Truth Unites - Origen and Praying to Saints: What Joe's Criticisms Miss

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

In this video I respond to Joe Heschmeyer on whether Origen affirmed praying to the saints. See Jeremy Treat's excellent book on the atonement: https://www.amazon.com/Atonement-Introduction-Studies-Systematic-Theology/dp/1433575698 See My Apologies' comments on the debate: https://youtu.be/vhMzTgkPTyE?si=UwiM4NqS7OxgxvFr My initial video on praying to the saints: https://youtu.be/TQRQ-bbmVvI?si=5zQcC4PxFp0ZU_ks Joe's first rebuttal: https://youtu.be/BA5rOsIhotM?si=H2lStnVDyLOTECL6 Joe's second rebuttal: https://youtu.be/OEreH7eKUqc?si=1H6OWrji54ii3yEG My Response to Joe: https://youtu.be/7TxB6_IPmYE?si=voL2yuns9ltm8rf8 Joe's Rejoinder: https://youtu.be/hyHP4zpAxdU?si=lNRoHx091cYLNjk4 Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Did Origin believe in praying to the Saints? And how many videos can we do on this before you get tired of hearing about us talk about it? If six months from now, Truth Unites has a video that comes out, Origin and Praying to the Saints, Episode 44. Don't watch the video. Just pray for Gavin. It won't go that far. This will be my last one.

But Joe Hashmire and I have been having a back and forth on this. I'm going to cast this video as a standalone as much as I can. But if you're interested in the previous videos, you can see the links in the video description if you want to catch up. This will be my final installment. I'm also happy to do a dialogue. I know some people don't like the back and forth rebuttals. I totally get that, but I think it depends totally on how they're done. I take a both and approach. Do dialogue and rebuttal videos or not even rebuttal, just the next step. I see it as a dialogue, you know. But I do understand some people don't like the back and forth. I think it's productive.

I think it depends on how it's done. You know, I think it depends entirely. entirely on how it's done. And this one has been very productive, I think. I've been to a lot of academic conferences where you see something being worked out on a, you know, four people on a panel, or you're reading a journal, you're seeing their back and forth. This has been as productive as any of those, you know, and it's got more of an audience watching. So I see value in this, so I want to take it one more step. First, because I'd left some doors open where I underdeveloped a couple important aspects, particularly of origins theology. I made some claims and didn't do as much work as I could have to support that. And that led to Gavin bringing up evidence that made it look like I was

lying. He doesn't accuse me of that, but people in the comments did. They said I was, you know, slandering him and slandering origin. And so there was a bit of credibility issue on the line. So let me just give a friendly encouragement because these same accusations of dishonesty are escalating against me in other in the comments for Joe's video, but neither Joe nor I are accusing each other of dishonesty. So just a friendly reminder for people following along, it's often not helpful to accuse the other side of dishonesty. Many times it might seem like that, but it's not that because we're coming from a different paradigm. And it's really easy to misconstrue that, even if it is true, it's not helpful to go there. Let's focus on the arguments. Let's assume the best motives,

people commenting on this video, you know, Joe is our fellow Christian, so let's be kind and assume the best in the way we interact with things. I do have concerns, as I'll get to at the end of this video, that Joe falls way short of, the nice way to put it is he doesn't steal man the view. He falls way short of steel manning the views he's criticizing. And so I'm going to comment on that briefly at the end, but I'll try to keep this video on what is probably of most interest to viewers, and so origin. And I think, so I'm going to focus mainly just on this, question about origin and praying to the saints. And I just have, I was thinking about should I make another video, you hate to go back and forth on and on and on, but there's a lot more to say here.

And I sincerely have a concern. People are not getting the right idea about origin. I think origin is being somewhat butchered. And I think people just need to get a fuller picture here. So I also want to say, the disagreement thus far is not just that some things were left out or doors were left open. We've been arguing about what Joe included. in his previous video. For example, some of these key passages in against Celsius, I'll put up one from 864, where, you know, origin explicitly says when not asked. And yet Joe had derived the conclusion from that that, oh yeah, go ahead and ask them. Ask, you know, by all means, ask them if you want to talk to the angels. And I was pointing out that's the opposite of what he says is ruled out by what

he says just a few sentences earlier. And that passage got dropped. So this is not just a matter of things being left out. We're disagreeing about what Joe has already introduced. And basically, I just, I mean, the big picture is origin never, ever, ever says we can pray to the saints. He never gives any indication that we can talk to Christians in heaven. And so let's work through that and I'll just try to show that and encourage people to think discerningly and critically about the different claims being made here. I'll just make three arguments. Number one, Joe conflates the saints praying for us with us praying to them. Number two, subordinate forms of prayer are not to Christians in heaven, which is the real issue

where we disagree, not whether you can talk to other Christians on earth. And number three, Joe tries to argue for prayers to saints and angels in heaven on the basis of passages where they appear or manifest to a person on earth. But that's obviously a different thing. So let's work through these three points. These are my three biggest concerns. So first of all, the distinction between what I called in my last video, the arrow down and the arrow up.

