Triablogue

More Non-Divine Healings

2026-10-18T07:01:56.839-04:00

I've been writing about healings that seem to come from a non-Divine source. I've discussed UFO healing cases, for example, including ones that involve medical documentation.

While it's good to have evidence like medical records, we shouldn't dismiss cases that involve lesser forms of evidence. There's some value to testimonial evidence, there's a cumulative effect to lesser forms of evidence that aren't so significant when considered in isolation, and so on.

I've been addressing issues like these for many years. Part of what I've been responding to lately, though, are the recent claims made about miracles by people like Ethan Muse and Joe Schmid. In Joe's recent videos explaining his conversion to Roman Catholicism, he cited evidence like medical records and photographs for much of what he appealed to, but there were times when he brought up something like testimonial evidence apart from X-rays, videos, and such (e.g., his citation of the testimony of Adam Blai).

What I want to do in this post is discuss Guy Playfair's testimony about healings from an apparently non-Divine source. For those who don't know, Playfair was a paranormal researcher best known for his work on the Enfield Poltergeist. You can read a tribute to him that I wrote several years ago here.

At 15:48 on his Enfield tape 33Ai, Playfair has a discussion with the Hodgsons (the family experiencing the poltergeist) in which he mentions that they may have an ability to heal people in the future. He comments on how people who experience a poltergeist sometimes acquire an ability to heal.

Matthew Manning, who had gone through a poltergeist earlier in the 1970s and visited the Hodgsons' house on December 17, 1977, supposedly acquired some kind of capacity for healing after his poltergeist experience. Playfair claimed that he'd been healed by Manning. Go here to listen to him discussing the subject in an interview. The claim about a healing from Manning occurs at 30:15. Go here for a discussion with more detail later in the interview. He seems to refer to how Manning healed him of a "slipped disc". He says an orthopedic surgeon witnessed the healing and that the surgeon claimed to have no medical explanation of it.

Keep in mind that Playfair had worked other poltergeist cases before he did his work on Enfield, and he was relating his own firsthand experience with Manning. So, he had some significant credibility in both contexts.

An article in the Daily Mail, written shortly after Playfair's death, discusses another healing he reported:

Later came an illustrious career in journalism working for Life magazine and, from his adopted home in Rio di Janeiro, for The Economist, Time, Associated Press, The Guardian and for the press corps of the U.S. Agency for International Development. One of his assignments was an investigation into 'psychic surgeons' in Brazil who performed operations without anaesthetics, aided — so it was said — by powers not of this world.

Playfair wasn't a believer, but, suffering from tummy troubles at the time, he found himself entering an inexplicable trance and undergoing two operations conducted by a psychic surgeon called Edivaldo.

Despite no anaesthetic, instead of experiencing searing pain, he described feeling 'a very distinct plop' the first time the medium's hands entered his abdomen and 'a sort of tickling but no pain at all'.

The operation was a success. Playfair had newfound respect for the psychic healers, saying: 'If they are magicians they could be earning a fortune on the stage.'

Shandon Guthrie's Assessment Of The Enfield Poltergeist

2026-10-16T18:58:24.954-04:00

From his recent book, Dark Apologetics (Verona, Wisconsin: Sound Faith Books, 2026):

One of the most famous and well-documented cases of poltergeist activity is the Enfield Poltergeist Case of 1977. It was the basis for the sequel movie, The Conjuring 2 (2016). This case took place in England and involved two young sisters. The phenomena included furniture moving on its own, small objects (like Lego pieces) being thrown around, and disembodied voices being heard. One of the sisters, Janet, was thought to be possessed by someone (Bill) who had died in the house prior to the current residents. Recordings of an interview with Janet allegedly while being possessed can be accessed publicly. There is also a picture of Janet being “hurled” or “hovering” over her bed.

If this is one of the best evidence-based cases of poltergeist activity, then this should be somewhat impressive even if inconclusive. But it’s quite a bit worse than that. As for thrown objects, we’re just taking the sisters’ word for it. They lack credibility in that investigators found out (something the sisters themselves admitted) that they were occasionally, if not frequently, acting as pranksters. As for the picture of Janet in the air, the image of her posture is perfectly consistent with her jumping up at the time of the snapshot (legs curled, head forward, and long hair suspended as if affected by inertia). But never mind that. We have the preceding photos of her jumping off the bed and into position. And, despite the fact that having an audio recording of a possession seems impressive to have, Janet’s voice and what she says in the recordings are something manageable by someone pretending to be possessed or functioning as a medium. The content of the conversation sometimes involves silliness in how she answers some of the questions given by the interviewer. It certainly sounds like the kind of staged conversation an 11-year-old would have and not an old man (Bill) looking to sincerely divulge his nefarious objectives. And yet this is supposed to be one of the more “extensively documented” cases.

