Beeson podcast, Episode 387
Dr. Stefana Dan Laing
April 10, 2018

https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2018/Prayer-in-the-Early-Church

Announcer:	Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George.
Timothy George:	Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. Well today I have the privilege of introducing to you a lecture given here at Beeson on Finkenwalde Day, back in 2016. Well, what is Finkenwalde Day? Well once a year, our entire Beeson Divinity School community, students, faculty and staff come together for a special focus on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and life together at Finkenwalde. That's where the underground seminary thrived during the Nazi time, with Bonhoeffer's leadership. 
	Well, this particular Finkenwalde Day was 2016, and our lecturer was Stefana Dan Laing and the topic was prayer in the early church. Dr. Stefana Dan Laing is a new member our faculty here at Beeson. She's the author of “Retrieving History, Memory and Identity Formation in the Early Church,” a number of other writings that she's done. She holds degrees from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Let's go to Hodges Chapel and listen to our friend and our new Beeson colleague, Dr. Stefana Dan Laing, “Prayer in the Early Church.”
Stefana Laing:	Well we're going to talk today about prayer in the Early Church. Not a very big topic. I'm sure I'll be able to address it all, and I'll finish early probably. Just don't get up and walk out. Do they do that at Finkenwalde? Did they get up and walk out when it was time? 
	The spiritual life of the ancient church or the patristic church was rich and varied, and many sources have survived, both to inform us and welcome us into this vibrant world of late antiquity, to partake of the church's bountiful banquet in those centuries. There is much that can be said about prayer in that era, about models and modes and postures and frequency.
	We'll look at some of these elements briefly and then turn to four points of instruction that I want to make on prayer, which we can derive from the ancient church. I'm not a real preacher, so I don't have three points. I have about four. In the first centuries, Christian prayers followed Jewish models from the Old Testament, for example, the antiphonal model of call and response, like we did this morning, praying or reciting and singing the Psalms corporately.
	In the early second century, about 110 AD, the Roman governor of Bithynia Pontus, Pliny the Younger, reported to the Emperor Trajan that some Christian deaconesses that he had interrogated, described singing hymns antiphonally in their assemblies. They sang hymns antiphonally to Christ, as to a God, he said, a reflection perhaps of their use of the Psalms in worship as prayer songs. 
	A few decades later, about 140 or so, Justin Martyr described Christian worship as rational, truthful and also for us, prayerful. Justin informs us and the Roman emperors that he addresses, that at their assemblies on Sundays, Christians pray corporately for catechumens, for the baptized, for believers everywhere to live their lives worthy of their illumination, worthy of their faith, to be good citizens and also good Christians, keeping the laws of the land and the commandments of God.
	Their prayers appear to have been in standing position, perhaps with arms upraised in the manner of Jewish and Roman worshippers familiar to us visually from catacomb frescoes as well as ceiling and asp mosaics in cathedrals and in churches. 
	Another source from about the fourth century, called the Apostolic Constitutions, which is kind of a church manual, offers a lot of information about corporate prayers, about the prayers themselves, the prayers themselves, not just about them. Even for various occasions and church services like prayers for communion, prayers for baptism, for ordinations, et cetera. 
	One interesting element that it provides is the timing of prayers, and specifically daily prayers. The author advises prayer at multiple hours throughout the day, and these prayer hours have a precedent in the Old Testament as well, as we hear echoes of morning, noon and evening prayer in the Psalms. Prayer seven times a day like David in Psalm 119, and also prayer in the life of Daniel who prayed toward Jerusalem three times a day, no matter what. 
	The Christians turned toward the east and prayed several times daily, as the Apostolic Constitution specified about six different prayer times. In the same century, fourth century, the hermit and philologist Jerome, mentions about six times as well, and indeed by the sixth century, the community of St. Benedict had eight prayer offices, around the clock.
	From the Apostolic Constitutions and Jerome then, we're recommended to have early morning and evening prayers and night prayers, and three times in between, at the third, sixth and ninth hours. Jerome says that one should also rise several times a night to thank God for what one has learned during the day. Aside from timing and posture and method and models, what instruction can we draw from the early church about prayer, about the church's banquet?
