Truth Unites - Praying to Saints: Defending the Protestant View

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Gavin Ortlund defends the Protestant view that Christians should pray to God alone, examining the biblical, theological, Jewish, and historical evidence surrounding the practice of praying to the saints.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Should Christians pray to the saints in heaven to ask for their intercession? This is one of the most important dividing lines between Protestants and other Christians. In this video, I'm going to defend the Protestant position that God has not authorized this. So if you're interested in this topic, watching to the end of this video will hopefully give you a one-stop shop on many of the kind of leading issues for and against and how they clash together, just to try to represent the Protestant side. What I want to work through is four categories of evidence. Number one is praying to saints directly taught in scripture. Number two, is it a valid theological inference?

Number three, was praying to the righteous dead of practice in pre-Christian Judaism, especially the Second Temple period? And number four, when does praying to saints emerge in church history? And I want to defend my claim of, it's not there for the first 200 years. We'll look at the strongest counter argument from Hippolytus. Before diving into those, let me address three unhelpful tactics reflected in some of the responses to my previous video on this topic. Number one, motive attribution.

These are worth addressing because you see them escalating these days, and they're unhelpful. They are distracting us from the issue. All of us lose when these tactics are engaged. But I see this a lot more these days, unfortunately, for example, in Alex Sorin's live stream rebuttal to me when he gets a super chat stating that my financial livelihood depends on intentionally lying to myself and my audience, he unfortunately states his agreement with this, and then he adds his own speculations about how I'd have so much to lose financially and so forth. But my motive for defending Protestantism is that I believe it is true.

Speculating about other people's motives, whether financial motives or anything else, distracts us from the issues being debated. Let's avoid that tactic and let's deal with the arguments because that's going to be more helpful to our viewers and more honoring to Christ. Second, discreditation. This is where you try to damage someone's reputation or credentials to make them appear untrustworthy. I see a lot of this online. Unfortunately, I see a lot of just blatant lies about my church, which is really sad to see, because I love my church so much. It's such a great place. Where I see people saying, Ortland is a fake scholar, this kind of thing. I came across this claim on X, arguing that I don't even study the reformed sources outside of cherry-picking reformed texts that I read. So, you know, here's what to say about this. I have a PhD in historical theology, done post-doctoral work as well. I publish regularly in this field, my scholarly work as well.

reviewed. I serve as a visiting professor at Phoenix Talbot. But even if all those things were fake, it wouldn't disprove my arguments. Again, these kinds of personal attacks, they're not just false. They are distracting for the discussion, and they're not helping our viewers. So let's focus on the arguments. A third issue I see is unwarranted triumphalism. I noticed this in the rebuttal from William Albrecht, Stephen Boyce, and Pat May. They repeatedly say things like, we've demolished his arguments, He must grant this, and even on a few points, if someone doesn't agree with one of the things we're saying, then they're dishonest. And yet, this triumphalism is not warranted by the quality of their arguments, and in some cases it rests on basic errors. For instance, in their treatment of Cyprian, their criticism of me conflates, praying for deceased believers with praying to deceased believers.

These are completely different things. Praying to someone and praying for that person are different. Just as both of those are distinct from the third issue, which is them praying for us. But people conflate these things so much. And they do that here, but listen to the way that they make their appeal. These are the spiritual defenses and divine weapons which defend us. Man, he's about to say something good. I just know it.

Oh, yeah. Let us remember one another and concord. And Pat. It made me get up and get a drink refill, man. It made me get up and get a drink. It's about to get good, guys. Let us on both sides. Yes.

Always pray for one another. Both sides. Let us relieve both sides of what. Let us relieve burdens and afflictions by here. It is again mutual love that if any one of us by the swiftness of divine condescension should go hence. The first, our love may continue in the presence of the Lord and our prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease. and the presence of the Father's mercy. I bid you, dearest brother, ever heartily.

Farewell. Oh, my goodness. How in the world are you going to bring Cyprian up in this argument of the 200 year mark? It's incredible. No way, man. No way. All right, I'm going to bring this one back. I just want to make another statement.

It's kind of bold. But I just want to say this. If you're reading Cyprian and you get out of Cyprian that he is not talking about saints praying for one another, even when they are in the beatific. vision, you are being intellectually dishonest. I agree. I agree. I think it's a problem. And I think that I'm with you there. I think that Gavin for his, for his respect levels for me, I guess, and if that means anything to him at this point. But I think that you need to retract or reword what, what you said. And, you know, I know you won't accept our position here. I get that. But I think

you need to retract. Joe had already tried to point some of this out to him and I'll know why he's buckling down. Yeah. But man, I mean, just we need to keep praying for just give it up. Gavin, Gavin, give this one up, man. Like just make your argument. Say you don't like it. It's uncomfortable. Fine, but like you got to let this one go. So you can see the triumphalism in this appeal. You know, it's over. Give it up. You're doubling down. If you don't see this one particular point, then you're dishonest. Our respect for Gavin is affected by this. Pray for Gavin and so on and so forth, and yet they're wrong on the issue being addressed here. They're making a basic mistake here. Let's just review this, because this will get us into the data and prepare us for some of the other

arguments. The passage in Cyprian's letter to Cornelius is about praying for deceased believers, as well as them praying for us. I totally agree that Cyprian teaches we should pray for deceased believers. I've talked about that in various videos, like my videos on purgatory and also Protestant views of that. I also totally agree that Cyprian thinks they are praying. for us, this is why I'm always trying to distinguish the arrow up and the arrow down. Intercession for us, us invoking them. You can argue from one to the other. We'll deal with that in this video, but you can't just conflate them as though they were the same thing. None of these things constitute praying two deceased believers in heaven. Look at the Cyprian passage with me. You can