I don’t intend to give a point-by-point assessment of each case considered to be good evidence for poltergeist activity. But I did want to profile one instance—one heralded as significant—to show that they can be inherently fraught with the kinds of data no one ought to be inclined to think is truly evidence of a poltergeist. Even if we set aside the spoiler of the Enfield sisters being pranksters, the other “evidence” given in that case is suspicious and easily accounted for by more readily available explanations. It seems that the demand for something supernatural, and so unfamiliar, is far less warranted here. Thus, unlike previous paranormal subjects that have more impressive eyewitnesses, and for the reasons given, I’m more confident that genuine poltergeist activity does not take place.

(approximate Kindle location 6962, links to internet sources he cited added)

Regarding a photo sequence he mentions that's found on the web page here, Shandon writes:

If you direct your attention to the neighboring bed with the other children in it as well as Janet’s own bed, the photos are inconsistent with a singular set of shutter bursts. It looks like a hodgepodge of separate sets of photographs that were put into a singular sequence. This indicates that the scenario had more than one take and the photographs in the sequence were deliberately put in the sequence.

(n. 26 at 7271)

To his credit, Shandon allows the photograph he initially cites (and others, by implication) to involve "hurling" or "hovering". That's better than what you typically get from skeptics of the case, who assume a certain form of levitation and show no awareness of other possibilities.

However, he goes on to note that Janet's hair can be seen moving in a sequence he later cites. The hair movement isn't a problem, since these photos are of throwing incidents, which would be expected to involve the movement of hair. And the web site he appeals to for the photo sequence doesn't tell us where the sequence originated, as far as I can tell. So, who is he blaming for the "hodgepodge of separate sets of photographs that were put into a singular sequence"? Graham Morris, who took many of the photos associated with these throwing incidents, has shown some of the original sequences in public. For example, go to 30 minutes and just after in episode 2 of Apple TV's 2023 Enfield documentary. Go here for a still shot of two photos in one of the relevant sequences, apparently showing Janet going from lying in bed to an upright position over the bed in about a sixth of a second. That same page has links to discussions of many of the lines of evidence for these throwing incidents and levitation in the Enfield case more broadly. Graham appeared at an event earlier this year at which he discussed the Enfield case, and much of that discussion involved the photos of the throwing incidents. He mentioned that he used photosensitive beams and pressure switches in the process of taking some of his photos. Go here and here for a couple of posts in which I discuss Graham's comments.

Whether the photos show Janet "jumping off the bed and into position" is disputed, and Shandon has given us no reason to conclude that Janet was jumping. My material linked above provides a large amount of evidence to the contrary.

The events involving the throwing of objects don't require "just taking the sisters' word for it". Many others claimed to have witnessed the apparently paranormal throwing of objects (Graham Morris, Vic Nottingham, Maurice Grosse, etc.). Far more than the testimony of the Hodgson sisters is involved. Peggy Hodgson alone probably witnessed at least a triple-digit number of incidents involving throwing, sometimes without any of the children in the room or even in the house.

The occasional joking, hoaxing, and such done by the Hodgson children are common in other contexts in life (cheating on tests in schools, the use of banned substances in sports, etc.). It's a poor explanation of the case as a whole. It would be like dismissing all of the test results for every student in a school because some of the students were sometimes caught cheating. For more about the fraud issue in the Enfield context, see here, among other posts in our archives.

After briefly discussing the poltergeist voice, Shandon commented, "yet this is supposed to be one of the more 'extensively documented' cases". If he's going by little more than the video he cited that's about five minutes long, then whose fault is it that the evidence he's considering isn't "extensive"? There's much more evidence pertaining to the voice than Shandon addresses, which I've outlined here. The low intellectual content of much of what the voice said is consistent with multiple paranormal scenarios: a conscious manifestation of the mind(s) of one or more of the Hodgson children, an unconscious manifestation of one or more of their minds, the use of their minds by an independent source, an independent source with a malfunctioning mind, etc. The voice does seem similar to the children in some ways, but also different in other ways. The primary issue here is that the voice seems to be paranormal as well.

Since an article by Chris French is one of the sources Shandon cites, go here for a collection of my Enfield posts that includes responses to French and other skeptics. That page also discusses many lines of evidence for the authenticity of Enfield that Shandon doesn't get into (the scientific tests done on Janet Hodgson to evaluate her paranormal abilities, the acoustic properties of the knocking phenomena, etc.). The case involved a quadruple-digit number of events witnessed by a triple-digit number of individuals over a double-digit number of years, with around two hundred hours of audio recordings, dozens of signed witness statements, and so on. The documentation for the case is extensive, and explaining it in a normal manner isn't something that can be done "easily".

The Bernadete Justiniano Gomes UFO Healing

2026-10-15T05:32:00.694-04:00

In a couple of posts earlier this year, here and here, I discussed healings that have been reported in affiliation with UFOs. In the second post, I linked a video by Preston Dennett in which he discusses what he considers the twenty best cases of UFO healings. The one he ranks as the best is the healing of Bernadete Justiniano Gomes. I've done some further research on it since my posts earlier this year. I couldn't find much about the case, but I came across enough to warrant another post.

