15 - Prayer

Summary

Herbert McCabe warns us off thinking that we need to get our ideas of God right before we establish whether or not to pray. It is the other way round, he says: The “way we understand God is as 'whatever makes sense of prayer.'” This seems to be borne out in the negative, too; making no sense of prayer, because of logical, empirical, or moral objections, involves bewilderment at the idea or worship of God. No account of prayer entirely makes sense of it, but the ways of not making sense, and the conclusions drawn from these ways, vary greatly. Philosophers and theologians have many different views, for example, on the point or pointlessness of prayer. We survey five ways of making and not making sense of prayer, turning on the question, “what is its point?” / 1. Communing with God / Most accounts of prayer situate it within the context of relationship with God; its point being to commune with God. This is so of all the positions surveyed subsequently, except for atheist positions and those that see prayer only as expedient to moral training.