¹ The title of Calvin's treatise on prayer, which is the focus of this discussion, is “Prayer, which is the Chief Exercise of Faith, and by which we daily receive God's benefits”; see Institute of the Christian Religion (ed. McNeill, John T.; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977)Google Scholar. All citations are from this edition. I focus on the Institutes because of Calvin's systematic discussion of questions related to prayer there, although he deals with the issue in a number of other places. In particular, see Commentary on the Book of Psalms (trans. Anderson, James; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949)Google Scholar esp. the “Author's Preface,” 1. xxxv–xlix; A Harmony of the Gospels (trans. Morrison, A. W.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972) 1. 204–13Google Scholar (comments on the Lord's Prayer); Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Daniel (trans. Myers, Thomas; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948) 2. 134–87Google Scholar. General discussions of Calvin on prayer may be found in Wallace, Ronald S., Calvin's Doctrine of the Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959) 271–93Google Scholar, and Niesel, Wilhelm, The Theology of Calvin (trans. Harold Knight; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956) 152–58. It is interesting that neither Wallace nor Niesel attends to the question of the justification of prayer.Google Scholar

² Institutes, Book III.

³ My discussion of Calvin's ethical teaching is influenced especially by Little, David, Religion, Order and Law: A Study in Pre-Revolutionary England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) 33–80Google Scholar; idem, “Calvin and the Prospects for a Christian Theory of Natural Law,” in Outka, Gene and Ramsey, Paul, eds., Norm and Context in Christian Ethics (New York: Scribner's, 1968) 175–97.Google Scholar

⁴ Institutes, III. 19, esp. sections 4 and 5.

⁵ Ibid., III.20.3; 17; On authoritarian appeals, see Little, David and Twiss, Sumner B., Comparative Religious Ethics (New York: Harper & Row, 1978) 103–4.Google Scholar On rule-deontology, see Beauchamp, Tom L. and Childress, James F., Principles of Biomedical Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979) 41–42.Google Scholar

⁶ Institutes, III.20.2.

⁷ Ibid., III.20.1.

⁸ At Institutes, III.2.7 faith is defined as “a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Also of interest is the discussion of repentance as the fruit of faith at III.3.1–4.

⁹ institutes, III.20.3.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ On this point see Stump, Eleonore, “Petitionary Prayer,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979) 81–91.Google Scholar

¹⁴ E.g., at Institutes, III.20.4 and 5. Cf. the editor's n. 6 to section 4.

¹⁵ Institutes, III.20.4–16.

¹⁶ Ibid., III.20.11.

¹⁷ Ibid., III.20.34–49.

¹⁸ Ibid., III.20.3.

¹⁹ (Trans. A. T. Mackay, et al.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1961). Again, I focus on this discussion because of its systematic nature. References to prayer are scattered throughout the Dogmatics; Barth also discusses prayer in the context of the work of theologians in Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (trans. Foley, Grover; New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1963) 159–70.Google Scholar

²⁰ Institutes, III.20.3; Barth (quote following), Church Dogmatics III/4.53.3.

²¹ For what follows, see in general Church Dogmatics, III/4.52; also II/2.36–39, and “The Gift of Freedom: Foundation for Evangelical Ethics,” in The Humanity of God (trans. Thomas, John Newton and Weiser, Thomas; Atlanta: John Knox, 1960) 69–96.Google Scholar My interpretation of Barth stresses some of the same points as those of Gustafson, James in Can Ethics Be Christian? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975) 160Google Scholar; idem, Christ and the Moral Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1968; reprint Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976) esp. 40–48Google Scholar; and most recently, idem, Theocentric Ethics (2 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) 2. 26–42.Google Scholar Alternative interpretations which have affected my discussion may be found in Ramsey, Paul, “Liturgy and Ethics,” JRE 7 (1979) 139–71Google Scholar; also Werpehowski, William, “Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth,” JRE 9 (1981) 298–320.Google Scholar

²² Ibid.; but cf. Church Dogmatics, III/2.

²³ Church Dogmatics, III/4, 105.

²⁴ Ibid., 93.

²⁵ Ibid., 92–93.

²⁶ Ibid., 10–31.

²⁷ Ibid., 3–31.

²⁸ Ibid., esp. 29–46. “Radical occasionalism” is Gustafson's term in Can Ethics Be Christian? 160. Ramsey (“Liturgy and Ethics”) and Werpehowski (“Command and History”) emphasize the role of the “spheres” in providing the “formed reference” for the divine command of which Barth speaks.

²⁹ Church Dogmatics, III/4, 31.

³⁰ Frankena, William K., Ethics (2d ed.; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973) 23. Werpehowski (“Command and History,” 317. n. 5) refers to Frankena and to the possibility that Barth's ethical theory might fit with Frankena's definition of act-deontologism. Werpehowski, who in this regard focuses on the question of Barth's “intuitionism,” thinks that such a characterization, while possible, is unnecessary and probably misleading. I use Frankena's terminology here more with respect to the place of rules than of intuitionism. See also Beauchamp and Childress, Principles, 43.Google Scholar

³¹ Church Dogmatics, III/4, 105.

