St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (2024)

1.1 Definition of prayer

In Christianity, prayer is a communicative act by which one or more human beings address themselves to God. Communication always involves sending and receiving; this also applies to prayer. The praying person is sending, and God, who is addressed in prayer, is receiving. Often, the praying person hopes to receive an answer through a word or an act. In principle, each human prayer to God always is a response to a prior divine initiative, for it is God who took the initiative to the divine-human relationship.

It is […] within the covenant, that the prayer of the Old Testament is born. It is an answer, a response, since [the Lord] always takes the initiative in the dialogue. Many of the liturgical prayers simply take up the words of [the Lord] or rehearse his saving acts. (Harvey 1963: 166)

The New Testament confirms this view: ‘It is not we who loved God, but God loved us and sent his Son to expiate our sins’ (1 John 4:10).

Within most Christian traditions – Protestantism being the exception – prayers may also be addressed to angels and saints (Summa Theologiae [ST] IIaIIae 83 4; Aquinas 1981: 1534; see section 8.1). Angels are spiritual messengers that have a special connection to God and that are not living on Earth, while saints are deceased human beings that are believed to live with God in heaven. When prayer is directed to angels or saints, these are addressed in their supposed capacity of intermediate figures between the one who is praying and God. Indirectly, therefore, this type of prayer is also directed at God (Prevot 2015: 14).

Paradigm cases of prayer use language as the primary medium of communication. The words may be accompanied by bodily postures and gestures that in some cases may take over the function of the words. While almost any emotion, request, message, or promise may be the content of prayer, prayer presupposes that the one addressed in prayer has a higher position than the person who prays. Therefore, prayer is uttered with a sense of respect.

Etymologically, ‘prayer’ derives from old French preier (hence also contemporary French prier, to pray), which in turn derives for Latin precari (to ask earnestly, beg, entreat).

1.2 Prayer, meditation, and contemplation

Within Christian theology, prayer and meditation are related, but they are not the same. In meditation, one thinks over or dwells on a text or a subject in the mind. Concentration is an important aspect of meditation, and meditation techniques are aimed at avoiding distraction and increasing concentration. These techniques may include bodily postures and breathing techniques. The main difference between prayer and meditation is that prayer is an act of communication, while meditation does not necessarily include communication. Since meditation often involves contemplating on a text from Holy Scripture and/or on the acts, purposes, and promises of God, when communication becomes part of meditation it is focused on listening to God rather than on speaking to God, on receiving rather than on sending.

Meditation can be accompanied by prayer – for example, when meditation begins with a petition for illumination by the Holy Spirit. In many cases, one of the purposes of meditation is to open the mind to the Holy Spirit, and then again, listening rather than speaking is part of meditation. Prayer and meditation can also be combined in meditative prayer. In that case, concentration and listening play an important part in prayer. When meditation moves on from the acts, purposes, and promises of God to Godself, it becomes contemplation: a wordless, deep communion with the triune God.

1.3 Prayer and liturgy

Liturgy is the public worship of God by the church. Liturgy always involves prayer, but not all prayer is liturgical. Liturgical prayers are set prayers offered by the church for public worship. This means that liturgical prayers have fixed texts. Public worship includes not only those occasions on which congregations convene for worship (e.g. the Sunday worship service or Eucharist) but also the liturgy of the hours, which in monasteries is mostly recited by the congregation as a whole, but which other believers recite privately. This private recitation of the liturgy of hours is also considered to be part of the public worship of the church. Often, but not always, liturgical prayer uses texts from the Bible and texts that have been taken from the tradition of the church. It is impossible to provide a firm set of criteria that must be present for a prayer to be liturgical. However, it is characteristic of liturgical prayer that it connects the praying subject with the past, in which God has acted for the good of God’s people, and with the future, in which God will be all in all. Thus, liturgical prayer situates the subject of prayer in salvation history and in this way connects the praying community to the Lord of history (Wegman 1975).

2.1 Old Testament

Hebrew has two verbs for praying: ‘tr (to pray [to God], to ask [God]) and pll (to pray, to ask for). The noun tepillah is used to refer to liturgical and personal prayers, to prayers sung and prayers said. It is also used for some of the Psalms (17; 86; 90; 102; 142). Besides these, many other terms used in human communication may be used, like various words for speaking, crying, weeping, extolling, praising, confessing, and singing. That prayer could be sung is reflected in the use of the verbs ‘to play’ and ‘to sing’ for prayer. Silent prayer is the exception (1 Sam 1:13; cf. Van der Horst 1994). That prayer was accompanied by specific bodily postures is also reflected in verbs used: to stand (1 Sam 1:26; 1 Kgs 8:22); to kneel (1 Kgs 8:54; Ps 95:6); to prostrate (Josh 5:14); to spread, stretch, or raise one’s hands (Ps 28:2; Isa 1:15). ‘To seek the face of God’ is another expression that may be used. Prayers include petition, intercession, lamentation, confession, repentance, vows, benediction, thanksgiving, and praise.

People can pray in many places: at the altar (Gen 12:8), in local sanctuaries (1 Sam 1), the temple in Jerusalem, and at home (Dan 6:11). In the temple, prayer may be accompanied by a sacrifice (Ps 54:8; 66:13). In New Testament times, the Jews prayed three times a day. It seems likely that this practice has its roots in Old Testament times (Dan 6:11; cf. Ps 55:18; see also McGowan 2014: 184–187). Once the temple in Jerusalem had been built, prayers outside Jerusalem were prayed in the direction of Jerusalem (1 Kgs 8:38; 2 Chr 6:34; Dan 6:11). The prophets made clear that prayer should not consist of words only, but must also be a matter of the heart (Isa 39:13) and lead to righteous behaviour (Amos 5:23–24).

The confidence that God hears our prayer is rooted in the covenant or in God’s status as creator of the world. If God does not answer our prayer, that may be caused by our breaking the covenant (Prov 28:9; Isa 59:2). In petitionary prayer, God is asked for something, such as a cure from illness, a rescue from a life-threatening situation, punishment of enemies, support in time of disaster, but also for redemption or forgiveness of sins (Ps 32; 51; 103; 130). A special form of petitionary prayer is intercession: petitionary prayer on behalf of others. This type of prayer may be offered by anyone, but leaders of the people like the patriarchs (Gen 20:7) and kings (2 Chr 30:18) – and even more so Moses (Exod 32:11–14; Deut 9:20–29) and the prophets (1 Sam 12:19; 2 Chr 32:20; Jer 14–15, 27:18; Amos 7:2) – exercise a ministry of intercession. The connection between prophecy and intercession is so strong that Abraham is called a prophet on account of him participating in intercession (Gen 20:7). In some instances, intercession takes the form of negotiation with God (Gen 18:23–32; Exod 32:7–35).

Most of the Psalms were used as hymns in temple worship (Rendsburg 2014). The Psalms do not only express a wish for earthly blessings and for the punishment of enemies, but also a spiritual thirst for God (Ps 42; 51; 63; 119).

During the exile, prayer became the only form of worship, since the sacrificial temple worship was no longer possible. As a result, prayer gained importance (Ezra 8:21; Neh 1:4–11; 2:4; 4:3; Dan 6:11–12, 14). In Isa 56:7, an exilic text, the temple is for the first time described as a ‘house of prayer’ (cf. 1 Kgs 8:22–59, a text mostly ascribed to the Deuteronomist and dated in the exile). However, it was only after the year 200 BCE that prayer became part of everyday piety and was no longer reserved for special occasions and festivities (Maher 2003: 22). In the deuterocanonical books we find a first instance of prayer for the dead, made possible by the emergence of belief in the resurrection (2 Macc 12:43–44). We also find an instance of prayer by the dead for the living (2 Macc 15:12–16).

2.2 New Testament

The most characteristic Greek verb for praying in the New Testament is proseuchomai. Other verbs that are used have the connotation of asking, blessing, thanking, prostrating, invoking, and begging. The attitudes of prayer are similar to those in the Old Testament: standing (Mark 11:25; Luke 18:11, 13), kneeling (Acts 21:5), prostrating oneself (Mark 14:35), and lifting up one’s hands (1 Tim 2:8). According to Paul, women should cover their heads when praying, men not (1 Cor 11:1–10). The combination of prayer with fasting, which was already present in the Old Testament (Ps 35:13; Dan 9:3; Joel 1:14), becomes even more common in the New Testament (Acts 13:3; 14:23).

In the Old Testament, prayer became more important during the exile. In the New Testament, which was partly written after the destruction of the Second Temple and which partly reflects the parting of the ways of Jews and Christians, this development is continued. While Jesus sees the temple as a house of prayer (Matt 21:13; Mark 11:17) and he goes with his disciples to the temple to pray (Luke 24:53; Acts 2:46), sacrificial temple worship loses its relevance. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross takes the place of the temple sacrifices (Heb 10:1–18) and Jesus is represented as the new high priest (Heb 4:14–16), sometimes even as the new temple (John 2:19–21; 7:37–38). One might say that Jesus himself becomes a ‘house of prayer’; his givenness to prayer is noticed in many instances, especially in the Gospel of Luke (3:21; 5:16; 6:12 etc.; Mark 1:35; Matt 14:23). Jesus is on especially intimate terms with the Father; the use of the address form abba, Father, is among the many signs of that. While this address form is rare in the Old Testament, probably to avoid anthropomorphic overtones, Jesus never addresses the Father otherwise, except in a quotation from Psalm 22 on the cross (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46, Soskice 2007: 75–80). For Paul, the proof that we are children of God is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts praying ‘Abba, Father!’ (Gal 4:6; cf. Rom 8:14–15).

In many instances, Jesus retires from the company of his disciples to pray. This may be connected to the ancient habit to pray out loud. Jesus also recommends his disciples to go into their room, shut the door and the pray to their Father in secret (Matt 6:6). It is not clear that ‘in secret’ here means silently, though Matt 6:8 may be interpreted as pointing in that direction. Paul’s exhortation to pray constantly (1 Thess 5:17), however, makes sense only on the presupposition that he means silent prayer (Van der Horst 1994: 17).

The very fact that the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray (Luke 11:1) suggests that Jesus’ prayer practice is different from that of his contemporaries. In reply, Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer; here also, God is addressed as Father. Paradoxically, this prayer requires the persons praying it to align their will with God (‘your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’), but leaves room for their own wishes (‘give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, do not lead us into temptation’) as well (see section 9.2). Elsewhere, Jesus recommends the disciples to pray in his name (John 14:14).

From the book of Acts, it becomes clear that after Jesus’ death, prayer becomes characteristic for the apostles (e.g. Acts 2:42; 3:1; 4:24–31; 6:4, 6; 9:11; 12:5, 12; cf. Luke 18:1 and 1 Thess 5:17). Important decisions are taken only after having prayed (Acts 1:24; 6:6; 13:3; 14:23; 20:36; 21:4–5). Simultaneously, it is also clear that Jesus’ own prayer does not stop after the crucifixion; at the right hand of God he is still pleading for us (Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25). While most prayers are directed to the Father, some prayers are directed to Jesus (Acts 7:59; 2 Cor 12:8–9).

