The Phenomenology Of Prayer

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 29 (2007) 131-178

Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba eds., The Phenomenology of Prayer (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005). 291 pp. $75.00 cloth; $24 paper.

The Perspectives in Continental Philosophy Series from Fordham has already published a number of inﬂuential books at the intersection between Continental philosophy and reli- gion. This book entirely devoted to the subject of prayer is a collection of thought provok- ing articles by philosophers and scholars of religion, grappling with topics such as the intentionality of prayer, the ethics of prayer, the consequences of prayer, and prayer in rela- tion to major ﬁgures such as Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida and Marion. It provides an excel- lent resource for reﬂection and will be useful for teachers in courses on prayer and spirituality, and for courses dealing with the limits of phenomenological method. Given the pentecostal emphasis on prayer as a central element in Christian practice, a fertile discus- sion could be expected among pentecostal theologians and scholars as well.

The book consists of three parts. The ﬁrst deals with learning how to pray, a task that is understood to take a lifetime. Merold Westphal contends that prayer may well be the deep- est decentering of the human self, dismantling our constant preoccupation with ourselves as we learn to praise the Other for what the Other is rather than what the Other can do for us. This theme is again taken up by Jill Robbins, arguing with Levinas that true prayer is necessarily a threefold aﬀair between God, myself, and the neighbour, thus bringing out the ethics of prayer as always concerned with the Other/other, be it God or neighbour. Indeed, a major theme of this volume is what I with some hesitation would describe as the fear of solitary prayer as something basically unethical. This is obviously closely connected to the question of the ethical justiﬁcation of petitionary prayer, praying for what I (we) want. From a pentecostal perspective one does indeed feel that one’s own prayer practices have been called into question by this ethics of the Other, with the possible puriﬁcation it entails; but one also feels the need to call some assumptions into question in return: can we not justify a certain restricted egoism — even hedonism — in prayer by saying that we want to have so as to be able to give? In other words, must one evaluate prayer’s ethical dimension by a ﬁrst movement only (“Give me . . .”), or can one not suspend that judgement in order to be able to arrive at a second movement (“I give you what I have already been given. . .”)? Rather than restricting solitary prayer and petition for its potential egoism, should it not be accorded its place — not the ﬁrst place, to be sure — and even be seen as a conduit to the good of my neighbour? Rather than arguing with Christina Gschwandtner that ethically responsible prayer must be corporate, we should perhaps follow the lead of Brian Treanor who sees that prayer as diﬀerent manifestations of love enables us to overcome the tensions between private and corporate praying.

The second part of the book deals with prayer and the limits of phenomenology. The fundamental idea — indeed, a basic theme for phenomenology as such — is that we ought not to force our life experience into preconceived theories or philosophies that do not ﬁt, but should instead be prepared to alter the theories in light of lived experience. This part of the book ranges from Cleo McNelly Kearns’ consideration of breathing in light of Irigaray’s reﬂections on the relation of yoga and Western philosophy, to Benjamin Crowe’s account of biblical forms of prayer in the light of Heidegger. The fact that there is such a wide scope is a strength as well as a weakness. On the one hand there is something for anyone remotely

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interested in the subject. On the other hand, the price paid for this breadth is a vagueness about what we are talking about. Often prayer is considered in abstraction from speciﬁc religions and traditions — contexts that give the activities of prayer their meaning (as Crowe’s article about Heidegger’s understanding of prayer argues). I would have liked to see more attention to diﬀerent forms of prayer and more determinate contexts of prayer, but this would run counter to some of the authors’ investment in the ideas of indeterminate religion, of religion sans religion, to speak with Derrida.

This leads us to the third and ﬁnal part of the book, dealing with prayer’s intentionality: To Whom/What do we direct our prayers? Well, in the absence of revelation, who knows! In the context of religion sans religion there is a direction of prayers to the unknown, the unreachable; there is a oui, oui to whatever may be. T ere is an emphasis on this element in the articles of Michael Andrews and Lissa McCullough. Andrews aims to “investigate how the phenomenology of prayer keeps a safe distance from every determinable faith” (p. 196). Now there is obviously a good point to be made here, one that is in accord with the whole tradition of apophatic theology: T ere is a need for a healthy agnosticism as regards the essence of God. However, I would have liked to see a discussion of the role of revelation in the practice of prayer.

Despite its broad approach there is in The Phenomenology of Prayer an implicit emphasis on the Christian tradition and on the contemplative strand within it. Valuable as this is, it would have been helpful to see elements of other traditions of Christian prayer. In the age of the embodied mind and of renewed interest in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body, the explicitly “physical” prayer practices of the pentecostal tradition — the speaking in tongues, the laying on of hands, the anointing with oil — would further challenge the phenomenological analyses of interiorized forms of prayer. Is there in this tradition the seeds for a renewed appreciation for the role of the body in prayer? Certainly, a dialogue with charismatically oriented prayer on such topics would have been provocative and would have further unsettled the already unsettled phenomenology of prayer.

Reviewed by Andreas Nordlander

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