"There is one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus. So why do Catholics go through Mary, the saints, and priests?" It is the root objection behind most others. Let's read the verse in context.
Short answer: Yes, and the Catholic Church teaches it without reservation: Jesus Christ is the one Mediator. But the same passage that names Him "one mediator" opens with St. Paul commanding Christians to pray for everyone (1 Timothy 2:1–5). Members of Christ's Body praying for one another, on earth or in heaven, do not compete with His mediation. They share in it, as "a sharing in this one source" (CCC 970).
Key verses on the one Mediator and the prayers of His Body
- "First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone" (1 Timothy 2:1)
- "There is also one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as ransom for all." (1 Timothy 2:5–6)
- "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful." (James 5:16)
- "Each of the elders held a harp and gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of the holy ones." (Revelation 5:8)
- "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1)
- "So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us." (2 Corinthians 5:20)
Scripture quotations are from the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE), © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
What Protestants Believe
The Reformation confessions ground their case against invoking saints in Christ's unique mediation. The Augsburg Confession (Lutheran, 1530), Article XXI, says: "But the Scripture teaches not the invocation of saints or to ask help of saints, since it sets before us the one Christ as the Mediator, Propitiation, High Priest, and Intercessor. He is to be prayed to, and has promised that He will hear our prayer" (Augsburg Confession XXI). The same article says "the memory of saints may be set before us, that we may follow their faith and good works."
The Westminster Confession (Reformed, 1646) says religious worship is to be given to God "and to him alone; not to angels, saints, or any other creature: and, since the fall, not without a Mediator; nor in the mediation of any other but of Christ alone" (Westminster Confession 21.2).
At its best, this is not hostility to the saints. It is jealousy for Christ: He alone reconciles us to God, so any intercessor in heaven or priest who absolves on earth seems to add a layer He abolished. We share that jealousy. The question is whether 1 Timothy 2:5 says what the argument needs.
What Catholics Actually Teach
The Catholic Church teaches that Christ's mediation is unique. The Old Covenant priesthood "finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the 'one mediator between God and men'" (CCC 1544). "No creature could ever be counted along with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer" (CCC 970).
But "just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by his ministers and the faithful, and as the one goodness of God is radiated in different ways among his creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source" (CCC 970). Mary's influence "rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it, and draws all its power from it" (CCC 970).
The saints in heaven "do not cease to intercede with the Father for us," always "through the one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus" (CCC 956). "We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world" (CCC 2683).
The same principle governs the priesthood and confession. "Only God forgives sins" (CCC 1441), yet Christ "entrusted the exercise of the power of absolution to the apostolic ministry which he charged with the 'ministry of reconciliation'" (CCC 1442). The one priesthood of Christ "is made present through the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the uniqueness of Christ's priesthood: 'Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers'" (CCC 1545).
What Catholics do not teach:
- That Mary or the saints are a second way to the Father. Jesus is "the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6). Saints only ask; Christ alone saves.
- That the saints are worshiped. Worship belongs to God alone. See Do Catholics Worship Mary?
- That a priest forgives by his own power. He absolves as Christ's minister, by Christ's authority; the forgiveness is Christ's (CCC 1441–1442, 1545).
It all points to Christ. Every prayer a saint offers, every absolution a priest speaks, every grace that comes through Mary comes from Jesus Christ, the one Mediator who "gave himself as ransom for all," and leads back to Him. The saints have nothing they did not receive from His cross.
The Biblical Case
1. Read 1 Timothy 2:5 in its own paragraph
St. Paul does not open with verse 5. He opens with a command: "First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority" (1 Timothy 2:1–2). This pleases "God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved" (1 Timothy 2:3–4). Then comes the reason: "For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:5–6).
Notice the logic. St. Paul commands intercession and grounds it in Christ's one mediation. If "one mediator" ruled out every other intercessor, verse 5 would cancel verse 1. Christ alone reconciles God and man by His ransom; His members, joined to Him, pray for the world through Him. His unique mediation is not the reason we stop praying for each other. It is the reason we do.