see the word four here twice. Let us on both sides always pray, one another, and then the person who dies first is in heaven praying for our brothers and our sisters. So the preposition four is different than the preposition two. Let us say you have a friend named Bob. Bob is your next door neighbor. He's the greatest Christian you've ever known. You promise whoever dies first, we're going to keep praying for one another. Then Bob dies, and you're in your prayer closet and you get on your knees. There's a difference between saying, dear Jesus, I pray for Bob, and saying, dear Bob, please intercede for me to Jesus. I underline the two different addresses of the prayer there. One is praying for Bob, but you're still

praying to God. The other is praying to Bob. And of course, both of those are distinct from Bob praying for me. And their critique here apparently doesn't notice that Cyprian speaks of Cornelius and himself praying for one another. There's no indication in this text that when one of them dies, the other will be praying to that person. For 500 years now, Protestants have been pointing out the problems with this particular proof text. In the Lutheran tradition, Philip Melanthin notes this exact Cyprian quote was being used in their day, and he says they cite Cyprian because he asked Cornelius while he was still alive to pray for his brothers after his death. By this example, they prove the invocation of the dead, and then he goes on to say,

nobody in Cyprian's day believed in invocation. He says it even stronger than I would, because he's talking about Gregory the Great there, which I wouldn't go that late. Then in other contexts, in the Anglican tradition, James Tyler's primitive Christian worship in the 19th century examines this exact passage at length and makes the same appeal. Quote, the sentiment of Cyprian, even as it is thus unduly extracted from his words, should not in the remotest degree countenance the invocation of the saints. Then the passage goes on to reference their intercession for us

and notes that that's quite distinct from the invocation of the saints. saints, something I often say. So note what is happening here. I'm not saying anything new. And almost all my videos, this is all I really do is I just repeat what Protestants have always argued for. And yet for simply saying the exact same thing as Melanchthon and Tyler and so many others, I get this triumphalist appeal as though Stephen's respect for me has gone down because of this, and I've got to give it up and I'm doubling down and so on and so forth. Now, there is a time for confident argumentation, but this unwarranted triumphalism is an unhelpful tactic. And the reason is it escalates the stakes of disagreement. It causes people, this is one of the things

that is causing the many unfortunate aspects of Christian disagreement on the internet to get worse. Because it causes people to think Protestants are dishonest. The truth is so clear and they're just doubling down and they just won't admit it and so on and so forth. And yet it's based on an error. and people don't really see where the disagreement actually even is. They're never going to know what Philip Melankton said about this and so forth, unless I put out a video and they happen to watch the video. You can see the dilemma I'm in when I put out one video that's 22 minutes, cast as a lightning quick overview,

and then I get all these three-hour, four-hour live streams, and I'm trying to figure out how do I respond? When do I respond? It's a very challenging situation to be in. I do ask for prayers, just that I'd have the Lord's wisdom to know how do I respond in the most helpful and God-honoring way. Now, Protestants can engage in all these same tactics than they do as well. So my encouragement for us all going forward is let's focus on the arguments, not on the

personal attacks and not on the escalating rhetoric, because focusing on the arguments is going to honor Christ more and it's going to serve our viewers better. And by the way, there are a lot of people who do that so beautifully arguing against me and they're doing a great job. So I'm not saying this is all of responses. I'm going to link to Matt Frad's article, which I thought was just a great example of how Protestant to Catholic disagreements can be at their best. Where we're not sacrificing our convictions, but we're still doing so with charity and clarity. I thought this video from the Oriental Orthodox Brothers was really great.

They're focusing on the arguments. I don't agree with all the conclusions. But again, it's like this is how it can be. We don't need to go after each other and so forth. One final comment, because of the nature of the heat that rises against the. me on the internet, part of my mission at Truth Unites is to defend what is true. And that is going to include Protestant beliefs. Now, I will always attempt to do that with charity, recognizing common ground, we don't disagree on everything, keeping positive relationships wherever possible. I love

having good relationships wherever we can. In real life, I pretty much always do. It's only on the internet that this hostility comes. But I'm not going to stop defending Protestantism just because there's negative energy. So if you disagree with me, make your case and make good arguments, and I enjoy that. But whatever happens, I'm not going away. I'm going to always advocate for what I think is right. All right, let's get into the arguments a little bit. I won't try to be comprehensive because there were so many videos, but I'll try to hit kind of a cluster response hitting some of the main issues here. Number one, is praying to saints directly taught in scripture. Now, I think the answer to this is pretty obviously not, and I don't say that to be

insulting, but I just think it's pretty obvious. I think the better argument is going to be the second section of this video. Is it a valid inference from scripture? And also I'll deal with that next. That'll be the intellectual heart of this video. But let's deal with some of these texts. If you just keep some basic distinctions in mind, some of which have already come up, you'll see that a lot of these texts in the Bible don't really hit the target. Some of them have to do with an angel showing up locally to you, and then someone communicating back, well, that is fine. If an angel shows up in your living room, you can talk to the angel. That is not a good proof text for regular devotional practice of speaking to angels in heaven who are not locally present. Many of these texts that are

appealed to, of course, have to do with them praying for us. That often gets conflated with us invoking them. But let me address one issue that I hope could be helpful to throw out a category, this idea of poetic apostrophe. Or to find that, throw out a category out of the table that's going to apply to a lot of texts. Because many people appeal to these cosmic summons to praise that include angels. And they're trying to get invocation of angels out of these passages like Psalm 103 and Psalm 148, where the psalmist says, praise the Lord, oh, you angels. But we can see the problem if we read them in context. For example, in Psalm 148, right after, praise him all his angels, praise him all his hosts.

It continues, praise him sun and moon, praise him all you shining stars. Which immediately raises the question, if Psalm 148-2 establishes invoking angels, does Psalm 148-3 establish invoking the sun, moon, and stars? Now Alex, Soren tries to say that the sun, moon, and stars really refer to the angels overseeing the sun, moon, and stars. That is not in the text, and it's difficult to square with how the psalm continues, because it goes on to also address sea creatures and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy winds, mountains and hills, cedars, beasts, livestock, creeping things, and flying birds. It's creeping things as like insects, for example. So the point of this Psalm is all creation is being summoned to praise the Lord. And all over the Bible, this summons is made.

