The Evidence From Origen Against Prayer To Saints And Angels

The mainstream view during the Biblical era and among the earliest extrabiblical sources was that we should pray only to God, not to saints and angels. See my collection of articles arguing for that conclusion, along with discussions of ongoing opposition to praying to saints and angels in later generations of pre-Reformation church history, here.

Origen is an important extrabiblical source on the topic. He's significant for more than one reason. He wrote a lot of material that's extant. He wrote an entire treatise on prayer. He addressed prayer many times in other contexts. The subject of who we should pray to came up a lot in his response to Celsus, a second-century pagan who consulted one or more Jewish sources when studying Christianity. So, Origen's treatise against Celsus reflects how a variety of sources perceived Christian views of prayer at the time.

I've written too many posts about Origen's material on prayer for me to link all of them here. You can use something like a Google search to find the relevant posts or see our collections of posts under post labels like Origen and Prayer. The post here goes into a lot of depth in response to some common arguments about Origen put forward by advocates of praying to saints and angels. And here's one about some material in Origen's Homilies On Ezekiel that's sometimes misused to make it appear that Origen supported prayer to angels. There are many other relevant posts in our archives, including some in comments sections of threads and in posts that don't have the Origen label, for example. If you're interested in an issue related to Origen and praying to saints and angels, there's a good chance you can find some relevant material somewhere in our archives.

It's important to go into discussions of this topic with some distinctions in mind. Supporters of praying to saints and angels will often change the subject, as if support for other prayer practices implies support for praying to saints and angels when it actually doesn't. They'll bring up passages in Origen about whether angels pray with us, even though that's a distinct issue from whether we should pray to angels. Or whether saints in heaven pray for us will be cited, as if it implies support for praying to those saints, which it doesn't. You have to be careful to consistently maintain such distinctions. Otherwise, your thinking about these issues and the discussions you have about them will go off track.

The Suspicious Early Silence About Later Marian Dogmas

In a recent post, I discussed some of the evidence against concepts like Mary's perpetual virginity, sinlessness, and assumption. Something to keep in mind when issues like those come up is that the lack of reference to those beliefs among the earliest sources carries some evidential weight against them. Think of the writings of Luke, for example. He wrote the longest gospel we have, said the most about Mary among the earliest Christians, and gave us our earliest church history. That church history doesn't end until the early 60s. Not only does he say nothing of concepts like Mary's perpetual virginity, sinlessness, assumption, praying to individuals like Mary, venerating images of such people, etc., but he even repeatedly uses language that most naturally suggests that he opposed some of those concepts. See here for a discussion of some examples. Or see here for many other examples of early opposition to later Marian beliefs and practices. My main point here, though, is that we should keep in mind that there's a double problem for the advocate of something like a modern Roman Catholic or modern Eastern Orthodox view of Mary. There's a suspicious lack of reference to their view, a view they claim to be so important, accompanied by so many apparent contradictions of it. And that's in a context in which they claim to belong to the one true church founded by Jesus, passing on all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession throughout church history, providing unity, providing doctrinal clarity, etc.

The Conspicuous Absence Of Prayer To Saints And Angels

Prayer is a large part of the Christian life, and it's discussed explicitly and often in the Biblical record from Genesis onward. The best explanation for the lack of prayer to sources other than God, such as saints and angels, is that prayer was thought to be something offered only to God. There are other lines of evidence against praying to saints and angels, which I've discussed elsewhere. But the evidence I'm focused on here has a lot of significance. To get a better idea of its significance among the extrabiblical sources, look at how often "pray" and other relevant terms are used in the Didache, the Shepherd Of Hermas, Justin Martyr, etc. That isn't the only evidence we should consider, but it is one important line of evidence among others. Prayer to God is mentioned explicitly and often. Prayer to saints and angels isn't advocated in the Biblical sources or the earliest extrabiblical ones and is sometimes contradicted in one way or another.

