Page History

...

Because the questions we are to consider are about Christian faith and practice, I naturally assume that the answers they call for are the answers to be given to them by an adequate Christian witness and theology. Of course, this can only mean, in practice, the answers given to them by particular Christians and theologians who take, or, possibly, mistake mistake, the answers to be adequately Christian. Therefore, I shall offer my initial responses to the questions as what, in my own best judgment as a Christian and as a theologian, are the answers called for by any adequate Christian witness and theology. This means, among other things, that I will be arguing more from my own positions as a Christian and·as a theologian than for them. So there is all the more reason for you to appropriate my answers critically in the light of your own best judgment about how the questions are to be answered if they are to be answered Christianly, from the standpoint of adequate Christian witness and Christian theological reflection on it.

I should also say that, since my written answers to the questions discussed last year are conveniently available at the church's website, I advise consulting it to any of you feeling the need for more of a response to some of the questions before us this evening than I shall take time to give in my initial

2

answers here. More than that, a couple of questions submitted this year are close enough to some asked last year that I shall say very little in responding to them here and simply refer the questioners as well as the rest of you to my earlier responses. If any of you needs or wants access to my written answers otherwise than electronically, let me know, and I'll arrange to send you a hard copy.

...

I conclude by remarking that, if what I have said is at all correct, perhaps the most appropriate prayer for the present tough times, as for any other times, is the so-called serenity prayer commonly attributed to the great American theologian of the last century, Reinhold Niebuhr:

...

As I see it, then, if there is a more correct way to think of life and death in Christian theology today, it is almost certainly due to theology's having allowed itself to learn from the best scientific knowledge now available to us, instead of being content simply to hand on the prescience of earlier human generations. In

...

This, stated all too briefly, is the understanding of "love" and "forgiveness" on the basis of which I have responded unhesitatingly, Yes, God does want you to love your neighbor as yourself and, as an essential expression or form of such love, to forgive anyone and everyone who, for whatever reason, stands in need of your forgiveness. But, given the fact that the terms "love" and "forgiveness" may be understood in other, sometimes very different senses from those I've tried to clarify, I have no trouble understanding how my response to the question might appear more problematic than I take it to be.

...

There's an old position on this issue that I take to be--or, at least, to point to--the right theological position; and I want now briefly to develop it by way of

...

focusing our discussion. Simply put, the position I'm prepared to defend is that prayer generally, and petitionary and intercessory prayer in particular; are a means of salvation, or, if you will, a means of grace.

The difficulty with this simple formulation, of course, is that there are so many things that have been said to be "means of salvation." If the term is most commonly applied to such things as preaching the word and administering the sacraments, it has also been applied to the faith by which the grace mediated by both word and sacraments alone becomes effective in our lives. But then it is also often applied to the representative ministry of the church and, by further extension, to the visible church itself, which, in the well-known formula of the Roman Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council, is defined as "sacrament of the salvation of the whole world" (sacramentum salutis totius mundi). More than that: in much contemporary theology, the application of the term has been extended still further to include Jesus Christ himself, who IS said to be the primal sacrament, or means of salvation, the church then being distinguished as the primary means, and all other such things as the church's word, sacraments, and ministry being distinguished as secondary means. My own way of making essentially the same point is to say that faith in God through Jesus Christ, although in its own way a means of salvation and therefore not constitutive of salvation, but only representative, of it, nonetheless is the constitutive such means for Christians-which is to say, the means that constitutes anything and everything else as properly Christian-while all other so-called means, be they the primary means of the visible church or the secondary means that the church in turn constitutes, are in no sense constitutive but rather representative means of salvation even for Christians.

Now, clearly, "prayer," as we ordinarily understand it, is-if a means of salvation at all-but one of many such representative means that we as Christians recognize and use. I say, "as we ordinarily understand it," because, as we all know, the term "prayer" can also be used in extended senses-so extended, indeed, that Paul can exhort the Thessalonians, "Pray constantly," or, as the _KJV_ has it, "Pray without ceasing." In the same vein, the great theologian of the ancient church, Origen, can say that "the whole life of the saint \[is\] one great unbroken prayer," and Bishop John A.T. Robinson can write in our own time, in

...

Honest to God, "Prayer is the responsibility to meet others with all I have, to be ready to encounter the unconditional in the conditional, to expect to meet God in the way, not to turn aside from the way. All else is exercise towards that or reflection in depth upon it." Clearly, "prayer" is being used in all these cases in so broad a sense that it covers the whole of our Christian existence as an existence in faith working through love and love see!dng justice, and is thus merely another word for our proper worship, or service, of God. But, as we most commonly use the term, "prayer" has the much narrower meaning illustrated paradigmatically by what goes on, or should go on, in the corporate worship of the gathered church. Far from referring to the whole of our existence and activity as Cr-..ristians, it refers to one activity alongside others, the significance of which-as of all such special "religious" activities (lvhichwhich, of course, are the "all else" of which Bishop Robinson speaks)--is in some way to re-present the ultimate reality understood and responded to in different ways through Christian faith and witness. In that sense, prayer is the re-presentation through appropriate concepts and symbols of the understanding of God, our neighbors, and ourselves to which we are brought insofar as we understand them in the light of God's decisive word to us through Jesus Christ. Prayer in this sense, in other words, is our response or "Amen" to the truth disclosed to us through God's decisive revelation through Christ as mediated through the visible church and all of its other secondary means of salvation. Prayer is our acknowledgment in an outward visible \..yay of the reality of God, our neighbors, and ourselves as this ultimate threefold reality is decisively re-presented to us through Christ and the church.

...

remember, we're charged with loving our neighbors as ourselves. Well, I hold that petitionary prayer, in the usual sense, is one of the ways we go about fulfilling the commandment to love ourselves, even as intercessory prayer which is really only petitionary prayer for others-is one of the ways we go about loving our neighbors. But how so? Why do we pray for ourselves and our neighbors? To what end do we pray? Here is where I always remember one of my favorite theologians, Martin Luther, who was the first to help me answer these questions, although I have since learned that essentially the same teaching is to be found already in Augustine (from whom Luther may very well have learned it) as well as in the sermons of the chief teacher of my own church tradition as a Methodist -Jolm- John Wesley. In his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, and specifically on Mt 6:7-13, Luther writes (and I quote him at length):

...

But if prayer is rightly understood, not as an ineffective means of lobbying with God for special favors, but as, in this sense, a means of salvation, how effective a means is it? Otherwise put: Does prayer used as such a means work? Does something happen, after all? I deeply believe it does; for when we learn to pray as we ought, making use of prayer as the means of salvation it properly is, it is bound to be effective for us as the pray-ers, and we have every reason to hope and pray that our prayers may also become an effective witness, and so an effective means of salvation, for others.

Conclusion

Let us pray. --

Bless, O God, all our attempts to do theology and enable them to bear rich fruit. Help us, above all, both to speak and to listen to one another in love: to say what we mean and to mean what we say; and, not least, to hear what is meant, not just what is said; for Jesus's sake. Amen

...