The Catholic practice of invoking the intercession of the saints assumes that the souls in heaven can know our interior thoughts. But for some Protestants, this is a problem, because it attributes to the saints a power that the Bible says belongs to God alone. In 2 Chronicles, we read the following:
Then hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render to each whose heart thou knowest, according to all his ways (for thou, thou only, knowest the hearts of the children of men (6:30).
If the Bible says that only God knows the hearts of men, so the argument goes, then the invocation of the saints’ intercession would be a doctrine that contradicts the Bible.
Let’s see how we can meet this challenge.
First, there is nothing contrary to reason in the idea that God can reveal his knowledge of the interior thoughts of men to those whose intellects he also created. Here is how St. Thomas Aquinas responds to the above challenge in his Summa Theologiae:
God alone of himself knows the thoughts of the heart: yet others know them, in so far as these are revealed to them, either by their vision of the Word or by any other means (Suppl. 72:1, ad 5).
Notice how Aquinas articulates the difference between how God knows the thoughts of men and how the saints in heaven know the thoughts of men. God alone knows “of himself,” and the saints know “by their vision of the Word or by any other means.”
That God knows “of himself” means that the knowledge God has of the interior movements of man’s heart and mind belongs to him by nature. In other words, he has this knowledge by virtue of being God, the uncaused Creator and sustainer of all being, including the thoughts of men. Consequently, he doesn’t have to receive it from a cause outside himself. Only an infinite being can know the interior thoughts of men in this way.
But it’s not a problem for God to reveal this knowledge to the saints in heaven (by whatever means) any more than it is for him to reveal to mankind’s knowledge of himself as a Trinity of persons. Knowledge of God as a Trinity is something that God alone has by nature. Human beings, on the other hand, know God as Trinity only because God willed to reveal that knowledge to mankind. Our knowledge of the Trinity is caused. God’s knowledge of himself as Trinity is uncaused.
Similarly, because God knows the thoughts of men “of himself,” God’s knowledge of man’s thoughts is uncaused. But this doesn’t mean that he couldn’t reveal this knowledge to the saints in heaven, in which case their knowledge of the interior hearts of men would be caused. And because God would cause this knowledge, we could still affirm that God alone knows the hearts of men—that’s to say, he knows them in an uncaused way.
A Protestant might counter, “But what if every person on earth, within his own heart, prays to Mary or one of the saints at the same time? Wouldn’t knowledge of those prayers require omniscience? And if so, then it follows that God couldn’t communicate this sort of knowledge to a created intellect.”
Even though the Church doesn’t claim that God ordinarily gives the saints in heaven the ability to know the thoughts of every living person, it’s not impossible for God to do so. Of course, knowing the thoughts of all men at the same time is something that goes beyond the natural powers of a created intellect. But this kind of knowledge doesn’t require full comprehension of the divine essence, which is characteristic of omniscience. Knowing a finite number of thoughts is not the same as knowing all that can be known about the divine essence, and thus knowing all possible ways that the divine essence can be imitated in the created order.
Since full comprehension of the divine essence is not involved in knowing a finite number of thoughts at the same time, it’s not necessary for the saints in heaven to be omniscient to know simultaneously the interior prayer requests of Christians on earth. From this, it follows that God can communicate this kind of knowledge to rational creatures. And according to Aquinas, God does this by giving a “created light of glory” that is “received into [the] created intellect” (ST I:12:7).
This “created light of glory” demands infinite power inasmuch as infinite power is needed to create and give it to the human or angelic intellect. But infinite power is not necessary for the human or angelic intellect to passively receive this light. As Tim Staples argues,
As long as what is received is not infinite by nature or does not require infinite power to comprehend or to be able to act upon, it would not be beyond men’s or angels’ ability to receive.
Because the light that God gives the created intellect is created, it’s not infinite by nature, nor does it require infinite power to comprehend or act upon. Therefore, it’s not contrary to reason to say that God gives this “created light of glory” to a human or angelic intellect to know simultaneously a finite number of interior thoughts and respond to them.
A second way to meet the above challenge is to show the evidence that God in fact reveals his knowledge of the interior thoughts of men to created intellects.
The Old Testament story in Daniel 2 involving his interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is one example. If God can reveal knowledge of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to Daniel, then surely, he can reveal to the saints in heaven the interior prayer requests of Christians on earth.
Another example is the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. We’re told that after selling his property, Ananias, with his wife’s knowledge, gave only a part of the proceeds to the apostles, which prompted Peter’s response: “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land?” (v. 3).
Although Ananias’s sin of dishonesty had an external dimension (there were some proceeds that he held back), the sin itself wasn’t subject to normal observation. Knowledge of this evil would have to be obtained in a way that transcends human nature.
Peter receives this knowledge by way of infusion. But it’s not merely knowledge of the external act. It’s knowledge of the interior movements in Ananias’s heart: “How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”
Revelation 5:8 serves as another example. John sees “twenty-four elders,” along with the “four living creatures,” prostrating themselves “before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” If they are offering the prayers of the Christians on earth, then it’s reasonable to infer that they have knowledge of those prayers.
Even if these prayers aren’t interior prayers, but merely verbal prayers, the souls in heaven don’t have physical ears. So whatever knowledge of prayers God gives to the created intellects in heaven is knowledge of interior thoughts, which the verbal prayers express.
In light of the above examples, we can see that both the Old and the New Testaments affirm that God does in fact communicate his knowledge of the interior thoughts of men to created intellects—interior thoughts that also involve prayers.
The bottom line is that God’s knowledge of the interior thoughts of men is not the kind of knowledge that belongs to omniscience alone. It can be communicated to created intellects, and we have biblical evidence that God in fact does reveal this kind of knowledge to created intellects.
For more defenses of the Catholic Church’s take on the communion of saints, check out Karlo’s new book, The Saints Pray for You.