# Intercession of the Saints ## Intro Every Christian tradition agrees that believers should pray for one another. Paul asks churches to pray for him, James tells believers to "pray one for another," and Paul urges prayers "for all men." Every tradition also agrees that Jesus Christ is the "one mediator between God and men" and that He and the Holy Spirit intercede for believers. None of that is in dispute. The dispute is narrower. Catholic and Orthodox Christians hold that believers who have died and are with Christ still pray for the church on earth, and that it is right to ask them for those prayers, just as one asks a friend. Most Protestants hold that Scripture gives no command and no example of anyone asking a departed believer for anything, that prayer in Scripture is addressed to God, and that asking the dead quietly credits creatures with powers that belong to God alone. The key to the whole question is keeping four separate claims apart: that living believers pray for each other, that Christ mediates and intercedes, that the departed pray, and that the departed can hear us. The first three have biblical support. The fourth is where the traditions really divide. ![Illuminated manuscript page: Christ enthroned in a mandorla gives the sealed book to the Lamb while crowned elders kneel on either side holding harps and golden bowls, with the Latin text of Revelation 5 below](/codex/assets/revelation-5-elders-golden-bowls-getty-apocalypse.jpg) *The crowned elders fall down before the Lamb, "having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints" ([Revelation 5:8](/codex/revelation-5-8-9/), ASV). English illuminated Apocalypse, about 1255-1260, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.* ## In full The **intercession of the saints** names two linked claims: (1) that the faithful departed, now with Christ, pray for the church on earth; and (2) that the living may rightly *invoke* them, addressing a departed saint directly with a request for prayer. The [Catholic Church](/codex/catholic-church/) and the Eastern Orthodox churches affirm both, within the doctrine of the communion of saints and with a sharp distinction between the worship owed to God alone (*latreia*, Latin *latria*) and the honor given to saints (*dulia*). The Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and evangelical traditions that came out of the [Reformation](/codex/reformation/) reject invocation, and generally either deny or decline to affirm that the departed are aware of particular earthly requests. The biblical data bear on five distinct questions, which the debate often runs together: | Question | Who | Key texts | Status across traditions | |---|---|---|---| | Do living believers intercede for others? | The church on earth | 1 Timothy 2:1; James 5:16; Romans 15:30; Ephesians 6:18-19 | Agreed: commanded | | Who reconciles God and humanity? | Christ alone, the one *mesitēs* | 1 Timothy 2:5-6; Hebrews 9:15 | Agreed: unique to Christ | | Does Christ intercede now? | The risen high priest | Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25 | Agreed | | Does the Spirit intercede? | The Holy Spirit | Romans 8:26-27 | Agreed | | Do the departed pray, and may we ask them? | Saints in heaven | Revelation 5:8; Revelation 6:9-10; Hebrews 12:1; 2 Maccabees 15:12-14 | Disputed | The argument turns on whether the last row is a natural extension of the first, as Catholic and Orthodox theology holds, or a new practice without warrant, as Protestant theology holds. ## The distinctions that have to be kept ### 1. Living believers praying for one another This is commanded, not merely permitted. - "I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men" ([1 Timothy 2:1](/codex/1-timothy-2-1/), ASV). The word translated "intercessions" is *enteuxeis*. - "Confess therefore your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working" ([James 5:16](/codex/james-5-16/), ASV). - Paul asks the Romans to "strive together with me in your prayers to God for me" ([Romans 15:30](/codex/romans-15-30/), ASV), and asks the same of the Ephesians ([Ephesians 6:18-19](/codex/ephesians-6-18-19/)), the Colossians and the Thessalonians. Notice the direction in [Romans 15:30](/codex/romans-15-30/): the Romans pray "to God for me." Paul asks for their prayers, and their prayers go to God. That is the structure every tradition accepts. ### 2. Christ the one mediator, and His heavenly intercession - "For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all" ([1 Timothy 2:5-6](/codex/1-timothy-2-5-6/), ASV). - Christ "is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us" ([Romans 