Go here to watch a 2010 presentation on the case for the Los Angeles branch of MUFON (Mutual UFO Network). The woman allegedly healed, Bernadete Justiniano Gomes, was a housekeeper for Alfredo Moacyr Uchoa, a general in the Brazilian military and a paranormal researcher. Here's a web site about Uchoa. The MUFON presentation was done by Uchoa's son and granddaughter. Roughly the first 53 minutes are by the son, and he provides an overview of Uchoa's life. You can go here to watch the more relevant part of the video, in which Uchoa's granddaughter discusses the healing under consideration. The healing was arranged ahead of time, apparently as something Uchoa asked the aliens he allegedly was in contact with to do, so it seems to be a type of vindicatory miracle.

Apparently, Gomes (her married name, I think) had an advanced form of Chagas disease. Some portions of the medical records are shown and discussed (with English translations of some parts). There are segments of an interview with Gomes that are shown, in Portuguese and with some English translation. You can watch what seems to be the entire interview here, with an English voiceover, not Gomes' own voice. If the medical records are authentic and are being represented accurately, it looks like there was a significant improvement in Gomes' health around the time when the healing is supposed to have occurred. And the healing apparently held up over time, at least to the point when Gomes was interviewed a few decades later. There's talk of how the case got a lot of media attention in Brazil, though I haven't seen much coverage in English on the internet or in the books I've checked. If the healing occurred in a way similar to what Uchoa and Gomes describe, both the change in her medical condition and the events surrounding the change seem to be paranormal. And multiple people are supposed to have witnessed the healing, including Uchoa. So, it looks like any skeptic of the healing would have to propose some kind of hoax involving at least a few people over multiple decades (e.g., because of what was said about obtaining Gomes' medical records after Uchoa's death), some kind of combination between hoaxing and mental illness, or something else of that nature. (Proposing that everybody involved was mentally ill, for example, would be too problematic, partly because their mental illnesses would be so unlikely to all line up the way they'd need to.)

There are some apparent discrepancies in the testimony. Gomes gives some dates that don't seem to agree with the medical records. But she was speaking off the top of her head a few decades later, without any notes, apparently, and that sort of inaccuracy is common among witnesses who are generally reliable. And it would be good to have one or more doctors rather than laymen examine and discuss the medical records. Still, there's some evidential value to what those laymen tell us. The claim of media coverage is significant and should be looked into. Presumably, at least most of the coverage would be in Portuguese. It seems unlikely that they'd claim there was media coverage if there wasn't any.

More work should be done on the case. What I've seen so far looks promising.

Did saints in the afterlife acquire an ability to hear prayer by moving to a different realm?

2026-10-13T05:16:44.775-04:00

Advocates of prayer to saints claim that the saints in heaven have abilities that people on earth don't have that allow the hearing and answering of prayers. Passages like Revelation 6:9-11 are often brought up as evidence of the heavenly saints' knowledge of earthly events, for example. I've responded to that argument before. See this recent post that discusses some Biblical passages that refer to the heavenly saints' ignorance of some events on earth.

Another approach advocates of prayer to saints take is to try to explain the absence of the practice in the Old Testament by appealing to a supposed inability to hear prayer in a particular part of the afterlife, such as Sheol. The saints were moved to a different realm of the afterlife later in history, after Jesus' death, a change that allowed them to hear and answer prayers. That still wouldn't explain the absence of prayer to saints in the remainder of the Biblical record and the earliest extrabiblical Christian sources, the Old Testament prohibitions of attempting to contact the dead, the patristic opposition to prayer to saints, etc. But it would at least explain a large portion of the evidence against the practice.

Just as advocates of such prayer have to justify their belief that saints in heaven have a particular level of knowledge, they also have to justify any assertion they make about a change in realms in the afterlife and the supposed implications of that change related to prayer to saints. It's not enough to merely claim that the heavenly saints have a certain amount of knowledge or have moved to another realm in the afterlife and can hear and answer prayers as a result. Those claims have to be argued for, not just asserted.

Roman Catholic And Pre-Reformation Support For Protestant Beliefs

2026-10-11T07:32:57.316-04:00

There were far more pre-Reformation individuals and groups who agreed with Protestant beliefs than critics of Protestantism typically suggest. And the beliefs people held prior to the Reformation, regardless of whether those people agreed with Protestants, were far more diverse than is often suggested. The people who agreed with Protestantism were accompanied by many others who had some degree of sympathy or tolerance for Protestant views, even though they didn't adopt those views themselves. Many people were agnostic about an issue, would hold a Roman Catholic view while attending the same church as somebody else who held a Protestant view, and so on. In 2008, I wrote a post providing some examples of the wide diversity of views people held at the time of the Reformation. A series of striking examples come from the diversity of views held by the Roman Catholic leaders who attended and voted at the Council of Trent.

