Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to talk about what the early Christians believed about images and icons, about the use of incense in worship, and about praying to saints. Now, next to the issue of Mary, probably one of the biggest issues that divides the Catholic world from the evangelical or non-Catholic world is the use and veneration of images and icons. Now, I'll use the word Catholic tonight with a small C on it.
I'm using it in a generic sense to refer to the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church, and other churches similar to them that use images, use incense, and pray to saints. Now, I assume that most of you listening to this message are persons who have dialogued or looked in to the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church.
I myself, a number of years ago, took a very serious look at the Eastern Orthodox Church, and to a lesser degree, the Coptic and even the Roman Catholic Church. Now, I know that has scandalized a lot of my readers, but just let me explain to you a moment where I'm coming from as a person, as a Christian.
As I've related in many of my messages, I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness, and I never even one time questioned anything that they said until right at the end when I started investigating, which led to my leaving Jehovah's Witnesses. And during that whole time when I was a Jehovah's Witness, the thought of even looking into the evangelical churches or other Bible-believing churches out there was totally unthinkable. I mean, I wouldn't have even begun to do that, nor would any of the other witnesses that I knew.
I mean, it was something you could just you could write off all of the churches without even a bat of an eye. They were all obviously wrong, and to even question if there was a possibility that they could be right was absurd. Well, once I saw the error of my ways and got out of the witnesses, I made a solemn commitment to God and to myself that I would never, ever again be an unthinking, unquestioning Christian.
I wasn't going to accept what any other group had to say without digging, searching, and without hearing what all of the other groups were saying as well. In other words, I wasn't going to just look at the evangelical church and not listen to what maybe the Church of Christ would have to say that I could just write this group off or that group or that or even the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox as remote in my mind as they seem that they could possibly be the right way to go.
I at least wanted to hear it from their own mouths what they believed. Because one of the things I saw very quickly after I left the witnesses were one, Jehovah's witnesses do not honestly represent what other churches teach in practice. I don't mean that it's totally false, the image that they give, but it's not a totally honest one either. And in the same level, I saw that the presentation that churches give about Jehovah's Witnesses isn't accurate and honest either.
And so that led me to distrust secondary sources. And what led to me in my investigation of the early church to begin with was I want to go back to the horse's mouth. I want to see really what the primitive Christians believed. How did they understand the New Testament? It wasn't a matter of going to them instead of the New Testament, but I saw that there were thousands of denominations, and they all interpreted New Testament passages differently.
So I wanted at least to see how those who were closest to the apostles interpreted those passages. And so to understand what the Eastern Orthodox Church believed, I attended Eastern Orthodox services. I've dialogued with Eastern Orthodox monks, priests, bishops, and read a number of their works. And I've also dialogued with priests in the Roman Catholic Church and read the works of their apologists to see what they have to say.
As I say, that scandalizes some persons that they live in a spiritual world where they can just automatically shut the door on a lot of things and never have to look into it. And that's fine. You know Their walk with God is their personal journey, and mine is my personal journey.
So when I talk tonight about images and the use of incense and prayer to saints, I'm not coming from the position of a diehard fundamentalist whose mind has totally been closed on the subject and would never even consider the possibility of it. Instead, I gave very serious thought to it, and there was a very brief moment in my spiritual journey when I was ready to become Eastern Orthodox.
The problem is when I started searching back into the history of Christianity, into the writings of the early church, I saw that so many of the things their apologists were saying were not true. They have apologists who are very effective, very persuasive. But I have a very strong commitment to spiritual integrity, to spiritual and intellectual honesty, that we're honest about what the facts of history show.
And sometimes that gets me in hot water with a lot of people because they would rather I brush things off that the early church believe that doesn't fit what many modern-day Bible-believing Christians believe. But my mission and the whole purpose of scroll publishing is to let the facts out, to shine light on them, that people can see them. And if someone wants to believe the primitive Christians were wrong, that's fine.
I don't feel I have to persuade you that the early Christian view was right, and I know they weren't infallible. I assume they were wrong on probably some of their positions. On the other hand, I think we all need to know at least what they did believe and practice so that we can make an honest examination of our own church and our own beliefs.
Now, when I dialogued with a number of Eastern Orthodox apologists and read their works, I was told that the church had always used icons and that, in fact, Luke had painted the first icon of Christ, and that no one had ever objected to having icons and venerating them until the rise of Islam, which forbid the use of any kind of painted image or statues.
And as a result, the Christians who were living in Muslim countries began objecting to statues and icons, other kinds of images because this was bringing persecution upon them. And that's why the whole controversy arose in the 7th, 8th, 9th century about the use of icons was because of pressure being put on various leaders in the church who resided in Muslim countries. But is all this really true? What do the facts show?
