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Gavin Ortlund just dropped a spicy short claiming the Bible has nothing like Catholic relics—and Jimmy Akin is having none of it. In this episode, Jimmy dismantles the short point by point, exposes a major Trent misquote, reveals the rich biblical evidence for honoring the dead and seeking help through relics, and shows why cultural differences don’t equal error. Fast, sharp, and packed with Scripture and history you won’t hear elsewhere.
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
GAVIN ORTLUND: In holy scripture, there’s really nothing exactly like a contemporary Catholic practice of relics.
There’s not? Okay . . . Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going toPatreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast
Introduction
Four years ago, Gavin Ortlund released a video on his channel about relics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5vm_nSWnko), and I’ve watched the whole thing.
However, just yesterday—at the time I’m doing this video—he released a short that was an excerpt from the original, and that’s what I’m responding to today.
As you might expect, the short contains some of the spicier material from the long-form video, so the apologetic temperature is higher.
And Gavin apparently feels the same way he did before about this material, because he released it out of the blue after four years.
Now, one of the things about shorts is that they are new, self-contained works, and so it’s legitimate for the audience to interpret them as self-contained works.
You’re putting them out there to represent your views on a subject, you chose to represent your work the way the short does, and you know that the vast majority of the people who watch the short will never go back and watch the full video.
A few of them may, but the large majority of them won’t. So you have to make sure that the short accurately represents your views and that it stands on its own.
If you don’t—and the short misrepresents your views in some way—then that’s on you.
So today I’m going to be responding to Gavin’s short. In the future, I may do a video responding to his longer, original video, but today I’m going to be responding to the short.
So what does Gavin say in it?
GAVIN: In holy scripture, there’s really nothing exactly like a contemporary Catholic practice of relics.
The first thing to notice here is that Gavin says in Scripture there’s nothing exactly like the contemporary Catholic practice of relics.
Yeah, so what? The last book of Scripture was written 2,000 years ago, so none of the doctrinal and practical development the Holy Spirit had led the Church through in that time had happened.
Gavin himself would admit this. He’s a Baptist pastor, but he knows that in Scripture there was nothing exactly like a contemporary Baptist church service, either. If you look at a first century church service and some contemporary Baptist services, they’d be quite different. Starting with a long-shot around 25:42; lower third: “Lakepointe Southern Baptist Church (Dallas, TX)”; may need to crop video to keep lyrics off screen
Or—to be a bit more ecumenical—there was nothing exactly like the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed. Those didn’t come along until later, but that doesn’t mean they don’t reflect biblical realities.
So the fact that things today aren’t exactly like they were in Scripture is irrelevant. You’re not going to be able to build an argument against the Catholic understanding of relics on that basis.
But notice what the short implies, because Gavin has just spoken of the contemporary Catholic practice of relics.
GAVIN: Contemporary Catholic practice of relics.
So the short indicates that it’s talking about things today—not how things were back in the Middle Ages or something.
So what does Gavin have to say?
Relics and Healings
GAVIN: So the claim often is here that you’ve got Peter’s shadow healing people, you’ve got Paul’s handkerchiefs healing people, and you’ve got the body of Elisha in 2 Kings 13 when a man is falling into his tomb and touches him, he’s revived. And so people use passages like this to argue for relics.
Well, passages like that do come up in discussions of relics, because they show that God sometimes works miracles through relics.
They also come up in other discussions, including sacraments—because they show how God uses material things as channels of his grace, so they can illustrate a general sacramental principle.
But these passages don’t have a direct bearing on the idea of relics more broadly.
You can infer certain things from them—like the reasonableness of treating relics with respect. I mean, if God works a miracle through something, you don’t want to treat it like it’s trash.
But let’s get back to Gavin.
GAVIN: None of these things really are comparable to the Catholic view of what relics are and how we should treat them and the veneration of relics that’s commended at Trent.
Okay, so here we have a reference to the Council of Trent, which met in the mid-1500s in response to the Protestant Reformation.
Trent is often portrayed as a boogie-man by many in the Protestant community, but very few look up what it has to say, so let’s do that.