An example that often comes up is that a minority of those who voted at Trent didn't initially support the council's position on the Old Testament canon. Another example:

"Debate over the decree on justification [at the Council of Trent] was lengthy, complex, and, once, so heated it led to a scuffle." (Anthony Lusvardi, Baptism Of Desire And Christian Salvation [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2024], 223-24)

In a book about the Lollards, Robert Lutton not only provides examples of support for Protestant beliefs among pre-Reformation Lollards, but also discusses how widely people outside of Lollard circles seemed to be tolerant of and even sympathetic toward those views. His focus is on the situation in Tenterden, but he addresses circumstances outside that area to some extent as well:

Above and beyond this shift in emphasis, however, Marianism seems to have been in decline at Tenterden by the last decade of the fifteenth century, was certainly not as popular as it was in some other urban centres and was eclipsed by other, newer cults - in particular the Jesus Mass - in the early sixteenth century. Perhaps the roots of this were part and parcel of general sensibilities about saints' images. Lollard views about the irrelevance of saints in general may have had a creeping influence on orthodox piety, but whatever its causes, the decline of Marianism and the cult of saints as a whole at Tenterden was a significant aspect of a particular religious culture that does not accord with revisionist accounts of late medieval piety [the notion that the piety was of a traditional Roman Catholic nature]....

Denial of transubstantiation, rejection of prayers to saints, veneration of images and pilgrimage all featured strongly [in the beliefs of the Lollards]....

All but one of the thirty [Lollard] suspects [in a particular set of trials] confessed to holding that the sacrament of the altar was not truly the body and blood of Christ but material bread....There is nothing to suggest belief in a Wycliffite real presence, but, rather, a sacramentarian view of the eucharist as a memorial only....

This extreme sacramentarianism was continuous with White's teachings in East Anglia, and most probably the Tenterden region in the early fifteenth century.

A much smaller number of suspects abjured the common Lollard opinion that the sacraments of baptism and confirmation were unnecessary for the profit of a person's soul. According to her son Christopher, Agnes Grebill believed 'that baptisme was nothing worth for a childe putt into the founte was nomore better then if he had be putt into other water, and that confirmacion ys avayn thing and of noon effecte'....

In all the places from which Lollards came in Kent, including Tenterden, it seems that the orthodox were reluctant to incriminate their heterodox neighbours. This is suggested by the fact that all the witnesses mentioned in the trials belonged to heretical groups or households of heretics. The authorities appear to have had to rely heavily upon inside informers who, although unnamed, can be guessed at....None of the major Lollard figures mentioned in the trial proceedings were indicted in the visitation, and neither are there any references to heresy in the Tenterden returns for fourteen separate years between 1498 and 1523. There were very few presentments of heretics in 1511-12 in other parishes within the archdeaconry of Canterbury in which it is established that Lollards lived. It is almost forty years since J. A. F. Thomson stated with regard to Tenterden that 'even although there is nothing to show that the Lollards were anything other than a minority, the majority does not appear to have been vindictive towards them'. Thomson's hunch that this may have had something to do with sympathetic churchwardens [sympathetic to the Lollards] appears to be correct....

The evidence suggests that extensive and entrenched sympathy with Lollard calls for reform afforded heretics a degree of protection, and ensured they were not ostracised from town or parish affairs. Convinced Lollards at Tenterden on the whole appear to have attended church [orthodox churches] and so were not separatists and cannot be described as a sect. They do not appear to have conceived of their activities as constituting an alternative Church and may have exercised considerable influence over parish religion....

Conversion to heretical opinions appears to have been experienced by some in the form of an intellectual, emotional or psychological moment of passage into heresy but there may have been a substantial proportion of parishioners who held more ambiguous views which lay somewhere on the pious spectrum between convinced Lollardy and more traditional forms of orthodoxy....

Although differences in piety do not appear to have resulted in schism, the allegation in 1511 that many members of the congregation sat still in church during procession suggests a significant degree of fragmentation of the religious community of the parish. What appears to have been an ostensibly orthodox body of worshippers, disengaged from traditional ceremonial, was not afraid to make its views known. Quite possibly not convinced heretics themselves, the orthodox piety of these parishioners may have been influenced by Lollard ideas that had been in circulation for a number of generations.

(Lollardy And Orthodox Religion In Pre-Reformation England [Suffolk, England: The Boydell Press, 2011], 85, 152, 158-59, 170-71, 194-95, 197)

The Use Of Matthew 27:47 As Evidence Of Prayer To Saints

2026-10-08T05:48:20.089-04:00

The passage has been brought up by some advocates of praying to saints. I discussed the passage in a post a few years ago.

