Debunking the “Pagan” Roots of Marian Devotion

You are listening to Shameless Popery with Joe Heschmeyer, a production of Catholic Answers.

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. So today I want to answer a question I think many Protestants have, which is when Catholics pray to Mary and the Saints, is that a thing that’s Christian in origin at all? Or is that a thing that we’ve gotten from Paganism?

Have we just taken all those gods and goddesses and paganism and slapped saint so-and-so on to replace them? Does all the goddess worship that we find in paganism get replaced with married worship? This is an objection I’ve heard many times and I was sort of surprised to hear a variation of it from Dr. Gavin Ortlund, who’s usually a pretty thoughtful and generous interlocutor with Catholicism. On this point, I think he’s just fundamentally wrong on some basic history. So I want to engage him in a spirit of Christian charity, but I want to be really clear that this is not a small thing to get wrong.

Now, in a way, this is kind of the second part of a two-part series. Because last week I looked at one of his objections, which is the idea that medieval piety, sure, maybe in theory it would be okay to pray to Mary and the Saints, but in practice it draws people away from Jesus Christ. And in response to that, I pointed out that that’s a bad reading of medieval history.

And I look to people like Eamon Duffy, who points out that you really can’t argue that medieval people are distant from Christ while they’re doing things like going to daily mass and constantly putting themselves in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And it’s very hard to discover things, as I pointed out last week, like The Imitation of Christ being the second bestselling book after the Bible itself in the 15th century. That this just doesn’t sound like a people who are cut off from Christ. And this is prior to the Reformation.

So if you want that argument, that’s all last week. But I mentioned that because Gavin’s going to presuppose that first point, that medieval piety went bad. And so that leads him to a second question, was it inherently bad? Or was this a good practice that went bad?

And his answer to it is that this was a bad practice from the beginning. That when the earliest Christians are offering up prayers to Mary or to the Saints, that they’re actually doing something that is not just un-biblical, it’s wrong, it’s evil. It’s something they’ve gotten from paganism itself.

So I’m going to let Gavin kind of make the argument. And then I’m going to pick it apart and show how this argument, which you’ve probably heard 1000 times if you’re in certain parts of Protestantism, is built on a historical foundation of basically nothing.

So now let’s address this worry. This is a second part of the video. Okay, but was this just medieval excess? Was this just medieval abuse? Is this a good practice that went awry? Or is it a bad practice that went worse? That’s one way of framing the question.

And here I would basically want to articulate a historical interpretation of the first several centuries of the church, as well as a view of holy scripture, where I would say I don’t think that this was the case of a good and apostolic practice that Jesus would want us to practice, that simply got taken too far.

I think rather the interpretation I would offer again with love in my heart, and I hope this won’t give undue offense, is that it’s a compromising with pagan practices that comes in, in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries. But at first is very modest and very mild, and then it grows and grows and grows.

So the historical interpretation I would have is that the full-blown medieval errors are not the result of a good thing being perverted, but it’s kind of like Solomon, small steps of compromise lead to bigger and bigger compromises. It’s something that’s inherently wrong, but is getting more and more and more egregious.

So what I want to focus on there is that Gavin’s really making two arguments. Number one, this was something inherently wrong. That not only is this not found at the time of Jesus, or it’s time of the apostles, that comes in later on, he’s going to second argue that it’s of pagan origin. This is a compromise with paganism, he claims.

Now that’s an important thing to recognize that he’s really making two arguments. One, this is a later development, and two, it’s a pagan development. That’s a really important distinction. There’s all sorts of good prayers that I think Protestants as well as Catholics have, that we would say, “Well, that’s not found in the Bible.” Many Protestants, especially more of an evangelical variety, might have some form of sinner’s prayer. Now they don’t claim Jesus gave them the sinner’s prayer. They don’t claim the apostles use the sinner’s prayer. The sinner’s prayer is clearly of a later origin, but that doesn’t make it pagan and that doesn’t make it evil.

So it’s fine for something to have developed later. The question is whether it’s consistent with the principles we’ve been given or whether it’s contrary. Now he’s going to say it’s contrary, but not only contrary, but actually coming from paganism. That’s a pretty specific, pretty extreme kind of position to take.

And so let’s listen to how he defends that position. And one of the things I think you’ll see throughout, is he doesn’t at all. He offers literally no evidence to suggest that this is coming from paganism. He offers some evidence for why he thinks it’s a later practice, no evidence for why he thinks it’s a pagan practice. That’s an important distinction, right?

The sinner’s prayer is a later practice. That doesn’t make it pagan. So where is the evidence we’re going to be looking for, for this being of pagan origin? And spoiler alert, there’s going to be none. There’s not even an attempt to provide any evidence of this really radical, really outrageous kind of claim.

Now again, because I know that that’s going to be offensive for some, let me give some evidence for that. Okay. So what I would say is basically this, biblically, I’m not aware of any compelling rationale for praying to the Saints. There’s nothing clear and compelling.

People try to derive it from various passages in Revelation, for example, Revelation 5:8. But none of these passages are actually talking about praying to the Saints. They don’t actually address the consequence that needs to be established.

And then there’s other passages that really you can’t look to as a sound basis for a practice, like a parable with the Lazarus. Or when the guards at the crucifixion of Jesus say he’s calling on Elijah. Have you even seen people try to argue for praying to the Saints from passages like that, as though it’s not problematic to derive our theology from these pagan Roman soldiers?

There’s nothing that I see in scripture that is clear or compelling that this is actually a practice God would want us to do.

Great. So the first thing to notice about the biblical evidence is that it’s entirely an argument from silence. He doesn’t see evidence of praying to Mary and the Saints in the Bible, and so therefore he concludes it’s not biblical, we shouldn’t do it. And then he somehow gets from that to it being pagan.

Well, there’s a couple of things to notice there. First, he doesn’t even actually say there’s no evidence. He just doesn’t think the evidence is compelling. He said, “There’s nothing clear and compelling. I’m not aware of any compelling rationale for praying to the Saints.”

Now I want to interrogate that standard in a little bit. Is that really a good way of trying to do theology? Is everything God wants us to do have to be proven by this clear and compelling standard? Now, I’m coming from the background of a lawyer so you don’t just throw out terms like clear and compelling because that’s a really high evidentiary burden.

Is that really what we’re called to? That we only follow biblical models if they read a certain threshold like that? We’ll get into that.

Before we do, he nevertheless acknowledges three different areas that Catholics are likely to point to find biblical evidence of praying to the Saints. Before we get into those three, which are going to be Revelation, the Parables of Jesus, and the crucifixion, I want to first cover one that he doesn’t mention at all that I think is really obvious, influential, important evidence.

In Second Maccabees chapter 15, there’s Judas Maccabees. He’s the leader of the Jewish revolt. He has a dream the night before a major battle. In that dream, Anais, who is the high priest who has died, appears to him in the dream with the prophet Jeremiah, and they are clearly interceding for him. And Jeremiah stretches out his right hand, give Judas a golden sword and says to him, “Take this holy sword, a gift from God, with which you will strike down your adversaries.”

Now in this, we clearly see a few things. One, we see conversation between Judas Maccabeus and two Saints who are in glory. Now they aren’t because this is before the time of Christ. They aren’t in the full vision, the beatific vision of God, but they’re still in some sort of glory. They’re still in some sort of place of rest where they’re able to intercede. This is what we’re going to see is called the Bosom of Abraham.

And from this, they’re aware of what’s going on. They’re not just generally aware that there’s humans on Earth. They know pretty intimately what’s going on at the battle and are interceding and preparing them for it. Now, the elephant in the room here is, is Second Maccabees is not in Protestant Bibles, but that is not our fault as Catholics. You can’t get rid of the evidence and then say, “Well, there’s no evidence.”

You threw it out. You disposed of the evidence. You took those books out of the Bible when they were in the Bible before. If you want to know more about that, I’ve got plenty of videos on that. But leave aside the question of Second Maccabees being canonical or not. This should immediately show the folly of claiming that this is all coming from paganism because this is a Jewish text older than Christianity, whether you think it’s inspired or not. First and Second Maccabees are historically really important.

They’re describing the Maccabean Revolt which actually happened. They’re the basis of the Jewish feast of Hanukkah, which we see in John 10, the dedication of the temple. And so it’s pointing to a Jewish devotional practice. Whether you think this is right or wrong, you’d at least have to say this is not some later pagan idea that’s creeping in. This is a pre-Christian idea within Judaism itself.