Here’s what Trent has to say about relics. The relevant part is in session 25, where the Council is discussing people who make various errors, and it says:
Council of Trent, Session 25
Also, that the holy bodies of holy martyrs, and of others now living with Christ, which were the living members of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Ghost [1 Cor. 3:16, 6:19], and which are by him to be raised unto eternal life, and to be glorified, are to be venerated by the faithful; through which [bodies] many benefits are bestowed by God on men; so that they who affirm that veneration and honor are not due to the relics of saints; or, that these, and other sacred monuments, are uselessly honored by the faithful; and that the places dedicated to the memories of the saints are vainly visited for the purpose of obtaining their aid; are wholly to be condemned, as the Church has already long since condemned, and doth now also condemn them.
That’s rather dense, so let’s go back and note what it says.
If you pull out the material that’s accurate from the errors some people make, the first thing Trent is affirming is that the bodies of the saints are to be venerated by the faithful.
The second is that through them many benefits are bestowed by God on men, so there’s the fact that God sometimes works miracles through relics.
The third is that veneration is due to the relics of the saints, so this extends the principle beyond the bodies themselves to things like smaller parts of bodies or things that a saint owned.
And the fourth is that these are not uselessly honored by the faithful, so there can be some kind of benefit—spiritual or physical—to showing them proper reverence.
We can put these points together as follows:
- Bodies of the saints are to be duly venerated by the faithful.
- God bestows benefits on men through relics.
- Relics of the saints are to be duly venerated by the faithful.
- Relics are not uselessly honored by the faithful.
The way Trent formulated its teaching against various errors, it articulated four points, but we can really articulate it as just two.
The first and the third points deal with different kinds of relics, with the first focusing on bodies and the second extending the principle to other kinds of relics, so we can combine those two and just say that relics are to be duly venerated by the faithful.
The fourth point says that relics are not uselessly honored by men, but that’s implied by the second point, so we can just say that God bestows benefits on men through relics.
So Trent is really just teaching two points: that we ought to give proper veneration to relics and that God sometimes gives benefits to us through them.
That’s it.
Now, back to Gavin.
Gavin’s Distinction
GAVIN: Peter and Paul being living apostles, being used by God in miraculous ways, is different—and there is some dispute about the shadow, does Luke actually say people were healed by it? But let’s leave that aside. That’s different from people collecting the bones of Peter and Paul or anyone else after they’re dead and thinking that there’s some kind of veneration owed to them or help we may obtain from them.
Okay, so Gavin distinguishes between the scriptural miracle passages like with Paul’s handkerchief and Elisha’s body and people thinking that some kind of veneration is owed to relics or that we may obtain help with them.
GAVIN: Some kind of veneration owed to them or help we may obtain from them
Notice—by the way—that these are the same two points that Trent teaches —veneration and help.
Well, there is a distinction between what happens in Bible verses and what Christians later think, but that distinction doesn’t tell us anything about whether the conclusions Christians draw from Bible passages are good or bad. They may draw good conclusions or bad conclusions.
You need something more than just a distinction if you want to argue that Catholics have drawn bad conclusions about relics.
You need an argument. So what does Gavin argue?
Gavin’s Argument
GAVIN: And pretty consistently throughout scripture we see the practice is simply burial. John the Baptist, what happens? They don’t collect his bones, he’s buried. Stephen, he’s buried. All throughout the Old Testament. Even the episode with Elisha there. It’s not as though this was a regular custom. It catches people by surprise. There’s a marauding group that comes in, so they throw the guy in there and then he’s revived. Now nobody, after this happens—it’s not like, you know, there was an ongoing practice of throwing people into the tomb of Elisha.. Nor after this happens does anyone say that we should exhume the bones of Elisha and elevate them and parade them and have people kiss them and bow down before them and you know honor them with candles and veneration and obtain help from them and that kind of thing. Such a practice is utterly alien to scripture. People just get buried.
So Gavin’s argument seems to be that—because Scripture depicts people being buried and because it doesn’t show a regular practice of venerating their remains or seeking miracles through them—that it’s somehow wrong for Christians to do these things.
But there are several problems with this argument.
We Can’t Do What Isn’t Shown?
First, the idea that just because Scripture doesn’t show something that it can’t be done by Christians is nonsense.