I'll just splash some examples up on screen where you find references to fields exulting, rivers clapping their hands, hills, singing for joy, everything in the ocean, praising God and so on and so forth. Of course, this isn't just in the Psalms. Now, in these summons, angels are in close. but all of creation is included with the angels. And this is what is happening in Psalm 148. Commentators routinely identify this Psalm as a cosmic creation hymn, summoning all creatures to worship the Creator. It's not invoking angels and then not invoking everything else in creation.

Rather, this is a well-known literary device, known as poetic apostrophe. This is very common in literature where an entity is addressed, not as an actual petition with the expectation that that entity is hearing and then will respond to the request, but it's more of a rhetorical device. For example, in 1st Corinthians 15, Paul says, oh, death, where is thy sting? Paul is not invoking death expecting an answer, right? It's a literary device here. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet's final words in the Shakespeare play, Oh, Happy Dagger, well, she's invoking daggers, it's a literary device, right? So also in text like Psalm 148, because you can't

pluck out angels as being addressed in one way, and then every other aspect of creation being addressed in a completely different way. And if you just think about this, this language makes a lot of sense. We have it in the doxology, which we sing the doxology every other week at my church. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. You see the word ye there. It's a direct address. But when Protestants sing this, we're not invoking the angels.

This is a summons to praise, including all creatures, including the creatures here below as well. Now, the song of the three youths is an especially clear example of poetic cosmic apostrophe. This is the Greek additional material in Daniel chapter three. on Facebook, Daniel Vesio put up a post referencing this passage, and he wrote the following, quote, Gavin Ortland, the Bible never shows that prayers should be addressed to anyone but God. Me, opening a Bible that has the complete canon, O you spirits and souls of the righteous, bless you the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever. That's Daniel 386.

Then he continues, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo are praising God and petitioning righteous souls to join them in praising and glorifying God, this is why the canon matters. Now, I left a comment trying to clarify his view of trying to understand how he's understanding because a lot of times these passages are appealed to, and there's not even any interpretation offered of the nature of this address. So I appreciated him responding to that. I'd just like to explain why I think reading this verse in context makes this a very clear example of apostrophe, almost a sort of text case example, because immediately before

the spirits and souls of the righteous are enjoined to praise the Lord. The text reads, All you waters above the heavens, bless the Lord. Praise and exalt him above all forever. All you powers, bless the Lord. Sun and moon, bless the Lord. And it continues like this referencing stars of heaven. Every shower and dew.

All you winds. Fire and heat, cold and chill. Dew and rain. Frost and chill. Horefrost and snow. nights and days light and darkness lightnings and clouds all the earth mountains and hills everything growing on the earth you springs bless the lord seas and rivers bless the lord you see monsters and all water creatures bless the lord all you birds of the air all you beasts wild and tame bless the lord all you mortals oh israel

priests of the lord servants of the lord and then here in verse 86 spirits and souls of the just. So do you see how reading this in context helps shed light on the nature of this address? What is not legitimate is to take one vocative of address in one way when it's the spirits and souls of the righteous, but taking the preceding 25 in a different way. So these kinds of literary addresses to figures and animals and aspects of God's creation and snow and rain and so forth don't constitute a ground for asking for their intercession. And I'm going say more about Daniel 3 specifically from Hippolytus in a bit. Poetic apostrophe, or if you don't like that term, hopefully you can at least understand the idea here. You don't have to use that term.

But this literary device is the answer for many of these texts that typically come up. Another example that I think is pretty unavoidable is Syrac 48, which apostrophizes Elijah, saying, how glorious you were Elijah in your wondrous deeds. Who can boast as you can? my son Elijah watches my videos, he's going to hear that verse and smile. That's hilarious. The writer of this text is not literally petitioning Elijah here, asking, you know, expecting him to respond to this in some way. This is a well-known literary phenomenon. Okay, now let me address a few other texts. I'm going to be brief on these because I see these as weak-proof texts that don't require a long response. Some have mentioned Job 5-1, which says, call now. Is there anyone

who will answer you to which of the holy ones will you turn? And so some appeal to this and say the holy ones is angels, therefore angelic invocation. But in context, this is part of Eliphaz's speech to Job. He's arguing that Job's cause is not a righteous one. And therefore, there's no one who's going to take Job's side against God that he can appeal to. This is a rhetorical challenge effectively saying there's nobody in your corner. Nobody you can ask. And the expected answer to this who's going to answer you is none of them. Because the book of Job has this idea that angels interpret divine providence. As the Cambridge commentary observes, the converse idea that they convey men's representations to God or intercede for them with him is not found here. On top of that, by the way,

Elifaz and his friends don't have a reliable theology. The end of the book makes clear they're wrong and a lot of what they say. That doesn't mean everything that Elifaz says is false, but it certainly means we should not build a doctrine of saintly invocation on this passing rhetorical challenge in his speech. Another text that comes up is 1 Timothy 521. Again, I'm going to be very brief on these. There's just nothing here about invoking or addressing angels. This seems to presuppose some kind of angelic witness and therefore awareness, but not us invoking them. Ephesians 310 has come up where God's wisdom is made known to angels through the church, and this is used to establish angelic awareness of earthly events.

Fine. I'll come back to that in section two of this video, but that's not invocation. Acts 940 and other texts where the dead are raised sometimes is appealed to. But obviously talking to a dead person whose dead body is right there, specifically so that you can bring them back to life is not a good proof text for talking to the deceased in general for other purposes when they're not bodily present. Another passage that comes up is Matthew 27

and the statement in verse 47, some say some misconstrue Christ to be calling Elijah, but the misunderstanding of bystanders establishes at most that this was a conceivable idea not that Jesus is actually doing this or that Matthew is commending such a practice. Again, the Protestant position is about divine warrant. We're not claiming no one has ever thought about this before. We're asking, does God authorize us to do this?