2. Scripture commands intercession, and says it works
"Pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful" (James 5:16). God even told Job's friends, "let my servant Job pray for you" (Job 42:8). St. Paul, who wrote 1 Timothy 2:5, begged for intercession himself: "join me in the struggle by your prayers to God on my behalf" (Romans 15:30).
Every Protestant who says "I'll pray for you" accepts the principle. The only question is whether death ends it.
3. In heaven, the saints offer prayers before the Lamb
St. John sees the heavenly liturgy. Before the Lamb "that seemed to have been slain," the elders hold "gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of the holy ones" (Revelation 5:6–8). Then an angel at the golden altar offers incense "along with the prayers of all the holy ones," and "The smoke of the incense along with the prayers of the holy ones went up before God from the hand of the angel" (Revelation 8:3–4).
Prayers from earth reach God through the hands of creatures in heaven, around the Lamb who was slain: many hands, one sacrifice, one Mediator.
4. The saints are alive, aware, and near
Jesus says God "is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive" (Luke 20:38). At the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah appear "conversing with him" (Matthew 17:3). The martyrs under the altar cry out to God about events on earth (Revelation 6:9–11). Christians have approached "the heavenly Jerusalem," with "the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant" (Hebrews 12:22–24). And "we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1).
Not even "death" can "separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38–39), and in Christ's Body "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I do not need you'" (1 Corinthians 12:21). The saints are still members of Christ, more perfectly united to Him than we are. Their love for us did not die with their bodies. See Is Praying to Saints Biblical?
5. Christ shares His work with His ministers
St. Paul calls himself and Apollos "Ministers through whom you became believers" and "God's co-workers" (1 Corinthians 3:5, 9). He even tells Timothy, "you will save both yourself and those who listen to you" (1 Timothy 4:16). Christ alone saves, yet Scripture can say Timothy saves, because Christ works through him.
The clearest case is reconciliation. God "has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:18). "So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us" (2 Corinthians 5:20). On Easter night, the risen Christ said to the apostles, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you," breathed on them, and said, "Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained" (John 20:21–23). That is not a rival mediator; it is the one Mediator acting through the men He sent. See Why Do Catholics Confess Sins to a Priest?
Objections Answered
(a) "Christ alone intercedes for us in heaven."
At its strongest: Christ "is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25). He "is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us" (Romans 8:34). "We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one" (1 John 2:1). Why ask anyone else when the perfect Intercessor is already pleading for us?
Answer: Every word is true, and Catholics believe it. But notice what kind of intercession Hebrews means. Christ intercedes as the High Priest who "offered himself" "once for all" (Hebrews 7:27), and as the one who "is expiation for our sins" (1 John 2:2). No saint does that, and the Catholic Church has never said one does. The saints' intercession is of a different kind: they ask, as St. Paul asked the Romans to pray for him. Hebrews 7:25 does not stop you from asking your pastor to pray. And Scripture shows the elders and an angel in heaven presenting "the prayers of the holy ones" to God (Revelation 5:8; 8:3–4). "Only Christ intercedes in heaven" proves too much: Scripture shows others doing it.
(b) "The dead can't hear us, and talking to them is forbidden."
At its strongest: "the dead no longer know anything" (Ecclesiastes 9:5). God forbids anyone who "consults ghosts and spirits, or seeks oracles from the dead" (Deuteronomy 18:11). A saint is not omniscient and cannot hear millions of prayers. And no believer in Scripture asks a departed saint to pray.
Answer: Ecclesiastes speaks of life "under the sun": the dead "Never again will they have part in anything that is done under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 9:6). Read as a full doctrine of the afterlife, it would deny heaven's rewards too: "There is no further recompense for them" (Ecclesiastes 9:5). Jesus gives the fuller revelation: "to him all are alive" (Luke 20:38). The martyrs in Revelation know their blood is not yet avenged on earth (Revelation 6:10), and "there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents" (Luke 15:7).
