What scriptures support praying to the saints?

[justinangel]

vs. 27 "He" refers to Christ.
vs. 29 "We'' refers to the church.
''I" throughout refers to Paul. "You" throughout, to his readers, the church.

vs. 28 "They" refers to ?

I believe it refers to practitioners of paganism. The whole passage is an argument in support of resurrection of the dead, not baptism for the dead. It is as if he were saying to his detractors that even the pagans believe in resurrection.

If Christ be not risen from the dead, our faith is in vain. And if you can pay for your own sins and thereby reconcile yourself to God, Christ died in vain.

Nevertheless, Paul is alluding to a church ceremony that was a custom among baptized Christians, probably to the prayers and penitential works performed by the early Christians for the benefit of the faithfully departed souls. He is addressing the church at Corinth, his "brethren", not any alleged detractors. Certainly Paul wouldn't make any argument of the resurrection from a pagan custom that neither he nor the Church would approve of. Nor would he ignore the opportunity of admonishing Christians at Corinth who incorporated a pagan belief and custom in the faith if that were the case. Thus "They" is synonomous with "I" and "We".

Meanwhile, Christ paid for our sins by making eternal satisfaction to the Father. He atoned for the eternal penalty. We, on the otherhand, are required to make satisfaction for temporal penalties. When we sin, we must repair our relationship with God and re-establish the equality of justice and friendship with God. David acknowledged this personal obligation after he committed two mortal sins, and so he wrote in Psalm 116: "What shall I render to the Lord for all his bounty to me?" Our relationship with God is one between a father and his children, not judge and defendants.

The early Church (East and West) believed in the existence of purgatory, which was not an invention of the Roman Catholic Church in the 4th century.

"Accordingly, the believer, through great discipline, divesting himself of the passions, passes to the mansion that is better than the former one, viz.,to the greatest torment, taking with him the characteristic of repentance for the sins he has committed after baptism. He is tortured then still more -- not yet or not quite attaining what he sees others to have acquired. Besides, he is also ashamed of his transgressions. The greatest torments, indeed, are assigned to the believer. For God's righteousness is good, and His goodness is righteous. And though the punishments cease in the course of the completion of the expiation and purification of each one, yet those have very great and permanent grief who are found worthy of the other fold, on account of not being along with those who have been glorified through righteousness."
St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6:14 (A.D. 202)

And the early Church prayed for the poor souls of the faithfully departed.

"A woman is more bound when her husband is dead ... Indeed, she prays for his soul, and requests refreshment for him meanwhile, and fellowship with him in the first resurrection; and she offers her sacrifice on the anniversary of his falling asleep."
Tertullian, On Monogamy 10 (A.D. 216)

I'm afraid the so-called Protestant reformers over 1, 300 years later unauthoritatively removed Maccabees, Sirach, and Ruth from the canon of Scripture because of their rejection of the traditional doctrine of purgatory which failed to square with their mistaken idea of being saved by faith alone and the forensic imputation of Christ's alien righteousness on the believer. Contrary to what you assert, the Roman Catholic Church, notably the Council of Trent, did not include these OT texts to defend her traditional beliefs and practices in the wake of opposition.

Abericus by name, I am a disciple of the chaste shepherd ... He taught me faithful writings ... These words, I Abericus, standing by, ordered to be inscribed. In truth, I was in the course of my seventy-second year. Let him who understands and believes this pray for Abericus.
Inscription of Abericus (A.D. 190)

PAX

 

[jackmt]

Nevertheless, Paul is alluding to a church ceremony that was a custom among baptized Christians, probably to the prayers and penitential works performed by the early Christians for the benefit of the faithfully departed souls. Certainly Paul wouldn't make any argument of the resurrection from a pagan custom that neither he nor the Church would approve of. Nor would he ignore the opportunity of admonishing Christians at Corinth who incorporated a pagan belief and custom in the faith if that were the case. Thus "They" is synonomous with "I" and "We".

The early Church (East and West) believed in the existence of purgatory, which was not an invention of the Roman Catholic Church in the 4th century.

"Accordingly, the believer, through great discipline, divesting himself of the passions, passes to the mansion that is better than the former one, viz.,to the greatest torment, taking with him the characteristic of repentance for the sins he has committed after baptism. He is tortured then still more -- not yet or not quite attaining what he sees others to have acquired. Besides, he is also ashamed of his transgressions. The greatest torments, indeed, are assigned to the believer. For God's righteousness is good, and His goodness is righteous. And though the punishments cease in the course of the completion of the expiation and purification of each one, yet those have very great and permanent grief who are found worthy of the other fold, on account of not being along with those who have been glorified through righteousness."
St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6:14 (A.D. 202)

And the early Church prayed for the poor souls of the faithfully departed.

