You want a chapter and verse for the fact that all spiritual benefits reaped through godly individuals are ultimately from God as the source of all grace and mercy? I'm really shocked that you deny that.
I mean chapter and verse on a saint's ability to help us.
That's odd...I thought that people in heaven were alive. They have been granted eternal life, no? If anything, they're more alive than we are. As for being "embodied" I have no idea what having a physical body has to do with praying or answering prayer. We do see various places in Scripture where those in heaven do hear the cries of those on Earth. See, for example Revelation 5 where the 24 elders (usually said to be a symbol for the Church in heaven) present the prayers of the saints to God.
Yes, they're alive. But they don't have eternal life by virtue of being in Paradise. "Eternal life" doesn't mean "life in heaven". It rather refers to the quality of the life. Eternal life means life
empowered by heaven. As a Christian, you have eternal life
right now.
The point of embodiment is to emphasize the biblical picture according to which embodied persons can and do elist the prayers of other embodied persons. There are no examples of embodied persons enlisting the help of the dead. Indeed, the example you cite from Revelation makes my point. The elders offer their own prayers on their own initiative. They don't make those prayers because individuals have asked them to make them.
Your entire reasoning here is built on how you define "Paradise," as a place where believers currently go in distinction to heaven, as an "interim state." Traditionally, my understanding has been that Paradise was separate from heaven under the Old Testament economy, but that Christ between His death and resurrection took Paradise, along with all OT saints, into heaven. NT saints therefore go to heaven when they die, as Paradise has been joined with it. This makes sense since, at the Second Coming, we see Jesus coming from heaven with His saints. If there are no saints in heaven until after the Second Coming then that doesn't make much sense.
Fine, if you want to identify "heaven" with "Paradise" I have no argument, so long as "heaven" is not conceived of as anything other than the TEMPORARY RESTING PLACE for the dead. And I never said that there would be saints in heaven after the Second Coming. There will not be any saints "in heaven." Rather, God will renew the heavens and the earth, and make the two into one. There will be a renewed heaven and earth on which we will live fully embodied lives (that's the whole point of the resurrection, after all!).
If it's not obvious that Catholics and other Christians who pray to saints mean something different when they speak of praying "to" saints than when they speak of praying "to" God, then it is I who cannot help you. The phrases mean different things, as a knowledgeable person could tell you. Consider the usage of the word "pray" in Old English.
I assume you're knowledgeable, so tell me.
If all your benefits are granted to you through Jesus, do you ask others to pray for you here on Earth? Aren't you taking glory away from Christ by expecting them to provide you with spiritual/earthly benefits via their prayers?
That's not the same thing. One entreats a "saint" because one expects that that "saint" has some extra "clout" with a distant "god" who is more or less uninterested in the prayers of an ordinary schlep like me. When I pray with other Christians, joining my prayers with them, on the other hand, I take advantage of Christ's promise that where two or three are gathered in [Christ's] name, Christ is in their midst. In other words, I'm standing on a specific promise of Jesus. I don't see anywhere in scripture where that promise extends to dead people.