Although most conservative Presbyterians consider Karl Barth primarily as a frontrunner within the neo-orthodoxy motion, few know of his lifelong curiosity within the follow of prayer.1 Throughout my doctoral research on Barth’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit, I found Barth’s curiosity in prayer and located myself benefitting from insights which have spurred enchancment in my very own prayer life. Whilst evangelicals learn Barth critically, they’ll nonetheless study from him.
Barth was a pastor in addition to a theologian. He was drawn to prayer by means of his pastoral work serving as an assistant pastor in Geneva, a solo pastor in Safenwil, and unofficial chaplain to the convicts on the Basel jail on the peak of his educational acclaim.2 Whereas there are a variety of locations inside his magnum opus, the 14-book “Church Dogmatics” sequence, the place one might flip for Barth’s view on prayer,3 the next exposition follows the fivefold framework utilized in his doctrine of creation.4
In fact, this isn’t meant to be a full endorsement of Barth’s life and work. Considerate Christians ought to neither embrace him utterly or ignore him utterly. As D.A. Carson acknowledged, “It’s unhappy if educated pastors don’t make use of Barth, however it’s much more unhappy in the event that they make a flawed use of Barth.”
Prayer as Freedom
Barth begins his doctrine of prayer along with his argument that “true prayer” relies on our “freedom earlier than God.”5 By this, Barth signifies that we pray as a result of we’ve got been “permitted to take action by God, as a result of [we] can pray, and since this very permission has change into a command.”6 Those that know the hole between their sin and God’s holiness might really feel unworthy to petition or hassle him in prayer.7 For Barth, the one “actual foundation of prayer is man’s freedom earlier than God, the God-given permission to hope which, as a result of it’s given by God, turns into a command and order and due to this fact a necessity.”8
The saved sinner is aware of merely this: “It’s in line with ‘God’s gracious will’ that I pray; thus I’ll pray.”9 On this argument Barth echoes two nice Reformers. First, he echoes Luther’s argument in The Giant Catechism: “[i]t is our responsibility to hope as a result of God has commanded it…[t]his God requires of us; he has not left it to our selection…[i[t is our duty and obligation to pray if we want to be Christians.”10
Likewise, John Calvin’s “finer” position in his 1542 Catechism places the source of our boldness in petitioning God as sinners in that “we have the command and the promise that we may and shall call upon Him in the name of Jesus Christ.”11 All failure to pray, then, must be seen as a refusal to do so rather than an inability, in a mistaken effort to evade “the judgment and the consequences of God…because [one] won’t reside by His grace.”12
Prayer as Petition
The second facet that Barth assigns to prayer is its being “decisively petition – petition addressed to God – however nonetheless petition” nonetheless.13 Barth praises Luther, Calvin, and the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism, who, following the Lord Jesus himself, selected to border their doctrines of prayer across the idea of petition versus later writers who tried for extra modern approaches that missed this “pure centre”.14
Petition is foundational to a correct view of prayer as a result of it removes the opportunity of seeing this act as some type of service or present that’s worthy of the divine. One comes however with “empty arms … to be unfold out earlier than God and stuffed by Him … because the one who has to obtain all issues from Him.”15 Such an understanding additionally acts as a “safeguard” that the person comes earlier than God with none semblance of placing on airs or an try at disguise – whether or not as people or the whole neighborhood – however because the sinners he has redeemed and instructions to hope.16
As such, prayer as petition should embrace confession and repentance of sin so completely exemplified by “[t]he penitential prayers within the Psalms” which exhibit “asking, wanting, sighing and crying in the direction of God that He’ll forgive the one who prays, that He won’t let him fall, that He’ll present him His manner and provides him a clear coronary heart and a brand new spirit.”17 Prayer that capabilities on this manner will lead into worship of God in “quietness earlier than His deity and its majesty, contemplation of its peak and profundity,” and a whole, joyful, and “but additionally terrifyingly shocked submission to Him.”18
Prayer as Communion
Barth’s third side of prayer is its communal nature.19 By the neighborhood, Barth means those that comply with Jesus “as a result of He has summoned, invited, and claimed them,” and whom Jesus calls to hope alongside him.20 The church will not be “an unique circle” in that “‘we’re most intimately united to the human world round us” by being fellow sinners with them, and in being tasked with “representing our Lord amongst them and them earlier than our Lord.”21
The prayer of this “we” is to mirror the primary three petitions of the Lord who established us as household earlier than “our Father” who “calls us to His facet” and “summons us to make His functions and goals the item of our personal need.”22
The church can also be to make use of the final three petitions whereby bringing the fundamental wants of the “we” for meals, forgiveness, and fortification to the God who’s “actually for us, as our Assist, and Helper, because the Giver of the great items we want.”23 In doing so, the seemingly particular person focus in these petitions, “loses its merely non-public character” in favor of an interconnected concern for all peoples and creation.24
