructing an environment for themselves both individually and collectively. (I've discussed the subject briefly in a review of one of Shushan's books here.) I think there's some merit to that kind of dream model, though I only partially agree with it. I think a lot of what goes on in the relevant paranormal contexts, such as near-death experiences, shared death experiences, and apparitions of the dead, is either a pre-afterlife state or an early stage of the afterlife that doesn't tell us much about the afterlife as a whole (much as Rachel's process of leaving her body in Genesis 35:18 and Lazarus' experience of being carried by angels to heaven in Luke 16:22 aren't much of a reflection of their afterlife experience as a whole).
Thanks!
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