The great True Catholic historian, Philip Schaff, points out as regards the beginning of prayers to the saints in the post-Nicene Church:
Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Volume III, Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity A.D. 311-390, P. 409-427).
In the first three centuries the veneration of the martyrs in general restricted itself to the thankful remembrance of their virtues and the celebration of the day of their death as the day of their heavenly birth. This celebration usually took place at their graves.
So the church of Smyrna annually commemorated its bishop Polycarp, and valued his bones more than gold and gems, though with the express distinction:
“Christ we worship as the Son of God; the martyrs we love and honor as disciples and successors of the Lord, on account of their insurpassable love to their King and Master, as also, we wish to be their companions and fellow disciples.” Here we find this veneration as yet in its innocent simplicity.
But in the Nicene age it advanced to a formal invocation of the saints as our patrons (patroni) and intercessors (intercessores, mediatores) before the throne of grace, and degenerated into a form of refined polytheism and idolatry. The saints came into the place of the demigods, Penates and Lares, the patrons of the domestic hearth and of the country.
As once temples and altars to the heroes, so now churches and chapels came to be built over the graves of the martyrs, and consecrated to their names (or more precisely to God through them). People laid in them, as they used to do in the temple of Aesculapius, the sick that they might be healed, and hung in them, as in the temples of the gods, sacred gifts of silver and gold. Their graves were, as Chrysostom says, more splendidly adorned and more frequently visited than the palaces of kings.
Banquets were held there in their honor, which recall the heathen sacrificial feasts for the welfare of the manes. Their relics were preserved with scrupulous care, and believed to possess miraculous virtue.
Earlier, it was the custom to pray for the martyrs (as if they were not yet perfect) and to thank God for their fellowship and their pious example. Now such intercessions for them were considered unbecoming, and their intercession was invoked for the living.
This invocation of the dead was accompanied with the presumption that they take the deepest interest in all the fortunes of the kingdom of God on earth, and express it in prayers and intercessions.
This was supposed to be warranted by some passages of Scripture, like Luke xv. 10, which speaks of the angels (not the saints) rejoicing over the conversion of a sinner, and Rev. viii. 3, 4, which represents an angel as laying the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne of God.
…the New Testament…furnishes not a single example of an actual invocation of dead men…But the New Testament expressly rebukes the worship of the angels (Col. ii. 18; Rev. xix. 10; xxii. 8, 9), and furnishes not a single example of an actual invocation of dead men; and it nowhere directs us to address our prayers to any creature. Mere inferences from certain premises, however plausible, are, in such weighty matters, not enough.
The intercession of the saints for us was drawn as a probable inference from the duty of all Christians to pray for others, and the invocation of the saints for their intercession was supported by the unquestioned right to apply to living saints for their prayers, of which even the apostles availed themselves in their epistles.
But here rises the insolvable question: How can departed saints hear at once the prayers of so many Christians on earth, unless they either partake of divine omnipresence or divine omniscience?
And is it not idolatrous to clothe creatures with attributes which belong exclusively to Godhead? Or, if the departed saints first learn from the omniscient God our prayers, and then bring them again before God with their powerful intercessions, to what purpose this circuitous way? Why not at once address God immediately, who alone is able, and who is always ready, to hear His children for the sake of Christ?
Augustine felt this difficulty, and concedes his inability to solve it. He leaves it undecided, whether the saints (as Jerome and others actually supposed) are present in so many places at once, or their knowledge comes through the omniscience of God, or finally it comes through the ministry of angels.
He already makes the distinction between latreiva, or adoration due to God alone, and the invocatio (douleiva) of the saints, and firmly repels the charge of idolatry, which the Manichaean Faustus brought against the catholic Christians when he said: “Ye have changed the idols into martyrs, whom ye worship with the like prayers, and ye appease the shades of the dead with wine and flesh.”
Augustine asserts that the church indeed celebrates the memory of the martyrs with religious solemnity, to be stirred up to imitate them, united with their merits, and supported by their prayers, but it offers sacrifice and dedicates altars to God alone.
Our martyrs, says he, are not gods; we build no temples to our martyrs, as to gods; but we consecrate to them only memorial places, as to departed men, whose spirits live with God; we build altars not to sacrifice to the martyrs, but to sacrifice with them to the one God, who is both ours and theirs.
But in spite of all these distinctions and cautions, which must be expected from a man like Augustine, and acknowledged to be a wholesome restraint against excesses, we cannot but see in the martyr-worship, as it was actually practiced, a new form of the hero-worship of the pagans.
Nor can we wonder in the least. For the great mass of the Christian people came, in fact, fresh from polytheism, without thorough conversion, and could not divest themselves of their old notions and customs at a stroke.
