The Veneration of Relics

For many Protestant Christians, the veneration of relics feels immediately unsettling. A fragment of bone, the clothing of a saint, and the tomb of a holy person become objects of pilgrimage, kissing and bowing. To many modern, especially protestant, believers, this looks straight like idolatry, pure and simple.

Yet before judging the practice, it is worth understanding the reasoning behind it.

Catholic and Orthodox reasoning behind honoring relics grows out of something central to the gospel story: the incarnation and, therefore, the affirmation and sanctification of embodied, material creation that God reclaims for Himself in Christ.

God Works Through Matter

Historic Christian orthodoxy has never regarded matter itself as evil. At its center stands the astonishing claim that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). God did not simply send ideas down from heaven. The Son of God took on a physical human body. Jesus touched lepers, put His fingers into the ears of a deaf man, used saliva to heal, broke bread, poured wine, washed feet, died in the flesh, and rose bodily.

The incarnation gives matter an extraordinary dignity, showing that the physical world is not something God keeps at arm’s length. The physical world is not something God remains distant from. He made it, entered it, and works through it.

Behind relic veneration lies a deep conviction about the holiness of the body. Paul writes, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19). The body is not disposable packaging for an immortal soul; Christian hope includes its resurrection. Holiness, then, is never merely inward. A believer who spends decades praying, fasting, serving the poor, and enduring hardship has served God with this very body/temple of the Holy Spirit. Hands served, knees bent, eyes wept, feet carried the gospel, and sometimes blood was shed.

When the Channel Replaces the Source

Yet Scripture also gives a solemn warning. God once used Moses’ bronze serpent as an instrument of healing (Num 21:8–9). Centuries later, however, Israelites were burning incense to it. King Hezekiah destroyed it and called it Nehushtan, simply “a piece of bronze” (2 Kgs 18:4). What God had once used had become a rival focus of devotion.

The same danger remains. God may work through material means, as He did through Peter’s shadow and cloths associated with Paul (Acts 5:15; 19:11–12). But the New Testament never teaches that such objects retain automatic or permanent power. The channel must not become the object of confidence.

Relevant Biblical connections

There are several striking texts that Catholic and Orthodox believers appeal to when seeking to establish the biblical precedent.

For example, after the great Old Testament prophet Elisha died, a dead man was resurrected when his corpse accidentally came into direct contact with the bones of the prophet. When the burial party saw Moabite raiders, they hastily threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When it touched Elisha’s bones, ‘he revived and stood on his feet’ (2 Kgs 13:21).

Acts offers equally striking cases. Luke tells us that extraordinary signs were performed through the apostles, especially Peter, so that the sick were carried into the streets “that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them” (Acts 5:15). Crowds came from the surrounding towns bringing the sick and those troubled by unclean spirits, “and they were all healed” (Acts 5:16). Luke records their hope that Peter’s shadow might fall on them, followed by a summary that the sick were healed (Acts 5:15–16). He does not explicitly state that Peter’s shadow itself healed anyone.

But Acts 19 pushes the pattern even further. “God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick” (Acts 19:11-12), and diseases and evil spirits departed. These texts complicate any simple claim that God does not work through physical objects. At times, He does.

Note: Catholic tradition commonly distinguishes different classes of relics. First-class relics are bodily remains of a saint; second-class relics are objects personally used or owned by the saint, such as clothing, a prayer book, or other possessions; and third-class relics are objects that have been touched by a saint’s body or relic. Official Catholic documents today more often speak of bodily remains and notable portions as particularly significant relics, while also recognizing personal belongings and objects that touched the saint’s body or tomb as relics. Here, ‘saint’ refers to a holy Christian who is honored in the Catholic or Orthodox tradition. In Catholic practice, formal recognition authorizes public ecclesial veneration, though Christians also use the term ‘saints’ more broadly for all of God’s holy people. You can probably already see how some of these ideas could be linked, at least in theory, to the biblical texts mentioned above.

Honor Is Not the Same as Worship

Many modern Protestants instinctively interpret gestures such as kissing, bowing before, or touching a sacred object as acts dangerously close to worship.