Keep in mind that Jesus' opponents often accused him of things they and he disapproved of (Matthew 11:19, 12:24). They heard him say "Eli, Eli" (Matthew 27:46), so they had to come up with an explanation. The idea that Jesus' enemies, in the process of misinterpreting what he said, would only attribute to him something that they thought was an acceptable practice, thought was accepted to some significant extent among the Jewish people, or thought Jesus had approved of in the past is ridiculous. It would be like taking 11:19, in the same gospel, as evidence for Jewish and/or Christian support of gluttony and the abuse of alcohol. And the absence of any condemnation of prayer to saints in Matthew 27:47 doesn't tell us that the individuals who made the comment held a positive view of the practice. A lack of condemnation could be a result of agnosticism about the practice or a result of expecting the audience to recognize the problematic nature of the practice without having it explained to them (as in 11:19 and 12:24). Besides, if the individuals who made the comment about Elijah were Romans, what's the relevance of whether they approved of praying to people who are in the afterlife? What Matthew 27:47 tells us is that the concept of prayer to saints was known at the time, but it doesn't tell us whether the concept was viewed positively, neutrally, or negatively or who viewed it that way.

If the passage reflects some degree of Jewish acceptance of prayer to saints, something I see no way to argue for from the passage itself, it falls into the category I discussed in a post earlier this year. Ancient Jewish support for praying to beings other than God was accompanied by Jewish opposition to the practice. That opposition seems to be older, Biblical, and the view that was the dominant one among Christians during the earliest generations of Christianity.

Arguments For Prayer To Saints And Angels In Psalms 103 And 148

2026-10-05T12:01:55.091-04:00

Ancient Jewish sources often associated angels with various aspects of the universe that people in the modern world often don't associate angels with, such as stars and weather (e.g., Job 38:7, Revelation 1:20, 12:4-9). Angels were perceived as highly active in the world and responsible for much of what happens in earthly life. It's been suggested that the call for mountains, trees, snow, and other sources to bless and praise God in Psalms 103 and 148 are directed to angels, the angels who have charge over those aspects of life. Supposedly, those references to angels are further evidence that those psalms support prayer to angels. And taking those parts of the psalms as references to angels undermines the appeal to impersonal objects in the psalms as evidence that a rhetorical device (apostrophe) is involved rather than prayer.

That sort of argument can take more than one form. A call for "all you works of His" to bless God (Psalm 103:22) or mountains to praise God (Psalm 148:9), for example, could be taken as referring to both angels and the other entity in question (all God's works or mountains, for example). Or it could be taken as referring only to angels.

Let's consider some problems common to both forms of the argument and problems that are distinct to each form:

- As a general principle, simpler explanations are better than more complicated ones. Taking a reference to cattle or kings as referring to cattle or kings is simpler than taking it as a reference to cattle and angels associated with cattle, kings and angels associated with kings, or just angels.

- When other Biblical passages refer to somebody eating something, should we conclude that an angel is being eaten? If a passage of scripture refers to the death of an animal, should we conclude that an angel has died? Should passages about human sin be taken as referring to angels sinning? If, instead, we distinguish between what's said of those non-angelic entities and the angels associated with them in those other Biblical passages, why shouldn't we make that distinction in the psalms under consideration?

- The entities mentioned in these psalms aren't just associated with angels. They're also associated with other sources, such as God and demons. Should we conclude that sources like God and demons are being referred to when things like all of God's works, sea creatures, and trees are mentioned? To the extent that demons are associated with the entities mentioned in these psalms, should we conclude that the psalms support prayer to demons? Psalm 148:8 refers to wind. In light of Job 1:19, should we take that passage in Psalm 148 as justification for praying to Satan? Demons are often referred to as an animal or associated with animals. Should we conclude that demons are among the animals referred to in Psalms 103 and 148 and that, therefore, prayer to demons is supported by those psalms? Daniel 10:13 refers to a prince of Persia who seems to be an evil spirit opposed to the angels. When Psalms 103:22 and 148:11-12 call on people in general to bless and praise the Lord, should we conclude that it's acceptable to pray to that evil prince of Persia, since the people of Persia are among the people referred to in those psalms, and those people are affiliated with that evil spirit? No. A reference to wind or animals or people is most naturally taken as having wind or animals or people alone in mind, not something else instead or a combination between wind or animals or people and something else. Something else may be involved, but an argument would need to be offered to that effect rather than just appealing to the possibility of it. And there are other factors involved that make it unlikely that such verses are referring to Satan, demons, God, etc. God has authority over all of the entities mentioned in these psalms and is associated with them in other ways, but we don't conclude that the references to mountains, trees, and such are therefore references to God. It would be unusual for the psalmist to call on God to praise God. Similarly, taking the wind in Psalm 148:8 or the references to animals or the references to people as not including a reference to an angel or group of angels is a simpler and better interpretation and makes more sense of other factors involved (other factors discussed elsewhere in this post).

