When I started looking into the use of anointing oil in the early church, I expected to find what most of us probably expect. I assumed that Christians prayed for the sick, sometimes put a little oil on them because James 5 told them to, and then over the centuries the practice slowly accumulated layers of ceremony. But once you start reading the early Christian sources themselves, that picture becomes difficult to maintain.

The early church used oil everywhere. Christians anointed the sick with it, incorporated it into baptism, associated it with the Holy Spirit, used it as a seal upon the newly baptized, and, perhaps most surprising to many Protestants, used holy oil directly against demons. In fact, some early Christian rites simply call one preparation the oil of exorcism, which is not exactly subtle terminology.

So what in the world were these Christians doing? Did they believe that olive oil had some kind of magical power, or were they just using the oil symbolically, much like we might use a wedding ring today? I think both explanations miss what the early Christians were actually saying, because their theology of anointing grew naturally out of Scripture, particularly the Biblical ideas of healing, consecration, participation in Christ, and deliverance from hostile spiritual powers.

Oil Was Never Just Oil

We have to begin with something rather mundane: oil was everywhere in the ancient Mediterranean world. People cooked with it, washed with it, treated their skin with it, applied it to wounds, and used it medicinally for all kinds of ailments. So when Mark says that the disciples “anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them” (Mark 6:13), nobody hearing that story in the first century would have wondered what this strange new liquid was.

But medicinal use only explains part of the picture. Scripture had already filled oil with theological meaning long before Jesus sent out the Twelve. Priests were anointed, kings were anointed, the tabernacle and its furnishings were anointed, and the very word Messiah means the Anointed One.

That means oil could carry several meanings at the same time. It naturally communicated health because people already used it in caring for the body, but it also communicated consecration because Scripture associated anointing with something or someone being set apart to God. And when these two streams come together in Mark 6 and James 5, the early church inherited a practice that was both very ordinary and deeply theological.

I have written elsewhere about the continuing Christian belief in divine healing and anointing with oil, especially in the later Holiness tradition. What interested me here, however, was how far back the practice actually goes. Once we move into the second, third, and fourth centuries, the evidence becomes rather difficult to ignore.

Tertullian and the Consecrating Oil

One of our earliest lengthy discussions comes from Tertullian in North Africa around the beginning of the third century. In his discussion of baptism, he describes Christians emerging from the water and then being anointed with blessed oil. He immediately reaches backward to the Old Testament priesthood to explain what Christians were doing.

“After this, when we have issued from the font, we are thoroughly anointed with a blessed unction, according to the ancient discipline wherein on entering the priesthood men were wont to be anointed with oil from a horn. Thus Aaron was anointed by Moses. And the name ‘Christ’ comes from ‘chrism,’ which means anointing.”

You can read Tertullian’s fuller discussion in On Baptism. What matters for our purposes is that Tertullian does not treat the oil as an incidental custom that Christians happened to pick up. He understands it through the Biblical theology of priestly consecration.

Elsewhere Tertullian makes the point even more directly. The flesh is washed so that the soul may be cleansed, the flesh is anointed so that the soul may be consecrated, and the flesh is signed so that the soul may be fortified. In other words, Christianity does something physical to the body because God is doing something spiritual to the person.

That distinction matters because modern Christians tend to split the physical and spiritual worlds apart. We are comfortable saying that prayer does something spiritual, but once water, hands, bread, wine, or oil become involved, we become nervous that someone is sneaking magic in through the back door. The early Christians simply did not think in those categories.

The Strange Appearance of the Oil of Exorcism

Now we get to the really interesting part. One of the earliest surviving Christian church orders, traditionally called the Apostolic Tradition, preserves a detailed baptismal ceremony. Its textual history is complicated, but whatever one thinks about its exact date and authorship, the rite it preserves became extremely influential in early Christianity.

Before the baptism itself, two kinds of oil appear. One is an oil of thanksgiving, while the other is explicitly designated the oil of exorcism. The candidate renounces Satan, and then a presbyter anoints the person with this oil while commanding the hostile spirits to depart.

