“For whom the bell tolls” is not just the title of one of Ernest Hemingway’s books, which he borrowed from a line in one of John Donne’s meditations, but it is a practice at St. Luke’s on All Saints Sunday as the nearest Sunday to 01 November, which is All Saints Day. On that Sunday, the names of persons deceased in the previous year related to the congregation are read, and at each name a bell is sounded. This type of ceremony has crept into Protestant churches because All Saints Day is observed in many liturgical calendars, even though Protestants no longer observe All Saints Day in the Roman Church’s way.

In the early church, it became common place to pray for the dead, to give alms to the church on behalf of the poor to assist the dead, and to say masses for the dead for their salvation. In other words, the church quickly became interested in helping God look favorably on Christians after death, despite God having raised Jesus from the dead once for all for all humanity. Sadly, this practice meant that early on the church had already deviated from the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This practice, and so many others, like a cancer eventually took its toll on the life and vitality of the church to the point of near spiritual death.

So, what is the history of this apparent problem. “All Saints’ Day was formally started by Pope Boniface IV, who consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Virgin Mary and all the Martyrs on May 13 in 609 AD. Boniface IV also established All Souls’ Day, which follows All Saints. The choice of the day may have been intended to co-opt the pagan holiday ‘Feast of the Lamures,’ a day which pagans used to placate the restless spirits of the dead. The holy day was eventually established on November 1 by Pope Gregory III in the mid-eighth century as a day dedicated to the saints and their relics. The May 13 celebration was subsequently abandoned. In Ireland, the Church celebrated All Saints’ Day on April 20, to avoid associating the day with the traditional harvest festivals and pagan feasts associated with Samhain, celebrated at the same time. Following the establishment of the Frankish Empire, and following the reign of Charlemagne, the holy day, which was already celebrated on November 1, became a holy day of obligation by decree of Pope Gregory IV and Louis the Pious, who was king over a portion of Charlemagne’s former empire. [Roman Catholics must attend mass on a day of obligation.] Following the Protestant Reformation, many Protestants retained the holy day, although they dismissed the need to pray for the dead.”*

In the Roman church, if the First of November commemorates the dead saints, then the Second of November concentrates on the non-saintly dead. “According to tradition, a pilgrim returning from the Holy Land took refuse on a rocky island during a storm. There he met a hermit, who told him that among the cliffs was an opening to the infernal regions through which flames ascended, and where the groans of the tormented were distinctly audible. The pilgrim told Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, who appointed the following day (2 November 998) to be set apart for ‘all the dead who have existed from the beginning of the world to the end of time.’ The day purposely follows All Saints’ Day in order to shift the focus from those in heaven to those in purgatory.”**  [So, who really established All Souls Day, Boniface IV, Gregory III, or Odilo, the Abbot of Cluny?]

Both All Saints and All Souls days, however, have no biblical foundation. First, as the New Testament makes clear, all those who believe, i.e. those Christians who are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, are considered to be not only priests but are also declared by God to be “holy” or “saints.” The gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, apart from works of the law done either by ourselves or by others on our behalf, makes sainthood happen when this faith-creating gospel is purely proclaimed in word and sacrament. The word creates the faith by which we sinners are made saints. Second, because “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:28-29), those who believe in Jesus Christ are already and remain forever part of Christ’s body by virtue of their baptism. This makes the notion of individual souls being shunted off to purgatory after death to face untold torments not only contrary to scripture but diabolically contrary to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In light thereof, what is the biblical and theological rationale of naming those for whom the bell tolls on All Saints Sunday? Even if it is not a complete resumption of old, unscriptural practices, is it alright or not? Or is it more of a slippery slope?  With that question in mind, consider this remarkable development in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA):

On All Saints Day, 2010, the results of the eleventh round of U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue, entitled The Hope of Eternal Life,*** were published, and sixteen months later, “[d]uring their meetings at the Vatican [held 14-16 February 2012], … ELCA leaders presented ‘The Hope of Eternal Life’ … to Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.”**** On purgatory, among other matters, this dialogue document states,

“The complex network of beliefs and practices surrounding the relation of the living to the dead – purgatory, masses offered for the dead, indulgences applies to the dead, prayers for the dead – were seen by the Reformers as deeply antagonistic to that evangelical proclamation.”

Just a few pages later, however, in the document’s concluding commentary lurks one seemingly innocuous sentence which reads,

“Ecumenical rapprochement requires, however, that Lutherans not condemn Catholic teaching about the practice of indulgences as inherently contrary to the Gospel.”

Is this alright or not, or is it a slippery slope? John Donne’s meditation coining the phrase “for whom the bell tolls” means, according to some, that humanity is interconnected, like all members in the body of Christ. With that in mind, because the ELCA no longer rejects purgatory and thus no longer rejects the need for indulgences, the ELCA has apparently not only ecumenically removed itself from papal condemnation issued at the Council of Trent, but it has biblically and theologically removed itself from the Reformation’s understanding of salvation. The results are not just slippery but sinister.  Such ecclesial capitulation on the part of so-called Lutherans is taking its toll not only on the integrity of the gospel but thereby on all the souls of all the saints populating vast swathes of world Christianity.

So, should we ring the bell on All Saints Sunday to commemorate the dead within the church or should we do so to warn the living that the spiritual death of the church comes from within?

* http://www.catholic.org/saints/allsaints/
** http://projectbritain.com/year/november.htm#souls
***http://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/The_Hope_of_Eternal_Life.pdf?_ga=2.209668048.332294403.1508447433-1689390344.1508447433
****http://www.elca.org/News-and-Events/7473?_ga=2.210282455.332294403.1508447433-1689390344.1508447433