Should We Pray for the Dead?

Should Christians pray for the souls of the dead? Today, Derek Thomas discusses how people have addressed this question throughout history—and most importantly, he explains the Bible’s answer.

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: This week on the Ask Ligonier podcast we’re recording live from Ligonier’s 2024 National Conference, and we’re joined by one of Ligonier’s teaching fellows, Dr. Derek Thomas. Dr. Thomas, should we pray for the dead?

DEREK THOMAS: Well, in Catholic theology, for example—Roman Catholic theology in the medieval period especially, but still today in the twenty-first century—they have a doctrine of purgatory, so that when you die, even if you are a saintly man—even if you’re a cardinal—you still end up in purgatory. And it might take you dozens, or even decades, or even hundreds of years to get out of purgatory. And they have a doctrine of supererogation, that if you perform more than is necessary in good works to win God’s favor, that surplus is then given to others in purgatory to eventually get them out of purgatory and eventually get them to see that beatific vision and so on. So that’s Catholic theology.

So, in Catholic theology, the mass includes, especially at the time of burial, the mass includes prayers for the dead because there is a view—and evangelicals have been here too in arguing for post-mortem evangelism—that there’s a second chance based on a view that God couldn’t possibly condemn to hell somebody that I know who is a good man, and there are much worse people than this person, and therefore there’s going to be a second chance, and so on and so forth.

But orthodox theology—from the church fathers through the Reformation and post-Reformation to the confessions and so on—insists that it is appointed unto man once to die, and after death, judgment, and that our eternal fate is sealed by whether or not we are believers at the time of death. And there is no hint in the teachings of Jesus, and there’s no hint in the teachings of the Apostle Paul—now, there are some things in the Apocrypha that suggest prayer for the dead—but in the Canon, the Protestant Canon of the Bible, there’s no hint of praying for the dead.

If I thought that there was a second chance, why would you engage in evangelism, especially evangelism that costs you, evangelism that’s going to involve a great deal of self-sacrifice and maybe persecution? And the reason you do that is because they need to believe in the Lord Jesus while they’re still here in this life, in the here and now. So, Protestants—orthodox Protestants—have argued that one should not pray for the dead, and Catholics and universalists have engaged in some kind of postmortem evangelism theology.