8:34](/codex/romans-8-34/), ASV). - "Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" ([Hebrews 7:25](/codex/hebrews-7-25/), ASV). Mediation and intercession are not the same thing. Christ's mediation is His standing between God and humanity as the one who gave Himself as a ransom and established the new covenant. His intercession is His ongoing priestly advocacy on the basis of that finished work. Believers who pray for each other share in neither role; they ask God, through Christ, on someone else's behalf. See [G3316 - mesites](/codex/g3316-mesites/). ### 3. The Spirit's intercession "The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered; and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God" ([Romans 8:26-27](/codex/romans-8-26-27/), ASV). The Spirit's intercession is within the believer, and it supplies what the believer's own prayer lacks. See [Pneumatology](/codex/pneumatology/). ### 4. Departed saints praying The texts usually cited: - **[Revelation 5:8](/codex/revelation-5-8/).** The four living creatures and twenty-four elders fall before the Lamb "having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints" (ASV). Compare [Revelation 8:3-4](/codex/revelation-8-3-4/), where an angel offers incense "with the prayers of the saints." - **[Revelation 6:9-10](/codex/revelation-6-9-10/).** The souls of the martyrs under the altar cry out, "How long, O Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" (ASV). - **[Hebrews 12:1](/codex/hebrews-12-1/).** Believers are "compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses" (ASV), the faithful of [Hebrews 11](/codex/hebrews-11-39-40/). - **[Luke 20:38](/codex/luke-20-38/).** God "is not the God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him" (ASV). The patriarchs are alive to God. - **2 Maccabees 15:12-14** (deuterocanonical; Scripture for Catholics and Orthodox, not for Protestants). Judas Maccabeus sees in a dream the dead high priest Onias praying for the Jewish people, and then the prophet Jeremiah, described as one who loves the brethren and prays much for the people and the holy city. It is the clearest pre-Christian Jewish text picturing the righteous dead interceding for the living, and it shows the idea was available in Second Temple Judaism. Its canonical status is part of the wider canon dispute settled differently at the [Council of Trent](/codex/council-of-trent/) and in the Protestant confessions. ### 5. Invoking departed saints This is the step from "the saints pray" to "I may address a saint and ask for prayer." It is the practice the [Council of Trent](/codex/council-of-trent/) defended and the Reformers rejected, and it is the real point of disagreement. ## The Catholic and Orthodox case Stated at full strength, the case runs as follows. 1. **The communion of saints is one family across death.** The Apostles' Creed confesses "the communion of saints." Death does not cut a believer off from the body of Christ, because those who die in Christ are "with Christ" ([Philippians 1:23](/codex/philippians-1-23/); [2 Corinthians 5:8](/codex/2-corinthians-5-8/)) and God is the God of the living ([Luke 20:38](/codex/luke-20-38/); [Mark 12:26-27](/codex/mark-12-26-27/)). The *Catechism of the Catholic Church* (956) teaches that those in heaven, being more closely united to Christ, do not cease to intercede with the Father for us. See [Catholic Church](/codex/catholic-church/). 2. **[James 5:16](/codex/james-5-16/) plus [Revelation 5:8](/codex/revelation-5-8/).** If "the supplication of a righteous man availeth much," then the prayer of a believer made perfect ([Hebrews 12:23](/codex/hebrews-12-23/), "the spirits of just men made perfect") avails at least as much. Revelation shows the prayers of the saints before the throne in the hands of heavenly figures. Asking a saint in heaven to pray is the same act as asking a friend on earth, directed to a friend who is holier and nearer to God. 3. **Intercession does not compete with mediation.** Paul commands intercession in [1 Timothy 2:1](/codex/1-timothy-2-1/) and names the one mediator four verses later. If a living Christian's prayer for me does not rival Christ, neither does a departed Christian's prayer. Catholic theology describes such prayer as a participation in Christ's one mediation, not an addition to it. 4. **Veneration is not worship.