There are some passages in the Old Testament that condemn resorting to mediums and some other practices (Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Leviticus 20:6, 2 Kings 21:6, Isaiah 8:19, etc.). The passages are sometimes brought up in discussions of prayer to saints.
It's popular to take the passages as addressing something narrow like seeking information about the future or trying to get the dead to verbally communicate with you, something that isn't being done by those who practice prayer to saints. And advocates of praying to saints often argue that the saints being prayed to are spiritually alive. It supposedly follows that even if the passages under consideration are about trying to contact the dead in a broader way that goes beyond something like seeking information about the future or trying to get verbal communication from the dead, the passages aren't relevant, since the saints in heaven aren't dead in the way that matters. What should we make of those responses?
The passages don't specify something like seeking information about the future or trying to get the dead to verbally communicate with you. Some of the people involved in the practices in question had such interests, and those interests are part of what's being addressed, but I see no reason to limit the passages to one or more such interests. It seems highly unlikely that people who thought they could contact the dead would only seek something like knowledge of the future or verbal communication from the deceased. You'd expect people in the ancient world, like people in the modern world, to also be interested in finding out the current state of the dead (not just information about the future), to want information about unknown aspects of the past, to seek protection from the dead (which doesn't require any knowledge of the future or verbal communication with the living on their part), etc. 1 Samuel 28:15 refers to Saul's interest in "what I should do". That can't be limited to knowledge of the future. Furthermore, consider the broad range of contexts in which Roman Catholics are told to go to Mary, for example:
"With a still more ardent zeal for piety, religion and love, let them continue to venerate, invoke and pray to the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, conceived without original sin. Let them fly with utter confidence to this most sweet Mother of mercy and grace in all dangers, difficulties, needs, doubts and fears. Under her guidance, under her patronage, under her kindness and protection, nothing is to be feared; nothing is hopeless. Because, while bearing toward us a truly motherly affection and having in her care the work of our salvation, she is solicitous about the whole human race." (Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus)
"How grateful and magnificent a spectacle to see in the cities, and towns, and villages, on land and sea—wherever the Catholic faith has penetrated—many hundreds of thousands of pious people uniting their praises and prayers with one voice and heart at every moment of the day, saluting Mary, invoking Mary, hoping everything through Mary." (Pope Leo XIII, Octobri Mense)
Here's a prayer to Mary cited at an Eastern Orthodox site:
"O All-Holy Lady Theotokos, the light of my darkened soul, my hope, shelter, refuge, consolation, and my joy; I thank You, that You have deemed me the unworthy one, worthy to be a communicant of the immaculate Body and Precious Blood of Your Son. But You, who gave birth to the True Light, enlighten the noetic eyes of my heart; You who bore the Fountain of Immortality, enliven me who am dead in sin; You who are the kind hearted and loving Mother of the Merciful God, have mercy on me, and grant compunction and contrition to my heart, humility in my reasonings, and the recall of my thoughts from the captivity. And deem me worthy, till my last breath, to receive without condemnation the sanctification of the immaculate Mysteries, for the healing of both soul and body; and grant me tears of repentance and confession, that I may hymn and glorify You all the days of my life."
Or see the prayer to Joseph for protection here. Or the request that Thomas Aquinas go to God to get you wisdom and understanding here. Or a request here to Anthony of Padua to work with God to help you find something that's been lost. If you're going to Mary "in all dangers, difficulties, needs, doubts and fears", seeking "guidance" from her, seeking "protection" from her, "hoping everything through Mary", seeking things like enlightenment and contrition and recollection of your thoughts from her, seeking Joseph's protection, seeking for Thomas Aquinas to arrange for you to receive wisdom and understanding, going to Anthony of Padua to help you find something lost under God's guidance, and so on, are we to think there's no overlap between such things and what the ancient sources under consideration were seeking from mediums, spirits of the dead, etc.?
Isaiah 19:3 includes idols. Are idols normally expected to provide information about the future or communication when somebody resorts to them? No. Similarly, seeking God rather than seeking the dead, mediums, etc. is sometimes put forward as the alternative (Isaiah 8:19-20). God sometimes gives us information about the future or verbally communicates to us in response to our prayers and other forms of seeking him, but he doesn't do so the large majority of the time. So, the sources these passages refer to (like idols and God) suggest the passages aren't limited to something like seeking information about the future or seeking verbal communication from the source under consideration.
And look at how the language of resorting to a source, seeking him, consulting him, etc., the sort of language used in these passages about mediums and such, is used elsewhere. The book of Isaiah, which has some of the passages relevant to the topic of this post, opens with a call to seek justice (1:17). It doesn't follow that justice is expected to give us information about the future or verbally communicate to us in response to that seeking. That language of resorting, seeking, and such doesn't seem to involve something narrow like seeking information about the future or trying to get verbal communication from a source.