- Even if angels were being referred to alongside mountains, trees, etc., a rhetorical device would still be involved in explaining the involvement of the non-angelic entities. And if a rhetorical device is involved in at least part of the passage, then a simpler, more continuous, better way to take the passage as a whole is as using a rhetorical device throughout the references to the sources in question who are to bless or praise God, including the angels. Moving from not using a rhetorical device to using one is a more complicated, less likely reading.

- Even if we took all of the relevant portions of these psalms as referring only to angels (not angels alongside other entities), prayer to angels wouldn't follow. Both psalms refer to all angels (103:20-21, 148:2). But angels aren't omnipresent or omniscient. There's no reason to think all angels are in our presence or have the relevant knowledge about us at all times or most of the time. Rather, they're often referred to as being sent (Hebrews 1:14), implying their being in one place and not another, and they can be occupied in one setting while being absent in another, including being kept from a particular person (Daniel 10:10-20). They're ignorant of some things (e.g., 1 Kings 8:39), and there's no reason to think they know all they'd need to know in order for the psalmist to be praying to them. I see no reason to think all angels would have been aware of the psalmist's words initially (as he thought of them or as he wrote them). I see no reason to think that any angel had that knowledge during the initial stages of the psalmist's process of communication. Given what scripture tells us about the angels' limits in terms of presence and knowledge, like in the passages cited above, it would be incongruous to expect them to know the psalmist's thoughts before he wrote them or know his words as he was writing them. The angel in Daniel 10 wasn't always in Daniel's presence, and he was delayed in getting to Daniel and communicating to him. If the angel was delayed in communicating to Daniel, why think all angels would immediately know what the psalmists thought and wrote? If the angel of Daniel 10 wasn't immediately giving his information to Daniel, why think all angels would immediately be receiving information like the thoughts of the psalmists and what the psalmists were writing as they wrote? Even if the psalmist had a guardian angel who wasn't distant from him at the time, distant as in the Daniel 10 scenario referenced above, there's no reason to think the angel's activities would have involved something like reading the psalmist's mind or reading his words as he wrote them. There's also no reason to think the psalmists expected the angels to be doing things like reading their minds and reading their writings as they wrote. The references to all angels in these psalms make the most sense as a rhetorical device, one not involving prayer. To whatever extent angels, demons, humans, and whoever else would eventually find out about what the psalmist wrote, prayer wouldn't be involved. Similarly, if I write a book and expect some people to read it, and I expect some angels and demons to find out about what the book says by one means or another, it doesn't follow that I'm praying to humans on earth, angels, and demons.

- Furthermore, the idea of only addressing angels in these psalms makes less sense than addressing more sources. God is worthy of being blessed and praised by more than just angels, as the most straightforward reading of these psalms suggests. Humans are an obvious additional group likely to be included, and they probably are in Psalms 103:22 and 148:11-12. You could focus on one source, such as angels, in a given context, but referring to more than one is more likely upfront and makes better sense of the diversity of language we see in both psalms and the length of the relevant material in Psalm 148.

- And that raises the issue of repetition. Scripture does sometimes repeat things for emphasis or for whatever other reason. But the fact that repetition is used in some contexts doesn't prove that repetition is always the best explanation of a passage. Given the number and variety of calls to praise God in Psalm 148, calling upon a larger rather than smaller number of entities makes more sense.

- Another way to judge which interpretation of these psalms makes the most sense is to look at which interpretation best explains what we see elsewhere. There are many references to prayer to God in the Biblical record, from Genesis onward. The lack of references to praying to angels (and saints) makes more sense if Psalms 103 and 148 are using a rhetorical device that doesn't involve praying to sources other than God.

Reading Prayer To Saints Into Hippolytus

2026-10-04T07:09:48.433-04:00

Prayer to saints is absent and contradicted among the relevant sources during the thousands of years of history of the Biblical era. It's also widely absent and contradicted among the earliest extrabiblical Christians. For the evidence to that effect, see here.

So, advocates of the practice have resorted to claiming that it's supported by material like the Mount of Transfiguration account in the gospels and Matthew 27:47. They also appeal to various apocryphal documents, anonymous inscriptions and manuscript fragments, etc. I've responded to such arguments in other posts. Since the lack of support for prayer to saints among the earlier church fathers is so problematic for advocates of the practice, they read it into some of those fathers to try to make the practice seem more credible. Among the earlier fathers, Hippolytus is the one who's most abused in this context. And I've addressed those abuses in other posts over the years, like here.

In the remainder of this post, I want to focus on a few other efforts advocates of prayer to saints have made to find the practice in Hippolytus. I'll start by quoting the relevant passage with emphasis added (in bold, italics, and underlining):

"Tell me, you three boys, remember me, I entreat you, that I also may obtain the same lot of martyrdom with you, who was the fourth person with you who was walking in the midst of the furnace and who was hymning to God with you as from one mouth? Describe to us his form and beauty so that we also, seeing him in the flesh, may recognize him. Who was he who in this way orderly described all creation through your mouth, so that you omitted nothing of which is and has been? Having done this for one hour in the furnace, you taught the workmanship of creation. For the Word was with you and was speaking through you, the Word who understands the workmanship of creation." (Commentary On Daniel, 2.30.1-3, found on page 73 of Tom Schmidt's translation here)

I've seen it argued that the highlighted portion above is a prayer to saints, whereas the surrounding context isn't. You can read my previous posts on Hippolytus, like this one, for an explanation of why the surrounding context can't be included. I've also seen it argued that the "remember" and "entreat" terms are evidence that Hippolytus is praying.

