Bible & Invocation of Saints (vs. Jordan Cooper)

12-Point Summary + Biblical Evidence for the Treasury of Merit and Redemptive Suffering

Rev. Dr. Jordan B. Cooper is a Lutheran pastor, adjunct professor of Systematic Theology, Executive Director of the popular Just & Sinner YouTube channel, and the President of the American Lutheran Theological Seminary (which holds to a doctrinally traditional Lutheranism, similar to the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod). He has authored several books, as well as theological articles in a variety of publications. All my Bible citations are from RSV, unless otherwise indicated. Jordan’s words will be in blue.

This is my 15th reply to Jordan (many more to come, because I want to interact with the best, most informed Protestant opponents). All of these respectful critiques can be found in the “Replies to Jordan Cooper” section at the top of my Lutheranism web page.

*****

“Please Hit ‘Subscribe’”! If you’ve received benefit from this or any of my 4,500+ articles, please follow this blog by signing up (email address) on the sidebar to the right, above the icon bar, “Sign Me Up!”: to receive notice when I post a new blog article. This is the equivalent of subscribing to a YouTube channel. Please also consider following me on Twitter / X and purchasing one or more of my 55 books. All of this helps me get more exposure and concretely supports my full-time apologetics work. Thanks so much and happy reading!

*****

This is a response to a portion of Jordan’s YouTube video, “A Further Critique of Offering Prayers to the Saints” (10-5-20).

32:20 The New Testament doesn’t mention prayers [to] the saints 

38:23 they also don’t appear in Scripture

47:24 the New Testament itself . . .  is silent about any prayers [to] the saints

I already responded to this claim at length in a reply to Jordan almost two years ago. But let me highlight the NT evidence (with corresponding references to OT evidence):

1) The rich man in Hades (whom tradition has named “Dives”) petitions Abraham three times in prayer (Luke 16:19-31). In the KJV it even says, “I pray thee.” From my earlier reply:

This shows (in a fascinating way) that not only can dead saints hear our requests, they also have some measure of power to carry them out on their own. Abraham is asked to “send” a dead man to appear to Dives’ brothers, in order for them to avoid damnation (yet another [potential] instance of dead men — like the prophet Samuel to Saul — communicating to those on the earth). Abraham doesn’t deny that he is able to potentially send Lazarus to do such a thing; he only denies that it would work, or that it is necessary (by the logic of “if they don’t respond to greater factor x, nor will they to lesser factor y”).

Therefore, it is assumed in the story that Abraham could have possibly done so on his own. And this is all told, remember, by our Lord Jesus. It is disputed whether it is a parable or not (several textual factors suggest that it is not; e.g., parables do not use proper names), but even if it is, it nevertheless cannot contain things that are untrue, lest Jesus be guilty of leading people into heresy by means of false illustrations or analogies within His common teaching tool: the parable.

Whether Dives was dead or not is also irrelevant to the argument at hand, since standard Protestant theology holds that no one can make such a request to anyone but God (and Dr. Cooper reiterates this as pertains to Lutheranism). He’s asking Abraham to send Lazarus to him, and then to his brothers, to prevent them from going to hell. That is very much, prayer: asking for supernatural aid from those who have left the earthly life and attained sainthood and perfection, with God. . . .

Abraham is functioning as a mini-mediator. He is being asked to accomplish certain things. An intercessory request was made of him, not God. In fact, God is never mentioned in the entire story. Why did Jesus teach in this fashion? Why did He teach that Dives was asking Abraham to do things that Protestant theology would hold that only God can do? And why is the whole story about him asking Abraham for requests, rather than going directly to God and asking Him: which is required by Lutheran and general Protestant theology? [cf. King Saul speaking to the dead prophet Samuel, who appeared to him after death, and making a petition (1 Sam 28:15). Samuel — like Abraham — never said that Saul shouldn’t have done that.]

