Todd and Tyler talk about Bible translations. Translation approaches ranging from word-for-word to thought-for-thought. How different translations handle idioms. The vast number of Bible translations. And the different preferences that people and groups have.
NIV: I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky
NRSV: I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven
KJV: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven
KJV mimics the pattern of the Hebrew use of the repeated verb: barek abarekha, harbah arbeh. The infinitive absolute immediately precedes a perfect of imperfect verbal form of the same root in order to emphasize the verbal meaning.
Todd and Tyler talk about Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Among other things. “Is Christ divided?” Diversity of spiritual gifts. Ecumenism. Modern equivalents to eating meat sacrificed to idols. Heretical lawlessness (antinomianism) that presumes to transcend morality. The nature of resurrected bodies.
On arguments for the existence of God from the principle of sufficient reason. The principle of sufficient reason is the principle that everything must have a reason, cause, or ground. This principle has been applied to argue for the existence of God as the ultimate reason behind all things.
In previous episodes I have discussed a couple arguments for the existence of God: the argument for “the One” and the argument from eternal truths. Both are kinds of cosmological arguments, characteristic of the thought of Plotinus and Augustine respectively. The central notion of a cosmological argument is that everything depends on something else for its existence and nature, except for one thing that is the ultimate source for everything else, one thing that is absolutely independent and necessary. With this episode I’d like to talk about another kind of cosmological argument that attends to this same central notion but in a slightly different way. This is the argument from the principle of sufficient reason. This argument was given its classical form by the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 – 1716). Leibniz was also the one to use the term sufficient reason to refer to the principle, though it had certainly been expressed by many people previously.
The principle of sufficient reason, often abbreviated as PSR, is that “everything must have a reason, cause, or ground” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Leibniz said in his Monadology:
“Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false; And that of sufficient reason, in virtue of which we hold that there can be no fact real or existing, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason, why it should be so and not otherwise, although these reasons usually cannot be known by us.”
Leibniz expands on this, leading to an argument for God, in a passage worth quoting extensively:
“In short, there are simple ideas, of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms and postulates, in a word, primary principles, which cannot be proved, and indeed have no need of proof; and these are identical propositions, whose opposite involves an express contradiction. But there must also be a sufficient reason for contingent truths or truths of fact, that is to say, for the sequence or connexion of the things which are dispersed throughout the universe of created beings, in which the analyzing into particular reasons might go on into endless detail, because of the immense variety of things in nature and the infinite division of bodies. There is an infinity of present and past forms and motions which go to make up the efficient cause of my present writing; and there is an infinity of minute tendencies and dispositions of my soul, which go to make its final cause. And as all this detail again involves other prior or more detailed contingent things, each of which still needs a similar analysis to yield its reason, we are no further forward: and the sufficient or final reason must be outside of the sequence or series of particular contingent things, however infinite this series may be. Thus the final reason of things must be in a necessary substance, in which the variety of particular changes exists only eminently, as in its source; and this substance we call God.”
Alexander Pruss picked out the key ideas from Leibniz’s argument and put it in the following, succinct form (The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument, by Alexander R. Pruss, pp.25-6):
Every contingent fact has an explanation.
There is a contingent fact that includes all other contingent facts.
Therefore, there is an explanation of this fact.
This explanation must involve a necessary being.
This necessary being is God.
Leibniz speaks of “an infinity” of “present and past forms and motions” of “minute tendencies and dispositions”. Basically an infinity of contingent facts. We can lump all these contingent facts into one, the logical conjunction of all contingent facts. This conjunction of all contingent facts has been called the Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact (abbreviated BCCF). Because all these facts are contingent and because their sum total is contingent it all requires explanation. But the explanation for all contingent facts cannot itself be contingent, otherwise it would be among the very set of facts in need of explanation. As Leibniz says, “the sufficient or final reason must be outside of the sequence or series of particular contingent things”. So this explanation must be the opposite of contingent, i.e. necessary. And Leibniz proposes that we call this God.
Like most arguments for the existence of God what is demonstrated, while important and significant, is also limited. There’s nothing demonstrated here about God’s activity in history or as revealed in scripture. It doesn’t tell us which religion or which sacred scripture, if any, is correct. It doesn’t tell us what kinds of ethical demands God might make of us. Such things might be demonstrated by other means and I think they very well can be. But that’s not where the argument has taken us so far. I think this is important because one actually doesn’t need to be religious to be a convinced theist. Being a Christian involves a lot more than this. For one thing it usually, and maybe always, involves transformative spiritual experience. Or one might be convinced just intellectually but in a way that would necessarily involve a great deal of familiarity with history, scriptural texts, and probably ancient languages. In modernity the reasonableness of theism itself is somewhat obscured by a lot of the cultural barriers, negative perceptions, and aversion to organized religion. But simple theism itself is fairly straightforward. I think theism is very rational and something that most people could easily accept, if not otherwise conditioned.
More later on the way that the principle of sufficient reason leads to an argument for the existence of God. Let’s first spend some time on the principle itself. Why accept it? What are some possible objections to it?
