Protestants sometimes object that we shouldn’t (or at least don’t need to) ask the Saints and angels for their prayers, since we can go directly to God. After all, they argue, the Temple veil that once impeded our access to God is now torn… right? That argument, which is also used against the Catholic priesthood, misinterprets this critical moment in the New Testament (and ignores the quite different way that the Epistle to the Hebrews interprets the same event). So what does it mean to say that the veil is now torn?

Transcription:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. As promised, this week I want to look at the idea of the temple veil. Because many times Protestants will say, why do you Catholics pray to Mary, the saints, angels? Don’t you know you can go directly to God? After all, the temple veil was torn. Or they’ll say, why do you Catholics confess your sins to a priest? Don’t you know you can go directly to God? You know, you have the temple veil in the Old Testament, but then when Jesus dies on the cross, the veil is torn.

You can go directly to God now. Now, I was asked this recently and I quoted from this message last week, but I had permission to do so. I’m going to do it again this week because the person who asked me had part of a broader question which we looked at last week. But one of the questions that the person asked was about intercession with the saints. And here’s how he put it. He said, I don’t know if theologically I have an issue. I see the points Catholics make.

But Jesus has connected us to the Father. Why add another layer between us when he literally tore the veil and gave us access to the Holy of Holies? Now, I gotta say as a Catholic, I’m gonna do my best to understand what the Protestant argument is here, but that it’s overwhelmingly presented in that way. Hey, why do you hold this position when this thing happened, the veil was torn? Implied there is some kind of argument that the veil being torn means…

something for the topic at hand. But rarely does someone really spell out, well, what do you think the theological implications of the torn veil are? So by all means, Protestants watching this, if you think I’m doing a bad job of representing it, let me know. I will show you what I’m hearing and then respond to those things. And I’m going to start by showing how these claims are often kind of vague. Here’s a good example of this sort of thing you’ll see.So that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. He says forced celibacy is bad. By the way, we don’t need priests at all because the veil is torn. As if that is a standalone argument that’s just self -explanatory and it says too much to discuss, it moves on to the next topic. So I mentioned this at the outset to say I’m not seeing a lot of Protestants carefully articulating an actual logical step -by -step sort of argument for how they’re getting from torn veil.

to no saints, no Mary, no intercession, no priesthood. It seems to be more assumed that those are the implications of the torn veil. And I think that matters because when you actually dig into it, that’s completely wrong. The torn veil does not mean that’s the end of the priesthood in terms of priestly intercession, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s the end of intercessory prayer. Now, we can talk about what it does mean, but I want to first get what it doesn’t. So I’m going to look at major ways…

popular Protestant interpretations tend to get this wrong, and then say, okay, well, if those are the wrong way, what’s the right way to interpret it? Let’s start with getting the priesthood wrong. This is a classic example from a popular Protestant by the name of John MacArthur.

So before I respond to his position, let’s just take a minute and try to understand what his position is. Because if you paid close attention, he actually made three different claims on the status of Christian priests. And on the surface, these claims are contradictory. And in the midst of them, he just throws out that the veil is torn. And this somehow is proving these apparently contradictory positions. Now, what do I mean? You pay close attention to what he says. He starts by saying,

we don’t need any priests. So the first position is there are no Christian priests. The second position is there is one, the great high priest, Jesus Christ. The third position is actually all of us are priests. You’re a priest and I’m a priest. So he appears to be arguing that there are no Christian priests, that there’s one Christian priest, Jesus, and that we’re all Christian priests. Now, at the outset, the reason I point this out,

is to say he’s not even trying to harmonize how these things could all be true. Now, maybe if you put the right nuances on it, you could hold some version of all of those positions and say, well, there’s no priest of this type, but we’re all priests of that type and Jesus is a priest of this type. But I mentioned these apparent contradictions at the outset, both to say the Protestants making this argument usually are not doing the actual intellectual work of showing how the torn veil supports any of those three positions.

But second, if you don’t have a clear vision of what the priesthood is in your own theology, it makes it really hard to argue against the Catholic vision because your own vision of priesthood is so muddled. And so you’ll find Protestants who say, well, it’s actually blasphemous, it’s wrong to claim any human person that isn’t Jesus Christ is a priest. So Catholic priesthood, this is a scandal, this is undoing the great work of Christ. And then in the next breath,

They’ll talk about how all of us are priests. Well, if it’s blasphemous and wrong, if this is a degradation of the unique act of Jesus on the cross, then how can you also say that all of us are degrading Jesus’ act on the cross? So I point this out just to say, if you’re a Catholic, pay careful attention to, well, what does this Protestant person think about the priesthood? Do they think there’s one priest, no priest, everybody’s a priest?

