What Are We Doing When We Pray?

On Prayer and the Nature of Faith

Vincent Brümmer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351873192
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Vincent Brümmer's classic book on prayer from 1984 provides a comprehensive philosophical analysis of central issues regarding the nature and practice of prayer. What do we do when we ask things of other people, when we thank them or praise them, when we express penitence for what we have done to them and ask their forgiveness? And how does doing these things in relation to God differ from when we do them in relation to other people? And what does this entail for the existence and nature of the God to whom we pray? This new edition has been substantially revised and updated. Three new chapters have been added which develop in detail a hint by G.K. Chesterton that faith 'is not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love affair.' Since prayer is the expression of this 'love affair' it is also the clue to understanding the nature of faith. These chapters contribute significantly to the current academic interest in spirituality by showing how Brümmer's analysis of prayer helps us to understand the nature of spirituality, of faith and religious belief, and of theology. Spirituality is not aimed at achieving religious 'experiences' or mystical 'knowledge' about God; it is primarily aimed at attaining the religious form of life and at coming to see the world in the light of faith. Religious belief is not merely a cognitive enterprise like science; it cannot be divorced from spirituality and the life of faith, and is therefore fundamentally existential and not merely intellectual. Serving as a valuable core text for students, this book also contributes to a number of current debates in theology and philosophy of religion: the debates on realism and religious belief, on the rationality of faith and the nature of theology, on the relation between religious belief and morality, on the relation between science and religion and the lively debate among evangelical Christians in America on the 'openness of God.'

Preface

The first seven chapters of this book contain a revised version of a book of mine with the same title published in 1984. The original version was intended to deal with a large number of philosophical puzzles concerning prayer. These included the following: Can we prove the efficacy of prayer experimentally or statistically, and if not. why not? What does this entail for the nature of prayer? Is prayer merely a form of spiritual therapy (as Immanuel Kant and others argue) or is it in some sense a 'conversation' with God entailing metaphysical assumptions about the existence and nature of God and his agency in the world? How does asking things of God differ from asking things of other people? What does this entail for the way we are to understand God's omnipotence, omniscience, immutability and perfect goodness without such claims about the nature of God making petitionary prayer meaningless? Does it make sense to assume that God can intervene in the world (in answer to prayer) without violating natural law or human freedom? And how do we decide whether a natural event or human action can count as an answer to prayer? In what sense can petitionary prayer be understood as a way of establishing a personal relationship with God, penitence as a way of restoring such a relationship and thanksgiving as way of acknowledging such a relationship? Can we thank God 'whatever happens' (1 Thessalonians 5:18) or do we only thank God for some things and blame him for others? What does this entail for the problem of evil? Does prayer make a difference to the way we relate to the world and hence to the way we act in the world? How does prayer relate to the moral life, and what does this entail for the relation between religious belief and morality?

Looking back it has become clear to me that my analysis of the things we do when we pray has significant implications for our understanding of the nature of spirituality, of faith and religious belief, and of theology. According to the German theologian Gerard Ebeling prayer is the key to understanding the nature of God. To this I would now add that prayer could be seen as the 'language game of faith' and as such it provides us with the key to understanding the nature of religious belief and its relation to the life of faith. Spirituality is not aimed at achieving ecstatic religious experiences or mystical 'knowledge' about God. It is primarily aimed at attaining the religious form of life expressed in prayer and at coming to see the world in the light of faith. In the words of John Drury, prayer is a 'school of seeing'. Contrary to what is generally assumed in modernity, religious belief is not merely a cognitive enterprise like science. It cannot be divorced from spirituality and the life of faith and is therefore fundamentally existential and not merely intellectual. This entails that theology is not a speculative enterprise providing us with knowledge of God analogously to the way in which science provides us with knowledge of the physical world.

I am very grateful to Ashgate for providing me with the opportunity to revise my 1984 book in the light of my subsequent work and to add three extra chapters discussing the implications of my analysis of prayer for understanding the nature of faith and religious belief. The revisions include a large number of changes to bring my argument up to date in the light of more recent literature and to amend my arguments in the light of changes in my views since then. The two most important revisions are first, my attempts to relate my argument (especially in chapters 3-5) more explicitly to the important current American debate on 'open theism'. It is clear to me that the things we do when we pray all assume an 'open' view of God and cannot be adequately accounted for by its opponents. To the extent that the opponents of open theism practise an evangelical form of piety, their doctrine is at odds with their spirituality. Secondly, my subsequent work on mysticism and the love of God have made it clear to me that the views on mysticism I assumed in 1984 (especially in chapters 6-7) are one-sided and mistaken. In this book I have tried to rectify this and to examine in more detail the connection between prayer and mysticism. This is important for our understanding of the life of faith and the way this is expressed in the things we do when we pray. These considerations lead directly to the analysis of the nature of faith and religious belief developed in the newly written chapters.

Vincent Brümmer
Bilthoven
November 2007

Part I
Prayer

Chapter 1
Introduction: Putting prayer to the test

1.1 ‘Whatever you pray for ...’

According to Matthew 21:22. Jesus said to his disciples: 'Whatever you pray for in faith you will receive.' Many believers have some difficulty with the generality of this promise. After all, not all prayers are answered, are they? This may have something to do with the condition that they have to be offered 'in faith'. Maybe prayers are often unanswered because they are not accompanied by 'faith' in the required sense. Apart from this difficulty.¹ however, most believers would be willing to claim that God does in fact answer their prayers. Many would add that they know this from personal experience. Even though God does not answer all prayers, or does not always answer prayers in the exact sense in which they were intended, experience does show that prayers do have effect and are not offered to God in vain.

