The Lutheran sociologist Peter Berger once observed that Protestantism had cut the “umbilical cord” between heaven and earth. How great a truth he spoke! Of course, the question is whether there should be a cord in the first place. Catholics hold that there should be one, and my task in this book is to provide biblical evidence of this.

A Protestant friend asked a question (with an analogy in business terms) that always comes up in any discussion of the Catholic view of the communion of saints: “Why would anyone content himself with seeking the intercession of a manager, when one can go directly to the president of the company?”

They do so for a simple reason: because we are taught in the Bible that the prayers of some people have more efficacy than those of others. Even in the Protestant view, there is this notion of “asking a holy man [or the pastor, etc.] to pray for us.” In this way, someone might, for example, ask Billy Graham to pray for them, because they think that somehow his prayer may be more efficacious. This intuition is really based on explicit biblical testimony:

“Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man: and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another, that you may be saved. For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much. Elias was a man passible like unto us: and with prayer he prayed that it might not rain upon the earth, and it rained not for three years and six months. And he prayed again: and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit” (James 5:14-18)

Note here that the Bible itself recommends asking someone else to pray: “the ancients” of the Church, who, like the rest of her leaders (1 Timothy 3:1-13, Titus 1:7), are supposed to be exemplary persons “worthy of double honour” (1 Timothy 5:17). They have more power, on account of their ordination. In fact, this is a text that appears in connection with the sacrament of anointing (also known as “extreme unction” or “last sacraments”: when a person is in danger of death). So they are asked to pray for the greater power they have, in terms of a possible miracle occurring, or of supernatural grace being imparted through them. They can do more than we ourselves can do; therefore we ask them for their prayer.

To make this point concrete, the apostle James cites the example of the prophet Elias. Thanks to his prayer, it did not rain for three and a half years. James says this was the case because (this is the principle he wishes to convey): “The continual prayer of a just man availeth much.” We see the same dynamic in the following passage:

“And the king answered, and said to the man of God: Entreat the face of the Lord thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored to me. And the man of God besought the face of the Lord, and the king’s hand was restored to him, and it became as it was before” (1 Kings 13:6)

This is the biblical reason for asking others of greater spiritual stature in the kingdom of God, or holier ones (or, even better still, both!), to plead for us. One immediately thinks of other powerful intercessors, such as Abraham and Moses. On occasion God did not destroy entire cities as a result of their supplications. Of course God cannot change, and knew what He was going to do all along, but the point is that He makes His creatures participants in the process, in a lesser and secondary way. They have participated, just as St. Paul says that we must “work out our own salvation” (Philippians 2:12).

The apostle John writes: “And this is the confidence which we have towards him: That, whatsoever we shall ask according to his will, he heareth us” (1 John 5:14-15). Similar texts abound in the Scriptures. It will not be necessary to document it further, because the principle is well established in the Bible.

Following this line of thought, then, if the Blessed Virgin Mary is immaculate, in effect (I remain still within the Catholic paradigm, for the sake of the argument), then it follows inexorably (according to Scripture) that her prayers would have greater power and efficacy, and not only because of her absence of sin, but because of her condition as Mother of God and spiritual Mother, for which God appointed her.

We pray for others, because we must love one another, and prayer is an evident aspect of love, because if we love someone, and we know that prayer can help them, we do so seeking their good. That is what intercession is. God grants us that great privilege, and we do it because we love others and desire to manifest the love of Christ. Jesus tells us to pray. That settles it.

Catholics agree with Protestants that prayer is exceedingly important, and is the will of God. The disagreement is over whether those who have died and gone to be with Jesus in the next life can continue interceding (as intercessors to God on our behalf). Most Protestants believe that we should not ask for their intercession; generally they indicate that we should go directly to God, but some acknowledge that this principle cannot be taken too far, otherwise all prayers for others would have to be discarded.

The most common Protestant position is to accept the prayers of those who are still on earth, but not of the (saved saints) who have departed from the earth as a result of physical death.

