What does the Bible say about praying for the dead?

Prayer and supplication. "Praying … with all perseverance and supplication for all saints." In praying for saints you must pray for all: I do not mean for quick and dead; prayer is a means to wait upon them in their way; at death, when they are at their journey's end, prayers are useless, and the wicked in that estate are beneath, the saints above, our prayers; we cannot help the wicked, the tree is fallen, and so it must lie. We read of a change the body shall have after death. Vile bodies may, but filthy souls cannot after death be made glorious: if they leave the body filthy, so shall they meet it at the resurrection. As the wicked are beyond our help, so the saints are above all need of our help. … We are to love all saints, therefore to pray for all. The new creature never wants its new nature; if God loves all His children, then wilt thou all thy brethren, or not one of them. When Paul commends Christians for this grace of love, he doth it thus: (Eph. 1:15) "After I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love to all the saints." Now, if we love all, we cannot but pray for all.

Abraham solemnly reminded the rich man of his past and that of Lazarus, and adds beside this that at death a great gulf has been fixed between the saved and the lost, so it is impossible for any cross over from one side to the other. All the prayers for the dead that man's "religion" can devise are useless. At death there is no doubt as to a man's final destiny: it has been decided.

But there was a notable exception. Onesiphorus had also visited Rome and had diligently sought him and found him finally. There were many thousands of prisoners in Roman dungeons, and we may well imagine how day after day Onesiphorus sought for his beloved brother, going from dungeon to dungeon till he had located Paul. What a meeting that must have been! He had ministered to Paul in Ephesus, which was well known to Timothy, and now he was not ashamed to minister unto the prisoner of the Lord. He prays therefore for his house and that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day. The reward for his faithfulness to Paul will be mercy, as everything else is mercy in the believer's life.

(Strange it is that the prayer of the Apostle for the house of Onesiphorus is used as an authority to pray for the dead. The assumption that Onesiphorus had died is incorrect.)

"Eminent commentators, comparing 2 Tim. 1:16 and 19 (18?), and 2 Tim. 4:19 have believed that St. Paul's prayer for Onesiphorus is a prayer for one who was dead and he does not reprove the principle of even so superstitious a practice as baptism for the dead."

The first of these is again a large conclusion from scant premises. Paul salutes the house of Onesiphorus, no mention made of Onesiphorus himself. He prays for mercy to his house, and "that he may find the mercy of the Lord in that day," and as Onesiphorus does not appear in all this, it must be inferred it was a prayer for the dead! In an opposite interest, how would Canon Farrar treat such a conjecture?

Yet the second argument is worse. Where does the apostle speak of the principle of the practice of "baptism for the dead"? Nowhere. He argues, if anything, for the practice itself: "Else what shall they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead? And why stand we in jeopardy every hour? I protest… I die daily" (1 Cor. 15:29-31). If this is not approving the practice, I know not what is. Fancy the apostle urging in his argument for resurrection, "Else what shall they do who are (so superstitiously!) baptized for the dead." As for the principle, he says nothing about it. What was the principle? What was the practice even? Dr. Farrar evidently refers to a suppositious ceremony "never adopted except by some obscure sects of Gnostics, who seem to have founded their custom on this very passage," the practice of submitting to baptism for some person who had died unbaptized. Dr. Farrar owns it as a "superstitious custom"; yet thinks the apostle does not reprove the principle of it, — a principle which must have implied the need of baptism to free from the penalties of sin, and the possibility of the living making up the deficiencies of the dead! a thing too gross to be accepted by the ritualistic Christianity which so soon succeeded the apostolic.

"There is a purgatory," says the Council, "and the souls detained there are assisted by the suffrages of the faithful but especially by the acceptable sacrifice of the Mass. This holy council commands all bishops diligently to endeavour that the wholesome doctrine concerning purgatory, delivered unto us by venerable fathers and sacred councils, be believed, held, taught, and everywhere preached by Christ's faithful. . . . . In the fire of purgatory the souls of just men are cleansed by a temporary punishment, in order to be admitted into their eternal country, into which nothing that defileth entereth . . . . . The sacrifice of the Mass is offered for those that are deceased in Christ, not entirely purged."*

"I constantly hold that there is a purgatory, and that the souls detained therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.

"Likewise, that the saints reigning together with Christ, are to be honoured and invocated; that they offer prayers to God for us, and that their relics are to be venerated.