** The Second Council of Nicaea (787), defending icons, distinguished the honorable veneration (*timētikē proskynēsis*) that may be given to images of Christ and the saints from the true worship (*latreia*) that belongs to God alone, holding that honor paid to an image passes to the one it depicts. Later Latin theology systematized the distinction as *latria* (to God), *dulia* (to saints) and *hyperdulia* (to Mary); [Thomas Aquinas](/codex/thomas-aquinas/) treats dulia in *Summa Theologiae* II-II, q. 103. Asking for a saint's prayers is, on this account, an act of dulia, never latria. See [G4352 - proskuneo](/codex/g4352-proskuneo/) and [Worship](/codex/worship/). 5. **Early Christian practice.** Graffiti left by third-century pilgrims at the shrine of the apostles on the Via Appia in Rome, beneath the present church of San Sebastiano, ask Peter and Paul to pray for named individuals. [Origen](/codex/origen/), *On Prayer* 11, writes that not only Christ the high priest but the angels and the souls of the saints who have fallen asleep pray alongside those who pray. Cyril of Jerusalem, *Mystagogical Catecheses* 5.9, says the church commemorates patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs in the liturgy so that God, at their prayers and intercessions, would receive its petitions. [Augustine](/codex/augustine/), *Tractates on the Gospel of John* 84, says the church does not pray *for* the martyrs at the altar, as it does for others who rest in peace, but asks that *they* pray for us. [Jerome](/codex/jerome/), *Against Vigilantius* (406), argued that if apostles and martyrs could pray for others while still in the body, they can do so all the more after their victory. 6. **Formal definition.** The [Council of Trent](/codex/council-of-trent/), Session 25 (1563), taught that the saints reigning with Christ offer their prayers to God for men, and that it is good and useful to invoke them humbly and to have recourse to their prayers, aid and help in obtaining benefits from God through Jesus Christ, who alone is our Redeemer and Saviour. Orthodox practice is the same in substance and is woven through the liturgy and the calendar of saints (see [Synaxarion](/codex/synaxarion/)). ## The Protestant case Stated at full strength, the case runs as follows. 1. **No command and no example.** Scripture records hundreds of prayers and many requests for prayer. Every request for prayer is made to a living person, and every prayer is addressed to God. No text commands invoking the dead, and no believer in Scripture is shown doing it. A practice that touches the heart of worship should rest on more than an inference. 2. **Prayer is addressed to God.** Jesus teaches His disciples to pray "Our Father who art in heaven" ([Matthew 6:9](/codex/matthew-6-9/), ASV). Heaven's own pattern in Revelation is prayer offered *to* God; when John falls before an angel, he is told, "See thou do it not: I am a fellow-servant with thee... worship God" ([Revelation 19:10](/codex/revelation-19-10/), ASV). Calling invocation "dulia" does not change the fact that it is a religious petition to an unseen creature in a devotional setting. 3. **The prohibition of consulting the dead.** The law forbids "a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer" ([Deuteronomy 18:10-11](/codex/deuteronomy-18-10-11/), ASV), and Isaiah asks, "should not a people seek unto their God? on behalf of the living should they seek unto the dead?" ([Isaiah 8:19](/codex/isaiah-8-19/), ASV). Catholic and Orthodox theologians reply, fairly, that these texts target occult attempts to extract knowledge from the dead, which is not what asking for prayer is. The Protestant point is more modest: the only time Scripture shows anyone on earth addressing a departed saint is Saul's consultation of Samuel through a medium ([1 Samuel 28](/codex/1-samuel-28/)), and Scripture records that Saul died partly "for that he asked counsel of one that had a familiar spirit... and inquired not of Jehovah" ([1 Chronicles 10:13-14](/codex/1-chronicles-10-13-14/), ASV). The canonical posture toward communication with the dead is wariness, not encouragement. 4. **Creatures are credited with divine attributes.** For a departed saint to receive the silent prayers of millions, in every language, at once, and to know the hearts behind them, the saint must possess something very like omniscience and omnipresence. Scripture reserves that to God: "thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men" ([1 Kings 8:39](/codex/1-kings-8-39/), ASV). Catholic theology answers that the saints know these prayers not by their own power but because God reveals them in the beatific vision. The Protestant reply is that this is a theory constructed to make the practice possible, and that Scripture never states it. 5. **Christ's access is sufficient and open.