I often point out that Scripture doesn’t depict Christians having churches with bathrooms or air conditioning, but I’m sure Gavin wouldn’t have a problem with that.
For that matter, Scripture doesn’t depict Christians having churches at all—the original Christians usually met in houses—and it doesn’t depict them using musical instruments in worship. But I don’t imagine that Gavin has a problem with church buildings or instrumental worship.
So the test is not whether Scripture shows Christians doing something but whether it is reasonable to do something.
This is a point we’ll come back to.
Simply Buried?
Second, Gavin depicts the way that the departed were dealt with in Scripture as simply being buried.
GAVIN: Pretty consistently throughout scripture we see the practice is simply burial.
However, the situation is actually more complex than this, because there is more than one way of burying a person.
In ancient Israel, the most common method of burial was to simply put someone in a tomb, without any embalming.
In the ancient near east, embalming was something that Egyptians did, but not something Israelites did. We know that because Genesis has to explain how the body of the patriarch Jacob—that is, Israel himself—was embalmed.
Genesis 50:2-3 says:
Genesis 50:2-3
Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are required for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days.
And we know about this from Egyptology. What Genesis says here is correct. The full Egyptian embalming process—or mummification—took 70 days, and there was a break point in the middle, between 30 and 40 days.
So Egyptology confirms what Genesis says here.
Among the things this means is that Joseph had his father Israel mummified, and the same thing happened with Joseph himself.
Genesis 50:26 says:
Genesis 50:26
So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
So the patriarchs Jacob and Joseph both became mummies after their death, but this was not normally what happened among Israelites.
Instead, they buried you—without embalming of any sort—on the same day you died, because of how rapidly your body would decompose.
They also typically put people in tombs. Sometimes these tombs were natural caves, like where Abraham buried his wife Sarah. Genesis 23:19 says:
Genesis 23:19
Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah east of Mamre (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan.
Other times, tombs were artificially cut into the rock, like with Joseph of Arimathea. Matthew 27 says that when Jesus died,
Matthew 27:59-60
Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock.
However, sometimes your family couldn’t bury you in a tomb, in which case they might have to bury you in the ground. This happened with Jacob’s wife Rachel. Genesis 35 says that she was buried by the side of a road:
Genesis 35:19-20
So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem), and Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel’s tomb, which is there to this day.
So Rachel was buried by the roadside, and her grave was marked with a pillar—an ancient equivalent of a modern tombstone.
There were also other options, like cremation. This happened with Saul and his sons. 1 Samuel 31:12 says:
1 Samuel 31:12
All the valiant men arose and went all night and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan, and they came to Jabesh and burned them there.
This was a reverent act, because Saul’s men were collecting the bodies of the royal family after they had been killed in battle by the Philistines.
So we see that there isn’t just one mode of burial in the Bible. You could be embalmed—or not. You could be buried in a tomb—or not. You could be cremated—or not. There wasn’t just a single option.
The Bible does not try to specify a single way of handling the dead. There are multiple respectful ways of dealing with their remains, so it’s something different people—and thus different cultures—can handle differently.
Remember that point.
No Further Involvement?
Third, Gavin seems to think that, once people were buried, that this put an end to matters. People just get buried, and that’s an end to it.
GAVIN: People just get buried.
But it’s not true that the ancient Israelites just buried you and had no further interaction with the remains of the departed.
Scripture is explicit about this point in the case of the patriarch Joseph. In Genesis 50,
Genesis 50:24-25
Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.”
So the Israelites still had a duty to fulfill to Joseph, and they fulfilled it. Exodus 13:19 records:
Exodus 13:19
Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here.”
So—hundreds of years later, when the Exodus finally happened—the Israelites had further interaction with Joseph’s remains.
And later interaction wasn’t unique to Joseph. It was actually normal.
The ideal in ancient Israel was for you to be buried in your family tomb right after you died—as we covered—because they didn’t embalm people, and your body would start decomposing quickly.
And the fact it was a family tomb was important, because it meant that your family would come back to the place and remember you and all the other members of your family who had passed.
