Prayer As God-Knowledge(Viaself)
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Joshua Cockayne Prayer as God-knowledge(viaSelf) Abstract: What is the purpose of prayer?AccordingtoKierkegaard, “prayer does not changeGod, but it changes the one who prays.” Whilst much contemporary philosophyofreligion focuses on the so-called puzzle of petitionary prayer,less is written about how prayer can changethe person who prays. In this paper,I discuss Kierkegaard’saccount of prayer in TheSickness unto Death and “An Oc- casional Discourse on the Occasion of Confession.” Prayer,asitispresented here, allows aperson to gain acertain kind of self-knowledge and thereby draw near to God. Afteroutlining Kierkegaard’saccount,Idraw some compari- sons with Harry Frankfurt’saccount of the will to demonstrate how prayer might allow for both self-knowledge as wellasGod-knowledge. IIntroduction Recent work on the philosophyofprayerhas focused almost entirelyonthe question of how aperson’sprayercould changethe mind of God. This is the so called “puzzle of petitionary prayer.”¹ However,not all philosophersortheo- logians agree that prayer should primarilyseek to changethe mind of God.The Danishthinker Søren Kierkegaard, for instance, writes that “prayer does not changeGod,but it changes the one who prays.”² This is aline of thought which those who engagewith the puzzle of petitionary prayer are familiar with. Danieland Frances Howard-Synder,for instance, state that, [w]e agreethat petitioningGod can make adifferenceinus. However…most practicing theists assume thereismoretoitthan that and so it would be morecharitable to solve Iwould like to thank David Efird and an anonymous referee fortheir helpfulfeedback on earlier drafts of thispaper.Thanksalso go to the members of the St. Benedict Society forphilosophy of religion and philosophical theology at the University of York fortheir helpful comments, as well as to the participantsofthe Annual Christian Philosophy Conferencefor their feedback. Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder, “The Puzzle of Petitionary Prayer,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion,vol. 2, 2010,pp. 43 – 68. SKS 8, 137 / UD,22. Joshua Cockayne,DepartmentofPhilosophy,UniversityofYork, York YO10 5DD,United Kingdom, :[email protected] https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2017-0005 Brought to you by | University of St Andrews Scotland Authenticated Download Date | 3/22/18 1:36 PM 102 Joshua Cockayne the puzzle without denying their assumption.Moreover,evenifpetitioning God can make a differenceinus, we cannot petition him while thinkingthat our words won’tmakeany dif- ference to whetherhedoes what we ask.³ The Howard-Snyders acknowledge that the kind of thinking behind Kierke- gaard’sview on prayer is valuable, but irrelevant to the puzzle of petitionary prayer.Yet,infocusing onlyonthe petitionary aspect of prayer,the philosophy of Christian prayer risks becomingskewed in focus. Even if we disagree with Kierkegaard’sconclusion (that prayer onlychanges us, and not God), the question thatseems pertinent to ask is: How does prayer changethe person who prays? In this paper,Iargue that the purpose of prayer is to gain knowledge of oneself. However,this is not the kind of knowledge one can gain merelybyin- trospecting—the account of prayer Iwill focus on here aims to draw aperson closer to God through their knowledge of self. To do this,Ifocus on the short, but intriguing, account of prayer that we find in Kierkegaard’s TheSickness unto Death. Kierkegaard’spseudonymous author,Anti-Climacus, writes, “to pray is…to breathe, and possibility is for the self what oxygen is for breathing.”⁴ Whatdoes Anti-Climacus mean by this remark?Inpresentingthis passageinthe wider context of TheSickness unto Death,Iarguethat prayer as it is presented here is best understood as an activity which enables aperson to gain akind of self-knowledge.More specifically, in seeing what Anti- Climacus writes about the human self as asynthesis of necessity and possibility, we can see prayer as an activity of becomingmore aware of our existenceas creatures who expressboth necessity (weare physical, mortal creatures) and possibility(it is possible for us to somehow transcend this earthlylife and the constraints of everydayphysical existence). Afterdiscussing Kierkegaard’s account of prayer and self-knowledge in TheSickness unto Death,Idraw acom- parisonbetween Kierkegaard’sHarry Frankfurt’saccounts of the will.⁵ Drawing on Frankfurt’snotion of wholeheartedness,Idescribethe Kierkegaardian notion of despair as akind of internal conflict of the will which is irresolvable without intervention from God; despair cannotbeovercome, Anti-Climacus tells us, until the soul “rests transparentlyinGod.”