Hallowed Be Your Name

"Only the first petition of the Lord's Prayer is a prayer for an explicit act of the human heart in response to the infinite Treasure of God's holiness: Hallow it. Hallow the holiness of this name. Revere the holiness of this name. Honor, esteem, admire, value, treasure supremely the infinite worth of this name….May the grand, overarching, all-embracing, all-pervasive theme of your life be the magnificence of God — his holiness, his beauty, his worth, his greatness. Pray that God would do this. That's what Jesus is telling us to do. Pray that he would do it. First in you, and then through you, in the lives of others, and among the nations — that his name be hallowed….In eternity, we will hallow the name of God not as a means to anything. Hallowing the name of God is not a means to any greater end. The hallowing of God's name is the end, the final goal, of all things." (John Piper)

Prayer Is A Mighty Weapon

"Prayer is a mighty weapon if it be made with suitable mind. And that thou mayest learn its strength, continued entreaty has overcome shamelessness, and injustice, and savage cruelty, and overbearing rashness. For He says, 'Hear what the unjust judge saith.' [Luke 18:6] Again it has overcome sloth also, and what friendship did not effect, this continued entreaty did: and 'although he will not give him because he is his friend' (He says), 'yet because of his importunity he will rise and give to him.' [Luke 11:8] And continued assiduity made her worthy who was unworthy. 'It is not meet' (He says) 'to take the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs.' 'Yea! Lord!' she says, 'for even the dogs eat [the crumbs] from their master's table.' [Matthew 15:26-27] Let us apply ourselves to Prayer. It is a mighty weapon if it be offered with earnestness, if without vainglory, if with a sincere mind. It has turned back wars, it has benefited an entire nation though undeserving. 'I have heard their groaning' (He says) 'and am come down to deliver them.' [Acts 7:34] It is itself a saving medicine, and has power to prevent sins, and to heal misdeeds. In this the desolate widow was assiduous. [1 Timothy 5:5] If then we pray with humility, smiting our breast as the publican, if we utter what he did, if we say, 'Be merciful to me a sinner' [Luke 18:13], we shall obtain all." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Hebrews 27:9)

Did prayer to saints and angels develop in a way comparable to the development of the canon?

When the historical evidence against a Roman Catholic belief is brought up, a common Catholic response is to compare the development of that belief to the development of the canon of scripture or Trinitarianism. Here's something I recently posted in a YouTube thread about the subject. YouTube has had a problem for years with some people's posts sometimes not appearing. Many of my posts don't appear after I submit them, and I still haven't found a way to determine which posts will go through and which won't. The one below didn't go up. Here's a link to the YouTube comment I was responding to. You can read that comment and the surrounding context if you want more information about what led up to my response below.

Is there support for praying to angels in Origen's Homilies On Ezekiel?

You can access a recent English translation of the homilies here. In section 1:7:2 (pp. 39 and 41 of the e-book just linked), Origen writes as if he's addressing an angel:

The Apostolic Tradition Of Praying Only To God

Gavin Ortlund recently made some good comments on Twitter about the evidence against praying to saints. What he said is also applicable to praying to angels.

As the comments section of his thread illustrates, though, we need to also be prepared to discuss a lot of other issues relevant to the subject. And Protestants seldom know much about the topic or make much of an effort to argue for their position.

Gavin's comments are primarily about the evidence from the Biblical era, but see here regarding extrabiblical sources. And we've addressed other extrabiblical and Biblical evidence in other posts, like this one on Psalm 103:20-21, this one on Matthew 27:47, here on Hebrews 12:1, and here on Revelation 5:8 and 8:4. Regarding the idea that attempting to contact the deceased is acceptable, since Jesus and Peter spoke to some individuals they raised from the dead, see here and here. And see my posts in the YouTube thread here for a discussion of some sources that are brought up less often, such as Eusebius of Caesarea and the Gospel Of Bartholomew. In that thread, I also interacted with some advocates of praying to saints and angels. See here for my interactions with the arguments of Joe Heschmeyer of Catholic Answers and here for a thread in which I interacted with some Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox opponents. If you search our archives, you can find a large number and variety of relevant topics addressed in a lot of posts.