As my previous posts, like the one linked above, explain, the context just before and just after the highlighted words of Hippolytus is earthly. That's what section 2.29 of the document is about, the opening reference to "boys" in 2.30 makes more sense in an earthly than a heavenly context, etc. So, making an exception for the highlighted words above creates some discontinuity. It involves a more complicated, less likely interpretation.

It's true that words like "remember" and "entreat" are terms often used in prayer. They're terms of request, and prayer often involves requests. But so do other things. The thief on the cross says "remember me" (Luke 23:42), Paul told the Colossians (not saints in heaven) "Remember my imprisonment." (Colossians 4:18), and so on. The language often occurs in requests that others do something in prayer, and asking somebody to do something in prayer doesn't necessarily involve praying to that person in the sense under dispute. You can ask somebody else on earth to pray for you without thereby praying to that person in the manner under consideration.

Think of what we see in the letters of Cyprian, for example, a contemporary of Hippolytus. Cyprian wrote to people on earth, "I bid you, beloved brethren, ever heartily farewell; and have me in remembrance." (Letter 7:8) And: "have me in remembrance" (Letter 8). And: "you give more when you remember me in prayer" (Letter 15:1). And: "remember me" (Letter 37:2). And: "always and everywhere remember me" (Letter 76:7). Some Christians writing to Cyprian: "I bid you, dearest brother and earnestly desired, ever heartily farewell, and remember us." (Letter 78:3) The "remember" language is widespread in contexts not involving prayer to saints, and one of the contexts in which it often occurs is in asking other people on earth to remember you in prayer. That's what Hippolytus is doing in the portion of his Daniel commentary quoted above. Since the surrounding context is earthly (a rhetorical device involving the earthly activities of Daniel's companions), and that earthly setting adequately explains the highlighted words of Hippolytus, we don't need to and shouldn't propose a changing of the subject to a heavenly scene, only for Hippolytus to then move back to the earthly context just after.

Much the same can be said about "entreat". Go to notes 2 and 4 on page 67 of Tom Schmidt's translation here (section 2.25.4-5 of the commentary). The language is used by Hippolytus in an earthly context, which is likely what he's doing in section 2.30 as well.

I'll close by reiterating something I've said about Hippolytus in my earlier posts. He says a lot about prayer in his commentary. However, the prayers are directed to God, not deceased individuals. It's highly unlikely that he believed in prayer to saints, yet never expressed that view in the contexts most obviously about prayer and only expressed the view so seldom and in a way that looks so much more like a rhetorical device than a prayer. The fact that advocates of prayer to saints keep resorting to such weak argumentation (appealing to the Mount of Transfiguration, Matthew 27:47, etc.) reflects the weakness of their position.

Is there support for prayer to saints in the Acts Of Paul?

2026-10-01T06:56:44.694-04:00

The Acts Of Paul is an apocryphal document typically dated to the second half of the second century. There's a passage there that's come up in disputes over prayer to saints. It's a passage that's been rendered in a wide variety of ways in the manuscript record and has been diversely translated and interpreted.

Earlier this year, an article was published arguing for a particular form of the passage and interpreting it as an instance of prayer to the dead. You can click the link just provided to read the article. It concludes with the following translation of section 5:3 of the portion of the document referred to as the Martyrdom Of Paul:

"And Paul standing opposite prayed for a long time and ending the prayer he communed with the fathers in Hebrew, he then stretched out his neck speaking no longer." (p. 7)

Supposedly, Paul's "communing with the fathers" involves praying to the deceased, since "the fathers" are taken as righteous dead individuals.

You can see some examples of how differently the passage has been rendered by others on page 4 of the article. Or go here for a version that has:

"Then Paul stood with his face to the east and lifted up his hands unto heaven and prayed a long time, and in his prayer he conversed in the Hebrew tongue with the fathers, and then stretched forth his neck without speaking."

Unlike the first version I quoted, this one has the interaction with the fathers occurring in the prayer. But advocates of prayer to saints sometimes tell us that the term in question used for prayer is a type reserved for God, whereas lesser types of prayer can be used to contact other beings, including saints. So, why would Acts Of Paul have Paul addressing saints in the context of that form of prayer reserved for God?

Or go to page 13 here for a translation that doesn't involve any addressing of the fathers.

I'm just bringing up a few examples here. You can see the article linked above and search the internet for other translations to get more examples.

