130 - The Psychology of Petitionary Prayer

The Psychology of Petitionary Prayer
By Donald Capps

"The heart of the psychology of religion is the psychology of prayer, especially petitionary prayer.... Down through the centuries, believers have considered prayer the primary religious resource available to them for effecting a connection between themselves and God."

In his article, The Life Line of Theology, George S. Hendry says that he uses a simple device in forming a judgment on the systematic writings of theologians, new and old: He reads what they have to say about prayer. If a theologian takes prayer seriously, Hendry takes the theologian seriously:

I am disappointed with the theologian who disposes of the subject briefly with a few commonplace observations or pious platitudes. I am impatient of those who omit the subject altogether (a group which contains some surprising names). And I am ambivalent toward those who show a serious concern to attach some real significance to prayer, but who reduce it to the practice of the presence of God or to some kind of sensitivity training.

Hendry goes even further. If prayer is the crux of theology, then petitionary prayer is the very heart of prayer. So he looks

to see what the theologian says about prayer as petition. For prayer is basically petition - asking, seeking, making requests. Of course, it is not all petition; there are other things - adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and so forth. But if these elements are so enlarged as to crowd out petition, prayer is denatured; for petition is the heart of prayer.¹

I agree with Hendry that petition is the heart of prayer, and I propose to examine this proposition, not as a clue to systematic theology, but within the area of the psychology of religion.

I

It is commonly believed that the conversion experience is the key issue in psychology of religion. But I am persuaded that, even as prayer is the

Donald Capps is Professor of Pastoral Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary. He is a graduate of Lewis and Clark College, Yale Divinity School, and the University of Chicago. Dr, Capps is the author of Pastoral Care: A Thematic Approach (1979), Pastoral Counseling and Preaching (1980), and Biblical Approaches to Pastoral Counseling (1981). He also serves in editorial capacities for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Religious Studies Review, and the Review of Religious Research
¹ George S. Hendry, The Life Line of Theology, The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 65 (1972): 22 - 30.

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crux of systematic theology, so also it is the crux of psychology of religion. Conversion, mystical experience, religious attitudes and beliefs these are vitally important to psychology of religion. But I am increasingly taken with the idea that prayer is foundational. The heart of the psychology of religion is the psychology of prayer, especially petitionary prayer.

In point of fact, psychologists of religion in the Jamesian era (1880 - 1930) ² were very interested in prayer. They recognized, far more than we do today, that prayer has vital importance for the psychological study of religion. William James said that prayer" is the very soul and essence of religion," ³ and George Albert Coe claimed that "a history and psychology of prayer would be almost equivalent to a history and psychology of religion. ^"4 These psychologists of religion also believed that their investigations of prayer would tell for or against the validity of religion. Alexander Hodge pointed out:

Prayer is the center and soul of all religion, and upon the question of its validity depends the trustworthiness of religious experience in general. If psychology can invalidate prayer, it has succeeded in disproving the whole of religion. On the other hand, if prayer withstands the test of the new thought, then religion as a whole is vindicated. ⁵

In similar fashion, James noted that "the genuineness of religion is thus indissolubly bound up with the question whether the prayerful consciousness be or be not deceitful. The conviction that something is genuinely transacted in this consciousness is the very core of living religion." ⁶

These psychologists of religion considered prayer an excellent test case for the validity of religious experience because prayer raises the critical question: "Is religious experience purely subjective, a merely human experience, or is something genuinely transacted between ourselves and God?" With the exception of certain forms of mysticism, prayer is inconceivable without such a transaction. In fact, down through the centuries, believers have considered prayer the primary religious resource available to them for effecting a connection between themselves and God. Thus, in a very real sense, prayer is the religious experience par excellence.

Without doubt, James and his colleagues were right to stress the importance of prayer for the psychological study of religious experience. In light of their profound interest in prayer, it is most unfortunate that we today give so little attention to the psychology of prayer. Even thoug

² I use the dates suggested by Benjamin Beit - Hallahmi in Psychology of Religion 1880 - 1930: The Rise and Fall of a Psychological Movement, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 10 (1974): 84 - 90.
³ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Mentor Books, 1958), p. 352.
⁴ George Albert Coe, The Psychology of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1916), p. 302.
⁵ Alexander Hodge, Prayer and Its Psychology (New York: Macmillan, 1931), p. x.
⁶ The Varieties, p. 353.

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there is a current revival of interest in James, his concern with prayer is virtually ignored. In my judgment, we need to take a more careful look at these early studies on the psychology of prayer. What follows is an initial step in that direction.