2) It was thought by bystanders at the cross that Jesus may have been calling upon Elijah (Mt 27:46-50; cf. Mk 15:34-36). An argument for invocation of dead saints can be constructed from this (again, I cite my earlier reply):

The “bystanders” are presented as allies of Jesus, since one of them gave Him a drink, in the next verse (Matthew 27:48). The next verse (27:49) again shows that this was common belief at the time: “But the others said, ‘Wait, let us see whether Eli’jah will come to save him.’”

Thus, it was believed that one could pray to one such as Elijah (who had already appeared with Jesus at the transfiguration), and that he had power to come and give aid; to “save” a person (in this case, Jesus from a horrible death). It’s not presented as if they are wrong, and in light of other related Scriptures it is more likely that they are correct in thinking that this was a permitted scenario.

Jesus, after all, had already referred to Elijah, saying that he was the prototype for John the Baptist (Mt 11:14; 17:10-13; cf. Lk 1:17 from the angel Gabriel), and it could also have been known that Elijah and Moses appeared with Jesus at the transfiguration (Mt 17:1-6), if these were His followers.

3) Departed saints in heaven pray for those on earth, and/or present their prayers to God (Rev 5:8). It’s God’s will that they are involved in the process of our prayers getting to God. It’s a reasonable supposition, then, that they have also heard our prayers. (cf. Jer 15:1: Moses and Samuel; 2 Macc 15:12-16).

4) Angels in heaven pray for those on earth, and/or present their prayers to God (Rev 8:2-3). It’s God’s will that they are involved in the process of our prayers getting to God. It’s a reasonable supposition, then, that they have also heard our prayers (cf. Tobit 12:15). In fact, in the OT, Lot made two petitionary prayer requests to angels, and they were both granted (Gen 19:15, 18-21).

5) St. John, when he was on the earth (on Patmos) spoke to one of the “elders” (dead saints) in heaven (Rev 7:14) and they spoke back to him (Rev 5:5; 7:13-17).

6) St. John, when he was on the earth (on Patmos) spoke to an angel in heaven (Rev 10:9) and angels spoke to him from heaven (Rev 1:1-2, 9; 10:9, 11; 11:1-2; 17:1-2; 7-18; 19:9-10; 21:9, 15; 22:6-11; cf. Gen 21:17).

7) Jesus Himself invoked a dead person twice: Jairus’ daughter (Mk 5:41: “Little girl, I say to you, arise”; cf. Lk 8:54: “Child, arise”) and Lazarus (Jn 11:43: “Lazarus, come out”). If someone objects that this is a special case because He’s God, then we have St. Peter invoking a dead person, too: “turning to the body he said, ‘Tabitha, rise.’ And she opened her eyes,” (Acts 9:40).

8) Jesus talked to the dead Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration (Mt 17:1-4; cf. Mk 9:2-5; Lk 9:29-33).

9) If God desired no contact at all between those living on the earth and dead saints, then it’s beyond odd that right after Jesus died, “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many” (Mt 27:52-53). Presumably, some or many or all of these talked to people and had conversations with them, just as Saul, Moses, Elijah, and the risen Jesus did when they came back from the dead.

10) Many commentators believe, and the traditional interpretation of Revelation 11:3 holds, that the “two witnesses” referred to were Enoch and Elijah come back to earth. Neither one died (they were taken up to heaven), and so they return and do die in this instance (Rev 11:7-12) and the Bible informs us that again they “went up to heaven in a cloud”.

11) I have made an extended biblical argument, in another recent reply to Jordan, about the extraordinary characteristics of saints in heaven, which lend themselves to a belief that they can not only hear our intercessions (Hebrews 12:1 and Revelation 6:9-10 show their awareness), but would also respond to them in charity, by the analogy of their presenting our prayers to God (#3 above).

12) The vast amount of biblical information concerning angels and their contact with human beings also shows that there is a God-willed connection between heaven and earth; between men and angels. To highlight just some of that: Matthew 18:10 instructs us that each person has a guardian angel. St. Stephen said that the law was “delivered by angels” (Acts 7:53). Angels appeared to and informed the Blessed Virgin Mary (Lk 1:26-38), Zechariah (Lk 1:11-20), St. Joseph — in a dream (Mt 1:20-21), Philip (Acts 8:26), and the shepherds in the field when Jesus was born (Lk 2:8-15). They are “ministering spirits sent forth to serve” the elect (Heb 1:14). And that’s just from the New Testament. It’s not far from all of this to speculate that we could also ask their assistance in an intercessory fashion. We know for a fact that Lot already did that in Abraham’s time, and that his two petitions were granted (Gen 19:15, 18-21).