It is really something quite simple. Either these persons are alive or they are not. It is clear that they are alive (more so than we are). Jesus alludes to this fact when He speaks of “the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” affirming that “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:32). All Christians who are not nihilists or believers in the “sleep of the soul” (such as, for example, the Seventh-day Adventists, or Trinitarian heretics, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses) believe that souls are conscious after death.

No doubt many Protestants respond, “that’s fine, they are alive, but that does not prove that they can pray for us or hear our prayers.” At that point, Catholics appeal to a very solid combination of direct and indirect biblical proofs.

The saints in heaven are clearly aware of earthly events (Luke 15:7f.; Revelation 6:9-11). If they have that awareness, it is not a very great leap to deduce that they can hear our requests for prayer. But is there any biblical evidence that they can do so? I believe there certainly is.

In Jeremias 15:1, we read: “And the Lord said to me: If Moses and Samuel shall stand before me, my soul is not towards this people.” Here it seems that God receives the prayers of the saints who have died as a matter of routine. Moses and Samuel were known as intercessors, and Jeremias lived centuries after them both (cf. 2 Maccabees 15:13-14, which reveals Jeremias praying for the Jews after his death).

This is our entirely rational reason for asking the saints for their intercession to God on our behalf: and it is all in the Bible:

1. The prayers of holy persons have great power.

2. Those holy persons who have died are perfected in holiness and continue to be part of the Body of Christ.

3. The Blessed Virgin Mary, in particular, is exceptionally holy (Immaculate from her conception), and as Mother of God her prayers have more power and effect than those of any other creature: all by the grace of God.

4. We know that they are aware of what happens on earth.

5. We know that they exercise much charity and plead for us.

We are not relying on the power of some “mediums” (many of whom have been shown to be false, to begin with, such as Houdini, the Amazing Randi, and many others), or on the occult or demonic powers, but on the power of God. The saints see us, hear us, and pray for us, because they are with God, outside of time, and He grants them the remarkable capacities beyond those who are in this state. We do not know all the mechanisms of how it works, but we do know that Scripture says it is “like” being similar to God in the hereafter:

“Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

If by “praying to a saint” is understood “asking the saint to grant a request by his own power,” then that is not what we Catholics believe. What we are doing (bottom line) is “asking a saint to intercede before God for us.” God responds with His power. The principle is simple, and biblical.

Prayer in itself is not adoration. I am not adoring God by simply asking Him to heal my wife. Neither am I adoring a saint if I ask him to intercede before God so that my wife may be healed. It is simply the love and concern that the Body of Christ has for each one of its members. Death does not put an end to this, because God transcends the power of death and physical separation.

Necromancy, divination, sorcery, witchcraft, and the various occult practices were firmly condemned in the law of the Old Testament; nevertheless, the Jews prayed for the dead. They saw no contradiction, because there was none. 2 Maccabees 12:39-45 presents prayers for the dead in the most unquestionable terms.

Of course, Protestants will reply that these are “apocryphal” books of the Bible that they reject, which is another discussion, but regardless of whether it is Scripture or not (the early Church thought so), the passage still shows that this was the practice of the Jews, and that they saw no conflict between that and the forbidden practices. Christianity arose out of Judaism. Many things in late Judaism, such as eschatology, angelology, and the notions of the resurrection of the body, were retained and developed by the early Church. Praying for the departed was only one of many examples of that.

It is almost as if Protestantism adopted the silly cultural stereotypes of what heaven supposedly is, as if it were the Norse Valhalla, rather than an intensely spiritual place (or state) where souls long and burn in their desire that human beings be saved and not condemned. The saints who have died know the magnitude of the matter. They are in a place where they can devote themselves to prayer for us (because they are perfected in love), and they know very well how much is at stake. They no longer have to play all the games we play in order to ignore the spiritual dimension and forget the world to come. This is the reason why we can, and certainly must, ask for their intercession: that of the Holy Virgin Mary principally.

As for asking an angel to pray for us or to help us, the Bible indicates that men are, at least in some sense, of a higher order than the angels (1 Corinthians 6:3, 1 Peter 1:12). A guardian angel is a servant of man and not the other way around. Therefore, there is no reason to feel that we are doing something improper in dealing with him.