One cautionary note. As we go about resurrecting these studies of prayer, we need to avoid an uncritical attitude toward the views of these early pioneers in the psychology of religion. I am convinced that we are now in a position to improve on their work, and to correct it in some fundamental ways, not because we arc any more gifted, but because we now have more adequate psychological theories for understanding the phenomenon of prayer. So, I will argue that recent developments in the psychology of communication may prove especially useful in the study of petitionary prayer.

II

Why focus on petitionary prayer? I have chosen this type of prayer because, as Hendry suggests, petitionary prayer is the heart of prayer. Moreover, it poses special problems for those who pray, and is therefore of particular interest to the psychologist of religion. Among the various types of prayer, petitionary prayer is both the most central and the most problematic. In discussing Karl Rahner's views on petitionary prayer, Perry LeFevre points out:

It is petitionary prayer which is something of a testing point for modern interpretations of prayer. Rahner recognizes that the prayer of petition is a special stumbling block for the contemporary world. To many it seems to be either useless or a fraud, or it is spiritualized so that one can only pray for purity of heart, patience, or endurance of our trials and tribulations.⁷

This view of petitionary prayer was shared by James and his colleagues. They, too, viewed petitionary prayer as a "special stumbling block". This is clear, for example, from James's rather negative treatment in The Varieties of Religious Experience. His discussion of this type of prayer consists almost entirely of an analysis of the prayers of a certain George Müller of Bristol, whose prayers were of the crassest petitioner order. Why crass? Because they were requests to God for specific amounts of money to maintain Müller's orphanages and schools. To James, George Müller's is a case extreme in every respect, and in no respect more so than in the extraordinary narrowness of the man's intellectual horizon. His God was, as he often said, his business partner. ⁸

James notes that many other accounts of petitionary prayer could be cited, some of which would presumably display less "crass" forms of petition. But he concludes that it is unnecessary to instance other cases of petitionary prayer, that for us Müller's case will suffice. Actually, it did not quite suffice. In a footnote to his analysis of Müller's prayers

⁷ Perry LeFevre, Understandings of Prayer (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981), p. 162.
⁸ The Varieties, p. 3 5 6.

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James gives a brief account of the petitionary prayers of an English sailor, Robert Lyde, who called on God to help him in a very bloody and violent fight against his French captors. James acknowledges that he simply cannot resist the temptation of quoting an expression of an even more primitive style of religious thought than that of Müller's.

James is rather typical of early psychologists of religion in their attitude toward petitionary prayer. By and large, they found it an intellectual embarassment, certainly one of the more primitive forms of prayer. In the following discussion, I will propose a psychological approach which is much more favorable to petitionary prayer.

III

In the Jamesian era, the study of petitionary prayer was largely informed by psychological theories of the will, a major issue for James in The Principles of Psychology. ⁹ Study after study viewed petitionary prayer as involving conflict between human and divine will, and focused on the boundaries within which the human will must operate. James, for example, questioned whether humans could bend the will of God to their own. Divine providence is not, after all, subject to human manipulation. Petitionary prayer may have therapeutic effect in cases of illness because such prayer may activate the will to recover, but prayers for good weather are of no avail, for the human will can have no direct effect on the natural world or divine providence. ¹⁰

To James, the problem with much petitionary prayer is that it intends to bend the will of God to the petitioner's own will. A major premise behind petitionary prayer is that we humans can directly influence God's will. James and most of his colleagues challenged this premise, agreeing that petitionary prayer is only effective in activating and altering the will of the petitioner.

In his monumental book, Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion, Friedrich Heiler took a more positive view of petitionary prayer, challenging the popular view that it is inferior to mystical prayer. Yet he, too, viewed petitionary prayer in terms of a conflict of wills between ourselves and God. And he, too, agreed that we cannot bend God's will to our own, stressing the importance of submission to the sovereign will of God. He cited Jesus' prayer at Gethsemane as a "classic example of the transformation of urgent desire into the confident yielding of oneself to the will of God". He cautioned that "frequent experience of this transition of the wish into subordination to God's will finally ... produces a type of prayer in which the wish is only conditionally formulated," and argued that accepting the will of God does not mean blotting out the living will. Still, the outcome of petitionary prayer is submission to God's will, a submission that will naturally follow from the discharge of emotion, its unreserved outpour-

⁹ William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1890).
¹⁰ The Varieties, p. 353.