Deuteronomy 18 forbids necromancy: summoning the dead for secret knowledge, apart from God. Asking a saint to pray to God for you is the opposite. How the saints know our requests, Scripture does not explain; we concede that. But they need not be omniscient, only to know what God grants them, as He showed St. John the prayers of the holy ones. It is also true that the New Testament does not narrate a Christian invoking a departed saint. It does show the departed martyrs praying (Revelation 6:10) and heavenly elders offering our prayers (Revelation 5:8), and the deuterocanonical 2 Maccabees, which the Catholic Church receives as Scripture, shows, in a vision granted to Judas Maccabeus, the departed prophet Jeremiah as one who "fervently prays for the people" (2 Maccabees 15:12–14). Even readers who reject the book must grant that faithful Jews before Christ held this belief. The Catholic Church, which Christ promised His Spirit would guide "to all truth" (John 16:13), has taught the practice from the earliest centuries (see below).
(c) "Honoring Mary and the saints takes glory from Christ."
At its strongest: Every prayer to Mary is a prayer not addressed to Jesus. Calling her "Advocate" or "Mediatrix" (CCC 969) gives a creature titles Scripture gives to Christ (1 John 2:1; 1 Timothy 2:5). And in practice, some seem to run to Mary instead of to Him.
Answer: The Catechism explains those titles in the very next paragraph: Mary's role "in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power" (CCC 970). "If [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy" (1 Corinthians 12:26). Jesus Himself promised His disciples, "whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these" (John 14:12). That does not rob Him; it displays His grace. Abuses are corrected by the Church's teaching, not by abandoning what Scripture shows. See Why Do Catholics Pray to Mary?
(d) "Priests are unnecessary middlemen. Every believer is a priest."
At its strongest: All believers are "a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5), "a royal priesthood" (1 Peter 2:9). Why confess to a man when you can go straight to God through the one Mediator?
Answer: Catholics affirm it: "the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by his ministers and the faithful" (CCC 970). But 1 Peter 2:9 echoes God's words to Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19:6), and Israel, a priestly people, still had an ordained priesthood. So does the New Covenant. Christ did not give the words "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them" to every believer, but to the apostles He sent (John 20:21–23). St. Paul, writing as an apostle, says God gave "us" "the ministry of reconciliation" and made "us" "ambassadors for Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:18, 20), and St. James tells the sick to "summon the presbyters of the church" whose prayer brings forgiveness of sins (James 5:14–15). The priest is not a middleman between you and Christ; he is the instrument Christ chose so you would hear His forgiveness with your own ears. "Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers" (CCC 1545).
The Early Church Agrees
The early Christians confessed one Mediator as firmly as any Reformer, and counted on the martyrs' prayers.
- The Martyrdom of Polycarp (Church of Smyrna, c. AD 155–160), answering the charge that Christians would abandon Christ to worship St. Polycarp: "For Him indeed, as being the Son of God, we adore; but the martyrs, as disciples and followers of the Lord, we worthily love on account of their extraordinary affection towards their own King and Master, of whom may we also be made companions and fellow disciples!" (ch. 17). Worship for Christ alone, love for His saints (quoted in CCC 957).
- Origen (On Prayer, c. AD 233; ch. VI in William A. Curtis's translation) calls Christ "high priest of our offerings and our pleader with the Father," and in the same work writes: "But these pray along with those who genuinely pray--not only the high priest but also the angels who 'rejoice in heaven over one repenting sinner more than over ninety-nine righteous that need not repentance,' and also the souls of the saints already at rest" (ccel.org). One High Priest, and the saints praying with Him.
- St. Cyprian of Carthage (Epistle 56, to Pope St. Cornelius in exile, c. AD 253): "Let us on both sides always pray for one another. Let us relieve burdens and afflictions by mutual love, that if any one of us, by the swiftness of divine condescension, shall go hence the first, our love may continue in the presence of the Lord, and our prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the presence of the Father's mercy" (par. 5).
- St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechetical Lecture 23, c. AD 350; some scholars credit this lecture to his successor John), describing the Eucharistic liturgy: "Then we commemorate also those who have fallen asleep before us, first Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, that at their prayers and intercessions God would receive our petition" (sec. 9).