What I'm going to be doing primarily this evening is reading you passages from the early church so that you can see for yourselves. And I'm going to tell you upfront that these passages are so crystal clear, there is no room for argument on the point, room for another view.
I mean, there's room for a view if you want to say the early Christians are wrong, but there's no view legitimately to say," Oh, well, there was a variety of practice," or," Well, we can't be sure what their practice was." Or the early church used and venerated icons.
This first quote is from Justin Martyr, written about the year 160, where he said," Talking to the Romans," This is the sole accusation you can bring against us that we do not offer drink offerings and the aroma of fat to the dead, nor crowns for their statues." So the pagans not only had statues, they would put crowns upon them.
These words came to my mind when I visited a Coptic church because there on the wall was a three-dimensional icon, the head of Mary, and someone had placed a little crown on top of the image, which is the very thing that the pagans were doing. Now, because I'm going to be reading to you quite a number of passages, I'm not going to be giving you the volumes and pages after each quote.
Instead, let me refer to you to a work that I edited entitled" The Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs." And you will find all of these quotes there under the subject of images. I encourage you to go back and read those and then read the entire page where the quote is found so that you can verify I haven't taken these out of context or anything like that. Irenaeus wrote this in about the year 170 or 180. They called themselves Gnostics. This is talking about the main heretical group back then.
He said they also possess images, some of them painted and others formed from different kinds of material. They maintained that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crowned these images and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world. That is to say, they placed them with the images of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honoring these images after the same manner of the Gentiles.
So that quote makes it clear. Number one, that the Gnostics, the main heretical group, were using images. And this is something that made them stand out from Orthodox Christians. And he says," They honor them in the same manner as the Gentiles, not the same manner as we do, the Orthodox Christians." So again, it's clear that this was a pagan Gentile practice, and it's something that heretical groups like the Gnostics were practicing.
Clement of Alexandria wrote about the year 195," It is with a different kind of spell that art deludes you." He's talking to Gentiles, pagans, it leads you to pay religious honor and worship to images and pictures. And again, he wrote," We are not to draw the faces of idols, for we are prohibited to cling to them." And again, from Clement, the law itself exhibits justice. It teaches wisdom by abstinence from visible images and by inviting us to the maker and father of the universe.
So he said," Christians, they're attracted away from the visible images, visible pictures, to worshiping God directly without the use of painted mediums." Again, Clement wrote," Ages before, Moses expressly commanded that neither a carved nor molten nor molded nor painted likeness should be made." This was so that we would not cling to things of sense, that is, visible things, but pass to spiritual objects. For familiarity with the sense of sight disparages the reverence of what is divine.
And again, he wrote," Those golden figures, each of them with six wings, signify either the two bears, as some would have it, or rather, the two hemispheres. For the name cherubim meant much knowledge. For he who prohibited the making of a graven image would never himself have made an image in the likeness of holy things. Now, I don't know if Clement was correct on that point or not. He seems to think there really wasn't a literal carved angels representation of angels on the Ark of the Covenant.
I think he's mistaken, but that point is irrelevant because the fact that he made that statement shows that the church he was in wasn't using images and paintings and things like that since he understood that such things didn't even exist in Judaism. And one more quote from Clement of Alexandria, he said," Works of art cannot be sacred and divine." you know That's just a very term I found Orthodox using, the sacred icons, the divine icons.
Tertullian, writing about the year 197, said," In a word, if we refuse our homage to statues and frigid images, does it not merit praise instead of penalty that we have rejected what we have come to see is error?" Now, can you imagine somebody in the Eastern Orthodox Church or Roman Catholic Church making that statement today that acknowledging," Yes, we refuse homage to statues and frigid images." That means still images. Again, he wrote," We know that the names of the dead are nothing, as are their images.
But when images are set up, we know well enough too who carry on their wicked work under these names. We know who exult in the homage rendered to the images. We know who pretend to be divine. It is none other than the accursed spirits." So you see, the Gentiles made images of their dead, and they rendered homage to those images.
And this is exactly what the Catholic and again, I'm using it with a small C, churches do today and have been doing since way back, making images to dead Christians and praying in front of them and giving them honor. Again, Tertullian writes," Not that an idol is anything," as the apostle says, but that the homage they render to it is to demons. These are the real occupants of these consecrated images, whether of dead men or as they think of gods.
Again, he wrote," We are charged with being irreligious towards the Caesars since we neither propitiate their images nor swear by their genius." Again, what do Catholics do? Do they not make prayers in front of images just as the pagans were doing back then? Again, he wrote, this is Tertullian talking about Hermogenes, the heretic. He says," He despises God's law in his painting, and he maintains repeated marriages.