I'm not going to repeat everything I've said before, but I'll reiterate some points about issues that keep coming up (such as in Gavin's Twitter thread). Our focus should be on the material most relevant to praying to saints and angels, such as narrative passages in which prayer can be and often is narrated and comments and documents about prayer. To go, instead, to contexts like poetry and catacomb inscriptions, all the while ignoring or underestimating the widespread absence and contradictions of prayer to saints and angels in more relevant contexts, is irresponsible. Yet, we see Catholics, Orthodox, and other advocates of prayer to saints and angels doing that over and over and over again. It's like trying to prove that Protestants believe in prayer to saints and angels by citing Psalm 103:20, the singing of "Angels From The Realms Of Glory" in a Protestant church service, or a Protestant gravestone with an inscription that's written as if it's addressed to a deceased person. In addition to ignoring the relevant genre issues, advocates of praying to saints and angels frequently do things like assume without argument the earliest date for a source whose dating is disputed if that source seems favorable to their position, appeal to forgeries, or cite anonymous sources, even though they so often dismiss anonymous sources and even significant named sources (e.g., Tertullian, Origen) in other contexts. You have to watch for that kind of behavior at every step along the way. If we judge the evidence as it would normally be judged in other contexts, it heavily favors the conclusion that we should pray only to God. But if you're going to argue for that conclusion, you have to be vigilant and diligent at every step, so that you and your audience aren't taken off course by all sorts of diversions. Protestants need to care enough about God and the people and issues involved to do that work.

Protestants Should Make More Of An Issue Of Who We Pray To

One of Stand To Reason's podcasts took a question yesterday about prayer to saints. I've noticed for years that Protestants seldom bring the subject up on their own initiative, even though they should. They don't even address it defensively much, and they bring it up as evidence for Protestantism even less. There are multiple Biblical and multiple extrabiblical lines of evidence for praying only to God. For a collection of resources on the topic, see here.

Joe Heschmeyer's Arguments For Praying To Saints And Angels

He's been exchanging videos with Gavin Ortlund on the subject. Joe has commented on some issues beyond what Gavin brought up as well. You can watch Gavin's most recent video here, which makes a lot of good points. You can find Joe's videos here, here, here, and here. I've said a lot about prayer to saints and angels in the past. You can find a collection of many of my posts here, for example. What follows are some of my initial reactions to Joe's videos:

Matthew 5 And Miracles Among Non-Christians

A common objection to Christianity is that miracles are reported among non-Christians, not just among Christians, or that miracles are reported to a particular degree or in a particular way among non-Christians. I've interacted with that argument many times, like here. A passage in the Bible that I don't recall having seen cited in this context before is Matthew 5:44-45. The call to pray for our enemies seems to imply that miracles can happen among non-Christians. It's doubtful that such an unqualified call to pray for our enemies would be intended to be limited to activities like praying for their salvation or would be so limited in practice. It's to be expected that such an unqualified principle would sometimes involve prayers for healing and other relevant types of supernatural activity. The examples of God's kindness to unbelievers mentioned in verse 45 are broad, which seems to underscore how broadly we can pray for them. The similar sentiment found in Acts 14:17 is likewise broad. So, the Matthew 5 passage can be added to others (like the ones discussed in my post linked above) showing that the occurrence of miracles among non-Christians is not only consistent with Christianity, but even affirmed by it and in its most foundational sources.

Against The Invocation Of Saints

That's the title of a book I hadn't heard about before I listened to The Other Paul's video with the author, Seth Kasten, earlier today. You can order the book here. I ordered it earlier today and expect to read it soon. It looks like there's some overlap between Seth's material on the topic and mine, but also some material we each cover that the other one didn't. It's a neglected subject and one that heavily favors Protestantism over Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The video linked above is worth watching, since the topic is so important, so neglected, and seldom addressed in that much depth.