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ing before God. "Jesus pours out his desires to God, then yields to his Father's will: "Not my will, but thine be done.^{" 11}

But suppose we were to view petitionary prayer from another psychological perspective: not the psychology of will, but the psychology of communication? Would we continue to view petitionary prayer as an attempt to manipulate God? Or would we take a more positive view of the role of human agency in petitionary prayer? Would we continue to view petitionary prayer as a conflict between ourselves and God in which one participant is unyielding and the other submissive? Or would we see petitionary prayer as a process in which freedom, not domination and submission, may prevail?

I think we really do gain a totally different view of petitionary prayer when we focus on its communicative nature. Moreover, it makes sense to focus on its communicative nature for, after all, James and his colleagues wanted to determine whether anything is "transacted" between ourselves and God in prayer. By focusing on the communication process in petitionary prayer, we address the transaction itself and not, as in the case of will, the alleged motivations behind this transaction.

IV

Other types of prayer (such as praise, meditation, confession) construe the transaction between ourselves and God in terms of communication. But petitionary prayer places the greatest emphasis on the communicative nature of prayer. The Lord's Prayer and Jesus' Gethsemane prayer illustrate how petitionary prayer is understood to be an intimate, intense conversation with God. The Lord's Prayer addresses God in an intimate way "(Our Father"), and the Gethsemane prayer demonstrates how intense this intimate conversation may be. In petitionary prayer, the critical question is a communication question: "Am I getting through to God? Does God hear me? Is God's ear inclined toward me?" Significantly, in an empirical study reported in 1950, M.G. Ross found that the reason most people cited for engaging in prayer is God listens to and answers my prayers". ¹²

More recent research also points to the value of studying petitionary prayer in terms of the psychology of communication. Consider, for example, David Elkind's study of the prayers of young children, in which three stages of development are identified. In the first stage (age 5 - 7), children had a vague and indistinct understanding of prayer. If their prayers involved petition, there was no clear understanding of what one was requesting, and no real expectation that one's requests would be answered. In the second stage (age 7 - 9), prayer was very concrete. Petitions involved specific needs and requests, and if God failed to respond to a petition, the explanation was also specific and pragmatic (for example, that God cannot respond to everyone's petitions at once).

¹¹ Friedrich Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion, trans. Samuel McComb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932), p. 268.
¹² Cf. Paul E. Johnson, Psychology of Religion (New York: Abingdon Press, rev. ed., 1959), p. 132.

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In the third stage (age 9 - 12), prayer emerged as a private conversation with God. Petitions were more likely to involve emotional or relational concerns. Children in this stage continued to view prayer as petitionary, but their petitions reflected "a type of private conversation with God." Petitions for things were still considered appropriate, but such petitions were made in the context of a conversation with God in which the pros and cons of this request were seriously weighed. Elkind's study indicates that, among 9 - 12 year olds, petitions to God are an integral part of an intimate conversation with God. ¹³

Consider also a study by Robert Thouless and L. Brown on the perceived efficacy of petitionary prayer. They found that belief in the causal efficacy of prayer among adolescent girls substantially declined between ages 12 and 17, but there was no corresponding decrease in the belief that the practice of petitionary prayer is valuable. They concluded:

It looks as if a simple view of prayer as an effective means of obtaining results in the world outside decreases as the children grow older, but they retain approval of the practice of petitionary prayer, increasingly finding its justification on grounds other than the expectation that it will after the course of events. ¹⁴

Thouless and Brown do not specify what these other justifications for engaging in petitionary prayer might be, but the Elkind study suggests that the opportunity to converse with God about one's problems and needs may be more important than evidence that one's prayers are answered, and is therefore justification enough for the continued practice of petitionary prayer. In any case, these two studies indicate that there is a relationship between: (1) the fact that confidence in petitionary prayer reaches a peak between ages 9 - 12; and (2) the fact that prayer between ages 9 - 12 is conceived as a private conversation with God. It is apparently not that 9 - 12 year - olds receive a higher percentage of answers to prayer than older youth receive, but that they have greater confidence that God hears and listens to them.

