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Course 20 · Lesson 1.2

How the Trinity, the Incarnation and grace shape Christian prayer

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 20 outline

Module 1: Spiritual Formation and the Doctrines Behind Prayer

  1. What spiritual formation means in Scripture and tradition
  2. How the Trinity, the Incarnation and grace shape Christian prayer
  3. A map of the prayer traditions: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant
  4. Ways and stages of growth: purgation, illumination and union, and their critics

Module 2: The Desert and Early Monasticism

  1. Anthony, Athanasius and the beginning of the desert movement
  2. The sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers: how to read them
  3. John Cassian and the eight thoughts that trouble the mind
  4. From the hermit to the community: Pachomius, Basil and Benedict

Module 3: Praying with Scripture and with the Church

  1. Lectio divina: its history and the four movements
  2. The Psalms as the prayer of the church
  3. The Divine Office and the Liturgy of the Hours: hours, texts and structure
  4. Using the daily office alone, and the Protestant daily prayer tradition

Module 4: Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer

  1. Stillness and the prayer of the heart in the early Eastern church
  2. The Jesus Prayer: its words, its sources and its history
  3. Gregory Palamas and the fourteenth century controversy over light and energies
  4. Practice and cautions: the role of a guide and the warnings of the tradition

Module 5: Fasting, Discernment and Spiritual Direction

  1. Fasting in Scripture and in the three traditions
  2. Asceticism: its purpose, its dangers and its abuses
  3. The discernment of spirits from Antony and Cassian to Ignatius of Loyola
  4. Spiritual direction: the elder, the confessor, the pastor and the mentor

Module 6: Contemplation and Action

  1. Mary and Martha: how the church has read the two lives
  2. Prayer that issues in service: Benedict, Brother Lawrence and the Reformers on vocation
  3. When practice goes wrong: pride, quietism and spiritual experience without doctrine

Module 7: Building a Rule of Life

  1. What a rule of life is, and what the word rule meant for Benedict
  2. Choosing practices: Scripture, prayer, fasting, rest and service
  3. Dryness, failure and starting again
  4. Reviewing and adjusting a rule over time

All courses

Program / Course 20: Spiritual Theology / Lesson 1.2

What you will learn

  • Explain why Christian prayer is addressed to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
  • Describe how the Incarnation makes prayer through a human Mediator possible.
  • State how the doctrine of grace changes what prayer is meant to do.
  • Recognize how a weak or mistaken doctrine can distort a person’s prayer.

The big idea

Christian prayer is not a general reaching toward the divine. It rests on three claims. God is Trinity, so prayer is a share in a conversation already going on between Father, Son and Spirit. God became human in Jesus Christ, so prayer goes through a Mediator who knows human life from inside. And salvation is by grace, so prayer is first a receiving and not a bargaining. When these doctrines are held, prayer has a shape. When they are neglected, prayer tends to drift toward technique or toward self-expression.

Key terms

Trinity
The Christian teaching that there is one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who share one divine nature.
Incarnation
The teaching that the eternal Son of God took a full human nature and became Jesus of Nazareth.
Mediator
One who stands between two parties. In 1 Timothy 2:5 Christ is called the one mediator between God and men.
Intercession
Prayer on behalf of someone else. Romans 8:34 says Christ intercedes for believers at God’s right hand.
Grace
God’s free gift of favor and help, given without being earned.
Adoption
The New Testament image (Romans 8:15) in which believers become God’s children by his gift.
Lex orandi, lex credendi
A Latin phrase often rendered as the law of prayer is the law of belief. It says that how the church prays and what it believes shape each other.

Background

A person may pray without knowing any theology. A child can say a prayer at bedtime and mean it. Yet the Christian tradition insists that prayer always has a doctrine inside it, spoken or unspoken. Whom a person addresses, on what basis they dare to approach, and what they expect to happen are all theological decisions. The phrase lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief) is usually traced to a fifth-century writer, Prosper of Aquitaine, who argued that the church’s established prayers show what it believes. Later writers extended the saying in both directions: belief shapes prayer, and prayer shapes belief.