The best reasons for accepting the principle would seem to be indirect ones through arguments with a reductio ad absurdum form. Such arguments ask, what would follow if we rejected the principle? What would we expect the world to be like if everything did not have a reason? One thing we might expect is that it would be very common to find things and events that didn’t have any evident explanation or that were completely unintelligible. This would be very different from what we observe scientifically. It’s also just very different from the experience of regular life which is, well, quite regular. We just don’t see things happening or being certain ways for no reason at all. That’s what we could expect, let’s say, in the physical world. But it would go even deeper than this, into our minds and thoughts. The principle of sufficient reason pertains to connections between thoughts and ideas. We think one thing to be so by reason of some other thing and so on. But absent the principle of sufficient reason all of this is gone. We’d just have a bundle of thoughts and ideas without any way of structuring them to give support to one another and to know which ones to think are true and which are false. In other words, we wouldn’t be able to trust our own cognitive faculties.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) distinguished between four forms of sufficient reason. Regardless of whether the four forms he picked out are the right ones or the only forms possible to pick out, I think that distinguishing between the different forms that sufficient reason can take is a good idea. Schopenhauer believed that philosophers throughout history had failed to make proper distinctions between various forms of the principle. In particular he thought most philosophers had failed to distinguish the other forms of PSR from the principle of causality, cause and effect in nature, which is only one form that the principle can take. Schopenhauer’s four forms were the principle of sufficient reason of becoming, knowing, being, and willing. These correspond to causality, rules of logic, mathematics, and motivations.
Causality is a major topic in philosophy with a whole host of objections and responses. Those are pertinent to PSR but, since causality is only one form of PSR, not to all forms of it. There are also objections to causality that are more properly objections to determinism rather than causality as such. For example, after the development of quantum mechanics we might think that many things happen without a cause. And we might similarly suppose that many things happen for no reason at all. For example, in radioactive decay the precise moment that any particular radioactive atom will decay is unpredictable. However the decay rate of many atoms of the same type over time is actually highly predictable, so that a given material has a characteristic half-life. A material’s half-life is consistent and related to its other properties. In more general terms the quantum state of a quantum system is characterized by a wave function. Under the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics the square modulus of the wavefunction is a probability density. This gives the probability of different states being experimentally observed. Upon observation the wave function “collapses” into a single state. And we can’t predict with certainty which state will be observed.
Now this is certainly a different way of understanding how things work than we would otherwise have thought. But does it mean that things happen for no reason at all? I maintain that this is not the case because these events are still highly constrained and highly ordered. In quantum chemistry, for example, it is wave functions called orbitals that characterize the behavior of electrons in atoms and molecules. And yes, wavefunctions are inherently probabilistic. But the structure of these orbitals imparts tremendous explanatory power to chemistry at the level of atomic and molecular bonds, and consequently also to chemical reactions. I propose that it’s not the case that with the development of quantum mechanics we have found more things that happen for no reason at all. I think it’s the opposite. Before quantum mechanics chemistry was more dependent on macro-scale empirical observations of regularities. Although we could observe that certain chemical phenomena occurred regularly in certain ways we didn’t have as much understanding about why they occurred in the ways that they did.There was more arbitrariness in our explanations. But with quantum chemistry we have a much more developed understanding and we actually know more of the reasons why things happen the way they do.
Another important point is that although wave functions are inherently probabilistic in quantum mechanics this does not mean that the quantum states that are observed occur for no reason at all. That would only be the case if there were no laws of quantum mechanics. Then anything at all really could happen, without any kind of pattern. But such quantum phenomena do have a reason and that reason is the laws of quantum mechanics themselves.
Now returning to the way the principle of sufficient reason connects to the existence of God. A short description of the logic is that everything has to have a reason. Most things have their reason in something else. But ultimately all reasons have to lead back to one thing. And this one thing has to have very unique properties in order to be the reason for everything. For everything else and even for itself. The unique properties that this ultimate reason would have to have are those of God. Now to get into more detail.
The first important concepts to follow on to PSR are of contingency and necessity. If we grant that everything has to have a reason, cause, or ground the next step is to categorize the ways that they have these reasons. And there are two: contingency and necessity. A thing can have a reason in something else, which means it’s contingent. Or a thing can have its reason in its own nature, which means it’s necessary. And if we grant PSR there’s no third alternative.
Clearly almost everything is contingent. If you think of almost anything you can see how something else is a reason for it. And there are chains of reasons, as we see in a child’s relentless “Why?” game. Where a child asks some “Why?” question and follows up the answer with “Why?”, and follows up the next answer with “Why?”, over and over again. Eventually you give up answering, not because there is not a reason but because you don’t know what the reason is. This is a great illustration of contingency.