- St. Augustine of Hippo (City of God 9.15, c. AD 415) on why Christ alone is the Mediator: "He is Mediator as He is man," so that "we need not seek other mediators to lead us through the successive steps of this attainment" (newadvent.org). Yet the same St. Augustine explains the martyrs' place at the altar: "we do not commemorate them at that table in the same way, as we do others who now rest in peace, as that we should also pray for them, but rather that they should do so for us, that we may cleave to their footsteps" (Tractates on John 84.1, early 5th century).
Conclusion
1 Timothy 2:5 is not a Protestant verse Catholics must explain away. The Catholic Church has prayed and taught it for twenty centuries. Read in its paragraph, it is the reason Christians intercede, not the reason they stop. Christ is the one Mediator, and because He is, His whole Body, on earth and in heaven, prays through Him. The saints do not stand between you and Jesus. They stand with Him.
If you are Protestant, you already ask fellow believers to pray for you. We ask only that you believe the saints in heaven are more alive in Christ, not less, and that the Lord who said "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them" meant it.
Come home. The one Mediator still shares His work with His whole Body, the saints in heaven, the faithful on earth, and the priests He sends to absolve, in the Catholic Church. Christ did not found many churches. He founded one, on St. Peter and the apostles (Matthew 16:18), and that Church is the Catholic Church. "It is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained" (CCC 816). If you are a baptized Christian, you already share "a certain, although imperfect, communion" with her (CCC 838). Every truth you already hold is a call to the rest of the way. Christ is calling you into the Catholic Church.
Your next step: Come to Mass this Sunday at your local Catholic church. You can find one near you at MassTimes.org. Everyone is welcome; if you're not yet Catholic, pray with us but don't receive Communion yet. When you're ready to become Catholic, call the parish office and ask about OCIA, the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults. They will walk you through every step. Read our guide: How Do I Become Catholic? Not ready yet? Get our free pocket guide below and keep learning.
FAQ
Can Catholics pray directly to Jesus? Yes, and they do constantly. Asking a saint to pray is like asking a friend to pray: it adds voices to your prayer, it does not replace your own. All of it goes to the Father "through the one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus" (CCC 956).
Doesn't calling Mary "Mediatrix" contradict 1 Timothy 2:5? No. The Catechism uses the title (CCC 969) and immediately explains that her role "depends entirely on" Christ's mediation and "draws all its power from it" (CCC 970). Her mediation is a sharing in His, never an addition to it.
If Christ forgives sins, why does a priest say "I absolve you"? Because Christ gave the apostles that ministry (John 20:23; 2 Corinthians 5:18). "Only God forgives sins" (CCC 1441); the priest speaks as Christ's minister, and "Only Christ is the true priest" (CCC 1545).
Sources
Scripture (NABRE, bible.usccb.org): Exodus 19:6; Deuteronomy 18:10–11; Job 42:7–10; Ecclesiastes 9:5–6; 2 Maccabees 15:12–14; Matthew 16:18; Matthew 17:3; Luke 15:7; Luke 20:36–38; John 14:6, 12; John 16:13; John 20:21–23; Romans 8:34, 38–39; Romans 15:30; 1 Corinthians 3:5–9; 1 Corinthians 12:21, 26–27; 2 Corinthians 5:18–20; 1 Timothy 2:1–6; 1 Timothy 4:16; Hebrews 7:24–27; Hebrews 12:1–2, 22–24; James 5:14–16; 1 Peter 2:5, 9; 1 John 2:1–2; Revelation 5:6–10; Revelation 6:9–11; Revelation 8:1–5.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (vatican.va): 816, 838; 956, 957; 969, 970; 1441, 1442; 1544, 1545; 2683.
Church Fathers: Martyrdom of Polycarp 17 (ANF vol. 1); Origen, On Prayer (trans. W. A. Curtis, ccel.org); Cyprian, Epistle 56, to Cornelius (ANF vol. 5); Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 23.9 (NPNF2 vol. 7); Augustine, City of God 9.15 (NPNF1 vol. 2); Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 84.1 (NPNF1 vol. 7).
Protestant sources: Augsburg Confession, Article XXI (Project Wittenberg); Westminster Confession of Faith 8.1, 21.2 (Orthodox Presbyterian Church).