When it comes to the content of prayer, thanksgiving (e.g. Eph 5:20; Phil 1:3; Col 1:3; 1 Thess 1:2; 5:18), petitionary prayer (Phil 4:4; 1 Pet 5:7), and intercession (e.g. Eph 6:18–20; Col 4:2–4; 1 Thess 5:25; 2 Thess 1:11, 3:1–2; Jas 5:14) play an important role. An obvious difference from the Old Testament is that – in spite of Jesus’ praying Psalm 22 on the cross – lament has a much less central place than in the Old Testament. Instead, the epistles abound with the admonition to bear one’s suffering patiently (Westermann 1974: 22).

In the Old Testament, ecstatic prophetic speech is not unknown (1 Sam 10:6; 10:10–11; 19:20–24). However, glossolalia or speaking in tongues is a new phenomenon in the New Testament. Those who practice glossolalia produce language-like sounds that are considered to be controlled by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:10) rather than by the speaker, though the glossolalist retains the possibility to withhold these sounds (1 Cor 14:39). In some cases, glossolalists speak a foreign language they do not know (Acts 2:1–13), in some cases, the sounds do not form a known language but can be interpreted by other people inspired by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:10, 14:3, 5, 13). Paul considers glossolalia to be prayer (1 Cor 14:2; 14:14–17).

In Romans 8, Paul argues that those who are ‘in Christ’ (8:1) no longer live by their natural inclinations but by the Spirit (8:4–5, 9, 11). The Spirit joins with their spirit and enables them to cry out ‘Abba, Father!’ (8:15–16). And then the Spirit will help them in their weakness,

for, when we do not know how to pray properly, then the Spirit personally makes our petitions for us in groans that cannot be put into words; and he who can see into all hearts knows what the Spirit means because the prayers that the Spirit makes for God’s holy people are always in accordance with the mind of God. (Rom 8:26–27, New Jerusalem Bible)

Here, those who are praying are taken up in a trinitarian dynamic: they are in Christ; the Spirit joins them in their prayer and even prays in them without their understanding what the Spirit is praying; and the Father accepts the prayer.

3.1 Early church

It is likely that Christian prayer hours have been influenced by Jewish examples (McGowan 2014: 184–187, 197–201). The information we have, however, is scarce and does not permit definitive conclusions on the influence of the prayer patterns of the temple service, the Essenes, and the community of Qumran on early Christian prayer (Taft 1985: 1–11). Christians prayed both individually and in community; there is no conclusive evidence for daily communal prayer before the reign of Constantine (fourth century), however. The form of the fourth-century cathedral office was such as to make it accessible to lay persons, while the monastic office, often with the daily recital of all 150 Psalms and many biblical canticles, was more demanding. Benedict of Nursia (c.480–550) mentions this practice in his Rule but requires only the weekly recital of all Psalms (Rule 18; Benedict of Nursia 1996; cf. Phillips 2008: 31–47; Taft 1985: 31–91; Jungmann 1978: 25–34). Both silent and audible prayer were practiced; silent prayer becomes more prominent when the concept of God becomes more abstract (Van der Horst 1994: 17–21). When it comes to postures, practices vary. Standing, standing with hands extended, and kneeling are all practised, though Tertullian (c.155–c.220), in De oratione 23 (see 2008), has it that some argue that kneeling is inacceptable on Sundays and during the period between Easter and Pentecost. For that reason, the Council of Nicaea (325) prefers standing during prayer (canon 20).

While the forms of prayer vary in many respects, other aspects are more constant. The sacrifices and material offerings known from the Old Testament and pagan religions were rejected. They were replaced by spiritual sacrifices like prayer and fasting, holy living, and martyrdom (Young 2022: 254–257). Prayer is primarily addressed to God the Father, often in the name of Jesus (Hurtado 2000: 74). Ceaseless prayer is a generally shared ideal, but practised especially by monks (cf. Jungmann 1978: 20–21). Prayer has both mental and bodily aspects; it requires specific bodily postures and mental concentration. Early Christians pray both in the church and at home (McGowan 2014: 183–215). For lay believers, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed were the most important prayers. Several authors recommend praying these morning and evening, and also the sign of the cross was much used (Jungmann 1978: 34–35). From the fourth century onwards, we also find prayers offered to the saints.

Also in the early church, under the influence of Origen (c.185–c.254), Ambrose (c.339–397) and Jerome (c.342–420), the monastic method of lectio divina (divine reading: a prayerful reading of the Bible contemplating its allegorical meaning) was introduced. This way of reading the Bible proceeds in four steps: read, meditate, pray, contemplate.

3.2 The Middle Ages

In the early Middle Ages, the monastic office becomes more important in Europe; over the centuries, it grows longer and more demanding. Simultaneously, the liturgy of hours celebrated by the numerous clerics in the cathedral liturgy is ‘monasticized’ and becomes almost as demanding than the monastic office (Taft 1985: 299). Prayer becomes increasingly the domain of the religious and of clergy. The Psalms remain the most important prayers. From the middle of the twelfth century onwards, traditional urban dioceses are broken up into parishes with fewer clergy and more pastoral duties. Thus ‘it became impossible to accomplish the office publicly in church and get much else done in the course of the day’ (Taft 1985: 299). Those clerics who cannot be present at the praying of the hours in church are supposed to pray them in private from a book, the breviary. In this way, in the West – and not in the East – the praying of the Divine Office becomes a private affair, the reading of a book (Taft 1985: 295). From a communal obligation the Divine Office develops into a personal obligation of the clerics.

From the eighth century onwards, prayers addressed ‘to the Trinity’ were introduced into the Roman liturgy. This is an obvious example of a Carolingina attempt to create unity by imposing doctrinal orthodoxy upon liturgy, leading to complicated and even strained prayers (Jungmann 1978: 74–77).

The prayers and meditations of Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033–1109) were written especially for private devotion. Spiritual authors like Master Eckhart (c.1260–1327), Johann Tauler (c.1300–1361), and in the Low Countries Jan van Ruysbroeck (1291–1381) and Thomas à Kempis (c.1380–1471), followed in his track. Third orders – groups of lay believers associated with religious orders – used books of hours: prayer books for private devotion, mostly based on the Psalms as prayed in the Liturgy of Hours. These were especially numerous from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (Jungmann 1978: 118–121). While medieval popular devotion was generally a ‘devotion of deeds’ – fasting, attending Mass, participating in collective rituals and prayers (Taylor 2007: 258) – the Devotio Moderna (or Modern Devotion) movement (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries) of which Thomas à Kempis became one of the leaders, emphasized inner devotion and private prayer (Jungmann 1978: 128–131). A side effect of this movement was that it also contributed to the privatization of piety among the clerics (Taft 1985: 301).

In the same period, various prayer practices that were also open to lay believers who could not read were developed, the praying of the rosary being one of the most important of these. Besides the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, the Hail Mary became the most important prayer for ordinary believers from the thirteenth century onwards (Jungmann 1978: 102). In the early fifteenth century, under influence of the Modern Devotion, meditation on the life of Christ was coupled to the praying of the Hail Marys (Miller 2001: xi, 13). Thus, the rosary became an aid in the imitation of Christ (Miller 2001: 17).

Under the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), who followed in the steps of Anselm by stimulating private prayer, and the Cistercians, meditation became more important. ‘By meditation, we discover the dangers which threaten us, by prayer we avoid them’ (Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo primus in festo S. Andreae Apostoli 10; PL 183: 509).

3.3 Modernity

In the Reformation, prayer did not lose its importance, but several shifts of emphasis took place. New developments include the following. Firstly, under influence of the growing individualism of the Renaissance, the emphasis of the Reformation is on private prayer rather than on community prayer (Institutes of the Christian Religion [Inst]: Book III, chap. 20, sections 20 and 29; Calvin 1986). Moreover, in the second half of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century, the emergence of pietism led to the growing importance of free prayer, in which one communicates the inner stirrings of one’s heart to God. This can go so far that fixed, formulaic prayer is sometimes classified as inauthentic and therefore without value. Secondly, the Reformers are divided on the primary function of prayer. According to Martin Luther (1483–1546), genuine prayer is ‘calling upon God in all needs’ (Luther 1977: 106 [in the introduction to the Lord’s Prayer]; cf. Hesselink 2002: 78–80). On the other hand, the Heidelberg Catechism views the expression of gratefulness as the most important function of prayer (Sunday 45 question 116, but see also Sunday 45 question 118, and Sunday 50 question 125). Thirdly, the Reformers aim to integrate prayer more deeply into the everyday life of lay people (Taylor 2007: 144). Fourthly, the Reformers insisted on prayer being directed only to God, not to angels or saints (Inst: Book III, chap. 20, sections 18–27; Calvin 1986). And fifthly, the Reformers objected to prayers for the dead, since they rejected the doctrine of purgatory and saw praying for the dead as unscriptural.

In the Catholic Reform also, private prayer became ever more important. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, retained the Office but confined it to private recitation (Jungmann 1978: 128–135; Taft 1985: 301–302). As a result of the invention of printing, prayer books for lay believers became more important. These continued to be based on the liturgy of hours but also featured litanies, by then the favourite type of prayer among lay believers (Jungmann 1978: 148–150).

From the twentieth century onwards, the process of secularization in the Western world undermines existing prayer traditions, be they Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish (Heschel 1953; Shepard 1970). Already in the early 1950s, Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) speaks of ‘spiritual absenteeism’: the words of formulaic Jewish prayers are still being said, but mind and heart are no longer in accord with them. The same problem is encountered in Roman Catholicism, while in Protestantism, with its emphasis on free prayer, believers have increasing difficulties to find the words for their prayers (religious analphabetism). Altogether, people pray less frequently (Pew Research Center 2014). One explanation draws upon the work of Charles Taylor: our ability to pray depends upon experiencing ourselves as ‘already opened to the divine as other to us and yet as in intimate communication with us’ (Desmond 2016: 291). In the modern era, however, we experience ourselves as ‘buffered selves’, as ‘not open and porous and vulnerable to a world of spirits and powers’ and the transcendent in general (Taylor 2007: 27).

4.1 Petitionary prayer and intercession

Petitionary prayer is simply asking, praying for things to happen. Friedrich Heiler (1892–1967), in his survey of prayer in religions across the world, calls this ‘the prototype of all prayer’ (Heiler 1932: 1). For many Christian theologians, this is the most basic form of prayer, the heart of prayer, or even its only form. This is reflected in the original meaning of the words we use for prayer in both in the biblical languages (the basic meaning of pll in Hebrew is to intervene, to interpose, and seems to point in the direction of petition for others, that is intercession proseuchomai in Greek is a combination of pros, to, and euchomai, to express a wish) and in modern languages (to pray in English, prier in French, pregare in Italian, beten in German; although prezar in Spanish means rather to read, to recite). Karl Barth affirms the central place of petition in prayer in the following way:

while prayer is a matter of worship and penitence, it is not so in the first instance. In the first instance, it is an asking, a seeking and a knocking directed towards God; a wishing, a desiring and a requesting presented to God. (Church Dogmatics [CD] III/3; Barth 1956–1977: 268)

Luther went a step further in his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, of which petition is an essential part: ‘A prayer in which nothing is desired from God is no prayer’ (Luther 1977: 109). One argument for the importance of petition in Christian prayer is that petitions have a central place in the main exemplar of Christian prayer, the Lord’s Prayer (Luther 1977; CD III/3; Barth 1956–1977: 268).

