Master,  I am thankful that you have taught this old Wesleyan about the tradition of praying for the dead.  Not sure still about how the rationale I have heard for praying for the departed seems to imply a conditional atonement.  Are you implying that Christ’s presence to us in death (grace) is conditioned upon our cooperation in the life after our earthly life?  So we can always blow it, so to speak?  Is our relation to God dependent on our response?  Does our rejection of grace determine God’s relation to us? Or does God in Christ determine to be in relation with us whether or not we cooperate?  If Hell is the name we give to the life of one who rejects grace, are we saying that God has no relation (no presence in spite of rejection) to those who choose that life?

Surely, if we pray for the departed, there must be a better reason than a fear that after earthly life God might reject them because they suddenly stopped cooperating with grace. If not, then we are reintroducing the anxieties of medieval times about Granny and ourselves.  Does not the Roman/Lutheran agreement on justification speak against such anxiety?

Ah, Grasshopper ... I would respond that God’s relation to us is unconditional, but our relation to God is conditional. (Can you hear the sound of one hand clapping?) To contend otherwise 1) leads inexorably to universalism, 2) obviates free will, and therefore the imago dei, and 3) turns God into a predator rather than a seducer. Moreover, your comment seems to not take account of the distinction between justification and sanctification. The former is a sovereign work of grace, full stop—a forensic transaction, an event. The latter is a sovereign work of grace requiring ongoing cooperation from the subject as part of a process. The fact that the Church has *always* prayed for the dead would seem to indicate that the process of sanctification extends beyond this mortal life. There is an appropriate balance to be struck in Christian piety between the morbid superstition and fear of the late Middle Ages and the blase “once saved always saved” attitude of some contemporary Protestantism.

But Master, to suggest that our relation to God is unconditional is not at all to obviate free will.  Certainly my question considers implicitly the concepts of justification and sanctification, though I avoid those Western terms as less helpful than the meanings to which we point with words like creation, Cross, resurrection, and theosis.  And notice that I sidestepped the question of “should we pray for the dead?” and asked a different question, “if we pray for the dead, do we pray for them out of a concern that God might reject them because of their own failure to cooperate with grace AFTER death, or do we pray for them for some other reason?” 

Of course we have free will, but that enables us to reject the grace that is freely offered, but not to change the nature of God.  And that’s where this conception of praying for Granny lest she fail to continue in relation to God by failing to cooperate runs into problems.  The fallacy is in the idea that our rejection of grace changes God’s relation to us.  Ours is a God with whom we can’t negotiate, with whom we can’t compete, and whom we can not threaten:  As Rowan Williams wrote in On Christian Theology

“God’s action…is always, we could say, prior to human activity, and, as such, ‘gracious’ - that is, undetermined by what we do.”

And that means that, no matter how low we fall, there is always a point below which we can not fall, for God alone has determined as Creator that it is God’s will that we continue to exist in relation to God. The ethical implications of this are profound.  Because God creates us from nothing, and re-creates us in Christ, we receive our identity as gift entirely from God and not from human failure or achievement. As Williams notes, that means:

...that time is always there for restoration; that we are never rendered incapable of action and passion, creating and being created, by any event. To be the object of God’s non-historical regard is to be assured, not only of a status, but also of an involvement: we are always ‘addressed.’

This is why the resurrection is the basis of Christian ethics.  For this is the means through which God gives us the gift of peace.  For when we realize we don’t have to defend ourselves or create ourselves, but receive ourselves as gift, then we no longer need to lie to ourselves or others about our past, we no longer feel anxious that rivals can define us in the future,  we no longer feel anxious that our lives might lack meaning, and we no longer feel anxious about “possible ultimate extinction of our interest in the presence of God.”

This is not universalism, if by that you mean that all persons will ultimately accept the grace that is universally given through Christ (in the event we name justification).  Hell is the name we give to the life of those who reject the grace of God, and, though we hope that the population of Hell is ultimately zero, we cannot make that claim precisely because, as you say, God gives us the freedom to reject grace.  But that is not the same as saying that our rejection of grace changes the Truth that God has already spoken about us. 