That’s an awful lot of material consistent with, highly suggestive of, or literally flat-out biblical examples of the intercessory prayer of saints and angels and general permissible, God-willed contact with the dead or angels from or in heaven in the NT — a thing that Jordan expressly denied was present at all, by making a “universal negative” denial in nine words. I provide extensive proof and twelve lines of argument from Bible passages.

Take your pick. Jordan would have to respond to the above and offer superior counter-explanations, for all of it to be discounted and entirely dismissed. That’s a pretty uphill battle, if you ask me. I’d love to see answers to and attempted refutations of all of the above. Then it could be a truly serious and constructive, productive Catholic-Protestant discussion, where our proofs are addressed head on, in a way that rarely ever happens.

36:01 You do have it [prayers to the saints] developing later, but you don’t have it in those major early sources and yeah again that’s significant . . . of course what you can argue is the Newman development hypothesis: that it was this kind of development of doctrine of prayer to the saints that came out of a recognition of things like the communion of the saints and what are these very scriptural themes, and I would argue that that is true too, in that these did develop from what are biblical ideas of honor to the saints and the communion of saints and union of the church in heaven and the beginning of the church on earth . . . but then it does develop into what I say is an unbiblical doctrine and I guess one who holds to the Newman development hypothesis can say, “well it did develop, but it developed in a way that is good.”

That’s exactly what we would say (and I write as one whose primary influence in becoming Catholic, was precisely Newman’s Essay on Development). I’ve just shown how there are twelve different types of biblical arguments (all even based in the New Testament logically and theologically leading to and harmonious with the proposition of the invocation and intercession of saints. So it may have developed slowly at first (like many doctrines), but eventually, based on, I submit, reflection on all these biblical motifs, it legitimately developed, because more than enough scriptural information to form the essential presuppositions was already present from the beginning of the Church. And a big part of the Protestant objection to the intercession of saints are the false premises (which I just dealt with in reply to Jordan) holding that all prayer is worship, and that it’s impossible for saints to answer many thousands of prayers without being quasi-omniscient.

45:08  what we don’t have is confirmation that the saints can hear the thoughts of our heads and the intentions of our hearts and can them respond in some way to that 

Jordan just got through establishing that the saints in heaven are actively concerned about those on the earth and that they pray, so that’s one premise we agree on. Now he takes it further, and it’s a good question. This is harder to verify, but I think I have done it through a fairly strong deduction and analogy from what we know in Holy Scripture. I already made the argument in my second reply back to Jordan, but here it is in a nutshell (repetition being a great teacher, and condensed, abridged arguments often helpful to many):

Saints in heaven “shall understand fully” (1 Cor 13:12), and possess “knowledge” that Paul describes as “perfect”(1 Cor 13:9-10) and will be “filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph 3:19) and “the fulness of Christ” (Eph 4:13) and will be fully “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). Now, I happen to think that all of that amazing knowledge granted by God’s love and power would include knowledge of “the thoughts of our heads and the intentions of our hearts”. The more we become like God, as those verses teach, the more things we will have in common with Him. Knowing thoughts would be one such thing.

But there is a second related argument that can be made, too: if we’re “equal to” angels after death, according to Jesus (Lk 20:36), and “like angels” (Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25), and we know that angels communicate with those on earth (many examples in the Bible; e.g., “the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven” — Gen 21:17; see also #12 in my list of twelve arguments above), then it stands to reason that the dead saints will by analogy be able to do the same thing. Jesus said, “I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Lk 15:10). That’s an interior disposition (how would an angel know that unless words to that effect were spoken or written?). If angels know that, and we will be “equal” to them, then dead saints in heaven can certainly hear a petition, since by analogy to the angels they’ll be able to discern interior thoughts.

