Catholic theologian and liturgist Josef Jungmann proposed that though private prayers were common in the first centuries of the church, public prayers were generally prayed to the Father through the Son (per Christum). The Jungmann Thesis is the theory that it was in reaction to Arianism (along with inclinations toward monophysitism) that prayers to Jesus (ad Christum) were added to the liturgies. The role of Christ as human mediator was diminished and Jesus (with the emphasis on his deity) was considered austere and far away. As a result, other mediators (the saints and Mary) were inserted between worshippers and Jesus. T.F. Torrance appropriated the Jungmann Thesis to advocate a greater emphasis on the human mediatorship of Christ.
In this paper (extracted from a chapter in a dissertation I am finishing up), I challenge that thesis by examining some of the oldest liturgies of the church (e.g., The Didache, Addai and Mari, Anaphora of St. Gregory Anaphora) and showing how more modern scholarship (Bradshaw, Spinks, Gerhards, etc.) has challenged Jungmann’s theory. I show that though Jungmann is not entirely inaccurate in his historical analysis, his interpretation of what happened (and T.F. Torrance’s appropriation thereof) should be questioned on biblical, historical, and theological grounds. I argue that ad Christum prayers reflect a continuous biblical tradition (e.g., Acts 7:59, 1 Cor. 1:2, Revelation 5:8-14), not merely anti-heretical reactions, and that both per Christum and ad Christum coexisted from apostolic times.
The paper addresses the broader issue of the appropriateness of prayer to Christ, and the extent to which church practices should be modified in response to heretical movements.