The real question here is not about the population of hell, however, but about the divinization of Creation in Christ.  To say that theosis begins at birth in Christ and continues unabated after this mortal life is not the same thing as saying that those who choose in free will to accept grace in this mortal life might later choose to reject grace (and thereby to choose the life of those who reject grace that we call Hell) after they have departed this mortal life.  If one accepts the gift of identity in Christ in this mortal life and thereby participates in Christ’s Cross, we can indeed be confident that one will participate in Christ’s resurrection.  We can indeed be confident that one will continue to grow in eternal blessedness in the life after death and will participate in the resurrection which is the Christian hope at the fulfillment of time.  So we need not fear that Granny after she departs this life - or that we - will reject after death the identity in Christ we accepted while alive.  If we pray for the departed, it should not be because we fear they will in death reject the identity already accepted, but rather that Christ will judge that in life they embraced their identity in Christ so freely given.

Master,

I am still troubled by this question of why we pray for the departed.

Please consider with me the baptism passage in Romans 6 as we contemplate this question together:

(Rom 6:3-11 NRSV)

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Paul seems to be quite clear in saying that death destroys all that remains of evil in us.  So though some Roman and Anglo-Catholics may still postulate the need for some kind of boot camp after death to clean us up, they seem not to reckon with what Paul actually says quite clearly. I have heard some speak of death as a process rather than an event, as though, when we die, we begin a slow process of divinization that cleanses us so that we become transformed into the imago dei.  But actually, Paul tells us death is a major event which puts us into a new state of being - a state of blissful rest (which many call Paradise) as we await eventual resurrection.  So when we are dead, we await this new Jerusalem like all the saints.  It is that world for which we wait that is the life of eternal blessedness.  So when we pray for the departed, it is not because they are not already assured of this eternal blessedness - for Paul says above that they clearly are (“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”).  The Greek Orthodox rightly pray for the departed because they have not yet reached this life of eternal blessedness that is the Christian hope - for no one has but Jesus himself. 

So the reason we should pray for the departed seems to be not out of concern that they will not participate in that life (for those who participate in Christ’s Cross are assured of it), but rather because, like all of us, they rest in bliss while still awaiting the eternal blessedness of the resurrected life.

I am pretty sure that Aquinas follows Paul on this, and so am I right in assuming it was later medieval sources that muddled it?

I appreciate that the 79 prayer book does not make prayers for the dead optional, but Jo Wells has pointed out to us how older prayer books do, and that many English evangelicals, in particular, continue to think the practice unconscionable.  But it makes sense to me to start from the question of “Why do we pray for the dead?” rather than wrestling with the question of whether we do or not… for to wrestle with that question would be to take a combative stance to the whole of church history.  This is, I gather, the way that N.T. Wright approaches the question in his little book on the subject (I don’t remember what it’s called, or even if I read the whole of it).  He is overly (in my view) concerned with making sure the prayers for the dead are not popish and about purgatory, and so in the end he seems to frame prayer for the dead as some kind of general acknowledgment that we can’t just leave the dead alone if we claim to have any kind of communion with them.  I believe he takes issue with the prayer “May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace” simply because it focuses too much on souls and not bodies, and he proposes instead, “May all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace and rise in glory.”  I think I’m with him on that one—I’m also wary of bodiless waif heaven—but I don’t think that necessarily proscribes the traditional prayer from our vocabulary, because the old prayer is not about the resurrection but about the time in between, the time where we are.  (And I don’t know if we want to start here the scholastic debate about whether or not souls can partake of the beatific vision before the general resurrection.  But these questions are all related.)

Craig wrote,

  So when we pray for the departed, it is not because they are not already assured of this eternal blessedness - for Paul says above that they clearly are (“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”).  The Greek Orthodox rightly pray for the departed because they have not yet reached this life of eternal blessedness that is the Christian hope - for no one has but Jesus himself.

So the reason we should pray for the departed seems to be not out of concern that they will not participate in that life (for those who participate in Christ’s Cross are assured of it), but rather because, like all of us, they rest in bliss while still awaiting the eternal blessedness of the resurrected life.

It’s this language of assurance that bothers me.  What about the “if”?  I don’t want to parse the Greek, but it may very well imply here an “if we have (and we have), then…”.  But I don’t want to jump quickly to that conclusion, or go too quickly past all the NT language of judgment (something that Wright cares a great deal about) or even, to use a particular example, God spitting people out of his mouth in the beginning of the Revelation.  Don’t apply some kind of Lutheran doctrine of assurance to the Orthodox. 

Also don’t lump everyone together into the departed.  The Orthodox also have a concept of capital-S Saints—the Holy Theotokos being the first among them—who have already gained eternal bliss.  We don’t pray for them.  We ask them to pray for us.  This is the classic distinction in the West between All Saints’ and All Souls’ days.

