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On Prayer

Origen, tr. Oulton, 1954

If it is necessary, then after this, to set forth, as you have bidden us, the plausible …

Objections to Prayer (Chapter V)

If it is necessary, then after this, to set forth, as you have bidden us, the plausible arguments first of those1 who think that nothing is effected by prayers, and therefore affirm that it is superfluous to pray, we shall not refuse to do this also according to our ability, employing the term “prayer” now in its simpler and more ordinary sense.2 . . . This opinion is so disreputable and lacking in distinguished supporters,3 that practically no one can be found among those who admit Providence and place God over the universe who rejects prayer. It is the tenet either of those who are downright atheists and deny the existence of God,4 or else of those who go as far as to accept the name of God but do away with his Providence. I would go further and say that the power that works in opposition,5 desiring to attach the most iniquitous opinions to the name of Christ and to the teaching of the Son of God, has even been able to persuade some that they ought not to pray.6 The champions of this opinion are those who completely reject objects of sense, and use neither Baptism nor Eucharist,7 and slanderously affirm that when the Scriptures speak of “praying” they do not mean this, but teach something with quite a different meaning.

The following are the arguments, conceivably, of those who set at naught prayers (that is to say, of those who place God over the universe and say that there is a Providence; for there is no question now of examining the statements of those who reject God or Providence altogether): “God” knows “all things before they be,”8 and nothing which happens is known to him for the first time when it happens, as if it were not known before this. What need is there, then, to offer up a prayer to him who before it was prayed knows what we lack? “For the heavenly Father knoweth what things” we “have need of before” we “ask him.”9 It is reasonable that he who is the Father and Creator of the universe, who “loveth all things that are, and abhorreth none of the things10 which” he “hath made,”11 should dispense what is for the well-being of each one without being prayed to; just as a father does, who protects his little ones and does not wait upon their requests, either because they are unable to ask at all, or because through ignorance they often wish to receive things that are clean contrary to their profit and advantage. And we human beings are much further off from God12 than mere children are from the mind of their parents.

Now it is probable that the future is not only known beforehand to God but also predetermined, and that nothing comes to pass which has not been predetermined by him. For example, if one were to pray that the sun should rise, he would be regarded as a foolish fellow, for requesting that something should happen through his prayer which would happen in any case without his prayer. So also a man would be senseless to imagine that his prayer caused things to happen which would without doubt have taken place had he never prayed. To give another example, it would be unsurpassable folly for a man who was troubled by the scorching sun at the summer solstice to imagine that by his prayer the sun could be shifted back among the vernal constellations, so that he might enjoy a temperate atmosphere. In like manner, for a man to suppose that by prayer he will escape from necessary happenings incidental to the human race, would be to surpass every form of melancholy madness.13

Moreover, if “the wicked are estranged from the womb,”14 and the righteous man is “separated from” his “mother’s womb,”15 and if, “the children being not yet” even “born, neither having done anything good or bad,16 that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth,”17 it is said, “The elder shall serve the younger,”18 in vain do we pray concerning remission of sins or the reception of “the Spirit of might,”1920 in order that we may “have might for all things, Christ strengthening us.”21 For if we are “sinners,” we “are estranged from the womb”22; but if we were “separated from” our “mother’s womb,”15 the best things will fall to our lot, even though we should not pray. What prayer did Jacob offer before he was born, that it should be prophesied of him that “he shall prevail” over Esau, and that his brother “shall serve”23 him? What sin did Esau commit, that he should be “hated”24 before he was born? Or why does Moses pray,25 as we find in the eighty-ninth Psalm, if God is his “refuge before the mountains” were established “and the earth and the world formed”26 . . .27