You can read an English translation of the Apostolic Tradition. The important point is not merely that exorcism and oil happen somewhere in the same service. The oil is deliberately distinguished, prepared for an exorcistic purpose, and then applied while the enemy is commanded to leave.

That is a rather significant piece of evidence. These Christians did not simply use a little olive oil because it moisturized dry skin before getting into the baptismal font. They understood the anointing as participating in the candidate’s movement out of the dominion of the enemy and into the lordship of Christ.

And notice the sequence. The candidate renounces Satan, receives the exorcistic anointing, enters the water, emerges from baptism, and then receives further anointing and sealing. The whole rite is telling one theological story: an old allegiance has ended, and a new allegiance has begun.

Cyril of Jerusalem Makes It Even Clearer

If the Apostolic Tradition gives us the ritual, Cyril of Jerusalem gives us one of the clearest explanations of what Christians believed they were doing. Cyril preached his baptismal catecheses in Jerusalem during the fourth century, teaching converts before baptism and then explaining the rites to them afterward. And when he came to the pre-baptismal anointing, he did not hedge his language.

Cyril reminded the newly baptized that they had been stripped and then anointed over their bodies with exorcised oil. He connected that anointing with Romans 11 and the imagery of being cut from a wild olive tree and grafted into the good olive tree, Jesus Christ. Then he explained the exorcistic purpose of the oil.

“You were anointed with exorcised oil, from the very hairs of your head to your feet, and were made partakers of the good olive-tree, Jesus Christ. For you were cut off from the wild olive-tree, and grafted into the good one, and were made to share the fatness of the true olive-tree. The exorcised oil therefore was a symbol of the participation of the fatness of Christ, being the charm to drive away every trace of hostile influence.”

The entire discussion is available in Cyril’s Second Mystagogical Catechesis. And I think this passage is important because Cyril refuses the categories we tend to impose upon him. The oil is symbolic, but that does not mean it is merely symbolic.

For Cyril, the oil symbolizes participation in Christ precisely while it also functions against the hostile powers. Prayer and the invocation of God distinguish it from common oil, and God works through the anointing for the purpose for which the church has prayed. The substance does not become a little bottle of independent divine power, but neither is it reduced to an object lesson.

What Is Baptismal Exorcism Doing Here Anyway?

At this point someone will probably raise the obvious question: why in the world were Christians exorcising everybody before baptism? Were they assuming that every person who walked into the church was demon possessed? No, and I think making that assumption causes us to misunderstand the entire early Christian theology of baptism.

The early Christians used the language of demonic dominion more broadly than we usually do. They believed that humanity outside Christ lived in a world ruled by sin, death, idolatry, and hostile spiritual powers. Paul himself describes conversion as being delivered “from the domain of darkness” and transferred “into the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).

So baptism was not merely a public testimony that an individual had made a private decision. It was a transfer of allegiance, and the bodily actions surrounding baptism made that transfer visible. The candidate faced west and renounced Satan, turned east and confessed Christ, was anointed, entered the water, emerged, was sealed, and eventually came to the Lord’s Table.

If you have followed my YHWH: God of the Gods material, you will recognize why this larger supernatural worldview matters. The early Christians believed there really were hostile spiritual intelligences working against God and His people. Christianity therefore involved more than forgiveness of private moral failures; it meant being transferred out of one kingdom and into another.

That also explains why baptismal exorcism does not require us to imagine every catechumen acting like the Gerasene demoniac. The rite declared that Satan had no rightful claim over the person being joined to Christ. The exorcistic oil embodied that declaration upon the person’s body.

The Body Became Part of the Battle

This physicality is something I find especially interesting. Early Christianity did not save the soul while leaving the body sitting in the waiting room. The whole person entered into the worship and work of God.

Candidates were touched, breathed upon, signed, anointed, washed, clothed, and fed. Water ran over their bodies, oil covered their skin, hands rested upon their heads, and eventually bread and wine entered their mouths. Christianity was embarrassingly material, which is probably what should happen in a religion built around the claim that God Himself became flesh.

The anointing also carried an athletic image. Ancient wrestlers and other athletes covered themselves with oil before competition, so the newly anointed Christian could easily be pictured as someone preparing to enter combat. Ambrose and other fathers make exactly this comparison: the Christian has been anointed because he is about to wrestle.

