Since some of the advocates of praying to saints and angels in the recent discussions have been making derogatory comments about Origen, see here regarding why he's important. One of the reasons why Origen is significant in this context is that much of his material on prayer is in a response he wrote to a pagan, Celsus, who also discussed prayer and Christian views of it. For reasons I've explained before, like here, Celsus' comments make more sense if the Christians of his day didn't practice prayer to angels. So, Origen's response to Celsus gives us a large amount of information about both Origen's view of prayer and the views and practices of Christians more broadly.
Advocates of praying to saints and angels often bring up the fact that Origen distinguished between different types of prayer, then read their own distinctions into the text. And they've done it again in their responses to Gavin's recent video. However, Origen's belief in multiple types of prayer doesn't imply that praying to saints (of the relevant sort, saints in heaven) or praying to angels was one of them. In fact, neither praying to saints nor praying to angels was one of the types of prayer Origen advocated. It's misleading to cite the fact that Origen believed in multiple types of prayer, then cite your own view of different kinds of prayer, even though Origen defined the types of prayer differently than you do.
There have been some citations of section 8:64 in Against Celsus as well, particularly his reference to how angels pray with us "even when not asked". Supposedly, Origen is saying that we can ask angels to pray with us, though they'll do so regardless of whether we ask. There are a lot of problems with that interpretation. First, the term "even" isn't in Henry Chadwick's translation. Rather, he has "when they [men on earth] pray to God, there are praying with them countless sacred powers who have not been invoked" (Origen: Contra Celsum [New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 501). How would advocates of prayer to angels who are appealing to the "even" language explain a translation like Chadwick's, which doesn't use that term? Secondly, the "even" language doesn't imply the acceptability of praying to angels, even if we were to go with that translation. The term "even" is ambiguous. It could allow an alternative (in this case, asking something of angels) to be done, but it could also not allow it, depending on the context. And the context tells us that we're to pray only to God. You have to ask why a scenario in which angels aren't asked to do something is being brought up to begin with. If the advocate of prayer to angels is going to say that the scenario is brought up because the asking in question involves something that can only appropriately be directed to God, then how can the "even" language allow that sort of asking of angels? On the other hand, if the asking can be acceptably directed to angels, then why is a scenario in which they're not asked brought up to begin with? The interpretation that advocates of praying to angels are putting forward here doesn't make sense either way. If you look up "even" in a dictionary, it has many potential meanings. It can convey the sense of "indeed", for example, to reflect the intensity of something, without implying support for prayer to angels. The term "even" can be read in a way that favors praying to angels, but it can easily be read otherwise as well, and we have to reconcile our interpretation of the term with the surrounding context. The context favors a rejection of prayer to angels.
The recent responses to Gavin have sometimes brought up Origen's comments in his treatise On Prayer. His comments about supplicating somebody like Peter or Paul have been abused in the usual way. But Origen is referring to how we should interact with people like Peter and Paul if we come across such individuals on earth. It's also about how we should respond "not only to saintly men but also to others" (section 10 here, though different versions of the document have different section numbers). The passage goes on to refer to asking for the forgiveness of non-saints against whom you've sinned. It's not about praying to saints in heaven. To the contrary, this passage and others in On Prayer go against praying to saints and angels.
You can read more about Origen's view of prayer in other posts I've written over the years. Here's a relevant one. Go there and either read the whole thing or do a Ctrl F search for whatever you're interested in ("type" to find discussions of types of prayer, "64" to find discussions of section 8:64 in Against Celsus, "On Prayer" to find discussions of Origen's treatise On Prayer, etc.). And you can run a search of this blog on Google, Blogger, or wherever else to find more. You can also click on the relevant post labels to get listings of some of the relevant posts, such as the Origen label or the Prayer label. Keep clicking Older Posts in the bottom right to see more. If a post is lengthy, like the first one linked in this paragraph, you can do a Ctrl F search for the relevant information.
People sometimes bring up some comments Origen made in his Homilies On Ezekiel as evidence that he believed in prayer to angels. Here's a response.