Them praying for us, us praying to them. Two different things. Let's talk about this. Early on, Joe claims that J.N.D. Kelly agrees with his view. Kelly, who is a Protestant, believes origin is really big in terms of the road towards what you're going to see in terms of a lot of prayer to marry into the saints. Gavin interprets origin as an early opponent of prayer to marry in the saints.

And so it seems like there's a tension, if not a contradiction, right? Like one of these guys seemingly has to be wrong. Now, in Gavin's defense, he points out, it's possible to believe the saints are in heaven praying for you and are aware of you, but you're not allowed to talk to them. And that's actually the position he claims origin help. That doesn't seem to be Kelly's read of origin. And as we're going to see, I think Kelly's right on this. That's the misunderstanding and a misreading of origin,

reading him to be using the word prayer, the way that a modern Protestant uses the word prayer. But I think Joe is misreading this Kelly quote here. Let me put it up. It's talking about the saints praying for us, not us praying to them. This is talking about the arrow down, not the arrow up.

This is in Kelly's summary of what he calls the rise and gradual development of veneration for the saints. I think he gets a great overview of that development, a really brief, compact overview, and it is very gradual. That's why I use the word accretions. And he speaks of basically the word it here in that final sentence you see in arguing for it. That is referring to their intercessory power.

Okay. It's talking about the saints praying for us. The reference to seeking that comes earlier and Kelly doesn't make any claims about origin on that topic. Okay, so it's really important not to get these two things confused. The saints praying for us. and us praying to them are two different things. You could argue, as I mentioned in my last video, from one to the other, but you can't just conflate them as though they're the same thing.

The relationships work very differently. Even in like a Roman Catholic view, the saints know about us much more than we know about them. You know, they know generally what we're doing. We don't know generally what they're doing. The arrow down and the arrow up work very differently. So it's really problematic to read passages about their relationship to us, as though it was talking about our relationship. to them. And the reason this is so important to be alert for, and I wanted to make this video

to encourage people to think about this, because I think people just, you know, it's easy to not realize that in the context of listening to Joe's video. Joe is a great speaker and very convincing, but if you just slow down and think about these things, you know, you've got to practice discernment about the substance of what's being said here. And this is a pretty basic point, but I worry people will miss it. And it's not just with Kelly, it's with origin as well. Going back earlier in on prayer, so the relevant section is section 9 and 10. So we see in section 20 that this twofold church is what he seems to have in view. Likewise, in on prayer six, he says, 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 99 righteous that need not repentance, and also the souls of the saints already at rest. So the idea that he thinks you can go to other people, you can even go to sinners and ask for their prayers, and that's fine. That's not worship. But if you go to a saint who is with God and ask him for prayer, that becomes worship or idolatry, that is totally absent from the theology of origin. Gavin is just imputing to origin, a position origin doesn't hold. And that seems pretty squarely at odds with what origin actually says about the communion of the church on earth and the church in heaven. That's the twofold nature of the church, after all.

So here's the passage in On Prayer 6 that Joe cites. Again, this is the arrow down. It's the saints praying with us when we pray. It is not us praying to them. It says absolutely nothing about us praying to the saints in heaven. It's just not there in the passage at all. Now, Joe tries to use other passages like this one in On Prayer 20 that talk about how perhaps the spirits of angels and saints attend the course.

corporate worship of the gathered church. And he's speculating here. He doesn't dogmatically teach this. But the problem is you can't just assume that because the saints and angels are attending the corporate worship of God's people, that therefore we should pray to them. It's a completely different point. You mean, you could make an argument to get to that. Origin never makes that argument. Origin never says that.

So, and same with all these, there's lots of statements that Joe was citing from On Prayer 6 about how the saints and angels are perfect. in love, about how we are all ultimately one body of Christ, all wonderfully true. Now, someone else might try to build from that to get to praying to the saints. Origin never says that. That's not what he concludes from that. It's certainly not the same thing as that. You can't just conflate those, too.