And who is the opponent? Satan and the hostile powers are the enemy, but the believer does not enter the arena alone. The whole point of the rite is that the Christian now belongs to Christ and fights under His authority.

This is also where the early Christian teaching about the supernatural world becomes so important. If you want more background on how I understand that world, my discussion of the Council of the Gods lays out part of the broader Biblical framework. Once that framework is restored, rites directed against demons do not look nearly as foreign to the world of the New Testament.

Exorcistic Oil Was Not Limited to Baptism

Things get even more interesting when we move outside the baptismal rite. By the fourth century, Christian prayers for the blessing of oil connect the substance not only with initiation but also with healing and deliverance. Serapion of Thmuis, an Egyptian bishop, provides one of the clearest examples.

In a prayer over oil, Serapion asks God to give it healing power and make it an “antidote against every demon.” The same prayer moves naturally between sickness, bodily affliction, spiritual attack, and the power of God. There is no hard wall separating healing ministry from deliverance ministry.

The Apostolic Constitutions does the same thing. A prayer over water and oil asks God to sanctify them so that they may restore health, drive away sickness, and banish demons. Again, the text does not say that every disease comes from a demon, but it puts sickness and demonic oppression within the same larger category of things from which Christ delivers His people.

Later monastic literature gives examples of the practice outside formal initiation. Palladius records accounts of holy oil being applied while prayer was offered for people suffering both physical ailments and demonic affliction. At that point, we are no longer talking about baptismal symbolism alone, because the oil is being applied directly as part of pastoral ministry to someone in distress.

Healing and Exorcism Were Already Neighbors in the Gospel

If we think about it, this connection should not surprise us. Mark 6 places healing and exorcism right beside each other when the Twelve go out preaching the kingdom. They “cast out many demons” and also “anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.”

That does not mean Mark thought sickness and demonization were identical. The wording actually distinguishes them, but both belong to the same eruption of Christ’s kingdom against the brokenness and hostile powers of the present world. The early church kept those ministries close because the Gospel itself keeps them close.

James 5 continues the healing side of that practice. The elders come, pray over the sick person, and anoint him “in the name of the Lord.” Then James says that the Lord will raise him up, which keeps the divine agency exactly where it belongs.

This is where some modern explanations of James become too thin. Yes, olive oil had medicinal uses, and that historical context is important. But if James only wanted the elders to administer first-century medicine, the command to anoint “in the name of the Lord,” within the gathered prayer of the church, becomes rather difficult to explain.

The early Christians certainly did not understand James as saying, “Call your elders so they can give you medicine.” They understood the passage as a ministry of prayer and anointing in which God healed. Whether someone agrees with that theology today is another discussion, but historically their interpretation is clear.

Is Holy Oil Just Medicine?

One common interpretation says that anointing was essentially medicinal. Ancient people treated wounds with olive oil, so James and Mark are supposedly describing prayer joined with normal medical treatment. There is truth buried in this explanation, but I think it is being asked to carry far more weight than it can support.

The medicinal background explains why oil communicated healing so naturally. It does not explain why Christians prayed over the oil, why they connected it to consecration, why they sealed the baptized with it, or why they used an explicitly named “oil of exorcism.” Medicine does not explain Cyril saying the oil drives away invisible evil powers.

So I would not throw out the medical background. Quite the opposite, because the ordinary use of oil probably helped give the Christian act its intuitive force. But the church took something familiar, prayed over it, and used it within a distinctly Christian theology of healing and deliverance.

Is Holy Oil Merely Symbolic?

Another explanation moves in the opposite direction and says that the oil is simply symbolic. Again, there is truth here because Cyril himself calls it a symbol. But his use of the word does not mean what many modern Protestants instinctively mean when they say “only a symbol.”

Cyril calls the oil symbolic and then, almost in the same breath, says that through prayer it receives virtue to drive away invisible powers. So if we want to claim Cyril believed the oil was merely illustrative, we have to ignore what Cyril actually says. We can disagree with him, but we should at least let the man have his own theology.