Now, in the Iron Age, when they buried you, they’d lay you on a bench. Later, they’d lay you on a shelf-like niche that had been cut into the wall of the tomb.
But they didn’t just leave you alone, as Gavin supposes. The InterVarsity Press Dictionary of New Testament Background states:
Dictionary of New Testament Background, “Burial Practices, Jewish”
Jewish burial rituals did not conclude with this first, or primary, burial. A year after the death, members of the immediate family returned to the tomb for a private ceremony in which the bones were reburied after the body had decayed.
What your family would do is come back a year later—after your flesh had rotted off your bones.
They’d clean your bones and then put them in a permanent storage place—like a stone box known as an Ossuary or Box for Containing Bones.
You may remember back in 2002, when there was a big hullabaloo about the discovery of the so-called James ossuary—which supposedly held the bones of Jesus’ brother James—though there is doubt about whether the inscription on it has been altered.
In any event, the practice of coming back after a year and re-interring your bones is known as Secondary Burial, and it was the normal practice in ancient Judah.
In between a person’s primary and secondary burials, there was also a year-long mourning period that was divided up into different sections, with different obligations on the family members that applied at different times.
So it wasn’t as simple as plunk you in the ground and forget you.
Your family had ongoing obligations and involvement with you.
Veneration?
Fourth, not only was there ongoing involvement with the body of the departed, there was also ongoing veneration—or honor—that was showed to the departed.
And it’s important to remember that terms like venerate, honor, and reverence all mean the same thing. VENERATE; lower third: “Cambridge Dictionary” If you venerate someone, then you honor that person or revere them.
One way this was showed in ancient Israel was by processing with the body to its resting place. The Dictionary of New Testament Background states:
Dictionary of New Testament Background, “Burial Practices, Jewish”
The corpse was then placed on a bier and carried in a procession to the family tomb (Lk 7:12). Eulogies were spoken, and the corpse was placed inside the tomb, along with items of jewelry or other personal effects. The funeral was thus conducted without delay, and most bodies were interred by sunset on the day of death.
The service at the grave site—with the eulogies that were spoken—were also ways of honoring the dead.
And sometimes we see extraordinary acts of honor for the dead in getting them to their place of rest, as with Joseph.
The fact that the Israelites took his bones out of Egypt—hundreds of years after he died—was an act of honor or veneration toward him.
They didn’t do that for just everybody, but they did do it for Joseph.
And it wasn’t just Joseph that was honored.
Jacob setting up a pillar over Rachael’s grave—lest it be forgotten—was an act of honor or veneration for her.
The very act of burying a person in a family tomb—whether people would come back and remember you and other family members—was such an act.
There’s also the fact that—when they buried you—they wrapped your body with spices.
In fact, the word in Hebrew for embalming—like the Egyptians did for Israel and Joseph—comes from a root that means to spice or make spicy.
But—even though they didn’t have embalming per se—the Israelites would do things to try to make your body smell nice after burial. The Dictionary of New Testament Background states:
Dictionary of New Testament Background, “Burial Practices, Jewish”
Jews of the NT period buried their dead promptly, as soon as possible after death and almost always on the same day. Preparations began at the moment of death: the eyes of the deceased were closed, the corpse was washed with perfumes and ointments.
Now, that washing with perfumes and ointments wasn’t for the benefit of the mourners. After all, they were going to bury you the same day, so your body wouldn’t be smelly yet.
The spices and perfumes were meant for your benefit. They fall into the same category that archaeologists refer to as Grave Goods, or things meant that are literally or symbolically for the enjoyment of the departed in the afterlife.
That’s why Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus with such an enormous quantity of spices. John 19 states:
John 19:39-40
Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.
Seventy-five pounds of spices is clearly not for the benefit of the living. It’s grave goods meant for the enjoyment of the departed in the afterlife, and—although most people probably didn’t have that much buried with them, this was the burial custom of the Jews.
So much so that—since the women apparently didn’t get the word that this had already been done for Jesus—Mark 16:1 tells us that:
Mark 16:1
When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.
The use of grave goods like burial spices thus reveals the reverence or devotion that Jewish people had toward their dead.
Then there was the period of mourning, and this also is a way of honoring the dead. That’s something that really came home to me the first time I suffered a major loss, which was when my wife died at the age of 28.