In principle, anything can be the object of petition. Awareness of the fact that one prays with Jesus or in the name of Jesus, however, should lead one to focus especially on those who are disadvantaged: the ill, the poor, the homeless, those in prison, etc. In the present time, Black people and ethnic minority groups who are victims of racism and the Earth which is the victim of human-caused global warming may also be considered as especially appropriate beneficiaries of prayer (Carvalhaes 2021). If the object of petition is incompatible with God’s will, it falls under the proviso of Jesus’ saying, ‘[n]ot my will, but your will be done’ (Matt 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42).

We have seen that prayer is a communicative act. Communication either takes place within a relationship or establishes a relationship. Petitionary prayer makes a number of assumptions about the relationship between God and the petitioner. Firstly, by asking God for things to happen, the person praying expresses their dependence upon God (Brümmer 2008: 33). Secondly, this type of prayer presupposes that it is possible that God may be influenced by prayer. If that possibility would a priori be excluded, it would not make sense to ask things of God (see section 6.6). Thirdly, petitionary prayer assumes that God is an agent who is able to bring about the state of affairs requested in the prayer. Depending on the favour requested, this may include the power to act both inside and outside the universe as we know it. Fourthly, petitionary prayer also makes it possible, once the requested state of affairs has been obtained, to experience that state of affairs as granted by God and thus as an answer to prayer. For this, it is not necessary that the believer has proof that God has indeed been influenced by prayer, or even that God is in a special way responsible for the actualization of the requested state of affairs.

Intercession is petitionary prayer on behalf of others. Like other forms of petitionary prayer, it presupposes that God may be influenced by it. In practice, however, it also influences the petitioners, increasing their sensitivity to the problems of the persons for whom they are praying, and encouraging them to make themselves available for contributing to the actualization of that for which they pray. Christians believe that divine agency is often mediated by human beings through whom God acts (see section 5.10).

4.2 Worship, adoration, and praise

Theologians sometimes object to the idea that petition is the heart of prayer on the grounds that this makes prayer into a human-centred, and even selfish activity; prayer should be God-centred rather than human-centred. These theologians prefer worship, adoration, and praise as purely God-centred activities: in these types of prayer, they argue, the stress falls on the divine sovereignty, greatness, strength, or perfection; and by concentrating on these rather than on their own wishes and desires, human beings transcend their own natural egocentricity (Calkins 1911: 492–493). Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) expresses this sentiment with respect to worship as follows: ‘worship and prayer […] must never be treated as equivalents. For worship is essentially disinterested […] but prayer is only in some of its aspects disinterested. One offers, the other asks’ (Underhill 1937: 9). ‘Worship is the response of the creature to the Eternal’, and it is ‘the […] vision of God […] which is the first cause of all worship’ (Underhill 1937: 3–4).

Additionally, for process theologian Charles Hartshorne, worship rather than prayer is ‘the prime religious reality’ (Hartt 1963: 767; cf. Hartshorne 1962: 40). His idea is that God is worthy of worship (worshipful) because God is perfect, and that worship is the natural reaction to a perfect being (Hartshorne 1962: 40, 81). Hartshorne also provides a definition of worship: ‘To worship X is to “love” X “with all one’s heart and all one’s mind and all one’s soul and all one’s strength”’ (Hartshorne 1962: 40). For Hartshorne, then, the mere love of God constitutes worship. However, as the term is used in this article, it means the communication or expression of love that constitutes worship (cf. White 2012: 2), and this expression may take place either in private devotion or in public liturgy.

Worship, like adoration, is due to God only; saints can be the object of veneration, but not of worship or adoration. In the words of the Catholic Catechism: ‘Adoration is the first attitude of man acknowledging that he is a creature before his Creator. It exalts the greatness of the Lord who made us’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] 2628). Worship and adoration are closely related; the term worship – contracted from worthship – focuses rather on the outward acknowledgment of worth, while adoration is rather a matter of the heart.

While worship and adoration are directed at Godself, God is praised for something. God may be praised for God’s mercy, goodness, love, or any other attribute, or for a state of affairs in the world perceived as manifesting the attribute in question.

4.3 Confession

There are two types of confessions: confessions of sins and confessions of faith. A confession of sins is an acknowledgement that one has sinned, usually followed by an entreaty for forgiveness. Prayers of confession are part of the liturgies of various churches; in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eucharist begins with the Confiteor. Within liturgies, confessions of sins usually take place at the beginning on the supposition that this loosening of the ties of sin enables believers more fruitfully to participate in the liturgy. Prayers of confession are also part of private prayer, both within and outside church buildings. Generally, prayers in which sins are confessed end with a prayer for forgiveness. The sacrament of confession as it is practiced in some churches is to be distinguished from prayers of confession.

Confessions of faith characteristically take place before a believer is admitted to a sacrament (baptism, Eucharist, ordination). The Apostles’ Creed probably goes back to the baptismal creed of the church of Rome, the Nicene Creed to doctrinal decisions taken at the ecumenical councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381). By praying a creed in the liturgy, believers commit themselves to God; in this context, creeds are to be interpreted as parallel to, for instance, marriage vows, rather than as lists of statements believed to be true (Lash 2002: 18–19; see section 9.4).

4.4 Lamentation and thanksgiving

Like petition and intercession, lamentation and thanksgiving are connected with the needs and desires of human beings. But while petition and intercession precede the desired state of affairs, lamentation and thanksgiving follow it: lamentation when it has not materialized, thanksgiving when it has. The prayer of thanksgiving most prominent in Christianity is the thanksgiving of Jesus for bread and wine at the Last Supper (Luke 22:19–20), which subsequently became a central part of the eucharistic liturgy.

4.5 Glossolalic prayer

Glossolalia, or ‘speaking in tongues’, is a prayer practice mentioned several times in the letters of Paul (see section 2.2), who tried to curb this practice (1 Cor 14). Apparently, he was successful, for it became obsolete soon after New Testament times. It is rarely mentioned by the church fathers, and during the Reformation John Calvin (1509–1564) argued that gifts of the Spirit like glossolalia and healing ceased at the end of the Apostolic Age (this is known as cessationism). In the seventeenth century, glossolalia is found among the Quakers, and in the nineteenth century among the early Mormons. In the early twentieth century, speaking in tongues became characteristic of the Pentecostal movement, where it was seen as evidence that one had received the baptism with the Holy Spirit. From the 1960s onwards, groups within mainline Protestant and Catholic churches were influenced by Pentecostal beliefs and formed the charismatic movement, in which glossolalia is also practised. Glossolalic prayer is primarily associated with situations in which people are free to extemporize (Samarin 1976: 39) and often expresses praise or thanksgiving. The other function of glossolalia is that of prophecy; in that case, however, glossolalia is not a form of prayer.

5.1 Prayer and words

It has been stated above that paradigm cases of prayer use language as medium of communication. In mystical prayer, however, prayer tends to become wordless, speaking to God tends to develop into silent contemplation of God, active meditation into passive experience, until at last the believer becomes one with God in ecstatic union. There is a good case to be made that when this happens and words disappear altogether, meditation and contemplation are no longer prayer (cf. Jungmann 1978: 43–45). Thus Friedrich Heiler claims:

This ecstatic union with God can only be called prayer by the use of an inaccurate metaphor. In these cases of ecstasy there is no such consciousness of the difference between ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ as is essential to all prayer. (Heiler 1932: 174)

However, the distinction between prayer on the one hand, and meditation and contemplation on the other is not sharp and not all agree that it should be made.

5.2 Prayer and bodily posture

Prayer is an act of the person, and not of the mind only. Therefore, the whole body is involved (Ratzinger 2000: 190–191). Posture, movements, and facial expression matter (Heiler 1932: 40). We have seen above that in the Bible and in the early church, prayer postures vary. Standing, standing with hands extended, sitting, and kneeling are still practised today, and so are lying prostrate (e.g. of a Roman Catholic ordinand during the litany of all saints) and walking around (e.g. while praying the breviary or liturgy of hours). Which attitudes are considered appropriate is largely dependent on which attitudes are (or were) considered to be appropriate in similar communication among human beings (e.g. with parents, a master, or a chief; Heiler 1932: 40–42).

5.3 Prayer and orientation

We have seen above that when the Jerusalem temple had been built, Jews praying outside Jerusalem prayed in its direction. From the early church onwards, Christian prayer was directed towards the east, probably because at the second coming Christ was expected to come from the east. Crosses were hung both in churches and in private houses to indicate the direction of prayer (Lang 2009: 35–46; cf. McGowan 2014: 194; for possible Jewish roots, see Barker 2003: 32–33). Up to the present day, churches are oriented towards the east, though the motivation has shifted: nowadays the rising sun in the east is seen as a symbol of the risen Christ. In some churches, such as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, private prayers outside the church also take place facing east.

5.4 Prayer and clothes

In 1 Cor 11:5–7, Paul argues that women should cover their head will praying, while men ought to pray with naked heads. Contemporary evidence indicates that in this, Paul was arguing for a widely accepted custom. In the early church, a number of church fathers accept this custom (Phillips 2008: 52), and until recently, head covering in churches was required by most Christian churches. Often, women were supposed to cover their heads whenever they appeared in public. Both the norms of public decency and the rules of various churches have changed in recent years, a prime example being in the Roman Catholic Church, where obligatory head covering was abolished with the new Codex of Canon Law (1983).

5.5 Prayer, fasting, and exorcism

We have seen above that already in the Bible, prayer and fasting are connected. Fasting is connected both with repentance (1 Sam 7:6) and concentration on God (Acts 9:9, 11). The idea seems to be that fasting adds earnestness to prayer (cf. Jdt 4:13) and thus enhances its force. This explains why prayer is connected with fasting and exorcism in the early church, a connection to which the majority of manuscripts testify in Matt 17:21 and Mark 9:29. The oldest manuscripts do not have this connection, and therefore it is nowadays assumed that these aspects have been added after the first century (Cranfield 1977: 304–305). At whatever point this connection was established, it is still made in present-day exorcism.

5.6 Prayer and sleep

Giving up sleep in order to pray is a well-known Christian practice, found most prominently in those orders and congregations which pray a night office. This practice is rooted both in Jesus’ own prayer practice (Luke 6:12; 9:28–29), in the expectation of Jesus’ second coming (1 Thess 5:1–6; Taft 1985: 15–16), and in the commandment to pray ceaselessly (Luke 18:1; Eph 6:18; 1 Thess 5:17). We find traces of it throughout the history of the church, beginning with the New Testament (Acts 16:25). One form this practice can take is that of the Greek monks called akoimetoi (‘non-sleepers’), who carried on a perpetual office in alternating groups. We find various forms of this among later orders and congregations in the West, for example laus perennis (the continuous praise of God; Jungmann 1978: 48–49) and perpetual eucharistic adoration. Another, more moderate form is that of the night office (e.g. Apostolic Tradition 41.11–16; cf. McGowan 2014: 201–203, 211; Taft 1985: 165–190).