Athenagoras' Belief In Praying Only To God

It seems that Athenagoras, a second-century Christian, held a view of the creator/creation distinction that involved praying only to God. When addressing the gods of paganism in his A Plea For The Christians, he sometimes brings up the creator/creation distinction, such as when he refers to "distinguishing and separating the uncreated and the created" at the beginning of section 15. That distinction comes up in section 13 as well, where he responds to the objection that Christians don't offer sacrifices to the gods. He explains that instead of offering sacrifices to the gods of paganism, Christians offer other types of sacrifices to the one true God. Prayer is one of those sacrifices:

When, holding God to be this Framer of all things, who preserves them in being and superintends them all by knowledge and administrative skill, we "lift up holy hands" to Him, what need has He further of a hecatomb [sacrifice]?

"For they, when mortals have transgress’d or fail’d
To do aright, by sacrifice and pray’r,
Libations and burnt-offerings, may be soothed."

Notice that he's approaching the discussion under the theme of God's being "Framer of all things", the creator/creation distinction I referred to earlier. So, he seems to be discussing what should be offered to God alone, not any created being. His reference to "lifting up holy hands" is about prayer, as 1 Timothy 2:8 illustrates. (Athenagoras also draws material from 1 Timothy 2 elsewhere, in the closing section of the document, which increases the likelihood that he's drawing from it here.) And the quote of the Iliad that follows also combines the themes of sacrifice and prayer, adding further evidence that Athenagoras had prayer in mind. Prayer is compared to offering a sacrifice that should be given to God alone. Though he's responding to paganism, the reasoning implies that we also shouldn't pray to angels or saints. The creator/creation distinction he keeps making can't be limited to pagan gods. And, like other early Christian sources, Athenagoras refers to praying to God without ever advocating praying to saints or angels. He keeps criticizing the practice of praying to pagan gods (e.g., "as to a god who can hear" in section 26), but only offers prayer to God as an alternative. Even when he writes about how the pagans pursue gods who used to be ordinary humans who lived on earth, he never offers praying to saints, who were better humans who lived on earth, as an alternative. He never makes a distinction between some higher form of prayer that can only be offered to God and a lower type that can be given to other beings. Reading that kind of distinction into the text is a less likely interpretation and places the burden of proof on the shoulders of the person advocating that view, a burden he won't be able to carry. An unqualified reference to prayer is most naturally taken as a reference to prayer in general, not just some subcategory of prayer. The best explanation of the evidence as a whole is that Athenagoras believed that we should pray only to God.

Did Irenaeus condemn prayer to angels?

Yes, though advocates of the practice sometimes suggest otherwise by adding qualifiers Irenaeus didn't include. Let's look at a couple of relevant passages.

If somebody prays for you, does it follow that you can pray to him?

Obviously not. Yet, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox often act as if passages in the church fathers about how the saints pray for us are evidence that those fathers believed in praying to the saints. Or let's say that somebody lives a thousand miles from you, but is part of the same denomination you belong to. And that denomination has set aside a particular day to pray about something. Let's say it's praying for missionaries. So, that person is praying with you for missionaries, in the sense that you're both praying for them on that day. Does the fact that he's praying with you prove that you can pray to him? Would you go into your bedroom, say a prayer to this man who lives a thousand miles away, and expect him to hear the prayer? No, you wouldn't. If you prayed for him, would it make sense for somebody to conclude that you must have no objection to praying to him as well? No. In that sort of everyday experience, we make the relevant distinction between praying for an individual and praying to him, praying with somebody and praying to somebody, being prayed for by somebody and praying to that person. And Protestants aren't the only ones who make those distinctions. Catholics and Orthodox do as well. They have to. They couldn't function in everyday life without doing so. But when they get into discussions about praying to the saints (and angels), they often act as though all of these distinctions can be disregarded. Supposedly, citing a church father's reference to how the saints pray for us or with us or how we pray for them is sufficient to prove that the father believed in praying to the saints.