If Geoffrey Wainwright and Joseph Ratzinger can both believe in some form of purgatory (one that is probably much closer to Eastern conceptions than late-medieval Roman piety), I’m hard-pressed to disagree with them.

Sam,
I am curious about what you think Benedict’s position is on this (and I have to research my notes to check on what Wainwright said he believes, but I do remember him saying his belief was heretical).  I remember von Balthasar quoting Benedict in the opposite direction as you may be implying (your caveat about “closer to Eastern conceptions” might mean we are remembering the same thing). 

I’ll take a pass on the purgatory thing and stay with Paul and Tom Wright, thank you….

Craig Uffman - 06 March 2009 11:37 PM

Master,

I am still troubled by this question of why we pray for the departed.

Please consider with me the baptism passage in Romans 6 as we contemplate this question together:

(Rom 6:3-11 NRSV)

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Paul seems to be quite clear in saying that death destroys all that remains of evil in us.  So though some Roman and Anglo-Catholics may still postulate the need for some kind of boot camp after death to clean us up, they seem not to reckon with what Paul actually says quite clearly. I have heard some speak of death as a process rather than an event, as though, when we die, we begin a slow process of divinization that cleanses us so that we become transformed into the imago dei.  But actually, Paul tells us death is a major event which puts us into a new state of being - a state of blissful rest (which many call Paradise) as we await eventual resurrection.  So when we are dead, we await this new Jerusalem like all the saints.  It is that world for which we wait that is the life of eternal blessedness.  So when we pray for the departed, it is not because they are not already assured of this eternal blessedness - for Paul says above that they clearly are (“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”).  The Greek Orthodox rightly pray for the departed because they have not yet reached this life of eternal blessedness that is the Christian hope - for no one has but Jesus himself. 

So the reason we should pray for the departed seems to be not out of concern that they will not participate in that life (for those who participate in Christ’s Cross are assured of it), but rather because, like all of us, they rest in bliss while still awaiting the eternal blessedness of the resurrected life.

I am pretty sure that Aquinas follows Paul on this, and so am I right in assuming it was later medieval sources that muddled it?

(boldface added by me) Even if all that remains of evil is destroyed, is it perhaps possible that there may be good things present at the time of death that are not yet fully developed, or even good things that are entirely lacking? For example, suppose a person had some besetting sin during their life. Even if at death that sin is removed, perhaps the corresponding virtue is also absent because it never began to develop during earthly life. So we might pray that that virtue would indeed develop in them. I am looking at the Funeral service from the 1928 BCP, and there is a prayer in it that the departed person will increase in knowledge and love of Christ, and go from strength to strength in his service. I think that indicates the possiblility that good things will develop after death into even better things.

The other reason I personally might pray for someone who has died would be if I did not know their spiritual condition at the time of death. Even if we say that it is impossible for Granny who has died in Christ to reject grace after death, is it perhaps possible for a person who had been rejecting grace all their life to reconsider after death? (I am thinking of the Ghosts in The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis. Maybe it really is possible for Ghosts to decide to stay in the Valley of the Shadow of Life, and become Solid People.) I am not sure I believe that “as the tree falls, so it shall lie”. At any rate, even if such a prayer does the person no good, I don’t think it can do them any harm.

Thanks for the references to CS Lewis, Karen.  I need to check them out.  And for the record, I am not suggesting that we should not pray for the dead.  The fact is that we do.  My question was seeking to understand the object of our prayer.  Anglo-Catholic and Roman piety certainly includes a tradition that a few have articulated here.  It’s not clear to me that that tradition is consistent with the account of death and the Christian hope for participation in the resurrection that we find in Scripture.  And, as Sam Keyes picked up quickly, I am very much influenced by N.T. Wright (but also von Balthasar!) in my own ongoing explorations of this question. And that account gives Scripture much more weight than it does the medieval sources of the piety that has been handed down.

I was just thinking of Wainwright making this off-hand comment last year, “Serious Protestants no longer have any objections about some sort of purgatory.”  I think for him it meant looking at Wesley’s idea of total sanctification after death—and this is really not so incompatible with the current Roman view on the matter which has rejected any notion of “years in purgatory” and so on.

I have found The Great Divorce and Buchanan’s Victorian poem “The Ballad of Judas Iscariot” challenging to my notion that I know the whole truth about salvation. A simple answer to the question, “Why do we pray for the departed?” is because we love them. If the departed are praying for us, it is because they love us.