Although he purports to follow the law of God in defense of his lust, he despises it in respect of his art. So here was a heretic again who was doing some sort of religious painting that Tertullian says he's showing disregard for God when he does that. And again, Tertullian in another passage says," How could Peter this song by the Transfiguration? How could Peter have known Moses and Elijah except in the Spirit?
People could not have had their images, statues, or likenesses for the law forbade that." So again, right or wrong, the early Christians certainly understood that the Mosaic law prevented making any kind of images, even a painting, of a person like Moses or Elijah. Now let me move on to Hippolytus. He was a presbyter in the Church of Rome, started a reform movement there. He was writing about the year 225, and he was discussing the disciples of a heretic named Carpocrates.
He says this," They make counterfeit images of Christ alleging that these were in existence at the time by Pilate." So you see, once again, the heretics were using images, and they were the ones claiming these go all the way back to the time of Christ. Origen, writing about the year 248, said this," Neither painter nor image maker existed in the nation of Israel, for the law expelled all such persons from it." In that way, there was no pretext for the construction of images.
For image-making is an art that attracts the attention of foolish men. It drags the eyes of the soul down from God to earth. Accordingly, there was among them a law to the following effect. Do not transgress the law and make to yourselves a carved image or any likeness of male or female. And in a work answering Celsus, who was a pagan critic of Christianity, well, Celsus in his work had accused Christians of being uneducated, servile, and ignorant. Those were his words.
So here's a passage from Origen's Reply to Celsus. Origen says," We, on the other hand, deem those tomorrow pagans to be uneducated," using Celsus' own words," who are not ashamed to address inanimate objects, to ask for health from those who have no strength, to ask the dead for life, and to entreat the helpless for assistance." Some may say that these objects are not gods, but only representations and symbols of real divinities.
Nevertheless, these very individuals, in imagining that the hands of lowly artisans can frame representations of divinity are, quote," uneducated, servile, and ignorant." Again, now Celsus had said this in another part of his work talking about Christians. He said," They cannot tolerate temples, altars, or images. In this, they are like the Scythians." Okay, so there's the charge made.
Now, can you imagine, say, a pagan, a Hindu, or a Muslim making that charge against Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox professing Christians, saying," Well, they cannot tolerate images." No one would say that, would they? Well, what does Origen reply? As he said," No, you're wrong. We have images and icons. We give them honor." No.
He says," To this, our answer is that if the Scythians cannot bear the sight of temples, altars, and images, it does not follow that our reason for objecting to these things is the same as theirs, even though we cannot tolerate them any more than they can. The Scythians, the nomadic Libyans, the godless Seres, and the Persians agree in this with the Christians and Jews. However, they are actuated by very different principles.
For none of these other groups abhor altars and images on the ground that they are afraid of degrading the worship of God and reducing it to the worship of material things. It is not possible at the same time to know God and to address prayers to images. It isn't possible, he said, to know God and still address prayers to images. But isn't that the practice we see among the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics of praying in front of images?
Origen wrote again," To explain this fully and to justify the conduct of Christians in refusing homage to any object except the Most High God and the firstborn of all creation who is His Word and is God," we must quote this from Scripture.
And again, he wrote," Therefore, it is not true that we object to building altars, statues, and temples because we have decided to make this the mark of a secret and forbidden society." See, that was one of the accusations that pagans brought against Christians." How come you have no temples? You don't have any altars. You don't have any images in your buildings." And I thought," Well, are you atheists then that you don't have these things?
Or do you want to just meet in secret where no one knows where you are because you don't have these visible things that they associated with religion?" No, as Origen continues, he says," Rather, we object because we have learned from Jesus Christ the true way of serving God, and we shrink from whatever under a pretense of piety leads to utter impiety." Now, let me move on to Cyprian, writing about the year 250. He was a bishop in the city of Carthage talking about the pagan gods.
He says they were once kings, but on account of their royal memory, they subsequently began to be adored by their people even in death. Afterwards, images were sculptured to retain the faces of the deceased by the likeness. Later, men sacrificed victims and celebrated festival days to give them honor. Finally, those rites became sacred to posterity, even though they had originally been adopted as a consolation.
So he says," Pagan worship of images just started with honoring the dead, remembering them giving veneration to a respected and liked king, a mighty king," or someone like that. And then after time, these kings were essentially deified and people were worshiping them. Well, isn't that the same thing with icons? They're made a picture of some saintly Christian who lived in the past. And perhaps it was first argued this is just to honor and commemorate that person.
But then now they've basically deified these people where professing Christians prayed to Mary like she could do something for them. They'll carry a statue of Mary on the dashboard of their vehicle to protect them. Sailors will have a medallion of St. Nicholas to protect them on the ocean. And they have patron saints for every kind of activity, just like the pagans had patron gods for various activities.
