May Grab Bag

Augustine on Prayer, Certainty About Grace, and Dignity in the Renaissance

In this month’s grab bag, I want to explore a handful of shorter themes that I thought were worth writing about but that either didn’t fit in, or that I ended up having to cut from, earlier essays. In this article, I’ll be looking at what St. Augustine had to say about seemingly unanswered prayers, a debate over whether we can be certain we are in a state of grace that took place during the Council of Trent (and what it has in common with the Vatican’s recent norms on the investigation of apparitions), and a Renaissance treatise on human dignity.

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Augustine on Unanswered Prayer

Just over a week ago, in commemoration of Pentecost, I wrote about St. Augustine’s thoughts on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and in particular the gift of speaking in tongues. I explained that, although Augustine has much in common with those today called “cessationists” who claim that the gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased at the end of the apostolic age, Augustine differs by arguing, not that the Holy Spirit has ceased offering gifts, but rather that, through the spread of the Church to all nations, the Holy Spirit has fulfilled what was given as a sacramental sign at Pentecost, namely the apostles’ speaking in tongues.

In the same text that serves as the primary source for Augustine’s thinking on this issue, his sixth Homily on the First Epistle of John, he also includes a substantive reflection on prayer in which he asks questions quite similar to those I raised in my earlier article on prayer, “What Does It Mean to Ask God for Something?”, so I was especially eager to discover how he answered them. Augustine wrestles in particular with the question of why our prayers sometimes seemingly go unanswered, despite Scripture’s assurances that God responds to our prayers

Augustine raises these questions while reflecting on this passage from 1 John: “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him” (3:21-22, NAB). This passage is quite similar to others that seem to suggest God faithfully answers our prayers (e.g., Mt 7:7-8, Mt 18:19, Jn 14:13-14). With this passage, Augustine writes, “He [i.e., John] has put us sorely to straits” (5), since we know of examples in which people did not receive what they asked for in prayer. He cites the example of the Apostle Paul, who himself admits a situation when his prayer went unanswered:

Therefore, that I might not become too elated, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:7-9)

Augustine immediately notes that John’s statement on prayer is limited to those who faithfully keep the commandments, which Augustine equates with the commandments of Jesus to love God and to love our neighbor; in other words, the passage refers to those with the virtue of charity. God, therefore, faithfully responds to the prayers of those who have the virtue of charity.

He admits this doesn’t really resolve the problem, however, since sometimes those we have reason to believe have the virtue of charity sometimes have their prayers left unanswered. Indeed, there is still the example of Paul, who, Augustine argues, must have kept the commandments:

But then the apostle Paul, what evil are we to think of him? He not love the brethren! He not have within himself the testimony of his conscience in the sight of God! Paul not have within him that root of charity whence all good fruits proceeded! What madman would say this? (6)

Augustine attempts to resolve this dilemma by suggesting that the prayers of those who possess charity, no matter the specific aim of the prayer, are always aimed at the goal of salvation. And God, he argues, always answers our prayers in terms of salvation, even if not always in terms of the specific thing we wished for:

Know, my beloved, a great mystery: which we urge upon your consideration on purpose that it may not slip from you in your temptations. The saints are in all things heard unto salvation: they are always heard in that which respects their eternal salvation; it is this that they desire: because in regard of this, their prayers are always heard.

But let us distinguish God's different ways of hearing prayer. For we find some not heard for their wish, heard for salvation: and again some we find heard for their wish, not heard for salvation. . . . (6-7)

Those familiar with Augustine’s work may see a parallel between his distinction here between a prayer’s “wish" and the desire for salvation and the more famous distinction between the “use” of temporal things and the “enjoyment” of God in his On Christian Doctrine. For the righteous, the things we ask for in prayer are only means toward salvation, the latter of which is the true aim of prayer.

He adds that in cases where we come to prayer with charity and with the goal of salvation in mind, but our wishes are seemingly not heard, it’s because God knows better than we do what will ultimately contribute best to our salvation:

[W]e ought to understand that God, though He give not to our will, does give for our salvation. For suppose the thing you have asked be to your hurt, and the Physician knows that it is to your hurt; what then? It is not to be said that the physician does not give ear to you, when, perhaps, you ask for cold water, and if it is good for you, he gives it immediately, if not good, he gives it not. Had he no ears for your request, or rather, did he give ear for your good, even when he gainsaid your will? (8)

In last week’s article on the gifts of the Spirit, I noted Jon Sobrino’s critique of the Church Fathers for often reducing the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus to Heaven, the afterlife, downplaying how the Kingdom is both made concrete in the present and an eschatological reality. Here, in Augustine’s insistence that the prayers of the saints are always aimed at their eternal salvation, we potentially see another instance of this problem. If, instead, we say that the prayers of the saints are always aimed at the coming of God’s Kingdom, both in the present and in its eschatological fullness, then I think Augustine’s arguments here can contribute to a helpful understanding of prayer for Christians today. As I noted in the earlier article, our prayers “should begin with seeking out God’s will, and with seeking to make the Kingdom present in the world.”

Saint Augustine of Hippo