Saul tried to contact the dead by the wrong route: through a medium. But the fact is that somehow the deceased prophet Samuel had knowledge of what was happening; indeed he appeared to Saul and communicated with him. This shows that his soul was in a state of consciousness and had the capacity to “hear” and to communicate with a person on earth.

If, on the contrary, God desired that there be no communication whatsoever between heaven and earth, then this and other similar incidents (such as the Transfiguration (Mark 9), etc.) would not have occurred, since they would have been against the will of God, and therefore would not have been permitted by Him. This incident, therefore, serves as proof that the dead saints can hear the requests of those who are on earth, and that God permits two-way communication. Protestants generally deny both things.

In Luke 16 two dead men are described who speak to one another. This is different from a man on earth speaking with a dead person, but it is still relevant to this discussion insofar as the rich man was praying or asking Abraham. That is not supposed to happen, according to the Protestant way of thinking, since prayer is supposed to go directly to God. That would apply to the dead men, as well as to those on earth.

Why would he be doing this instead of going to God directly? He is making a specific request of Abraham, not merely asking him to pray for him to God (more than Catholics ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to attend to their requests). Abraham twice refused his requests, which demonstrates that the dead can play a role, together with God, even in refusing (or, by implication, also in fulfilling prayer requests).

Note also that in Luke 16:27-31 the rich man asks that Lazarus be sent to his brothers, to warn them of his own terrible fate. Abraham refuses, but does not rule out the possibility of a dead man being able to return to earth. Therefore, once again, the supposed “wall” between heaven and earth becomes much less impenetrable than it would be according to the Protestant mentality.

These are the presuppositions behind the Catholic belief in the communion and intercession of the saints. Many Protestant critics of our point of view seem to be looking for the exact correspondence of each and every edge of these arguments (which frequently corresponds to the Protestant way of thinking, since they often unreasonably demand explicit biblical proofs), whereas I am testing the different parts of a whole with each example: making a cumulative argument for Catholic practices.

I believe we see enough about the communion of the saints in the Scriptures to establish the principle. It is not required to have a great quantity of material in the Bible about something in order for it to be believed and followed. For example, the virgin birth is based on very few passages (only two or three, I reckon), yet it is firmly believed by all Christians. Original sin, which is mentioned only very few times in Scripture, is accepted by almost all Christians (with some rare exceptions).

On the other hand, the doctrines concerning the angels and the life after this life were at an early stage of development at the time the New Testament was compiled. Many of them were highly developed in the inter-testamental period, and that is why we see much more of these doctrines in the deuterocanonical books, which derive above all from that period of time.

This is the reason why the Sadducees rejected the resurrection of the dead and the concepts of Jewish angelology and eschatology. That is because they accepted only the written laws of the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), and in these these questions are scarcely debated. They were something like the “Scripture Alone” people of their time. The Pharisees, on the other hand, accepted all these doctrines, which is why Jesus operated within that tradition, and this is why Paul calls himself a Pharisee three times, even after his conversion. They accepted the oral Torah, as well as the written one, and these later traditions.

For these reasons, there is not much in the New Testament about these practices. This poses no problem, because doctrines, even more important and central ones, such as the Blessed Trinity or the two natures of Christ, were developed much further several hundred years after the Bible. In other words, if even doctrines such as the Trinity, Christology, and original sin were subjected to intense development in the post-biblical period, then it is no more difficult to believe that the Catholic doctrines of the communion of the saints, and the intercession and invocation of the saints, also did so.

If a saint is truly considered a substitute for God, and an end in himself, then it is idolatry. If it were thought, for example, that Mary could grant requests of herself, without the grace of God, as if she were self-sufficient (in effect, like God), it would clearly be Mariolatry and a kind of idolatry, since it would be a replacement of God Himself. From the Catholic point of view, the saints reflect the glory of God. They are the intermediaries, the vessels. Mary points to her Son, who is God, to the disciples of the Lord. She does not exalt herself.