Arnobius, an apologist writing about the year 305, said this," You say that we rear no temples to the gods and do not worship their images." Well, what greater honor or dignity could we ascribe to them than that we put them in the same position as the head and lord of the universe? Do we honor Him with shrines and by building temples? The last person I want to read from is Lactantius, writing somewhere between the year 304 and 313.
And he said this," It is also supernatural that the statue of fortune in the form of a woman," he's talking about pagans here, is reported to have spoken more than once. Also, that the statue of Juno, Moneta, when one of the soldiers jokingly asked whether she wished to transfer to Rome, answered that she wished it. So the pagans had all kinds of stories about how their statues and images would talk or do other miraculous things.
No doubt, if you've looked into the Eastern Orthodox Church or Roman Catholic, you've heard stories about weeping icons and paintings that bleed and things like that. It's no different from what the pagans were claiming either. Again, Lactantius wrote," I have shown that the religious ceremonies of the gods are in vain for three reasons.
In the first place, those images that are worshipped are representations of men who are dead." Now, isn't that the same thing true with the statues and icons in the Catholic churches? He says," And it is wrong and it is a wrong and inconsistent thing that the image of a man should be worshipped by the image of God. For he who worships is naturally lower and weaker than that which is worshipped." Furthermore, it is an unforgivable crime to desert the living in order to serve memorials for the dead.
For the dead can neither give life nor light to anyone, for they are themselves without it. Secondly, the sacred images themselves to which most senseless men render service are destitute of all perception.
They are earth." And he says," Without a doubt, there is no religion wherever there is an image, for religion consists of divine things, and there is nothing divine except in heavenly things." So it follows that images are without religion, for there can be nothing heavenly in something that is made from the earth. Now, I don't know how Catholics try to get around those.
And I hope I haven't bored you reading so many passages, but I wanted to make it so crystal clear that you could see for yourself the overwhelming amount of evidence there is. And these aren't ones that I've dishonestly collected together, pushing aside quotes that show them paying homage to icons and all of that. These are all of the passages I was able to find that dealt in any way with the subject of images, statues, icons, those sort of things. And every one of them is negative towards them.
And these are from Christians who lived all over the ancient world from Gaul to Alexandria to Rome to Asia Minor. And they all say the same thing. I mean, just be honest for a moment. Think to yourself, can you imagine any Catholic person and again, I'm using the word Catholic to incorporate Rome Eastern Orthodoxy and Coptic and those kind of churches. Seeing the kind of things I've just been reading to you, would any Catholic make those kind of statements?
And at the same time, can you possibly harmonize those statements with the decree of the so-called Seventh Ecumenical Council that says Christians must venerate the, quote," holy icons." And it pronounces an anathema, a divine curse on any Christian who refuses to do it. I mean, you're cursing all of these faithful Christians who lived before Constantine because it's obvious that none of them did any such thing. I had an orthodox apologist tell me once," Oh, no, the early Christians venerated icons.
You just don't read about it in their writings because they were living under persecution, and they did not want the Romans to know what they did in their meeting." So these things were all secret. They were not made open to unbelievers. But see, that's not true. Several of the apologists like Justin Martyr describe what a Christian service is like. Tertullian talks about things that go on in their services. And look at all of these quotes dealing with worship and the use of images.
It's not that they were trying to hide something. It's that they didn't have images. Now, I should explain that the early Christians did not think that it was a sin to have religious art, such as scenes from the Bible. In fact, they painted such scenes on the walls of the catacombs. Also, archaeologists have uncovered a house church that dates back to the early 3rd century, and it has biblical scenes painted on the walls of the baptismal room where there was a pool for baptism.
But interestingly, in this church that they found, there are no pictures, no statues of any kind in the nave of the church, in the part of the church where they assembled for worship. And like I say, in the baptismal room, there are only paintings of biblical scenes, not icons that would be suitable for venerating. Now, I will tell you, I've been in the catacombs, and there are icons in the catacombs. But don't let anyone fool you on that. The icons that are there were painted much later.
In fact, there's one there of Jesus that I believe dates to the 8th century. You see, the catacombs were originally the burial places of the Christians in Rome, and there are catacombs in other cities too. But most of the people who were buried there were buried there after Constantine when the church became very worldly and people thought there would be some sort of merit to be buried next to a saint. And they imagined that all of the people in the catacombs had been martyrs.
And so you had the catacombs actually enlarged after the time of Constantine. And like I say, there is a lot of art there that dates from the time of Constantine and up towards the Middle Ages. But none of the art that dates before Constantine is in the form of an icon. In fact, even after Constantine, it was still somewhat of a new thing, and there was opposition to it when churches started using paintings and things like that. I'm going to read you an account that's related by Jerome.