Prayer as Assurance
The fourth foundational leg of “[t]rue prayer” for Barth is its being “prayer which is bound of a listening to.”25 This listening to in prayer is “the reception and adoption of the human request into God’s plan and can.”26
Luther insisted upon trusting within the guarantees of God’s Phrase that “our prayer is heartily pleasing to him and can assuredly be heard and granted, in order that we might not despise or disdain it or pray uncertainly.”27 Calvin believed it’s not possible for individuals who don’t belief God’s goodness to name upon him in prayer. The Heidelberg divines declared that “‘Amen’ means, this shall be true and sure…[f]or my prayer is far more definitely heard by God than I really feel in my coronary heart that I need such from Him.”28
One may be assured of being heard by means of the fellowship believers share with the glorified Son of God by means of the Spirit who leads us to “pray with and after Him, making the nice request which He as man has uttered and nonetheless utters at God’s proper hand”.29
Prayer as Obedience
The ultimate important facet of prayer for Barth is its being a Christian ethic.30 By this Barth signifies that each believer is named to prayer. In different phrases, invocation is the vocation of the Christian life.31 Thus prayer isn’t any mere abstraction however a “pleading” earlier than God fervently for the wants of others first, adopted by “one’s personal trigger.”32 Underscoring prayer’s function as a Christian ethic that each one believers should reply to, Barth calls prayer “an occasion” by which Christians fulfill their function as Christ’s “despatched neighborhood” to the world.33
Virtually, Barth means that this obedience extends past one’s prayer closet and personal devotions and to the weekly service believers supply as much as God in worship. Such prayer ought to occupy no much less severe consideration than the sermon and be given with the identical degree of preparation, whereby one strives for excellence in content material, eloquence in speech, and unction in supply.34
As this facet happens with the opposite 4, our prayers will more and more be in accord with the definition offered by our Catechism which reminds us that, “[p]rayer is an providing up of our wishes unto God, for issues agreeable to His will, within the title of Christ, with confession of our sins, and grateful acknowledgment of His mercies.”35
Might we, as with the multitude of saints earlier than us, come earlier than the God who has promised to fulfill all our wants with the mercy and charm he has offered us within the items of Jesus Christ, his Spirit, and our fellowship with each other.
Rev. Dr. Daniel J. McDowell is assistant pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Georgetown Texas. Daniel earned his Ph.D. in Divinity on the College of Aberdeen along with his thesis on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit within the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth.
1 This included exploring a doctoral thesis on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theology of prayer beneath Wilhelm Herrmann. See Ashley Cocksworth, Karl Barth on Prayer (London: T&T Clark, 2015), particularly pp. 1-23.
2 See Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His life from letters and autobiographical texts, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), pp. 52-125; pp. 414-5; Christiane Tietz, Karl Barth: A Life in Battle, trans. Victoria J. Barnett (New York, Oxford College Press, 2021), pp. 344-6; Karl Barth, Deliverance to the Captives (Eugene: Wipf & Inventory, 2010), pp. 14-160.
3 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols in 13 components, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, G. T. Thomson & Harold Knight, eds. Geoffrey W. Bromiley & T. F. Torrance (New York: T&T Clark, 2004) [hereafter CD].
4 CD III/4, pp. 87-116.
5 CD III/4, p. 91.
6 CD III/4, p. 91.
7 CD III/4, p. 92.
8 CD III/4, p. 92.
9 CD III/4, p. 93.
10 Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The E-book of Harmony the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), pp. 420-1.
11 CD III/4, p. 93.
12 CD III/4, p. 96.
13 CD III/4, p. 97.
14 CD III/4, p. 97.
15 CD III/4, p. 97.
16 CD III/4, pp. 97-8, cf. Mt. 6:9-13.
17 CD III/4, p. 99.
18 CD III/4, p. 100.
19 CD III/4, p. 102, cf. III/4, p. 102, IV/2, p. 705.
20 CD III/4, p. 102.
21 CD III/4, p. 102. Whereas this may be learn charitably and evangelically, in fact, Barth’s tacit universalism have to be famous right here—a view untenable for these holding to the historic confessions of the Christian and particularly Reformed church plus the clear instructing of Holy Scripture. For the traditional fashionable rebuttal to universalism, see William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, third ed., Alan W. Gomes (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003), pp. 884-939.
22 CD III/4, pp. 103-4, cf. Mt. 6:9-10. See additionally CD III/1, p. 39, IV/2, p. 706; Rom. 8:17; Karl Barth, The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics IV/4, Lecture Fragments, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), p. 49-51, pp. 82-5 [hereafter ChL].
23 CD III/4, p. 105.
24 CD III/4, p. 105.
25 CD III/4, p. 106.
26 CD III/4, p. 106.
27 Tappert, The E-book of Harmony, p. 423.
28 CD III/4, p. 107, cf. Calvin, 1542 Catechism, Q. 248; The Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 129.
29 CD III/4, pp. 107-8, cf. Mt. 18:19; Jn. 14:13, 15:16, 16:23.
30 CD III/4, p. 110.
31 CD IV/3, p. 783; ChrL, pp. 85-109.
32 CD III/4, p. 110.
33 CD IV/3, p. 780.
34 CD III/4, pp. 114-5. See additionally IV/3, pp. 882-5; ChrL, pp. 85-6, p. 92.
35 Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q & A, #98 cf. Ps. 10:17.
