How To Structure An Argument Against Prayer To Saints

There's not just one way to do it. But I want to outline one approach that can be taken.

People have an interest in contacting the dead. That follows from the nature of human relationships. And we see that in the Old Testament prohibitions of attempting to contact the deceased, whether through mediums or by other means. We also see it in the modern world in a variety of ways (interest in mediumship, what people say about certain aspects of near-death experiences, what people say about apparitions of the dead, etc.).

That raises the question of why we don't see support for prayer to the deceased in the Biblical record. There are occasional attempts to argue for Biblical examples of favorable references to prayer to the dead, but none of those arguments have been successful. See here for a collection of posts arguing that prayer to saints (and angels) is absent and contradicted in the Bible and absent and contradicted among the earliest extrabiblical Christian sources. Three of the most popular passages cited to argue for Biblical support for praying to saints are Matthew 27:47, Hebrews 12:1, and Revelation 5:8. I addressed those in the posts here, here, and here, among others in our archives. The paucity of such alleged support for prayer to the dead in scripture reflects how weak the argument for such prayers is. Prayer to God is expressed explicitly and frequently from Genesis onward, in hundreds of passages. We're often told that prayer to saints is like having conversations with people on earth (asking a friend to pray for you; a widow talking to her deceased husband, as she did when he was alive; etc.), and scripture often tells us about conversations people on earth had with each other. Yet, there aren't any passages that indicate approval for prayer to saints or prayer to angels. Think of how often something like a prayer to God or a conversation between two or more people on earth (something prayer to saints is often likened to) will get mentioned incidentally in scripture. Here's just a small portion of the passages about prayer to God, for example: Genesis 24:12, 1 Samuel 1:10, Luke 6:12, Acts 4:24, 10:2, 12:5, 27:35, Romans 10:1, 15:30, 1 Corinthians 11:13, Hebrews 5:7. So, why does that never happen with prayer to saints and angels? Answered prayer is a prominent subject in scripture. Why do we keep getting references to how it was a prayer to God that brought about a particular situation, whereas there's never a reference to how a healing, a change of events during a war, or something else happened because of a prayer to a saint or a prayer to an angel? Or think of the many Biblical references to asking others for prayer: 1 Samuel 12:19, 1 Kings 13:6, Jeremiah 37:3, 42:2, Acts 8:24, Romans 15:30, 2 Corinthians 1:11, Ephesians 6:19, Philippians 1:19, Colossians 4:3, 1 Thessalonians 5:25, 2 Thessalonians 3:1, Philemon 22, Hebrews 13:18, etc. If praying to saints is like asking somebody on earth to pray for you, why do we have so many Biblical passages in which one person or group on earth asks another person or group on earth for prayer, yet there are no prayer requests to a deceased person or to an angel asking him to pray for the requester? And there are other contexts in which prayer to saints is absent in a significant way. Advocates of the practice sometimes tell us how beneficial it is to be able to speak to the deceased, such as a wife's ability to keep talking to her dead husband. Yet, none of the Biblical passages about death, grieving, comforting people, what people do after a death occurs, etc. say anything about praying to the dead (e.g., 2 Samuel 12:23, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Furthermore, the groups who practice prayer to saints in the modern world have given us a large amount of evidence for their beliefs and practices in that context. The idea that prayer to saints was a practice of the Biblical era, yet we'd have to go to such a small number of passages of the nature of Matthew 27:47 and Revelation 5:8 to find it in the Biblical record, is absurd. We don't have to resort to such passages to demonstrate prayer to God in the Bible or practices advocates of prayer to saints often compare to praying to saints (asking a friend to pray for you, etc.). It isn't just prayer to saints itself that's absent from scripture. There's also an absence of discussion of it in relation to its ramifications (answers to prayers to saints, mentioning prayer to saints when counseling somebody whose relative or somebody else of a close relationship recently died, discussions of the afterlife, etc.). In other words, because prayer to saints is connected to such things, there were more opportunities for that sort of prayer to be mentioned accordingly. That makes its absence more difficult to explain if that sort of prayer was a practice of the relevant Biblical figures. Advocates of prayer to saints can't have it both ways. They can't practice it so much and compare it to other things that are practiced so much and are mentioned in scripture so much, yet claim that it's not a problem that scripture doesn't refer to people praying to saints.