5.7 Prayer and the mind

It has been emphasized several times above that prayer is a communicative act of the whole person. Human communication has a material aspect: it takes place through words, facial expression, bodily gestures, and attitudes, etc. In ideal cases, this material or external aspect expresses an internal aspect: the heart or mind of the person communicating. Prayer also has this dual aspect: it involves external expression of inner feelings, emotions, or thoughts. In some periods of history (e.g. in the Old Testament) and in some forms of prayer (e.g. the communal office as prayed in monasteries) the external aspect of prayer is strongly emphasized, whereas in other periods of history (e.g. the present time) and in other forms of prayer (e.g. adoration), the internal aspect receives more emphasis. That the external aspect of prayer was so important in Old Testament times (not only in Israel, but also in the Ancient Near East in general) likely stems from the conviction that without the external aspect of communication, communication would fail. When the concept of God became more abstract, the idea took root that since God knows our heart and mind, the external movements of prayer can be omitted without a communication failure resulting. Once this is accepted, in discussions of prayer the focus shifts more and more to heart and mind. For Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), for example prayer is an act of reason (ST IiaIIae 83 1c; Aquinas 1981: 1522).

It should be noted that when the external aspect of prayer is considered of vital importance, the internal aspect is never deemed irrelevant. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, for example, is reported to have said ‘The point is not that the liturgy says what we mean, but rather that we mean what the liturgy says’ (De Souza 2007). Elsewhere he claims: ‘What, then, makes it possible for us to pray is our ability to affiliate our own minds with the pattern of fixed texts […] and to surrender to their meanings’ (Heschel 1945: 165). The same applies to praying the Divine Office in the Catholic Church. On the one hand, Aquinas explains ‘it is not necessary that prayer should be attentive throughout; because the force of the original attention with which one sets about praying’ suffices to make the prayer meaningful’ (ST IiaIIae 83 13c; Aquinas 1981: 1542). But on the other hand, Joseph Ratzinger explains:

In his Rule, Saint Benedict coined the formula Mens nostra concordet voci nostrae – our mind must be in accord with our voice (Rule, 19, 7). Normally, thought proceeds word; it seeks and formulates the word. But praying the Psalms and liturgical prayer in general is exactly the other way around: The word, the voice, goes ahead of us, and our mind must adapt to it. For on our own we human beings do not ‘know how to pray as we ought’ (Romans 8:26). (Ratzinger 2007: 131)

Prayer, then, may never become mere lip service; our mind should be engaged with it as well. We should pay attention to what we pray and concentrate on the one to whom we are praying. This becomes even more important when prayer is seen as the primary means for entertaining a relationship of personal fellowship with God. This is the view of many Protestant theologians. Friedrich Heiler, for instance, a Roman Catholic who became a Lutheran and who wrote an important phenomenological study of prayer, wrote: ‘Prayer is […] a living communion of the religious man with God, conceived as personal and present in experience, a communion which reflects the forms of the social relations of humanity. This is prayer in essence’ (Heiler 1932: 358). And according to John Calvin, ‘prayer is the familiar intercourse of believers with God’ (Inst: Book III Ch. 20, section 16; Calvin 1986). If prayer is intended to entertain a relationship, the mindless recitation of prayer formulas is doomed to fail.

There is another way in which prayer and the mind are related. It is not only the case that our mind should be involved in prayer, but also that our prayer reflects our belief in God and our belief in God is reflected in our prayer. This is encapsulated in a well-known Latin phrase: lex orandi, lex credenda. This adagium, which is adapted from a phrase of Prosper of Aquitaine (390–c.465; Sarot 2012: 288–293), claims that the ‘law of prayer’ equals the ‘law of faith’. According to Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001), this means that prayer is ‘a hermeneutical key to the doctrine of God’ – in other words, that the Christian doctrine of God can be developed on the basis of the Christian prayer life (Ebeling 1979: 193). This is precisely what Vincent Brümmer (1932–2021) has done in his contemporary classic What Are We Doing When We Pray? , in which he develops a doctrine of God on the basis of the practice of Christian prayer (Brümmer 2008). According to Sarah Coakley, theology should be rooted prayer; theology that is not based in silent, contemplative prayer runs the risk of becoming superficial (Coakley 2013b: 15–16; criticized by co*cksworth 2020; see also Coakley 2013a; Prevot 2015).

5.8 Prayer and the heart

What we said above about prayer and the mind also applies to prayer and the heart. Again, what Heschel says about the importance of the heart in Judaism applies equally to Christianity:

There is a specific difficulty of Jewish prayer. There are laws: how to pray, when to pray, what to pray. There are fixed times, fixed ways, fixed texts. On the other hand, prayer is worship of the heart, the outpouring of the soul. […] Not the words we utter, the service of the lips, but the way in which it is performed, the devotion of the heart to what the words contain, the consciousness of speaking under His eyes, is the pith of prayer. (Heschel 1953: 162, 161)

And Heschel adds: ‘The text is given once and for all, the inner devotion comes into being every time anew’. But, he continues, the question is: ‘Is the heart always ready – three times a day – to bring forth devotion? And if it is, is its devotion in tune with what the text proclaims?’ (Heschel 1953: 165). Devotion is the term that is often used for the love and loyalty that is fitting for those who pray.

The importance of prayer of the heart was emphasized especially in the Eastern form of mysticism called hesychasm, from the Greek term hēsychia (silence, stillness). Hesychasm emphasizes the importance of non-discursive, imageless prayer; by freeing itself from all images, the heart is prepared for its meeting with God. In some strands of hesychasm, the constant repetition of the Jesus prayer plays an important role, and some restrict the use of the term hesychasm to the form of mysticism that practices the Jesus prayer (see section 9.7; Ware 1986b: 176–177; 1986a: 243–244; Lossky 1957: 209–211).

During the Reformation, it was Calvin who argued that prayer should come from the heart: ‘It is fully evident that unless voice and song, if interposed in prayer, spring from deep feeling of heart, neither has any value or profit in the least with God’ (Calvin 1986: 74 [first published 1536]).

5.9 Prayer and singing

Prayer and music are closely connected. In the Psalms, over 130 references to music appear (Kligman 2005: 1779). Community singing was part of early Christian worship (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16; Quasten 1941: 151–157) and by the fourth century psalmody can be found among the desert monks (McGowan 2014: 205). From the third century onwards, there was discussion about the singing of women in church; in reaction to the prominent role of women in heterodox groups (Quasten 1941: 157–158), some (e.g. Jerome) thought that Paul’s teaching that women should be silent in church (1 Cor 14:34) also applied to singing.

Many liturgical prayers are, or can be, sung, and the Christian tradition views the practice of singing prayers as especially valuable. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) is often credited with having said ‘[h]e who sings, prays twice’ (e.g. CCC 1156), but this quote does not appear in his work and was not attributed to him before the twentieth century (Zuhlsdorf 2006). This is not to deny that singing gives additional value to prayer; it can both express and evoke feelings and emotions by a combination of the musical elements of melody, tempo, rhythm, key (Garrigan 2022: 608–609; cf. Wald-Fuhrmann et al. 2020). Moreover, words memorized in hymns or songs are more easily remembered than mere texts (Slee 2022: 664).

One church leader and theologian who was convinced of the power of music was John Calvin. He urged his followers to return to the apostles’ practice of singing Psalms, and to do so in the vernacular, so that they could understand what they are singing (Begbie 2013: 13). Calvin appreciates the affective power of singing the Psalms: it ‘can incite us to lift up our hearts to God and move us to an ardour in invoking and exalting with praises the glory of his Name’ (Calvin 2006: 53). Contemporary research has established the positive affective power of Gregorian chant with its lack of metrum and fluid rhythm. Gregorian chant facilitates meditation and concentration. What Calvin will not have foreseen, is that this effect has been shown to occur even when the words are not understood (Janssen 2001).

One aspect of Gregorian chant must have been appreciated by Calvin: the lack of musical instruments. Calvin rejected the use of musical instruments, even to accompany the congregational singing. This rejection was motivated both by his rejection of Judaism and Catholicism, which did use these instruments, and by the value he attached to ‘verbal articulation in worship’ (Begbie 2013: 20). Soon after, however, his followers no longer heeded this ban on musical instruments, and nowadays the organ is the characteristic musical instrument of Calvinist churches.

5.10 Prayer and action

Christians believe that God acts in the world both directly (immediately) and indirectly (mediately). In the terms Aquinas uses, God is the causa prima (primary cause) who can also act through causae secundae (secondary causes; ST Ia 22–23; Aquinas 1981: 120–133). On this belief, one cannot pray for things to happen without making oneself available to help bringing about the things for which one prays (in so far as one can help, of course). Intercession is not a way of evading one’s duties and getting God to fulfil them in one’s place (Brümmer 2008: 66).

Though there is this link between prayer and action, it is a common prejudice in our time that a prayerful life should be a life of withdrawal from society rather than an active life. This view is often supported by an interpretation of the story of Martha and Maria in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 10:38–42), according to which Martha, by being busy looking after Jesus and the apostles, fails to focus on the one thing that is really important: sitting at Jesus’ feet (Passmore 2000: 179). On this interpretation, loving God and loving one’s neighbours become incompatible rivals, and only the detachment from everything else allows one to concentrate on loving God (Jantzen 1995: 10–11). This is in flagrant contradiction with the spirituality of the Rule of Benedict which strives to keep prayer and labour in balance (ora et labora: pray and work). Grace Jantzen has pointed out that it is also inconsistent with what we know about the lives of many Christian mystics. A recent example of a mystic who precisely in the years in which he was politically active, also rapidly advanced in faith and prayer, was Dag Hammarskjöld (Van Dusen 1967: 96, 177; Hammarskjöld 1964).

5.11 Material prayer aids

In obedience to a rather vague commandment in the Old Testament (Exod 13:9–16; Deut 6:8, 11:18) that is made more specific in the oral Torah, Jews wear tefillin (phylacteries: small black boxes with texts from the Torah attached to leather straps) during prayer. They are placed on arms and head, mostly by adult men, among liberal Jews sometimes also by women. Their function is to remind the persons who are praying of God’s intervention during the Exodus.

Christians sometimes use strings of beads when praying. By around 1080, it became common for lay people who could not read, if they were required to pray a number of Psalms as penance, to pray Pater Nosters instead. In order to facilitate counting, from the twelfth century onwards a string for counting prayers called the paternoster was used. Within approximately one century this developed into a series of thrice fifty Hail Marys: the rosary. Subsequently, ‘mysteries’ (i.e. events from the life of Christ to meditate on) were added, giving a christological twist to this Marian devotion. These received more or less their definitive form when the Dominican Alan of Rupe (d.1475) distinguished fifteen mysteries, one for each decade of Hail Marys: Five Joyful, five Sorrowful, and five Glorious Mysteries (Jungmann 1978: 104–109). During and after the Reformation, the rosary remained popular in the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII alone devoted sixteen encyclicals and apostolic letters to it (Jungmann 1978: 161). In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the five luminous mysteries to the rosary, thus bringing the total number of mysteries to twenty. Rosary rings (ten Hail Marys and one Lord’s Prayer) are also used.