Protestants frequently ask Catholics to provide even a single example of the invocation of a dead person in any way, shape, or form similar to prayer in the Bible (especially in the New Testament). Happily obliged to give an answer, we present the following documentation:

“And in Joppe there was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did. And it came to pass in those days that she was sick and died. Whom when they had washed, they laid her in an upper chamber. And forasmuch as Lydda was nigh to Joppe, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent unto him two men, desiring him that he would not be slack to come unto them. And Peter rising up went with them. And when he was come, they brought him into the upper chamber. And all the widows stood about him weeping and shewing him the coats and garments which Dorcas made them. And they all being put forth, Peter kneeling down prayed. And turning to the body, he said: Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes and seeing Peter, she sat up. And giving her his hand, he lifted her up. And when he had called the saints and the widows, he presented her alive” (Acts 9:36-41)

Tabitha was a disciple who died in Joppe. St. Peter prayed to her when he said to her: “Tabitha, arise.” She was dead and he was addressing her. Case closed. There is no impenetrable wall between heaven and earth. This is not only praying (that is, speaking) to the dead, but also for the dead, since the passage says that Peter “prayed” before addressing Tabitha in the second person.

Our Lord Jesus does the same with respect to Lazarus. He prays for Lazarus (a dead man. See John 11:41-42) and then addresses directly a dead man (in effect, “praying” to him): “Lazarus, come forth!” (John 11:43). The prophet Elias also prayed and obtained that a dead man be raised (1 Kings 17:17-24). So we have three cases: one of our Lord Jesus Christ. He provided an example to imitate, and Peter followed it clearly, since Jesus had said that His followers would “raise the dead” (Matthew 10:8).

Therefore, it follows that the use of mediums or engaging in other abominable occult practices is not the total sum of all possible communications with the dead. Because the practice is wrong, it does not follow that all communication (of a different nature) with the dead is also wrong.

Prayer is communication between two beings. If one says that one cannot: 1) speak with a dead person, or 2) that the dead person could not hear us anyway, even if we did, then this passage (Acts 9:36-41) refutes both objections at once (and both are the premises of the invocation of the saints). Peter spoke with a dead person (Tabitha) and she heard him because she obeyed his “command” and returned to life. Jesus does the same with Lazarus. The fact that Jesus told His disciples that they could raise the dead opens the possibility of many similar cases.

Finally, Protestants argue that they see nothing explicit or direct in the New Testament regarding asking the saints to pray for us. But this is also true regarding prayer to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, and intercedes for us (Romans 8:26-27), so that one (obviously) can pray to God.

If direct biblical proof is necessary for the invocation of the saints to ask them to pray for us, then, by analogy, it is required for prayer to the Holy Spirit as well. But it is likewise lacking. Therefore (carrying this Protestant reasoning to its logical conclusion), prayer to the Holy Spirit should also be forbidden. Ergo: one cannot forbid the intercession of the saints without also forbidding prayer to the Holy Spirit.

Since this “proves too much” and is what is called a reductio ad absurdum in classical logic, the Protestant must then abandon his excessive demand for express biblical proofs necessary for the idea of asking the saints to pray for us. In fact, both cases are perfectly acceptable, and both are based on a great quantity of indirect or deductive biblical information.

Different lines of reasoning are convincing to different people. It occurs to me that all the arguments presented in this volume, taken together, provide very solid evidence that the communion of the saints is not only not against Scripture, but is positively upheld by the Scriptures in all its details, from the cumulative evidence. Of course, they will not convince everyone, because of the deductive nature of some of the proofs, but it is, nevertheless, a good argument, when all the different aspects of it are considered together.

Note: This article has been translated and published with the permission of the author by José Miguel Arráiz for ApologeticaCatolica.org, from chapter 4 of his book Biblical Evidence for the Communion of Saints. You may reproduce it freely provided that it is complete, citing the source and including this note. You may locate and acquire the author’s books on his website: Biblical Evidence for Catholicism

Author: Dave Armstrong