** "Having then a great high priest, who hath passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God... Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of need" ([Hebrews 4:14-16](/codex/hebrews-4-14-16/), ASV). Every believer already has the direct access to the Father that a saint in heaven has. Seeking a holier intermediary, however sincerely, tends in practice to make the believer's own access feel second-class. 6. **The confessional statements.** The Augsburg Confession (1530), Article 21, allows that the saints may be remembered so that we imitate their faith and good works, "But the Scripture teaches not the invocation of saints or to ask help of saints, since it sets before us the one Christ as the Mediator, Propitiation, High Priest, and Intercessor" (the Latin text, in the *Concordia Triglotta* translation). Its Apology (1531) grants that the saints in heaven pray for the church in general, while still rejecting invocation. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), 21.2: "Religious worship is to be given to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and to him alone; not to angels, saints, or any other creature: and, since the fall, not without a Mediator; nor in the mediation of any other but of Christ alone." The Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles (1563/1571), Article 22, calls the invocation of saints "a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture." [John Calvin](/codex/john-calvin/) argues the case at length in the *Institutes* (III.20.21-27). See [Sola Scriptura](/codex/sola-scriptura/) and [Reformation](/codex/reformation/). 7. **The lived-practice concern.** Protestants commonly grant that official Catholic teaching distinguishes dulia from latria, and argue that popular devotion (shrines, patron saints for particular needs, prayers addressed to saints as givers of help) blurs the line in practice. This is an argument about effects, not about the official definition, and it should be stated as such. ## Praying is not hearing The single most important logical point in the debate is that **"the departed pray" does not entail "the departed hear us."** - [Revelation 6:10](/codex/revelation-6-10/) shows departed martyrs praying, and what they pray for is vindication of their own blood. It shows they are conscious and know that judgment has not yet come. It does not show them receiving requests from anyone on earth. - [Revelation 5:8](/codex/revelation-5-8/) shows heavenly figures presenting "the prayers of the saints." It shows those prayers are known and honored in heaven. It does not say the prayers were addressed to the elders, nor that the elders heard them from the people who prayed. - [Hebrews 12:1](/codex/hebrews-12-1/) calls the faithful of chapter 11 "witnesses." Whether the image is of spectators in a stadium or of people who bore witness by their faith, it says nothing about their receiving petitions. - [Jeremiah 15:1](/codex/jeremiah-15-1/) ("Though Moses and Samuel stood before me") is sometimes cited for the intercession of the departed. It is a hypothetical about two great intercessors, used to say that even their prayer would not avert judgment. It assumes their prayer would be addressed to God, and it says nothing about anyone asking them. A Protestant can therefore grant, without contradiction, that the saints in heaven may well pray for the church in general terms, as the martyrs' cry suggests, while denying that Scripture warrants addressing them. Some Protestants, for example within Anglicanism and Lutheranism, take exactly this position. A Catholic or Orthodox Christian, for their part, has to supply the second premise (that the departed are given knowledge of our requests) from something other than these texts: from tradition, from the beatific vision, or from the general claim that the communion of saints implies it. ## Grammar and hermeneutics ### *Mesitēs* in 1 Timothy 2:5 - **The word.** *Mesitēs* (μεσίτης, from *mesos*, "middle") is one who stands between two parties: an arbiter, a negotiator, a guarantor of an agreement. In the New Testament it occurs six times: [Galatians 3:19, 20](/codex/galatians-3-19-20/), [1 Timothy 2:5](/codex/1-timothy-2-5/), [Hebrews 8:6](/codex/hebrews-8-6/), [Hebrews 9:15](/codex/hebrews-9-15/) and [Hebrews 12:24](/codex/hebrews-12-24/). In Hebrews it is always "mediator of a better (or new) covenant." See [G3316 - mesites](/codex/g3316-mesites/). - **The structure of the sentence.