In another study, Elkind draws attention to the fact that children between ages 9 - 12 are especially sensitive to matters of relationship, and suggests that this may be a period in which relationship becomes a significant dimension of one's religious experience. In petitionary prayer, the form that relationship normally takes is that of communication, a conversation between the individual and God. This study therefore provides further support for the view that communication has critical importance for petitionary prayer. ¹⁵

¹³ David Elkind, "The Child's Conception of Prayer," in The Child's Reality: Three Developmental Themes (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1978), pp. 27 - 45. Based on a study with Diane Long and Bernard Spilka,"The Child's Conception of Prayer," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 6 (1967):101 - 109.
¹⁴ Robert Thouless and L. Brown, "Petitionary Prayer: Belief in Its Appropriateness and Causal Efficacy among Adolescent Girls", in Andre Godin, ed., From Religious Experience to a Religious Attitude (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1965), pp. 109 - 122.
¹⁵ David Elkind, "The Origins of Religion in the Child", Review of Religious Research 12 (1970): 35 - 41

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V

One reason early psychologists of religion failed to view petitionary prayer as a communicative act is because many were impressed with the then popular theory of suggestion, and were entertaining the idea that prayer is a form of auto - suggestion. In this view, prayers that are ostensibly addressed to God are actually monologues with oneself. The value of petitionary prayers is that they allow one to express personal concerns. Even though no real communication has occurred, the result is typically an emotional catharsis and/or the galvanizing of the human will.

To counter the charge that this makes prayer into a purely subjective experience, Alexander Hodge contended for the role of 'hetero-suggestion" in prayer. Here, the words that one says in prayer are suggested by a biblical text, a conversation with another person, or an inspiration from God. ¹⁶ But, even when so modified, the "suggestion" model fails to view prayer as a two - way conversation. No real" transaction" between the petitioner and God takes place.

This poses the critical question: "Granted that we intend to communicate with God in petitionary prayer, does God hear and respond to our requests?" In his very careful analysis of petitionary prayer, the Finnish philosopher of religion, Antti Albonsaari, says "No." ¹⁷ He claims that this dialogical view would be justified if prayer manifested a complete dialogical circle involving four communication elements: (1) we speak; (2) God bears; (3) God responds; and (4) we hear the response. If only (1), or (1) and (2), occurs, there is only a monologue. If (1), (2), and (3) occur, but (4) is lacking, we have a defective dialogue.

Alhonsaari contends that a dialogical view of prayer cannot be supported because we have no means of ascertaining whether God has responded to our petitions. Even if what we have prayed for actually comes to pass, how do we know that this was an answer from God? If we send a letter to a friend, our receipt of our friend's response to our letter (perhaps in the form of a return letter) confirms that our letter was received and answered. Because such confirmation is missing in prayer, the dialogical circle is incomplete, and true communication has failed to take place.

But we may ask whether Alhonsaari's communication model is too simplistic. Is his negative conclusion regarding the 'dialogical" nature of petitionary prayer due to a defective communication model? In my judgment, the analogy of an exchange of letters fails to take sufficient account of the complexity of the communication process, especially as it occurs in petitionary prayer.

One concept in modern communication theory which enables us to take account of this complexity is Theodore Newcomb's notion of

¹⁶ Prayer and Its Psychology, pp. 147 - 48.
¹⁷ Antti Alhonsaari, Prayer:- An Analysis of Theological Terminology (Helsinki: Kirjapaino Tarmo, 1973).

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coorientation, a concept based on George Herbert Mead's idea of role - taking. ¹⁸ In the communication process, coorientation means that we may simultaneously orient ourselves to the subject of discussion and to another person's anticipated view of this subject. Coorientation may occur without any verbal exchange. We may simply anticipate the other person's response to the subject in question, and this anticipation takes the place of an actual verbal response.

Coorientation often occurs within the family context, where one member of the family knows the other well enough to be able to anticipate how the other responds to the subject of discussion. In families, some issues are avoided while others are addressed precisely because we "know" how our spouse feels about these issues. Teenage sons or daughters may avoid making certain requests because they already know that their parents will respond negatively, but they make other requests without hesitation because their parents have responded positively to similar requests in the past. The same process occurs, of course, when parents are doing the requesting and children are giving the response. Nor is this process limited to family life. It occurs in any situation, from a business transaction to a counseling session, where one participant in the communication process is in a position to view the subject under consideration from the other person's point of view.

In light of earlier comments on children's prayers, it is also worth noting that, as various studies indicate, children are able to engage in role - taking no earlier than age 8, and more likely 9 - 11, or roughly the same stage in their development when they begin conceiving of prayer as a personal conversation with God ¹⁹ This could mean that coorientation (or role - taking) is primarily responsible for the child's ability to engage in personal conversation with God, since such conversation requires the capacity to participate in a communication process which is partially non - verbal (that is, one does not literally hear the voice of God).