And Judas Maccabeus is a fierce opponent of paganism. That’s literally the point of the book. So it’d be strange to argue that he’s falling into some form of paganism here. That’ll be kind of a theme. We’ll get back to that.

But before we do, I want to look at the other three biblical areas. So the Book of Revelation. To get there, we have to talk about another book that has been removed from Protestant Bibles, the Book of Tobit, because Tobit and Revelation have a special relationship that a lot of people don’t know about.

In the Book of Tobit, in chapter 12, the angel Raphael reveals who he is. He’s been sort of an angel in disguise. This is a biblical theme. And he reveals himself and says, “And so when you and your daughter-in-law Sarah prayed, I brought a reminder of your prayer before the Holy One. When you buried the dead, I was likewise present with you. When you did not hesitate to rise and leave your dinner in order to go and lay out the dead, your good deed was not hidden from me, but I was with you.”

And then two verses later, he reveals himself and says, “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the Saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One.” Now, I realize Raphael is an angel and not a saint in glory, so why bring him up? Well, a couple of reasons.

Number one, it shows a certain model of intercession. There are certain Protestants who are okay with the idea the Saints might have a general kind of awareness of what’s going on, but they’re not okay with the idea the Saints know particularly what’s going on. They don’t know about your life here and now in 2023. And Raphael clearly does know at that level of detail what’s going on in the lives of Tobias Tobit and Sarah. And what’s more, he is offering up their prayers and reminding the Lord of things from their lives and interceding for them on their behalf.

There’s an intimate level of angelic intercession going on there. Now, again, Protestants don’t have this book and they might say, “Well, that’s just more evidence that it doesn’t belong in the Bible because it’s clearly wrong.” Here’s the problem with that. Remember how Tobit says he’s one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the Saints in the glory of the Holy One? That is a detail found nowhere else in the Old Testament.

There’s no Jewish text in the Old Testament that says, “Here’s what the inner sanctum of heaven looks like.” Just Tobit. Why does that matter? Because jump forward to the Book of Revelation written much later. Revelation chapter eight, John says, “Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God.” Wait a second. Somehow Tobit, this book that we’re supposed to believe isn’t inspired, happened to guess the inner sanctum of God? The author who apparently uninspired, just knew there were seven angels who were standing in the presence of God and what’s more, knew exactly what those angels were doing in God’s presence?

Because what does John see? He sees the smoke of the incense that rises with the prayers of the Saints from the hand of the angels before God. That these seven angels are standing there before God interceding on our behalf, offering up our prayers as incense before God, just like Tobit said. Now this is remarkable. And so if you’re a Protestant, I would encourage you to do a little Bible study.

You can go to somewhere like Bible Gateway and look up seven angels. And if you have a Protestant Bible, you’re going to find only the Book of Revelation. If you’ve got a Catholic Bible, you’ll also find Tobit 12. The point I’m making here is pretty obviously you should be reading Revelation in light of Tobit because they’re describing the same heavenly reality. And obviously they’re both inspired scripture, whatever the reformers may have said.

This is all important because it’s not just the angels who were interceding for us in this way. Revelation chapter five says that this is also true of the four living creatures and the 24 elders, that there’s what appears to be human intercession. They are also falling down with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the Saints.

So this intimate intercession that we see Raphael offering in Tobit 12 is true, not only of the seven angels before the presence of God, it’s also true of the humans in heaven, the Saints. And so that’s a pretty clear case for saintly intercession, that they’re interceding on our behalf. They’re deeply and intimately aware of what’s going on.

It’s a very short step from there to say, “Okay, if these Saints and angels are watching me, watching over me, interceding for me, looking out for me, why don’t I ask them for their prayers about this thing I really care about?” You don’t have to be a pagan.

It just seems like, “Hey, this person in my life is really caring for me. They’re praying for me. Let’s see if they’ll offer this prayer up.” You do this with your friends here on Earth all the time if you have even an ounce of spiritual insight.

Okay, so that’s Revelation. And you can see once again, but for Protestants taking out Tobit, it becomes pretty clear why this is a text that really supports the saintly intercession.

Now we have the Parables of Jesus. There was a sort of a remarkable thing. I don’t know if you caught Gavin saying it, that he doesn’t think it’s a sound basis to rely on Jesus’s Parables for showing the intercession of the Saints. And I would suggest that that’s a strange position for a pastor to take because a lot of what Jesus does is he teaches by Parables. So I mean, for instance, in Matthew 13, verse 34, he says, “Indeed, he said nothing to them, the crowds without a parable, and this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.”

“I will open my mouth in Parables. I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” That is we’re told that Jesus is revealing these foundational things through Parables. So if we’re not allowed to look to the Parables, we have to throw out a lot of Jesus’s teaching.

What’s more is, so look at the context of the controversial Parable in question. It’s Luke chapter 16, and this is the Parable of Lazarus and the rich man. So Lazarus and the rich man both die. Lazarus goes to be in the bosom of Abraham. Remember that place before heaven is open. Jesus describes him as being in the bosom of Abraham. So he’s actually revealing something of what we now call like the limbo of the fathers. We also just call it the bosom of Abraham. That there is a place of rest for the righteous who’ve died in the Old Testament.

They’re not able to stand in the full presence of God because Christ has an opened the gates of heaven, but they’re not being punished in hell because they’re those who live by faith. Where are they? Well, Jesus gives us an answer here. He’s revealing one of those foundational things that Matthew 13 tells us he’s going to do. He reveals the notion of this idea of the bosom of Abraham.

Lazarus meanwhile, excuse me, the rich man meanwhile, goes down to Hades and to torment. He’s in suffering and he cries out in a prayer to Abraham. “Father Abraham have mercy upon me. Send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water.” Now, there’s a problem with this prayer. The problem is not that he’s praying to Abraham, there’s not even a hint that this is wrong anywhere in the Parable. The problem is the rich man has this pompous imperious attitude and treats Lazarus as less than him.

He’s trying to have Lazarus be the errand boy from heaven. And so that’s the problem. He still has the same pride he had during life. And so Abraham rebukes him and says, “Son, remember that you in your lifetime received good things, Lazarus evil things, but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish.” That’s the first objection.

The second one, he says, “Basically, even if I wanted to grant you a request, I couldn’t because there’s a great chasm fixed between us. In order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able and none may cross from there to us.” So there’s no way of getting from the bosom of Abraham to Hades. Given that, Lazarus says, “Okay, then.” Excuse me, the rich, I keep saying, the rich man then says, “Okay, then send Lazarus to my father’s house.” In other words, since he can’t come here to Hades, I know he can go to Earth.

So send him to Earth and have him warn my brothers. And Abraham says, “No. If they’re not going to listen to Moses and the prophets, they’re not going to listen to him.” But strikingly, Abraham doesn’t say, “Oh, that’s impossible. There’s another chasm you didn’t know about.”

So Jesus appears to be revealing the nature of the afterlife to a certain degree, at least the nature of the afterlife before the opening of the gates of heaven. And it certainly is consistent with and supports the idea the Saints are aware of what’s going on, and it’s totally okay to pray to them because we literally see this conversation of prayers to Abraham.

So the thing I’d say here is Jesus isn’t a Hollywood director. He’s not including some immoral scenes in his Parables to make him more spicy. And so when you see this stuff, and prayer to Abraham is presented as a good thing, it’s not presented as a bad thing. That’s a really solid foundation to base praying to Abraham and the other Saints on.

There’s not a clear reason to look at that and say, “Secretly the rich man was actually committing another series of sins that Jesus forgot to mention or just failed to include.” There are times where Jesus includes immoral behavior in the Parables. I’m not denying that, of course. But he doesn’t present immorality as a good and then expect you to know like, “Oh, don’t take it seriously. It’s just a Parable.” Like, no, no, he’s teaching foundational things about reality through the Parables.

Okay, last of the pieces of biblical evidence to explore. The crucifixion, calling upon Elijah. And this one’s a little more controversial and a little more, yeah, it’s kind of an interesting one. So in Matthew 27, Jesus cries out, “Eli, Eli, [foreign language 00:20:32]. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

And some of the bystanders, Matthew 27 says, hear him and say, “This man is calling Elijah.” And then one of them takes a sponge, fills it with vinegar, puts it on a reed, and gives it to him to drink. But the others say, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.”

