Today is the Feast of All Souls, when we pray for the faithful departed. Atheists think that's stupid because they don't believe in souls, God, heaven or hell. Good luck with that. Some, though not all Protestants think that prayers for the dead are stupid because they believe in something called "soul sleep."
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| No such thing as hell? |
According to soul sleep theorists, you fall asleep when you die and if you're asleep you can't benefit from prayers offered on your behalf. More serious Protestants, such as Calvinists, believe that God has made up His mind from all eternity as to whether you're going up to heaven or down to the fiery pit. So there's no point in praying for the dead and to do so reduces the Lord's sovereignty. There is, they argue, one mediator between God and Man, who is Christ. Prayers for the departed, they feel, diminish that.
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| Reformers smashing it up |
But soul sleep is problematic because scripture reveals the saints to be alive, albeit not on earth. We see this on the Mount of Transfiguration, where Our Lord converses with Moses and Elijah. According to the Transfiguration, holy souls are alive instead of snoring, whether gracefully or not, under the horns of the heavenly altar.
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| No sleeping at the Altar |
Bearing in mind the eternal simultaneity of God's knowledge, this allows us to pray for departed and ask for their prayers, which reduces the mediatorship of Christ no more than asking one another for prayers. In fact it adds to it, as all prayer, properly made, is directed to Christ and hence to the Father.
So don't be a soul sleeper, pray instead for the holy souls and ask them for their intercession.
May they rest in peace,
LSP
5 comments:
Soul sleep..good grief. I wonder do they need spiritual CPAP to stop the snoring?
I know. The problem is, the prots have to invent all this spurious psuedo-doctrine to justify their essentially emotive mutiny from the Church.
Soul sleep. Please.
I've never heard of "soul sleep"; though the correct word is psychopannychism, but I do believe that the recently dead are still present in our lives.
My thought is when psychorrhagy takes place, some feel the need of their presence in our life, or maybe they know our pain. I know, I have experienced this -I don't care if it's sulphorous to some- I know it was for my bien aise
The presence of the departed can feel quite strong, I've always thought. May they rest in peace.
Yes, I noticed your were close to your father -you haven't published his work yet?
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