Opposition To Prayer To The Saints Among The Pre-Reformation Hussites

The pre-Reformation Hussites differed with each other in some of their beliefs, but we find a rejection of prayer to saints among some of them. For example, the historian Nick Needham wrote concerning the Taborites:

"They were much more radical in their rejection of Catholic doctrines and practices than the Utraquists were (e.g. Taborites denied transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, and prayers for the dead), and wanted to break away entirely from the Catholic Church." (2000 Years Of Christ's Power, Vol. 2: The Middle Ages [United Kingdom: Christian Focus, 2016], approximate Kindle location 6711)

See here for a collection of other examples of pre-Reformation opposition to praying to saints and angels and responses to arguments for the practice.

Doubts About Prayer To The Saints In The Late Patristic And Early Medieval Eras

A little over a decade ago, Matthew Dal Santo published a book about skepticism of the cult of the saints in the late patristic and early medieval eras (Debating The Saints' Cult In The Age Of Gregory The Great [United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2012]). Here's an abstract of the book:

Tim Keller's Death

Here's a discussion Gavin Ortlund had with Collin Hansen a few months ago concerning a book Collin wrote about Keller. I've had a quote from Keller's book on prayer that I hadn't gotten around to posting yet, so this is an appropriate time to post it. I'll include another good passage that I've quoted before from the same book.

"Consider the petition 'O Lord - give me a job so I won't be poor.' That is an appropriate thing to ask God for. Indeed, it is essentially the same thing as to pray, 'Give us this day our daily bread.' Yet the Proverbs [30:7-9] prayer reveals the only proper motivation beneath the request. If you just jump into prayer without recognizing the disordered nature of the heart's loves, your prayer's intention will be, 'Make me as wealthy as possible.' The Proverbs 30 prayer is different. It is to ask, 'Lord, meet my material needs, and give me wealth, yes, but only as much as I can handle without it harming my ability to put you first in life. Because ultimately I don't need status and comfort - I need you as my Lord.'" (Prayer [New York, New York: Dutton, 2014], 86)

"If you forget the costliness of sin, your prayers of confession and repentance will be shallow and trivial. They will neither honor God nor change your life….Stott argued that confessing our sins implies the forsaking of our sins. Confessing and forsaking must not be decoupled, yet most people confess - admit that what they did was wrong - without at the same time disowning the sin and turning their hearts against it in such a way that would weaken their ability to do it again. We must be inwardly grieved and appalled enough by sin - even as we frame the whole process with the knowledge of our acceptance in Christ - that it loses its hold over us." (212)

Pre-Reformation Opposition To Praying To Saints And Angels

I want to provide a list of some of the relevant pre-Reformation sources. I'll list them in alphabetical order, and I'll provide a link to one post on each source. Some of these sources are discussed in more than one post. Hippolytus often comes up in discussions of how the early Christians viewed prayer, for example, and I've written multiple posts about Hippolytus' views, but I'll only be linking to one of those posts here. If you want more information on any of these sources, you can search our archives for other relevant material. I expect to be updating this post, including the list below, periodically.

Before I provide the list, I want to address some background issues. I'm not trying to be exhaustive here, but I want to make some preliminary comments that should help in the process of sorting through the evidence.

Claudius Of Turin's Opposition To Prayer To The Saints In The Ninth Century

The historian Philip Schaff wrote the following about the views of Claudius, a bishop of Turin in the ninth century:

"The departed saints themselves do not wish to be worshipped by us, and cannot help us. While we live, we may aid each other by prayers, but not after death." (section 105 here)

The historian Nick Needham wrote:

"Scholars once thought Agobard was the author of Concerning Images, an attack on image-worship which anticipated many of the concerns of the Protestant Reformation, rejecting the practice of invoking the saints, and exalting Christ as the only Mediator between God and humankind, the sole object of religious trust. However, modern scholars now doubt whether Agobard wrote this - the real author was probably bishop Claudius of Turin (died 827), another distinguished Carolingian scholar." (2000 Years Of Christ's Power, Vol. 2: The Middle Ages [United Kingdom: Christian Focus, 2016], approximate Kindle location 1136)