So if you want to find divine warrant for praying to saints, and you're going to say, and you want to say that that's directly taught in Scripture, you need to find a text that constitutes divine warrant for praying to saints. and that such verses as these come up as the appeals is very telling, because so many of these fall so short of actually giving you divine warrant for this specific practice. Think about how common praying to saints today is in some Christian traditions. If you spend time in a tradition that believes this, you're going to hear about it. It's going to come up.

So if this is something that really represents continuity with biblical practice, It's very surprising that the best evidence that can be found is these kinds of oblique verses. It's not as though there are no natural places where saintly invocation could come up. Somewhere in the 150 Psalms, for example, we could find some kind of invocation of Abraham or the patriarchs or others. Solomon's prayer in the dedication of the temple in First Kings 8 has a lot to do with intercession. It would make sense there to find some kind of statement like, oh Moses, here, the prayers made in this temple or something like that. Times of covenant renewal, when the people of God are repenting, returning to the Lord,

like Nehemiah 9 and elsewhere, this would make sense that if this was a practice, that it would come up in a context like this, but David or the patriarchs or others would be invoked in some way, but we don't find this. And so if all that can come up from Scripture as evidential in favor of this practice is things like, you know, in the Psalms saying, oh, angels, praise the the Lord, along with the rest of creation, just like the doxology says, this is a very weak biblical foundation. And I think this is why people go to non-canonical texts, as well as to the practice within intertestamental Judaism, which I'll come back to in just a moment. Let me just observe that

even the Catholic Encyclopedia appeals to biblical principles to support the doctrine of invoking the saints, which is a much better argument I'm about to deal with. But it acknowledges, quote, it is true that in none of the passages of the Old Testament, mention is made of prayer to the saints. Later on, it says we readily admit that the doctrine of the intercession of the saints is a development from the teaching of Scripture. I'll put up another passage so no one thinks

I'm straw manning the Catholic encyclopedia there. It's making a much better argument. It's arguing that this follows from principles. So let's deal with that argument there. Now, this would be the heart of the video. This is where I think the discussion gets most interesting and there's a real clash. And I think intelligent, well-meaning people

can really wrestle with this. I don't mean to act like this. This is all simple. But I do think it's pretty clear. I used the word obvious before. I only use a word like that after prayerful consideration to never, I don't want to be triumphalist myself, but I do think the word is warranted in this case. I think it's obvious that it's not directly there in Scripture. But the question is, is it a legitimate inference from Scripture? And this is a fair question because we all can agree. We don't have to have explicit biblical sanction for everything we believe. Some of our beliefs and practices can be valid by means of inference. So one appeal that can be made

and has been made against me is like this. Gavin admits that heavenly intercession is true. Heavenly invocation is entailed by that. After all, if they're praying for us already, why can't we ask them to do that, right? If the arrow down is coming this way, why can't we send the arrow up? And let's try to steal man this appeal a little bit.

the best version of this appeal isn't just to say, heavenly intercession, therefore heavenly invocation, the arrow down, therefore the arrow up. If it's just formulated like that, that's a non-sequitur, meaning it doesn't follow. The mere fact that someone is praying for you does not itself entail that they can receive your requests or that God has authorized this particular form of communication to them.

But there's several responses that have made a much more careful argument. For example, in the response from the Oriental Orthodox brothers, they make a comparison to the doctrine of the Trinity. And they're basically saying something like this, invocation follows logically from biblical premises, even if it's not explicitly stated, just as the Trinity follows logically from scriptural premises before you get to Nicene terminology. And I want to be careful to not straw man their argument, so let me put up there four prerequisite beliefs from which they argue invocation of the saints emerges. Number one, saints in heaven can pray for us. Number two, saints in heaven are capable of hearing us. Number three, Christians are allowed to ask

fellow members of Christ's body to pray for them. And number four, death does not separate Christians from the body slash love of Christ. And they argue invocation follows from those premises. In my view, this is a much better argument than trying to argue from like Psalm 148 and things like that. Matt Frad's article was also a great model of argumentation in this regard, making an inference like this. And again, this is a good discussion. So let's work through this a little bit. I'm going to take the Oriental Orthodox four prerex there as a template to work with. Now, first, let me say, some people on X have cast, in their rebuttals and in their comments, have cast my affirmation of heavenly intercession for us as though we're making a concession, as though I used to say one thing,

and now I'm moving or something like that. That is not accurate. My first video on this topic five years ago made the exact same point. It's good to be cautious about this and not be dogmatic about it. But many Protestants have been very open to say that, on the contrary, the saints are praying for us. For example, in the Lutheran tradition, the Augsburg Confessions, says we also grant that the saints in heaven pray for the church in general. And I developed that a bit there.

I've also showed this has been very common in Protestant, and I cited Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican Theologians. So there's no concession here. This is what's been present within many Protestant contexts always. But let me give two counter appeals here. One has to do with the degrees of knowledge of the saints and angels in heaven. And the other has to do with the metaphysics of communication from earth to heaven. So first, when we affirm that the saints intercede for us, it remains still to clarify the nature of

What I said in my last video is that this is plausible that they pray for us, not that we have certainty or detailed knowledge about how it works. Like, for instance, how much each particular angel and believer in heaven knows about each particular earthly event or person. And that was also clear in the quotes I put up in my last video, Zecharias Ercinus, saying, yes, they pray for us, but that they know the misfortunes and business of everyone in particular, and that they hear us, we deny. Calvin said something similar. Yes, they're praying for us, but they don't lose their quiescence and become distracted with earthly cares. In the Anglican tradition,

the statement I cited from Archbishop John Tillotson was saying, yeah, we don't deny that this is happening, but it goes beyond what we can prove to be dogmatic about it. So I think this is a very coherent position to say, this is totally plausible that the saints and angels in heaven are praying for us, but we've not been given detailed instruction about this. We need to be careful not to speculate or go beyond what we know. We've not been to heaven and God's not told us all the details of how this works. Okay? Trying to make a modest point there. So now, let's go back to, from the Oriental Orthodox Brothers video, their second prerequisite belief, saints in heaven are capable of hearing us. Now, that is exactly a point where I think we need to slow down and clarify and distinguish what we do and don't know.