Look at the contexts of the passages. There's a lot of diversity, which makes more sense if they're addressing a broader context rather than a narrower one. Isaiah 8:19 is addressing Israelites, whereas Isaiah 19:3 is about a situation in Egypt. And that Egyptian situation is about turmoil in Egypt that likely involves more than a desire for information about the future or wanting to get verbal communication from the source being sought. As I said above, I'm not denying that such interests are part of what's in view. What I'm denying is that we should think one or more such interests are the only things the authors had in mind. A context like the one in Isaiah 19 probably also involved interests in protection, peace, victory in battle, etc. The Egyptians surely sought such things, not just something like information about the future, from their idols, for example.
Notice that the passages sometimes refer to two or more practices that involve trying to contact the dead. You get different renderings from different translations: "medium", "spiritist", "necromancer", "wizard", "ghosts of the dead", etc. When multiple practices of that type or multiple terms are used, that increases the likelihood that the author is condemning efforts to contact the deceased in general, not just a subset of methods. The idea that trying to contact the dead through mediums is being condemned, whereas trying to contact the dead through prayer isn't, for example, is a weaker explanation of the number and variety of practices and terms that are included.
1 Chronicles 10:13-14 offers "inquiring of the Lord" as the appropriate alternative to Saul's inquiring of a medium. None of the Old Testament authors suggest that praying to Samuel or some kind of combination between seeking God and praying to Samuel was an acceptable alternative.
Isaiah 8:19-20 offers an alternative to the condemned practice and contrasts it with what's being condemned. The alternative isn't to replace something like going to a medium with contacting the dead through prayer. Rather, the alternative is to consult God. And that resorting to God is contrasted to consulting "the dead" without qualification. So, Isaiah apparently is criticizing attempts to contact the dead in general, not just some subset of methods of doing so, as if one or more other methods are acceptable.
And that brings us to the issue of who the dead are in these passages. References to death are usually about physical death. If you want us to think spiritual death or a combination between physical and spiritual death is in view, you bear the burden of proof. If we're supposed to think the passages condemning attempts to contact the dead are about spiritual death, then was it sinful for Moses to speak to the spiritually dead Pharaoh? Is it sinful for Christians to proclaim the gospel to spiritually dead sinners? How would somebody know that the physically dead person he's trying to contact is spiritually dead? What if the person came to faith just before death? Or what if a spiritually alive person committed what you consider a mortal sin just before death? The best explanation for why people were expected to know who's dead and who isn't is that physical death is in view. These passages about contacting the dead make the most sense if they're addressing physical death. The large majority of the saints in heaven are physically dead. Lazarus was spiritually alive, but Jesus could say "Lazarus is dead" (John 11:14). And there are references to believers who are "asleep" in the sense of death (1 Corinthians 15:51, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14), "the dead in Christ" (1 Thessalonians 4:16), and so forth.
Remember, the issue here isn't whether it's possible to read the relevant Biblical passages in a way that's consistent with praying to saints. Rather, the issue is what the best explanation of the passages is. Similarly, when an advocate of homosexuality interprets the language of Romans 1 and other ancient sources as referring to a particular type of homosexuality rather than homosexuality more broadly, we don't accept such interpretations just because they're possible. Rather, we expect that individual to demonstrate that it's probable that the ancient authors had the qualifier(s) under consideration in mind. Advocates of praying to saints can't show that it's probable that the Biblical passages in question include the qualifiers they're alleging.
And we should look for consistency. If an advocate of praying to saints claims that only particular types of attempting to contact the dead are being condemned in the Biblical passages in question, does he apply the same reasoning to going to a medium and other practices that are brought up in these passages? If it's going to be claimed that going to the dead for information about the future or for information more broadly is all that's being condemned, then is it acceptable by the standards of these passages to go to a medium just to speak to a dead person, to ask the dead for protection, or to ask the dead to help you find something (like asking Anthony of Padua to help you find something that's been lost), for example? Is it permissible by the standards in question to go to a medium to ask the dead to pray to God on your behalf? If you're going to appeal to some other source to justify making the relevant distinctions, such as appealing to church authority, then your argument depends on the validity of your appeal to the authority of the church you have in mind, which is a disputed issue. And you can't claim to offer an argument that's independent of something like church authority if you're, in fact, depending on an appeal to church authority.
I could say more, but I'll conclude the post here. I'm just addressing the Biblical passages themselves at this point. In a later post, I'll address multiple lines of evidence outside these passages that likewise suggest that prayer to the deceased is one of the practices the passages are condemning.
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