So this is the burden behind this video. I want people to be discerning about these claims that are being made. Now, the other thing here is, because Kelly was referenced, Joe's video, I think, is going to mislead people into thinking that I'm at odds with the scholarship here. because he's pitting me and Kelly against each other, even though we are not against each other, I think Kelly's statement is right on the money. And Kelly does not say, Origin thinks we pray to the Saints. But the opposite is the case.

I don't have as much exhaustive awareness of the scholarship on this question as I do on some other things, but thus far in my study, I cannot find anybody who affirms with Joe that Origen believed in actually praying to the Saints. I don't see that anywhere. It may be out there, and I'm just not found it yet. But in general, the scholarship seems to be pray to God alone. That's Origen's view. It's in the context of discussing Origins' fourfold taxonomy of prayer that I'll get to in just a moment. That's the next thing, that the Eastern Orthodox scholar John McGuckin and his entry to Origen's book on prayer in the Westminster Handbook to Origin says,

Origin is clear in this work that prayer ought to be addressed to God, the Father, alone. Here's a similar position from Lorenzo Perron in a 2001 article talking about Origins' view of prayer in general. You can pause the video and read that. The general view of the scholarship that I see thus far is that origin is a significant catalyst unto praying to the saints. Okay. But he himself doesn't believe that because he's a catalyst unto that because he has this speculation of perhaps them praying for us, with us. He's kind of careful about how to cash that out. In his Romans commentary, he talks about the secret things that belong to the Lord that we don't know for sure.

But he does advocate that idea a lot. So he's a catalyst unto the further development, but he himself, I don't know anybody who argues that Origen believes in praying to the Saints. So I would disagree with Joe that I'm reading Origin through a Protestant lens. My appeal and my consistent desire, and I think my exegesis of him is simple. Let Origin be Origin. He's one of my favorite people in all of church history. I absolutely love the man. And there's all kinds of twistings and misrepresentations that come out.

I'll come to that at the end of this video. I never said origin is a heretic about the Trinity. I never said he's internally incoherent, you know, all kinds of things. Just like I never said Augustine contradicts himself. I just said he has some statements that seem to conflict, but I don't know whether you can resolve them. So I'm not insulting origin. I love origin. He's fascinating.

He's an amazing theologian. But the simple fact is he doesn't fit neatly into any of our polemics today. He's in his own unique context. And so my basic concern is I think Joe is reading origin through a Roman Catholic lens. I really think that's what's happening. Later ideas are being imported back onto origin that he had no awareness of. So because never, in all his writings, does origin ever make any reference to praying to the saints in heaven or to angels.

So, but Joe argues that you do have that with the four moods of prayer that Origin discusses in On Prayer Chapter 9. So we're going to dive into the weeds on this a little bit, but let me summarize my main point up front to make it clear for people watching in case you don't watch the whole video or you're doing it while you're, you know, on a bike ride or something. That's what happens to me. I'm watching a video while doing other things and so you can miss something. So it'd just be really clear.

origin uses the word prayer in different ways and more broadly to refer to different acts of communication among Christians. Absolutely. I had mentioned that in my last video. None of those acts of communication are from Christians on earth to Christians in heaven or to angels in heaven. So the issue is not whether there's other uses of the word prayer, but whether that any uses of the word prayer are about people in heaven receiving those prayers. That is the issue. So to try to explain the linguistic complexity of the word prayer, it might help us to remember in old English.

You know, you can use the word prayer like in Shakespeare. A character might say, answer me, I pray thee, or something like that. Origin uses the word prayer to refer to supplication, intercession, Thanksgiving that can be given to people. At 2618 of my last video, I mentioned that. But then he speaks of prayer in its full meaning. Okay, or we might say prayer proper, and this is prayer to God alone. That's the sense in which we usually use the word today, and that's the sense in which people like McGuckin are using the term.

I will put up a picture of Joe's summary of the proper recipients of these four moods of prayer in from On Prayer 10. I think Joe does a good job defining those categories. And then Joe says this. Let's turn then to book 10, who are the recipient of each of these four types of prayer? Now, if you've just heard Gavin's whole treatise, you'd say, well, doesn't he say explicitly, all four of these go to God alone, and to the Father alone, or maybe to the Father and the Son? No, that is not my argument.

