Welcome to Ask the Church, our series where we seek to answer your questions about church worship, practice, and theology in around five minutes.
Today’s question was asked in a couple of ways:
Can I speak to my dead grandmother?
Can I pray to a saint?
At its heart, this is a question about whether Christians can seek encouragement or intercession from those who’ve gone before us in the faith.
The Invocation of Saints
There’s something condemned in the Anglican Articles of Religion called the Doctrine of the Invocation of Saints (Article XXII).
This medieval doctrine taught that certain Christians were so holy and pure in their lives that they accrued extra merit before God. This supposed status gave them closer access to God—“the ear of God,” so to speak.
The teaching that grew up around this was: if these people are closer to God, then if we ask them to intercede for us, they can bend God’s ear in our favor.
That doctrine was condemned by Anglicans at the time of the Reformation.
Why? Two reasons:
Grace. Christianity teaches that Jesus gives us the grace of God fully and completely through His merit—His life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Our access to God is secured by Jesus alone. Everything we have is grace (Ephesians 2:8-9). There is no “superclass” of Christians with special status.
Direct Access. Scripture is clear that all believers have direct access to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit. Hebrews invites us to “come boldly to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16). When Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, He begins: “Our Father…” (Matthew 6:9). Every Christian, no matter how holy or unholy, has direct access to the Father through Christ.
To say otherwise—to suggest that we need somebody else other than Christ to mediate between us and God—is to deny the Gospel itself (1 Timothy 2:5).
But What About Asking for Prayer?
Here’s the natural follow-up question:
“Okay, I believe I have access to the Father through the Son. But I still need the help of fellow Christians. I ask other living Christians to pray for me, so why can’t I ask a Christian who’s died in the faith to pray for me, too? Why can’t I say to my grandmother, who was a great saint, ‘Will you pray for me?’ just like I would ask a friend here on earth to pray for me?”
In one sense, there’s nothing inappropriate about this. We already ask living Christians to pray for us. In the same way, speaking to one of the great saint of the past or a departed loved one, and asking them to encourage us, to strengthen us, or to pray for us in our pursuit of the Father through the Son, does not deny Scripture or the Gospel.
As long as we don’t see them as mediators, but only as encouragers in our pursuit of God, there’s no problem in principle.
Do They Hear Us?
That raises another question: Do those who have died in the faith actually hear us?
With living Christians, we know they’ve heard our request. But with the dead, Scripture gives no indication that they are listening. There’s also no explicit indication that they can’t hear.
So we need to be careful. We should not imagine those who’ve died as semi-divine beings with omniscience. They are like us—faithful men and women who followed God, some more faithfully, some less.
We are not omniscient. We cannot hear voices from all over the world. And Scripture does not suggest that departed saints have been given such abilities, either.
So whatever we mean by “talking to” those who’ve gone before us, we mustn’t turn them into a class of sub-gods who stand between us and God.
Holding the Tension
Here’s the balance:
We must guard the truth that we have direct access to the Father through the Son, by the Spirit.
But we shouldn’t be too quick to condemn someone who finds comfort in asking a saintly grandmother or another Christian from the past to pray for them.
It may be of no use—we don’t know. But there is nothing inherently inappropriate in asking for encouragement to pursue God more fully.
I hope this answer helps.
As always, if you have other questions, send them to steven@incarnationrichmond.org.
And now, go in the grace of our Lord.