Moreover, concerning all those that shall be saved it is recorded in the [Epistle] to the Ephesians that “the Father chose” them “in him, in Christ,28 before foundation of the world,” that they “should be holy and without blemish before him, having foreordained” them “in love unto adoption as sons through Christ unto himself.”29 Either then a man is one of those “chosen30 before the foundation of the world,” and it is impossible for him to fall from this “election,”31 and therefore there is no need for him to pray; or else he has not been “chosen” neither “foreordained,” and it is in vain for him to pray: even were he to pray ten thousand times, he would not be heard. For “whom” God “foreknew,” them “he also foreordained to be conformed to the image” of the glory “of his Son.32 And whom he foreordained, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”33 Why does Josiah weary himself, or wherefore when he prays does he take thought whether or no he shall be heard,34 when many generations previously it was prophesied of him by name,35 and it was not only foreknown but also foretold in the hearing of many what he would then do?36 Why, too, should Judas pray,37 so that “his prayer be turned into sin,” it having been previously announced, from the times of “David,” that he would lose “his office,” and that “another” would “take” it in his stead?38 And since God is unchangeable and has predetermined everything that is, and abides in what he has pre-arranged, it is obviously inconsistent to pray with the idea of altering his plan by prayer, or of intreating him as one who has not pre-arranged it but awaits each one’s prayer. This would be to make prayer the reason why God arranges what is fitting for him who prays, and settles then what is deemed proper, as if it had not already been foreseen by him.

Let the position be stated now in the very words of the letter you addressed39 to me. They are as follows: “First: if God knows the future beforehand, and it must come to pass, prayer is vain. Secondly: if all things happen according to the will of God, and if what is willed by him is fixed,40 and nothing of what he wills can be changed, prayer is vain.” It is useful, I think, to decide these points as a preliminary to solving the difficulties which cause insensibility41 in regard to prayer.