I had mentioned, again, at 2618 of my last video, that Origin talks about supplications, intercessions, and Thanksgivings being given to people, okay? But the issue is not whether they are given to people, it's whether they're given to Christians in heaven. That's the issue where we disagree. We all agree that you can make supplications, intercessions, and thanksgivings to other Christians. It would be just a matter of terminology if you categorize those as prayer, but the practice would not be a point of dispute between our different traditions. And if you just read through origin descriptions of these supplications, intercessions,

and thanksgivings, and what they actually are like, you see, most of them, it's clear right away. This is just talking about relationships between Christians on earth, doing things that Christians do. one of the passages Joe brought up is just about basically apologizing to another Christian when you sin against them or when you wrong them. Of course, Protestants have no problem with this. Or most of the scenarios that origin envisions. So Joe said a couple of times that Origins' ideas contrary to a Protestant lens or something.

No, not at all. You can go and apologize to another Christian. You can go and give Thanksgiving to another Christian. You can go and ask for intercession from another Christian. We all do that. That's extremely non-controversial. The issue is whether you do that to deceased Christians who are, are now in heaven. That's where we differ. And the question before us is, does origin ever give any

indication he thinks you can do that? And since the passage in 864 of against Celsius appears to have been dropped, the main passage that's on the table now is from on prayer. Joe cites it as 10.1. That's from, I think, a different online edition, I'm guessing. I'm looking at the book here, just chapter 10, I'd say. Origin deals explicitly here with the subjects of prayer. To whom do we pray? So this is maybe the most important passage for this. So let's just let Joe cite the passage and hear his initial argument from this. He says of three of the types of prayer. Now request an intercession and Thanksgiving, it is not out of place to offer even to men.

The two latter intercession and Thanksgiving, not only to saintly men, but also to others. But request to saints alone should some Paul or Peter appear to benefit us by making us worthy to obtain the authority which has been given to them to forgive sins. With this addition, indeed, that even should a man not be a saint, and we've wronged him, we're permitted, are becoming conscious of our sin against him, to make requests even of such that he extend pardon to us who have wronged him. And then he says, yet, if we were to offer Thanksgiving to men who are saints, how much more should we give thanks to Christ, who has, under the Father's will, conferred so many benefactions

upon us? And then he gives the example of St. Stephen doing just this. where Stephen prays to Jesus and says, Lord, set not this sin against them. And so it's very clear that there's these three of the four types of prayer that origin thinks we can offer to the saints. And there's two of the types of prayer. We can offer even to people who are sinners. You know, if you've wronged someone or if someone does you a good service, you can ask your forgiveness, you can thank them. And you're not, you're not worshiping them, right? You're not giving them some sort of homage that is due only to God, you'll notice there is absolutely nothing in there

about how you can do that to living saints and not dead saints. Now, the Anglican scholar Eric George J., who is the translator, one of the translators of this book, has a series of glosses as he's translating through. As he gets to this passage, he says, it is to be noted that this passage nowhere refers to departed saints. Yet if you listen to the appeal Joe was making there, there's a shifting of the burden of proof. He appears to be arguing that if origin speaks of making supplications, intercessions,

and thanksgivings to other Christians, well, then that must include deceased Christians in heaven, but that's the very thing we're trying to establish. That's the very thing that needs to be proven. And so this is a form of begging the question. The flow of the claims is like this. Person one says, origin affirmed praying to the saints. Person two says, no, he didn't.

He never says anything about that. person one comes back well yes he did because he spoke of making supplications intercessions and thanksgivings to other Christians and now you have to prove that that doesn't include the saints in heaven so you see the problem if you're making a positive claim about origin the burden of proof is on you to establish it you can't just assume that however let's do more than just show that the burden of proof has not been met here let's show why this reading is not plausible i'll put of the passage here, the phrase, should some Peter or Paul appear, is referring to a priest, someone in the apostolic role of forgiveness. Jay interprets this as someone who has the apostolic

power of declaring sins forgiven, a priest of the church. Note the Dorian assumes that Paul, as well as Peter, was commissioned to forgive sins. So in other words, that's not Paul or Peter personally. That's why it says some Paul or Peter, or some translations say A, Paul or Peter. So that's the kind of thing that happens on earth. You don't look for a priest up in heaven, nor does the word saint in origin's time refer specifically to Christians in heaven. That would be reading a later terminology back onto origin. Here's J again.

Saint here has its frequent New Testament meaning of Christian. And that's why, by the way, origin says saints or others. Okay. Now there's a channel called My Apologies that has an interesting video commenting on this discussion, I'll link to that. He points out that the word saint appears 44 times in on prayer, and the vast majority of the time is referring to saints on earth. Only four times does it refer to saints in heaven, according to him, where each time it's clearly indicated by the context. I've not gone through and verified that claim, but I certainly know he's correct that the vast majority

are about saints on earth. So I haven't counted whether it's 40 and 4 to get up to 44. but you can verify that yourself if you want. But it's true that the vast, if you read through on prayer, the vast majority of the time the word saint is used is talking about Christians on earth. And when it is talking about Christians in heaven, that's clearly indicated in the context in some way. Here, earthly relationships are in view.