However, people are known to express honor through physical objects that are entirely unrelated to worship.

Tefillin of my great-grandfather, 1905, Russian Empire. Now it is home in the Land of Israel.

We kiss photographs of those we love. We keep a deceased parent’s Bible. We visit the grave of someone who shaped our lives. A soldier stands at attention before a flag.

Incidentally, Catholic official teaching separates the worship owed to God alone from the honor (not worship) that is due to His saints. That distinction is worth taking seriously, even for those who remain uneasy with the practice itself (me included!).

Just yesterday with great reverence I came into contact with tefillin (Jewish prayer gear) from 1905, which my great-grandfather Eliyahu Girzshil received on his bar mitzvah at the age of 13. It was truly significant to look at this relic that my great-grandfather Eliyahu, whom I am named after, left behind. My nephew Eitan (I held him in my hands at his circumcision ceremony) is planning to lay this very tefillin on his school trip to Poland as they enter Auschwitz death camp, where many Jews died in Nazi-occupied Poland. You can’t make this story more moving, at least for me personally. It connects me to the faith and prayers of my great-grandfather in a way that nothing else does.

A Jewish Parallel

Commenting on the episode of Caleb and the spies, the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 34b) interprets the singular wording in Num 13:22, “he came to Hebron,” as referring specifically to Caleb. According to this rabbinic tradition, Caleb separated himself from the other spies, went to the graves of the patriarchs, prostrated himself there, and pleaded, “My fathers, ask for mercy upon me,” so that he would be delivered from the counsel of the other spies. Whatever one concludes about the plain meaning of Num 13:22, this rabbinic interpretation is revealing. It shows that Jewish sages could understand the graves of Israel’s patriarchs not merely as memorial sites, but as places where the living could appeal to the righteous dead to intercede with God on their behalf.

Today Jews pray at the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron (my wife and I prayed there fairly recently), where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah are traditionally understood to be buried. Abraham originally purchased the site for Sarah’s burial (Gen 23; 49:29–31). The name “Machpelah” is related to the Hebrew idea of doubling and is traditionally understood as referring to the “double cave.” Jewish visitors direct prayer to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though Jewish customs and theological understandings of prayer at graves are not uniform.

Jewish practice is not identical to Catholic or Orthodox relic veneration, and there are significant differences, but the comparison illuminates something shared: an instinct, deeply rooted in Jewish tradition, that persons, bodies, places, and memory remain bound together.

Possibility Is Not Command

Elisha’s bones, Peter’s shadow, and Paul’s handkerchiefs each show something God was able to do in a given moment. None of them comes attached to an instruction. 2 Kings records the resurrection at Elisha’s tomb once, and nothing follows it, no shrine, no repeated ritual, no command to seek a prophet’s remains again.

Yet within a few generations, some Christians began gathering and honoring the bones of their martyrs. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, generally regarded as one of our earliest martyr accounts, describes believers gathering his bones as more precious than gold and jewels, while insisting that worship belongs to Christ alone. The same account takes care to distinguish the practice from worship, which belongs to Christ alone.

So the historical record holds two things side by side without resolving them: Scripture never commands relic veneration, and some Christians embraced a version of it quite early anyway. Recognizing a possibility is different from receiving a command and from issuing a prohibition. Both directions overstate what the text actually provides us.

Conclusion

Relics are not the point. They are signposts. When honor becomes worship, the signpost eclipses the destination. But when a bone, a garment, or a grave draws a soul toward the God who became flesh, suffered, and rose, it fulfills its purpose. The question is never merely whether a practice is biblically precedented, but whether it leads us to Christ or away from Him. Every devotion, every gesture, every tradition must finally answer that question. Hold loosely the things that point, and cling tightly to the One who saves. For the God who once worked through Elisha’s bones and Paul’s handkerchiefs still works today. Let every practice, ancient or new, be measured by this alone:

Does it lead you to God in Christ Jesus rather than gradually taking His place? If yes, receive it with gratitude. If it does not, let it go without regret.