Orthodox Book Series: “The Orthodox Way” by Kallistos Ware (Part 7a: God as Prayer)

In these next two posts, I will discuss the next chapter of Kallistos Ware’s book, The Orthodox Way. Chapter 6 is entitled, “God as Prayer.” Now, most Evangelicals think of prayer as that thing you do before meals in during your quiet/devotional time where you bow your head, close your eyes, and talk to God in some way—you thank Him for the day, you prayer for a friend, etc. Simply put, “prayer” is a think you do at various points in your life.

Prayer Along the Spiritual Way
What Ware emphasizes in this chapter is that prayer is life. As he begins the chapter with a quote from Vasilii Rozanov, “There is no life without prayer. Without prayer there is only madness and horror.” Because of that, Ware doesn’t engage in a discussion of method, or anything like that. Instead, the focus of the chapter is on the impact of a life of prayer has on the spiritual journey of each Christian. Now, when it comes to one’s spiritual journey on the Spiritual Way, Ware borrows a description from early Church Fathers like Origen, Evagrius, and St. Maximus the Confessor. Simply put, the journey on the Spiritual Way can be divided into three stages:

(1) The practice of the virtues, which begins with repentance and continues by the use of one’s free will to struggle to escape from enslavement to one’s passions.

(2) The contemplation of nature, where the Christian “sharpens his perception of the ‘isness’ of created things” and begins to see the presence of God throughout His creation.

(3) The contemplation of God, what Ware calls “theology in the strict sense of the word,” and that entails a direct vision of God, not only in everything, but also above and beyond everything.

Two things need to be further clarified. First, prayer is sort of like the very breath one breathes as one journeys on the Way, in that it is “a living relationship between persons [both God and other people], and personal relationships cannot be neatly classified.” Second, the description of these three stages does not mean they are successive, like one coming clearly after the other. Rather, these stages are simultaneous, ever-deepening and interdependent levels through which Christians are always journeying.

Having laid that out, Ware then pauses to put forth three presuppositions relating to three crucial elements in every Christian’s journey on the Spiritual Way.  

I. The Traveler on the Way is a Member of the Church
Simply put, no one is saved alone. If you are saved, you are the part of the Body of Christ. There are no “Lone Ranger” Christians. That being said, Ware readily acknowledges (just like C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity) that God is able to save those in this life who never belonged to His Church, or who necessarily have ever heard of Christ. Nevertheless, looking at things from our limited human perspective, that does not justify saying that the Church is unnecessary for people.

II. The Spiritual Way also Presupposes a Life in the Sacraments
Simply put, as Ware states, “The way of the sacraments and the way of inner prayer are not alternatives, but form a single unity.” This one perhaps seems a bit foreign, or at least over-emphasized, from the perspective of Protestants, especially Evangelicals. Having grown up within Evangelicalism, I confess that I still probably don’t fully appreciate the Orthodox emphasis on the sacraments as I should. Compounded on that fact is my peculiar situation of being Orthodox, but living in an area where there is no Orthodox Church to take the sacraments. According to Orthodoxy, Orthodox Christians should only take communion in the Orthodox Church, so what should I do? It is something I still struggle with.

III. The Spiritual Way is not only ecclesial and sacramental, but it is also evangelical
“Evangelical” here refers to reliance on the Good News (i.e. Gospel) put forth in the Holy Scriptures. As the early Desert Fathers said, “God demands nothing from Christians except that they shall hearken to the Holy Scriptures and carry into effect the things that are said in them.” Now, the focus on the Scriptures brings up another interesting situation, especially for people like me, whose profession is that of the academic, critical study of the Bible.

Now, even though I love the academic study of the Bible, I’ve always had a love/hate attitude toward “the academy.” On one hand, the critical study of the Bible can illuminate so many things relating to the historical and literary contexts of the Bible, that it just lights everything up in technicolor to where (perhaps this doesn’t sound too academic) it all becomes just a great deal of fun. On the other hand, though, as everyone who has ever spent any time in the academic discipline of Biblical Studies can attest to (and I apologize if this sounds rather crude), so much of what is written and published amounts to nothing more than theological and intellectual masturbation that ultimately is useful to no one.

That being said, I appreciate what Ware says about the issue of the critical study (i.e. formal academic discipline) of the Bible. He says that obviously there is a legitimate place for that—after all, our ability to reason is a gift from God, and therefore, we should engage in scholarly research of the Bible. That being said, he continues: “Always we need to keep in view that the Bible is not just a collection of historical documents, but it is the book of the Church, containing God’s word. And so we do not read the Bible as isolated individuals, interpreting it solely by the light of our private understanding, or in terms of current theories about source, form or redaction criticism. We read it as members of the Church, in communion with all the other members throughout the ages. The final criterion for our interpretation of Scripture is the mind of the Church” (110). He then says, “Critical scholarship is by no means excluded, but the true meaning of the Bible will only be apparent to those who study it with their spiritual intellect as well as their reasoning brain” (111).

Those are wise words I have always remembered in my own study of the Bible.

The Kingdom of Heaven Suffers Violence
Ware then touches upon the idea that the active Spiritual life requires effort, struggle, and the voluntary exertion of our own free will. He alludes to Matthew 7:14 (“Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life”) and Matthew 7:21 (“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but he that that does the will of my Father”) to make this point. His point is that salvation (unlike what is taught in Calvinism) is not a one-sided affair. It requires both divine initiative and human response.

He then makes a comment about the slightly odd verse of Matthew 11:12 that causes the biblical scholar side of me to cringe just a bit. The verse is question is this: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.” Now, in its original context, I am convinced that Jesus is talking about how various Jewish sects like the Pharisees and Sadducees are opposing his Gospel message of the Kingdom—they opposed John the Baptist and they are now opposing Jesus. Ware, though, forgoes the lesson on the original context of this passage and chooses to reinterpret it an apply it to the struggle of the Spiritual journey. His point is entirely legitimate, nonetheless.

He writes: “Man must do violence to himself—to his fallen self, that is to say—for the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and it is the men of violence who take it by force.” His point and application of this verse, therefore, is to emphasize that in order to attain the kingdom of heaven, we must be, so to speak, “men of violence” who struggle (and thus “do violence” to ourselves) in this present age. Ware then quotes from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers: “The present age is not a time for rest and sleep, but it is a struggle, a combat, a market, a school, a voyage. Therefore, you must exert yourself and not be downcast and idle but devote yourself to holy actions.”

What all this means, as Ware states, is “that each day we are to renew our relationship with God through living prayer; and to pray, as Abba Agathon reminds us, is the hardest of all tasks. If we do not find prayer difficult, perhaps it is because we have not really started to pray” (113).

Personally, that is encouraging to me, because I have always found prayer rather difficult. And, truth be told, most of my prayers are filled with struggle and frustration. Perhaps I’m “doing it right” after all—of course, I don’t know, aside from just struggle to do it, that there is a right or wrong way to do it.

In any case, in my next post I will cover the rest of Ware’s chapter, “God as Prayer.”