With these kinds of chains of reasons an issue that comes up is the infinite regress and the question of whether you can have an infinite regress. There are different opinions and arguments on that point but I think the possibility of infinite regress is untenable. William Lane Craig has done a lot of work on this subject. I also like what David Bentley Hart has called the “pleonastic fallacy”, which he defines as “the belief that an absolute qualitative difference can be overcome by a successive accumulation of extremely small and entirely relative quantitative steps.” (The Experience of God, 98) As it pertains to the case at hand, the difference between an infinite regress and a finite regress is an absolute qualitative difference. A finite regress terminates at some determinate point. An infinite regress does not. That’s an absolute qualitative difference. An infinite regress of reasons still lacks an ultimate reason. It doesn’t matter that there’s an infinite number of them. That’s the idea behind the joke that “it’s turtles all the way down.” If the world rests on the back of a turtle that rests on the back of another turtle and so on you can always ask what the next turtle is resting on. And it doesn’t help to say that it’s turtles all the way down. The stack of turtles is still unsupported. It doesn’t matter that there’s an infinite number of them. There has to be a termination in the chain. And that termination point has to be something with a unique set of qualifying properties.
So much for contingent things. What about necessary things? What would a necessary entity have to be like? There are reasons to think that a necessary being would have to be:
purely actual
absolutely simple or noncomposite, and
something which just is subsistent existence itself
A word on actuality. Actuality and potentiality are concepts going back to Aristotle and the Medieval Scholastics. An entity can have some attribute actually or potentially. Actuality is an entity’s already having an attribute. Potentiality is an entity’s capacity to have an attribute. Almost everything has both actuality and potentiality for different things. Since things are certain ways they have actuality for those ways that they are. But they also have potentiality for all the ways that they are not yet but could be. There’s a connection here to contingency. If a thing could be many different ways but happens to be only certain of those ways, the ways that it happens to be are contingent, because it could have been otherwise. When an entity has potentiality for an attribute that attribute can only become actual if it is actualized. And it can only be actualized by another entity that has that attribute already, i.e. has actuality for it. Heat is an illustrative example. All materials have a certain heat capacity, which is the amount of heat they can absorb for a given increase in temperature. Materials have this capacity even when they are not increasing in temperature. In order to increase in temperature the material has to receive an energy input from some heat source. The heat source has actuality that it imparts to the material, actualizing its potential for the higher temperature. This is a physical example but the principles of actuality and potentiality also apply to ideas.
What are the reasons to suppose that a necessary being would have to be purely actual, noncomposite, and self-subsistent? A necessary being is one that cannot not exist. A contingent being is the opposite because it is possible for it not to exist and for it to have been otherwise than it is. Because a contingent being could be otherwise than it actually is it has unactualized potentiality. A necessary being cannot have unactualized potentiality. It has to be purely actual. The way it is is the only way that could be. Furthermore, all other things ultimately trace their source of actualization back to this necessary being. A necessary being is purely actual and also the entity that actualizes everything else. A necessary being has to be concomposite because anything composite could have been composed differently. Anything composite is composed of parts. These could be physical parts or abstract parts. Anything composed of parts cannot be necessary because it is possible for its parts to be put together in different ways or not at all. Finally a necessary being has to be self-subsistent in its existence because if it depended on some other entity for its existence it wouldn’t be self-subsistent.
In a previous episode, An Argument for the One, I shared a Neo-Platonic argument for why an entity possessing these attributes would have to be unique. There can in principle be only one thing which is purely actual, absolutely simple or noncomposite, and something which just is subsistent existence itself. Why is that? If there were more than one necessary being each would have to have some differentiating feature that the others lacked. Otherwise they would just be the same entity. But to have any differentiating features they would have to have potentialities. The potentialities of each would be whatever features the others did not have. But since a necessary being is purely actual it cannot have any such potentialities and so no differentiating features. This would preclude there being any more than one. So there can be only one necessary being.
It’s worth noting here for a moment that these attributes that the one necessary entity would have to have preclude certain candidates that might naturally occur to us. The big one, I think, is the universe itself. Can’t the universe itself just be the one explanation for everything? But this won’t do because the universe lacks the qualities that a necessary entity has to have. The universe is not necessary; it’s contingent. It doesn’t have to exist. The universe is not purely actual, noncomposite, or self-subsistent. The universe has many unactualized potentialities, potentialities that we know a lot about now thanks to the science of cosmology. The universe is certainly not noncomposite. The observable universe is thought to contain 10^80 particles. So the universe does not qualify as the kind of thing that could be the one necessary entity.
If we grant the foregoing there are also reasons to think that a necessary being would also have to be:
Immutable
Eternal
Immaterial
Incorporeal
Perfect
Omnipotent
Fully good
Intelligent, and
Omniscient
These are clearly attributes associated with God. At this stage we’re looking at identifying the one necessary being with the attributes of God. Why would a necessary being have all of these attributes? These trace back to its being purely actual, noncomposite, and self-subsistent. Immutability is changelessness, which relates to actuality and potentiality. Things with potentiality have the capacity to change. But something that is purely actual is already fully actualized. It doesn’t have any potentialities that need to be actualized. Such changelessness also applies across time. Because God is the same across time he is eternal, the same at all moments. God is also immaterial and incorporeal because he is noncomposite. Matter and bodies are essentially composite, both because they are composed of particles and because matter is a plurality; there are many different material and bodily entities, each with distinguishing features. God, being noncomposite, cannot be like that.
