The Value of Offering Sacrifice for the Dead in the Thought of the Fathers of the Church

Abstract

The Value of Offering Sacrifice for the Dead in the Thought of the Fathers of the Church Christian D. Washburn The practice of offering private prayers and the sacrifice of the Mass for the dead was a controversial topic in the sixteenth century and continues to be an important ecumenical question. Both Lutheran and Reformed theologians of the sixteenth century, for example, admitted the antiquity of the practice but denied that it had an apostolic foundation.1 Moreover, these theologians denied that the purpose of 1 Philipp Melanchthon states: “We know the ancients spoke of prayer for the dead.” Apology of the Augsburg Confession, 24:94, 24:69, in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, trans. Charles Arand et al. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2000) 275, 269. Martin Chemnitz (1522-1586) holds that prayers for the dead were unknown in the time of the apostles and were introduced “little by little . . . into the church” but does not appear to deny that the prayers for the dead were the universal practice of the Christians in the postapostolic period. Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, vol. 3, trans. Fred Kramer (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1971-1986) 262-263. Calvin’s judgment is considerably more severe, “When my adversaries , therefore, raise against me the objection that prayers for the dead have been a custom for thirteen hundred years, ask them, in turn, by what word of God, by what revelation, by what example, is this done?” Again, “But the observance of it in the Church is of the highest antiquity. . . . I admit that the fathers themselves were also carried off into error. For heedless credulity commonly deprives men’s minds of judgment.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, The Library of Christian Classics, vol. 20, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960) 3.5.10, vol. 1, pp. 681, 682. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.5.10, vol. 1, pp. 682, 683. Protestant theologians offered various explanations for how this practice entered the Church. Chemnitz, for example, argues that prayers for the dead were derived “from a certain natural disposition of the human mind,” such as “human affection,” or from a desire to preserve something of the good within pagan culture, but modified “in the direction of Christian piety.” Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, vol. 3, 262-263. Calvin asserts that prayers for the dead entered into Christian thought not only on account of “public custom,” and “common ignorance,” but Christians also did it “lest they should seem to have cast Antiphon 16.3 (2012): 154-178 155 The Value of Offering Sacrifice for the Dead these prayers was to assist the dead, arguing instead that they were conducted merely for the benefit of the living.2 On the other hand, the Council of Trent quite clearly insisted that prayers for the dead were derived from “Holy Scripture” and the “ancient tradition of the fathers,” and further claimed that the poor souls in Purgatory “are aided by the suffrages of the faithful, and principally the acceptable sacrifice of the altar,” so that “they might be liberated from the fire of purgatory.”3 This article seeks to examine the teaching of the Fathers of the Church on the purpose of offering prayers and sacrifice, especially the sacrifice of the Mass, for the dead. This article will include an examination of different aspects of this question including: those for whom prayers and sacrifice can be offered, the purpose of praying and sacrificing for the dead, the way in which these prayers and sacrifices assist, and finally the way that different types of sacrifices help the dead. away all concern for them.” Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.5.10, vol. 1, pp. 682, 683. For a recent ecumenical approach see The Hope of Eternal Life: Common Statement of the Eleventh Round of the U.S. Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue, ed. Lowell G. Almen and Richard J. Sklba (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2011). 2 Chemnitz’s explanation: “For there can be many other reasons and far other purposes for such prayer...