Some Christian denominations use prayer candles or votive candles to symbolize intercessory or petitionary prayer. When favours have been received in response to prayer, votive offerings may be left in a church or chapel. These votive offerings symbolize the gratitude of those who give them; in many cases they are directly connected with the favour that was received. Think, for instance, of the crutches left in the grotto of Lourdes (Notermans and Jansen 2011), and of ex votos (votive offerings) in the form of the small models of the part of the body that was healed. Votive offerings are known in Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism. Roman Catholics sometimes use devotional scapulars (two rectangular pieces of cloth connected by bands and worn across the shoulders) to express a particular devotion, for example, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In a similar way, devotional medals may be used. A relatively new phenomenon are prayer cubes: large dice with a prayer on each side mainly used to teach children to pray.

5.12 Digital prayer aids

A very recent phenomenon is the use of mobile prayer apps, which may come to impact Christian prayer practices in a major way (Dugan 2019; Karis 2020; see Theology and Technology).

6.1 Introduction

Petitionary prayer and intercession, taken at face value, aim to convince God to change the course of events in the world. Thus, we can inquire whether these types of prayer have an effect on God and on the world. Many believers, moreover, have argued that these types of prayer also affect the persons praying. Here, we will discuss the alleged effects of prayer on the world, on the person praying (section 6.5), and on God (6.6), in that order. As to the alleged effects of petitionary prayer on the world, we will discuss subsequently empirical experiments that were conducted to establish the effect on prayer of the world (6.2), scientific objections to the idea that prayer could have such influence (6.3), and moral objections to the same (6.4).

6.2 Empirical experiments

Petitionary and intercessory prayers may request favours beyond the world as we know it (e.g. that God may receive one’s deceased spouse in his eternal glory) or within the world as we know it (e.g. that one’s child may recover from a serious illness). These types of prayer presuppose that praying makes a difference, and with the latter type, since the difference requested is a difference within this world, it seems reasonable to suppose that if the prayer were granted, one would be able to notice it. Since petitionary prayer falls under the proviso of ‘Not my will, but your will be done,’ one would expect not every prayer to be granted. On the other hand, it does not seem a priori unreasonable to suppose that if one could do research on a large number of prayers, one should be able to establish a certain positive effect.

A possible objection against this type of research, namely that it would be unacceptable from a religious point of view, seems to be undermined by several Old Testament stories. For example, Elijah’s prayer contest on Mount Carmel (1 Kgs 18:20–46), or Ahaz’s request for a sign in Isaiah 7. The father of empirical research on the efficacy of prayer is the nineteenth-century statistician Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911). In his 1872 article ‘Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer’ he argued that the many prayers of people for their sovereigns did not result in longer lives, and that the same applies to clergy. Moreover, people who pray do not have fewer stillborn babies than people who do not pray (Galton 1872). While Galton used statistical databases, later researchers would conduct empirical experiments, mostly on intercessory prayer for people in hospital. The best-known among these are Byrd 1988, Harris et al. 1999, MANTRA II (Krucoff et al. 2005), and STEP (Benson et al. 2006). While results vary, a 2006 meta-analysis concluded:

There is no scientifically discernible effect for IP [intercessory prayer] as assessed in controlled studies. Given that the IP literature […] has failed to produce significant findings in controlled trials, we recommend that further resources not be allocated to this line of research. (Masters, Spielmans and Goodson 2006)

In this meta-analysis, STEP is not included, but STEP primarily found a negative effect of intercessory prayer among those patients who knew they received intercessory prayer. Therefore, inclusion of STEP would not have changed their conclusions.

How should these results be evaluated from a theological point of view? C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) argued long before most of these experiments took place that this type of experiment is fundamentally misguided:

We shall be told, reasonably enough, that post hoc is not propter hoc. The thing we prayed for was going to happen anyway. Our action was irrelevant. Even a fellow-creature’s action which fulfils our request may not be caused by it; he does what we ask, but perhaps he would equally have done so without our asking. Some cynics will tell us that no woman ever married a man because he proposed to her: she always elicits the proposal because she has determined to marry him. In these human instances we believe, when we do believe, that our request was the cause, or a cause, of the other party’s action, because we have from deep acquaintance a certain impression of that party’s character. Certainly not by applying the scientific procedures – control experiments, etc. – for establishing causes. Similarly we believe, when we do believe, that the relation between our prayer and the event is not a mere coincidence only because we have a certain idea of God’s character. Only faith vouches for the connection. No empirical proof could establish it. (Lewis 1964: 48–49, original emphasis)

Empirical research can establish correlation, not causation. Moreover, some research strategies that are available in other empirical research, are not available in prayer research. For instance, in experiments on the efficacy of medicine, one randomly applies the medicine to one group and applies a placebo to the control group. In the case of prayer, however, this is impossible; there will always be people who pray for all ill people (‘send your blessing on all who are sick’), and these prayers will contaminate the results of the experiment. And finally, Richard Swinburne has pointed out that an omniscient God will know that specific prayers are part of an experiment, and may decide therefore to ignore these prayers (Swinburne 2006).

6.3 Scientific objections

Scientific objections to petitionary and intercessory prayer mostly regard the question whether it is possible for God to act in the world in response to prayer. Most atheists and some Christians consider the world as a closed system, a system that cannot be influenced from outside, or – stronger – a system to which there is no outside. Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) famously phrased this objection as follows:

It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe the New Testament world of spirits and miracles. (Bultmann et al. 1961: 5)

For Bultmann, the problem is that the world we live in is governed by natural laws; ‘a violation of the conformity to law which governs all nature […] is no longer tenable’ (Bultmann 1969: 261). Theologians have given several responses to this objection. They have argued that it is based on an outdated, deterministic view of science; Newtonian mechanics is deterministic, but it has been replaced by quantum mechanics, and according to quantum mechanics the laws of nature are statistical rather than deterministic (Hesse 1965: 37–38; Ward 1990: 86). This response evokes two new objections, however. According to the first, the indeterminism is epistemological rather than ontological; it characterizes our knowledge rather than the world around us (Barbour 1966: 291–301; cf. Hesse 1965: 38). According to the second objection, even if one accepts that the indeterminism is ontological, the question is to what extent this indeterminism at the micro-level also leads to an indeterminism at the macro-level (the level of objects observable by the naked eye). The fact that the role of chance at the micro-level has only recently been discovered, and that even those who think we are dealing with an ontological reality do not generally think that this reality undermines Newtonian physics at the macro-level, says it all. Even if God could act on reality at the micro-level, this seems insufficient from a religious point of view, because it makes no difference at the macro-level (Hansson 1991: 99).

A more recent attempt to understand divine action in terms of quantum mechanics is Robert John Russell’s Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action (NIODA) approach, which is based on the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (Russell 2008: 110–211). This approach is quite speculative, but not without merit (Qureshi-Hurst 2023).

Another attempt to understand divine action uses chaos theory, a mathematical theory about nonlinear dynamical systems that are extremely sensitive to initial conditions, resulting in, among other things, eventual unpredictability. This unpredictability is interpreted in two ways: as an epistemic limitation (if we would know more, the unpredictability would disappear) and ontologically (it points to the openness of nature). The second is the position of John Polkinghorne, who posits the possibility of God acting by means of ‘the input of pure information’ (Polkinghorne 2009: 85). Many, however, consider this ontological interpretation of unpredictability implausible, and the concept of ‘pure information input’ is scientifically problematic (Smedes 2002–2022.).

As things stand, many accept that there is no plausible explanation of divine action in the world. This leads some theologians to adopt a non-interventionist view of divine action. Bultmann, for instance, claims that the believer with the eyes of faith may see sequences of events governed by law as divine actions (Bultmann 1969: 25, 259), and thus as answers to prayer. The problem with this view is that for most believers, once they would accept that this is the way petitionary prayer works, they would lose the motivation to pray (Brümmer 2008: 28–30). Since, on the other hand, there is no scientific proof for the causal closure of the world (Polkinghorne 2009: xxiii), another option is open to believers. Those who assume that libertarian free agency is open to human beings – that is that human beings have real alternatives to choose from – assume that it is possible for mind to act on matter. By decisions one makes in one’s mind, one is able to perform basic actions (actions not caused by other actions one performs; Danto 1973). If finite human minds are able to perform basic actions – in their case, these would always be bodily movements – would an infinite mind not be able to do this as well? And if this infinite mind is not embodied, is it not conceivable that it would be able to do so wherever it wants to, in the universe it has created, parallel to the way human minds act on human bodies (Tracy 1984)?

In this way, one cannot show how God can act in the world, nor can one show that God can act in the world. All one can do is, is show that – assuming that there is a God, that this God has created the world and that the description of God as an infinite disembodied mind is not completely flawed – it is plausible to assume that God can act in the world and thus answer prayer. While this parallel serves to defend a type of divine agency that is often considered to be particularly problematic, we should add that believers mostly assume that God answers prayer also by other, less problematic types of action: by inspiring people and by acting through other people. Austin Farrer has called this ‘double agency’ (Farrer 1967: 68–85; for a contemporary reinterpretation of Aquinas’ theory of causa prima and causae secundae; see section 5.10). Finally, even if we assume that God acts in an interventionist way in response to prayer, this does not take away that Bultmann’s ‘eyes of faith’ are needed to perceive such responses to prayer. Without these eyes of faith, it is always possible either to provide natural explanations for what happens, or to claim that there is no explanation.

6.4 Moral objections

According to John Hick, the idea that God would answer petitionary prayer by intervening in the world is morally problematic. Suppose that person A prays for a safe arrival before he sets off on his journey. On the way, he has a car accident. The other passengers are killed, but A remains unharmed. Afterwards A thanks God for having saved him. Here, the following question can be asked: if God intervenes to save A, why doesn’t God also save the other people involved? Is that not immoral? More generally, if God regularly intervenes in the world, doesn’t that make the problem of evil much more unpalatable? (Hick 1999: 18; Hick’s own solution is that this type of prayer influences the way things go in the world in psychosomatic and telepathic ways, so that it is not God but we who are acting.)

Is it morally acceptable that God helps one person without helping another? Human beings may do so, because their resources are limited, and it is better to help one neighbour than to help none. God’s resources, however, are infinite. It is not clear, however, that an infinite number of favours granted in response to human prayers, would make the overall situation of humanity better. After all, it is precisely the regularity of nature that makes it possible to make predictions and calculate probabilities. It is regularity that enables us to learn from our mistakes and to increase our scientific knowledge. The fact that God has given us a world in which nature exhibits regularity is a reason for gratitude. Altogether, we would be worse off with constant intervention from God, which would result in chaos, than with less frequent intervention, which does not really undermine order and regularity (Brink 1992: 42). Thus, it is not the finitude of God’s resources, but the regularity of nature that sets a limit to God’s interventions in nature in reaction to prayer. If that is the case, one can understand why divine intervention must be the exception, and thus also why it might be useful to pray for such an exception, without this undermining the moral character of God.