Now, Gavin says, “We can’t use this evidence because it’s problematic to use a pagan.” I say two things to this. Number one, I mean, you also have one of the Romans who says, “Surely this man is the son of God.” And we have no problem using that evidence here at the crucifixion of the Pagans being really moved by what they’re seeing of Christ.

But the other more important point is, we don’t actually know if these bystanders are Romans or Jews, and there’s some evidence that they’re Jews. Now, some of them at least are not. Because the one bystander who puts the sponge with vinegar and puts it to Jesus’s lips, we know that’s one of the soldiers from one of the parallel accounts.

So I get Gavin’s argument here. But there’s good reason to believe that some of the others, the ones talking about Elijah, are Jews. First of all, because how many Roman soldiers were deeply aware of Elijah? There’s an argument that maybe they’re mishearing Eli, Eli, and because they don’t speak Hebrew or Aramaic, they don’t know that he’s saying, “My God, my God.” And they think he’s trying to say, “Elijah.” Maybe I can’t discount that. So I understand why people are going that way.

But there’s another argument that no, no, this is actually based on a Jewish expectation of the intercession of Elijah. And so D.A. Carson who a Protestant and his commentary on Matthew explains that Elijah in Second Kings, he doesn’t die. He’s taken up into heaven in a whirlwind. And so there is a Jewish tradition that may date back to the first century, that held that he would come and rescue the righteous in their distress.

Moreover, Malachi chapter four verse five says, “Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” So it may be that when they hear him crying out in agony, they’re not mishearing Hebrew or mishearing Aramaic, they’re just saying he’s calling Elijah because he’s crying out in this forsakedness, which is an appeal for Elijah to come.

Again, I can’t say that’s a slam dunk argument in either direction. It’s some argument. It’s some evidence that certainly some of the bystanders there were thought it was completely normal that Jesus might be asking for the intercession of Saint Elijah. That by itself seems like a pretty important piece. To disregard it, you’d have to say basically there were Roman soldiers there who knew enough about Judaism, to recognize Eli, Eli and think, “Oh, Elijah, I know about that Jewish prophet.” But who somehow didn’t know allegedly that Jews didn’t pray for the prophets’ intercession.

So I think you’d have to really put your camel through a needle to hold that that was exactly who was listening to this. I don’t think the evidence is there. So I think this is still good evidence for the intercession of the Saints, although I acknowledge it’s not ironclad, it’s not rebuttable.

Okay, so summarizing all of that, remember this is still an argument from silence. He’s claiming there’s no evidence or that there’s some evidence, but it’s not clear and compelling. Imagine for a moment that’s true. Imagine that there is no biblical evidence. Would that prove that praying to the Saints is wrong? No, it wouldn’t.

But to get there, it’s important to do a little bit of a deep dive in terms of how do we make sense of the biblical data? So I want to look at two questions. Number one, how carefully does the New Testament actually describe what prayer and worship are supposed to look like? And number two, what do we do when those topics aren’t explicitly mentioned?

And here I want to turn to a book that I think is pretty helpful called The Bible Made Impossible, Why Biblicism is Not a truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. It’s by the sociologist Christian Smith. This is Smith’s last book before he converted to Catholicism. He was an evangelical. He’s fairly prominent, I think both as an evangelical and as a Catholic. If you’ve ever heard of Moral and Therapeutic Deism, he’s the one who coined that term.

And one of the things he realized in his faith journey was this model of reading the Bible doesn’t make any sense, it doesn’t work. And he criticized what he calls the handbook model. Now, I don’t know that Gavin is exactly doing this, but it certainly seems like he’s doing a form of this. And the handbook model, according to Smith is the idea the Bible teaches doctrine and morals with every affirmation that it makes. So that together, those affirmations comprise something like a handbook or textbook for Christian belief and living.

A compendium of divine and therefore inert teaching. So a full array of subjects including science, economics, health, politics and romance. Now, I know Gavin doesn’t go fully in on that position. You’ll find people who are much more that way than he is, but it seems like at least in the context of worship, he’s expecting the New Testament to be something like a handbook. And the problem is that it isn’t.

So Smith points out that a lot of the biblical texts are narrative. And a lot of the ones that aren’t narrative are prophetic or liturgical or proverbial or poetic or legal. That rarely are they just straight-up theological texts. You can draw the theology out of there, but it’s very weak to say, “Well, I don’t see this liturgical practice and therefore it’s forbidden.”

So looking specifically, Smith actually raises this question, “Well, how does God want or how might he allow his people to worship him?” And he points out that Bible readings Christians disagree on things like whether the clergy can wear vestments, whether they can burn incense, whether you can have pictures and images in the sanctuary, whether worship can even include musical instruments.

Broadly speaking, Smith identifies three kind of interpretive traditions within Protestantism. The first one is the so-called Regulative Principle. Something that’s called the Regulative Principle of worship. More or less this says, “Anything not commanded is forbidden.” Those things that are instituted by command, teaching or example in the Bible or derived by good and necessary consequence are permitted. Anything God silent on is functionally forbidden. And so Smith says, “Okay, that’s the view of many Presbyterians, reformed, Anabaptist, restorationists, and some Baptists.

On the other hand, the second interpretive principle is called the Normative Principle of Worship, which says, “You can use anything that isn’t prohibited is permitted.” So if the Bible’s silent on X, that means you can do it. Whereas the first group said, “If the Bible’s silent, you can’t do it.”

And then there’s a third group called the Informed Principle of Worship that says, “What the Bible commands is required, what it forbids is prohibited. What is not forbidden is allowable if deduced by an application of the necessary consequence principle.” So it’s going to say, “If the Bible’s silent, look to see what it commands and forbids and see if you can figure it out.”

None of those three principles, none of those three hermeneutics are actually found in the Bible. These are all manmade traditions. They’re ways of interpreting the biblical data. And the problem is they don’t produce any kind of coherent system. This is why there’s massive disparities in Protestant worship because there are things that Protestants find the scripture just doesn’t cover.

And so if the Bible is silent, does that mean you’re allowed to do it? Or does that mean you’re not allowed to do it? There’s not an answer to that in the Bible.

Gavin interestingly has a book that takes a slightly different approach. It is called Finding the Right Hills to Die On, The Case for Theological Triage. And in there he argues that you should have first tier issues like the Trinity, and then you get second and third tier issues. And at the very bottom, the fourth tier, the adia thora, the things indifferent. He gives the example, he says, “These are the practices or views that are neither commanded nor forbidden by scripture.”

An example of a fourth rank issue is the musical instrumentation used in worship or the number of angels that exist. Fourth rank issues might be practically relevant or intellectually stimulating, but they’re not theologically important.

So Gavin’s got an argument. If scripture is silent, that means it’s not important. So if God neither commands nor forbids praying to Mary and the Saints, do whatever you want, it’s not important. It’s not worth dividing the church over.

All I’d point out is if that argument is good enough for musical instruments, why isn’t it good enough for the Saints? So if you say, “Scripture is silent on whether New Testament churches should include litanies to the Saints. And the New Testament is silent on whether New Testament churches should use the piano.” Okay. You can’t just say, “Therefore we can use the piano and not the litany of the Saints.” You could just as easily say the opposite. It’s totally arbitrary. Hopefully you see what I’m saying.

In fact, I want to press this even a little bit further. And say, “Biblically, is it okay to pray to the Holy Spirit?” That might sound like a crazy question or a really obvious question. I mean, after all, the Holy Spirit is God. But Gavin’s co-author at the Gospel Coalition, Graham Cole, points out that there are no prayers addressed to the Holy Spirit in the Bible. That’s actually kind of a striking fact.

And he has an entire book called Engaging with the Holy Spirit where he says, “I cannot offer a biblical theology of prayer to the Spirit, as there are no texts that can be used in evidence.” And then he says, “Sure, there’s prayers to people praying in the Spirit. There’s the Spirit interceding on our behalf.” But he says, “There are no examples of biblical characters praying to the Holy Spirit. And there are no commands to pray to the Holy Spirit.” So just like we’re not told whether we can or can’t pray to the Virgin Mary or to the Saints, we’re not even told whether we can or can’t pray to the Holy Spirit.

So if silence means it’s prohibited, then seemingly you would have to say, “You’re not allowed to pray to the Holy Spirit, even though he’s God.”

