Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Origen on Addressing Praying to the Father and the Son in "On Prayer"

The following is from Origen's On Prayer where he addresses praying to the Father through the Son (as well as whether it is proper to pray directly to the person of the Son):

  

XV.1. Now if we are to take prayer in its most exact sense, perhaps we should not pray to anyone begotten, not even to Christ Himself, but only to the God and Father of all, to whom even our Savior Himself prayed, as we have explained, and to whom He taught us to pray. For when He heard "teach us to pray," He did not teach us to pray to Himself, but to the Father by saying "Our Father in heaven, and so forth" (Lk. l1:1£f.; Mt. 6:5ff.). For if, as is demonstrated by other arguments, the Son is a being and subject distinct from the Father, it follows that prayer should be addressed to the Son and not to the Father, or to both, or to the Father alone. Anyone at all would agree that the first possibility, to the Son and not to the Father, is completely absurd, and would have to be maintained against the obvious facts. And if we prayed to both, then it is obvious that we should offer our requests in the plural, saying in our prayer, "You all supply and do good and furnish and save, and so forth." The very expressions betray the absurdity of this alternative, nor can anyone find in Scripture prayers addressed in the plural. Consequently, the remaining possibility is that we should pray only to the God and Father of all, yet not without the High Priest, who was appointed "with an oath" according to the verse, "He has sworn and will not change His mind, You are a priest forever after the order of Melchisedek" (Ps. 110:4; Heb. 7:20-21).

 

2. And so, when the saints give thanks to God in their prayers, they acknowledge through Christ Jesus the favors He has done. And if it is true that one who is scrupulous about prayer ought not to pray to someone else who prays, but rather to the Father whom our Lord Jesus taught us to address in prayers, it is especially true that no prayer should be addressed to the Father without Him, who clearly points this out Himself when He says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, He will give it to you in my name. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full" Gn. 16:23 -24). Now He did not say "ask me" or simply "ask the Father." On the contrary, He said "If you ask anything of the Father, He will give it to you in my name." For until Jesus taught this, no one asked the Father in the name of the Son. And what Jesus said was true, "Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name." And also true was His saying, "Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full."

 

3. Let us suppose someone thinks that we should pray to Christ Himself and argues that we are permitted to do so because it says that He is worshiped in the text from Deuteronomy, which admittedly refers to Christ, "Let all the angels of God worship Him" (Deut. 32:43 LXX; Heb. 1:6). Let him be told that even the Church, which is called Jerusalem by the prophet, is worshiped by kings and queens, who are her nursing mothers and foster fathers. This is said in the following passage, "Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and raise my signal to the peoples; and they shall bring your sons in their bosom, and your daughters they shall carryon their shoulders. Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall worship you, and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord, and you will not be ashamed" (Is. 49:22-23).

 

4. Christ said, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God the Father alone" (cf. Mk. 10:18; Lie 18:19; Mt. 19:17). Would He not also say:

 

Why do you pray to me? You should pray only to the Father, to whom I pray myself. This is what you learn from the holy Scriptures. For you must not pray to the High Priest appointed on your behalf by the Father (cf. Heb. 8:3) or to the Advocate who is charged by the Father with praying for you (cf. 1 John 2:1). Rather you must pray through the High Priest and Advocate, who is able to sympathize with your weaknesses, since He has been tempted in every respect as you are, and yet tempted without sin (Heb. 4:15) because of the Father's gift to me. Learn, then, how great a gift you have received from my Father, when you received the Spirit of sonship (Rom. 8:15) by becoming regenerate in me, so that you. are called sons of God and my brothers. For you have read the proclamation concerning you that I made to the Father through David, "I will proclaim your name to my brethren, in the midst of the Church I will praise you" (Ps. 22:22; cf. Heb. 2:12). It IS not reasonable for those who are deemed worthy of one and the same Father to pray to a brother. You must pray only to the Father with me and through me.

 

XVI. 1. Since we hear Jesus saying this, let us pray to God through Him, all of us saying the same things and not divided about the way we pray. Are we not divided if some of us pray to the Father and some to the Son, since those who pray to the Son, whether with or without the Father, sin through lack of instruction and great simplicity because they have not examined or inquired into the matter? Therefore, let us pray as to a God, and let us intercede as with a Father. Let us make supplication as of a Lord, and let us give thanks as to a God, a Father, and a Lord, though in no sense Lord of a servant. For a father may reasonably be supposed also lord of a son, and He is Lord of those who have become sons through Him. Just as He is not God of the dead, but of the living (Mt. 22:32; Mk. 12:27; Lk. 20:38), so He is not Lord of base slaves, but of those who to begin with were in fear because of their childishness, but who have been made noble and afterwards serve more blessedly by love than they did in fear. For the marks of God's servants and of His sons are visible in the soul only to the One who sees their hearts. (Origen, On Prayer in Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and Selected Works [trans. Rowan A. Greer; The Classics of Western Spirituality; New York: Paulist Press, 1979] p. 112-14)