One I hadn't seen before the recent controversy surrounding Gavin's video, as far as I recall, is a citation of some of Origen's material in his commentary on the Song of Solomon. Go here to watch a few Roman Catholics discussing the material. And here's what I wrote in response in the comments section below the video:
Your citation of Origen in his commentary on the Song of Songs seems to be incorrect. I looked up pages 194-95 in R.P. Lawson's translation, and the text there is different than the text you cited. It's mostly the same, but doesn't have the sentence you quoted about the bride. In some material in the commentary you didn't quote, Origen does refer to the bride speaking to angels, the Old Testament prophets, etc., but he also refers to how they speak back to her, instruct her, and so on. The bride is likewise referred to as going into the king's chamber and house of wine, wanting to recline upon an apple tree, etc. The commentary is highly metaphorical. It's doubtful that Origen is advocating praying to angels and deceased saints, just as it's doubtful that he's advocating the concept that we hear back from angels and the deceased after praying to them, as if they verbally instruct us and do other such things in response to prayer. He's discussing individual believers and the church as a whole down through the ages as the bride, with a focus on the earthly component of the church. We collectively interact with angels, Old Testament prophets, the apostles, other people on earth with us, Jesus, etc. That could involve praying to one or more of those individuals and groups, but it need not. We know from experience that if we're to interact with other believers on earth, one of the groups of the bridegroom's friends Origen refers to in the surrounding context, it can't be done through prayer. A Christian who lives in Canada can't pray to a Christian living in Brazil. Yet, Origen refers to how we speak to believers on earth, just as he refers to interacting with angels, Jesus, and others. Similarly, on pages 91-92 of Lawson's translation (book 2, section 1 of the commentary), Origen has the bride speaking to "enemies" of the church, specifically the unregenerate Jews who have lived down through the ages. It doesn't follow that we can pray to those unbelieving Jews.
The most that can be said in favor of praying to saints and angels from that material in Origen's Song of Solomon commentary is that he might have had the practice in mind as one of the ways of interacting with saints and angels. But if you look at the larger context of the remainder of his writings (and what seems to have been the majority view of his Christian contemporaries), it's unlikely that he was advocating that sort of prayer.
Later in the video, they cite section 30 in Origen's Exhortation To Martyrdom, which you can read here. But the passage refers to prayer without saying who the prayer is directed to. So, it's ambiguous. It's likely another reference to the intercessory work of saints in heaven. He's alluding to the martyrs of Revelation 6, and chapter 5 of Revelation (verse 8) refers to the intercessory role of heavenly saints in the context of prayer. Origen could, and I suspect does, have the material in chapter 5 in mind when discussing the martyrs of Revelation 6 (mentioned again in Revelation 20:4). The question, then, is who he thought the prayers of chapter 5 were directed to. I've argued elsewhere that the prayers are to God, much like the angels are intermediaries in the context of God's wrath, carrying the bowls of wrath, even though the wrath isn't directed at them. See my post linked above for a lot of other relevant information. And I've documented that Origen agreed with me that the prayers in Revelation 5 are prayers to God (Against Celsus 8:17, and see my discussion of some other material likely from him here). So, the passage in Exhortation To Martyrdom likely is a variation of Origen's view of Revelation 5:8, meaning that it's another example of the saints' intercessory role in prayer without being the recipients of the prayers.
The Catholics I'm responding to said earlier in the video that prayer to saints is prayer to God. But Catholicism does sometimes refer to praying to saints and angels. For example, Pope Pius IX's Ineffabilis Deus refers to how Catholics "invoke and pray to the most Blessed Virgin Mary". Pope Leo XIII's Octobri Mense refers to Catholics "invoking Mary". Etc. And the simplest interpretation of Origen, when he refers to praying to God, is that he has prayer directly to God in mind, not the more complicated scenario in which a prayer is said to a saint or angel, but is considered a prayer to God in a more complicated manner than what people typically have in mind when they refer to praying to God. The fact that a Catholic could read Origen with the qualifiers in mind that the Catholics in question are advocating doesn't prove that reading Origen in such a manner is the best explanation of what he said.
Keep in mind that Gavin has cited some scholars in support of his conclusions about Origen. So have I. If some of Gavin's critics are going to keep calling him a liar, grifter, etc. (as some Eastern Orthodox recently did, for example), will they say the same about the scholars we've cited, including Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox ones?
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