Because God is pure actuality and doesn’t have any potentialities that need to be actualized he is already perfect. He’s already everything that he can be. This perfection includes moral perfection. For the one necessary being to be fully good is actually the attribute that is, on its face, least obvious to me and also the one of greatest existential concern. Apart from all the foregoing, it would be easy for me to imagine that the ultimate source of all things with all power might not be morally good but might actually be amoral. And that would be rather distressing. Maybe morality is a human invention and not pertinent to the one necessary being behind all things. But in relation to everything else we can reason about God there is good reason to think that the one necessary being is also fully good. The goodness of the necessary being relates to his pure actuality. To see the relation requires a certain understanding of goodness. In this understanding goodness is the actualization of an entity’s potentialities. This is the understanding of goodness expounded by Aristotle and articulated in modern times by Alisdair MacIntyre. The good is that at which things aim. Living things have natures with potentialities to become the kinds of things that they are meant to be. Goodness is the actualization of these potentialities. It’s essentially creative and fruitful. Its opposite, evil, is essentially destructive and privative. We think of something like the Holocaust as the ultimate evil, and very rightly so. This was supremely destructive and the complete opposite of creation, multiplying, and replenishing. Other evils may be much less total in their destructive force but also work against growth and realization of our potentialities. The one necessary being is decidedly on the side of creation and goodness. As pure actuality God is the very source of all creation and growth that empowers all entities to move toward the things for which they aim.
Omnipotence is another way of understanding God’s pure actuality. Actuality means making things happen, which is essentially what power is. Everything that happens and that can happen is dependent on being actualized by the ultimate actualizer, and so God is the source of all power and is all-powerful.
Intelligence and omniscience are probably the most bold assertions about God’s nature. We might imagine a single source for all things but still resist that this ultimate source itself possesses human-like consciousness. Why should we suppose this to be the case? The reason for this relates to an important Platonic insight about the nature of reality. And this is the existence of abstractions. I discussed this in another episode about an argument for the existence of God from eternal truths. Examples of abstraction include mathematical concepts and theorems that would seem to hold independent of anything physical. Abstractions have the character of ideas. They can certainly subsist in our minds. But they would also seem to transcend any particular, finite mind, like the minds of human beings. These abstract forms can be actualized in the physical universe, as in the form of physical laws or in the form of created entities. As Edward Feser has stated: “To cause something to exist is just to cause something having a certain form or fitting a certain pattern.” (Five Proofs of the Existence of God, 33). If these abstractions have real existence they have to exist somewhere. The various modes of subsistence they might have is a huge topic but for our purposes here we’ll just note that as entities of a mental character the most reasonable way for them to exist is as ideas in God. It is the intellectual and mental nature of these abstractions, existing in God, that gives reason to think that God must have intelligence. In fact, his intelligence must be very great indeed because it comprises all abstractions. And because all actualization, including actualization involving these sorts of mental abstractions, originates from God, God’s intelligence must be all-encompassing; in other words, omniscient.
Let’s return to the expression of all these ideas in the forms of arguments for the existence of God. I shared earlier the argument from Leibniz, as re-expressed by Alexander Pruss:
Every contingent fact has an explanation.
There is a contingent fact that includes all other contingent facts.
Therefore, there is an explanation of this fact.
This explanation must involve a necessary being.
This necessary being is God.
This is a nice, concise argument. But a longer argument has the benefit of explaining a little more that is taken for granted here. For example, why we should understand a necessary being to be God and to have the attributes traditionally associated with God. The kinds of reasons I’ve been discussing. A longer version of the argument that lays all this out is given by Edward Feser in his book Five Proofs of the Existence of God, in his fifth proof which he calls the Rationalist Proof, since Leibniz was a rationalist. It proceeds in 27 steps. The terms and ideas should be familiar now after everything discussed so far. The argument is the following:
The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) holds that there is an explanation for the existence of anything that does exist and for its having the attributes that it has.
If PSR were not true, then things and events without evident explanation or intelligibility would be extremely common.
But this is the opposite of what common sense and science alike find to be the case.
If PSR were not true, then we would be unable to trust our own cognitive faculties.
But in fact we are able to trust those faculties.
Furthermore, there is no principled way to deny the truth of PSR while generally accepting that there are genuine explanations in science and philosophy.
But there are many genuine explanations to be found in science and philosophy.
So, PSR is true.
The explanation of existence of anything is to be found either in some other thing which causes it, in which case it is contingent, or in its own nature, in which case it is necessary; PSR rules out any purported third alternative on which a thing’s existence is explained by nothing.
There are contingent things.
Even if the existence of an individual contingent thing could be explained by reference to some previously existing contingent thing, which in turn could be explained by a previous member, and so on to infinity, that the infinite series as a whole exists at all would remain to be explained.
To explain this series by reference to some further contingent cause outside the series, and then explain this cause in terms of some yet further contingent thing, and so on to infinity, would merely yield another series whose existence would remain to be explained; and to posit yet another contingent thing outside this second series would merely generate the same problem yet again.
