Praying

Knocking on Heaven's Door:
A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer
By David Crump
Baker Academic, 2006
(352 pages, $22.99, paperback)

reviewed by S.N.D.

In his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door David Crump, professor of religion and theology at Calvin College, argues that a careful reading of the New Testament leads to a theology of petitionary prayer that avoids two opposite popular extremes. One extreme, bordering on a magical view, teaches that praying very persistently, in the right way, and with the requisite degree and purity of faith, is all that is required to get prayers answered. The opposite extreme, a therapeutic view that Crump believes borders on fatalism, teaches that prayer ultimately does not change God’s intentions but is primarily His tool for shaping our character and conforming us to His will. Strongly opposed to both extremes, Crump states the goal of his study thus:

There must be some way to honor the sovereignty of God’s will within the context of a truly reciprocal relationship where the believer’s concerns make a real difference to God. . . Attempting to unravel this Gordian knot of practical theology is the goal of this book. . . [It] will approach the theological and practical questions raised in petitionary prayer by studying the relevant New Testament evidence. (16)

Crump contends that most books on prayer, offering mainly “'folk theologies’ rooted in anecdote and personal experience,” do not sufficiently and “rigorously engage the biblical text” and therefore “make for bad theology and frustrating, even damaging, experiences at prayer.” (18) In Knocking on Heaven’s Door he presents a systematic interpretation of the New Testament’s teachings on petitionary prayer interwoven in nearly every chapter with real-life issues and experiences. And he offers no apology for exposing even the average reader to a lot of recent New Testament scholarship related to his subject:

[T]he disciplined, precise, exegetical study of Scripture should be a primary concern for every Christian without exception, even if the believer has never attended seminary or graduate school. (17) . . . The biblical writers were firmly convinced that genuine faith will seek understanding and that deeper understanding inevitably yields a more galvanized faith. (19)

Every Christian? Without exception? Inevitably galvanized faith? This mere bookworm senses a little overstatement here. The Holy Spirit has proven Himself capable, I think, of leading humble believers to a rich and satisfying prayer life aided by simple but faithful and attentive Bible reading, and even, in some times and places, by only a meager recall of Scripture heard in church. But certainly in our day there are a great number of Christians, especially those with pastoral and teaching responsibilities, those who struggle excessively with prayer, and those troubled by prayer’s perennial questions, who could and should grapple with this book and would profit from it greatly.

Well over half of the pages that follow the Introduction deal with petitionary prayer as taught and modeled by Jesus in the Gospels. In Chapters 1 and 2, Crump tackles head-on the most difficult issue regarding Jesus’s teaching on petitionary prayer: how do we reconcile His assurances about the power of believing prayer (“all things are possible for those who believe”) with His prayer in Gethsemane and the real-life experiences of believers?

To his credit, Crump offers no easy clear-cut answers. He does not attempt to fully resolve all the aspects of the issue. But his exegesis of relevant Gospel passages always enlightens and challenges, often surprises, and sometimes even shocks. What did Jesus think about degrees of faith in prayer or faith mixed with doubt? Crump’s interpretations surprised me. When he healed the epileptic boy (Mark 9:14-29), did Jesus really mean to commend the father’s confession of belief and unbelief? Contrary to every interpretation I can remember, Crump says no. But his conclusions always encourage the believer to faithfully, persistently, and patiently pray.

Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the topics of persistent prayer and patient prayer in the Gospels. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 provide an in-depth study of the Lord’s Prayer under the titles “Praying to the Son’s Father,” “God’s Will and Our Wishes,” and “Our Wishes and God’s Will.”

Why pray for God’s will to be done? Though a professor at Calvin College, and one who professes Reformed theological preferences, Crump does not balk when his exegesis leads him to conclusions that differ (or seem to differ) from Reformed doctrine. While he agrees that “the argument that prayer facilitates a disciple’s sanctification fits comfortably within the eschatological (already) and ethical (not yet) dimensions of Jesus’s teaching,” he disagrees with the view of “many Reformed thinkers. . .that God ordains our prayers as tools in accomplishing his will. . .In other words, God moves us to pray for the things he wants to give us and then answers our prayer.” (129) Crump is clear, even adamant, on this issue:

It is very difficult to read the Lord’s Prayer—not to mention the rest of Jesus’s prayer teaching—as anything but misleading, even deceptive, if God’s responses to petition are only "apparent." From this perspective, an informed surface reading of the prayer is inexplicably replaced by a dogmatic paradigm that leaves the text no longer meaning what it straightforwardly appears to mean. (129-130)

(I don’t think Reformed readers should be put off by Crump’s views. I am no theologian, but I suspect that he has not plumbed the theological depths of this issue. Honest debates about how and to what extent God exercises His indubitable sovereignty will continue among the Church’s theologians, as perhaps they should, until the consummation.)

In Chapter 8, Crump investigates the teaching in the Gospel of John about “Asking in Jesus’s Name.” In the last half of the chapter he provides a very helpful discussion of the significant differences between magical incantation and the New Testament’s characterizations of Christian prayer. He concludes by citing a contemporary example that shows the continuing danger that believers can “fumble along the boundaries separating legitimate petition from magical incantation.”

In Chapter 9, Crump studies prayer in the life of the early church as documented in the book of Acts. He draws three major lessons here. “First, the early church somehow manages to sustain a significant degree of unity through corporate prayer. . . Second, the emerging church rapidly adopts both Christ’s model and teaching about personal prayer. . . Third, prayer is the way for believers to find their lives realigned with God’s redemptive plans.” (194-195)

Chapters 10, 11, and 12 deal with petitionary prayer in the letters of Paul. In Chapter 10, which he gives the enigmatic title “The Impossibility of Petition and Prayers of the Spirit,” Crump reflects on the cosmic dimension of salvation taught by Paul in Romans 8, the fact that “all creation groans,” and the relation of this cosmic travail and the work of the Holy Spirit to the prayers of the redeemed:

[N]ot only does fallen humanity fail to groan with creation over its own fallenness, but it remains blind and deaf to the ubiquitous travail of a fallen universe. Whatever sensitivity believers may have to the destructive outworkings of sin is solely a gift of the Spirit: "We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption" (8:23). . . The importance of this point cannot be overstated. A Christian’s groaning [in prayer] is the fruit of salvation. We must be very clear about this no matter how counterintuitive it might first appear. For the remainder of creation, anguish precedes rebirth, but for the believer, rebirth gives rise to anguish. (201)

Finally, in Chapter 13 entitled “Asking Ethically,” Crump surveys the teachings on petitionary prayer in the General Epistles and in Revelation, prayer in the community relationships within the Body, prayer in light of the Final Judgment.

I would not attempt to summarize Crump’s final chapter, “Petition, the Hiddenness of God, and the Theology of the Cross.” It is itself one of the most moving summary chapters of a biblical study that this mere reader has yet encountered.

Knocking on Heaven’s Door exemplifies what its author exhorts all Christians to attempt—“the disciplined, precise, exegetical study of Scripture.” To quote from the backcover endorsement by Bruce N. Fisk of Westmont College:

If for you praying is like breathing, don’t bother with this book. For the rest of us, Knocking on Heaven’s Door may well be an answer to prayer.