	First point. Prayer in the ancient church was intimately tied to the Scripture, especially to the Psalms, which was also often tied to singing and worship. Sometimes we try to study prayer as a discipline in isolation from other forms of spiritual practice, but the truth is that prayer is not a standalone discipline. 
	The text which looms largest here of course is the Book of Psalms, a special book indeed, as virtually all the fathers who produced commentaries wrote a commentary on the Psalms. The Psalms are the church's prayer book and hymn book alike, so psalm memorization, recitation, singing and prayer, all went together in both private and corporate worship, equally in the city as out in the desert.
	Athanasius, our friend up there, who the fourth century bishop of Alexandria teaches that, "The book of the Psalms possesses a certain grace, all of its own, an extraordinary grace, peculiar to itself." He says, "This is because it reflects the movements of each soul, allowing believers who want to be transformed," he says, "To mold themselves, to learn about themselves." It allows them to do that.
	The Psalms also provide models and patterns for believers to pray in various situations. So Athanasius says, "Thus for every person whatsoever, we may find the divine songs appropriate for us and for the states of emotional turmoil or stability." Thus the Psalms are like a mirror. This is a theme that will be taken up later too. They're like a mirror in which each person views his or her own soul and its movements with a view to assessing the situation and taking the requisite actions to bring oneself into line with the Spirit, and he says “to amend our daily conduct.”
	It's an interesting interplay, I feel, between singing and chanting a psalm, praying a psalm, reading or vocalizing a psalm. Today, we're more likely to read a psalm in what Athanasius called prose tone, but Athanasius insisted Psalms really should be sung. In a work that he wrote, “Called a letter to Marcellus, a tract did on how to derive the most spiritual benefit from the Psalms, Athanasius says that the Psalms should be sung in full voice, because it's a counterpart to loving God with our full heart, our full mind, our full strength. 
	But also because of a transformational process that's occurring in the believer. The musical harmony in the singing brings into spiritual harmony the disordered movements in the person's soul, movements which cause the bodily members to act in either a virtuous way, when he or she is acting according to reason, or to act in a sinful way, when he or she acts according to the passions. 
	Singing the Psalms then brings a person into harmony with himself so that he truly knows himself, rather than being self-alienated. This kind of spiritual harmony from both singing and praying the Psalms produces a calmness and tranquility of the soul, conforming the bodily members to the dictates of the reasoning faculty. In other words, praying and singing the Psalms as a discipline produces inner harmony in the soul, resulting in an outward harmony of virtuous thought and conduct.
	The Spirit then works from the inside out, and his vehicle is the prayer and singing of the Psalms. Athanasius' hero, the hermit Antony, was a prime example of one who had mastered the passions and how had achieved this tranquility and equanimity. I mean this sounds like a dream that's completely unattainable to me. You all must be further ahead than me. 
	Tranquility and equanimity, by unceasing prayer and ascetic practice, Antony had achieved such calmness of spirit that no matter what came to him, good news or ill, he took it the same way. He was, in Athanasius' words, "A man ruled by reason." Antony is renowned for his involvement in spiritual warfare and his best weapon in that fight was prayer. 
	Thinking a bit more about the spiritual dynamics of a person, the disordered and unruly passions in the soul can be affected through the outer senses, and are thus affected negatively by evil, external forces and are thus affected negatively by evil external forces, the powers and principalities in the air. This explains Athanasius' heavy, not to say overdone focus on anti-demonic warfare in the life of Antony.
	 A few quick examples of Antony's powerful Scripture prayers can offer a model for us, as it was intended to for the original readers as well. "Once they, the demons, came threatening and surrounded me with battle array like soldiers. Sometimes they filled the house with horses and beasts and serpents and I sang the psalm, these in chariots and these in horses, but we shall be magnified in the name of the Lord our God, psalm 20. And at these prayers they were turned back by the Lord. Once in the dark, they came with a show of light, saying we have come to light you, Antony, but I shut my eyes and prayed, and at once, their unholy light was quenched."