So, no contingent thing or series of contingent things can explain why there are any contingent things at all.
But that there are any contingent things at all must have some explanation, given PSR; and the only remaining explanation is in terms of a necessary being as cause.
Furthermore, that an individual contingent thing persists in existence at any moment requires an explanation; and since it is contingent, that explanation must lie in some simultaneous cause distinct from it.
If this cause is itself contingent, then even if it has yet another contingent thing as its own simultaneous cause, and that cause yet another contingent thing as its simultaneous cause, and so on to infinity, then once again we have an infinite series of contingent things the existence of which has yet to be explained.
So, no contingent thing or series of contingent things can explain why any particular contingent thing persists in existence at any moment; and the only remaining explanation is in terms of a necessary being as its simultaneous cause.
So, there must be at least one necessary being, to explain why any contingent things exist at all and how any particular contingent thing persists in existence at any moment.
A necessary being would have to be purely actual, absolutely simple or noncomposite, and something which just is subsistent existence itself.
But there can in principle be only one thing which is purely actual, absolutely simple or noncomposite, and something which just is subsistent existence itself.
So, there is only one necessary being.
So, it is this same one necessary being which is the explanation of why any contingent things exist at all and which is the cause of every particular contingent thing’s existing at any moment.
So, this necessary being is the cause of everything other than itself.
Something which is purely actual, absolutely simple or non-composite, and something which just is subsistent existence itself must also be immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, fully good, intelligent, and omniscient.
So, there is a necessary being which is one, purely actual, absolutely simple, subsistent existence itself, cause of everything other than itself, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, fully good, intelligent, and omniscient.
But for there to be such a thing is for God to exist.
So, God exists.
Feser’s argument covers the core points of the argument from the principle of sufficient reason as well as all related issues, tying this not only to God as the one necessary being but also to God with all of his classical divine attributes.
Now to speak more reflectively on all of this, I sometimes feel like we are all far too incurious and complacent about our existence. We’re all just thrown into life as infants without the ability to reflect on it and ask what should be a pretty obvious question: “What’s going on here?!” By the time we’re old enough to speak and reason we settle in and just go along with things. But we can still go back to the beginning, before we’ve taken everything for granted, and ask: “Where does all of this come from?” And there are important related questions like, “What’s our part in all of this?” “What are we supposed to be doing here?”
Maybe these are unreasonable questions to ask. But I don’t think so. Things don’t just happen for no reason at all. It may be practical to ignore these questions in order to just get along with the daily business of our lives. But we shouldn’t push them off forever. We are made for more than just our particular day to day affairs. The big questions are also the ones that give intelligibility and meaning to our life’s details.
The reason to believe in God is also the reason for asking for reasons for everything and anything at all.
There is a condition of looking for something without knowing what we are looking for, or even that we are looking for anything at all. Augustine called it restlessness. Jesus described it as a thing that we would ask for if we knew to ask for it. It is a thirst for living water that will quench all thirst. All religions give witness to this act of reaching out. Jesus taught us to reach out by calling upon God in prayer. Prayer is not just one act among many. It works directly on that essential thirst that can only be satisfied in God.
With this episode I’d like to talk about some things I’ve been studying about prayer. This may be one of the most practical topics I’ve ever gotten into since it’s essentially about a practice, something that you do. We can talk about it and reflect on it, which is what I’ll be doing here. But prayer is ultimately a spiritual practice. Theology can certainly be theoretical and intellectual. And that’s something that I really like about it. But I always try to remember something that Evagrius Ponticus (345 – 399) said about theology: “A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian.”
I try to live my life in imitation of Christ and one thing that stands out to me in the scriptures is that Jesus prayed. And I think this is very significant. In his book Jesus of Nazareth Pope Benedict XVI said:
“Again and again the Gospels note that Jesus withdrew ‘to the mountain’ to spend nights in prayer ‘alone’ with his Father. These short passages are fundamental for our understanding of Jesus; they lift the veil of mystery just a little; they give us a glimpse into Jesus’ filial existence, into the source from which his action and teaching and suffering sprang. This ‘praying’ of Jesus is the Son conversing with the Father; Jesus’ human consciousness and will, his human soul, is taken up into that exchange, and in this way human ‘praying’ is able to become a participation in this filial communion with the Father.” (7)
As is typical with Benedict, he packs a lot into very condensed passages. Three points stand out to me here about Jesus’ practice of prayer.
1. It is fundamental for our understanding of him.
2. It is the source from which his action and teaching and suffering sprang.
3. Our prayer is a way of participating in the communion that Jesus has with the Father.
That prayer was something fundamental to Jesus’ behavior and identity was apparently something that his disciples noticed as well. On one occasion after he returned from prayer they asked him to instruct them.
“And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” (John 11:1, KJV)
And we have many examples in the Gospels of Jesus teaching about prayer and how to pray, especially in Luke.