Notes

  1. V, 1. the plausible arguments first of those, etc.] Origen’s friends placed before him two arguments against prayer (see section 6 of this chapter): (1) that God has foreseen the future, and it must come to pass; (2) man has no free will, since God’s will cannot be changed. The conclusion on both suppositions is that prayer is in vain. Before he deals with these objections, Origen mentions in passing (section 1) a third class of objectors who reject prayer altogether because they are atheists or do not believe in Providence. He then proceeds to deal with argument (1) in sections 2–5. In ch. VI he begins a discussion of objection (2). A clearer arrangement would have been to place V, 6, at the beginning of the chapter.
  2. A lacuna of two lines in T follows, which Koetschau fills up conjecturally thus: “For there are some who do not even accept prayer in this sense, but rather make mock of those who pray, and desire to do away completely with any kind of prayer whatsoever.”
  3. V, 1. lacking in distinguished supporters] Origen means that there is no sect of philosophers which admits God and Providence and at the same time rejects prayer altogether, although it may doubt its efficacy.
  4. V, 1. deny the existence of God, etc.] There is an echo of this aspect of Origen’s teaching in the Panegyric of Gregory addressed to Origen, ch. XIII (P.G., X, 1088; A.N.L., VI, 34): “He [Origen] deemed it right for us to study philosophy in such wise, that we should read with utmost diligence all that has been written, both by the philosophers and by the poets of old, rejecting nothing, and repudiating nothing . . . except only the productions of the atheists, who, in their conceits, lapse from the general intelligence of man, and deny that there is either a God or a Providence.” In contra Celsum, II, 13, Origen says that the Epicureans “completely reject” Providence.
  5. Cf. II Thess. 2:4, 9.
  6. V, 1. to persuade some that they ought not to pray] Perhaps this is a direct reference to Clement of Alexandria, Strom., VII, 41, who speaks of the followers of the heresy of Prodicus as holding that one “ought not to pray”—περὶ τοῦ μὴ δεῖν εὔχεσθαι—the same phrase as Origen uses here.
  7. V, 1. those who completely reject objects of sense, and use neither Baptism nor Eucharist] That such persons were to be found in the early Church is clear from Irenaeus, Haer., I, 14:3 (Harvey), who speaks of a section of the gnostics, called the Marcosians, who reject baptismal rites, affirming that “the mystery of the ineffable and invisible power ought not to be performed by visible and corruptible things, nor the mystery of beings who are inconceivable and incorporeal by material objects of sense.” And Tertullian (De Baptismo, 1) states that the Cainites rejected Baptism. The persons referred to by Ignatius (Smyrn. 6), who “abstain from Eucharist and prayer,” did not apparently abstain altogether from this sacrament, but established a sacrament of their own apart from the Church (see Lightfoot’s note ad. loc.). In contra Celsum II, 13, Origen says of the Peripatetic philosophers that they maintain prayers to be of no avail and sacrifices offered as to a Divinity.
  8. Susanna 42.
  9. Matt. 6:8.
  10. V, 2. “abhorreth none of the things,” etc.] Wisdom of Solomon 11:24. This appears to be the source of the words in the Collect of Ash Wednesday: “Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made.”
  11. Wisdom of Solomon 11:24.
  12. V, 2. much further off from God] i.e., from the mind of God. See Introduction, p. 189.
  13. V, 3. melancholy madness] Origen uses the corresponding verb in contra Celsum, II, 60, where he co-ordinates it with “being out of one’s mind and delirious.”
  14. Ps. 58:3.
  15. Cf. Gal. 1:15.
  16. V, 4. “good or bad”] In this quotation from Rom. 9:11 Origen reads φαῦλον for “bad” with ℵ AB, etc., v.l., κακόν.
  17. Rom. 9:11.
  18. Gen. 25:23 (Rom. 9:12).
  19. Isa. 11:2.
  20. V, 4. in vain do we pray concerning . . . the reception of the Spirit of might] It is noteworthy that this form of the doctrine of predestination gives rise to the same difficulties concerning the reception of grace as Calvinism afterwards occasioned.
  21. Cf. Phil. 4:13.
  22. Cf. Ps. 58:3.
  23. Gen. 25:23.
  24. Mal. 1:3 (Rom. 9:13).
  25. V, 4. why does Moses pray] The title of Ps. 89 (LXX) in both Hebrew and LXX is: “A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.”
  26. Ps. 90:1.
  27. A lacuna of one and three-sevenths lines occurs here in T, in all likelihood containing another of these rhetorical questions.
  28. V, 5. “in him, in Christ”] Eph. 1:4. Either “in. Christ” is a gloss which has subsequently got into the text, or it is added by Origen from the preceding verse of Ephesians by way of explanation.
  29. Eph. 1:3–5.
  30. V, 5. one of those “chosen”] So Bentley emends the text of T.
  31. Rom. 9:11.
  32. V, 5. “conformed to the image” of the glory “of his Son”] Origen apparently quotes from memory. The words “of the glory” are not in Rom. 8:29, but in Phil. 3:21; “conformed to,” being in both texts, has given rise to the confusion.
  33. Rom. 8:29, 30.
  34. Cf. II Kings 22:11–13, 18, 19; 23:3 ff.
  35. V, 5. many generations previously it was prophesied of him by name] The passage in I Kings 13:2 is without analogy in Hebrew prophecy, in that 350 years before its fulfilment it gives a specific and detailed prediction of what a person named (Josiah) would do.
  36. Cf. I Kings 13:1–3.
  37. V, 5. why should Judas pray, etc.] This passage throws light upon the manner of interpreting the Old Testament in the time of Origen. Psalm 109 is regarded, not as indicating a set of circumstances which afterwards were seen to be applicable to the case of Judas, but as referring in the first instance to Judas, so much so that the actions of Judas, historically considered, are predestined by the prophecy. Origen indicates in contra Celsum, II, 11, that he himself took a similar view of the Psalm, although he rejected the predestinarian views founded upon it. Cf. also De Orat., VI, 5; XXIV, 5.
  38. Ps. 109:7, 8; Acts 1:16, 20.
  39. V, 6. you addressed] “You” is singular. Ambrose wrote the letter, although Tatiana was associated with it.
  40. V, 6. the future . . . must come to pass . . . what is willed by him is fixed] It is not clear if Ambrose (and Tatiana) put forward these difficulties as their own or as suggested to them by others. It is significant, however, that Ambrose was formerly a gnostic. Eusebius (H.E., VI, 18:1) says he was a follower of Valentinus, Jerome (V.1, 5, 6) that he was a Marcionite. For the gnostics denied moral freedom and held predestinarian views (see de Faye, III, 179 ff.; Bigg, 243 ff.). Probably, therefore, even if the difficulties about prayer that Ambrose puts forward were not held by him at the time of writing, they had been difficulties for him once; and it is more than likely that he still had friends in gnostic circles who would press him for an answer to these questions.
  41. V, 6. insensibility] Greek ἀποναρκᾶν, lit. “to be numb”: the effect, it was supposed, of being touched by the ναρκὴ, the electric rayfish.

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