Theopedia

Invocation of Saints

“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

— 1 Timothy 2:5

Definition

Invocation of saints is the practice of addressing prayer to departed saints or angels, asking them to intercede with God on a petitioner’s behalf. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology treat it as an extension of the communion of saints, distinguishing the honor (dulia) owed to the saints from the worship (latria) owed to God alone. The Reformed confessions treat prayer itself as an act of religious worship, and religious worship as due to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit alone, not to any creature, however honored.

Confessional Witness

The Second London Baptist Confession restricts religious worship, including prayer, to God alone:

Religious worship is to be given to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to him alone; not to angels, saints, or any other creatures; and since the fall, not without a mediator, nor in the mediation of any other but Christ alone.1

The same chapter closes the practice off from the other direction as well: prayer “is to be made for things lawful, and for all sorts of men living, or that shall live hereafter; but not for the dead.”1

This is not a Baptist distinctive; it is the wider Reformed confessional family’s collective judgment. Westminster’s Larger Catechism, expounding the first commandment, names “praying, or giving any religious worship, to saints, angels, or any other creatures” among the sins that commandment forbids.2 The Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles reject invocation of saints by name as “a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.”3

Biblical Basis

Scripture forbids seeking communication with the dead on behalf of the living: the Mosaic law condemns anyone who “seeks oracles from the dead” (Deut. 18:11), and Isaiah rebukes those who would turn from God to “the mediums and the necromancers,” asking, “Should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?” (Isa. 8:19).

Access to God rests on a single mediator: “there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5), whose heavenly intercession is already complete and sufficient: “he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).

Twice in Revelation an angel refuses the worship John offers him and redirects it to God: “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you… Worship God” (Rev. 19:10; see also 22:8-9). Jesus’ own parable of the rich man and Lazarus depicts no channel between the dead and the living: asked by the rich man to send Lazarus to warn his brothers, Abraham refuses, and answers that Moses and the prophets, not a message from the dead, are sufficient to persuade them (Luke 16:27-31).

Bavinck reads this whole pattern of texts as consistent with how Scripture treats death itself:

The whole of Scripture proceeds from the idea that death is a total break with life on this side of the grave… Nowhere is there any sign that the dead are in contact with the living: they belong to another realm.4

Historical Development

The practice predates any conciliar ruling on it. Ambrose, in the fourth century, is the earliest clear witness to invoking angels: “We to whom the angels have been given for assistance and protection ought to entreat them.”5 The Second Council of Nicaea (787) sanctioned invoking angels, and by the medieval period Thomas Aquinas could state the rationale plainly: “Although God alone is to be prayed to, that he may grant us either grace or glory, it is nevertheless expedient to pray to holy men, that by their prayers and merits our prayers may obtain their effect.”6

The Council of Trent, at its twenty-fifth session (1563), made invocation of the saints binding Roman Catholic teaching and anathematized denying it, commanding bishops to instruct the faithful

that the saints, reigning together with Christ, offer their prayers to God for men; that it is good and useful to invoke them suppliantly and to have recourse to their prayers, aid, and assistance for obtaining benefits from God through his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who alone is our redeemer and savior; and that they think impiously who deny that the saints… are to be invoked, or who assert that the invocation of them, that they may pray for us, is idolatry, or is opposed to the word of God, and to the honor of the one mediator of God and men, Jesus Christ.7

The Reformation confessions answered directly. Calvin, in the final edition of the Institutes (1559), devotes a section of his chapter on prayer to denying that Scripture anywhere authorizes the practice: “there is no passage in the Sacred Volume which permits the invocation of saints, unless we are pleased to wrest to this purpose what is said in the parable as to the rich man imploring the help of Abraham.”8 The Thirty-Nine Articles (1571) and, later, the Westminster and Baptist confessions state the same rejection as settled Reformed teaching.31

Opposing Views

Rome frames invocation of saints as a request for intercession, structurally parallel to asking a living believer to pray for you, rather than as worship offered to a creature. Aquinas grounds it in the saints’ nearness to God, not in any independent power of their own: prayer is due to God alone “that he may grant us… grace or glory,” while the saints are asked only to add their prayers and merits to ours.6 Trent’s own decree explicitly denies that this amounts to idolatry or competes with Christ’s sole mediatorship, anathematizing anyone who says otherwise.7 Robert Bellarmine sharpened the distinction further: the saints are not “immediate intercessors” with God in their own right, but obtain whatever they obtain from God through Christ, and pray for believers on earth “at least in general, according to the Scriptures,” and, for at least some believers, in particular as well.9

Bavinck judges that the distinction does not hold up in practice: “in the practices of Roman Catholicism the communion of saints degenerates into mutual veneration that crowds the Mediator of God and humanity into the background.”4 Charles Hodge makes the same point about the latria/dulia distinction generally: “Whether the homage paid by Romanists to saints and angels be idolatrous is a question of fact rather than of theory… it is to be determined by the homage actually rendered, and not by that which is prescribed.”10

Objections and Responses

Objection: asking a saint to pray for you is no different from asking a living Christian to pray for you. A living believer is asked directly, in ordinary speech. Invoking the departed instead means addressing a prayer to someone not physically present and trusting them to hear it, something Scripture nowhere commands. Bavinck argues Scripture’s own picture of death as “a total break with life on this side of the grave” rules it out.4

Objection: Revelation 5:8 shows the saints and angels in heaven presenting the prayers of believers to God, so they already have some intercessory role. Bavinck reads the parallel text at Revelation 8:3-4, where an angel offers incense with “the prayers of all the saints,” narrowly: “the text does not breathe a word about intercession. The angel is simply a servant.”5 The verse describes prayers already offered by believers being carried to God’s presence, not saints or angels being petitioned by believers on earth to intercede on their own initiative.

Objection: the distinction between honor (dulia) owed to saints and worship (latria) owed to God alone keeps the practice from being idolatrous. Bavinck answers that Scripture does not recognize the distinction: “Scripture knows no twofold religious veneration, one of a lower kind and the other of a higher kind… The entire distinction is arbitrary, supported neither by etymology or Scripture.”5

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677), chap. 22, “Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day,” paras. 2, 4. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647), Q. 105. ↩

  3. The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 22, “Of Purgatory.” ↩ ↩2

  4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 23, “The Intermediate State.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 10, “Creator of Heaven and Earth.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. Thomas Aquinas, quoted in Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 281: “Quanquam solus Deus sit orandus, ut vel gratiam vel gloriam nobis donet; sanctos nihilominus viros orare expedit, ut illorum precibus et meritis, nostrae orationes sortiantur effectum.” ↩ ↩2

  7. Council of Trent, session 25 (1563), decree “On the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics of Saints, and on Sacred Images,” quoted in Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 280: “Mandat sancta synodus omnibus episcopis… ut… fideles diligenter instruant, docentes eos, sanctos, una cum Christo regnantes, orationes suas pro hominibus Deo offerre; bonum, atque utile esse suppliciter eos invocare.” ↩ ↩2

  8. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 3, chap. 20. ↩

  9. Robert Bellarmine, quoted in Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 281: “Sancti non sunt immediati intercessores nostri apud Deum, sed quidquid a Deo nobis impetrant, per Christum impetrant… Sancti orant pro nobis saltem in genere, secundum Scripturas.” ↩

  10. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 279. ↩