I realized that by mourning—by allowing myself to grieve for Renee—I was showing how much she meant to me. It was a testament of love for her and a way of honoring her, and that helped comfort me in my sadness.
Mourning as a way of honoring someone also happens when the mourning is ritualized, as it was with the ancient Jews.
For the first 7 days after a loved one died, you didn’t leave the house at all except to go to the grave. Then—for the first 30 days—you didn’t go to festive social gatherings or take out of town trips. And if the person you lost was a parent, you remained in mourning for a full year.
All of that testifies to the importance of the person you have lost and thus honors them.
There also were other ways Jews ritualized their mourning and honored the dead. Thus in 2 Samuel 1:11-12 we read:
2 Samuel 1:11-12
David took hold of his clothes and tore them and so did all the men who were with him. And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son and for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword.
So the ancient Israelites did things like tearing their clothes, weeping, and fasting as ways of mourning those they had lost.
They also had professional mourners come to lament the passing of the departed and to honor the person by testifying to the impact of their loss. As Jeremiah 9:17 says,
Jeremiah 9:17
Consider, and call for the mourning women to come;
send for the skillful women to come.
These professional mourners were accompanied by musicians—like flute players—who came to assist in the mourning. As Matthew 9:23 records about the death of Jairus’s daughter:
Matthew 9:23
Jesus came to the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion.
Getting professional mourners and musicians to come and help you lament the loss of your loved ones was a way of testifying to the value of your loved ones and what a tragedy their loss was, so it was a way of honoring them.
And all that was just at the person’s primary burial.
Your secondary burial—where they came back after a year and cleaned your bones—was most definitely an act of reverence or veneration toward you.
You don’t clean all the ick off someone’s bones unless you really care for them.
I mean, would you want to clean the ick off someone’s bones after their flesh has rotted for a year?
It probably wouldn’t be your favorite chore to perform—especially when the person whose bones you are cleaning is a close relative—so it shows how much you valued that person and thus honors them.
We thus see ample indication of how the Israelites honored their dead, and it didn’t stop with the secondary burial.
Like we mentioned, the whole reason for family tombs was so that people could come back—years after the people inside had died—and remember and thus honor them.
One particular way of honoring the departed in ancient Israel was by giving food to them. This was an extension of the custom of including grave goods when they were buried.
This custom was so normal in ancient Israel that it’s mentioned in the book of Deuteronomy, which contains special laws for how the Israelites were to tithe.
There were certain things that they were and were not supposed to do with the tithes they offered, and these included regulations connected with burial customs.
Deuteronomy 26:14 states that, when you brought the tithe of the third year, you were supposed to declare:
Deuteronomy 26:14
I have not eaten any of the tithe while in mourning; I have not brought any of it while unclean; I have not offered any of it to the dead.
This forbids using this tithe in three ways: First, the Israelites weren’t supposed to eat any of the tithe while mourning—that is, mourning for the dead; second, they weren’t supposed to bring any of it while unclean—contact with the dead being something that caused ritual uncleanliness; and third, they weren’t supposed to offer any of this tithe to the dead.
Notice that this doesn’t prohibit giving food to the dead. It prohibits using the tithe of the third year for that purpose. You can’t infer that food is not to be offered to the dead from this passage any more than you can infer that you must not eat while you are in mourning or that you can’t touch food while you are unclean.
You obviously can touch food while unclean and eat while you are mourning. The text presupposes those common practices, and so it also presupposes giving food to the dead. It just that you’re not supposed to do that with the tithe of the third year.
As the Jewish Publication Society’s Torah Commentary on Deuteronomy says:
JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy 26:14
This practice was widespread in the ancient world, and it is also attested among some Jews in Second Temple times and later, as in Tobit 4:17: “Pour out your bread and wine on the tomb of the just and give not to sinners.” In some graves excavated at Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, holes were found in the floors, similar to holes found in tombs at Ugarit, which served as receptacles for food and drink offerings to the dead. The Torah does not forbid this practice, but because contact with the dead is ritually defiling, it prohibits the use of the tithe for it.