This claim raises a further question. If the efficacy of prayer can in principle be known from experience, does it not follow that we should be able to conduct an experiment to test the claim that prayers are efficacious? To many the very idea of such an experiment sounds irreligious and even blasphemous. Are we not forbidden to put the Lord our God to the test (Matth. 4:7; Deut. 6:16)? On the other hand, do we not read in the Psalms that 'the Lord's word has stood the test? He is the shield of all who take refuge in him' (Psalm 18:30)? And does the Bible not provide us with numerous examples of people who did put the Lord to the test – and with success? Is the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal not a case in point? Did not Elijah conduct a successful experiment on Mount Cannel to prove to the prophets of Baal that the God of Israel answers the prayers of those who call upon him?

To these questions one might reply that the test spoken of in Psalm 18:30 should not be interpreted as an experimental test, and that what Elijah did on Mount Carmel should also not be confused with experimenting. Both Elijah and the Psalmist were trusting the Lord and finding that their trust was not in vain. This is something quite different from testing an experimental hypothesis. It would be a category mistake to interpret the believer's claim that God answers prayer as an experimental hypothesis.

But how, then, do these differ? We could learn much about the logic of the believer's claim by asking how it differs from an experimental hypothesis, or, more concretely, how what Elijah did on Mount Carmel differs from what a scientist does in conducting an experiment. This question will turn out to be a useful point of departure for our inquiry into what we do when we pray. In pursuing it we could at the same time introduce, in a provisional way, the various issues to be discussed in the rest of the book.

1.2 Prayer and experiment: Elijah and Einstein

Scientific experiments serve to test theories. A scientific theory is a generalization from which predictions can be derived, such that if these predictions come true, the theory is confirmed, and if they do not, the theory would be falsified. A good example to illustrate this point is Einstein's theory of gravitation which Karl Popper describes as follows:

Einstein's gravitational theory had led to the result that light must be attracted by heavy bodies (such as the sun), precisely as material bodies were attracted. As a consequence it could be calculated that light from a distant fixed star whose apparent position was close to the sun would reach the earth from such a direction that the star would seem to be slightly shifted away from the sun; or, in other words, that stars close to the sun would look as if they had moved a little away from the sun, and from one another. This is a tiling which cannot normally be observed since such stars are rendered invisible in daytime by the sun's overwhelming brightness; but during an eclipse it is possible to take photographs of them. If the same constellation is photographed at night one can measure the distance on the two photographs, and check the predicted effect.²

During an eclipse of the sun in 1919 Eddington made the observations described here by Popper, and thus provided the first important confirmation of Einstein's theory.

Do we not have something similar in the case of Elijah and the prophets of Baal as described in I Kings 18? Elijah's opponents believed that the God Baal answers prayers, and on the basis of this belief they called on Baal all day long – but to no avail. Thus their belief in the efficacy of such prayers was falsified. Elijah believed that Yahweh was God and that he would answer the prayers of those who call on him. On the basis of this belief he prayed to Yahweh who answered his prayer by sending fire from heaven. Thus his belief in the God of Abraham was confirmed before the assembled multitude on Mount Cannel.

The similarities between the examples of Einstein and Elijah are enough to explain why the episode on Mount Cannel is sometimes interpreted as an experiment.³ However, there are at least four significant differences which should not be overlooked.

1. As Popper says, scientific theories and the predictions derived from them have the status of conjectures, i.e. hypotheses which are always open to falsification. As such they are adhered to in a more or less provisional or tentative way as long as they have not been falsified. It has often been pointed out that this sort of adherence is completely uncharacteristic for religious belief.⁴ Thus Elijah's action on Mount Carmel was the expression of an unshakable trust in Jahweh, which is quite unlike the provisional adherence appropriate to scientific conjectures. 'Elijah is not verifying deductions, he is yielding himself in prayer, and trusting God for some – no matter what – visible answer.'⁵ In fact part of the meaning of the words of Jesus quoted at the beginning of this chapter is that faith like that of Elijah is a necessary condition for prayers to be granted. This implies that an experiment to test the efficacy of prayer must necessarily be a self-defeating operation: in order to be an experiment one would have to view the claim that prayer is efficacious as a conjecture which requires no more than tentative adherence, and this would exclude the kind of faith which is a necessary condition for prayer to be efficacious.

2. Scientific theories are generalizations which apply not only to the situation in which the experiment is conducted, but to all similar situations. The prediction derived from the theory must necessarily come true in all such situations if the theory is to be maintained. For this reason experiments are always repeatable. In the case of Einstein's theory of gravitation, Eddington's observations of 1919 were repeated at many subsequent solar eclipses, thus confirming the theory anew. Elijah's action on Mount Carmel was not repeatable in the same way. If the prophets of Baal had reacted to Elijah by suggesting that the fire from heaven in that particular case was merely a lucky coincidence, it is doubtful whether Elijah would have repeated the 'experiment' just to make sure that this was not the case!

3. In science every experiment implies a risk for the theory: if the relevant prediction does not come true, the theory is falsified. Popper explains this with reference to the Einstein example:

The impressive tiling about this case is the risk involved in a prediction of this kind. If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted. The theory is incompatible with certain possible results of observations – in fact with results which before Einstein everybody would have expected.⁶

Thu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Index