You don't go to a priest in heaven for forgiveness. And right after this, origin adds, basically, with this addition indeed that, basically, if you sin against someone, you go apologize to them. Just as we don't go to priests in heaven, nor do we wrong people in heaven and then go to apologize to them. This is just talking about Christian relationships.

If you want to get the idea of prayers to Christians in heaven, you have to read that into the passage. It's completely at odds with the context here of what origin is referring to. Furthermore, note the specific recipients of each kind of prayer. I'll put up the documentation of this again. I said earlier I accept this. That's not totally true. category two, I think, is problematic. I think the idea that origin doesn't think you pray to Jesus

in the same way you pray to the Father, I think that's problematic. I'll come back to that in a second. But notice what is missing from all four. Angels, think about this. Joe is arguing that, you know, we're all one gathered body of Christ in worship. We are all one spiritually united body of Christ. so references to Christians on earth must include references to Christians in heaven. If you're making supplications or intercessions or thanksgivings to your living Christian neighbor, it must include the Christians in heaven as well. Why doesn't it include angels then too? Because the angels are just as much in the same position as the saints in heaven of praying with us and so forth in origin's theology. That is a strange omission on Joe's view, on my view. It's

exactly what you'd expect, because the idea of any kind of prayers involving a communication to a different realm is just something that Origin never speaks about. There's no hint that Origin has even imagined that, that we're praying to people in a different realm. And it's not as though you wouldn't expect that to come up. Origin has a lot to say about how we don't pray to angels, as I've recounted in my last video, in against Celsius 5.4 and 5.5 when he develops this, he could very clearly have said, oh, well, actually, we can pray to the angels. Three of the four types of prayer can go to the angels. That would be a pretty important clarification to offer when he's saying you don't pray to the angels, but he doesn't offer

that clarification because none of these four kinds of prayer are ever spoken. of as an act of communication from earth to heaven that just never comes up. Now here's another problem. If supplications, intercessions, and thanksgivings are equally given to the saints on earth and in heaven, if those are just two clumped together, why do they look so different in actual practice? If you just look at the way, you know, for example, I never go to another living Christian and say things like, in thy hands, I place my eternal salvation. And to this, thee, I entrust my soul. If you protect me, I fear nothing, not even Jesus, my judge, because by one prayer from thee, he will be appeased. Yet this is how prayers to marry work.

And this is what I've drawn attention to and I've stated my concern about this. I find it extremely problematic. When people say things like, oh, well, it's just like when you go to your fellow Christians on earth to pray for you, just like you can do that so you can go to the Christians in heaven and ask them to pray. It's the same thing. but it's not the same thing because they look completely different. And I don't understand how people are not concerned about idolatry on this. I can understand if someone said, well, categorically, that's a valid concern. It just doesn't apply here for these reasons.

But there seems to be such under sensitivity about the danger of putting creatures, saints, angels, Mary, into the role of God, going to them for things that we should go to the Lord himself for. and just to, you know, state it plainly. The gospel teaches us that Christ does not need to be appeased, okay? The very one who will judge us is the one who is interceding for us, according to Romans 834. This is just one text that kind of gets us into the hope we have in the gospel. There is no more further appeasement that needs to be made. Christ is the one who has completely forgotten.

given our sins, solved all. I don't want to wrap this around the word propitiation. In the previous videos, we've gotten into atonement theology. That's not really some specific understanding of propitiation is not the idea here. Just the basic mechanics of the gospel that Jesus's death on the cross makes us right with God. That is really important to be crystal clear about. And I do have a concern that these prayers like this one, the prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, do give the overall impression that God is a little more distant, as I said back in my initial video, and I'll come back to that at the end of this. Now, I'm not going to say more on the Atonement, but I do want to do a book recommendation,

because I just got this book by Jeremy Treat, and it's really excellent. It's balanced. It's, you know, Atonement stuff can be very controversial. This is a very balanced book. It's not reactionary. It's very wise. It's always great to see theological wisdom. But it's also clearly written and accessible.

So this would be the first book that I would recommend to someone just as an introduction, kind of a primer on the atonement, just outstanding. I'll put a link in the video description. It's just called The Atonement and Introduction. You won't be disappointed if you're looking for just a fair and wise treatment of that doctrine. So I won't go more into the Atonement here. I'll recommend that book. It's in the video description.