And second, if you’re a Protestant, maybe consider whether your arguments are internally coherent, because I don’t think MacArthur’s arguments really work together. And at the very least, many of the arguments that the Catholic priesthood is somehow offensive to the priesthood of Christ, those, if you took them seriously, would be arguments against the idea of us being a kingdom of priests, which is clearly biblical. So to be really clear here, as Catholics, we want to affirm that yes, we have a great high priest, Jesus Christ.

And yes, all of us, by incorporation into Christ and our baptism, share in his threefold office of priest, prophet, king. Remember, the word Christian means anointed, the word Christ means anointed. So we’re little Christ, as it were. We share in the anointed office of Christ. In the threefold anointed office in the Old Testament, the three groups of people you see getting anointed chiefly are priests, prophets, and kings. And so we understand that

Christ is all of those things and that we share in some mysterious way in that threefold office of Christ. Every one of us does. From the ordinary lay person on the street to the Pope in Rome, everybody in between. So I want to say that at the outset. But we also believe that some, but not all, are called to serve as Catholic priests in a unique capacity. They’re called to a different kind of priesthood. Priesthood in the order of Melchizedek.

Melchizedek, you’ll remember in the Old Testament, offers bread and wine, which is a prefigurement of the Mass. And Jesus is described as being a priest in the order of Melchizedek, and he calls not all of his followers. As we’re going to see, he calls the Twelve, he calls the Apostles, he calls the chosen top -down, if you will, clerical leadership, and he tells them to offer the Eucharist. The do this and do this in remembrance of me isn’t to you and me, it’s to the clergy.

And so that’s why we believe that some priests share in this in a way that not all the baptized do. There’s also good evidence of this even in the Old Testament. So remember, MacArthur’s position would seem to logically say, okay, you could say there are no priests or that everybody’s a priest or that just Jesus is a priest. The only position he hasn’t staked out is the one I just described, that some Christians, but not all, are called to be priests. And the thing that’s radical about that is scripture clearly says that. Go to the last chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah 66, God foretells that he’s going to come and gather the nations and that they’ll offer true worship. And he even talks about how they’re going to be bringing an offering to the Lord. That’s a sacrifice. Now, as we’re going to see, that’s really important because this involves the language of worship and the temple.

And this was something Gentiles couldn’t do before. They couldn’t make these offerings in the Holy of Holies. And then, so they’re coming to the Holy Mountain of Jerusalem. In Isaiah 66 verse 20, God says, and some of them, not one of them, not none of them, not all of them, some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites, says the Lord. So in the new covenant, when God comes and gathers his people together, which he’s done,

Jesus came into history, spoiler alert, he gathers the people together, he brings the Gentiles into the people of God, and he chooses some of these believers, not all of them, not none of them, some of them, to serve as priests. And the fulfillment of the Levites, who were the assistants to the priests, is the diaconate. And this is how Christians understood this from extremely early on. We find in the year 96, Pope Clement, in a letter called First Clement, comparing

the orders of bishop, presbyter, what would be now called priest, deacon, and layman to the Old Testament structure of high priest, priest, Levite, layman. So this is not some crazy reading of Isaiah 66, it’s just God saying he’s going to gather the nations together and he literally does that. So that points to there being an actual priesthood. John MacArthur’s position

Somehow is that the temple veil is contrary to that, but the temple veil being torn isn’t contrary to everybody being a priest, and it’s not contrary to nobody being a priest. But there’s no work being done there. See, that’s what I mean by having a very, it’s a weak vision of the priesthood. And so there’s no coherent way you’re getting from a torn temple veil to saying everybody or nobody can be a priest, but we can’t have some people. Okay, so that’s the first way Protestants in the popular interpretation get this wrong. The second thing they tend to get wrong is intercession. Here’s a clip to show what I mean.

So that was a very confusing description of Catholic theology. The idea that we’re praying to priests and if we have like a big thing we pray to a monsignor, I don’t actually know what he’s talking about. That doesn’t resemble anything I’ve ever seen any Catholic do and I’ve been Catholic my entire life. Nevertheless, he seems to be making five claims. Number one, Jesus is our only intercessor. Number two, Catholics think that you’re not able to pray directly to God.

you have to have the intercession of a priest. Even though he words it as like we’re praying to the priest, he might mean we have to like ask the priest to pray for us. Like we can’t pray the Our Father, Ourself. The priest has to pray it for us or something. The third claim, this somehow explains why Catholics pray to Mary. Now, before he’s talking about priests and monsignors and cardinals and the pope, it’s like, okay, he’s making some kind of argument. I don’t know what, but some kind of argument against the priesthood, against the clergy.