6.5 The effect of prayer on the self

Sections 6.2–6.4 discussed the effect of prayer on the world. Those who do not believe that prayer can change the course of events in the world, like Bultmann, argue that prayer affects the person who prays instead. This is also the position of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804; Kant 1998; cf. Brümmer 2008: 18–22) and T. R. Miles (1923–2008; Miles 1959; cf. Brümmer 2008: 22–25). We have seen that the main problem for this non-interventionist view of divine action – which is in fact a view of absence of divine action – is that if believers accept it, they will lose the motivation to pray. If such accounts were true, that would be problematic for theology, for theology aims to articulate the Christian faith in an academically credible way from within. This is not to say, however, that there is no truth at all in these views. They are building on one aspect of traditional Christian views on prayer: the self-involving function of prayer. Augustine of Hippo explains this function in a way that is still helpful today:

Words […] are necessary for us so that we may be roused and may take note of what we are asking […] When we say ‘Thy kingdom come,’ it will come inevitably whether we wish it or not, but we stir up our own desire for that kingdom. […] When we say ‘Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors,’ we warn ourselves both what to ask and what to do that we may deserve to obtain mercy. When we say ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ we warn ourselves […] not to consent to any temptation through deception, not to yield through tribulation. (Letter 130; Augustine of Hippo 1953: 391–392)

In other words, one of the functions of prayer is that it changes the person who prays. One of the ways in which we are changed by prayer is that is we pray for something to happen, a possible result is that this stimulates us to contribute to bringing the desired state of affairs about (Brümmer 2008: 29, 117–131). Another way in which we may be changed by petitionary prayer is that when a desired state of affairs obtains, the fact that we have prayed for it enables us to experience it as an answer to our prayer (Brümmer 2008: 147–165).

6.6 The effect of prayer on God

Petitionary prayer seems to presuppose that God may by prayer be induced to intervene in the world, and that the course of events in the world may change because of this divine intervention. While scientists often have reservations about prayer having an effect on the world, it is theologians who have reservations about prayer having an effect on God. According to the concept of God that is common to Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and a large part of the Christian tradition, God exists in a timeless eternity and is immutable, omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. Each of these attributes throws doubt on the possibility of God changing in reaction to prayer. If God is perfectly good, God would do the best for us anyhow and not wait until he is asked to do so. If God is omniscient, he knows what we need and how to bring it about; his omnipotence will guarantee his ability to do so. Again, he will not wait until he is asked to do so. If God exists outside of time and is immutable, any change in God is ruled out a priori.

Those who hold this classical concept of God either reinterpret petitionary prayer as an expression of wishes, rather than as questions trying to move God to act, or see petitionary prayer as part of God’s eternal plan for this world. ‘We pray, not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that we may impetrate that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers’ (ST IIaIIae 83 2c; Aquinas 1981: 1533). On this view, each petitionary prayer was pre-ordained by God from eternity as a means to God’s eternal ‘reaction,’ which may lead to (again: eternally pre-ordained) states of affairs in the world. ‘Reaction’ has been placed here between quotation marks because it is not really a re-action; it is an action simultaneous with the prayer, which may by those existing in time be experienced as a reaction coming after the prayer. Thus, God’s will is eternal and immutable, but the effects of God’s will are temporal. Those who advocate this position will argue that it does justice to the absolute reliability of God. In a term used by Paul Helm, it is a no-risk view of the providence of God (Helm 1993). Those who disagree will argue that on this no-risk view, a real personal relation with God is impossible; God becomes, rather, a ventriloquist with the human believer as a dummy. Moreover, this position implies a deterministic view of the universe.

The label currently used for the alternative position is ‘open theism.’ Open theists hold that the future is open (there are real alternatives), God interacts with human beings in time, and God is able to change his mind in response to prayer. This means that God’s eternity is interpreted as sempiternity (existence in time without beginning and end), God’s immutability is not absolute (but should be interpreted as perfect reliability), God’s omnipotence respects the free agency of human beings and God’s omniscience does not include full foreknowledge (because free decisions that have not yet been made cannot yet be known). The label ‘open theism’ emerged among North American evangelicals in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century and evoked a heated debate among North American evangelicals and Protestants (Pinnock et al. 1994). However, similar positions (combining sempiternity with limited foreknowledge and immutability) had been held previously in Britain by, for example, Peter T. Geach, John R. Lucas, and Richard Swinburne, and by many others throughout the Christian tradition. All of these maintain that God can really be affected by petitionary prayer.

Still, this does not solve the problem of the pointlessness or superfluity of petitionary prayer (cf. Davison 2017: 96–113). If God exists in time and thus is not absolutely immutable, God can change, but if he is omniscient and knows our needs, perfectly good and wills the best for us, and omnipotent and can bring about this best, he will not need our prayer and do the best, regardless of our prayer. In other words, according to this objection God will never do something because of our prayer. Eleonore Stump answers this objection by arguing that if God were to provide in our every need without our asking, this would either be ‘overwhelming spoiling’ (spoiling in the sense that human beings would receive everything they could ever want and as a result become self-indulgent) – or oppressively overwhelming (in the sense of meddlesome interference). Only by making some goods dependent on our asking God for them, God enables us to remain in a relationship of healthy ‘friendship’ with God (Stump 1979; cf. Brümmer 2008: 54). Note, however, that Stump’s answer applies primarily to petitionary prayers for oneself, and less so to petitionary prayers for others. Why would God require petitionary prayer for others? In this connection, Michael Murray and Kurt Meyers argue: ‘One reason why God may make provision of certain goods contingent upon corporate requests is because His creatures assisting one another in this way generates interdependence among believers – an interdependence that fosters the sort of unity God demands of the church’ (Murray and Meyers 1994: 327).

7.1 God

In his Commentary on the Psalms Augustine states:

When we speak to God in prayer we do not separate the Son from God, and when the body of the Son prays it does not separate its head from itself. The one sole Savior of his body is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us, prays in us, and is prayed to by us. He prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our head, and he is prayed to by us as our God. (Enarrationes in Psalmos 85, 1; Augustine of Hippo 2002: 220)

In this rich and often-quoted passage Augustine combines several views of prayer; on one of these, when Christian communities pray to God the Father, it is Jesus Christ who prays in them. They are the Body of Christ and after the Ascension it is their task to continue his prayer. This line of thought is the motivation behind the liturgy of the hours as prayed in the Catholic Church. It explains why the Psalter constitutes the main part of the liturgy of the hours; the Psalter was Jesus’ prayer book, and by praying the Psalms the church continues Jesus’ prayer (Congregation for Divine Worship 1993: 108). The Liturgy of the Hours is therefore characterized as ‘a source of piety and nourishment for personal prayer’ (Congregation for Divine Worship 1993: 28; cf. 14 and Second Vatican Council [SC] 90) rather than as ‘personal prayer’. In this respect, the Liturgy of the Hours is like other forms of liturgy: in liturgy, personal prayer can have a place, but not all liturgy is personal prayer. Therefore, the church prays with Christ (Congregation for Divine Worship 1993: 2; cf. SC 99). This praying with Christ requires the use of the words of another, for example the Psalms or the Lord’s Prayer. The idea is that our minds adapt to these words (see section 5.7). According to this view, prayer is primarily a responsibility of the community, since it is the community that is the body of Christ. When our own, personal feelings differ from those our prayer is expressing – for example when we are mourning and our prayer is rejoicing – we must be aware that we are praying in the name of the church, not in our own name (Congregation for Divine Worship 1993: 108). Despite the efforts of the Second Vatican Council to encourage lay people to participate in the liturgy of the hours, in parishes and even in cathedrals, communal praying of the liturgy of the hours remains an exception (Taft 1985: xi–xii). Believers have difficulties praying in their own name, let alone in the name of Christ or that of the church as his body.

7.2 The community

When we say that in the liturgy of the hours, Christ as the head prays in and through the church as his body, we assume that it is the church or the community that prays. This is also assumed in the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Our Father.’ Liturgical prayer is prayer of the Christian community, either of the community gathered together in one place (e.g. a church), or of the community scattered over the world but convening simultaneously in prayer. According to Catholic and Orthodox views, prayer is primarily a responsibility of the community. This has to do with the belief that God’s relation with humanity is primarily a relation with the people of Israel in the Old Testament and with the church in the New Testament; individual believers relate to God as members of these communities. This primacy of communal prayer is well expressed by the Orthodox theologian Alexei Khomiakov (1804–1860):

If any one believes, he is in the communion of faith; if he loves, he is in the communion of love; if he prays, he is in the communion of prayer. Wherefore no one can rest his hope on his own prayers, and every one who prays asks the whole church for intercession, not as if he had doubts of the intercession of Christ, the one Advocate, but in the assurance that the whole church ever prays for all her members. (Khomiakov 1895: 216)

From a Catholic perspective, it was expressed by Pope Pius XII:

Liturgical prayer, being the public supplication of the illustrious Spouse of Jesus Christ, is superior in excellence to private prayers. But this superior worth does not at all imply contrast or incompatibility between these two kinds of prayer. (Pope Pius XII 1947: 37)

7.3 The individual believer

Communal prayer and personal prayer are not opposed to each other (see section 7.2). There is no communal prayer without the joint prayer of a number of individual believers, and communal prayer is a source and school of individual prayer. While there is no opposition between the two, there is a difference of emphasis between traditions. In Catholic and Orthodox traditions, communal prayer has a central place, whereas in Protestantism individual prayer is more important. For Calvin the ideal form of prayer is not the prayer of a community of believers, but private prayer behind closed doors. This has to do with the fact that he sees the relationship between God and humanity primarily as a relationship between God and individual human beings. Believers should in all openness and honesty, in their own words, put before God the concerns that are of innermost importance for them, so that their relationship with God can deepen. This should be done with reverence and attention, since a beloved requires attentions and God reverence. The command to pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17) applies primarily to private prayer, rather than to the public prayer of the church, that is by necessity limited to certain hours (Inst: Book III Ch. 20, section 29; Calvin 1986). This does of course not mean that Calvin is in any way opposed to community singing and praying; on the contrary (Inst: Book III Ch. 20, sections 30 and 32; Calvin 1986)! His focus is, however, on the intimate intercourse between God and the individual believer opening their heart to God (Calvin, Commentary on Isaiah: ad 63:16; Calvin 1948: 353–354). Therefore, it is for Calvin and other Protestants important that one uses one’s own words rather than formulaic prayer (3.3).

8.1 Prayer within ecumenical relationships

Prayer is intrinsically directed at the unity of the church. All those who pray the Lord’s Prayer not only express the way they relate to God, but also express their relationship to each other. On his visit to the World Council of Churches in Geneva on 21 June 2018, Pope Francis expressed this as follows:

Whenever we say ‘Our Father,’ we feel an echo within us of our being sons and daughters, but also of our being brothers and sisters. Prayer is the oxygen of ecumenism. Without prayer, communion becomes stifling and makes no progress, because we prevent the wind of the Spirit from driving us forward. Let us ask ourselves: How much do we pray for one another? The Lord prayed that we would be one: do we imitate him in this regard? (Pope Francis 2018)

In so far as the Lord’s Prayer provides the basic structure of all our prayers, all our prayers are – at least implicitly – directed at unity. Even when we do not pray explicitly for unity, and even when we do not pray together with Christians from other churches and denominations, our prayer is never entirely separate from the ecumenical quest for unity. For this reason, prayer is an ecumenical activity par excellence (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity 1993: 108–115; Conference of European Churches 2001: 5; Kasper 2008: 28–31). To promote joint prayer, there is an annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, celebrated between 18–25 January, between the feasts of Peter and Paul. The prayers for this week are prepared by churches in a particular region, finetuned by an international editorial team of World Council of Churches and Roman Catholic representatives, and published by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the World Council of Churches’ Commission on Faith and Order.

