Praying for the dead
Anglicans pray for the dead. I am Anglican therefore I pray for the dead.
Why might a Christian do such a thing? Tradition. Tradition is an important source of knowledge and praxis, this is part of why I have become Anglican. While I do think that tradition is not in itself inspired or authoritative in the same sense as Scripture or prophecy it is authoritative in a lesser sense. But in some sense Scripture itself is tradition, and reliance upon it and the Holy Spirit is our greatest tradition as Christians.
Tradition is a good and weighty reason for doing a thing. That is part of why being an Anglican means to be Catholic. We think what we do in liturgy and reliance upon apostolic succession through Bishops, is ancient and universal Christian practice. We are traditionalists and confessional, claiming along with Roman, Lutheran, Eastern, Oriental, and Assyrian Christians that our communion dates back to the Apostles.
But we are also Protestant or Reformed, not just Catholic. Which is why we do not accept every piece of confession or tradition wholesale. While there are Anglicans who pray to saints and not just for them when they die, there is no public Anglican liturgy I am aware of that invokes saints in the very common way that occurs in the non Protestant forms of traditional Christianity.
Tradition is good. The prayer book in particular is an ongoing revisable and living source of medicine and knowledge. But tradition apart from Scripture and the Holy Spirit is not itself enough. So where might a Christian get theological or scriptural warrant to pray for the departed?
I am unaware of any passage in scripture that explicitly prays for those who have passed. But we have a strong candidate in 2 Timothy 1:16-18
May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day! You know very well in how many ways he helped me in Ephesus.
John Stott thought it was unwarranted to see this as a prayer for the dead, despite himself being an Anglican Priest. He expressly says that Roman Catholic commentators tend to see this that way, clearly implying theological bias. His reading is entirely plausible that Onesiphorous is not dead merely separated from Paul.
Scholar Gordon Fee, who was not Anglican or Catholic, concludes the opposite, that Onesiphorous probably is dead because on that day is most likely a reference to the day of judgement.
We could look at other commentators, but everyone is probably going to say something slightly different but ultimately side in a binary of sorts. To me what seems most probable is that whether this is prayer for a dead man or not, it is probably theological justification for praying for the dead.
The reason is that Paul does not see this faithful person as eschatologically “settled.” So much of the time in American Christianity we tend to see the Christian life as “settled” or completed in the act of “being saved” or coming to Jesus. But that is merely the beginning. The good news is not about forgiveness of sins today and getting to be a force ghost with Jesus forever. The good news is that God’s kingdom and rule will make it on earth as it is in heaven. Shalom is coming to the earth, God will make the earth heavenly and complete. In other words your body and soul will be reunited in the end and you will live bodily forever in perfect harmony with all things because of Christ’s work. Until that is all completed we are all of us incomplete.
That was explicitly why Anabaptist founder Michael Sattler refused to pray to Mary: because she awaited judgement like the rest of us. In other words he denied the traditional teaching that Mary was essentially resurrected and glorified either after her death or in lieu of death.
The irony is that the Marian doctrines actually underscore what Sattler is doing and what Paul is probably doing in praying for someone “on that day.” Sattler sees that the Christian life and hope are not complete till resurrection, and so has the consistent position of ancient Christianity via the Marian doctrines of her resurrection. Without her resurrection it would be unclear what her position truly is in the heavens, but non Protestant forms of Christianity see her as a very important intermediary on our behalf. For them she is like Christ in this regard, one of the first fruits of the end partaking in final glory.
If this were not true she should fall into the category of dead that actually need to be remembered in our prayers because their story is not finished yet. This whole line of thought both provides evidence for the Protestant conviction that the cult of the saints, while well intentioned and in some stylistic sense theologically beautiful, is ultimately wrong because praying for dead saints would be the more pious thing to do.
In other words what seems most consistent with fundamental universal Christian teaching would be to pray for dead saints not to them, Mary being a possible exception if indeed she was resurrected and glorified, though I see little reason to believe that is true (though it is beautiful). Also possibly Elijah, though it’s very unclear if he was “resurrected”, which is also interesting since the confusion over whether Jesus is praying to Elijah on the cross is the closest the New Testament comes to acknowledging prayers to the dead.
CS Lewis also had some thoughts on this, he referenced praying for the dead in a positive way numerous times. As far as I can tell he never referenced praying to them, even though he grants this:
Of course we should pray for the dead as I’m sure they do for us.
There is a line between the living and the dead, how harsh that distinction is seems very unclear to me biblically. But to judge someone praying for a loved one who has passed on seems completely unjustified, because their story isn’t over yet. None of our stories are over until the King returns, when then we will begin our final eternal chapter and be safely forever at home.
Seeing death as the end isn’t biblical or hopeful, it is essentially too modern. The small bit of praying for the dead that we Anglicans do seems to be a good antidote to the idea that heaven is being a force ghost with Jesus forever. The resurrection is coming, that is the blessed hope. Christ will not leave his bride in the grave, and until that day we will pray for the church Catholic, that is universal, and all saints that we are in communion with both living and dead via our one sympathetic high priest.