Cole comes out in a slightly different place. He says, “It doesn’t matter.” He says, “If a Christian never prayed to the Spirit in this life, would that be a slighting or aggrieving of the spirit? I think not, but never to pray to God, the Father is highly problematical.”

Now, I hope that answer leaves you a little unsatisfied. I also hope that answer reveals how a lot of this stuff is a little bit ad hoc, meaning Protestant theologians and authors don’t seem to use a consistent standard. On one issue, they’ll say, “Scripture is silent on this, so it’s forbidden.” On the next one, they’ll say, “Scripture is silent on this, so it’s permitted.”

Choose a lane because neither of those is ultimately workable. Because there’s all sorts of bad ideas that aren’t explicitly prohibited and all sorts of good ideas aren’t explicitly permitted. So either lane you choose is actually not going to be that great, but it’s certainly better than just saying, “Silence, therefore,” and then arbitrarily choosing whether you want to allow or not allow it.

Okay, so that’s the biblical evidence. Let’s turn now to the historical evidence from the time after the Apostles.

Moreover, I don’t see any examples of prayers to the Saints for the first roughly 200 years of church history. So here’s a good entry point into this. I think you start seeing it in the mid third century.

All right, well, the first thing to notice then is this is another argument from silence. He’s not proving this is pagan in origin at all. He’s just saying he doesn’t see really clear evidence, which fair enough. On this point, we actually largely agree.

The first time we find pretty clear evidence of people praying to the Saints is in the mid 200s. So about 200 years later. And of course with each passing century, we find that evidence in increasing amounts and clearer and clearer. And there are basically three ways of explaining that.

The first way, is what I’ll call the unbroken practice hypothesis. The idea is really simple. People were always praying to the Saints, but the documentary evidence just got better over time. The second way of interpreting the evidence, we’ll call it the anti-pagan hypothesis. This is the argument that a lot of Protestant historians like JND Kelly go for when said prayer to the Saints, grew up not out of paganism, but out of devotion to the martyrs who refuse to compromise with paganism. That in the fight against paganism, the early Christians were praying to the people who’d gone before them and died resisting paganism.

And then the third way of explaining the evidence would be the pagan hypothesis, which is Gavin’s argument. That Christianity compromised with paganism more and more. Now for myself, I lean towards the combination of the first two. I think there is probably a pretty decent argument to be made that there is an unbroken practice. We already saw what appears to be some Jewish antecedent evidence from the biblical stuff.

And at the same time, I also believe that there is a sense in which it’s developing. I’ll make a really easy case for that. Devotion to St. Augustine does not happen until St. Augustine’s lifetime. In fact, it happens after, right? So of course there’s a sense in which there were no John Paul II fans in the early church. That’s an uncontroversial thing to say. So in one sense, of course, devotion to Mary and the Saints is growing because the number of Saints is constantly growing.

But nevertheless, I’ll argue that the first two of these theses, which you could take individually or together, better explains the evidence than Gavin’s explanation, which is a paganism one.

So let’s start with the first of them, the unbroken practice hypothesis. And so as I said, it’s true, we really don’t see clear evidence for about 200 years. Why not? Well, there’s some obvious things to consider. There were fewer Christians. There were relatively few documents from this period that survived. The ones that do survive largely aren’t on prayer. They aren’t prayer manuals, they’re not treatises on prayers. They’re often addressing particular issues in the early church.

And then third, the prayers that we have to Mary and the Saints are primarily non-liturgical. Think about this in a few ways. If you were to go and read, or for that matter, just go to mass, you’re not going to find prayers to Mary in the mass.

The liturgical life of the church is distinct from the devotional life of the church. A lot of the prayers like the rosary, there’s no rosary during the mass, right? That’s devotion. The private prayers of individuals or groups, is devotional. Liturgical is the public prayer of the church as such.

So when we’re talking about Mary and the Saints, we’re dealing with devotional prayer mostly, not liturgical prayer. There’s some tie in with liturgical stuff. For instance, you’ve got the relics of the Saints, you’ve got feast days. And as we’re going to see, we actually find things like the relics of the Saints on their heavenly birthdays in the early church even before 200 years. But nevertheless, the devotional stuff, where people are just offering up prayers to the Saints, it’s not shocking we don’t see a ton of that because a lot of that even today is happening in a more private context.

So the other question you could ask yourself is, “Okay, how much of your own prayer life is written down in a way scholars would be able to piece together centuries from now?” And to think about how many of your prayers are actually written down in some place? How many of them happen to be written on papyrus? How many of them happen to be in caves? Or in some other place where they’re not likely to be destroyed? Because if you don’t have that, then it’s pretty hard to have those things preserved.

So just to give a little bit of a timeline here, when Gavin says the mid 200s is when we first get a reference to prayer to the Saints, it might sound really late. But when you know how the rest of early Christian evidence works, it makes complete sense. The first time we get Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being named as the four and only four gospels, 180. It’s not long before.

The first time we hear the word Trinity used to describe the Godhead, 181. So now we’re like the mid 200s. The first time we even hear anyone explicitly say the Holy Spirit is divine, he’s consubstantial with the Father, he’s co-equal with the Father, 358, like 100 years after we find prayers to Mary and the Saints. So just as we could ask the question, “Would Gavin’s argument against Mary and the Saints also discredit praying to the Holy Spirit?” And seemingly the answer is yes.

Well also if you make this historical argument from silence, anything we don’t have the clear evidence of in the first 200 years, is out. Well, that’s going to be trouble for worshiping the Holy Spirit because the evidence is scanter than you would imagine. That’s not a reflection of early Christian belief, so much as it is a reflection of the documentary evidence and the number of Christians.

Rodney Stark, another sociologist, in his book, The Rise of Christianity puts forward some numbers assuming a rate of growth at about 43% per decade. The Christian population is maybe 1000 people around the year, 40, 1400 people by the year 50. And then every decade another 40% increase, another 40% increase.

If that’s right, and it seems like something close-ish there is probably accurate, although historians are doing a lot of guesswork here. When we talk about Christianity before 200, we’re talking about a pretty small group of people. Even by the year 200, there’s only maybe 217,000 Christians. That is about the population of Des Moines, Iowa in 2017. That’s not a lot of people. By 350, there’s more than 33 million Christians. If that was a city, it wouldn’t be Des Moines, it’d be just under Tokyo, which would make it the second-largest city in the world.

So there’s a massive explosion in the Christian population from under a quarter million to more than 33 million. Again, those numbers are kind of estimates, but it can be helpful to bear in mind because you say, “Why isn’t there more evidence from before 200?” There weren’t many people before 200 in the church comparatively.

And so we can see this also in terms of the written evidence. So just to give a quick example here, there are two major series of several volumes of books. One’s called the Ante-Nicene Fathers, it’s the writing of the Church Fathers before the Council of Nicene in 325. The section on the first, second, and beginning of the third century is four volumes. There’s a volume on Justin Martyr, there’s a volume on the fathers of the second century, and then there’s two volumes on Tertullian, who lived at the end of the 100s, beginning of the 200s. Four volumes for all of that time period.

That’s how much written record we have, more or less. I mean there’s some other things that don’t make it into the Ante-Nicene Fathers, but these are the principle works. To contrast that, Saint Augustine’s writings alone in the Nicene Father series, eight volumes. He’s got twice as many volumes for just himself. Saint john Chrysostom has another six volumes. So you’ve got 14 volumes for two men who are writing enormous amounts of work.

And in comparison, you have the Fathers in the 100s who leave behind very, very little. They don’t write down every sermon, they don’t write down every homily. In many cases, we have one writing of maybe a couple pages from a particular individual and we have to reconstruct what did they believe in? And so the fact that in the couple pages that they may have left us, they didn’t mention whether or not they prayed to Mary and the Saints, is just not strong evidence.

It’s an argument from silence in the face of very little evidence in either direction. So because I mentioned argument from silence, there is a time and place where an argument from silence can be persuasive. If you say, “There’s every reason this thing should have been mentioned and it wasn’t.” That’s a pretty good argument against the thing existing.

But in something like this where there’s just not much evidence at all, the fact that it’s not amongst the small amount of evidence you have, just doesn’t prove much. Of the small amount of evidence we have, we also see the church fathers have a very high view of Mary. So you see this, for instance, St. Justin Martyr talks about this. I’m going to focus on just one because I don’t want to make this video longer than it will be.