	"Once they shook the monastery, but I prayed and remained unshaken in mind. And afterwards they came again, stamping, hissing and leaping, but as I prayed and reclined, singing Psalms to myself, maybe like Psalm 4, lie down and sleep in peace, they at once began to wail and weep as if utterly exhausted, and I glorified God who took away and made a mockery of their daring and fury."
	Antony's life influenced a well-off young man who was struggling with direction in his life. His name was Augustine, who offered the beautiful autobiographical prayer we now know as The Confessions. In his own Psalms commentary, Augustine taught that the voice of Christ is heard in the Psalms, a perspective shared by Bonhoeffer incidentally. Augustine developed an ecclesiological aspect as well, teaching that the church, that both Christ and the church pray the Psalms. As the church identified with Christ, so she progressively entered into the Psalms and found her own voice there, together with Christ.
	The Psalms were to dictate what the believer felt and experienced. "If the psalm prays you pray. If it laments, you lament. If it exalts, you rejoice. If it hopes, you hope. If it fears, you fear. Everything written here is a mirror for us." Sound familiar? We can learn from the early church that when we allow ourselves to pray the Psalms as they are, and Athanasius said, "Don't change them. Pray the psalm as it is, as it was written and enter into it." As you do that, we allow the Holy Spirit through the holy Scripture, to set the agenda for our prayer life, both corporate and individual, rather than rattling off a one sided conversation about only our needs in the moment or heaping up like a laundry list of vain repetitions and selfish desires of how we want things to go and what we want God to do for us, and may it be his will.
	Speaking of selfishness and our inward attitude in prayer, we move on to the next point, which is, preparation for prayer was vital to ancient Christians. Preparation for prayer. In the Apostolic Constitutions it says, "Thou shalt not proceed to thy prayer in the day of thy wickedness, before you have set aside your bitterness." 
	The spiritual master origin said and taught some controversial things, but one idea that's certainly not controversial and is and was well-received, is the idea of the purity of life and heart that is required to progress into a life in God. The Christian much strive for purity in life and heart and being, driven on in this holy quest by what he called the wound of love for Jesus. 
	Origin presented the life of purity and holiness as a prerequisite for success in the ascetic life and for being allowed access to God. Some refer to this aspect of Origin's teaching as the first element in the mystical journey to God or purgation. This is process that takes place over a period of time, not that one can't pray for all of that time, but it allows one to progress into the life of God, to express God in a more intense and regular and sustained way, to commune with God in a mature way.
	We don't need to call it mystical and therefore somehow not quite Christian or biblical. Witness the preparation required of the Israelites before they could approach God at Sinai for the giving of the commandments at Exodus 19. The people were to wash themselves and their clothes, to set themselves apart, to consecrate themselves for three days, to abstain from sexual relations. One of Origin's admirers, Gregory of Nyssa, composed a work on the life of Moses, in which the life of Moses is laid out and interpreted a journey towards the mountain, and then climbing the mountain, ascending the mountain to stand before God, culminating in his reaching the top of the mountain and entering into the darkness that is there, the smoke or the cloud, the dark cloud where God was.
	In order to even begin to climb the mountain though, and to enjoy the companionship of God, there must be preparation, and that preparation involves toil, a desert journey in their case, obedience, humility, purity of life and heart. The truth is, that probably even in our churches, most people won't even make it to the bottom of the mountain.
	Another admirer of origin and a friend of Gregory's, Evagrius of Pontus, equates the whole of the Christian life with the life of prayer, or as he calls it, contemplation, which is a way to refer to ardent prayer. It makes sense of course, because if prayer requires preparation and Paul exhorts believers to pray without ceasing, one starts to get the notion that life was to be lived prepared, and so we begin to understand the monastic vocation and their work of prayer better.
	Evagrius also composed a Psalms commentary, but this became very controversial too, and so we're not talking about that today. But in a different work, a classic on prayer, it's called Chapters on Prayer, 153 short chapters, very brief, some of them just one line. Evagrius gets readers to understand that a life of ardent prayer, or a life of contemplation is the equivalent of martyrdom, except that instead of suffering of the hands of governors and prefects and emperors, like our friends Perpetua and Felicitus up there. I had to work them in. 
