Shleiermacher's Understanding Of Prayer Essay

Schleiermacher’s Understanding of Prayer To understand the mind of Friedrich Schleiermacher and his thought on prayer we must first understand his background. Schleiermacher is an interesting figure mainly because he embraces many aspects of the enlightenment. Yet, there is also a side of him that rejects many aspects of it as well. His relationship to the enlightenment is dialectical in that he raises some ideas of the enlightenment through different concedes that he has. Schleiermacher was born 1768 and was the son of a reformed army pastor. Therefore, his background is strongly formed out of a Calvinist/Zwinglian tradition. His father had been converted to Christianity among pietists; specifically Moravians. These were people who had …show more content…
How do we grapple with this issue? How do we understand petitionary prayer? Do we pray in a way that insists on God objectively affecting a change? Is that why we ask God to help or is something else going on? Does prayer in fact change external circumstances? The answer for Schleiermacher is no. On the contrary, prayer changes our perception on reality. Prayer changes the one praying; it does not change God. Neither does prayer change the circumstances. So Schleiermacher, begs the question if we can change external circumstances by prayer. His answer is no. We can pray but it does not do any good to change external circumstances. People who work with the theology of prayer that thinks that every time they have a crisis. that a prayer chain is going to help change the external circumstance is wrong according to Schleiermacher. If we can just get more people praying for uncle Joe lying on his death bed, that God is going to heal him. Read what Schleiermacher said, “Now if we regard the fulfilment of those wishes as the aim of our prayers, and connection with this idea what is promised in answer to prayer-then,