While joint prayer is recommended, it is important that the ecumenical partners participating in such prayer show regard for the sensibilities of the ecumenical partners (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity 1993: 119). Some of the differences between Catholic and Protestant prayer have already been mentioned above, with Catholics (and the Orthodox) prioritizing communal and liturgical prayer (with fixed texts), while Protestants prioritize personal prayer which often don’t use texts at all, with prayers composed as they are spoken. In addition to these differences, some forms of prayer that are part of the Roman Catholic tradition are not accepted within Protestant churches. These are as follows:

• One such form of prayer is praying for the dead. In the early church, prayer for the deceased was quite common. Biblical support was found in 2 Macc 12:38–46 and its acceptance played a role in the development of belief in purgatory. It continues up to the present day in both the Catholic Church and in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches. On the Protestant view, one’s final destiny is decided at the moment one dies, and prayer for the dead is pointless because either one is saved or one is damned, and once that has been decided prayer can no longer change it (Heb 9:27).
• In all Christian denominations, one can invoke the prayer of fellow Christians. In the Catholic Church and in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, these include those deceased Christians who are now in heaven: the saints. This is connected with the idea that the communion of saints, the spiritual union of the members of the church, also includes those who have died and now live with God. The invocation of saints presupposes that the saints in heaven also pray (a biblical idea: Rev 8:3–4, cf. Luke 16:19–31) and that they can hear our prayers (an idea not found in the Bible, but present in the Christian tradition from the early church onwards). In Protestantism, which has a different view of the communion of saints, this type of prayer is rejected because Christ is the one Mediator. Catholic prayers to saints are in many respects comparable to Jewish prayers to tzaddikim, often at their graves (Fried 2020).
• In the Catholic Church and in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, one can also invoke the prayer of angels. This was already done in first-century Judaism (1 Enoch 39:5, 99:3, 104:1; Bar-Ilan 2004) and is also found in Rev 8:3–4. In Protestantism this type of prayer is rejected for the same reason as the invocation of the saints is rejected.

In ecumenical prayer meetings in which Protestants are present, these types of prayer are to be avoided if they are to be acceptable to all.

8.2 Interreligious prayer

In 1986, Pope John Paul II convened an interreligious prayer meeting with leaders of various religions in Assisi. In his opening address, the Pope made it clear that these religious leaders came together to pray for peace, but not to pray together. Representatives of each religion would pray separately in their own traditional rites (Pope John Paul II 1986). Subsequent similar meetings took place in 1993, 2002, and 2020. These prayer meetings mark a next stage in the involvement of the Catholic Church in interreligious dialogue that began at Vatican II. In most cases, interreligious prayer takes place with partners with whom one has been in dialogue for some time.

Interreligious prayer meetings may take three forms (Henderson 2011: 12):

• A single-faith service with interfaith guests: The host community determines the liturgy, not hiding its own identity, but taking into account the guests. The guests adapt to the host community: in a Christian church, men take off their hats; in a synagogue, men put on yarmulkes (and men and women sit separately, if that is the custom); in a mosque, guests take off their shoes. The guests are explicitly welcomed. They do not contribute to the liturgy but may say a greeting.
• A multifaith service like the Assisi meetings: Participants pray next to each other or take turns leading the service. Those who are not praying behave respectfully and, in so far as possible, sympathetically. The meeting may take place under the responsibility of one tradition or of all participating traditions. The liturgy contains elements from different religious traditions, which are given a place one after the other. Each element carries the colour of the tradition from which it originates. Prayer leaders are recognizable by their own ‘liturgical’ clothing.
• An interfaith service (in the fullest sense): Praying together. All traditions present participate in elements of the liturgy. This means that elements that are unacceptable for one tradition are not included. At the end of his encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis provided an interreligious prayer for our Earth for all those who believe in an almighty Creator.

In all forms of interreligious prayer, the sensibilities of other-faith partners need to be taken into account.

9.1 The Psalms

An important question concerning the Psalms is whether they are intended for individual or devotional prayer or rather for communal and liturgical prayer. In practice, they have been used for both, but the question that has not been put to rest until the present day is: Can we – on the basis of the Psalms themselves, the words used in them, their composition, and what we know about their context – say something about how the Psalms were intended? Most Psalms (almost eighty) were written in the ‘I’-form, the first person singular. The tradition identifies David as the author of almost half of the Psalms, mostly on the basis of the Hebrew ledāwid preceding them, and sees Asaph, Korach, Moses, Solomon, and a number of others as authors of the other Psalms. In thirteen cases, the first verse identifies the specific occasion on which David would have written a Psalm. On this reading of the Psalms, many of them were written by individuals for specific occasions; they were expressions of individual piety rather than cultic hymns.

When historical criticism in the nineteenth century made it plausible that in all or almost all cases, the ascriptions of individual Psalms were from a later date than the Psalms themselves, a communal reading of the Psalms emerged. Rudolf Smend (1851–1931; Smend 1888) argued that the ‘I’ was personification of the people of Israel. Then again, of course, scholars attempted to connect individual Psalms to historical situations. Emil Balla (1885–1956; Balla 1912) used literary and stylistic arguments to show that the communal interpretation failed and returned to a more individual interpretation of the ‘I’-Psalms. Some argued that this individual was the king, and the Psalms ‘of David’ were intended to be recited by kings in their cultic roles (Ridderbos 1962). In the so-called Scandinavian school, Psalms were situated in the cult and interpreted within that context, especially in a hypothetical New Year autumn festival (Mowinckel 1921–1924.). More recent scholarship confirms that the majority of the Psalms were written before the exile and have been used in the liturgy in King Solomon’s temple (Kraus 1966; Day 1990). Gerstenberger distinguishes between four different social settings in which the Psalms were recited: (1) the intimate family cluster, (2) local sanctuaries, (3) the temple and its state cult, (4) synagogues in the post-exilic period (Gerstenberger 2005: 604–608). It seems, then, that the Psalms were written for community worship. Their use in private devotion, however, is old and for Christians it is sanctioned by Jesus’ use of the Psalms.

The use of the Psalms in the course of the Christian tradition reflects what we have just seen about their origin: Psalms have been in use in individual prayer as well as in the liturgy of the church. This applies to all 150 Psalms. As we have seen above (sections 3.1, 3.2, 7.1), the Psalms form the heart of the monastic office. After the reforms of Vatican II, in the liturgy of the hours the Psalter is recited every four weeks (instead of every week), and some verses and even entire Psalms (55, 82, 108) have been omitted. The liturgy of the hours does not exhaust the role of the Psalms in the Christian prayer life. Psalms have a place in almost every liturgy, in almost all traditional churches and beyond (Lamb 1962).

In the nineteenth and twentieth century, newly composed hymns and gospel songs almost completely replaced the Psalms in the liturgies of many Protestant churches. Unexpectedly, the reforms of the Second Vatican Council proved to be a turning point. They gave a more important place to the Psalms in Catholic liturgy, and this influenced the liturgy of many Protestant churches (Bracken Long 2014: 545–546). The fact that the Psalms sometimes express feelings and emotions that are not held by many in the community who sings or prays them, is sometimes experienced by churchgoers as a problem. From a theological perspective, however, it is seen as an advantage: ‘Christians learn to pray not only for themselves but for others through words that have been voiced by believers through the centuries. In so doing, they remember the suffering of other believers’ (Bracken Long 2014: 548).

The Psalms have been considered a school of prayer all through the Christian tradition: they provide God-given language to express to express a wide range of emotions in various circ*mstances. They play a role in Christian prayer at home and in private prayer. Thus, for instance, in many Protestant families it is a tradition to pray Psalm 90 at New Year’s Eve.

9.2 The Lord’s Prayer

Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer to the disciples (Matt 6:9–13; Luke 11:1–4). But what precisely did Jesus do when he taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer? Did he teach them what to pray or did he teach them how to pray? In the first case, Jesus taught his pupils a prayer which they learnt by heart and which has been handed on to us by the tradition. In the second case, Jesus taught his disciples how to pray by giving them an example that we may imitate. In that case, it is not the exact words that are important. Rather, this exemplary prayer tells us how to structure our prayers (McGowan 2014: 187). A first move in the direction of this belief can be found already in Tertullian, who calls the Lord’s Prayer a disciplina orandi (‘method of prayer’) and argues that, after having prayed the Lord’s Prayer, we may add petitions of our own, while respecting the precepts given by Jesus. Thus, the Lord’s Prayer becomes ‘a guide to the form and content of all Christian prayer’ (Volpe 2022: 620).

The Didache (second century) prescribes that the Lord’s Prayer should be prayed thrice a day. That seems to speak in favour of the idea that Jesus told his disciples what to pray. However, the first problem for this position is that if the precise text of the Lord’s Prayer mattered, one would expect the disciples to have transmitted it literally, whereas in practice we have in the manuscripts six main versions of this prayer. Luke has a short form, Matthew a longer one, and then there are several variants of these two (Parker 1997: 69). These variants cannot be explained as different translations from the original Aramaic into the Greek (on the texts of the Lord’s Prayer, see Parker 1997: 49–74). The doxology, which does not appear in the oldest and most reliable manuscripts, and which also appears in various forms, may nevertheless be original. Of some contemporary Jewish prayers it is known that they were ended with similar formulas that were, however, not printed because the person praying might freely choose among them (Cullmann 1994: 89–90). The second problem for this position is that ‘while Matthew stresses a spiritually fresh prayer life and expression (Matt 6:5–8), as opposed to endless repetitions of words (6:7–8), the Didache actually encourages repetition (Did. 8.3)’ (Payes 2021).

In the early church, the Lord’s Prayer was taught to the catechumens only towards the end of their catechumenate, together with the Creed, and they were supposed to pray it only after their baptism. ‘Only the baptized could properly address God as “Our Father,” a sign of their adoption by God into Christ Jesus, his son, and also a sign of their inclusion into the body of Christ’ (Volpe 2022: 620; cf. Froehlich 2008: 63). It was considered not only as the Christian prayer par excellence, but also as a breviarium totius Evangelii, a summary of the entire gospel. Thus, the Lord’s Prayer was considered to have a catechetical dimension as well (Volpe 2022: 625; CCC 2761).

