Book Review: Analyzing Prayer in Oxford's Studies in Analytic Theology Series
A homage to my training and past
Two years ago I was delighted to be presented with the opportunity to write a book review for a top academic journal. A colleague with connections to the journal thought I’d be a good candidate, given my recently completed thesis on Kierkegaard’s theology of prayer, and went out of her way to connect me to one of the editors. The book was (and still is) a compendium of essays by analytic and systematic theologians on prayer, and was part of Oxford’s running series on analytic theology. I was grateful for the opportunity, despite not considering myself to be an analytic theologian anymore, and proceeded to spend far too much time producing it. I eventually sent the review back to the kind and long-suffering editor, who had more than once checked in to make sure it was forthcoming, and with eagerness I waited to see it appear in the latest volume. It was first with horror, then, and later with humor that I discovered the journal had double-booked a review for this title. There in print was another person’s name appended to a review!
The editor was very apologetic when the issue was discovered, and after my inital emotions had passed (and not without, I confess, some indulgent augury that my ongoing participation in academic circles was confirmed as never meant to be), I posed the review to Academia.edu and enjoyed contemplating the marvels and ironies the Internet provides writiers and publishers alike.
Why, then, dig this up and reproduce it here? Mainly for the reasons of paying homage to my past, but also with the hope it will interest even one person. Substack is a unique medium, and I like how it can simultaneously be a type of living digital record of your personal deveopment as writer and thinker, while also serving as a dynamic and “living” community of others.
What writing this book review felt like then, feels like it does now by posting it to Substack: a way of respecting and appreciating the people and style of inquiry I was molded by at the Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology. I was there at a unique time, where analytic theology was still deciding what exactly it was and was not, and I’ll never forget the fascinating debates the resident biblical scholars had with the visiting philosophers and sitting theologians in our seminars. Is interdisciniplinary dialogue possible while also practicing systematic rigor in definition, argument, and style? Since then my cohort has spread to the winds, analytic theology has a better sense of what it is and is not, and the pursuit of seeking the truth amidst overwhelming diversity continues.
Oliver D. Crisp, James M. Arcadi, Jordan Wessling. Analyzing Prayer: Theological and Philosophical Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, October 2022. 223 pp. $105 / £75 (hbk)
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Reading Analyzing Prayer is like viewing Raphael’s famous “School of Athens.” I do not venture to say which of this book’s twelve contributors take the central position of Plato and Aristotle, but this volume’s cross-over in thought, with distinction and challenge to others’ arguments, is reminiscent of the vibrancy and energy present in that painting.
This is the first book-length treatment Oxford’s Studies in Analytic Theology has given to the subject of prayer, though select subjects relating to prayer have been present in the series before (e.g. Terence Cuneo’s Ritualized Faith: Essays on the Philosophy of Liturgy (2016), a chapter in William Wood’s Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion (2021), and an entry in Michael Rae’s Essays in Analytic Theology, Vol 2 (2021)). Oliver Crisp’s introduction to this collection explains that the book was born out of seminars held at Fuller Seminary between the years 2015-2018, owing to the ripe timing provided by the “liturgical turn” in analytic theology, along with Scott Davidson’s research into petitionary prayer (published by Oxford in 2017). Crisp explains that it is the editors’ hope this volume not only continues with the focus on petitionary prayer enjoyed in those seminars and the field at large, but also achieves the goals of “deepening the engagement with the Christian tradition” and broadening out “the kinds of prayer discussed” (p. 2). These last two goals are so well met in these essays that the assertion petitionary prayer maintains a focus of this volume is where Analyzing Prayer’s aims fall a little short—two essays on petitionary prayer by Scott Davidson and Jordan Wessling begin the volume, and the subject sometimes appears in others’ essays. Otherwise the book ranges broadly and focuses on equally important subjects such as lament, unbelieving “doxastic” prayer, mystical prayer, dogmatics as a type of prayer, God’s own praying, prayer as a means of knowing God and being known, and also prayer as a means of coming to know yourself. A new idea, that liturgical prayer functions as a pledge of allegiance to God, is also presented for the reader’s consideration.
Thoughtful engagement with theologians such as Karl Barth, Alexander Schmemann, Theresa de Avila, Anselm, and Aquinas all feature prominently in these essays (Friedrich Schleiermacher does too, but his presence is more obviously indicated by an essay’s title). Herman Bavnick, Karl Rahner, John Calvin, Augustine, Chrysostom, Walter Brueggemann, and Hans Urs von Balthasar all do as well, though to a lesser degree. Nicholas Wolterstorff and Eleonore Stump are the choice analytic philosophy of religion dialogue partners, along with Sarah Coakley and Marilyn McChord Adams in passing. As for engagement with analytic philosophy, J.L. Austin, John Searle, Robert Nozick, and Thomas Nagel all make appearances (the first three of which are not listed in the index), along with Richard Swinburne and William Alston.