	Instead of suffering at their hands, the believer suffers at the hands of demons, who, as previously, negatively affect the passions to try to hinder the believer's progress in holiness. Further, it is impossible that one can approach God without purity of heart. Pure prayer requires full cleansing. 
	In chapter 4 of his work, Evagrius writes, "If Moses, when he attempted to draw near the burning bush, was prohibited until he should remove the shoes from his feet, how should you not free yourself of every thought that is colored by passion, seeing that you wish to see one who is beyond every thought and perception." Moses had to prepare. We have to prepare.
	Successful cleansing results in the state of calm and tranquility that was described by Athanasius before and exemplified by Antony. Evagrius calls this state apathea. It doesn't mean apathy, as some would conclude. Apathea is passionlessness, and the fruit of apathea is agape. It's love. When a believe has agape, then she or he can truly know God.
	This implies the third point, which is that prayer is hard work. Prayer is hard work. Evagrius and the mystical fathers are not the only ones that think so by the way. The Apostle Paul entreated the Romans to strive together with him in their prayers for him. He wrote to the Colossians that their friend Epaphras was always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, for their spiritual maturity and fortitude, just as Paul struggled in prayer, he says, for the church at Laodicea.
	Evagrius is sometimes obscure, but penetratingly insightful on spiritual matters, a very skillful spiritual director, a kind of psychologist of the soul. Not to lose sight though of Evagrius' clear teachings on prayer, he said that prayer or contemplation lifts one up beyond his own human nature, to join the ranks of angels. Prayer is the source of union with the Trinity. That is, it allows the believer to participate in the life of God.
	How can we, in our culture of distractions and temptations, sustain a lifestyle of prayer and reap its rich benefits as Evagrius describes? It is hard work, requiring prioritization and strategizing and integrating. It doesn't necessarily require a block of time, since Evagrius doesn't talk about prayer in those terms. He rather calls prayer a state, an assent of the spirit toward God, a constant conversation and communion towards God.
	Prayer is a way of life. It is all of life. It's not just a block of time. It's all our time. It's our life. It requires, Evagrius says, self-denial every hour. It requires focus and fixity of purpose, and it requires a willingness, he says, to withstand the assaults of the demon and endure with constancy the lashes that he lays on, and to this end, he urges, train yourself like a skilled athlete. 
	Prayer is hard work, and requires training and exercise, self-denial, wisdom and deep humility. All these requisites, tend to go against the very nature of our flesh, making our work even harder. Several things though are in our favor. According to Evagrius, the human spirit was created by God to watch and pray, and prayer can also be given by God as a gift, but not just asking for it. He says it's given by God as a gift to the man who prays. There's already an engagement in prayer, a trying.
	The Holy Spirit helps us as well. Even when we do not pray in a perfectly pure state, he says the Holy Spirit has compassion on us in our weakness, and if our spirit prays to God out of love for the truth, the Spirit then descends upon it and dispels the whole army of thoughts and reasonings that beset it. 
	A life of true and ardent prayer is hard work, but it is worth it to reap the benefits of a life in God, in this world and the next. Evagrius asks the believe, do you wish to pray? Then banish the things of this world. Have heaven as your homeland, and live there constantly, in this life. Live there constantly, not in mere word, but in actions that imitate the angels and in a more godlike knowledge. 
	Bringing us to the fourth point then, fourth and final. Prayer in the ancient church integrates the believer with salvation history. Gregory of Nyssa, the friend and mentor of Evagrius, had an older sister named Macrena. This incredible lived at home at Anyssa, in Cappadocia, and had taken up a life of chastity after the fiance her parents chose for her died before her wedding.
	After her father died, she and her widowed mother, Amelia, turned their home into a domestic monastery and eventually it became a double monastery, meaning that it was for two distinct communities, one of men and one of women. Now, up to this point today, we've talked about living a praying life, which Macrena did, but she also exemplifies something else, what it means to die a praying death.