** Paul writes *heis gar theos, heis kai mesitēs theou kai anthrōpōn, anthrōpos Christos Iēsous*. The two parallel uses of *heis* ("one") tie the oneness of the mediator to the oneness of God: there is one God, and correspondingly one go-between. The final *anthrōpos* stands without the article, stressing that the mediator is Himself human. - **The mediation is defined by the ransom.** Verse 6 continues *ho dous heauton antilytron hyper pantōn*, "who gave himself a ransom for all." The one mediator is the one who gave Himself. Mediation in this verse is covenantal and redemptive, not a general term for "anyone who asks God for something on someone's behalf." See [G3083 - lytron](/codex/g3083-lytron/). - **The context separates intercession from mediation.** The paragraph opens with a call to *enteuxeis*, intercessions, "for all men" (2:1). The *gar* ("for") of verse 5 gives the ground for that call: God wants all to be saved (2:4) because there is one God and one mediator for all. Paul therefore commands believers to intercede in the same breath as he says Christ alone mediates. The text itself shows that interceding is not mediating. - **What this settles and what it does not.** It settles that no creature shares Christ's role of standing between God and humanity by self-giving. It does not by itself settle the question of invocation, because both sides accept that intercession is a different act. The Catholic who says "a saint's prayer is intercession, not mediation" is using [1 Timothy 2](/codex/1-timothy-2/) correctly; the question that remains is whether Scripture warrants addressing that saint. - **A Catholic point that deserves a hearing.** In [Galatians 3:19](/codex/galatians-3-19-20/) the law was "ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator," usually understood as Moses. So the noun is not used only of Christ. The Protestant reply is that [1 Timothy 2:5](/codex/1-timothy-2-5/) speaks of mediation "between God and men" as such, grounded in a ransom for all, which is a role Moses never held. ### What Revelation 5:8 and 6:10 do and do not show - **Genre.** Revelation is apocalyptic and symbolic: a slain Lamb with seven horns, bowls of incense that "are" prayers. Doctrine can be drawn from it, but a detail of a vision should not be made to carry a practice that no didactic text teaches. Both sides should grant this. - **Who the elders are is disputed.** The twenty-four elders ([Revelation 4:4](/codex/revelation-4-4/)) are read by many commentators as glorified representatives of the people of God (twelve tribes plus twelve apostles), and by others as an exalted order of angelic beings. The song of [Revelation 5:9-10](/codex/revelation-5-9-10/) has a textual variant affecting whether the singers include themselves among the redeemed. The identification is not secure enough to prove that departed humans receive prayers. - **The "saints" whose prayers they hold.** In Revelation *hagioi* ("saints") is the ordinary word for God's people, and the natural reading of 5:8 and 8:3-4 is the prayers of believers generally, very possibly believers on earth. - **The action is presentation, not reception.** The elders hold the prayers before the Lamb, and in 8:4 the incense "with the prayers of the saints, went up before God." The prayers are directed to God. Nothing in the grammar makes the elders the addressees. - **[Revelation 6:10](/codex/revelation-6-10/) is a prayer to God.** The martyrs address God as *despotēs* ("Master") and ask for justice on their own behalf. It shows that the departed are conscious, remember earthly events and pray. It is the strongest text for the claim that the departed pray, and it gives no support to the claim that they hear the living. ## Where the traditions actually agree - Christ is the only mediator between God and humanity, and His once-for-all sacrifice is the ground of all prayer. - Believers on earth should pray for one another, and this does not compete with Christ. - The faithful departed are alive with Christ, not annihilated or unconscious (with the exception of Christians who hold [conditional immortality](/codex/conditional-immortality/) or soul sleep). - Worship in the strict sense belongs to God alone. What divides them is whether the communion of saints includes a two-way channel of request across death, and whether a practice may be grounded in tradition and inference when Scripture is silent. That second question is the [Sola Scriptura](/codex/sola-scriptura/) question, and this debate is one of its clearest test cases. ## Tactical notes 1. **Fix the question first.** Ask, "Are we debating whether the saints pray, or whether we may ask them?" Most of the heat comes from conflating the two. 2. **Do not overclaim [1 Timothy 2:5](/codex/1-timothy-2-5/).