The basic point is clear that prayers to saints in heaven in actual practice don't look anything like the kinds of categories that Origin talks about where we relate to Kirsten. Christians on Earth. Okay, just one other thing on origin, Joe appears to defend Origen's early view that prayers to Christ are not in category two type prayer. In other words, that there's a prayer that is to God alone and that it doesn't properly get directed to Christ. And he compares this to the sacrifice of the mass. Now, whether he's right or wrong, I think it's too dismissive to treat him as internally incoherent, having bad Trinitarian theology. I mean, Origins, a major figure in helping to kind of pave the way towards Trinitarian orthodoxy.

Origins not, as far as I'm aware, remembered for being a Trinitarian heretic. Quite the opposite. And so when he has this sense that there's something we offer to God the Father alone, he's probably not wrong about that. And I'll offer two areas here. First, the notion of the sacrifice of the Mass within Catholicism. You only offer the Mass to the Father. It's offering, it's the offering of the Son.

It's the offering through the Spirit, but there's a Trinitarian movement. The third person makes present the second person who is offered to the first person as the perfect oblation for sins. There's a whole movement of prayer. There's a whole movement of worship, a whole movement of sacrifice.

That's not bad Trinitarian theology. That's actually good Trinitarian theology. That doesn't mean we're not allowed to make request to Jesus. That's why origin is totally fine making supplication to Jesus, asking him to come and help to wash his feet. But there's one, there's something, there's a type of prayer that is only made to God, and more specifically, seemingly to God the Father. Now I find this really problematic. As far as I'm aware, the entire Christian tradition comes to say we can pray directly to the Son of God and the Spirit of God, and that is not a different form of

prayer any more than we offer them a different form of worship. Jesus himself said, you may ask me anything in my name and I will do it. The words in my name there. People have used that to argue for the divinity of Christ. Whether that's right or wrong, it doesn't look like there's a separate category of prayer here, you know, intercession or supplication or something rather than direct prayer, prayer in its highest form going to Christ. And even origin himself comes to this view that we can pray directly to Christ in the same way, the same form of prayer we give to God. Here's how Julia Konstantinovsky puts it. Origin is also much concerned with the question to whom should one pray.

In the on prayer, origin states categorically that we must never pray to anything generated, not even to Christ, and that it is a sin of ignorance to pray to Christ. In his later works, however, origin seems to have changed this view and certainly allows prayer to be addressed directly to Christ. In fact, he often addresses invocations of his own to the divine Christ. J takes the same position. Again, that's Origins translator or one of them. He basically says origin is not always perfectly consistent.

He also references prayers to the Holy Spirit in Origin. And I think that's the better way to harmonize Origins' writings, because later in his writings, origin explicitly and clearly does speak of prayer to the sun. In fact, for example, against Celsius 5.4, he names all. four forms of prayer and specifies that those are to the Word or the Son of God, as well as to the Father. And again, in 827, you can see the same idea there. So it's explicit and clear. Origin does come to affirm.

All four forms of prayer can be given to God the Son. But his view develops, and that's fine. That's not an insult to origin. Again, I love origin, but, you know, he's not perfect, so no big deal. but I think trying to defend Origin's earlier view is really theologically problematic, and so I'm very surprised and concerned about that. Third and final issue, we need to recognize a distinction between praying to the saints in heaven or the angels in heaven versus talking to them when they appear on Earth.

And then Origin backs up this twofold nature of the church with two instances, and they are actually the two that I cited last week, the first from the book of Tobit. Now, there's a whole aside. Gavin has another part where he claims I'm misrepresenting the early canon, which books were accepted in scripture, but notice the two books that origin appeals to are both books Protestants no longer accept. Origin appeals to Tobit 12, where the angel Raphael reveals himself to Tobit and to Tobit and Sarah and reveals that he's been interceding and praying for.

And the second is Second Maccabees 15, where you have the prayer of Judas Maccabeus, where Jeremiah and the high priest, Anias, intercede for him, and they have a conversation. In both cases, there's a conversation between the person on earth, and in one case with an angel, and another case with two deceased saints. And where to believe that Orson thought all of this was wrong, that he thought this was idolatry of the kind that Selsus was accusing us of. So this point is pretty simple, so I'll just be very brief on this, but basically these passages are not talking about praying to saints or angels in heaven as this irregular

their practice or something like that. You know, it's like it would be like trying to argue that when Gabriel appears to Mary in Luke 1 and the fact that Mary speaks to Gabriel, therefore that this is a proof for praying to angels in heaven or something like that. That's obviously really problematic. It's another one of those things I just want to alert people to be discerning about because they might miss that if they're not paying attention or practicing discernment as they listen. I do want to make a quick aside on the issue of the canon that Joe brought up here. You heard Joe say that, or Origin appeals to these books as though that meant they were canonical. I think that's very problematic because a reference to Tobit doesn't prove that origin thought it was canonical.