When applied to petitionary prayer, the concept of coorientation suggests that we may anticipate how God responds to a need or problem of ours, and this anticipation itself completes the dialogical circle. The petitioner somehow "knows" how God views the matter, and this knowledge or awareness is itself an "answer" to prayer. This anticipation of God's response may occur even when we do not share God's view of the matter.

As George Kelly points out, to say that we "effectively construe the other person's outlook ... is different from saying that each must understand things in the same way as the other." ²⁰ We may urge God to respond in such - and - such a way to a desire of ours and simultaneously doubt that God will in fact respond in this desired way. Coorientation

¹⁸ Theodore Newcomb," An Approach to the Study of Communication,"Psychological Review 60 (1953): 392 - 403.
¹⁹ Mary M. Wilcox, Developmental Journey (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979). pp. 106,132.
²⁰ Cf. Bonnie McDaniel Johnson, Communication: The Process of Organizing (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1977), p. 70.

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does not mean seeing eye - to - eye. It means being able to view a matter from the perspective of the other person.

VI

C. S. Lewis may have had something like this coorientation in mind when he discussed the second of two apparently conflicting patterns of petitionary prayer in the New Testament. The first pattern teaches that all petitions are to be qualified by the clause, "Thy will be done", and stresses submission to the will of God. The second pattern says that whatever we ask for in faith will be given to us. No submission to a will not our own, and no uncertainty as to the outcome of our request.

Lewis suggests that this second pattern is one which most believers never experience. It occurs when the person of faith is so united with God that something of the "divine foreknowledge" enters his mind. ²¹ Perhaps what Lewis calls divine foreknowledge here is essentially what communication theory calls "coorientation". One becomes so attuned to how God may be expected to respond to one's desire that one "knows" the response before it becomes known in some more objective way.

In a sense, James and his colleagues focused on the first of these two patterns (submission to the will of God) when they viewed petitionary prayer from the perspective of the psychology of will. However, by viewing petitionary prayer from the viewpoint of the psychology of communication, we draw attention to the second pattern. Here the issue is not submission to the will of God, but anticipation of God's response. Lewis believes that these two patterns are probably irreconcilable, and this may mean that these two psychological approaches to petitionary prayer are also irreconcilable.

Yet, in Jesus' prayer at Gethsemane we have the convergence of both patterns because his utterance, "Thy will be done", was undoubtedly the product of coorientation. From his close, even intimate relationship with his Father, be was aware that what he desired and what his Father intended were incompatible. Thus, this was a situation in which Jesus effectively construed his Father's outlook even though he did not share that view. Jesus' perception of their conflict of will was a function of coorientation, and the issue of will may therefore be viewed as one aspect of the communication process - not as independent of this process.

The concept of coorientation raises a fundamental question when applied to petitionary prayer: "On what basis do we anticipate God's response to our petitions? How can we know how God may be expected to respond?" From the theological side, we have Lewis' view that such "divine foreknowledge" derives from our being "united" with God. This view finds support from the psychological side, particularly from William James, who suggests that "persistence in leaning on the Almighty for support and guidance brings with it proof, palpable ... but subtle, of his presence and active influence." ²² Becoming habituated to

²¹ Quoted by LeFevre, pp. 104 - 105.
²² The Varieties, pp. 357 - 58.

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God's support enables one to anticipate God's response in new situations. One becomes oriented to God's ways of responding, and this provides a sense of how God may be expected to respond in new situations.

But this, in turn, raises another fundamental question: "How does one become oriented to God's ways of responding in the first place?" If one becomes habituated to God's ways of responding to one's petitions, this process of habituation must have its origins somewhere. How, then, does it get initiated?

This is an extremely complex issue, but I would note that one source of such orientation is how our children get socialized in communication. If we are interested in discovering the psychosocial origins of petitionary prayer, we should take particular cognizance of everyday situations in which the realization of the child's urgent desires depends on the agency of another person. Communication with parents, teachers, siblings, and intimate friends - all people to whom the child turns for help in achieving certain desires - may be especially influential in forming the child's orientation to God's ways of responding.

A second source of such orientation is the child's appropriation of the Judeo - Christian tradition. Hjalmar Sundén, the Swedish psychologist of religion who has developed a comprehensive theory of religious roletaking, points out that when we identify with the role of an individual in our religious heritage (such as a biblical figure or saint), we anticipate that God will act toward us as God acted toward this individual. ²³ Through such role - taking, one's religious tradition provides an orientation to God's ways of responding to entreaties. This is a good argument for educating children in the stories of biblical figures and Christian saints, particularly stories in which these historic figures made requests to God.