What's the best explanation for the lack of prayer to saints in the Bible? Some of the potential answers are the issues I discussed in my last post. We don't have adequate reason to conclude that the saints hear our prayers, so praying to them would be a waste of time, attention, and other resources. And if the Biblical prohibitions of attempting to contact the deceased are applicable to offering prayers to them, as seems likely (a conclusion I argued for here), that would provide a further explanation of why praying to the saints isn't a Biblical practice. In other words, the absence of prayer to saints in the Biblical record is accompanied by other factors that make that absence more coherent. The best explanation of the evidence as a whole is that prayer to saints was absent because of one or more of the problems with it that I've discussed and perhaps one or more other reasons.

Furthermore, the earliest extrabiblical Christian sources provide additional evidence that praying to saints was both widely absent and contradicted during the Biblical era. A widespread rejection of prayer to saints among the New Testament Christians best explains the widespread absence of and opposition to such prayers among the earliest extrabiblical Christians. Though some ancient Jews supported prayers to sources other than God, the belief that we should pray only to God seems to have been the earliest view and the one supported by the most relevant figures (e.g., the Biblical authors). Go here for a discussion of the subject. When those extrabiblical Christians and Jews explain why they don't believe in praying to the deceased, they give a variety of reasons for it. See the material just linked concerning ancient Jewish sources. Justin Martyr mentions the invoking of the deceased alongside other practices the Old Testament condemns (First Apology 18). Or think of Lactantius' reference to praying to the dead as a violation of "sacred law" (The Divine Institutes 2:18), which is best explained as an allusion to the relevant Old Testament passages. So, it seems that the Biblical prohibitions of attempting to contact the dead were among the reasons why the believers of the Biblical era, the earliest extrabiblical Christians, and some extrabiblical Jews didn't pray to saints.

An appeal to doctrinal development would be problematic. If the person or group appealing to development believes that special, public revelation ceased with the apostles (as affirmed by Roman Catholics, for example), how was an understanding that praying to saints is acceptable developed? How do you go from a belief that we shouldn't offer such prayers, probably for the multiple reasons outlined above, to the belief that we should do so, without additional revelation?

Was it through trying prayer to saints and seeing certain results that were considered vindicatory? If so, what about the potential for being misled in such contexts by prayer requests granted in spite of sin (something that often happens), answers to prayer brought about by human psi, or answers produced by demonic activity, for example? There are many examples of things like human psi or demonic activity (depending on how you interpret the phenomena) in paranormal research, for instance. One of the reasons people often went to certain mediums in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was that they got results. We've documented many examples in previous posts over the years (e.g., the cases discussed by Stephen Braude). Similarly, people often get results they want from other contexts, like apparitions of the dead, beings who are encountered when using drugs, and interactions with UFO phenomena (people who summon UFOs or aliens, for example). I've argued, from both Biblical and extrabiblical evidence, that exorcisms and healings can be done by non-Christians and in non-Christian contexts. An appeal to exorcisms or healings performed through prayer to saints (or angels) has to address the potential for those phenomena to be explained by something like paranormal activity among living humans, psi on the part of deceased humans other than the saints, or demonic activity. The Bible frequently refers to miracles performed by non-Christians and in non-Christian contexts, including exorcisms and healings (the magicians of Pharaoh, Matthew 7:22-23, 24:24, Luke 11:19, the miracles of the Antichrist and his associates referred to in the book of Revelation and elsewhere, etc.). For an overview of the evidence for miracles among non-Christians, including exorcisms and healings performed by non-Christians and in non-Christian contexts, see my posts on healings in UFO and other non-Christian contexts here and here. Marian apparitions sometimes have healings affiliated with them that are said to have occurred through praying to Mary. Zeitoun is one of those cases. See here for an argument that the Zeitoun Marian apparitions were affiliated with Coptic Christianity, a belief system that's a rival to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. And here's a post arguing that the Zeitoun apparitions were non-Divine. So, the Zeitoun healings, including in response to prayers to Mary, are affiliated with apparitions that were anti-Roman-Catholic and anti-Eastern-Orthodox in their Coptic associations and non-Divine. I've done a lot of work on the Enfield Poltergeist. One of the topics I've addressed in that context is the involvement of mediums in bringing about a reduction in the activity of the poltergeist, including the mediums' performance of what looks like successful exorcisms. See this post, for example. For a detailed account of one of the episodes, see pages 92-95 in Guy Playfair's This House Is Haunted (United States: White Crow Books, 2011). For a discussion of bringing UFO experiences to an end by calling on non-Christian religious figures and other non-Christian methods, see here. For a historical overview of exorcism, including among non-Christian sources, see pages 769-856 in the second volume of Craig Keener's Miracles (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2011).