** The Catholic distinction between mediation and intercession is the text's own. The stronger Protestant argument is the absence of any command or example, and the knowledge problem. 3. **Do not overclaim [Deuteronomy 18](/codex/deuteronomy-18/).** Asking for prayer is not divination. Use the necromancy texts for the narrower point that Scripture's only example of addressing a departed saint is a forbidden one. 4. **Press the knowledge premise.** The decisive question for the Catholic or Orthodox side is: from what text do we learn that the departed hear requests addressed to them? 5. **Grant what is true.** The early evidence for asking martyrs' prayers is real and goes back at least to the third century. The Protestant argument is that early is not apostolic, not that the practice is a medieval invention. ## See also - [Prayer](/codex/prayer/), the wider practice and its forms - [G3316 - mesites](/codex/g3316-mesites/), the Greek word for mediator - [Catholic Church](/codex/catholic-church/), the communion of saints in Catholic teaching - [Eastern Orthodox](/codex/eastern-orthodox/), veneration, icons and the saints in Orthodox worship - [Reformation](/codex/reformation/), *solus Christus* and the rejection of invocation - [Council of Trent](/codex/council-of-trent/), Session 25 on the invocation of saints - [Sola Scriptura](/codex/sola-scriptura/), the authority question underneath this debate - [Mary Sinless](/codex/mary-sinless/), the related question of Marian doctrine - [Worship](/codex/worship/), the line between worship and honor - [Idolatry](/codex/idolatry/), what giving God's honor to creatures means - [Heaven](/codex/heaven/), the state of the faithful departed - [Pneumatology](/codex/pneumatology/), the Spirit's intercession
## Common questions this page answers **Q: Is praying to saints biblical?** Scripture commands believers to pray for one another and shows the prayers of the saints honored in heaven ([Revelation 5:8](/codex/revelation-5-8/)), but it contains no command and no example of anyone asking a departed believer for prayer. Catholics and Orthodox ground the practice in the communion of saints and early Christian tradition; most Protestants reject it for lack of biblical warrant. **Q: If Jesus is the one mediator, can anyone else intercede?** Yes. In [1 Timothy 2:1](/codex/1-timothy-2-1/) Paul commands intercessions for all people, and in 2:5 he names Christ the one mediator. Mediation is Christ's unique role of reconciling God and humanity by giving Himself as a ransom; intercession is asking God on someone's behalf, which all believers do. **Q: Can saints in heaven pray for us?** [Revelation 6:10](/codex/revelation-6-10/) shows departed martyrs praying, so the claim that the departed pray has some biblical support. Whether they pray for particular people on earth, and whether they can hear requests addressed to them, is not stated in Scripture and is the point the traditions dispute. **Q: What is the difference between dulia and latria?** *Latria* is worship due to God alone; *dulia* is the honor Catholic and Orthodox theology gives to saints, and *hyperdulia* the higher honor given to Mary. The Second Council of Nicaea (787) drew the underlying distinction between true worship and honorable veneration. Protestants generally accept the distinction in principle and question whether invocation stays on the right side of it. **Q: Does [Revelation 5:8](/codex/revelation-5-8/) prove the saints in heaven hear our prayers?** No. It shows heavenly figures presenting "the prayers of the saints" to God, which shows that prayers are honored in heaven. It does not say the prayers were addressed to the elders, and the identity of the elders is itself disputed. **Q: Why do Protestants not pray to saints?** Because Scripture gives no command or example of it, all biblical prayer is addressed to God, Scripture is wary of contact with the dead, hearing countless prayers at once would require knowledge Scripture assigns to God alone, and every believer already has direct access to God through Christ ([Hebrews 4:16](/codex/hebrews-4-14-16/)). The Augsburg Confession (Article 21) and the Westminster Confession (21.2) state this position. **Q: Is asking a saint to pray the same as asking a friend to pray?** Catholics and Orthodox say yes: it is the same request, made to a friend who is closer to God. Protestants answer that the analogy breaks at two points: a living friend can hear you, and Scripture shows people asking living friends but never the departed.