I don't know Greek, and I don't know much about the Acts Of Paul manuscript record. I'm not in much of a position to judge those issues. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the first translation quoted above, from the article I cited, is correct. Let's also assume that the term "the fathers" usually refers to righteous deceased individuals. Would it follow that Acts Of Paul is offering support for prayer to saints?

It depends on how you judge some other issues involved. There are other terms and other contextual factors to take into account.

The context surrounding Acts Of Paul is one in which prayer to saints was at least generally opposed among Christians, as I've argued elsewhere. Even advocates of the practice reflect the lack of support for it in the early years of Christianity when they resort to Biblical passages like the Mount of Transfiguration and Matthew 27:47 to support it and find so little alleged support for it in the earliest extrabiblical sources. It's possible that Acts Of Paul would support prayer to saints in spite of its unpopularity elsewhere, but that unpopularity adds some weight to interpreting the document in a way that doesn't involve such prayer.

And some of the details of the passage are problematic for a reading involving praying to saints. Even if the phrase "the fathers" is taken to likely refer to some deceased righteous individuals, the likelihood of that reading could be outweighed by other factors involved. It's possible for "fathers" to refer to people on earth who are of an older age. Paul himself is referred to as addressing "fathers" on earth in Acts 22:1. In fact, like the Acts Of Paul passage, Acts 22 goes on to mention that Paul was speaking to those fathers in Hebrew (verse 2). So, what details am I referring to that lean against taking "the fathers" in Acts Of Paul to refer to saints in heaven? Prayer can involve addressing a group, but it seems that addressing a group occurs more often outside of prayer, like in the Acts 22 context. Even singling out prayer to saints rather than thinking of prayer more broadly, addressing a group seems more common outside that sort of prayer than it is within that type of prayer. And addressing "the fathers" in particular in prayer seems at least highly unusual. Furthermore, why change to the Hebrew language to do it? That makes more sense in an earthly context, where people sometimes need a change in language to understand what's being said or to understand it better. Saints in heaven presumably don't need a change in language. You could argue that in Acts Of Paul, Paul doesn't need to change his language, but just chooses to do so, without needing to, for whatever reason. But a context in which language changes are more needed and more common, an earthly context, makes more sense of Paul's language change. The reference to "communing" with the fathers also makes more sense in an earthly context, since it seems to imply two-way communication. An earthly context would allow for a two-way interaction, not just Paul speaking to people in prayer without any speaking back. So, even if the phrase "the fathers" favors prayer to saints when considered in isolation, other characteristics of the passage and its context make more sense if the people being addressed are on earth, perhaps a group of Jewish elders witnessing Paul's martyrdom. The fathers appear abruptly in any understanding of the passage that includes the fathers, so objecting that they aren't referred to elsewhere is an inadequate response if you're going to propose an interpretation that also involves an abrupt mention of fathers of whatever type. In the sources leading up to the time of Acts Of Paul, there's a lot of precedent for speaking to father figures on earth as a group (Mark 11:27-33, Acts 4:8, 24:1, 1 John 2:13-14, etc.), including instances involving Paul in particular (e.g., Acts 24:1) and speaking in Hebrew in particular (Acts 22:1-2). I'm not aware of any comparable or greater precedent for praying to the fathers collectively, much less changing your language to do it.

However much the phrase "the fathers" favors an interpretation of Acts Of Paul involving prayer to the deceased, the other factors involved in interpreting the passage favor a different interpretation. Those other factors are more numerous and more varied, and I think they carry more weight overall.

You could propose a third option, in which there are one or more elements of the interpretation I've proposed above combined with one or more elements of the interpretation of an advocate of prayer to saints. Maybe Paul is seeing a vision of the fathers in Acts Of Paul, for example, which would allow the fathers to speak back to him (unlike in prayer to saints, at least as that sort of prayer is typically conceived). But if a vision is involved, then that's comparable to Samuel returning to earth in 1 Samuel 28, the Mount of Transfiguration, Gabriel visiting Zechariah and Mary in Luke 1, etc. That's not prayer as the term is usually defined. If you're brought into the presence of the fathers (whoever they are in the Acts Of Paul context) or they enter the earthly realm, then prayer, as it's defined in the dispute over prayer under consideration here, is no longer involved.

Reformation Resources

2026-10-01T06:54:31.210-04:00

For several years, I've been maintaining a collection of resources on Reformation-related topics, found here. I wanted to link it in anticipation of Reformation Day later this month and mention some recent additions to the collection. I've added three entries on support for Reformation beliefs among the pre-Reformation Hussites: one, two, and three. I also added a post about agnosticism about religious issues on the part of pre-Reformation sources. Agnosticism is a category that often gets overlooked. The page on baptismal regeneration has been updated as well. And the link on Ignatius and Roman Catholicism is now attached to a different article, a more recent one on Ignatius. I also added a link about Mary's assumption and doctrinal development. The page on prayer to saints and angels was updated.