Analyzing Prayer: Theological and Philosophical Essays. Edited by Oliver Crisp, James Arcadi, and Jordan Wessling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. 234 pp. $82.49.
Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo is far and away my favorite work of fiction in the western literary canon.[1] Why this work is not more widely read, save only for excuses about its admittedly staggering length, is a mystery. From ethics to medicine, economics to European history, from theology to philosophy to language, from seamanship, chemistry, and law, Dumas’ work is a treasure trove of moral and practical lessons.
One of Monte Cristo’s most consistent lessons—moral and practical alike—are those taught on prayer. For example, at one point, early in the story, the young and despondent Edmond Dantè comforts himself with a recollection of his youth that, “in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes, and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven.”
Far and away the most vivifying lesson on prayer unfolds when Dantè hears the voice of the “Mad Priest,” Abbé Faria, deep from a subterranean tunnel in the Chateau d’if. Hearing his dejected supplication, the Abbé reproves Dantè, declaring that hopelessness has no place where faith believes in a God of providence who calls himself love. And this coming from an (albeit fictional) “Italian scholar,” heir to a mythical fortune, and subject of a decade-plus-long incarceration in a French island-dungeon. Faria’s gentle reproof is a lesson that teaches readers that with pressure and time, one’s theory and practice of prayer will doubtless expose one’s most intimate ideas of God and self.
Starting out a book review of Analyzing Prayer with a foray into The Count of Monte Cristo is a bit risky for readers expecting to hear about academic philosophy and theology. I’ve taken this risk because I was reading both books contemporaneously, and more to the point, because I think Faria’s lesson contains profundities that modern academic readers of philosophy and theology dare not miss as they read Analyzing Prayer. For, each of its contributors subtly exposes details—some more than others—about their own ideas of God and self. By this light, some of the chapters read like a “mere medley of words,” whereas others read as written by “unhappy sufferer[s]” who demonstrate an understanding of “the meaning of the sublime language in which [they have invoked] the pity of heaven.” Here’s a thumbnail sketch of each of these chapters.
Scott Davidson (Morehead State University) examines the subject of petitionary prayer, divine freedom, and the juxtaposition of answered prayer and human pride. At the heart of this chapter is 1) a supposition that, “when people pray to God for good things, and then those things come to be, it is natural for them to rejoice and feel gratitude. It is also not unusual for them to feel proud” (12) together with 2) an objection to the idea that the creature justifiably credits himself with constraining divine action. Jordan Wessling (Lindsey Wilson College) also examines the subject of petitionary prayer, but with a view to reconciling human free agency (i.e. Libertarianism) and the nature of prayer for the salvation of certain individuals. Amber Griffioen (Duke Kushan University) examines the viability of non-doxastic prayer or prayer sans particular, formed religious belief. Following an exercise in philosophical justification for the analytic theological movement’s ability to speak meaningfully into the subject of prayer, James Gordon (Wheaton College) attempts to carve out a niche for Schleiermacher’s so-called ‘mystical’ account, which I found quite interesting.
Chapters five and six form a sort of couplet in the lineup of essays—Oliver Crisp (St. Andrews University) tackling the subject of prayer as “complaint” while Kevin Timpe (Calvin University) delves into the subject of prayer as “lament.” Crisp offers up something of a corrective to the prevailing notion among Christians that enough intercessory prayer can somehow change God’s mind, and at the same time argues that Christians ought to see prayer as “complaint directed at God,” as a plea that God would conform grieving souls to the divine will. Reading more like an exercise in philosophical clarification than anything else, Timpe makes a general appeal for the virtuousness of lament.
Leveraging a whole chorus of voices from the Christian tradition—foremost of which is Karl Barth—Ross Inman (Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) mounts a defense for what he calls “prayerful dogmatics,” which is shorthand for the idea that academic reflection on the Scripture and tradition should have virtuous and formative implications for the theologian of humble posture. Katherine Sonderegger (Virginia Theological Seminary) spends her literary capital challenging the widely held assumption that prayer is driven principally by humanity’s finitude; a creaturely lack or need. As a chapter driven by a strong sense that “the tradition is far more radical [on this matter] that we allow our eyes to see,” (145) Sonderegger advances a number of “daring” proposals (146)—ones couched in analytic theological terms of “perhaps” this or “if” that—that attempt to reorient the readers’ thinking about even the very definition of what she calls “ordinary dogmatic answers” (145). At the end of her chapter she considers, for example, whether “we might dare to say that the [the doctrine of] Divine Processions themselves are prayer” (147).