It's in a letter from Bishop Epiphanius, who is Bishop of Salamis. And he says this. He was journeying to another church, and he says this," I came to a villa entitled Anablatha, and as I was passing, I saw a lamp burning there. Asking what place it was and learning it to be a church, I went in to pray and found there a curtain hanging on the doors of the church dyed and embroidered. It bore an image either of Christ or of one of the saints. I do not rightly remember whose the image was.
Seeing this and both loathe that an image of a man should be hung up in Christ's church, contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures, I tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a burial sheet for some poor person. They, however, murmured and said that if I made up my mind to tear it, it was only fair that I should give them another curtain in its place. As soon as I heard this, I promised that I would give one and said that I would send it at once.
Since then, there has been some little delay due to the fact that I have been seeking a curtain of the best quality to give to them instead of the former one and thought it right to send to Cyprus for one.
I have now sent the best that I could find, and I beg that you will order the presbyter of the place to take the curtain in which I have sent from the hands of the reader and that you will afterwards give directions that curtains of the other sort that is a curtain that had an image on it opposed as they are to our religion shall not be hung up in any church of Christ.
A man of your uprightness should be careful to remove an occasion of offense, unworthy alike of the Church of Christ and of those Christians who are committed to your charge. This was a letter he wrote to another bishop. And that letter would be from the fourth century. So it's obvious even then you can see that, okay, the practice was beginning to creep in. Having curtains, for example, that had embroidery on them, that would be the face of Christ or of some other person.
But you can see there was initially pretty strong opposition, and this is from a bishop. But later, they began trickling in. And like I say, by the eighth century, then the church declares that you have to venerate images. Going from the position of the early church that you cannot have them at all to you must not only have them, you must venerate them. But even then, there was a lot of opposition all the way up through the so-called Seventh Ecumenical Council.
Well, did the early Christians just make their position up or did they have scriptural support to take the stance that they did? Here are some of the Scripture passages they relied on.
Exodus 20, verses 4 and 5, where it says," You will not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, and that is in the water under the earth, you will not bow down to them nor serve them." 1 Corinthians 10:14," Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry." 2 Corinthians 5:7," For we walk by faith, not by sight." And finally, 1 John 5:21 where he writes," Little children, keep yourself from idols." And I'm well aware of the fact that the Eastern
Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and these other churches would say," Well, their statues and their icons are not images or not idols such as are referred to in the Scripture." Well, I'm not so sure that's how God looks at it.
Now, of course, if you talk to an educated Orthodox person or educated Roman Catholic about images and icons, and you point to the scriptures I've just read, you point to the overwhelming testimony of the early church. But what they invariably will say was," Oh, no, what they're doing is something very different from what the Bible speaks about or what the early Christians speak about." They say that," Well, unlike the pagans, they don't worship or venerate the actual statue or the icon.
They're merely showing devotion to the person that that picture represents." See, the pagans were actually representing the picture itself or the statue itself. But no, that's not what we're doing. It's very different. We know interestingly, that is the exact same argument that educated pagans made to the Christians.
For example, Athenagoras wrote," It is asserted by some pagans that although these are only images, yet there do exist gods in honor of whom they are made." They say that the prayers and sacrifice presented to the images are to be referred to the gods and are, in fact, made to the gods. This is exactly what Catholics say that any devotion given to an image or icon refers to the person that that image represents.
Arnobius wrote, talking to pagans, he says," You say but you err and are mistaken, for we do not consider either copper, gold, silver, or these other materials of which statues are made to be in themselves gods and sacred deities. Rather, in them, we worship and venerate those beings whom their dedication as sacred items caused to dwell in those statues made by workmen. See, we know our God isn't that statue, but our gods do have some kind of divine presence in the statue.
This is what the Orthodox say, the Eastern Orthodox, they say that there is some kind of presence in an icon, that it is a window into heaven or a window into eternity.
Lactantius said," What madness is it then either to form those objects that they themselves may afterwards fear or to fear the things that they have formed." However, they say," We do not fear the images themselves, but those beings after whose likeness they were formed and to whose names they are dedicated." No doubt, you fear them for this reason because you think that they are in heaven. For if they are gods, the case cannot be otherwise. So why then do you not raise your eyes to heaven?
Why do you look to walls, wood, and stone rather than to the place where you believe them to be? So the early Christians didn't pray to walls, direct their devotion to walls like Orthodox do or to images like many Roman Catholics do. They cast their eyes upward to heaven when they prayed. In short, there is no difference between what these Catholics do and what the pagans did. The exact same rationalization that was used by the pagans are used by Catholics today.