Saint Irenaeus against heresies. This is 180. Remember when I said the first time we get the four gospels mentioned? It’s this guy Saint Irenaeus of Lyon. And he talks about how the Virgin Mary was found obedient, as Eve was found disobedient. And so Eve, she was a virgin who was nevertheless married to Adam. She listened to an angel who has fallen, Satan. She became disobedient, was the cause of death both to herself and to the entire human race.

And so he says, “Mary, having a man betrothed to her and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience became the cause of salvation both to herself and the whole human race.” That is, we see a startlingly high Marian theology. So for the argument from silence to work, the way that it kind of impresses itself on people’s imagination is, “Oh, the early church fathers didn’t have a super high view of Mary.” That’s like a later thing, a medieval thing.

And then you read what they actually have to say about Mary and they’re saying things like this, “Mary is the cause of salvation.” That’s the kind of thing that makes many Protestant skin crawl. That sounds crazier than the medieval prayers that Gavin was objecting to.

So even though it’s true, he doesn’t explicitly say whether he does or doesn’t pray to Mary there. He certainly has a view of Mary that seems much closer to the Catholic view than it does to the standard counter Protestant view. But more than that, Irenaeus also says in book five of Against Heresies that as the former, Eve, disobeyed God, the latter, Mary, was persuaded to be obedient to God in order that the Virgin Mary might become the patroness, and literally it’s adovacata of the Virgin Eve, that Mary is the advocate of Eve. So he seems to be presupposing his readers know that Mary is interceding and advocating. That’s a tantalizing clue.

Unfortunately that’s all he says. So I don’t want to stretch the evidence further than it goes. I just think the first thing to point out in this thesis is you know what, there’s some good evidence that would seem to suggest the early Christians might’ve been praying to Mary even before they’re explicitly writing about it.

Let me give you one more piece of evidence called the Rylands Papyrus 470. And this is a prayer called the Sub tuum praesidium. And we have a little scrap of this prayer. And if you are watching the video, you can see a picture of the scrap. And we only have part of the prayer, but we know the full prayer from other versions of it. And the prayer goes like this, “Beneath your compassion, we take refuge, Theotokos, Mother of God. Our petitions do not despise in time of trouble but from dangerous ransomware, so Holy, Only Blessed One.”

So it’s invoking Mary for her intercession saying, “We take refuge with her asking for her petition.” And excuse me, I was rather saying our petitions don’t despise in time of trouble. And then asking her as the only Holy, Only Blessed One to protect us from danger and to ransom us.

Now these are exactly the kind of things that I know Gavin objects to because it’s that language that sounds like it should belong only to Christ. Mary ransoming us and rescuing us. Now if you watch the prior video, you know the sense in which we can speak of Mary and the Saints saving us, or in the sense of us saving other people. It’s not in replacement of Christ. If that scandalizes and shocks you, watch the other video. For now, my point is simply this is what the early church was praying. How early? That’s a good question.

The historian Stephen Schumacher in his book, Mary and Early Christian Faith and Devotion, says that this papyrus indicates that at least some Christians in Egypt had begun to pray to the Virgin Mary and asked for her intercessions already by the end of the third century. So he’s saying by the end of the 200s, but then he acknowledges there’s been some question regarding the date of the papyrus.

Initially the editors dated it to the fourth century, to the 300s. Nevertheless, at the same time they also note that their paleography expert was unwilling to place it anytime later than the third century on the basis of its writing style. So the way the letters are actually formed looks more like the Greek that we find in the third century, the 200s, than it does like the Greek we find in the fourth century, the 300s.

Nevertheless, even though the physical evidence pointed to a date in the 200s, despite this, even though that’s the standard method for dating papyri, the editors conclude the text must instead belong to the fourth century. Since, “It is almost incredible that a prayer addressed directly to the Virgin in these terms could be written in the third century.”

And then Schumacher explains, “Likewise, the prayer’s use of the word Theotokos, Mother of God for Mary does not fit with the third century.” They maintained because they didn’t see the title before the beginning of the fourth century. Therefore, in the basis of these presumptions about the development of Marian piety, the editors decided to look past the evidence of the handwriting and date the papyrus to at least a century later than its paleography indicated.

In other words, all the physical evidence pointed to this being from the 200s. But that’s so shocking to realize Christians in the 200s weren’t just saying, “Mary, pray for us.” They had these elaborate, impressive prayers invoking her as Theotokos and saying, “That we’re placing ourselves under her protection.” That’s the sort of thing that according to many kind of slow emergence, “This is a bad practice. It’s getting a little worse and a little worse over time.”

It’s full bloom here in the 200s. That doesn’t work with that slow emergent kind of view, does it? Because if you’re going to say, “This is already happening in the 200s,” well that’s probably not going to be the first Marian prayer. A couple of reasons for that. Number one, the odds that we happen to get the first papyrus, exceedingly unlikely. We know this was a widespread prayer. We’ve had multiple other copies of this prayer.

We don’t have any reason to believe that Riley’s papyrus 470 is the oldest. It’s just the oldest one we have. It’s not the author of the prayer who wrote it down, right? Additionally, there were probably other prayers before this. This is probably not the first prayer to Mary. This is just the first one again that we happen to have. This is the first copy of the first prayer that we happen to have.

And if that is, as the physical evidence suggests, from the 200s, that is certainly consistent with Marian prayer happening even earlier than that, say in the 100s. Now we’re guessing there, so be totally clear about that. We are guessing, but we’re guessing based on an educated guest, based on the evidence that we do have.

In the same way that again, take like a Baptist, they take Gavin’s church, First Baptist in Ojai, they don’t do any prayer to Mary. You might imagine maybe Gavin gets a little experimental and says, “I think we can learn from the early church. We’re going to occasionally say Saints in heaven, pray for us.” You can kind of imagine that. What you don’t imagine is him saying, “We’re going to pray this sub tool and say beneath your compassion, we take refuge Theotokos. Our petitions do not despise in time of trouble, but from dangers, ransom us, only Holy, only Blessed One.”

He would be dis-fellow-shipped from his own church if he did that, I think it’s safe to say. And yet this is how the early Christians were praying. Now we get again these precious little glimpses. So we don’t want to go beyond the evidence because there’s not a lot of evidence to go around. But the little bit of evidence there is points in a Catholic direction.

You don’t see people saying, “Hey, we notice some people are starting to pray to Mary. That’s evil and wrong.” We don’t see any of that. We do see some prayers to Mary. We do see some people talking about Mary in this very kind of exalted sort of way. So that’s the first way of interpreting the evidence, the consistent, this has always been there. We just have better documents.

But I want to consider a second hypothesis as well. Now, this is an either or, or a both and. I mean they could both be correct, could be just one or the other. This is what we can call the anti-pagan hypothesis. The historian JND Kelly, who is a giant in the field of Patristics, the study of the early church, makes this argument in the 1978 edition of his classic work, Early Christian Doctrines.

He describes what he views as the rise in gradual development of veneration for the Saints. So he does think this is a slower kind of emergence, particularly for Mary. But he nevertheless views this as emerging from very, very early in the life of the church. He says, “Earliest in the field was the cult of martyrs, meaning there was a devotion to the martyrs. The heroes of the faith whom Christians held to be already in God’s presence and glorious in his sight. At first, it took the form of the reverent preservation of their relics and the annual celebration of their birthday.”

And as evidence in the footnote, he points to the martyrdom of Polycarp. Now, the martyrdom of Polycarp is from 155 or 156. And we can date this pretty precisely because we know when Polycarp died. And we know from the document itself that this was written in preparation for the first anniversary of his death.

The authors of the letter, the Church at Smyrna that Polycarp was the bishop of, describe how after he was executed, “They took up his bones as being more precious than the most exquisite jewels, more purified than gold. And they put them in a fitting place so that they could be gathered together as opportunities allowed with joy and rejoicing. The Lord shall grant us to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom. Both in memory of those who’ve already finished their course and for the exercising and preparation of those yet to walk in their steps.”

In short then, the early Christians in the mid 100s, not the mid 200s, mid 100s, gathered the bones of the martyred Saint Polycarp so they could use them and venerate them as relics. And so they could have them on what we would now call his feast day, his heavenly birthday, and they could have a liturgical celebration together.

