Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Origen/Origen Against Celsus/Book VIII/Chapter XIII

by Origen

Chapter XIII.

He further supposes, that “because we join along with the worship of God the worship of His Son, it follows that, in our view, not only God, but also the servants of God, are to be worshipped.”  If he had meant this to apply to those who are truly the servants of God, after His only-begotten Son,—to Gabriel and Michael, and the other angels and archangels, and if he had said of these that they ought to be worshipped,—if also he had clearly defined the meaning of the word “worship,” and the duties of the worshippers,—we might perhaps have brought forward such thoughts as have occurred to us on so important a subject.  But as he reckons among the servants of God the demons which are worshipped by the heathen, he cannot induce us, on the plea of consistency, to worship such as are declared by the word to be servants of the evil one, the prince of this world, who leads astray from God as many as he can.  We decline, therefore, altogether to worship and serve those whom other men worship, for the reason that they are not servants of God.  For if we had been taught to regard them as servants of the Most High, we would not have called them demons.  Accordingly, we worship with all our power the one God, and His only Son, the Word and the Image of God, by prayers and supplications; and we offer our petitions to the God of the universe through His only-begotten Son.  To the Son we first present them, and beseech Him, as “the propitiation for our sins,”^[1] and our High Priest, to offer our desires, and sacrifices, and prayers, to the Most High.  Our faith, therefore, is directed to God through His Son, who strengthens it in us; and Celsus can never show that the Son of God is the cause of any sedition or disloyalty in the kingdom of God.  We honour the Father when we admire His Son, the Word, and Wisdom, and Truth, and Righteousness, and all that He who is the Son of so great a Father is said in Scripture to be.  So much on this point.

1. 1 John ii. 2.