But then he starts talking about praying to Mary and it’s like, well, Mary’s not a priest. She’s not like the super pope. So what is he talking about here? Like is the argument that Catholics go to clergy to pray for them? And so they don’t pray or they pray, but they only pray to saints in heaven and Mary. Or that we only pray to Mary if we have a lot of money and influence. I mean, I’d love to see him explain all the little old ladies in the pews with the rosaries out like, they must be so rich. They must be so powerful.

the pope gave them special permission to pray to Mary. I have no idea what this claim is, but this is the kind of stuff as a Catholic you hear Protestants claiming about Catholicism and it’s like well just stop and try to think about the words you’re saying. Does this make any sense? And it doesn’t seem to me that it does. But that’s his third apparent claim. Fourth, he says Christians do not go through man to reach God. He makes it very clear. Like you just do not do that.

In fifth, under the old covenant, that was the only way. You had to go through a man to reach God. You couldn’t just pray directly to God. So you needed intercession. Now, I wanted to say at the outset, literally all five of those are wrong. It’s not true that Jesus is our only intercessor. It’s not true the Catholics can’t pray directly to God. Every time you’ve prayed the Our Father, you’ve prayed directly to God.

It’s not true that this is why we go to Mary, because we think we can’t go to God directly. Like even in the Rosary, you have an Our Father next to a Hail Mary. It’s clearly not an either or situation from the Catholic side of things. Number four, the idea that Christians can’t go through man to reach God would have been total news to the readers of the New Testament. The paralyzed man who’s brought by his friends to Jesus. Did Jesus say, hey, you can’t go through a man to reach me? Totally.

nonsensical, totally theologically unsound, leaving aside the fact that Jesus is himself a man as well as God, there are all sorts of cases where people go to men, like the apostles, to reach God. In all sorts of ways, including like hearing the gospel in the first place. But also, as we’re going to see, in terms of intercession. And then it’s also, as we’re going to see, not true that in the Old Covenant you had to go to a priest to get to God. That we find people praying directly to God.

without an intercessor in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. So none of those five claims are true, but you’ll hear variations of those five things regularly said. Now I’m unpacking a little bit more on how in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament people pray directly to God when we look at getting prayer wrong. But right now I want to focus just on the intercessory claims. The idea that Jesus is our only intercessor, we’re not allowed to go through any other man, and that in the Old Testament,

you had to go through an intercessor. None of that is true. That’s claims one, four, and five, if you’re keeping track of his five claims. And I think it would suffice to say one of the passages that regularly gets mis -cited here, taken totally out of context, is the first half of a sentence. It’s 1 Timothy chapter two, verse five. And it says, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. And Protestants who lean on this verse,

tend to stop at verse 5, even though it’s half of a sentence. And why do they do that? Because if you read verse 6, then you realize this is not an argument against intercessory prayer whatsoever. That this is talking about how Jesus is our one mediator because he gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony to which was born at the proper time. That in calling Jesus our one mediator, he’s the bridge between God and man in the sense that he dies on the cross pays for our sins and nobody claims somebody else did that. Like there’s no Catholic who’s saying, you know what, I gotta go to the Monsignor because he died on the cross for my sins. No, that’s not a position. Like if that’s what you think Catholics believe in, that’s just not Catholic theology at all. Like when we go to those people with us on earth or we go to the saints in heaven and we ask for their prayers, it’s not because we think they died on the cross.

Jesus is the sole mediator, he’s the one mediator in the sense that Paul is talking about in 1 Timothy chapter 2 verses 5 and 6. What Timothy is, well, excuse me, what Paul is not talking about is that Jesus is our only intercessor. How do we know that? By actually reading 1 Timothy chapter 2. Because verse 5 and 6, that’s the third sentence of the chapter. The first sentence begins this way. First of all then,

I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way.” So literally, if you just read two sentences before, you’d realize that we are called to intercession, not that we’re prohibited from intercession. Like, we absolutely should be a people of intercession. And so that’s one of the reasons why.

Like in a Christian context, if everyone around you is a Christian, you don’t say, well, I’m not allowed to pray or intercede for anybody because they’re all Christians and they have to go directly to God. Nonsense. That is nowhere written in the Bible. Old or New Testament. The exact opposite is written that you’re to make prayer and intercession for them. And Paul is very clear that this is good and it is acceptable in the sight of God. What is? Us interceding and praying for one another.

That is literally the two sentences prior to the one taken out of context to argue this totally false vision that we’re not allowed to have intercession.