I’m not going to argue for prayers to the saints, but something seems not quite right about this sequence:
Leave aside that the second phrase perhaps too quickly brushes aside Brenz Chemnitz, and the rest of the Lutherans who make Christ’s body omnipresent; do you not believe that Christ hears you in his humanity? But if He hears you in his humanity, why cannot his mother? That Christ does implies that there is nothing particularly ahuman about hearing prayers.
(Ok, also, aren’t you arguing against Brown’s thesis in The Cult of the Saints? Doesn’t he argue the opposite–that the cult of the saints was *not* just the hero-worship of the pagans, and that it was not something the mass of Christians brought in from paganism? Perhaps you could interact with the masterful book?)
Jesus hears me in His humanity because the Holy Spirit has been sent from Him as God-man, since Pentecost. The Spirit does not proceed from Mary. As for the Lutheran view of “real presence,” this has always been criticized as problematic in view of Chalcedon.
It is true that the Spirit proceeds in a way from each of us (John 7:38-39), but that does not mean I can talk to believers in China and be heard by them, any more than I can talk to saints in heaven. They are out of earshot.
Of course, the bottom line is that nowhere in any of the Fathers do we see anything like this. By “Fathers” of course I mean Moses, Jeremiah, John, etc.
Brown sees a variety of factors, including the heroic, and does improve on Schaff. But what Brown discusses is all post-Nicene, right?
JBJ
I am not trying to say that the saints in heaven do hear us, but that it isn’t a denial of their humanity. The reason we should be cautious about making claims about them hearing us is not because they are human, but because they are not resurrected. When they are resurrected they will be like Christ, and He hears us.
Other than that I think I agree with your post.
I don’t have my copy of The Cult of the Saints here, so I cannot look up what portion of history he is looking at. I remember at NSA being taught to appreciate the cult of the saints (though not to accept it).
I suppose you could argue that they do, indeed, partake of divine omipresence and/or omniscience – not, obviously, by nature, but by grace. There seems a possibility of something of the sort in John’s “we shall see Him as He is.” It seems to me that we cannot see God as He is unless in some sense we partake of the ‘divine nature’ (as Peter says).
Many say this partaking is ethical only; I’m not sure that gives the full meaning of the Bible.
jj
Wouldn’t the primary reason why the ascended saints cannot hear our prayers is because of the firmament-veil that was firmly set in place on day two of creation? (And by ascended saints, I don’t mean fully ascended, since they lack their resurrected bodies. By ascended, I mean it in the intermediate sense in which their souls are temporarily separated from their bodies, and their souls now dwell in the highest heavens before the face of God.)
It seems to me that communion with departed saints isn’t just a post-fall problem, but was something built into the order of creation from the beginning. But originally, the issue of direct communion wasn’t one of defilement, but of immaturity. Now it’s both an issue of defilement and immaturity. And although the Church on earth has matured over the millennia, she is not mature enough yet to be able to commune with the ascended saints in their estate of complete (i.e. mature) holiness. This must await the completed work of the Holy Spirit as he progressively unveils the Unveiled Christ, on earth as He is in heaven.
Even if some kind of communication were possible between the saints on earth and those in heaven, what would completely holy and mature saints do with our defiled and immature prayers? It would be like us taking the babbling prayers of our children and making these the intercessory prayers we offer up every Lord’s Day in worship. These are fine in their place, but not in the Lord’s Service. So even if we could pray/communicate with departed saints, what good would it do them, or us?
Furthermore, all of our (earthly) prayers must be given by the power of the Spirit, in the Name of Christ, and addressed directly to the Father. (Eph 2:18; I take “access” here to mean “prayer-access” as well.) This adds three “lines” of divine communication between us and the departed saints (assuming there is any communication with them at all). So who really knows what our prayers would end up getting translated into once they actually reached the ears of the departed saints? We have three divine “Moderators” that must first clean-up, spell-check, and grow-up our prayers before any of them gets published in the highest heavens. I mean, you think it’s tough getting your comments posted on Biblical Horizons? This ain’t nothin’ my friend!
James,
Your critique has several flaws in it. You attempt to associate certain aspects of Church tradition with pagan practice and attempt to use that as a defeater for the tradition itself.
Just because something seems to be associated with a pagan religion does not mean that it is wrong. For example, circumcision was practiced among pagans but we also do not believe it is wrong.
This is a typical argument from the Protestant side which look something like this:
1. Everything pagans practice is wrong
2. Pagans practice X
3. Catholics practice something that seems similar to X
4. Therefore Catholics are wrong
It’s a terrible argument and you couldn’t find a direct link to any of these pagan practices if you wanted to.
To the omniscience argument:
It is not necessary for a Saint who has entered into glory to have the attribute of omniscience or omnipresence in order to aid us in our prayers. When a prayer in time goes into eternity, you can bet that the nature in which you hear or participate in time is much different.