"A woman is more bound when her husband is dead ... Indeed, she prays for his soul, and requests refreshment for him meanwhile, and fellowship with him in the first resurrection; and she offers her sacrifice on the anniversary of his falling asleep."
Tertullian, On Monogamy 10 (A.D. 216)

I'm afraid the so-called Protestant reformers over 1, 300 years later unauthoritatively removed Maccabees, Sirach, and Ruth from the canon of Scripture because of their rejection of the traditional doctrine of purgatory which failed to square with their mistaken idea of being saved by faith alone and the forensic imputation of Christ's alien righteousness on the believer. Contrary to what you assert, the Roman Catholic Church, notably the Council of Trent, did not include these OT texts to defend her traditional beliefs and practices in the wake of opposition.

Abericus by name, I am a disciple of the chaste shepherd ... He taught me faithful writings ... These words, I Abericus, standing by, ordered to be inscribed. In truth, I was in the course of my seventy-second year. Let him who understands and believes this pray for Abericus.
Inscription of Abericus (A.D. 190)

PAX

The devils believe and tremble. Jas. 2:19 James appealed to the demons' beliefs in support of his teaching.

And citing your authorities that I reject cannot be expected to convince me of anything but that heretical teachings have always been with the church, allowed so by God so that they could be refuted by Scripture.

Even if I accept your premise that baptism for the dead was a Godly practice, nothing in the passage suggests purgatory or the efficacy of baptism for the dead for anyone there.

But if Christ be not risen, our faith is in vain. And if you can save yourself, why did Christ die for you?

 

[justinangel]

The devils believe and tremble. Jas. 2:19 James appealed to the demons' beliefs in support of his teaching.

What the demons believe must be true or else they wouldn't tremble.

And citing your authorities that I reject cannot be expected to convince me of anything but that heretical teachings have always been with the church, allowed so by God so that they could be refuted by Scripture.

Jesus promised to be with his Church until the end of time and send the Paraclete to guide her to all truth until he returns. I doubt he would break his promise by abandoning his bride, so that he can promote a book for you to peruse against her. Scripture doesn't refute Catholic teaching. Rather your misunderstanding of Scripture opposes it. The final teaching authority rests with the person who is holding the book. It is not the book itself. So in whose hands does the Bible belong, yours or the Church's Magisterium's? Common sense alone tells me it's not yours or any private individual's.

The teaching authorities I quoted bear testimony to a universal Christian belief since earliest times. They aren't expounding on any theories of theirs. We have extant writings about purgatory from almost all of the Church Fathers up to the 8th century.

Even if I accept your premise that baptism for the dead was a Godly practice, nothing in the passage suggests purgatory or the efficacy of baptism for the dead for anyone there.

How can baptism for the dead be inefficacious if it is performed "for the sake of" or "the benefit of" faithfully departed souls. If purgatory isn't implied, then how do the faithful souls in heaven benefit from our prayers and sacrifices? Certainly they no longer have any need of our mediation.

But if Christ be not risen, our faith is in vain. And if you can save yourself, why did Christ die for you?

Christ died on the cross to open the gates of heaven for everyone and to ensure that the gates of hell don't close on everyone. But if you believe in limited atonement (that Christ died only for the elect), then your answer to Paul's question will differ from mine. Anyway, we aren't talking about saving ourselves or others, because once we pass from this life to the next the souls in heaven and in purgatory are saved, while the sins of the souls in hell can no longer be atoned for. The issue is about making temporal reparation and satisfaction to restore our equity of friendship with God which we have injured by our transgressions notwithstanding having been forgiven through the merits of Christ by our act of repentance. Being forgiven of a misdeed doesn't presuppose that an act of reparation is needless to restore the balance in our personal relationship with God. When I was a boy, my father forgave me for having broken the kitchen window. But the equity of justice and friendship between us was fully restored only by my helping him repair the window. And in order to do so, I had to sacrifice going to the park to play softball with my friends. I broke the window by throwing my bat through it in anger. This experience of making complete satisfaction and restoring the balance of equity in my relations with my father helped purge my soul of any remaining ill feeling and made me a better person in his sight.

I will clean purge away thy dross, and I will take away all thy tin.
Isaiah 1, 25

I'm afraid Christ's merits do not fully apply instrumentally in the temporal order of our existence in our relationship with our heavenly Father. We are not only required, but expected to make atonement for ourselves and others to appease the divine justice and satisfy the Father's wrath now that Christ has opened the gates of heaven for us. The more we suffer in this life and offer up our sufferings to God, the sooner we and our brethren can get to heaven if they aren't already there. Satisfaction means giving to God the due honour we ourselves owe him. Christ did not take from us that honour we owe God. God requires a just measure of satisfaction from us to restore the balance in the divine order of justice. Christ did not die in vain, so he couldn't have sacrificed himself to maintain an imbalance in our personal relationship with the Father by covering it up in a blanket. What he accomplished was making it efficaciously possible for us to repair the imbalance in our relationship with God through prayer and self-sacrifice.

For the Lord is a God of justice, and he judges the people with equity.
Psalm 9, 8

Correct me, O Lord, but in just measure, lest thou bring me to nothing.
Jeremiah 10, 24

In his own body he brought our sins to the cross, so that all of us dead to sin could live in accord with God's will.
1 Peter 2, 23

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