³² Ibid., 91.

³³ Ibid., 102.

³⁴ Ibid., 97.

³⁵ Ibid., 98–100.

³⁶ Ibid., 99.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Ibid., 91–92.

³⁹ Ibid., 108–9.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 109.

⁴¹ Ibid., 100–101.

⁴² Ibid., beginning at 91.

⁴³ Ibid., 110. Of course, the community also honors the individual in its prayers: “The community is composed only of individuals, so that even in its assembling, if it is to pray aright, it can only express the real requests of these individuals.” My point is one of comparative emphasis.

⁴⁴ Institutes, III.20.29.

⁴⁵ Richard, Lucien, The Spirituality of John Calvin (Atlanta: John Knox, 1974).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Ibid., 1.

⁴⁷ Church Dogmatics, III/4, 97–98. The “type of exercise, as evolved and prescribed by Ignatius of Loyola for his pupils and as variously recommended in modern secular religions, can perform a useful function as a means of psychical hygiene, but it has nothing whatever to do with the prayer required of us. Prayer begins where this kind of exercise leaves off; and this exercise must leave off where the prayer begins in which neither the collected man nor the distraught, neither the deepened nor the superficial, neither the purified and cleansed nor the impure, and not even the clear and the strong, has anything whatever to represent or offer to God, but everything to ask of him.” In view of the discussion of interpretations or responses to Calvin, perhaps this is the place to note that Barth's use of Calvin in the discussion of prayer primarily refers to the Geneva Catechism rather than to the Institutes.

⁴⁸ Among those noted for discussion of spirituality, one thinks, e.g., of the statement of Hans Ur von Balthasar: “It is not because Barth represents one strong current in contemporary Protestantism that we are going to dialogue with him.… Barth was a representative of authentic Protestantism.… We must choose Barth as a partner for dialogue because in his work authentic Protestantism has found its full-blown image for the first time. Cutting through all the distorted developments of neo-Protestantism, he has gone back to the root sources of Protestantism, Calvin and Luther, and has even refined and purified these sources” (Balthasar, Hans Ur von, The Theology of Karl Barth [trans. Drury, John; New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971] 18; emphasis in original).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Kant's discussion is found in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (trans. Greene, Theodore M. and Hudson, Hoyt H.; New York: Harper & Row, 1960) 182–86.Google Scholar Among theologians, it is interesting to compare Schleiermacher and Ritschl, whose discussions of prayer exhibit some of the same tendencies as Kant's, though in a less radical version. Cf. Schleiermacher, Friedrich, The Christian Faith (trans. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S Stewart; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928) 180, 586–91Google Scholar; Ritschl, Albrecht, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (trans. H. R. Mackintosh and A. B. Macauley; Clifton, NJ: Reformed Book Publishers, 1966) 640–46.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 184.

⁵¹ Ibid., 182–86.

⁵² I do not wish to overstate this; in particular, cf. the brief comment at Church Dogmatics, III/4, 97–98, in which Barth indicates that if “devotion” can be taken to mean simply putting oneself under the “fundamental law of the covenant relationship” by praying, then there may be a place for considering prayer as a “devotional exercise.” Such a comment, coupled with the language of “deepening” documented and discussed by Werpehowski (“Command and History”), might suggest more in the way of a Barthian spirituality than I allow. However, I think that the question of what is being deepened remains. Werpehowski suggests that the notion of “responsibility before God” provides continuity for the Barthian self, and thus a characteristic which can be “deepened” over time. I suggest that Barthian responsibility, conceived as it is in relation to his particular actdeontologism, suggests only formal “characteristics” (virtues), e.g., “openness.”

⁵³ Using “shibboleth” as Eire, Carlos M. N. does in his volume on War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) 304 (“Idolatry as the Calvinist shibboleth”).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁴ Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E., The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Institutes, III.20.3. One could go on from here to ask about continuity between the spiritual life, especially the practice of prayer, and the moral life. Calvin has some very interesting things to say along these lines—in general, prayer animates the moral life by increasing the disposition to serve God, including service through the practice of neighbor-love (Ibid.. III.20.24, 29, 38, 39; also note the discussion at II.8.11–12 concerning the relations between the “two tables” of the Decalogue). The relations between prayer and the moral life are more complex than this, however, since in some sense it is the moral experience of humanity which leads, or ought to lead, to repentance and faith—the creation of which is the work of the Holy Spirit; the outcome of which is continuous “calling upon God.” Suggestive in this regard is the intriguing passage at IV.20.29, which deals with the appropriate response of believers to tyranny: “Let us first be mindful of our own misdeeds, which without doubt are chastened by such whips of the Lord. By this, humility will restrain our impatience. Let us then also call this thought to mind, that it is not for us to remedy such evils; that only this remains, to implore the Lord's help, in whose hand are the hearts of kings, and the changing of kingdoms.”