Analyzing Prayer’s table of contents are available for viewing online, as well as Oliver Crisp’s neat summaries of each essay in his introduction (which can be read using Amazon’s “read sample” feature). Therefore rather than give my own summaries and responses to each essay, I will provide some examples of where interesting commonalities or differences of perspective arise between the essayists. Hopefully this will then encourage readers to pursue more than just one or two of the essays, as is typical for compendiums such as these.
For example, Amber Griffioen’s essay on non-believing prayer contends with a number of other essayists’ claims. James Gordon’s is the first to do so, with his aim to retrieve Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theology of prayer in order to provide an alternative to theologies that generally take either an “above” or “below” approach to understanding prayer. Griffioen’s essay unashamedly emphasizes the human individual, which would classify as the “below” approach for Gordon. Yet both writers go on to emphasize the important role a pray-er’s mind has in prayer by means of her consciousness and her imagination. This could mean that Gordon’s presentation of Schleiermacher’s approach as a ‘third way’ is not quite as set apart as claimed. His account of prayer maintains a unity with God where sin-consciousness gives way to God-consciousness, and relies upon the same mind that uses the imagination to encounter God second-personally in Griffioen’s apophatic approach to prayer. Irrespective of whether the reader determines that Gordon’s account of prayer stands outside of “above” or “below” approaches, though, his presentation of Schleiermacher’s theology of prayer does not depend upon successfully being a ‘third way.’
Considering Kyle Strobel’s account of knowledge and faith against Griffioen’s account would be worthwhile, too. Even though Griffioen focuses on theistic prayer and Strobel on Christian prayer, their accounts invite a dialogue that has the potential to better inform each respective account. Towards the end of his essay, Strobel asserts that “we can say that God’s presence is real to Paula, regardless of her experience of it, because God is personally present to the souls of those who have embraced Christ in faith…to have second-personal experience by faith is to embrace this relational presence by giving oneself to God in truth, knowing His presence and reciprocating by offering oneself to Him” (p. 174). For Strobel, the pray-er gets to respond to the real ever-presence of God, all made possible by Christ. Strobel then appends the necessity of ‘embracing Christ in faith’ by means of ‘giving oneself to God in truth’ to the possibility of this response. Meanwhile, Griffioen discusses how pray-ers would benefit from taking a playful approach to prayer via the imagination, which then opens the pray-er to God in real but new ways. “[T]o relate to God, we need something more immanent than transcendent, something relatable, which is what the religious imagination provides in prayer: it gives the religious subject a way to cognitively and affectively ‘reach out toward the divine’ through second-personal address” (p. 50). Between Strobel’s insistence that God is present to the individual pray-er irrespective of her experiences of his presence, and Griffioen’s confidence in the religious imagination as a means of speaking to the second-personal God (through an address to such a God), there is room for reconsideration about the roles either a knowledge of Christ or a consciousness of Christ has to play in both of these accounts of prayer.
James Gordon’s and Ross Inman’s definitions of prayer seem to carry similarities to each other too, with one focusing on God-consciousness and the other focusing on a human being’s shared attention and participating presence with God. There is even more to consider between these two essays as well, with Gordon utilizing Schleiermacher and Inman utilizing Schleiermacher’s self-declared nemesis, Karl Barth. Soon after, Katherine Songeregger singles out Schleiermacher in her essay as being a paradigmatic example of the “most natural response” one makes to explain the Holy Spirit praying, all by relying upon “excessive” mystical metaphors (p. 142). Then with James Arcadi’s essay we see a complimentary account to Inman’s regarding serious engagement with select versions of speech-act theory, as well as a utilization of Wolterstorff’s work on God’s speaking and communicating with God.
With these far from exhaustive suggestions for cross-inspectional reading, I have said nothing of other thinkers who might further some of the contributor’s projects, such as James Cone’s work for Kevin Timpe’s essay on lament (a recommendation Timpe welcomes; pp. 111, 114), G.E. Anscombe’s robust philosophy on intention for either fleshing out or jeopardizing Arcadi’s account of prayer as pledge of allegiance,1 and Julian of Norwich’s potentially complimentary theology of prayer with some of Sonderegger’s work.
Overall, Analyzing Prayer is a strong first start for analytic theology’s serious engagement with the difficult and dynamic, yet crucial and wonderful, subject of prayer.
I found Arcadi’s essay deeply problematic (there were others, too), and found writing this book review to be a good, stretching exercise for me—to remember the point and purpose of the medium and context I was constrained by, and to not get bogged down in the particularities of any one essay. It was challenging!