⁶ To explain what generates this internal conflict,Iarguethatall human beingshaveafirst-order desire for union with Howard-Synder and Howard-Snyder, “The Puzzle of Petitionary Prayer,” p. 46. SKS 11, 156 / SUD, 40. Harry Frankfurt, TheImportance of What We Care About, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press 1988. SKS 11, 146/SUD,30. Brought to you by | University of St Andrews Scotland Authenticated Download Date | 3/22/18 1:36 PM Prayer as God-knowledge(viaSelf) 103 God which is often supressed, ignored, or misunderstood. It is onlywhen this desire for God is unified with ahigher-order desire for union with God thata person can be free of despair and come close to God. Thus, it follows, in order for aperson to come close to God in faith, she must become conscious of her inherent desire for God. That is, prayer makes possible akind of God- knowledge via self-knowledge.⁷ II KierkegaardonPrayer Those familiar with Kierkegaard’swritingswill know thatthey are littered with short,and often profound, examples of prayers.⁸ Kierkegaard alsooffers some thoughts on the purpose of prayer,atplaces in his writings. In his “Occasional Discourse on the Occasion of Confession,” for instance, Kierkegaard discusses an example of aconfessional prayer.Kierkegaardwrites that [a] hasty explanation can suppose that to prayisafutile act because aperson’sprayerdoes not,ofcourse, change the changeless;but in the long run would this be desirable, could not the changingperson easilycome to repentthat he managedtoget God changed! Thus,the true explanation is also the one and onlytobedesired: the prayerdoes not change God, but it changesthe one whoprays.⁹ AccordingtoKierkegaard, to pray is not to seek to changeGod’smind, or at least not in the context of aconfession, but rather,toprayistoseek to changeoneself. Whilst it appears that Kierkegaard seeks to disregard petitionary prayer altogeth- Some points of clarification: First,this paper is not an attempt to offer asolution to the problem of petitionary prayer. The claim that prayerprimarilychangesusand not God is not asatisfyingresponse to the problem of petitionary prayer,yet this does not mean that prayer as ameans of self-knowledgeiswithout philosophical interest (although this mayexplain the lack of exploration of this kind of prayerbyanalytic philosophers). Secondly, thereismuch to be said on Kierkegaard’sdiscussion of self-knowledge (for discussions of Kierkegaardand self-knowledge, see John Lippitt’s “Self-Knowledge in Kierkegaard,” in Self-Knowledge,ed. by Ursula Renz, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press 2016;orDaniel Watts’s “Kierkegaardand the Search for Self‐Knowledge,” European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 4, 2013,pp. 525–549). There is not scopefor abroad overview of what Kierkegaardwrites on self-knowledgehere. My focus will primarilybetogiveanaccount of prayerwhich drawsonaspectsofKierkegaard’s thinking, rather than to offer asystematicoverview of Kierkegaard’sthoughts on the topics of either self-knowledge or prayer. These are compiled in ThePrayers of Kierkegaard, ed. by Perry D. Le Fevre, Chicago:The Uni- versity of Chicago Press 1956. SKS 8, 137 / UD,22. Brought to you by | University of St Andrews Scotland Authenticated Download Date | 3/22/18 1:36 PM 104 Joshua Cockayne er here, we need not reach such adrastic conclusion to follow Kierkegaard’s thoughts on prayer.Asthe Howard-Snyders acknowledge,itisentirely possiblefor prayer to changeboththe individual and God. The question that I am interestedinexploring here concerns what differenceprayermakes to the pray-er. What is the nature of this change? In the context of the discourse, we find this discussion of confessional prayer alongside Kierkegaard’sdiscussion of the human will. Kierkegaard describes faith as akind of single-mindedness in which an individual has the purity of heart to will onlythe good. And it is this purity of heart and single-mindedness of the will which allows aperson to draw near to God. Kierkegaard writes that “onlythe pure in heart are able to see God and consequentlykeep near to him.”¹⁰ When Kierkegaardspeaks of “nearness” to God or “distance” from God, we should read this in terms of willed distance from God. Although God never distances himself from us, the resultofdespair and sin is awilled distance from God—human beingschoose to be far from God by lacking apurity of heart to will the good. Conversely, it is aperson’slack of ability to will onlythe good, or their being in astate of sin, which means that they will not to come near to God. Sin, as it is discussed here, is akind of despair in which aperson has two wills;¹¹ although a person wills the good and wills to be close to God, she is double-minded or con- flicted in her will. Forinstance, she might pursue the good for some selfish purpose such as for some reward,¹² or fear of punishment.¹³ Or,Kierkegaard tells us, aperson can be double-minded by onlypartiallywilling the good through busyness