Now, elsewhere, you could make a good case for that because elsewhere, origin does appear to cite Tobit as Scripture. I think a good argument could be made for origin on most of the Dutero canonicals, not on the book of wisdom, but most of the others. But here's the thing that just is just a little bit of an aside here, kind of off of Joe and onto some broader things I see, where I think there's confusion about this whole issue of the canon. People often think that reference to a book from a church father or ecclesial writer as scripture. So if a church father references cites a book as scripture, then that just settles the question. And it doesn't because there is a two-tier system among many early Christians, a kind of second register of scripture.

And some people will think, I'm making this up, or I'm used to all the accusations of being disingenuous. over nuance and all that kind of thing. It's not. This really is real. You can, especially in the East, this is very common. And I think that's what's going on with origin here. Uzebius records origin as a proponent of the 22 book Hebrew language-based shorter Old Testament canon. And basically, even in our passages here, and on prayer chapter 9, when origin is defining each of these four moods of prayer, he quotes for his second kind of prayer, his first examples are from Daniel and then Tobit, but then he acknowledges that basically the Jewish people don't acknowledge as legitimate this passage in Daniel or the book of Tobit. This is what you see

a lot of times among other church fathers where they'll cite a book as scripture, but then in their canon list they'll leave it out because they recognize it's disputed. And a lot of these second-tier books are used with less authority. It's cashed out in different ways, but some kind of distinction there is maintained by many Christians all the way up through the Middle Ages. And I'm kind of amazed at basically how people just assume the Protestant view of the canon has no legs to stand on. And so they're shocked when you bring up these points. Don't take my word for it.

Don't triangulate me. Just look into it. Read the canon lists of Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, John of Damascus, Gregory of Nazianzus, so many of these Eastern fathers. And you'll see, they do. make a cutoff on the 22, well, they cash it out as 22 books because they put like all the minor prophets together as one book and so forth. So anyway, don't take my word for it. But the main point is just understand that merely citing a book as scripture and certainly not just merely

referencing a book, that's not enough. Because it's, there's often also a recognition of a subordinate or contested status to that book. If you look at like their canon list, for example. Okay, that's enough on origin. I'm not going to go line by line through the rest of Joe's video. The second half of his video, I do need to state my concern about a significant level of distortion and how he summarizes my views. Some people criticize me for complaining about misrepresentation. I'm sorry. If somebody misrepresents us, we're allowed to say so. And what Joe is doing is taking these various statements from a video I did when I was in a green shirt. He says it was from one year ago. It was actually two years ago. It came out October 7th,

2021 and then statements I made more recently in a blue shirt and he's Pitting them against one another trying to make me look as contradictory as possible often showing tiny little snippets of each video showing them back and forth and it often comes across as trying to make the view being criticized look as silly as possible rather than understand the view being criticized and there's a lot of distortion I won't go it'd be tedious to go line by line at this point but just to alert people to be on the lookout for this I'll give one example from where he asks for a clarification. Here's Gavin now. This is to distinguish. The original video is actually, I think, like a year old.

So one of the reasons maybe his recollection now might differ from what he originally said is if I took a long time to reply to the video, it wasn't like, you know, I'm replying to his video now that he made on Sunday. I'm sure he remembers it well. But trying to remember something you said a year ago. Understandably, he may be misremembering some details. But Gavin Blue Shirt is 2023 Gavin. Gavin Green shirt is 2022, Gavin. 2023 Gavin insists he does not believe in this kind of estrangement from God being reflected in medieval theology or medieval prayers. So here he is today.

Very annoyed that I would even make this suggestion. The main point is simply this, that the entire framing of the video is a fundamental misrepresentation. Dr. Gavin Orlin argues that medieval prayers asking for me, Mary's intercession are proof of people being estranged from Christ. What? I've never said that. I don't recognize that at all. You can watch my whole video. You'll never hear me say that. It just, as with so many things, there's this consistent, just not listening carefully. And then there's, as a result of that, tearing down a straw man. So yeah, I would say, go back and listen to Gavin Greenshirt in 2022. You're, you know, Gavin Blue shirt is right.