Christians who venerate statues and icons are acting directly contrary to the practice of the original Christians. Now, on another message, I've talked about the ecumenical councils. And in that, I go into a little bit more detail about the so-called Seventh Ecumenical Council concerning icons. You may want to listen to that message if you want to pursue this a bit further. I remember the first time that I visited an Eastern Orthodox church. This was quite some time ago, I'd say at least 15 years ago.
And in the middle of the service, when they suddenly brought out censers waving incense everywhere, I was very tempted to get up and run out the door. I'd never experienced that in worship, and I felt like I was in a pagan temple. But I talked to a number of Orthodox persons after that, and I listened to their rationalizations. They said," Well, the use of incense is simply something that was carried over into the church from Jewish worship." They had incense there at the temple.
You read about that all throughout the scriptures. And so it was natural that the apostles carried this into Christian worship as well. And so Christians have always used incense as just the Protestants who objected to it and imagined it was something that came in from pagandom. Hmm, okay. And then they also use the argument if you go to Revelation chapter 8, verses 3 and 4, it talks about the incense ascending up the prayers of the saints.
They said," See, in heaven, you're going to have incense, so you better get used to it now because you're going to have it in heaven." And for a while, I bought what they had to say about the use of incense. But I decided," Okay, I wanted to check what the practice of the primitive church was on this." Now, I'd already read the writings of the early Christians, but at that point in time, I had not yet done the dictionary of early Christian beliefs.
I didn't have anything at my fingertips where I could just quickly check things on the early church, what they believed as I'm able to do now. But as I perused through various works and passages in the early Christian writings, I soon found out that just like the use of images, that I was being fed a bill of goods that was not true. Let me read to you some of the quotations that I found.
Justin Martyr wrote," God has no need of streams of blood, libations, that's drink offerings, and incense." Athenagoras, writing about the year 175, said," The framer and father of this universe does not need the fragrance of flowers and incense, for he is himself perfect fragrance." Clement of Alexandria wrote," How then will I crown myself anoint with ointment or offer incense to the Lord?" It is said, quoting now from Psalms," An odor of a sweet fragrance is the heart that glorifies him who made it." Clement
continues," These are the crowns and sacrifices, aromatic odors, and flowers of God." He says," you know We don't offer literal incense.
We offer our heart. A changed, regenerated heart is the sweet fragrance that God wants to smell." Tertullian wrote," I offer to him, talk about God, at his own requirement, that costly and noble sacrifice of prayer dispatched from the chaste body, an unstained soul, and a sanctified spirit. I do not offer the few grains of incense that a small coin buys." See, God wants an offering of a chaste body, a holy soul. That's what smells sweet to him.
Again, Tertullian wrote," As a Christian, you worship not with the spirit of some worthless perfume, but with your own." And again, talking about the three so-called wise men or magi. He says," The Magi, therefore, offered frankincense, myrrh, and gold to the then-infant Lord." This was to be, as it were, the end of worldly sacrifice and glory, which Christ was about to do away with. So we see, see, Christ did away with all of that type of worship, of worldly sacrifice and glory.
And one more from Tertullian, and he said," Even now, for the most part, idolatry is perpetrated without the idol, merely by the burning of aromas. The frankincense seller is more serviceable to demons, for idolatry is more easily carried on without the idol than without the goods of the frankincense seller." So the use of incense was closely tied to pagan idolatry. Obviously, the church wasn't using incense in its worship, or these writers could not have said the things that they did.
Again, Lactantius said," God is not appeased by incense, victims, or costly offerings. For these things are all corruptible. Rather, he is appeased by a reform of the morals." See, pagan worship that's all existed in their religion was worship. Offer up incense. Offer up sacrifices. Do these things. That's what the gods want.
The Christians are saying," No, the real God is totally different." That's not the type of things he wants, burning of incense, building costly buildings, and having statues and images and all of that. He wants a changed life, a holy life. That's how we worship God. Not that we don't pray to Him and worship in that sense, but those things are empty if they're not accompanied with a godly life. That's what enhances our worship.
So it's very clear from the historical record that the use of incense in the visible church was not something carried over from Judaism because the pre-Nicene Christians did not use incense. So it did not originate with the apostles. It came in later. The unanimous testimony of the early pre-Nicene Christians is that they did not use incense. There's not even one exception on that. It's interesting. I think the record is also clear where it came from, how it got into the church.
Tertullian had written to the pagans," You slay the same victims." That means sacrificial victims and burn the same odors for your dead as you do for your gods. So pagans burned incense not only to the gods, but also to honor the dead. They also used it because they generally cremated their bodies. They would use incense in the cremation process. Again, Tertullian wrote this about the difficulty of being a wife married to an unbeliever.