339 Scripture, not history, is the warrant for doctrine; but the historical fact is that half the church, and the oldest half of it, never held purgatory, nor do to this day (the other half, when expressing their personal faith, spoke in a way entirely contrary to it), but had, when the true knowledge of redemption was lost, and the purifying power of ceremonies and works came in, some mere vague notion of an intermediate state, or its possibility, or a purgatorial fire in the judgment of the last day, which ripened gradually in the West to the fact of a purgatory stated, as we have seen it, by Gregory at the end of the sixth century, but then only, if these were just, for very little sins, such as idle words. Before that prayers for the dead were offered, but then for all departed in peace, including the Virgin Mary. I give a specimen from Chrysostom: "We offer to thee this reasonable service for those that are absent in the faith — our forefathers, fathers, patriarchs, prophets and apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, religious persons, and every spirit perfected in the faith, but especially for all-holy, spotless, over-and-above-blessed, God-bearing, and ever-Virgin Mary."

The importance of this is that it shews that all that Dr. Milner says of the connection of prayers for the dead and purgatory is without foundation, and is, I must say, disingenuous. I have quoted quite sufficient of the Fathers' denying purgatory; I only fear that it might be supposed that I attach any importance to their opinions. From Epiphanius we may find both doctrines of going to the Lord and prayers for the dead combined. Aerius had objected to prayers for the dead, just before the time of Augustine and Jerome, saying, What good could it do them? Epiphanius answers, What can be more useful, more opportune, more worthy of admiration, than the hearing the names of the dead: first, in order that those present may be persuaded that the dead live, nor are reduced to nothing, but still exist and live with the Lord; then, that that most religious doctrine may be preached by which it is evident that those who pray for their brethren think well of them — that they are gone on a journey. But the prayer which is made profits them, though it may not cut off all the sins: but it is profitable in this, that, for the most part, while in this life we fail, voluntarily or involuntarily, something more perfect may be signified, for we make mention at the same time of the just and of sinners, of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, bishops, authorities, and all of the whole universal assembly, that Jesus Christ the Lord, receiving a special honour, may be separated from the rest of men, etc. The Lord Jesus was, of course, not prayed for; His mother, Mary, we have seen, was.

As to the other Fathers, a single remark will suffice for them; they speak of prayers for the dead, not of purgatory. This was the common practice, to pray for all the dead, that they might have a part, or a speedy part, in the resurrection to glory, or in the first resurrection. They were remembered in the sacrifice of the altar. But this had no possible connection with purgatory, for they named patriarchs, apostles, prophets, martyrs, and the Virgin Mary herself. I suppose, M., you do not think all these are in purgatory?

In the third century superstition had made ample progress, and we find, not indeed prayers to saints, nor purgatory, but prayers for them. If the knowledge of redemption was practically lost, if works and ordinances had taken their place, if the corrupt morals and proud asceticism of Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, had taken the place of the gospel, men's minds wanted something to mend them when dead, who knew neither redemption nor holiness when living. At first, as given by Origen, it was calling them to mind, with thanksgiving for them, and prayer for resemblance to them. The first person who speaks of these prayers for the dead pretty definitely, is the upright but ardent Tertullian, who left the "Catholic church," as no longer bearing its looseness; and, with an African imagination, though a Father, fell into the wild pretensions of Montanus. His disciple, the martyr Cyprian, also speaks of them; he who tells us that all morality was gone, men given up to shameful vanity, women painting their faces, bishops running about all the provinces to make gain by fraud.

137 But then, at this time, they prayed for martyrs, apostles, prophets, patriarchs, saints, and all the departed together, that they might have part in the first resurrection; and the Virgin Mary, among the rest, was prayed for in the same way, and not only among the rest but especially for her. Cyril of Jerusalem says the same in connection with the Eucharist, saying, We believe it to be a considerable advantage to their souls! So St. Austin says, as to the drunken bouts, the people believed it to be a solace to the martyrs; and he says, since it was to be believed, it was something (aliquid). But then here a difficulty arose; a step was made in the superstition, and, the saints and martyrs being greatly exalted, they were considered as enjoying the beatific vision; full heathenism was flowing in, and they were to help the living, not the living to help them. This was an immense change indeed in the "Catholic" view of things. Epiphanius justifies prayers for saints, because it put a difference between Christ perfect and other men's imperfection, shewing he had wholly lost the notion of Christ Himself being our righteousness, and that, when we depart, we are with Him; but shewing too that all other men were held to be prayed for (not a word, remark, about purgatory all this time). So Hincmar, in the ninth century, tells us, "Grant to us, O Lord, that this oblation may be of advantage to the soul of thy servant Leo (a St. Leo), by which, in its immolation, thou hast granted that the sins of the whole world should be loosened." In the thirteenth century, as given by Pope Innocent, it had become, "Grant to us, we beseech thee, O Lord, that, by the intercession of the blessed Leo, this offering may profit us."

"By not losing sight of the fact that (1) these views have been held in substance, not only (as I have said) by great teachers and holy saints, but also by whole churches; and (2) that they are involved in practices so universal and so primitive as prayers for the dead. The Kaddish, or prayer for the dead, in the Jewish liturgies, is probably as old as the time of our Lord, and if so was by Him unreproved, though it was believed to be efficacious for the relief of souls in Gehenna."