The people of the Biblical era and the earliest extrabiblical Christians had many opportunities to experiment with praying to saints (and angels). The most relevant figures (the Biblical authors, the earliest church fathers, etc.) weren't persuaded by an appeal to such experimentation and alleged vindicatory results.

And keep in mind that if the development of an acceptance of prayer to saints is going to be dated to something like the third or fourth century A.D., it would be a development that reached that state after thousands of years of prayer. It's not as though prayer originated at the time of Jesus or later in the first century, during the lives of the apostles. Rather, it's present as early as the book of Genesis. And it's a simple concept, as is the idea of praying to a source other than God, like deceased humans. An appeal to development for something as simple, yet late as prayer to saints is highly dubious.

I've argued elsewhere (such as here and here) that the miracles of the era of special, public revelation (what could be called the Biblical era, involving miracles like those of Moses and Jesus) are superior to later miracles (including ones attributed to prayer to saints and angels). The structure of Christianity's network of miracles is such that the miracles of the Biblical era are foundational or closer to the foundation (e.g., Jesus' resurrection), whereas later miracles are less significant even if Divine. That's why Jesus could point people backward to what he'd taught in the past in the context of evaluating future miracles from false Christs and false prophets (Matthew 24:24-27). That's why Paul and Peter, in their final letters (2 Timothy and 2 Peter), pointed their readers backward to what Jesus and the apostles had handed down to them without telling anybody to look for guidance from future exorcisms, healings, Marian apparitions, and such. See my posts on what I've called departure passages in the New Testament here. So, the evidence I've cited against prayer to saints (and angels) from the Biblical era (the era of special, public revelation) is weightier than the later and contradictory development of such prayers supported by inferior miracles.

To summarize and expand upon some of the points made in this post:

- The Biblical record gives us hundreds of supportive references to prayer to God and other practices advocates of prayer to saints often compare that kind of prayer to, yet there's no Biblical support for prayer to saints (or angels). That contrast, despite the interest people would have had in the latter type of prayer, needs to be explained. Which view better explains it? The view that prayer to saints wasn't an accepted practice among the relevant Biblical figures? Or the view that such prayer was an accepted practice among them? The former is a better explanation than the latter. And we can go on to ask why the Biblical figures under consideration didn't practice prayer to saints.

- One potential and likely explanation is the lack of sufficient evidence that the saints (and angels) would be able to hear our prayers.

- A second potential and likely explanation is that the Biblical passages condemning attempts to contact the dead were considered applicable to praying to the dead.

- Other problems with prayer to saints (and angels) could be brought up as well, like the opposition to the practice among some ancient extrabiblical Jewish sources and the earliest extrabiblical Christians.

- Appeals to development of doctrine and evidence for prayer to saints from miracles affiliated with those prayers fail for the reasons discussed earlier in this post.