So then, what about getting prayer wrong? I said I was going to get to that, and I intend to do so. This, I want to, instead of using a clip, there’s actually a book that I think does the clearest job of presenting an argument I’ve heard elsewhere. And the book is called Hebrew Foundations of the Christian Faith. And I’m not claiming it’s any great, well -respected book. I don’t mean that to knock the book. I just mean…

I’m not citing to it because everybody loves this book or something like that. I’m citing to it because I’ve heard variations of this argument before and think this clearly presents a sort of vision. Because it’s not just, well, the temple veil’s torn, therefore I’m right. He’s explaining why he thinks the temple veil being torn means that he’s right. So this is David Hampshire and here’s what he says. As a result of Jesus’s death, for those who wish to know and draw near to God, this is now possible.

When one of the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus replied, when you pray, say, our Father in heaven hallowed be your name. Luke 11, verse 1. For his disciples, to give ordinary people being able to pray directly to God would have been unusual. Hence the question. Following the tearing of the temple veil, enabling access for all who wish to draw near to God, the sacrifice of himself, a type of veil, Hebrews 10, 20.

is the only way that we can approach God. Okay, so there’s a couple things that I appreciate about this. First, he’s actually trying to make an argument. He’s looking at scripture and then trying to show how that means what he believes about the temple of El. So I appreciate that he’s making an argument. I appreciate that he’s trying to incorporate scripture. The trouble is the two verses that he cites actually contradict the claims that he’s making. Hebrews 10 .20 doesn’t interpret.

that Jesus had sacrificed to say this is the only way we’re allowed to go to God. And Luke 11 verse 1 doesn’t say it was unusual for people to be praying to God. So Hamshard is making two apparent claims, and again these are ones that I’ve seen lots of other people seemingly making, but often not spelling out quite this clearly. And the first claim is, you know, before the temple veil was torn, ordinary people just didn’t pray directly to God. It’d be super weird to see a regular guy praying.

You’d be like, what? You can’t do that. You have to be a priest or a monsignor or something to do that. That’s kind of the idea. That was what Judaism must have looked like. And the people making this claim never think to like, ask, well, Jews today, when they don’t have a temple, do they pray directly to God? Why? What’s going on there? Like, there’s not even that level of, huh, I’ve been making this claim about the old covenant. Does this match up with what we see about people praying in the old covenant? There’s none of that, but this is a popular…

Many Protestants seemed to think you had to go through a priest to pray in the Old Covenant. The second apparent claim, the torn temple veil, means that because of Jesus’ death on the cross, we can now draw close to God in prayer. Okay, now as you may suspect, I disagree with both of these and in fact think both of these are demonstrably false. So how does this get prayer wrong? Well, a few ways. Let’s start with the fact that Luke 11 verse 1 contradicts this whole vision. Which again, remember this is one of the two verses that he’s trying to point to. Jesus is praying in a certain place and when he’s done praying one of the disciples says to him, Lord teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. Now did John tear the temple of Ael? No.

Were they saying, we’ve never known that we were allowed to pray, but John told his disciples they were? No. This is a much simpler story. They want to learn how to pray better. So they’re going to their master and asking how to pray, the same way Christians still do 2 ,000 years on. Literally, like if you talk to someone who does spiritual direction or is in some sort of spiritual authority over someone else or they’re mentoring someone, any of those things, I can just about guarantee one of the most common questions they answer is how do I pray?

Not, am I allowed to pray because of the temple veil? But just, I want to know how to talk to God, and it’s strange and confusing when you first start to do it. And so the apostles are trying to pray better. They prayed before this. This isn’t the first time they’re praying. They’re just trying to learn how to do it right. That’s Luke 11 verse one. It presupposes they can pray, and not only that, that John has already been teaching disciples how to pray. And in fact, it’s not just John.

One of the knocks against Jesus and the disciples wasn’t that they were so weird because they prayed. It was literally the opposite. In Luke 5 verse 33, the critics of Jesus say the disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink. In other words, the knock on Jesus and the disciples, or at least on the disciples, was that they were slack in prayer. That they didn’t seem to take prayer and fasting seriously enough compared to John the Baptist,

and even the Pharisees. So the idea that this was some radical new thing that Jesus was bringing to ordinary people is just plainly contradicted by the New Testament. No, the surprising thing wasn’t that they were praying, the surprising thing was that they didn’t seem to be praying enough. And then jumping forward to Luke 18, you’ve got Jesus’ parable where he talks about two men going up to the temple to pray. One of them is a Pharisee, the other a tax collector.

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