Now, Gavin’s going to point out, it doesn’t explicitly say that they pray to him during that, but I find that to be a weak argument. And find that there’s already right here in the 100s, a much higher view of the Saints than you would find. What Protestants today gather the relics of their fallen brethren to venerate them in liturgical celebrations in church? It just doesn’t happen. So here’s Gavin’s take on it.

It talks, it is a very high view, again where Protestants can learn. This is a very high view of how we should honor Polycarp, but it makes the distinction, quote, “We worship Christ as the Son of God. The martyrs, however we love as disciples and imitators of the Lord as is right on account of their unsurpassable benevolence toward their king and teacher, and we wish to become their companions and disciples.”

There’s no prayers to Polycarp. I don’t see this practice early on. And then even after it comes in the four-

So there you have it. They’ve taken the bones of Polycarp, but because they don’t worship Polycarp, which again, Catholics don’t worship the Saints, Gavin points to this as evidence. I mean the quote in Martyrdom of Polycarp that, We worship God, not the martyrs, we look to the martyrs as examples,” is of course true. That’s true. Any Catholic would tell you that today. That’s hardly evidence against them praying to Polycarp or asking for his intercession.

There’s several points where Gavin’s going to find instances where it turns out, shockingly, the early Christians are monotheists, they don’t worship the Saints. And he’ll try to use that as argument against veneration of the Saints. And when we get to Augustine, we’ll see why that argument doesn’t make any sense. Because the early Christians are actually really clear that they pray to the Saints, but they don’t worship them. There’s no contradiction there unless you presuppose that that’s impossible.

That’s the very thing we’re debating, is praying to the Saints worship? Is it pagan? We say no. And as evidence, the early Christians who hated paganism did this. And Gavin replies basically, “Well, this is a contradiction. Either they did it and therefore they’re pagan or they reject paganism, therefore they must not have done it.”

But that argument only works if you presuppose that praying to the Saints as paganism, which is you might notice the whole thing we’re trying to establish. Okay, let’s continue though.

You’ve got the Martyrdom of Polycarp. But then Kelly says, “From this, it was a short step since they were now with Christ in glory, in seeking their help in prayers. And in the third century, evidence for the belief in their intercessory power accumulates.” So you have whether or not the sub tuum, in other words, is from the 200s. There’s plenty of evidence from the 200s that we’re asking them for intercession.

And then he says, “In arguing for it, Origin appealed to the communion of Saints, advancing the view that the church in heaven assists the church on Earth with its prayers.” Now, this is going to be important because Gavin’s going to actually try to point to Origin in a totally different way. He’s going to think Origin helps his case.

But here’s Kelly, who is a Protestant and a historian on the early church saying, “No, no Origin is arguing for the intercession of the Saints.” And as you’ll see, Origin is very explicitly arguing for the intercession of the Saints. And then with the cessation of persecution in the fourth centuries, so 300s, Christians focused not just on martyrs, but now focused more on the so-called confessors, those who confess to faith but didn’t die for it. Aesthetics, so people who self denied invergence, who’d been examples of heroic sanctity.

But the important thing I bring out here is that he sees an increasing devotion to the Saints as evidence not of a compromise of paganism, but as a natural outgrowth in a real way of the fight against paganism. That they were looking to martyrs in this time of crisis as an example, and asking those who had been martyred, who’d gone before them, to pray and intercede for them.

And here’s the great part. There’s good evidence that this is biblical. Let me show you what I mean. So in Revelation chapter six, one of the things John sees is the souls who were martyred, who are under the altar, they’ve been slain for the word of God, for the witness they’d born. And they cry out with a loud voice, “Oh, sovereign Lord, holy and true. How long before that will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the Earth?”

And then God tells them to wait a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren should be complete. Who were to be killed as they themselves had been. So it’s an intriguing piece of evidence, but it shows a certain communion of Saints between the martyrs who’ve already been slain and those who are going to be slain.

So you can imagine as someone who is facing martyrdom in early Christianity for refusing to be pagan, you’re not just looking to these guys as an example, although you’re absolutely doing that. You’re also aware that God has seemingly created a communion between you and they. That their justice will happen when your justice happens. You have been bound together with them in some mysterious way. So it makes sense that they prayed to the martyrs, not because of paganism, but because of the internal logic of Christianity itself.

Nevertheless, last point on this second part, JND Kelly, again Protestant, early church historian, talks about how the middle part of now we’re in the 300s according to serial of Jerusalem, “The patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs were commemorated in the liturgy so that by their prayers and intercessions, God may receive our supplications.”

So it becomes clear why we’re having these special heavenly birthdays because we’re honoring them and also asking God to grant our requests through their intercession, through their prayers. And Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Gregory Nazianzen, look to the Saints as being more efficacious because they’re closer to God.

This is something, if you’ve watched videos I’ve done on this, this is something I’ve talked about elsewhere. That in scripture, some people’s prayers are worth more than others. This is not a politically correct thing to say. It is nevertheless a biblical thing. And those who are in the presence of God are in a privileged place where their prayers make sense, they matter.

So you’ve got two hypotheses that make I think complete sense of the evidence. One, that we’ve just gotten better records and if we had good records in the first century, we’d see they were also praying to Mary and the Saints. That’s why there’s no outcry when we do find Mary and the Saints being prayed to because this has been going on the whole time.

The second is that this grows, but it grows precisely because of the martyrs. And of course it grows because there are more Saints in heaven than there used to be. Contrast those two theses with the third one, the pagan hypothesis that Gavin proposes. And the question I want you to be asking is what evidence do we have here for the pagan hypothesis actually being true? Because we have some clear evidence against it.

Remember the timeline. By the mid 200s Christians are clearly preying to the Saints. We have that evidence. At the same time, they’re fanatically not compromising with paganism. Just to give one example, if you look at the history of the pagan temples in Rome. So Rome had the most beautiful temples. And early Christian writers extolled the wonders of Rome as precursors of the beauties of the heavenly Jerusalem.

The historian Francis Nitarude talks about this in actually a 1953 article. You can find some later stuff. I just like the way he says it. And so the temples when they were closed with the legalization and then the creation of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. They closed the pagan temples. And then very quickly they reopened them as museums and monuments and they preserved the actual buildings. But they do not use them churches. For 200 years, they don’t use any of those beautiful old temples as churches.

They don’t even want to have any association, even though other places outside of Rome Christians would do a little more of that. And even though plenty of other ancient buildings in Rome were being turned into churches, it’s not until the 600s, the seventh century, that we find a temple being converted into a church.

Now to be clear, I’m perfectly fine with and comfortable with a pagan temple being turned into a church. And if you go to Rome now, you’ll see for instance, Santa Maria Supra Minerva, Saint Mary’s over the Minervan Temple and it shows the triumph of Christianity over paganism. But in the early days, when there were still a lot of diehard pagans out there, Christians wanted to be abundantly cautious. Because you don’t want to say one week you’re going in there to offer pagan sacrifices, the next week you’re going in there for church. How converted are the people really?

So to make sure that there were no compromises with paganism, for 200 years, they just didn’t use these gorgeous buildings. Lest those fourth century pagans should try to carry on their ways. It’s only after paganism is really thoroughly eradicated that you see them being turned into churches.

So think about that timeline. Mid 200s you’ve got Marian devotion. 313, you have the legalization of Christianity. 380 with the Edict of Thessalonica, you have Christianity becoming the official religion of the empire, and it’s now that all the pagan temples are being closed.

Not until the early 600s are they ever turned into churches. My point here is that does not look like a people that are willing to compromise with paganism. That looks like a people who are aggressively unwilling to compromise with paganism. So that doesn’t look like what Gavin is claiming was the actual history. That these people, even while they were refusing to even go into the temples for turning them into churches, they were perfectly comfortable with taking the old gods and just slapping Saint on there.

Or somehow, he doesn’t really explain how, but somehow borrowing these practices from paganism. And what evidence does he offer for this? None. He’s going to point to two church fathers Origin and Augustine. And in both cases, I think he’s going to misrepresent in some important ways what they actually believed. So let’s look at what he says about Origin first.

So here’s a good entry point into this. I think you start seeing it in the mid third century. So here’s a good entry point, Origin in his commentary on the epistle to the Romans, written in the 240s, is among the earlier Christians to speculate about how does the church triumphant relate to the church militant?

And listen to how cautious he is in how he puts it. He says, quote, “If indeed the Saints who are outside the body and with Christ, do and work anything in our behalf after the manner of the angels who perform services for our salvation, let this also be considered among the secret things of God not to be committed to paper.” In other words, when you start seeing speculation about this, it’s more in the realm of speculative thought. It’s not referenced as kind of a common belief or a universal practice.