	In the biography, Life of Macrena, Gregory describes Macrena's life of asceticism. The community of women had so achieve apathea, that they were like a community of angels. The humility among them was such that even though Macrena's family was aristocratic, Gregory says that there was no differences, there were no differences of rank among them, but all served one another in love and humble service. He says they made sisters and equals out of slave women and servants. 
	Gregory writes that their lifestyle "Was in harmony with the life of the angels." This is the kind of thing that Evagrius had in mind when he urged his students to have heaven as your homeland, and live there constantly. Prayer is not mentioned very much in this brief bio of Macrena's life. It doesn't talk about her practice of prayer, but it assumes that she is practicing prayer all through her life as a discipline.
	In the main, this account deals with her death. As she had lived a life of prayer, her life itself, had become a prayer. The focal piece of the work is Macrena's deathbed prayer, which is essentially the prayer of a dying penitent. It wonderfully illustrates the final point of our time spent with the early church. Macrena shows an awareness in her prayer of salvation history as well as an understanding of its impact on her own life story. It is an awareness of God's providential work in the world, his salvific work in her life, and his work to achieve eternal and universal goals, despite demonic opposition.
	By our prayer life then, we are joined to God in his mission in the world. As the sun set on her final day, Macrena's bed was turned toward the east, and she began her prayer as Gregory attended her at bedside. The focus in her prayer is the mighty work of God in salvation. God has freed us from the fear of death and saved us, effectively transforming our mortality into his immortality. By his atonement, he smashed the head of the dragon, the ancient serpent, who attempted humanity and he broke the gates of hell, destroying him that had the power over death. 
	Here she has quotes out of Psalm 74 that we read, in verses 13 and 14. Those very verses. Macrena expresses her love to Christ, the love that has sustained her in serving him all through her life, and the fear through which she has lived a righteous life. After requesting a guiding angel to lead her to the promised land, she places herself in the role of the dying thief on the cross. She says, "May you who cut through the fires of the flaming sword at the gate of Eden, and assigned to paradise, him who was crucified with you, remember me too in your kingdom because I too have been crucified with you. From fear of you, I have nailed down my flesh and have been in fear of your judgments." 
	Finally, she prays for forgiveness of sins, and offers up her soul, asking that it be received "like incense in your presence," that is as a pleasing evening sacrifice, citing from Psalm 141. Just then, the lamps were lit in the evening, and the evening prayer office of thanksgiving was said, with Macrena barely mouthing the words, but when she crossed herself, indicating that she had reached the end of her prayers, Gregory says she gave a great deep sigh, and ended her life and her prayers at the same moment.
	As he reached down his trembling hand to close her eyes and arrange her body, Gregory saw that nothing was needed, and he remarked, he whole body had, of its own accord, assumed a harmonious posture and did not need any hand to lay it out. Macrena exemplified what the entire ascetic movement was striving towards, a life of prayer having reached its fulfillment, where the harmony of the body, by some spiritual symmetry, reflected the harmony of the recently departed soul.
	What are we to glean then from our sojourn of prayer with the ancient church? If we want to have a successful prayer life, we must make our lives living prayers. We must know and pray the Scriptures, allowing them to form us. We must clean up our lives and approach God in purity and love. We must make the effort to maintain the relationship with God and the state of prayer life we have achieved by constant vigilance. We must place our lives in the broader, universal scope of God's salvific work.
	I'm going to read her to close, the evening prayer from the Apostolic Constitutions, one of the evening prayers. There are a couple. Maybe this is one that Macrena prayed. Maybe not, we don't know, but here is an evening prayer, and if you like, let's stand for the evening prayer. 
	The Constitutions says, "When it is evening the bishop should assemble the church, and after the psalm at the lighting of the lamps they will pray for the catechumens, the illuminated and the penitents. Save us O God, and raise us up by thy Christ. Let us stand up and beg for the mercies of the Lord and his compassions, for the angel of peace, for what things are good and profitable, for a Christian departure out of this life, an evening and a night of peace and free from sin. Let us beg that the whole course of our life may be unblamable. Let us dedicate ourselves and one another to the living God through his Christ, amen."
Announcer:	You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelic divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.