And so let's distinguish between a weaker and a stronger possible construal of this. The weaker construe, A, is that the saints in heaven have knowledge of affairs on earth. A stronger possible construe, B, is that this particular saint hears this particular verbal or mental address that we direct toward him. Now, A, seems much more secure than B, and yet B is what would be necessary for most practices of praying to saints today. For example, in many traditions, it is common to posit that the saints in heaven can discern silent mental addresses directed to them, that they can hear many different addresses all happening at the same time.

This is all grounded in the beatific vision. and these beliefs constitute a very specific construal of the metaphysics of earth and heaven and the nature of communication from earth to heaven. God is infinite and omniscient. We know this, but the saints and angels in heaven, though they are glorified, are still finite. So looking at prerec number four, death does not separate Christians from the body slash love of Christ. I fully affirm that and agree with that as stated. But I don't think that settles the question of communication and how communication works

between different members of the body of Christ. Yes, we are all one body. The communion of saints is gloriously true. We are all one. But that does not necessarily entail automatic and unrestricted communicative access between each other. I mean, even on earth, there are limitations for how we can communicate with each other. On earth, you have to be bodily present with someone or have a cell phone or some other

form of technology to communicate with someone, but also on earth, we can't read each other's thoughts, we can't hear 1,000 people all talking at the same time, because we're finite. So I'm just making a very basic point here that our unity in the body of Christ doesn't settle this question of communication. And if the claim on the table is that God overcomes these limitations in the earth to heaven communication, so we don't have to be locally present in the same way, the saints can hear our interior thoughts, they can receive, many simultaneous petitions and so forth, that is a very specific set of claims that needs some kind of grounding. I'm not saying that God can't do that. The issue here is one of warrant.

I don't see that we have warrant to think that God does do this. And that seems to me to go well beyond what is entailed by these four prerequisite beliefs, because prerequisite belief number two does not necessarily entail this exhaustive penetrating kind of knowledge where they can hear our mental addresses, and prerequisite number four does not settle the issue of communication. Here's the issue, if you got lost in all that. The issue is the communion of saints does not require that a finite, departed human receives verbal and mental address from anywhere on earth. That communication mechanism is the very point in question. and that seems to me to be a very different kind of inference than the doctrine of the Trinity.

The doctrine of the Trinity is an inference explaining first century data in the deposit of faith. We have, for example, in the New Testament monotheism, that's explicit. There is one God. We have the Father, Son, and Spirit, all identified as God, clearer with the Son, but I would say still pretty clear with the Holy Spirit too. we have baptism in the name of the Trinity, straight from Christ himself, where everyone is from the get-go baptized in the name of the father-son spirit.

We have other triatic formula as well. We have personal distinctions. The father is sending the son, the son is sending the spirit, and so on. And so what develops here is the clarification and further understanding and further terminology for what God has revealed. Later developments clarify what's been used.

given. From John 1-1, the Word Was God, to the Homooseon Clause, is the lens getting clearer and clearer, like when you put on better prescription glasses. By contrast, the invocation of the saints is an observable devotional behavior with a very specific metaphysics of how communication works between earth and heaven. And I'm not seeing anything in the apostolic deposit that is being clarified by the emergence of this practice, this looks to me more just like a new devotional practice coming into being, and that requires warrant. Otherwise, we lack a reason to think that this practice is divinely authorized. However, I want to acknowledge this discussion is much, you know, we need to keep having this. I'd like to hear the counter responses. I'm sure there are some good ones.

So, you know, if my Oriental Orthodox brothers want to have a conversation, let's talk about this, let's keep this going. I'm not trying to act like this discussion right here is a kind of slam dunk. I'm trying to explain how I'm looking at it. Now, some argue that invoking the saints was present in intertestimental Jewish practice, and that would then lend credibility to its continuation in the church. So let's address this next. Before we get to the church history section, believe it or not, I'm 35 minutes into this video. Believe it or not, this is condensed and squeezed down. My only worry is, am I talking too fast? Oh, man, you're always worried if you're annoying people when you're doing a YouTube video. Okay, let's keep going here.

Because the church history section is the real important one, and we're going to get to origin there too. Now, of course, with the intertestimental Jewish period, one of the issues is that not everything that happens in intertestimental Judaism is approved by God, of course. So again, the issue is divine warrant and authorization. But some could be. So let's focus on this historical question of whether this was a Jewish practice during this period of time prior to the coming of Christ for devout Jews to invoke the deceased righteous. Now, Alex Sorin argues that invoking the saints in Second Temple Judaism is not controversial. It's settled, and that my position, that it arose later, is not a serious scholarly position.

Intertestamental literature. Tobit, the Song of the Three Youths, Enoch. It's not controversial, not controversial at all. Yet he acts as if it is. He has even Jewish scholars I show in my video on intercession to the saints. Jewish scholars, this is like settled for them. Talk to Ash Mays, dude. Talk to Ash Mays. This is settled. It's widespread early on. I'm not the only one saying this. I'm just so shocked that he takes this position. This is not a serious scholarly position. It's not. Not at all. There is so much that shows this predates the fulfillment of the church. This was a practice within the church prior to the incarnation. Gavin, church history starts at Sinai.