The same problem appears in other early texts. Serapion asks that the oil work against demons, while church orders give a particular oil an exorcistic function. The symbolism is real, but so is the expectation that God will act through the rite.

But Isn’t This Magic?

Now we reach the accusation that usually gets thrown at practices like this: magic. If a physical object is used in relation to a spiritual result, then surely we have crossed the line from Biblical Christianity into superstition. But that definition creates far more problems than it solves.

Jesus puts mud on a blind man’s eyes. Naaman washes in the Jordan, the sick receive handkerchiefs associated with Paul, believers lay hands upon one another, Christians are baptized in water, and James tells elders to anoint the sick with oil. So the involvement of matter cannot be what makes something magical.

The real question is where the power is located. And this is exactly where the early prayers are very clear. The oil does not command God; God sanctifies the oil, the Christian invokes the name of Christ, and the church asks God to act.

That difference is enormous. Magic attempts to manipulate power through a technique, while Christian prayer places the act under the will and authority of God. Calling every material expression of spiritual power “magic” would require us to flatten a good portion of Biblical religion along with the early church.

The Oil Was a Mark of Ownership

I think the strongest way to pull all of this together is through the idea of ownership. The baptismal candidate renounced Satan because he was abandoning the old allegiance. Then he was anointed and baptized because he was entering into Christ.

That makes Cyril’s olive-tree imagery especially beautiful. The person is cut from the wild olive tree and grafted into the good olive tree, Jesus Christ. The same oil that acts against the enemy also represents the person’s participation in Christ.

So the exorcistic side and the consecrating side are really two halves of the same movement. The enemy loses his claim because Christ has made His own claim. Something is being driven out precisely because Someone else is taking possession.

This also explains the later idea of sealing. The Christian bears the sign of Christ because he belongs to Christ. And once you see the rite that way, exorcism becomes less about a fascination with demons and much more about the lordship of Jesus.

Why This Matters

I do not think we should study the early church simply so we can find an ancient practice and then recreate it on Sunday morning. Antiquity does not automatically equal correctness, and the fathers could be wrong, disagree with one another, and develop practices beyond what Scripture requires. But they can also expose things we have stopped noticing in Scripture.

And on this subject, I think they force us to reckon with how material Biblical Christianity really is. God made matter, Christ took matter upon Himself, and the Bible repeatedly uses physical acts within the spiritual life of His people. That does not prove every later rite is correct, but it should make us cautious about dismissing material practices merely because they feel unfamiliar.

They also force us to reckon with the supernatural side of Christianity. Jesus really cast out demons, the Apostles really cast out demons, and Paul really believed that Christians wrestled against principalities and powers. Early Christians took those passages seriously enough to shape their baptismal and pastoral practices around them.

So when fourth-century Christians covered a convert in exorcised oil and told the enemy to leave because this person now belonged to Christ, the practice did not arise in a theological vacuum. Whatever questions we may have about later liturgical development, their basic theology was rooted in a very Biblical conviction. Jesus Christ has invaded the domain of darkness, and those who belong to Him have been transferred into His kingdom.

Holy Oil in the Early Church

The evidence for holy oil in the early church is broader than I expected when I first began looking into it. Oil appears in healing, baptism, consecration, sealing, spiritual protection, and explicit exorcism. And the more sources we read, the harder it becomes to force all of those practices into a single explanation such as medicine, symbolism, or superstition.

The fathers thought much more concretely. Oil could symbolize healing because it was actually used for healing, symbolize consecration because Scripture used it for consecration, and function in prayer against demons because the church believed God sanctified material things for His purposes. Those ideas could coexist without contradiction.

And perhaps that is the point where the early church challenges us most. They did not believe that the spiritual world floated somewhere above the physical world with no contact between the two. They believed the God who created matter could work through matter, and they believed the Christ who defeated the powers could mark His people visibly as His own.

So when Cyril looked at the freshly baptized Christian, covered in oil, he did not merely see someone who had completed a ceremony. He saw someone who had been cut out of the wild olive tree and grafted into Christ. And because that person now belonged to Christ, the invisible powers of the evil one were told, quite simply, to get out.