As to responding, we know they can do that, from concrete examples: Abraham with the rich man and Samuel with Saul. Both were petitioned and both refused the petitions themselves (without disputing the practice of asking them in the first place). The Bible gives no indication whatsoever that these instances of prayers to men were intrinsically wrong or forbidden. And in the case of Abraham, it’s a story told by Jesus. Bottom line, the stories are presented as if Abraham and Samuel could have possibly granted the petitions (if they had been asked according to God’s will).

As it was, Samuel did give a correct prophecy that Saul would be killed in battle the next day. So he knew that; and it was in the future. He had the gift of prophecy from God. But this goes back to my point about the incredible knowledge saints will have in heaven. God can just as easily communicate to any saint who was asked to intercede, what the answer would be. God gives them the power to “:hear” our thoughts in the first place and to respond in some way, by the same power. It’s all from God, as Paul stated: “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor 15:10).

49:26 this merit of the saints [that] can be transferred to the believer through the treasury of merit that is something that the Church has the ability to dispense merit to us . . . [is] extremely problematic and extremely unbiblical. It’s just not taught in Scripture. There simply is no transfer of merit other than the merit of Christ himself and his righteousness counted to us; we are found righteous in him, but in terms of there being some kind of a human individual that has excess merit that they can transfer to us and prayers to the saints being involved in that, this is of course a problem.

Not in Scripture at all (yet another universal negative that can easily be disproved)? That’s news to me:

Deuteronomy 9:18-19  Then I lay prostrate before the LORD as before, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin which you had committed, in doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger. [19] For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure which the LORD bore against you, so that he was ready to destroy you. But the LORD hearkened to me that time also. (cf. 9:9; Ex 34:28)

Daniel 9:3-6, 16 Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.  [4] I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession, saying, “O Lord, the great and terrible God, who keepest covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments,  [5] we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from thy commandments and ordinances; [6] we have not listened to thy servants the prophets, who spoke in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. . . . [16]  O Lord, according to all thy righteous acts, let thy anger and thy wrath turn away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy hill; because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people have become a byword among all who are round about us.

2 Corinthians 1:5-6 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. [6] If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; . . .

2 Corinthians 4:8-10, 15 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; [9] persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; [10] always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. . . . [15] For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

2 Corinthians 12:15 I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.

Ephesians 3:13 So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you,

Colossians 1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,

2 Timothy 2:9-10 the gospel for which I am suffering and wearing fetters like a criminal. But the word of God is not fettered.  [10] Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus with its eternal glory.

Also, it can be argued that if a holy person prays for another and their prayer is granted (because the “prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects”: Jas 5:16), then that is merit transferred from the holy person to others. They benefit from it. It’s the same principle.

Genesis 20:7 Now then restore the man’s wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you, and you shall live. . . .

Numbers 14:17-20 And now, I pray thee, let the power of the LORD be great as thou hast promised, saying, [18] `The LORD is slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of fathers upon children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.’ [19] Pardon the iniquity of this people, I pray thee, according to the greatness of thy steadfast love, and according as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.” [20] Then the LORD said, “I have pardoned, according to your word;

Deuteronomy 10:10 I stayed on the mountain, as at the first time, forty days and forty nights, and the LORD hearkened to me that time also; the LORD was unwilling to destroy you.

1 Samuel 7:8 And the people of Israel said to Samuel, “Do not cease to cry to the LORD our God for us, that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines.”

56:41 Roman Catholic listeners will probably have plenty of retorts and responses to this, so I’ll be looking forward to those as well.

Again, I hope that Jordan chooses to respond to my respectful criticisms. Whoever is confident in his position loves to do so. I certainly do. I would be delighted to receive the sort of Bible-soaked, in-depth criticisms that I offer to others.

*

Photo credit: Photograph by Dr Dawn Tames (3-9-04) [Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0 license]

Summary: Jordan Cooper denies any biblical evidence for the invocation of saints. I provide twelve biblical arguments for that & more for merit and redemptive suffering.