What he's addressing there is this practice of invoking the righteous in this period. I'll put up some statements that you can see his view there on the screen. I don't want to be unfair. But this is not correct. This is not a settled matter in the scholarship. Much of the scholarly discussion actually is about how long after this period, after the Second Temple period, did this practice of, in Jewish contexts, invoking the dead come into being. So it's common to find older scholars saying things like the following,

quote, it is a well-known fact that there are no prayers from the Talmudic period which are addressed to intermediaries of any sort, neither to angels nor to saints or patriarchs. The Talmudic period is the first six or seven centuries after the destruction of the temple, basically from 70 AD to around 638 AD. So he puts the emergence of this practice within Judaism, way late, and a lot of people have argued for that. More recent scholars are arguing against that in many cases, and they're placing the emergence of invoking the righteous dead within Judaism in these centuries after Christ, but earlier than that. So the third, fourth, fifth, century times like this. For example, Meir Bar Ilan is an Israeli scholar of ancient Judaism. He is

not a Protestant apologist. He is a Jewish historian who's sympathetic to Jewish prayer to intermediaries, but his thesis is that the practice of appealing to the dead patriarchs began in the Amaraic period. The Amoreic period is from 200 to 500 AD, roughly. And more broadly, Bar Ilan portrays grave-based solicitation of the deceased as a practice that emerges in this same rabbinic period of Judaism. And he's arguing against this older view. So you can see the scholarly discussion between these two camps, some putting it in maybe like the 400s, others putting it way later than that. There are some who put invoking the dead back earlier into this intertestamental period, but it is not settled, as Alex says. Many scholars deny that. Larry Hurtado

reviewed two important works in this field, and his conclusion about the Second Temple Judaism is, both of these texts, these are leading texts in the field, demonstrated that all the prayers in these writings are offered to the God of Israel alone, though angels may serve as bearers of prayers and as intercessors for humans, for example, Tobit Chapter 12, God is the object of prayers by humans and angels alike. Herato himself holds to a similar view, quote, the studies of Jewish piety in the post-exylic period indicate that it was essentially directed toward God alone, and within piety there he includes prayer. Richard Baucombe seems to hold to a similar view for, from what I can tell. There's also some, now there is some discussion about this, especially about

invoking angels within Second Temple Judaism, but even that is not settled. Lauren Stuckenbrook surveys early Jewish evidence, which would include the Second Temple Jewish material, and concludes in none of the passages discussed, is there any hint that in Judaism a cultus was being organized around angelic beings? The position that invoking the deceased righteous was a common practice within Second Temple Judaism is out there, but from what I can tell, it is rarer. It's the minority view from what I can tell. And when present, it's heavily qualified. If you want to read debate about this, you could read William Horbury's article.

I'll put the details on screen, and he's arguing in favor. And then you can see the counterargument, especially page 26 of this book, arguing against Horbury. But this is a disputed question, and it's being worked through. So when Alex says it's not controversial, not controversy at all, even Jewish scholars, this is settled for them, this is settled, it's widespread early on, this is not a serious scholarly position. Okay, given the evidence we've just surveyed, I think you can judge for yourself how

seriously to take that claim. Now, the reason why so many don't find invoking the dead to be a pre-Christian Jewish practice is that we just don't have much evidence for that. And when you keep in mind these various distinctions we've brought up, you can see why. Often, the texts appealed to are doing one of three things. And we've seen these already. Number one, they might be conflating heavenly intercession for us with our invoking of heavenly agents. Number two, they might be quoting a passage about an angel showing up locally, and then a person's talking to the angel.

again, that is not a good proof text for having an ongoing devotional practice of speaking to angels who are not locally present. And number three, you could have texts dealing with people going to heaven and then speaking with people while locally themselves present in heaven. Like in first Enoch, when Methuselah actually goes to Enoch, who is not deceased, but he's been translated to heaven. And of course, Methuselah can speak to him. if God transports you to heaven like Paul in 2 Corinthians, of course you can talk to people there,

but that's not a good proof text for establishing that people who are still on earth can regularly communicate to those in heaven. The idea that we talk to those in heaven and ask for their intercession with this idea that they're going to answer our specific request that does not seem to be present in the Jewish text prior to the coming of Christ. Now, if someone wants to dispute that, I'm not going to try to survey every possible text year. Again, because sometimes if I don't give an exhaustive response, which is very difficult to do because there's so much out there, so many different response videos, and everyone thinks, not everyone, I don't know, say. Some people think, well, it's ours. That is the one that's so important that he has to respond to us. And it's hard. It's like

I'm trying to respond to the best things out there. If there's something you really think I'm leaving off, I need to address it in this video, leave it in the comments. And we'll keep the conversation going. I'll try to address whatever people are concerned about. Okay. So now that raises this question. So far in this video, we've argued invoking the saints is not directly taught in scripture. I've argued against it as a theological inference. I've argued that it's not present in intertestamental Judaism. It's certainly not settled that it's present there.

So then we ask the question, well, when does it emerge? And in this last section of the video, I want to address church history and give some comments defending my 200-year time frame. You know, my last video on this, I cast that as a 22-minute lightning-quick overview, so I didn't give tons of documentation. But maybe the first thing I can just do here, say, what I'm arguing is very standard. Peter Brown famously wrote a book entitled The Cult of the Saints, its rise and function in Latin Christianity.

And you can pick up the back cover and read the summary of what he has accomplished in this book from this review from the Christian century. Quote, Christianity was born without such a cult. it took rise and that rise needs chronicling. And that's what Brown's book is attempted to do, trace out the rise and development. J.N. D. Kelly, in his early Christian doctrines, describes the history of the cult of saints as a rise and gradual development. He says the earliest cult of martyrs consisted in preservation of relics and annual commemoration.

And then he's showing the adjective gradual there is important. and he's showing the piece-by-piece building of this theology. When I use the word accretion, I'm using my term there that has become common, but that's actually pretty consistent with how many people describe an issue like this. It's gradual, it's piece-by-piece, etc. Everett Ferguson, in his church history text, argues for something very similar to me. He's basically saying third-century emergence, fourth-century expansion, intercession of the saints first, then invocation of the saints from that.

and he references third-century developments like the prayers to Peter and Paul in Rome, but then he acknowledges by the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth centuries, the cult of saints was fully developed. So again, you get this sense of development. Very common, you know, older scholars like Adolf von Harnack had a similar view. So I'm not saying that means that's right. I'm just saying sometimes I will say something that is very common within academic literature, and it will engender this very fierce reaction.