Apart from the introduction and the doxology, the Lord’s Prayer consists of seven petitions (Hammerling 2022: 89). Quoting the text as given in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2759, 2760, 2856), these are:

Introduction: Our Father, who art in heaven,
1 hallowed be thy name.
2 Thy kingdom come.
3 Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
4 Give us this day our daily bread,
5 and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
6 and lead us not into temptation,
7 but deliver us from evil.
Doxology: For the kingdom,
the power and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
(Amen)

Traditionally, the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are divided into two sets. The heavenly petitions, that is the first three, express a desire for God. The earthly petitions, the final four, express human material and spiritual needs (Hammerling 2022: 93–102). On the basis of the introduction, the Lord’s Prayer was considered a communal prayer rather than a prayer for private use (Hammerling 2022: 90; Froehlich 2008: 63). The first petition is mostly taken to target not God’s holiness as such, which cannot be improved, but God’s holiness in us: God is to be made holy in the lives of the faithful (Hammerling 2022: 94). The second petition was mostly interpreted as being intended not to accelerate the coming of the Kingdom, which would be coming at God’s time anyhow, but to stir up a desire for God’s kingdom in the person praying. Similarly, the third petition was interpreted as presupposing that God’s will shall be done anyhow, and thus as being intended to align our wills with God’s will.

The fourth petition was taken as being directed both at our daily food and at the Eucharist, and thus as being a transition between the heavenly and earthly petitions. The Greek term translated with ‘daily’ appears only once in the New Testament and its meaning is uncertain (Froehlich 2008: 73–74). The fifth petition was often considered to be very important: ‘Augustine even considered the Lord’s Prayer to be a sacrament because it bestows the grace of absolution’ (Hammerling 2022: 99). While the fifth petition sought forgiveness for past sins, the sixth and seventh petition seek ‘deliverance from future temptation and evil’ (Hammerling 2022: 102).

The doxology has been inserted into the biblical text on the basis of the Didache; it is not found in the oldest manuscripts. This does not mean that it does not belong to the text; to Jewish prayers frequently a freely formulated ending was added, that was not found in the written text. This may have been presupposed in the texts of the Lord’s Prayer. The present form became standard only in the second century (Froehlich 2008: 61). Early twenty-first century exegesis emphasizes the forward-looking character of the whole prayer and interprets it as thoroughly eschatological.

In the Catholic Eucharist, between the Lord’s Prayer and the doxology the ‘embolism’ (an insertion, elaborating on the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer) is added:

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil,
graciously grant peace in our days,
that, by the help of your mercy,
we may be always free from sin
and safe from all distress,
as we await the blessed hope
and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

The habit of inserting an embolism dates back to the early church. In the current Catholic liturgy for the Eucharist, after the doxology a prayer for peace has been inserted, with as side-effect that the ‘Amen’ that concludes the Lord’s Prayer is separated from it.

9.3 Hail Mary

The English text of the Hail Mary runs as follows:

Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

The first sentence (‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee’) is taken from Luke 1:28 (the words by which the angel Gabriel greets Mary), the second from Luke 1:42 (‘Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus’; the words by which Elisabeth greets Mary). The combination of both is first found in an Egyptian Coptic ostracon from c. 600 CE (Miller 2001: 39) and became common in the second half of the eleventh century, partly as a result of the growing popularity of the Little Office of Our Lady (Miller 2001: 41). The final invocation (‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death) is a late fifteenth-century addition, fixed by its inclusion in the Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566; Miller 2001: 53). The prayer Hail Mary is part of the Rosary and of the Angelus.

9.4 The Apostles’ Creed and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

The Apostles’ Creed and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed are mostly discussed as dogmatic texts. The Apostles’ Creed, however, is a liturgical text in origin, and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is a dogmatic text that is often put to liturgical use. It took a long time before the definitive text of the Apostles’ Creed was codified. That happened only in the seventh century, while the Creed had been around at least since the early third century. In origin, it is the baptismal creed of the church of Rome; the catechumens had to learn it by heart and to recite it before being baptized. That it took so long to codify it had to do with the fact that it was a liturgical text that was orally transmitted. It was orally transmitted because it was part of the disciplina arcana: only Christians were supposed to know it, and by confessing it had access to the liturgy of the Eucharist (which, unlike the liturgy of the word, was not public). The text is accepted in the Western church only (Westra 2002).

The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is a doctrinal statement, at least in the sense that, according to the tradition, it was drafted in reaction to Arianism at the First Council of Nicaea (325) and amended at the First Council of Constantinople (381). Since the minutes of that Council have not survived, probably because its ecumenical character was not immediately recognized, they are found only in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon (451; cf. Kelly 1972: 296–331). According to J. N. D. Kelly, although this Creed was codified at an ecumenical council, it also may have a liturgical origin:

The whole style of the Creed, its graceful balance and smooth flow, convey the impression of a liturgical piece which has emerged naturally in the life and worship of the Christian community, rather than of a conciliar artefact. C [the Constantinopolitan Creed] was probably already in existence when the council fathers took it up, though not necessarily in exactly the form it now wears. (Kelly 1972: 325)

However, this Creed soon acquired a liturgical function and was recited at the beginning of the liturgy of the Eucharist. The current Roman Missal (2011: 528) still accepts the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed as standard and states: ‘Instead of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, especially during Lent and Easter time, the baptismal Symbol of the Roman Church, known as the Apostles’ Creed, may be used’.

It is generally accepted that when the Apostles’ Creed is recited in a liturgical context, it functions as a prayer. Reciting the Creed is praying the Creed. The question arises of why is it that this prayer is so important that on the basis of praying it we are admitted to baptism or to the Eucharist? Nicholas Lash explains this in the following way:

As we use it in the Creed, in a public act of worship, ‘I believe’ does not express an opinion, however well-founded or firmly held, concerning God’s existence. It promises that life and love, mind, heart, and all my actions, are set henceforward steadfastly on God, and God alone. ‘William James, do you take Mary Montague to your lawful wedded wife? ‘I do.’ ‘Mary Montague, do you believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth?’ ‘I do.’ The grammar of these two declarations is the same. (Lash 2002: 18)

To pray the Creed is to commit oneself to God and to the way of life that this commitment implies. Interpreted in this way, it makes sense to confess a holy and catholic church; insofar as the church is not yet holy, we commit ourselves to making it holy. And insofar as the church is not yet catholic, we commit ourselves to making it catholic, and to overcome schisms and divisions.

Of course, this is not all we do when we pray the Creed. We also confess our trust in God. The opening article of the Creed (‘I believe in God the Father’) is often mistaken for ‘I believe that God the Father exists’. But the belief that is expressed here is belief in rather than belief that, and thus it is an expression of trust rather than a factual claim that a state of affairs is the case in reality. So praying the Creed firstly means committing ourselves to God, and secondly expressing our trust in God. The factual claims we make by praying the Creed are not unimportant, but come after the commissives and expressives. A clear example of factual claims is to be found in the clauses ‘who […] suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried’.

9.5 The Magnificat, Benedictus, and Nunc dimittis

The Benedictus, the Magnificat, and the Nunc dimittis are canticles, scriptural hymns prayed (and often sung) in the liturgy and not taken from the Psalms. These three canticles are taken from the Gospel according to Luke: the Benedictus or ‘Canticle of Zechariah’ from Luke 1:68–79, the Magnificat or ‘Canticle of Mary’ from Luke 1:46–55, and the Nunc dimittis or ‘Canticle of Simeon’ from Luke 2:29–32. Most exegetes think that they are Lukan compositions; all of them contain many allusions of poetic texts from the Old Testament. Moreover, they are intimately connected to later parts of Luke-Acts (Kozitza 2014). Their names are taken from the first words of their Latin translations. All three form a daily part of the Catholic liturgy of the hours: the Benedictus of the Lauds (morning prayers), the Magnificat of the Vespers (evening prayers) and the Nunc dimittis of the Compline (prayers at the end of the day). The habit of praying these canticles at these hours goes back to the early church. In music, the Magnificat is by far the most popular of the three and has been most often put to music (Mittmann 2013).

The Benedictus is the prophecy Zechariah spoke after confirming the name of John the Baptist. Its first part (Luke 1:68–75) is a song of thanksgiving for the liberation of Israel from its enemies and for the establishment of the house of David. The second part (Luke 1:76–79) is addressed to Zechariah’s son, John the Baptist, who ‘will go before the Lord to prepare a way for him’ (1:76). Its use in the morning prayer is probably connected with the mentioning of the sunrise in verse 78; the Benedictus is part of the morning office also in the Byzantine and Anglican liturgies.

The Magnificat is the song Mary sung on the occasion of her visit to Elisabeth in response to Elisabeth’s greeting. In it, Mary praises God for what he has done for her and for Israel. Some sentences are almost revolutionary: ‘He has pulled down princes from their thrones and raised high the lowly. He has filled the starving with good things, sent the rich away empty’ (Luke 1:52–53). In Western Christianity, the Magnificat is sung during morning prayers, in the Eastern church it is prayed during the night office. The Magnificat is also held in high regard among Protestants and Martin Luther wrote a commentary on it.

The Nunc dimittis is the prayer of Simeon when he held Jesus in his arms during his parents’ visit to the temple. It is prayed before going to sleep because the opening words (‘let your servant go in peace’) are associated not only with death, but also with sleep.

9.6 The Jesus Prayer

In the Life of Abba Philemon, an Egyptian monk living in the sixth century or one or two centuries later, the standard form of the Jesus Prayer is first found: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.’ This short prayer is intended to be repeated without interruption whenever one is not otherwise meditating, to achieve the ideal of continuous prayer (1 Thess 5:17; Ware 1986b: 180–181). Praying the Jesus Prayer is often combined with a physical technique, consisting of (1) a bodily posture: bowing one’s head and staring at one’s navel, (2) a breathing technique: slowing down one’s breathing, and (3) concentrating on one’s heart (Ware 1986a: 244–246). The Jesus Prayer is especially connected with the work of Gregory Palamas (c.1296–1359).

9.7 The sign of the cross

Unlikely as this may seem at first sight, the sign of the cross may originate in the First Temple period. In Ezek 9:4, an angel marks the men who were faithful to God with the Hebrew letter tau on their foreheads; in ancient Hebrew, this letter looked like an ‘x’ or a ‘+’ (Barker 2003: 33). In Christianity, this ancient symbol refers to the cross of Jesus Christ. It was used from the early church onwards and is mentioned by Nicetas of Remesiana (c.335–414) and Augustine of Hippo (Jungmann 1978: 34). It is used to bless oneself and others and to ward off evil spirits, illnesses and dangers. Often it is accompanied by a prayer formula, especially ‘in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’ (already in the sixth century). Originally, the sign of the cross was made with one finger on the forehead; the ‘large’ sign of the cross was rare until the eleventh century. Until the thirteenth century, the large sign of the cross was made from forehead to breast to right shoulder to left shoulder, as it still is in the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Rite churches (Snijders 1968). The sign of the cross often accompanies prayer or is accompanied by them, but it may also function as a wordless prayer in its own right (Andreopoulos 2006).

9.8 The Angelus

Like the Rosary, the Angelus combines the praying of Hail Marys with attention for the life (in this case: the incarnation) of Christ. Before each of the Hail Marys, a Bible verse on the incarnation is recited: either Luke 1:26–28 (condensed; it is from the beginning word of this versicle that the name of the prayer is derived), Luke 1:38, or John 1:14. Its origins lie in the Middle Ages, somewhere after the year 1000. It is prayed thrice a day: at 6 AM, noon, and 6 PM, after the ringing of a bell (Miller 2001: 250–256).