Ancient and modern views on the cosmological and political meaning of prayer

Yet one of those blog-posts that are "to be updated" as  I find more quotes on the subject matter.

There is a tendency to think of prayer as a mechanism of obtaining things. You ask, you receive. God is imagined to be some sort of cosmic mechanical dispenser. You put in prayer, you get something, whatever, out. Of course it has to be honest prayer from a pure heart, and so on. We also tend to think of prayer as an initiative we take in order to get God's attention. But what we forget is that the only prayer acceptable to God is the one animated by the Spirit.


Robert Barclay writes that,

"We freely confess that prayer is both very profitable, and a necessary duty commanded, and fit to be practised frequently by all Christians; but as we can do nothing without Christ, so neither can we pray without the concurrence and assistance of his Spirit. [...] This necessity of the Spirit's moving and concurrence appears abundantly from that of the apostle Paul, Rom. viii. 26, 27. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infrmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. Which first holds forth the incapacity of men as of themselves to pray or call upon God in their own wills, even such as have received the faith of Christ, and are in measure sanctified by it, as was the church of Rome, to which the apostle then wrote. Secondly, It holds forth that which can only help and assist men to pray, to wit, the Spirit, as that without which they cannot do it acceptably to God, nor beneficially to their own souls." (Barclay, Ap. Prop. XI)

God already knows our needs. No need to talk and talk for hours, babbling along as some pious people like to, then. Rather, prayer is about continuously re-establishing and re-affirming the atonement, God's love for the world. Prayer unfolds the world which has a constant tendency of being entangled in itself, and puts things under the rule of God. This is the job of the Church, God's living presence in the world. Barth famously wrote that,

"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." (Karl Barth, On Prayer(?))

Of course, for Barth, protest and unrest, skepticism against the righteousness of this world were always (dialectically) a way of acknowledging the righteousness of God and a way of proclaiming the coming of His kingdom.

Putting words to the positive side of Barth's claim, Jacques Ellul (a Barthian), wrote that

"Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible."

Similarly, John Climacus (the Syriac monk of the 7th century(?)), wrote that

"Prayer is by nature a dialog and a union of man with God. Its effect is to hold the world together." (Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent p. 274)

All this easily gives prayer a political significance. William Stringfellow (another Barthian), wrote that

"Prayer, as I mean it, has it integrity in recall of the event of one's own creation in the Word of God. Prayer, in this significance, is distinguished from the vulgar or profane connotations that have, unhappily, accrued to the term. Prayer, for instance, has nothing, as such, to do with utterance, language, posture, ceremony, or pharisaical style and tradition. Prayer is not "talking" with God, to God, or about God. It is not asking God for anything whatsoever. It is not bargaining with God. It has no similarity to conjuring, fantasizing, sentimental indulgence, or superstitious practice. It is not motivational therapy, either. It is not inspirational. It does not seriously resemble yoga, "transcendental mediation," or any other inverted exercises. More definitively, prayer is not personal in the sense of a private transaction occurring in a void, disconnected with everyone and everything else, but its is so personal that it reveals (I have chosen this verb conscientiously) every connection with everyone and everything else in the whole of Creation throughout time. A person in the estate of prayer is identified in relation to Alpha and Omega - in relationship to the inception of everything and to the fulfillment of everything (cf. Romans 1:20, I Corinthians 12:12-13, Revelations 22:12). [...] Prayer, in quintessence, therefore, is a political action - an audacious one, at that - bridging the gap between immediate realities and ultimate hope, between ethics and eschatology, between the world as it is and the Kingdom which is vouchsafed. (Stringfellow, A Simplicity of Faith)

That prayer had a political meaning, was clear for the early Christians, who saw persecution as the devil's attempt to stop the prayers of the Christians through the secular powers:

"This is always the devil's way in persecuting, in afflicting, in oppressing Christians: to stop them from lifting blameless hands in prayer to God, knowing that the prayer of the saints obtains peace for the world, punishment for wrongdoers." (Hippolytus, Comm. Dan. 31)

More to come.