ola sigurdson
Could prayer, then, be a protection against any short-circuit
be tween the perspective of the believer and universality as such? One
critical objection would be that modern or post-modern theology un-
like pre-modern theology never or almost never starts or ends with
prayer — especially the kind of academic theology that would like to
pursue its interests without regard to confessional considerations. This
might be true. But against such an objection that this prayerful atti-
tude at least could not be valid for contemporary theology in its aca-
demic form, an argument could be put forward that the notion that
the practice of theology (as any other academic subject) is always con-
textual leads to a certain humility regarding its own claims for truth
given that it catches sight of itself as a practice and not only a theory.
Moreover, even in the ethos of contemporary scholarly work there are
dimensions that remind us of prayer, for instance the attention to
details and its will to suspend judgment as far as possible. According
to Simone Weil “absolutely unmixed attention is prayer,” and she is
very clear about her view that schoolwork as well as scholarly work are
activities that could be regarded as a training of one’s attention.^29 In
other words, the difference is not absolute if or rather when contem-
porary theology — in many ways thanks to the critique against the
prevailing practice of theology from liberation theology and feminist
theology — becomes aware of its actual dependence on different ways
of being in the world that are rooted in the particular life-worlds. In
so far as the ideal that the autonomous self and the autonomous ex-
ploration in the arts and sciences no longer enjoys the status of a self-
evident truth, the dependence of the inquiring subject on her or his
life-world as well as the very form of subjectivity that is implied by the
inquiry makes us aware that all kinds of study are, in a way, spiritual
endeavors, although not necessarily in any ordinary religious sense of
the word. In an analogous way prayer could be said to be, at least
desire for another world — or a better version of this world — through its very
absence? Prayer, on the other hand, aims at letting the subject win itself by giving
up itself. But prayer as well as humor do not have any eternal essences, and the
question then also becomes how they relate in praxis.
- Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, quoted from Norman Wirzba, “Attention and
Responsibility: The Work of Prayer,” The Phenomenology of Prayer, 88.