James Arcadi’s chapter, “Blessing God as Pledge of Allegiance: A Speech-Act Theoretic Approach” argues for re-envisaging ministerial and lay liturgical prayer in the familiar language of faith’s fidelity to Christ and his kingdom. I found this chapter as compelling as I did practical.
In “Knowing as you are known: Prayer in the Presence of God,” Kyle Strobel (Talbot School of Theology), focuses his attention on the religious experience of Christian prayer, arguing for what he refers to as “prayer as form of shared presence” (166). By “shared presence” Strobel means the soul’s posture toward God; a true “drawing near by faith,” he says (182). Looking to both historical and contemporary voices in the tradition—Stump, Edwards, Calvin—and select passages of Scripture—Ephesians 3, Colossians 3, 1 Corinthians—Strobel makes a convincing case for prayer as act of the experiencing, in part, what it might be to participate in the divine nature, as the Apostle says.
Adam Green’s (University of Oklahoma), “Prayer as the Road to Self-Knowledge,” is somewhat unique in this collection as he re-examines a pair of claims about the human self by Richard Moran with an appeal to Teresa of Avila’s notion of prayer a journey to self-knowledge. Rounding out the symposia is another, quasi-Barthian inspired chapter by Jason McMartin (Talbot School of Theology), entitled, “Prayer and the Meaning of Life.” McMartin argues that life’s meaningfulness is not exclusive, nor so simply reducible, to Christian appeals to the glory of God. He describes (though curiously he never actually defines) the nature of prayer as a subjective appropriation of an “objective framework” for the establishment of meaning, Christian theism being but one of an unknown number of candidate objective measures for meaning.
To describe Analyzing Prayer a piece of analytic theology may well be the single most important observation of this review. I say this for two reasons. The first reason, to which I’ve already alluded, is because the book personalizes its contributors in a way that is uncommon to analytic projects, which are often justly characterized as some good ol’ intellectual gymnastics and logic-chopping. Faria’s lesson bears unique fruit in this case, cutting through rational exercises and revealing assumptions, biases, sympathies, and much more about the rest of the theological and philosophical commitments of the contributors.
The second reason that describing this collection as a piece of analytic theology is important is because it tells the reader something discriminatingly important about what you’re likely to encounter, both in terms of the method of inquiry and final product of each essay. Methodologically speaking, each essay bears the assurances of those ever-championed markers—rigor, clarity, and logic—that supposedly accompany every analytic project.[2] If there is any feature that unifies collection, it is these markers. In terms of a final product, each chapter offers to carve out conceptual room for this or that problem related to prayer and common experience and then supply solutions to these problems as varied as the problem they tackle.
Despite some recent news that cuts in funding for analytic theology initiatives (like this one) might be in the offing,[3] there is no denying as one contributor states, that the analytic theology has been “all-the-rage” in theological circles for going on two decades.[4] Analyzing Prayer is the product of a generous Templeton grant for the Theological Formation Project during 2015-2018 at Fuller Theological Seminary, CA. The editors—Crisp, Arcadi, and Wessling—represent some of the brightest lights of the so called analytic movement, having been “socialized” by the “shared intellectual culture” of analytic philosophical tradition upon which they necessarily rely.[5] Their individual and collective acumen, not to mention their general literary industry, represents some of most nimble thinking among analytic theologians today.[6] Analyzing Prayer reveals that Crisp, Arcadi, and Wessling are not alone in this. Included in this collection are some similarly bright intellects. I say this because those familiar with the works of Crisp, Arcadi, and Wessling will encounter in this collection of essays a diverse deployment of analytic methodologies, an uncommonly revealing look at some of the ideas that are more near-and-dear to the contributors themselves, together with an invitation of sorts, to think critically about some of the more perplexing and interesting questions in theology related to prayer. For those looking to familiarize themselves with how analytics do business, intellectually speaking, this collection might be worth the letterpress price. For those looking to supplement their devotional life, however, you ought think about investing your resources elsewhere.
S. Mark Hamilton is Editor-in-Chief at The Davenant Press, alongside working as NPI Project Manager for SPM Oil and Gas, a Caterpillar Company and research associate at the Jonathan Edwards Society. He is a contributor to and co-editor of a number of symposia and has published in variety of academic journals. At present, he is completing two monographs: Re-envisioning Substitutionary Atonement (Cascade) and Jonathan Edwards on Spirit Christology (Routledge). He lives in Fort Worth, Texas with his wife and four sons.
*Image Credit: Pexels