This lesson looks at three doctrines that give Christian prayer its form. They are not the only ones, but they run through nearly everything in the course. The Trinity tells who is being addressed and who makes prayer possible. The Incarnation tells how a creature can come near the Creator. Grace tells what is happening when prayer is heard. A student who understands these will read the desert elders, the Jesus Prayer and the Divine Office with more understanding.

A caution about method. This lesson describes what Christian traditions teach. It does not argue that they are correct, and it does not claim that people of other faiths pray wrongly. Jewish, Muslim and other prayer traditions have their own doctrines behind them and are described as such by their own members elsewhere.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The Trinity: prayer to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit

Jesus teaches his disciples to pray to “Our Father” (Matthew 6:9). Paul writes that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into believers’ hearts, crying “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6), and that the Spirit helps human weakness, since believers do not know how to pray as they ought (Romans 8:26). Ephesians 2:18 puts the pattern in one sentence: through Christ both Jews and Gentiles have access in one Spirit to the Father.

From this the early church drew a pattern. Prayer is usually addressed to the Father, offered through the Son and made possible by the Spirit. Origen, in the third century, argued in his work On Prayer for this pattern, with prayer offered to the Father through the Son. Later liturgies also address the Son and the Spirit directly, and the Jesus Prayer (a later lesson) is addressed to the Son. The tradition sees no conflict, because the three persons are one God.

Step 2: The Incarnation: a Mediator who shares human nature

The letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus was tempted in all points as believers are, yet without sin, and invites them to come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:15-16). The reasoning is that the one who intercedes knows human weakness from inside.

The Councils of Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451) defined the claims behind this: that the Son is truly God and truly man. Athanasius, writing about the same time, argued that only God could rescue humanity and only a human could stand for humanity, and that in Christ both were true. Prayer in Christ’s name rests on that claim.

Step 3: Grace: prayer as receiving

If salvation were a reward, prayer might become a way of persuading God. The tradition teaches the opposite. Paul writes that believers are saved by grace through faith, and that it is a gift (Ephesians 2:8). Prayer therefore begins with God’s prior action. Augustine, in the Confessions, opens his prayer with the words that God made human beings for himself and that the heart is restless until it rests in him.

The three traditions differ on how grace and human response relate, as Lesson 1.1 showed. They agree that prayer is not a means of putting God in anyone’s debt.

Step 4: Seeing doctrine in the shape of a prayer

Take the collect, a short prayer used in many Western liturgies. It usually has four parts: it addresses God by a name or attribute, recalls something God has done, makes a petition and ends through Jesus Christ our Lord, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity, the work of God and the role of the Mediator are all in a few lines.

Reading old prayers this way is a skill. A student can ask of any prayer: whom does it address, on what ground, and what does it ask?

Step 5: When doctrine goes missing

A prayer life without doctrine tends to move in one of two directions. It can become self-expression, in which the person talks to the air and finds comfort in the act. Or it can become technique, in which certain words or states of mind are treated as levers that produce results. Both fall short of what the tradition means by prayer, which is a relationship with a God who has made himself known. This is one reason the course spends time on creeds as well as on practices.

  1. To whom do I address my prayers, and does that match what I believe about God?
  2. Do I ever pray as if I were trying to persuade God to be kinder than he is?
  3. What does it mean to me that the Mediator is also human?
  4. Which prayers do I say from memory, and what doctrine do they contain?
  5. What would change in my prayer if I took Romans 8:26 seriously?
  6. Where do I treat prayer as a technique that should produce a result?

Examples

A collect

A typical collect asks God, the Father, to grant some gift to his people, and ends by naming Jesus Christ as the one through whom the request is made. It addresses the Father, asks on the basis of what God has promised and names the Son as the way. The doctrine is present in a single sentence. (A composite description, not a quotation of one prayer.)

Spirit-led prayer

A woman in grief cannot find words and sits in silence in church. A friend tells her that Romans 8:26 describes exactly this, the Spirit praying with groanings that cannot be uttered. She is not told to feel better. She is told she is not praying alone. (A constructed example.)