He doesn't use the word estrangement. But would Gavin Green shirt does say is, I think one way I could articulate the concern is that many of these texts give the overall impression that God is a bit more distant, a bit more uncertain, and Mary is more tender and near and approachable. So that's how Gavin Greenshirt presents his problem with Marian prayer, is that it presents God as far off. and the term for someone who is no longer closer affectionate is estranged. And so when I use that word, it's true, he doesn't use that word.

I am summarizing his thought. If he thinks I'm getting it wrong, I'd love to know how to square what Gavin Greenshirt is actually saying about God being far off and Mary being the one who's near and affectionate with that not being the medieval's being estranged from God. So by all means, look, I want to be totally clear. When people tell you, hey, you're misrepresenting my argument, I err on the side of believing them because most of the time that is the case. They're saying something different or more nuanced than what you interpret them to be saying. And I take that to be true, even in this case here.

At the same time, there are people who treat every rejection of their views. It's like, well, you must not understand me well enough. And so I want to kind of square, okay, you're saying now you never said anything about estrangement. But what you're saying then sounds like that. So square those up for me because I don't know how to square that because it looks like you've just kind of shifted what your objection is. Okay, so I'll answer this. There is no shifting of position. These two statements are not at all difficult to square up if you just think about them and think sympathetically, like what, you know, or not even that sympathetically.

Just think about them. And the issue here is not the word estrangement. Just think about these two sentences. Okay, sentence one is medieval prayers asking, for Mary's intercession are proof of people being estranged from God. That's from his Facebook post where he's juxtaposing my statement of that with the actual scholars. Okay, that's one idea. The second sentence is many of these texts give the overall impression that God is a bit more distant, a bit more uncertain, and Mary is more tender, near, and approachable. Those are two

fundamentally different claims. Just think about it. I don't think that's that complicated. saying certain medieval prayers give the overall impression that God is a bit more distant is not the same as saying medieval Christians are estranged from God. One has to do with the subjective impression given by some of these prayers. The other has to do with the spiritual status of people praying such prayers. I don't believe that medieval Christians are estranged from God. I do believe that many of these prayers give the overall impression that God is a bit more distant. because when you have prayers saying Mary, placate Jesus, I think that's a problem. So I don't really understand why we're having an issue here.

To me, if you're trying to understand someone, you just think about that you kind of see within five seconds, that's not a problem. Those aren't contradictory. And that's not just a technicality because it's relevant to the criticism being offered from Eamon Duffy and the medieval historians, Joe, references, about Christo-centrism in the medieval period and so forth. unfortunately there's just a lot of you know just continual the nice way to say it is continual falling short of steel manning the view that's being criticized here so i'm not going to go line by line i'll just encourage people to mention or to look out for that i could give one other example and that's the whole issue of pagan origins so again i don't think this is that hard to understand my argument was in my initial video that praying to the saints looks like a later development it looks like an accretion It looks like it's not apostolic. I framed that video very modestly, if you go back and listen to the beginning of it.

Why it came in and how it came in is a distinct issue, and it's not the focus of that video. Okay? It'd be like if I made an argument or I was giving a presentation saying that the stock of McDonald's is down by 10%. And then in the context of making that claim, I made a reference to the popularity of Chick-fil-A as one possible reason or as a cause for that, and that's my view, and I hold to that, and I stated that, but I didn't develop that because it's not my main point. It's not the argument. And then the main point is McDonald's is down by 10%. And then someone wants to come up afterwards and say, you didn't do a single thing to prove your case. You said Chick-fil-A, but you didn't talk about that and so forth. Well,

the response is that was just one comment. The argument is that it's down, not why. Similarly, my argument is that praying to the Saints is a gradual accretion. Why it came in as a separate point. I do think you can make a good case for pagan influence because something like praying to the saints is a nearly universal pagan practice and it just so happens to come into the church in that exact era in which a lot of pagan influence is flooding into the church. But that's not what I was seeking to argue. So to frame a video in response to that is unfortunate. And again, there's so many things like this where there's a kind of a twisting of things. So I'm going to stop there. I do hope to do a fuller case on praying to the saints in the future. This is a topic I would love to

explore more, but hopefully at least on the question of origin, now I can kind of sleep better at night knowing people have gotten a fuller and kind of rounder and more accurate portrait of his thought on this topic. All right, thanks for watching everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments. Let's keep working on this issue. And yeah, let me know what you think. God bless.