He said," The handmaid of God dwells amid alien labors that is if she's married to an unbeliever." He says," And among these things, she will be agitated by the odor of incense on all the memorial days of demons at all solemnities of kings at the beginning of the year and at the beginning of the month." So you see, pagans were using incense all the time. Right there in her home, she would have been subjected to it.
Well, what about then the argument that, well, heavenly worship makes use of incense because Revelation talks about incense. Now, come on. Let's be honest here. Is Revelation a description of literal things? Of course not. It's mainly written in signs, symbols, and allegorical language. I mean, does anyone really think that when they get to heaven, they're going to see an actual lamb? Is God going to be really sitting on a material throne? Will the angels there be blowing literal trumpets?
I mean, is heaven a physical place where there are material things like incense, trumpets, altars, thrones? Of course not. I don't think any of us believe that. Will we see 24 actual thrones in heaven for the 24 elders? What about all these references of precious jewels? Will there be a sea made out of literal glass? The woman that we read about in Revelation, dressed in scarlet. Is that a literal woman, a female? And does she literally ride a gigantic beast?
Revelation talks about the stars falling down from heaven to earth. Is this literal? If the stars fell down to Earth, they're so much bigger than Earth, we all know they would totally annihilate the Earth, just one star. That would happen. Of course not. We know that revelation is not to be taken literally. To use revelation as an excuse to burn incense is simply a human rationalization. Instead of searching for truth, we come up with pious-sounding arguments.
The early Christians certainly understood that the incense spoken of in Revelation was nothing more than a symbol of the prayers of the saints. For example, Irenaeus wrote, quoting from Malachi 1," In every place, incense is offered to my name and a pure sacrifice." And then to explain that verse from the Old Testament, he says," As John declares in the apocalypse, the incense is the prayers of the saints." Yes, the church offers today incense to the name of God. This is me talking now.
But the incense that we offer are our prayers. Clement of Alexandria wrote," The sacrifice of the church is the Word breathing as incense from holy souls." Both the sacrifice and the whole mind are unveiled to God at the same time. And will they not believe us when we say that the righteous soul is the truly sacred altar and that the incense arising from it is holy prayer?
So the early church knew that revelation was symbolic, and it even says there that the incense is the prayer of the saints in the book of Revelation. To finish our discussion tonight, let's talk about prayers to saints. Now, when I have asked Catholic apologists to explain their practice of praying to saints, the immediate response is," Oh, no, we don't pray to saints. All we do is ask the saints to pray for us." Just like you ask people in your congregation to pray for you.
Well, we feel that the deceased Christians of old are still alive. They're alive in paradise or heaven. And therefore, we're simply asking them, giving them a prayer request. Well, again, that's a very good sounding rationalization, but it's not true. In fact, I have been around too many Catholic persons and listened to their prayers, and they are praying directly to Mary. They're not saying," Mary, I have a prayer request for you." They are praying actually to her. Well, what about the early Christians?
Did they ever pray to saints? Did they pray to Peter or Paul or Mary or even maybe to an angel like Gabriel? Or did they even ask these people to pray for them? Well, again, let's look at the historical record and see. In all of these instances, I've neglected to mention the New Testament, which is our starting point. And in the New Testament, you don't find anything about Christians worshiping images. I assume that was self-understood or else I would have mentioned it.
But to get it on record, let's just state that right now. And the same with incense, you're not going to find anywhere in the New Testament anything about worship with incense other than, like I say, that symbolic passage in Revelation. What about anyone praying to other Christians who had died or to angels? Do you find any instance there? Stephen was martyred. Do you find anyone praying to Stephen or asking Stephen to pray for them? No. Nothing like that in the New Testament. What about to an angel, to Gabriel?
No. You can scour through the whole New Testament. You can use a Roman Catholic translation if you want. You won't find any passage of any Christian praying to anybody other than God. Well, how did Jesus teach us to pray? His disciples had asked him," Teach us to pray." Did he say," Well, do this.
Ask somebody of old like Elijah, Abraham, to pray for you." No, he said," In this manner, therefore, pray, our Father in heaven, no record in the New Testament of anyone ever praying to Mary." Now, apparently, however, some of the heretics in the first century were praying to angels, or at least they were worshipping angels, because Paul mentions in Colossians 2:18, he said," Let no one defraud you of your reward taking delight in false humility and worship of angels." So that was a heresy they were having to deal
with, worship of angels.
Well, what about in the second and third centuries? Well, again, I'm going to just tell you flatly, there is no record anywhere in the ante-Nicene writings of any Christian praying to a saint or to an angel that is in the writings before the time of Constantine. There's not even an instant of any Christian who was part of the church, I mean, other than a heretic maybe, asking a deceased Christian to pray for them. There's not even any instance of that happening.