As I’ve reflected on prayer I keep sensing its great importance. It’s such a simple thing. And we even tend to dismiss it as insignificant. Like many things, the phrase “thoughts and prayers” is politicized and maybe that’s an apt indicator of our attitudes about prayer, that it’s something empty and ineffectual. And it’s certainly true that prayer can be empty and vain. Jesus even said as much (Matthew 6:5-8). But I actually believe that sincere prayer, far from being empty and ineffectual, is actually the most important thing that we can do. If we want to change the world, starting especially with changing ourselves, we must pray.
Prayer touches on the fundamental issues of who we are and what we exist for. Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) said to God in his Confessions, “You have made us for Yourself.” Why do we exist? We exist for God. That’s not what most of us think. We may think we exist for any number of other things, or nothing at all. We could say, as Jesus said to Martha, that we “are worried and troubled about many things” (Luke 10:41, NKJV). Ultimately all of these things, all our desires, interests, projects, and concerns are imperfect reflections of the most fundamental and innate desire for our creator and sustainer. But we often don’t know that that’s what we’re looking for, or even that we’re looking for anything at all.
Each of us is, in many ways, the Samaritan woman at the well to whom Jesus said:
“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” (John 4:10, NKJV)
What an interesting hypothetical. You would be asking for something. You’re not asking for it now. But you would ask for it if you knew about it. It’s this fascinating situation where we’re looking for something without knowing what we are looking for or even that we are looking for anything at all.
I think this is an apt description of the human condition generally. There’s this kind of generalized discontent and incompleteness to our existence. Augustine called it restlessness.
“You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
I think a scripturally appropriate term would be thirst. Jesus described the object of this thirst as “living water”:
“Whoever drinks of this water [meaning literal, physical water] will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13-14, NKJV)
This living water is both our source and purpose. It’s the culmination of all our longing but we know, both from scripture and just from experience, that the challenges of finding it are significant. Paul said we seek in the hope that we might grope for and find the Unknown God, even “though He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27, NKJV) Paul also acknowledged that prayer itself is difficult: “We do not know what we should pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26, NKJV)
In my conversations with fellow Christians we’ve shared this experience that prayer can be difficult. We don’t feel like we’re doing it right or that we’re making that spiritual connection with God. That’s a common experience and has been from the beginning. But we have help. Paul said:
“Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” (Romans 8:26, NKJV)
It seems appropriate and perfect to me that the Spirit would intercede for our nondescript, generalized restlessness for the Unknown God with unutterable groanings. Even if we don’t know what we’re looking for or that we’re looking for anything at all the Spirit can intercede and act on this most vague longing with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Something that I’ve found helpful in the practice of prayer is making use of the different forms of prayer from the Christian tradition. The Catechism of the Catholic Church identifies three major expressions of the life of prayer in the Christian tradition (2699, 2721):
Vocal Prayer
Meditation
Contemplative Prayer
I find that one or the other of these three expressions of prayer is often most suitable at certain times. I think that sometimes we find prayer difficult because we only know of one form. And even though that one form may be very suitable in many situations it might not be most suitable in others. I’ve found it helpful to weave these three forms together in my practice of prayer.
I tend to think of these three expressions of prayer as sitting on a spectrum of expressibility and expressive content. Vocal prayer is most characterized by expressible content in the sentences that we speak. Contemplative prayer mostly transcends anything that can be expressed in words. And meditation, centering mostly in the words scripture and the life of Christ, sits between vocal prayer and contemplative prayer in its degree of expressibility.
The first major expression of prayer in the Christian tradition is vocal prayer. There are a couple things that strike me about Jesus’s teachings about vocal prayer. And I think they’re related. The first is that in our petitions we must have faith. The second is that we should be relentless in our petitions. I think those two things are related. And they strike me because I don’t feel like I live in an age and culture where we really believe in miracles, especially not to a degree that we would pursue them relentlessly in our prayers. Part of that may be our secularism. And part of it may be a concern that relentlessness would be irreverently presumptuous. But Jesus seemed to have precious little concern about presumptuousness. Consider the following parable:
“Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart, saying: There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man. Now there was a widow in that city; and she came to him, saying, Get justice for me from my adversary. And he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself, Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. Then the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge said. And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:1-8, NKJV)
Jesus was insistent that God is the most disposed to grant petitions for those who seek after them.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:7-12, NKJV)
I’m struck by the directness and complete lack of qualification in these teachings. But if you’re like me you have doubts that it can really be so straightforward. Why? Because we’ve all had the experience that Jesus’s disciples had, where we pursued a miracle that didn’t come:
“Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, Why could we not cast it [the demon] out? So Jesus said to them, Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 17:19-21, NKJV)
We’ve all had this experience. We pray for something and we don’t get it. I’ve even considered this an important spiritual developmental step, moving from a more naive conception of God to one that’s more sophisticated, where we can appreciate the various reasons that our petitions in prayer might not be granted. But I’m coming around to question that. I wonder if we’re too quick in our sophistication to enable underdeveloped faith.
This is why I think prayer, far from being vain and ineffectual, is the most important thing we can do. We need, as individuals and as societies and nations, things that we cannot produce on our own. We need God to intervene. There are societies and sub-cultures where these things do happen, where people expect, pursue, and receive miracles. God knows how to give good gifts to his children.