So both earlier in Israel’s history—when Deuteronomy was written—and later, in the Second Temple era—when Tobit was written—giving food to the dead was normal. You just didn’t do it with the tithe.
We thus see abundant evidence that, contrary to what Gavin said, the Israelites did honor or venerate the dead—and on an ongoing basis.
They’d go to the tombs of their ancestors—where their ancestors relics were—and show honor or devotion to them.
There thus is a biblical basis for the first thing Trent taught about relics.
Help from the Dead?
But what about the second? Do we have any evidence for the ancient Israelites seeking help from the dead?
Actually, we do.
In the ancient Near East, it was a widespread belief that there was a reciprocity between the living and the dead. The living respected and cared for the dead—such as by giving them food—and the dead were expected to help the living.
We have evidence of that belief being shared in Israel as well. We’ve already seen that the ancient Israelites gave food to the dead, so they were holding up their end of the bargain. And the evidence indicates that they expected the dead to hold up their end as well.
If you’d like to read more about that, you can consult Elizabeth Bloch-Smith’s book Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs About the Dead.
We thus see the ancient Israelites participating in what in Christian times came to be called the Communion of the Saints, which we confess every time we say the Apostles’ Creed.
Of course, the ancient Israelites didn’t understand this communion as precisely as we do. The Holy Spirit has given more revelation and guidance since their time, and—after all that doctrinal development—we today understand that the saints can only help us through their prayers.
Or—at least—we can only assert with confidence that it’s through their prayers that they help us.
We’re not told the limits of what God has them do, so I’ll leave that matter to God.
The ancient Israelites also certainly knew about miracles being performed through the bones of Elisha.
Gavin says that was just a one-time thing and people didn’t keep bringing people into contact with them—
GAVIN: It’s not like, you know, there was an ongoing practice of throwing people into the tomb of Elisha.
But we actually don’t know that. As other scholars have said about working with a text, “What you can’t show, you don’t know.”
And the truth is that we have no idea what use may have been made of Elisha’s bones after this event happened.
Once one miracle has been worked through the bones, it would be entirely natural for people—especially desperately sick people in danger of dying—to try to touch them again in hopes of healing.
Just like people sought to touch Peter’s shadow in Acts 5:15-16 to be healed or—more to the point—like the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5:28 says about Jesus:
Mark 5:28
“If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.”
Or like the people we read about in Mark 6:56:
Mark 6:56
Wherever [Jesus] came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well.
So we can see that this was a regular impulse in ancient Israel, and—once Elisha’s bones revealed God’s miraculous power working through them—it would be entirely natural for people to seek to touch them to be healed.
Even if you set the case of Elisha’s bones aside, we still have multiple instances of people in the New Testament seeking healing through class two relics like the clothing of a holy person, including Jesus himself.
So there’s also a biblical basis for the Council of Trent’s second teaching on relics.
Conclusion
So let’s put the pieces together. In the first place, there are biblical basis for both of Trent’s teachings regarding relics—that we can show honor or veneration to the deceased by the way we treat their remains and that we can seek their help in connection with relics.
However, that’s just icing on the cake, because we don’t need such a basis to justify these practices.
The test for Christians is not a restrictive one that requires every practice to be explicitly commanded in Scripture.
Otherwise, churches would have to give up bathrooms, air conditioning, musical instruments, and even church buildings themselves.
The test is whether a practice is reasonable, and both of these principles are reasonable.
Even in our own culture, we show respect or honor for the dead with funeral customs like:
- Embalming—which arrests the decay of the body and keeps bodies from smelling, the way Israel’s spices and perfumes did
- Processions—which we do with cars with their headlights turned on and a special car known as a hearse to carry the body, instead of carrying the body on a bier with a train of people behind it
- Family Plots & Mausoleums—instead of family tombs
- Grave Markers—like tombstones instead of things like the pillar that Jacob set up
In fact, Gavin himself acknowledges that we honor the bodies of the dead.
GAVIN: We honor their bodies and hope of the glorification of the body at the final resurrection.
So, yay! We’ve got agreement on the fact that honoring or venerating the saints through their bodies is a good thing.
In other words, Trent was correct on its first teaching regarding relics.
