On Theology as Prayer
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord my Rock and my Redeemer. Theology is a task undertaken with great caution. We dare speak of the thrice-holy Lord, from whom the seraphim hide their faces. This may be one reason why, for most of the history of the church, theology was seen to be intimately tied to virtue, and ultimately, prayer. Writing in the fourth century, Athanasius writes: "Without a pure mind and a life modeled on the saints, no one can comprehend the words of the saints...one wishing to comprehend the mind of the theologians [the authors of Scripture] must first wash and cleanse his soul by his manner of life" ( On the Incarnation, paragraph 57). The entirety of Augustine's Confessions is written in the mode of prayer, asking God to aid him in the task of recounting his life and searching out God's works in it. A more recent example is the Episcopal theologian Katherine S...