The second major expression of prayer in Christian tradition is meditation. Meditation might not be something we popularly associate with Christianity but it’s definitely part of the tradition. It’s often facilitated by texts of scripture and devotional writings. Also visual arts like icons. Lectio divina is one venerable practice of reading scripture for the special purpose of focusing and meditating on it in prayer. I often use one of the Psalms for this purpose. Events from the life of Christ are also very powerful.
The Rosary is a classic example of a practice of prayer that is focused on events from the life of Christ. Each cycle of the Rosary goes through five “Mysteries” from the life of Christ.
The Joyful Mysteries are:
The Annunciation
The Visitation
The Nativity
The Presentation in the Temple
The Finding in the Temple
The Sorrowful Mysteries are
The Agony in the Garden
The Scourging at the Pillar
The Crowning with Thorns
The Carrying of the Cross
The Crucifixion and Death
The Glorious Mysteries are
The Resurrection
The Ascension
The Descent of the Holy Spirit
The Assumption
The Coronation of Mary
The Luminous Mysteries are
The Baptism of Christ in the Jordan
The Wedding Feast at Cana
Jesus’ Proclamation of the Coming of the Kingdom of God
The Transfiguration
The Institution of the Eucharist
We can read the accounts of these events in scripture and learn about their contents. But in meditative prayer we can go deeper into them to be moved and edified by them. As an example, concerning the mystery of the Carrying of the Cross, Bishop Robert Barron remarked that, “Carrying the cross must become the very structure of the Christian life.” This idea has had a profound impact on me as I’ve meditated on it.
Something I enjoy about scripture is that it’s very intellectually challenging and stimulating. And interdisciplinary. It involves topics of history, philosophy, and linguistics. I think that’s wonderful. But I think there’s sometimes a temptation to compete over who can be the most knowledgeable about the content of scripture. I don’t think that serves the purposes of scripture at all. In The Imitation of Christ Thomas à Kempis (1380 – 1471) warned: “If you wish to derive profit from your reading of Scripture, do it with humility, simplicity, and faith; at no time use it to gain a reputation for being one who is learned.” (Book I, Chapter V) Rather, Thomas said: “Let it then be our main concern to meditate on the life of Jesus Christ.” (Book I, Chapter I)
In addition to meditation of the life of Christ I cannot speak highly enough about the edifying influence of the Psalms. I’ve said at times, and I still think it’s true, that the fastest way to learn about the narrative arc of the Old Testament is to read 1 Samuel through 2 Kings. And of course those four books are books of holy scripture, so well worth reading. But I think now that the most direct path into the spiritual world of the Old Testament is in the Psalms. I admit that I didn’t always appreciate them and couldn’t get into them. Maybe I wasn’t ready for them. But I really appreciate them now. Sometimes if I find it difficult to get into prayer the Psalms are a great way to get started, to get into the right frame of mind.
To paraphrase Ecclesiastes (3:1), there is a Psalm for every season.
Psalms of joy:
“O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.” (Psalm 119:97, KJV)
“How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119: 103, KJV)
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” (Psalm 119:103, KJV)
“Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.” (Psalm 150:6, KJV)
Psalms of grief and frustration:
“How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” (Psalm 13:1, KJV)
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psalm 8:3-4, KJV)
“One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.” (Psalm 27:1, KJV)
In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI said: “The Psalms are words that the Holy Spirit has given to men; they are God’s Spirit become word.” (131) Speaking about the Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer he remarks that certain formulaic prayers like these can help us to get started in prayer and in approaching God.
“Our prayer can and should be a wholly personal prayer. But we also constantly need to make use of those prayers that express in words the encounter with God experienced both by the Church as a whole and by individual members of the Church… In the formulaic prayers that arose first from the faith of Israel and then from the faith of praying members of the Church, we get to know God and ourselves as well. They are a ‘school of prayer’ that transforms and opens up our life… Normally, thought precedes word; it seems to formulate 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’ (Rom 8:26) – we are too far removed from God, he is too mysterious and too great for us. And so God has come to our aid: He himself provides the words of our prayer and teaches us to pray. Through the prayers that come from him, he enables us to set out toward him; by praying together with the brothers and sisters he has given us, we gradually come to know him and draw closer to him.” (130-131)
The third major expression of prayer in the Christian tradition is contemplative prayer. This is the form of prayer that I think of as being the furthest on the spectrum away from expressibility and expressive content. In the Eastern Christian tradition it’s sometimes called “hesychasm”, derived from the Greek hesychia (ἡσυχία), meaning “stillness, rest, quiet, or silence”. Another descriptive term is “apophatic”, from the Greek apophēmi (ἀπόφημι), meaning “to deny”, which is characterized by negative content rather than positive content. I sometimes think of it as empty space into which the Spirit can freely enter.
Perhaps appropriately some of the greatest spiritual writers in this tradition are anonymous (or pseudonymous). One lived sometime in the 5th or 6th century, writing under the pseudonym Dionysius, whose major work was On The Divine Names. Another was an English writer living sometime in the 14th century, whose major work was The Cloud of Unknowing.