Only . . . Gavin’s going to try to avoid that conclusion. He says . . .
GAVIN: But we don’t dig out and utilize their bones or other physical objects related to them. That’s just not what we see in the Bible. And those kinds of the kinds of examples with Peter’s shadow and the handkerchiefs of Paul And the bones of Elisha just really are so different from a Catholic understanding of relics.
Except . . . we do see this kind of thing in the Bible, and they’re not different—not different in kind.
For example, there is no objective difference between the honor Gavin acknowledges we should show to the saintly departed and the veneration Catholics and other historic Christians give them.
A common move on the part of Protestant apologists when this fact is pointed out is to switch from talking about principles to specifics, like what posture your body is in or what actions you take with it.
I think the reason for this is that they know they can’t argue based on principles, so they hope that citing particular specifics that aren’t part of their culture will cause their audience to say, “Oh! Well, of course that’s wrong!”
And—especially in this context—all they’re able to cite are things based on cultural differences rather than differences in principle.
Like when Gavin says:
GAVIN: Nor after this happens does anyone say that we should exhume the bones of Elisha and elevate them and parade them and have people kiss them and bow down before them and you know honor them with candles.
As if specific bodily actions like processions, kisses, bows, and candles made any difference.
They’re all just different ways of using the body to show honor or respect.
They’re not even that different from things that are done in Gavin’s American Protestant culture, which already has embalming, funeral processions, family plots and tombs, and grave markers.
These are just equivalent behaviors in another culture.
And that’s really the problem here. What Gavin’s lacking is a sense of how things are done in other cultures—outside the common American Protestant Culture he’s part of.
He just doesn’t seem to have a sense of the sweep of how things are done by people in other groups, and—if you don’t have that—it’s easy to judge other cultures by imposing your own ideas on them and judging them by how things are done in your tribe.
This is a known human problem. If you read the writings of the ancients—from the Egyptians to the Israelites to the Greeks—they all look down on other peoples because their customs are different from theirs.
This includes the practices connected with how to honor the dead. Take the example of what happened with Israelite secondary burial, when they cleaned all the ick off your bones.
I mean—would you want to do to that? Suppose they were the bones of your mother, your father, your wife, or your husband. Would you want to take the bones of your mother, father, wife, or husband and pick off all the remaining bits of flesh and decay from them—knowing that these were the bones of someone who was that close to you in life, and it was bits of their flesh you were picking off?
Probably not. In fact, if you’re a typical American, you’d probably be disgusted and revolted at the thought. If you didn’t know that it was standard in the time of Jesus, you’d likely declare that kind of funeral practice to be just plain immoral—to be crossing the line.
And I get that. I’m an American, too. But I also make a point of understanding other cultures and not judging them for having different customs than ours.
Let’s take kissing the relics of a saint as an example. People don’t really do that today, because relics are housed in containers known as reliquaries, so you don’t actually come into physical contact with the relic itself. But—even though it’s by no means a standard practice—someone might conceivably choose to kiss a reliquary, yet Gavin treated that as if it was clearly crossing a line.
GAVIN: Elevate them and parade them and have people kiss them.
Except . . . this is just a cultural difference. I mean, we kiss people in this life, don’t we?
In numerous passages, St. Paul told the early Christians to
Romans 16:16
Greet one another with a holy kiss.
. . . as a sign of love and respect.
And after they’re gone, we treat the departed’s bodies with love and respect.
So how is it suddenly wrong to kiss a relic?
I mean, if it was just a year after my wife Renee died—and I was still deep in grief for her—if someone gave me one of her bones—a clean one—I can imagine kissing it.
I know that I kissed her face as she was laying on the hospital bed after she died.
And if you can’t imagine doing that . . . then the kindest thing I can say is that you have a limited imagination.
But the limitations of your imagination don’t determine doctrine.
Now, this is not to say that there are no limits to what it would be appropriate to do in showing reverence with relic.
There is such a thing as attributing too much significance to a holy thing, and—in theological vocabulary—that is referred to as superstition.
So there are superstitious things one can do, but superstition is shown in the attitude of the heart, not in the actions of the body.
Like if you thought a saint’s relic would magically cure your illness—whether or not it was God’s will for you to be healed.