And I think sometimes people are simply not aware that what Gavin Orton is saying is very standard is not some new idea. So let me defend this idea a little bit that this is an emergence sometime in the late third century is when we really, you know, you don't want to be exact on the exact year. We're dealing with general timeframes here.

And I'll just engage here the strongest counter argument that has come up, by my judgment, Again, if you want other texts, leave him in the comments, we'll keep working at this. And this is Hippolytus in his comments on Daniel 3. And this is dated to the early 3rd century. So that would fit within that 200-year window of time I've proposed, but we don't see this. So let's work through this.

And what I want to point out is that in his commentary on Daniel, Hippolytus repeatedly employs rhetorical apostrophe. The literary device I counted, I discussed at the beginning of this video from Psalm 148 and elsewhere. He speaks to Daniel right at the beginning of the book, oh, Daniel, do this, that, and the other. But it's also addressed to the unrighteous, all the characters in the story, including the unrighteous characters. So, for example, he's directly haranguing the wicked elders in the Susanna story. Wicked rulers and filled with the workings of the devil. Did Moses deliver these things to you? And while you read the law

yourselves, do you teach others thus? Why, you lawless? Do you strive? to gain over a chaste and guile a soul by deceitful words, etc., etc., etc. So he's speaking to them as though they were right there presently plotting against Susanna. Now, no one would interpret this as Hippolytus attempting to communicate with these deceased villains. This is a dramatic apostrophe. The expositor enters into the narrative and then speaks to the characters. He does the same thing with Nebuchadnezzar. Quote, tell me Nebuchadnezzar, with what purpose you or

them to be cast into the fire bound. Later on, tell me Nebuchadnezzar, when did you see the son of God, that you should confess that this is the son of God? And who pricked your heart? And he's going on and on and on. You can read the rest of that quote. Again, these are rhetorical questions addressed to Nebuchadnezzar as character in Daniel 3, not to the deceased Nebuchadnezzar, wherever Hippolyt thinks his soul presently resides with an expectation that Nebuchadnezzar is going to hear him and reply to him. This is a literary device. Now, the three-ythews passage in Hippolytus has exactly the same dramatic structure. Hippolytus is narrating the three youths inside the furnace.

He explains there, him line by line, quoted this from that earlier. They were addressing heaven and son and moon and so forth. And then without changing scene, Hippolytus turns toward them and says, tell me, you three boys, remember me, I entreat you, that I may also obtain the same lot of martyrdom with you, who was the fourth person with you who was walking in the midst of the furnace and who was hymning to God with you, et cetera, et cetera. Describe him and he's going on. You can read that whole quote on the screen. And Apolitus himself immediately after this supplies the answer to this rhetorical question, namely it was the word who was present with them and speaking through them.

Just before this passage, Apolitus has been explaining the three youth's own apostrophic rhetoric in the song of the three children. And you can see this on screen where they're addressing all creation as through one mouth. It's a literary device. It's as though all creation through one mouth. So he's recognizing Daniel 3 itself is using apostrophe. So no one can say that Hippolytus is unfamiliar with this literary device. It's in the very text he's commenting on right here. So I think we have a literary apostrophe here with the three youths. Now, if you don't agree with that, I think here's the challenge for you is,

how do you explain how he's invoking the unrighteous dead as well? Because as we've seen, he's speaking same exact way, same style and everything to the wicked elders and to Nebuchadnezzar and so forth. And my proposal is let's read these different vocatives of address consistently. unless there's a reason supplied in the text, a non-arbitrary reason for differentiation. So I don't think this piece of literature demonstrates that Hippolytus is actually praying to anyone's soul. Rather, he's using a literary device. Now, the last figure I want to address is Origin.

He's a very important in this discussion, and he really is a key catalytic figure in the historical development. Now, in the Boyce-Albrecht-May video, they use Origin, but one general concern I have is that they reference texts that refer to angels praying for us and with us, which is part of my case. It's part of what I argue for, and I'll give a fuller review of Origin in just a moment. Again, it happens a lot where that is conflated with as though it were evidence of us praying to them. As we'll see, Origin actually addresses that very issue, and he's explicit to say. say, no, we don't ask the angels. But first, let me just address one more specific problem with

their video, and that is they're trying to get the practice of invoking angels from a passage I've already addressed in my discussion with Joe Heschmire, but I'll address it here again. Here's their reasoning. Even when not asked. So if they're not asked, they're still doing it. That means that they do it when they are asked, which means we invoke. There you go. We invoke them. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's such a profound point. Yes. The opposite of that is also true.

Because he makes the claim, these even when not asked would mean. We'd still do it. They would still do it. And it would mean that they are also asked. How much more when you do ask. Right. Right. William.

Yeah. No, this is tremendous. So they refer to this argument as a silver bullet, but I actually think this argument is very problematic. We're going to put up the passage here, and you can see this phrase, even when not asked. So origin is saying, the angels pray for us even when not asked. Now, some translations don't have the word even, by the way. But let's just go with that here for now. It plainly does not follow that if it says even when not asked, therefore they are asked. That's trying to get a positive out of a negative. Just think of some parallel examples. If I said, my neighbor shovels the snow in

my driveway, even when not asked. That can be a perfectly natural way to express that I don't need to solicit them. They're going to do it whether I ask them to or not. They're doing that, and I'm not asking them. Or if I said, my wife packs me yummy snacks in my lunch, even when not asked, it does not logically follow from that that I am asking her to pack snacks in my lunch. Or if someone said, the government offers free driving classes even when not asked, it does does not follow from that that you can infer that people are petitioning the government for these classes. So you can see the problem here. You're trying to get a positive out of a negative. Now, if you had an additional sentence like, I often ask my neighbor to shovel my driveway, but my neighbor shovels the

snow in my driveway, even when not asked, that would be proof for invoking your neighbor because of the first sentence there. But in origin, we don't have a first sentence like that. In fact, He's explicit on this point. He addresses this point, and I'll review that text in a minute. And there was also some problematic treatment of origin in the Oriental Orthodox video. He tries to cite origin as, you know, a defender of prayers to God alone. And that makes me laugh because clearly that means Gavin has not read origin theology. Because when origin is saying prayer is to God alone, he means specifically prayer is to God the