So you might be saying, “Well, what’s wrong with that? That sounds totally reasonable.” And the problem is he’s misrepresenting that quotation.

Now, I want to be clear here, I don’t think Gavin is doing this intentionally. He was really clear earlier in the video that he’s getting his sources from Martin Chemnitz and John Calvin who are Protestant reformers. And Chemnitz is taking Origin pretty wildly and pretty obviously out of context here. So the quotation from Origin comes from his commentary on Romans.

And if you read what he actually says, he’s asking whether those who are disembodied, or the Saints who are now with Christ, do anything in labor on our behalf in imitation of the angels? That’s an important phrase, who attend to the service of our salvation. Or on the other hand, whether ever sinners themselves without bodies, do anything in accordance with the intention of their own mind and no less imitation of the evil angels.

In other words, he’s not asking anything about the intercession of Saints in their prayers. He’s asking whether do the Saints in heaven or the souls of the damned in hell, do those work like the angels and demons? Because we know from scripture for instance in Hebrews chapter one, verse 14, that the angels are described as ministering spirit sent forth to serve for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation. Okay, great.

So we know that the angels aren’t just praying for us, they’re actively involved in our lives. Is that true in the same way of the Saints? And if it is, is that true in the same way of the damned? So in other words, he’s asking a totally different question than what we’re talking about here. Because think about it, in First Peter five, we’re told that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Is that also true of Hitler? Are the souls of the damned roaming the Earth looking to tempt someone?

We’re not given that evidence. That is one of those hidden things of God. To what extent can the souls of the just or the souls of the damned interact on Earth with us in that way? It’s a little bit mysterious. And so he’s very clear it’s mysterious. He’s not saying they don’t intercede for us. He’s not saying they don’t pray for us. He couldn’t be clearer that they do.

So in one of his homilies on Joshua, he talks about this. He says that the Saints already possess his promise and have rested and they’ve been judged worthy to receive the inheritance through Moses. Nevertheless, they themselves still fight and they’re in the struggle on behalf of those who serve under Jesus. They’re still praying for us. And he says, “But you’ll want to know who those are who fight, and what is the battle they wage?”

I think the answer is that all those fathers who have slept before us fight with us and help us by their prayers. And then he says, “I’ve heard also one of the older teachers speaking in the same way with regard to that passage in numbers, where it is written that congregation will lick up this congregation just as the calf will lick up the green grass of the field.”

Now you may say, “What is that passage?” Well, that passage is Numbers 22. In Numbers 22, Moab is worried. They’re an enemy of Israel, they’re worried about Israel, and they say that this horde. And the word there is actually cahel, which is the Hebrew word that also means congregation, and gets translated into Greek as ecclesia, which means church. So the translation that Origin has there of congregation is completely valid. This horde will now lick up all that is round about us.

And this says, “As the ox licks up the grass of the field,” whether you say ox or calf, it’s completely irrelevant. And Origen saying basically that is a very weird image in the Bible. What is that image about? And so he says that this older teacher told him that the only reason that the Bible would use that kind of image is to signify that the congregation of the Lord which has gone before us into the holy places, will consume the hostile congregation, meaning the church of the antichrist, the hoard of demons, the enemies of God, will consume them by mouth and by tongue. That is we’ll diminish our adversaries by prayers and petitions.

So in other words, the reason, according to this reading of Numbers, that this older teacher, someone prior to, excuse me, prior to Origin, so this is very early on because Origin lives in the second century. This person is, or excuse me, in the third century, this person is convinced this older generation that this reference to the calf licking up the enemies of Israel is because it’s by the mouth. That is by prayer and petition that the battle is being won. That the heavenly church is defeating the demonic anti-church through prayer and petition.

All that’s to say if the claim is Origin doesn’t think there’s a practice of praying to the Saints, or even of the Saints interceding for us, it’s manifestly untrue. And so that’s why JND Kelly you may remember, points to this passage of saying, “Yeah, Origin talks about how the Saints in heaven pray for us because they’re closer to God.”

And if you read his Homily in Joshua, he does exactly that. So Martin Chemnitz is again the one to blame, not Gavin, but Chemnitz is taking this part where Origin is asking a very speculative question about the way the Saints can interact with us, and treating it to act as if there’s some ambiguity about whether the Saints do pray for us and there’s no ambiguity.

Okay. There’s another area right after this, where Gavin is going to again claim one thing about what Origin believes and then when you read it turns out to be a pretty different story.

Moreover, when Origin faces the charge from Celsus, the pagan philosopher, that we shouldn’t only pray to God, Celsus says, “We should pray to other spirits who are present in heaven with God.” Now Celsus, his whole theology of that is very different. So we won’t get into all that.

Origin rejects that proposal and he says, “We offer humble prayers to God himself who is overall through his only begotten son, to whom we make supplication in as much as he is the propitiation of our sins. In order that he as our high priest may offer our prayers to God.”

Then someone can say, “Well, or that’s not iron clad because Origin is opposing Celsus’s particular proposal, that doesn’t necessarily mean prayers to the Saints he would oppose as well.” I mean, again, when we’re working with historical data like this, it is good to be cautious and not to oversell our conclusions, but I would just-

I want to second the very last thing he said about the temptation to oversell conclusions because that’s exactly what he’s doing.

So to give a little context, Laurie Guy, in Introducing Early Christianity points out that we don’t really see major attacks on the church until Celsus, and he’s written in the 170. So Celsus is actually earlier than Origin because Origin’s in the 200s. And Origin writing later, responds to him, but he quotes what Celsus is actually arguing.

Now, we don’t have Celsus’s original arguments against Christianity. He’s a pagan who thinks Christianity is dumb and he thinks Judaism is dumb. And he thinks it’s particularly dumb that the Jews in his claim, worship heaven and the angels who dwell in, but don’t worship the sun, the moon, and the stars. And he thinks it’s dumb, like, “Why would you worship the entire heaven with the angels but not worship the parts of the heaven with the sun and the moon and the stars?”

And so as you can tell, he has an extremely confused understanding. The question is not praying to the Saints. The question is he thinks we worship angels. He thinks that Jews worship angels too. And so Origin responds by saying, “No, that is not the understanding. That instead we acknowledge the angels, our ministering spirits. We say they’re sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation and they ascend burying the supplications of men.”

So notice in responding to Celsus, even though it’s probably after Celsus has died, Origin is clear. Yeah, sure, we don’t worship the angels. That totally misunderstands it. We do think that they intercede for us. And then he even says, “Yeah, they are called angels. That means messengers. We find that they are divine. They are sometimes termed gods in the scriptures, but not so that we are committed to honor and worship in place of God those who minister to us and bear to us his blessing.”

So in scriptures you’ll find God in the assembly of the gods and this means the angels, but that doesn’t mean they’re literally gods in the way a pagan would hear that. And so that’s an important distinction to make when you’re answering paganism. No, no, no. What we’re talking about with the angels and the Saints isn’t paganism, which is by the way, the exact point I’m making. That’s what Origin is saying to Celsus.

And then he explains a little further on, “We may indeed boldly say that men who aspire after better things have when they pray to God, 10s of 1000s of sacred powers upon their sides.” He means of course the angels. “And that these, even when not asked, pray with them, they bring succor or comfort to our mortal race. And if I may say so, take up arms alongside of it.”

Now notice it even when not asked, he’s assuming it’s okay to ask the angels for their prayers, knowing that they’re going to pray for you either way. But if you have something in particular you want to pray for, by all means you can ask them because what are they doing? They’re offering your prayers up to God. And so that’s well and good.

So all that’s to say Origin is not arguing against praying to the Saints, or to the angels for that matter. He’s arguing that we don’t worship the Saints and angels because he’s responding to a confused pagan who thought we did.

Now, maybe the better question Gavin could ask is why does this confused pagan think that the Jews and Christians worship the angels? And it’s seemingly because there’s a high view of angelic intercession in both Judaism in this era and in Christianity. Now that’s speculative. It’s hard to say how Celsus screwed this one up so badly.

But it’s clear that Origin is not arguing against the Catholic practice at all in any way, shape, or form. And that he very clearly believes the Saints and angels in heaven intercede for us because he says numerous times that they do.

