Praying to Saints

I'd like to know where he got the quotes from Origen and Hippolytus. I can't find them on searchearlychristianwritings.online! The nearest I could get with Hippolytus was this quote, which is clearly poetic:

“O Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, bless ye the Lord; O ye apostles, prophets, and martyrs of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him, and exalt Him above all, for ever.”

The quote from Ignatius is very clearly talking about intercessory prayer of Ignatius, presumably while he was still alive. Here's the quote as given on searchearlychristianwritings.online:

"Let my spirit be sanctified by yours, not only now, but also when I shall attain to God. For I am as yet exposed to danger. But the Father is faithful in Jesus Christ to fulfill both mine and your petitions: in whom may ye be found unblameable."

The Sub Tuum Praesidium, according to Wikipedia, is from the 3rd or 4th century at the earliest, but some scholars would date it much later.

I'm not sure what to say about the catacombs inscriptions, other than how sure are they on the dates? If the date is given in the inscription, there is no need to say "ca. 3rd century".

Notice the overall trend, though- the earliest evidence on this comes from the third century. This may point toward it being a later innovation and not part of the historic faith.

I have now located the quote from Origen. Here it is in the full context:

"CHAPTER X- THE RECIPIENT OF PRAYER IN ITS FOUR MOODS

"Now request and intercession and thanksgiving, it is not out of place to offer even to men—the two latter, intercession and thanksgiving, not only to saintly men but also to others.

But request to saints alone, should some Paul or Peter appear, to benefit us by making us worthy to obtain the authority which has been given to them to forgive sins—with this addition indeed that, even should a man not be a saint and we have wronged him, we are permitted our becoming conscious of our sin against him to make request even of such, that he extend pardon to us who have wronged him.

"Yet if we are offer thanksgiving to men who are saints, how much more should we give thanks to Christ, who has under the Father’s will conferred so many benefactions upon us? Yes and intercede with Him as did Stephen when he said, “Lord, set not this sin against them.” In imitation of the father of the lunatic we shall say, “I request, Lord, have mercy” either on my son, or myself, or as the case may be.

But if we accept prayer in its full meaning, we may not ever pray to any begotten being, not even to Christ himself, but only to the God and Father of All to whom our Savior both prayed himself, as we have already instanced, and teaches us to pray."

Notice how the sentence before what your friend quoted changes the emphasis completely! Origen is not talking about praying to dead saints- he's talking about asking living saintly men (saints) to pray for us. The early church did not think of saints as exclusively dead people, but any godly people, whether living or dead.

Joshua's replies are good. The Sub Tuum Praesiduum prayer is not a strong argument. It turns out that the only reason many people date it to the 200s is the handwriting on the papyrus! It could be much, much later. See this article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0142064X19855579

I haven't looked at the Origen quote myself, but here's Gavin Ortlund's analysis of it: https://youtu.be/7TxB6_IPmYE

And just because some lay Christians inscribed prayers to saints on their tombs doesn't mean it was a practice that was taught by Christian leaders.

Rather than relying on the common teachings of early church leaders, placed in their original context, the Eastern Orthodox apologists often list a huge amount of very selective quotations and then feel they have proved their point. Often, all it takes to show the error is a careful look at each example one by one in its original context.

One other type of "evidence" you'll often see is where people believed that the departed saints are praying for us, but where no mention is made of praying to them to pray to us.

And finally, I would note that the Eastern Orthodox believe in what is often called the "consensus patri." What this means is that whenever there's a consensus in the people they consider church fathers, that teaching is true. But notice that in this case, almost none of the people quoted would they consider to be church fathers. They wouldn't even include Origen as a church father. So even if all these quotations were valid, it still wouldn't be enough to prove their point.

Brothers Miller and Martin did excellent jobs in responding; allow me to further build on their work:

Regarding Ignatius, it seems that some translations might lend themselves better to the argument that he could have been making a reference to a future tense occasion for him to be offering prayers, let alone the idea that these were prayers on behalf of others who would be sending intercessory prayers to him. The latter element is completely absent from any translation. The translation offered by brother Miller is from the Ante-Nicene Fathers

, so one could potentially argue that such is a dated translation reflecting Protestant bias. To this I would preemptively counter with the most recent translation (2013) from an Eastern Orthodox source:

"My spirit is consecrated for you, not only now, but also when I attain to God. For I am still in danger. But the Father is faithful in Jesus Christ, fulfilling both my request and yours, that you may be found blameless in him." (Ignatius, Trallians 13:3, in Popular Patrsitics 49:63)

It should be fairly evident that the idea of Ignatius receiving prayers from living saints after his immanent martyrdom is completely alien to the text.

Regarding Hippolytus, my personal skepticism regarding the authenticity of the extant Commentary on Daniel aside, for the author to say that there was an angel praying in harmony with the three holy children in the furnace is a far cry from saying that they were praying to the angel any more than they were praying to one another. No, it was a common motif in the early Christians writings to depict people praying with the same intent as a chorus (cf. Ignatius Ephesians 4:2).

Regarding Origen, brother Miller's citation of the greater context of the passage says it all. Unless one wishes to interpret Origen as advocating praying to not only deceased saints but also deceased sinners as well, one can only interpret Origen to have been asking other living people for their prayers. Now contrast that with brother Bercot's citation of Origen from Against Celsus and it's obvious that he only saw room for one mediator through Whom it is proper to pray to the Father.

Regarding the Sub Tuum Praesidium, one could argue that Wikipedia is not a valid scholarly source to cite on the subject (never mind it's footnotes). But see my recent blog post which demonstrates that even the premier reference source for current Roman Catholic patristic scholarship, despite favoring an earlier date, had to admit that a later date is plausible: In Defense of Bercot Regarding Icon Veneration, Incense in Worship, and Prayers Through Deceased Saints.

Regarding the early epitaphs cited, these represent the parting words of parents to their children. I, for one, find it rather ghoulish for anyone to try to leverage them for the sake of arguing that these parents were in the practice of praying to their own deceased children.

Finally, the Rylands Papyrus is dated to decades after Constantine's influence began to be felt by the Church, and is thus out of our purview.