Father alone, right? That's his idea, right? Only the Father can be prayed to. The son is as a mediator who you can ask in order to be an instrumental, to the father. So yes, I am familiar with Origin. Let me recount a little bit of his theology here. Origin serves as almost a laboratory perfect example of this distinction between heavenly intercession for us, on the one hand, and are invoking heavenly beings on the other because he's very emphatic about them praying for us, them praying with us, but in those very contexts, he addresses

the issue of are invoking them, and he says no. So on the one hand, he's appealing to Tobit and second Maccabees to establish that angels and departed saints pray for us and pray along with us. But in those contexts, like in against Celsius, when the question becomes whether we should then invoke the angels, origin says, no, the knowledge of the angels does not permit Christians to direct prayer to them, and that piety toward God is enough to secure their help. This is extremely important because it pushes against the idea that it's somehow illogical to believe in heavenly intercession for us without believing in invoking heavenly beings. That's origin's view.

Here are his words, for to invoke angels without having obtained a knowledge of their nature, greater than is possessed by men, would be contrary to reason. But conformably to our hypothesis, let this knowledge of them, which is something wonderful and mysterious, be obtained. then this knowledge making known to us their nature and the offices to which they are severally appointed will not permit us to pray with confidence to any other than to the supreme God who is sufficient for all things and that through our Savior the Son of God who is the Word and Wisdom and Truth and everything else which the writings of God's prophets and the apostles of Jesus entitle him.

So you saw Mourette's words in the clip that I showed. he's saying he tries to cite origin as a defender of prayers to God alone, and that makes me laugh because clearly that means Gavin is not read Origins theology, because Origin is saying prayers to God alone. He means God the Father alone. This is one spot where their video may have lapsed a little bit in charity, but that's okay. But this is not true. Origin's early view is pray to God the Father alone. That's in his text on prayer. And you can see here, if we accept prayer in its full meaning, we may not ever pray to any begotten being,

not even to Christ himself, but only to the God and Father of all. But Origin comes to embrace prayer to God the Son as well. Now, in my previous dialogues on this, I've given more scholarly citation to show this isn't just my crazy idea, but here's one example on screen of someone, a scholar who's recognizing Origins' development on this point. between on prayer and against Celsius, there's about 15 years.

By the time you get to the mid-third century when against Celsius is written, origin has changed his mind, and that's clear from the text, quote, for every prayer and supplication and intercession and Thanksgiving is to be sent up to the supreme God through the high priest, who is above all the angels, the living word and God, and to the word himself. Shall we also pray and make intercessions and offer thanksgiving and supplications? to him if we have the capacity of distinguishing between the proper use and the abuse of prayer. And then later in the text, away then with this counsel, which Selsus gives us to offer prayer to demons, it is not to be listened to for a moment, for our duty is to pray to the most high God alone, and to the only begotten, the firstborn of the whole creation, and to ask him as our high priest

to present the prayers which ascend to him from us, to his God and our God, etc., etc. the rest there. So it's very significant that Origin, right in these very texts that he's addressing, how angels pray with us and for us, turns around and says, don't pray to them. Prayer is to God alone. And he includes, the sun is the object of prayer. Now, in my previous videos on Origin, I've addressed other issues. I've documented more scholarly citations about showing that, you know, this is Origin's view, pray to God alone. And I've really only been able to find one 19th century Anglican who takes a different view on that. Maybe there's others, but I can't find too many view. So my view on origin is pretty standard. I've also talked about the different moods of prayer.

And when Origin talks about these, he's not talking about praying to heavenly beings. So for more on Origin, see that. Here's the only question I bring up here. And the reason I bring this up is because this is right at the cutoff time. And here's the point. If praying to angels or praying to deceased Christians was a generally known Christian practice, can you imagine origin coming along around the year 250 and arguing like this? He says, don't pray to the angels. And this is one piece of the cumulative data that really does make it seem. Like praying to deceased believers is something that Christians didn't do once upon a time, and then they started doing.

And origin himself is one factor in that transition, though he doesn't get there himself. So to put my heart on the table, making videos like this, you know, you risk lots of reactions against you and so forth. But this issue really matters, and so the reason I'm addressing this is, what Protestants want to do is pray as God taught us. And it genuinely does not seem like this practice has divine authorization. Stepping back and looking at the big picture, the desire is it's not, the argument is not, though it's often caricatured this way very frequently, that you have to have explicit scriptural warrant for everything you believe.

Not explicit. But it does require that in the absence of explicit scriptural warrant, you need some other reason to believe that this particular practice has divine authorization. We cannot pray in a certain way just because human beings began to do that. We need to pray as God has instructed and authorized us. This does not mean that we are cut off from the saints in heaven in every sense. We are united to them in Christ. We rejoice that they are with the Lord in glory, perfect happiness right now.

We look forward to joining them. But in the meantime, to say the main thing to finish with, we want to pray as God himself authorized us. And as Protestants, with a few exceptions, I keep saying Protestants, that's basically true. There's a few exceptions among like the Anglo-Catholics and so on and so forth. But as Protestants, we don't believe that God has authorized us to pray to deceased Christians and angels.

And so we're trying to obey God. And that's our concern in this. All right. I hope that video is helpful to onlookers. seeking the truth about these things. Lord, forgive me for any sins in me in the way I may have responded imperfectly. If there's other things that still need to be addressed

that have not yet come into this video, fair enough. Let's keep working. This doesn't need to be the last time we ever talk about this. Put in the comments, other topics you want me to address. And I hope that this video just serves the truth, honors Christ, serves the discussion. All right, thanks for watching everybody. See you in the next video.