In fact, their beliefs show why they would not even have considered such a thing. For example, Tertullian wrote, this is from about the year 197. He said," We speak of paradise, the place of divine bliss appointed to receive the spirits of the saints." There, the saints are cut off from the knowledge of this world by that fiery zone as by a sort of enclosure.
So he certainly did not think that the deceased saints and there he's using it in the biblical sense of any Christian who is in paradise or on the earth, that they knew what was going on here.
He said," No, they're cut off from knowledge of the world." Origen wrote, this is about the year 225," Having thus learned to call these beings angels," which meant messenger in Greek, from their employments, that is the work they did, we find that because they are divine, they are sometimes called gods in the sacred Scripture. But this is not said in the sense that we are commanded to honor and worship them in place of God, even though they minister to us and bear His blessings to us.
And his quotation about the gods is from the Psalms where it says that God ruled in the midst of the gods, okay? He says," For every prayer, supplication, intercession, and thanksgiving is to be sent up to the supreme God through the high priest, the living Word, and God who is above all the angels. To invoke angels without having obtained a greater knowledge of their nature than is possessed by man would be contrary to reason.
But even if we had this knowledge, it would not permit us to pray with confidence to anyone other than to the supreme God who is sufficient for all things through our Savior, the Son of God. That's the only scriptural mode for praying is to the Father through our mediator, Jesus Christ. He is the only mediator we need. We don't need somebody else to mediate for us.
We can ask our fellow Christians to intercede on our behalf to pray for us, but never in the New Testament or in the pre-Nicene church did people imagine that they could talk to the dead and ask them requests like praying for them. As Origen also wrote," We judge it improper to pray to those beings who themselves offer up prayers.
For even they themselves would prefer that we should send up our requests to the God to whom they pray rather than to send them downwards to themselves or to apportion our power of prayer between God and them." So see, even the ones in Paradise, he says," They don't want us praying to them. They want us to send our request to God. They're having to pray to God as well. Origen wrote in another place answering Celsus.
He says," Celsus forgets that he is addressing Christians who pray to God alone through Jesus." By the way, there's quotes from Origen if you want the site in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. Volume 4, page 544, 548, and 653. And the quotes on incense you can find in the dictionary of early Christian beliefs under incense. Cyprian wrote about the year 250," In the apocalypse, the angel resists John, who wishes to worship him and says," See that you do not do this, for I am your fellow servant and your brother.
Worship Jesus the Lord." you know The Catholics will use the rationalization. Well, we offer Dulia to Mary and the saints and to the icons and statues. That this is a form of veneration, but we only offer Latria, true worship, to God Himself. But you think John was offering Latria the actual worship we would give to God, to an angel? This is an apostle? Of course not. He's offering Dulia, ordinary veneration, whatever you want to call it. And the angel told him not to do that.
So that's a distinction that the Scriptures do not make, that we can offer worship to statues, images, to saints, to Mary, and say," Oh, well, this worship is different from the worship we give to God." No, we don't want to offer any kind of worship to these things. Lactantius wrote," It is clear that those who make prayers to the dead do not act as becomes men. They will suffer punishment for their impiety and guilt. Rebelling against God, the Father of the human race, they have undertaken unforgivable rites.
They have violated every sacred law. But isn't that what Catholics do when they're praying to saints? They are praying to the dead. It's so easy to see how all of this came into the church. It was not there before Constantine. And then you have this pagan suddenly making Christianity the sponsored religion of the state, the favored religion of the state. And you have masses of unconverted pagans coming into the church because now it would give them social advancement to be Christians.
And yet these people were so obviously not regenerated. I don't mean none of them were, but I don't think the vast majority were. And they brought with them these practices of, number one, we've looked at using images, icons, those sort of things. I've been to the British Museum and seen pictures of pagan Roman icons, paintings of a deceased person that look exactly like the picture of like an icon that the Eastern Orthodox use. I mean, you would not know it was not an Eastern Orthodox icon.
It's the exact same format. So you don't have to be much of a detective to deduce how this happened. It did not come from Judaism because it was not used. None of these things were used by the primitive Christians. So then it had to have come from pagandom. And since the pagans were using these things, it was so easy to just give them a Christian rationalization. Oh, well, now these icons, these are just honoring the dead saints. Oh, incense?
Well, you know we're offering incense up to God, just as they had done to their idols. And then praying to the dead that they were accustomed to doing," Oh, well, we pray to dead saintly Christians." So the historical record shows that these practices, that is, of using statues, icons, any kind of image in worship, to use incense in worship, and to pray to anybody other than God through Jesus Christ. It's not a scriptural tradition. It's not a tradition handed down by the apostles. No, it is a tradition of man.