VII

This brief application of the concept of coorientation to petitionary prayer is only one illustration of the potential usefulness of modern communication theory for understanding prayer. There are other concerns (such as the problem of barriers to communication) which ate equally relevant to petitionary prayer. But the concept of coorientation provides strong support for the validity of petitionary prayer because it addresses the major objection to claims for validity: the seemingly obvious but actually quite questionable argument that we have no way of knowing whether and how God responds to our entreaties. If coorientation is valid in human conversation, is it not equally valid (and necessary) in conversation with God? The concept of coorientation draws our attention to the fact that we are able to anticipate how God responds to our petitions. We can do so because it is within our human capacity to take the role of another, including God, and to see matters from God's own perspective.

²³ Hjalmar Sunden, Die Religion und die Rollen: Ein Psychologische Untersuchung der Frommigkeit. trans. Herman Müller and Suzanne Ohman (Berlin: Topelmann, 1966). Suden's religious role - taking theory was inspired by the views of Newcomb and Mead.

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I fully recognize that some may object to this view, and for any number of reasons. One objection that must be addressed goes to the very heart of the argument. This is the objection that the view of petitionary prayer developed here seems to limit our freedom to make our desires known to God (especially desires which we anticipate that God will not support), and to restrict God's freedom to respond (since coorientation appears to work only if we are able to anticipate that God will continue to act in the present and future as God has acted in the past).

I have two responses to this objection. First, we are actually more likely to place severe limitations on our own and God's freedom when we view petitionary prayer as preeminently a matter of will. The effect of this more common view of petitionary prayer has been to restrict our freedom to plead with God. Why? Because, in emphasizing the potential conflict between our will and God's will, this view has stressed the submission of our will to God. And, as Heiler points out, this encourages a "conditional formulation" of our desires. Our desires are expressed, but in a half - hearted sort of way. The words are not the words of pure desire but an ambivalent mix of request and resignation. In addition, this view has fostered a restrictive view of God's freedom because it has invited us to believe that God's will is impervious to our entreaties. This is a view which is certainly challenged by David's impassioned plea for his son's survival (II Sam. 12: 15b - 23).

Second, I would argue that the coorientation concept is not inherently negative regarding our freedom to express our desires to God and God's freedom to respond. Rather, it is inherently neutral. How we construe these freedoms is not for the coorientation concept to decide; it all depends on how we have come to orient ourselves to God. Some view petitionary prayer in a rigid, deterministic fashion because this is how they are oriented to God. Others view petitionary prayer as an act of freedom because this is how they are oriented to God. Coorientation may occur in both cases. In the former case, one anticipates submitting to the pre - established will of God. In the latter case, one anticipates that God may be moved by one's entreaties.

In my opinion, Jesus' Gethsemane prayer takes the latter view of petitionary prayer even though it appears, at first glance, to support the former. We tend to think of this prayer as the prototypical prayer of submission of our will to God's. However, our emphasis on the submissive quality of this prayer has been largely due to our tendency to view this prayer from the perspective of the psychology of will. If, instead, we view the prayer as a communication between Jesus and his Father, we are far more likely to take note of the fact that this prayer is a prototype of Christian freedom. In this prayer, Jesus was free to express his urgent desires to his Father, and his Father was free to respond as he desired. Moreover, the very fact that Jesus could say, Not my will but thine be done, indicates that he was free to accept or reflect his Father's response. This was an utterance which Jesus freely volunteered; it was

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neither coerced nor demanded by his Father. Indeed, in Luke's account of this prayer, Jesus continued his intense pleading even after he had uttered these words (Luke 22: 42 - 44). This was hardly a case of resigned submission following an intense discharge of emotion. If anything, Jesus' free acceptance of his Father's will in the matter was the catalyst for even more intense entreaties.

As we orient ourselves to God's ways of responding to our prayers, we can hardly do better than to turn to Jesus' prayer at Gethsemane for such orientation. Through this prayer, we discover that petitionary prayer is one of those increasingly rare occasions in which we have direct, immediate experience of Christian freedom. It is unfortunate that we are so reluctant to avail ourselves of the opportunity which petitionary prayer affords to experience the freedom which our Lord experienced at Gethsemane.

Perhaps we are ambivalent about such freedom. Maybe it is too threatening. Maybe we rather prefer to submit to the will of God than to communicate with God in utter freedom. Or maybe we have become so adept at submitting our will to God that we have forgotten how to express our desires. Lord, teach us to pray.