Okay, so much for Origin. The other person who gets I think misconstrued in some important ways is Saint Augustine. So here’s how Gavin approaches him.

Fourth and fifth century, there’s a lot of ambivalence. You see Augustine, Augustine is very kind of interesting on this. He will have statements that seem to almost conflict with each other. He, for example, read what he says about praying at the tombs of martyrs and some of his concerns about the superstitions developing there. It feels very different when you’re looking at the Cappadocian fathers or Augustine or fourth and fifth century practices to the later medieval practices.

So does Augustine contradict himself on praying to the martyrs? And the answer is no. If Gavin is reading contradiction here, it’s probably because he’s operating within a Protestant view that doesn’t think it’s possible to pray to the martyrs without it being something like worship.

And Augustine makes the exact distinction I’ve been making this entire time, which is we pray to them, we don’t worship them. So in his reply to Faustus, this is, remember he said, “Look at what Augustine says about prayers of the tombs of the martyrs.” Great, let’s do that.

In response to Faustus and Manichean, Augustine says, “As to our paying honor to the memory of the martyrs and the accusation of Faustus that we worship them instead of idols. I should not care to answer such a charge except to show,” he says, “That in Faustus’s desire to cast prosoans, he has overstepped the Manichean inventions and has fallen heedlessly into a popular notion found in pagan poetry although he is so anxious to be distinguished from the pagans.”

Yes, he’s making a clever argument. We might even say the same of Gavin or Chemnitz or Calvin. That in their war against paganism, they’re so strongly like, “I don’t want to be associated with anything pagan,” that they end up making the exact same foolish error that Celsus made back in the 170s. And that numerous other pagans made of claiming that Catholics worship the martyrs and treat them as idols. Or claiming that Catholics worship Mary, treat her as a goddess.

That argument is a pagan argument. It’s based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity. And so it’s bizarre to see Christians raising it, repeating these pagan attack lines in their attempt to distinguish themselves from paganism. That’s Augustine’s kind of first point. I think it’s a clever rhetorical point. He says, “It is true that Christians pay religious honor to the memory of the martyrs, both to excite us, to imitate them, and to obtain a share in their merits and the assistance of their prayers.”

Boom, very clear. But we build altars not to any martyr but to the God of martyrs, although it is to the memory of the martyrs. So if you have the Church of St. Anne’s, you’re not going in there to worship St. Anne, you’re going in there to worship God. The church is named in her memory, but you’re not directing your worship to her.

This is true of the tombs of the martyrs. This is what he’s saying. And he says, “No one officiating at the altar, in the Saints burying place ever says, “We bring an offering to the Oh Peter or Oh Paul or Oh Cyprian.” In other words, the mass is not directed to, “I’m going to offer the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus and the mass to Peter.” No, it’s offered to the Father and to the Father alone. The offering is made to God who gave the crown of martyrdom, while it is in memory of those thus crowned.

This is a very clear distinction. You’ll find the exact same thing in any Catholic theology book today. We regard the martyrs with the same affectionate and intimacy that we feel towards the holy men of God in this life, when we know that their hearts are prepared to endure the same suffering for the truth of the gospel.

There’s more devotion in our feeling toward the martyrs because we know their conflict is over and we can speak with greater confidence and praise of those already victors in heaven than of those still combating here. So just as we would say, someone living today is really saintly. We can say this even more of those who’ve been completely purified and are standing in the presence of God.

Because the person on Earth you’re praising, well tomorrow they could totally screw it up. Or there may be some other thing that is going to reveal itself soon. But those who’ve gone before us, over and done with, we don’t have to worry about some scandal happening next week with them. They’re in heaven, they’re in glory.

Then he says, this is a really important distinction, not a contradiction, just accurately getting the Catholic view right, “What is properly divine worship, which the Greeks call latria, both indoctrinate and in practice, we give only to God. To this worship belongs the offering of sacrifices.” As we see in the word idolatry, which means the offering, the giving of this worship to idols.

Accordingly, we never offer or require anyone to offer sacrifice to a martyr or to a holy soul or to any angel. Now, when I say this is what you’d find in any Catholic textbook today, I mean that. The compendium of the catechism of the Catholic Church makes this exact same point. But the worship due to the Eucharist is the worship of latria. That is the adoration given to God alone. This is only to God.

That’s not a contradiction in Augustine. He’s just making nuanced distinctions that we still believe in. We don’t worship the Saints. We do honor them. We do invoke them. We do pray to them. We don’t worship them. We worship God alone. Paul the Sixth makes the same point in Mysterium Fidei. You can find the same point in I think probably literally 1000 other places.

Okay, but let’s round this out. A couple final points. If you’re going to embrace the Pagan hypothesis, if Gavin’s right, if the early Christians from the 250s or maybe even earlier, because you have the gathering of the relics to commemorate St. Polycarp. If this is a compromise of paganism, then throw out all of early Christianity, but you have nothing left to stand on. You don’t have a Bible, you don’t have any of this stuff because how do we know which books belong in the Bible?

Because the early Christians preserve them, compile them, tell us they’re of apostolic origin. Tell us that they’re orthodox and the rest. And if we can’t trust them because they’re half pagan, you’re not left with Protestantism, you’re left with nothing.

You’re left with no form of Christianity because you can’t trust the people who carried the teachings of the apostles forward because they compromised with paganism. Again, that’s not an argument against the Catholic Church. That’s an argument against Christianity as such because it becomes un-recoverably lost if that’s true.

Second final thought, what does the Bible have to say about Medieval Mary and devotion? And I’ve been saving my favorite point on this for last. So kudos for those of you who’ve made it this far. And you might be saying, “Joe, what you talking about? How can you say the Bible has anything to say about Medieval Marian devotion?”

Well, I’ll tell you. If Protestants are right, and this includes Gavin, but it’s more broad than that, then number one, well-meaning early and medieval Christians strayed into pagan practices and away from Christ by Marian prayer, right? Number two, we’d have to say God for knew this would happen. If you believe God knows everything, he knew this was going to happen.

And so number three, we should expect there to be some kind of warning within the inspired words of the Bible. But this isn’t like one or two Christian straying from the faith. If the entire visible church on Earth is offering these pagan prayers to Mary and the Saints, and they’re doing it while thinking that they’ve beaten paganism, wouldn’t you expect God to warn us about that? This is the biggest threat imaginable and God doesn’t tell us about this one. So we would expect to find some really clear passages for telling this.

And you can find the Protestants like Jack Chick, who he’s got one of many of the tracks he wrote before he died says, “Poor Mary, her heart is broken by the very ones who love her.” This idea is Mary, if she can only see this would look forward and just mourn this.

And then you contrast it with the Bible and you find Mary looks forward and does the opposite. In Luke chapter one in the Magnifico, Mary says, “My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has regarded the lowest state of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth, all generations will call me blessed.” She’s looking forward, right? “All generations will call me blessed, for he who is mighty has done great things for me and holy is his name.”

Let’s unpack that. Number one, every generation of Christians, including the early church, including the medieval Christians, will honor Mary. “All generations will call me blessed.” And number two, this isn’t because of paganism. This is because God is good and has been good to Mary. She says, “All generations will call me blessed for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”

That is the fact that the early Christians did this. The fact that the medieval Christians did this, is not cause for alarm. It’s not cause for scandal, is not cause to dissect them and see were they secretly pagans and we just didn’t know it? No, it’s cause to rejoice because God is good and he shows this goodness in Marian and the Saints. God is made glorious in the Saints as the New Testament says. That’s what Mary says is going to happen, that these subsequent generations are going to praise her because God has been good to her.

They’re going to call her blessed because God has been good to her. She’s not warning about that. She is joyfully anticipating that all generations are going to look at Mary and see in Mary, God’s masterpiece, the mother of his son. So all that’s to say, whenever anyone points to these passages, it’s worth keeping this in mind. Like Mary knew this was going to happen. She foretold it in Luke one.

If this was bad, we would expect it to be foretold in a negative way, but instead it’s pretty clearly foretold in a positive way. So of course there’s much more that could be said, but at the risk of really overstaying my welcome, I’m grateful that you’ve stayed with this response for so long. I look forward to your thoughts and your comments below. For Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.

Thank you for listening to Shameless Popery, a production of the Catholic Answers Podcast Network. Find more great shows by visiting Catholic Answers podcasts.com or search Catholic Answers wherever you listen to podcasts.