That would be superstition, and since superstition is believing too much about something, the superstition resides in your beliefs about the relic—not in any particular bodily action, whether it’s kissing or bowing or whatever else.
As always, it’s the heart that matters.
How the body expresses our beliefs is a matter of culture, and here it’s important that we don’t look down on others because their customs are different than ours.
That was one of St. Paul’s recurring themes—particularly in Romans and Galatians—where he didn’t want Jews looking down on Gentiles—or one group of Christians looking down on another—because their customs were different.
It didn’t matter if Gentiles were ritually unclean by Jewish standards. That’s something he discussed in Galatians 2.
It didn’t matter if some people thought they could only eat certain foods. That’s something he discussed in Romans 14.
It didn’t even matter if that food had been offered to idols. That’s something he discussed in 1 Corinthians 8.
None of these customs—which were based on culture—mattered, because none of them contradicted the law of Christ.
What mattered was that the people were Christians, and Paul warned in Galatians 2:4 about
Galatians 2:4
Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus . . .
Anything that doesn’t contradict the law of Christ is a matter of Christian liberty.
It doesn’t matter if it’s your custom or not. It’s a matter of Christian liberty, and you should not be looking down on fellow Christians whose customs are different than yours.
Of course, this particular discussion is complicated by the history of the Protestant Reformation.
And I have no problem acknowledging that—as part of this history—there were people who had superstitious beliefs regarding relics at the time of the Reformation.
That’s something that’s important to Gavin because—in his longer, original video; not the short—he says:
GAVIN: A part of my concern is and where I could more easily consider becoming Catholic if Trent had genuinely incorporated and received Protestant criticisms rather than what looks to me like kind of doubling down on a lot of issues. And when it comes to these, I mean it advocates veneration. There’s basically no warnings about superstition. There’s no I don’t see anything in session 25 of Trent where it’s saying, okay, yeah, the Protestants have a point about this or that, or here’s the problems with relics. There’s really nothing like that. In session 26, when it gets to images and icons, there is, you still have bowing, it commends bowing down and kissing the images. You do have a warning, there is a reference to the danger of superstition there. So there’s at least a category.
Okay, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no session 26 in Trent. It ends with session 25, and the passage Gavin is thinking of dealing with images and icons of saints is actually in session 25. It’s part of the same decree that deals with relics.
More fundamentally, though, Gavin is simply wrong about there being no cautions about relics. In fact, there is specifically what he says he wants—a warning about superstition. Session 25 says:
Council of Trent, Session 25
Moreover, in the invocation of saints, the veneration of relics, and the sacred use of images, every superstition shall be removed, all filthy lucre be abolished, finally, all lasciviousness be avoided.
Got that?
Council of Trent, Session 25
Moreover, in . . . the veneration of relics . . . every superstition shall be removed, all filthy lucre be abolished, finally, all lasciviousness be avoided.
So Gavin, you got what you wanted! Maybe next time—before you criticize somebody else in public—you might want to check the documents you’re criticizing.
And—just as Trent had no problem acknowledging that there can be superstition connected with relics, I have no problem with it, either.
But superstition is a defect at one end of a spectrum. Superstition is Believing too much about something, while Impiety is Believing too little. Both believing too much and believing too little are equally vices, and here Gavin—and many in the Protestant community—are in danger of impiety.
I’m not accusing them of that outright, because I can’t know their hearts, but what I can and do know is their outward behavior, and their outward behavior involves looking down on other Christians and judging them for having different customs in how they show their reverence to the departed.
If you don’t have relics in your church and that’s not how you show veneration in your culture, that’s fine.
But don’t allow anti-Catholic prejudices from the time of the Reformation to cloud your judgment and cause you to look down on historic Christians like Catholics for how they show their reverence.
We can all agree that superstition is bad, but so is impiety, and the truth is that showing veneration or honor to our departed brothers and sisters in Christ is not only not contrary to the law of Christ, it’s positively a good thing.
However you show that honor in your particular part of Christian culture.
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VIDEO SOURCES:
Gavin’s recent short:https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8lOvedHT7DA
Gavin’s original video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5vm_nSWnko