prayer, subjectivity, and politicsmetaphorically, a way of being in the world that might permeate all
human practices — as in the practical realization of the Pauline exhor-
tation to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5.17) — and which is express-
ed in attention and responsibility.^30 If you regard academic practices
as well as other human activities in the same way as prayer, you will
discover that they also imply a certain kind of habituation and a cer-
tain attitude and comportment towards the world, in other words a
certain form of subjectivity. Concerning academic work, even though
the meaning of the concept “theory” has changed since ancient times,
one could actually claim that academic inquiry still is imbued by a cer-
tain ethos and that philosophy still is a certain “way of life,” although
perhaps not always as reflexively aware of itself as in ancient history.^31
To return to the question of prayer as such, attention to this phe-
nomenon makes us aware that any human experience of transcendence
is mediated through the created world. This should be no surprise to
theology, as it is an immediate implication of the Christian doctrine
of the incarnation — that God took human flesh in Christ — which
means that the message of God always is thought to be mediated “in,
with, and below” the concrete material circumstances of any particular
situation. The doctrine of the incarnation means, among other things,
that the believer is not thought to be somehow mysteriously trans-
ported out of this world to enjoy the unmediated presence of God (not
even in mysticism, but that is something that I have to leave for now).
You could perhaps say that the doctrine of the incarnation suggests
that mediation and representation receives a divine sanction.^32 It is,
however, a fact that the material mediation of transcendence fell into
disrepute as a consequence of the modern Western (especially Protes-
tant but indeed also Roman-Catholic) disembodiment of the Chris-
tian tradition where the central relation between the believing subject
and God came to be understood as a private commerce between God
- Wirzba, ibid., 88–100. Wirzba, ibid., 88–100.
- Cf. Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to
Foucault, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. - See Graham Ward, “Transcendence and Representation,” Transcendence: Phi-
losophy, Literature, and Theology Approach the Beyond, ed. Regina Schwartz, New
York/London: Routledge, 2004, 142.