Prayer as bargaining

A man promises God to attend church every week for a year if his business is saved. When it fails, he stops praying. He has treated prayer as an exchange. The tradition would answer him with grace, not as a rebuke but as a different account of what prayer is. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that Christian prayer is communion with the Father, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit. Catholics also pray with and ask the intercession of Mary and the saints, which they understand as asking fellow members of Christ’s body to pray with them, not as replacing the one Mediator.

Orthodox

Orthodox theology treats the liturgy as the place where doctrine is lived. The Trinity is named constantly in worship, and the saying about prayer and belief is taken seriously. Orthodox Christians also ask the prayers of the saints and of the Mother of God, and venerate icons as a consequence of the Incarnation.

Reformed Protestant

Calvin, in the Institutes, teaches that Christ is the only Mediator, and that believers therefore pray in his name alone. Reformed churches reject prayer to saints, holding that it obscures the sufficiency of Christ’s mediation. They agree with the others that prayer is trinitarian.

Lutheran and evangelical Protestant

Luther’s Small Catechism explains the Lord’s Prayer as the model of what Christians may ask their Father in heaven, with emphasis on trust in God’s promise. Evangelical traditions stress the simplicity of coming to the Father directly through Christ, with free prayer alongside written forms.

Why it matters

Teaching on prayer that skips doctrine produces confusion at the first hard moment. A person who has never learned why they may pray at all will find silence unbearable. A person who has learned that prayer rests on the Trinity, the Incarnation and grace can pray in dryness, knowing that the foundation does not depend on feeling. Doctrine also protects against false teaching dressed as spiritual advice.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Doctrine is for theologians and prayer is for ordinary people.

Correction: Every prayer assumes a doctrine. Children’s prayers and the liturgy alike name the Father, the Son or the Spirit. Learning the doctrine makes the assumption conscious.

Misunderstanding: Praying through Christ means God the Father is distant or unwilling.

Correction: The New Testament says the reverse. Jesus teaches believers to say Father, and Paul writes of the Spirit crying Abba in their hearts. The mediation is the means of access, not a barrier.

Misunderstanding: If prayer is by grace, a person need not try.

Correction: Jesus commands asking, seeking and knocking (Matthew 7:7). Grace explains why prayer is heard. It does not remove the call to pray.

Misunderstanding: All traditions agree about the saints in prayer.

Correction: They do not. Catholic and Orthodox Christians ask for saints’ prayers. Reformed and most Protestant Christians do not. All affirm the Trinity and Christ as Mediator.

Knowledge check

What pattern does Ephesians 2:18 describe for prayer?

Access to the Father, through Christ, in one Spirit. The verse names all three persons of the Trinity in connection with approaching God. It became the basis for the early church’s habit of praying to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.

Why does the Incarnation matter for prayer?

Because the Mediator is both God and man. Hebrews 4:15 says he can sympathize with human weakness because he was tempted as believers are, without sin. Prayer in his name rests on the claim that he is truly one of us and truly God.

What does lex orandi, lex credendi mean?

It means the law of prayer is the law of belief. The church’s established prayers show what it believes, and its beliefs shape how it prays. The saying is often traced to Prosper of Aquitaine and later extended in both directions.

How does grace change the purpose of prayer?

It means prayer is first a response to what God has already done, not an attempt to earn his favor. Ephesians 2:8 calls salvation a gift. The traditions disagree on how effort and grace relate, but none teaches that prayer buys God’s help.

Think it through

  1. Which person of the Trinity do you most often address in prayer, and why?
  2. Is there a prayer you say that you have never examined for what it assumes?
  3. How does it affect you to know the Mediator was tempted and tired?
  4. Where might you be treating prayer as bargaining?

Independent assignment

Reading a prayer for its doctrine

In your notebook, write 300 to 400 words. Choose a prayer you know by heart, such as the Lord’s Prayer or a collect. For each phrase, note whom it addresses, what it assumes about God and what it asks. Then write a paragraph on one thing you learned that you had not noticed. Do not share the notebook with anyone.

Further study