Contemplative prayer is the most unexpressible form of prayer, but it often still involves single words or phases, similar to a mantra in Indian religious traditions. In The Cloud of Unknowing the author instructs that we should use one word of just one syllable in which to enfold our intent:
“If you like, you can have this reaching out, wrapped up and enfolded in a single word. So as to have a better grasp of it, take just a little word, of one syllable rather than of two; for the shorter it is the better it is in agreement with this exercise of the spirit. Such a one is the word ‘God’ or the word ‘love.’ Choose which one you prefer, or any other according to your liking – the word of one syllable that you like the best. Fasten this word to your heart, so that whatever happens it will never go away. This word is to be your shield and your spear, whether you are riding in peace or in war. With this word you are to beat upon this cloud and this darkness about you. With this word you are to strike down every kind of thought under the cloud of forgetting.” (Chapter VII, James Walsh edition)
Other contemplatives haven’t necessarily restricted themselves to one word alone but have also used phrases. The most notable example, especially in Eastern Christianity, is the Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer is this:
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
The scriptural roots of this prayer are in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican in Luke 18:9-14.
“And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’” (NKJV)
Paul, in his first letter to the Thassolonians, counseled to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). The Jesus Prayer is traditionally thought to be a prayer that a person can eventually learn to pray continually at every moment. In the 19th century Russian text, The Way of a Pilgrim, the pilgrim learns to pray without ceasing by incorporating the Jesus Prayer into his very breath.
“Begin bringing the whole prayer of Jesus into and out of your heart in time with your breathing, as the Fathers taught. Thus, as you draw your breath in, say, or imagine yourself saying, ‘Lord Jesus Christ,’ and as you breathe again, ‘have mercy on me.’ Do this as often and as much as you can, and in a short space of time you will feel a slight and not unpleasant pain in your heart, followed by a warmth. Thus by God’s help you will get the joy of self-acting inward prayer of the heart.”
I have found the Jesus Prayer to be the most powerful prayer for my practice of contemplation.
The Cloud of Unknowing invites what I interpret to be an inversion in perspective and attitude toward the experience of unknowing. Usually we want to know things but when we approach God in his infinity we find ourselves unable to comprehend him because he exceeds our comprehension. But this very experience of unknowability is itself a form of knowledge. It is in this cloud of unknowing that we must dwell.
“This darkness and cloud is always between you and your God, no matter what you do, and it prevents you from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your reason, and from experiencing him in sweetness of love in your affection. So set yourself to rest in this darkness as long as you can, always crying out after him whom you love. For if you are to experience him or to see him at all, insofar as it is possible here, it must always be in this cloud and in this darkness. So if you labour at it with all your attention as I bid you, I trust, in his mercy, that you will reach this point.” (Chapter III)
In scripture the cloud is often where we find and hear the voice of God.
“While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud.” (Matthew 17:5, NKJV)
“Now the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day He called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel. So Moses went into the midst of the cloud and went up into the mountain.” (Exodus 24:16-18, NKJV)
The cloud is not an easy place to be. It requires practice and conditioning. As the author says, “So set yourself to rest in this darkness as long as you can”.
The author also counsels that such contemplation is the one act that it is not possible to pursue to excess.
“If you ask me the further question, how you are to apply discretion in this exercise, I answer and say, ‘none at all!’ In all your other activities you are to have discretion, in eating and drinking, in sleeping, and in protecting your body from the extremes of heat and cold, in the length of time you give to prayer or reading or to conversation with your fellow-Christians. In all these things you are to observe moderation, avoiding excess and defect. But in this exercise there is no question of moderation; I would prefer that you should never leave off as long as you live.” (Chapter 41)
Not only is excess of contemplation not a possibility or a problem. Unrestrained indulgence in contemplation also rightly orders the soul in regards to all other things, such that they are not taken to excess, but in proper measure.
“Now perhaps you will ask how you shall observe prudence in eating and sleeping and everything else. My answer to this is brief enough: ‘Understand it as best you can.’ Work at this exercise without ceasing and without moderation, and you will know where to begin and to end all your other activities with great discretion. I cannot believe that a soul who perseveres in this exercise night and day without moderation should ever make a mistake in any of his external activities.” (Chapter 42)
Why might this be? The Catechism says, “Contemplation is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus.” (2715) With a gaze fixed on Christ all other things become rightly ordered and proportioned. As Jesus said:
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33, KJV)
I think this coheres with what I said earlier about how I believe prayer is the most important thing we can do. Because prayer, especially prayer of contemplation focuses our gaze singly on Christ. Jesus said to Martha: “You are worried and troubled about many things.” (Luke 10:41, NKJV) That’s all of us. The Greek word merimnao (μεριμνάω), to be anxious, is a word I always pay close attention to in the New Testament when I see it. It occurs a number of times in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6: me merimnate (μὴ μεριμνᾶτε), do not worry. “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on… For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matthew 6:25; 32-33, NKJV) As Jesus said to Martha: “One thing is needed.” (Luke 10:42, NKJV) That one thing is the gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus in prayer.
Todd Decker 