Does God Speak To People?

We frequently hear Christians say things like, "God spoke to me" or "I sensed God saying to me . . ." or "I'm learning to hear God's voice" or "We need to listen to God." We often pray for an answer to a specific question, expecting that God will, in some way, give us a specific answer. Are these ways of talking based on bad theology?

What would it mean for God to speak to me? In cases of human communication, a simple model involves four parts: sender, message, medium and receiver. On this simple model, God is the sender, the message is various and I am the receiver. But what is the medium? There seem to be several possible answers to this question.

If God does "speak" to humans, there are several means or mediums by which God might do so. First, we see in the Bible cases where it appears that God spoke in an audible voice with human language. For instance, the prophen Habakkuk writes that "the LORD answered me and said, 'Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets . . .'" Of course, it is possible that God spoke directly to his mind and bypassed the ears altogether. I'm not sure it matters, though. The important thing to note is that the "speaking" was linguistic and readily understandable. I would also include dreams and visions in this category. The instances I am referring to are not just vague "feelings" or "senses" that God was saying something, but clear linguistic communication.

Second, God speaks through the medium of written language. Certainly God's Word is, indirectly, God speaking. God has brought it about that his intentions, commands, thoughts, etc. are communicated to us by means of written language. This is perhaps the easiest medium to accept.

Third, I think God speaks to believers intuitively. By this I mean to capture things like impressions during prayer, or when God speaks personally through the Word. When we experience intuitive communication, we sometimes say that we have a sense of God's leading or his direction on a matter. We don't hear or see any language, but we just know. Sometimes this is called tacit knowing. You may not know how you know, but you just know. Perhaps an example of this is in Acts when the elders of the church said that "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us . . ."

Fourth, God can speak to us through other people. This one is akin to the first, since it generally involves hearing an audible voice, but not God's voice. It is a linguistic and propositional form of communication. The prophets are good examples of this type, as are angels. God once got his message across to Balam by means of a donkey! Recall, though, that it was the donkey's words, not God being "channeled" through the donkey.

Fifth, I think God can speak to us through circumstances or through creation. "Dat to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge." (Ps. 19) This is metaphorical, but the idea is that God is attempting to say something by means of creation. There is content. They tell of the glory of God. My favorite example is Jonah and the vine. God causes the vine to grow and perish overnight in order to get a message across to Jonah. The vine was not the message, but it was meant to get his attention and reveal to him the dark places in his soul. God may also "close a door" or cause some other event that is meant to signal his desire for us.

So, all these examples are well and good, but does God still speak to us today, as he did in the Bible? I think the answer has to be "yes," but with one caveat. The content of God's message in the act of communication is almost always going to be of a certain sort. Let's distinguish between two kinds of information or message-content that God might transmit to us. I will call the first "gnostic" information and the second "biblical" (you can see where this is going). Most people are wary of "speaking" talk because of abuses that generally involve gnostic information. What I mean by "gnostic" is secret, privileged information that God gives to a very limited number of persons. Gnostic information consists of propositions that are not contained in, nor can be inferred from the Bible. In fact, they may even be contrary to the Bible. Moreover, gnostic information is allegedly given to one person or a small group of people. I do not believe that God speaks in this way, with very few exceptions.

Biblical information, on the other hand, is intended to be public, consistent with and very often echoing Scripture. Paul's conclusion in the dispute over the communicative gifts is this: "Let all things be done for edification." God's speaking to a person should not be considered strictly a private matter, but ultimately for the building up of the body as a whole community. I am extremely skeptical of any alleged "divine message," the content of which is something that no Christian could ever have known or discerned apart from the revelation of the message. That is, I believe that when God speaks, he will simply be recapitulating what he has already said, in one way or another. This is what the entire ministry of the Old Testament prophets consisted in. They simply recapitulated or rehashed the Mosaic law and covenant, with all its promises and warnings.

So, I probably have not said enough here to draw a sound conclusion. More distinctions need to be drawn, more terms defined, more Scriptures explored. That will be for a later post. Of course, if I get absolutely no comments on this, I won't be terribly motivated to write more. I'll let the "free market" decide.

A Definition of Prayer

What is prayer? Simone Weil's definition is one of the more intriguing ones I've come across. I'll put it in a philosophical format. I'll call her definition the "Attention Thesis" (AT).

(AT) A subject S is praying if and only if S's attention is oriented toward God.

Is this an adequate definition? First let's get clear on an important term: attention. First, attention refers to an intentional mental state in which a person chooses to make some particular thing the object of his thought. When I choose to watch the second hand of my clock move, my attention is on the movement of the second hand. I am attending to the movement of the second hand. When I choose to imagine a cube in my mind, I am attending to the image of the cube. When I choose to think about the concept of humility, I am attending to that concept. If a thought pops into my head involuntarily, or if an insect flies across my visual field, I may notice or see it, but I am not attending to it.

Second, attenting is an action, it is something we choose to do. I cannot give my attention to something without doing so on purpose. In the case of the insect, once I have noticed it I may then choose to direct my attention to it.

Now there is an important difference between attending a thing and attending to my concept of a thing. To attend to a thing is not merely to think about it, put to pay attention to it. I cannot pay attention to the Mona Lisa if I am not in the Louvre. I can attend to my memory of it, or my concept of it, but not the thing itself. Thus, in the case of persons, I do not think we can pay attention to someone who is not present or engaged in communication with us. And even if the person is present, attention is more than merely looking at them or hearing them. We see this phenomenologically with human communication. It is possible to hear what a person says with out paying attention to them. We all know the difference, and we consider ourselves slighted when our interlocutor fails to pay attention to us in an important conversation.

So given this understanding of attention, how does AT hold up? Well, let's break it into two pieces.

(AT1) S is praying only if S's attention is oriented toward God.

(AT2) S's attention is oriented toward God only if S is praying.

To refute AT, we must show that either AT1 or AT2 is false by way of a counter-example. Can we think of a counter-example for AT1? Is there a scenario where someone is praying (to God), and yet their attention is not oriented toward God? Consdier the following: Smith is reciting the daily prayers prescribed by his church, and yet he is thinking about a report he must give at the office on Monday. Smith's attention is on his report. Is Smith praying? Intuitively, no.

Now, one might object by claiming that God's hearing a person's prayer-like words is sufficient for prayer to occur. I.e., a person can perform an utterance of certain prayer-like words ("deliver me O, Lord") without any thought of God whatsoever, and God will count that as a legitimate request. But consider the following case. Brown is watching a football game on TV. Black, who has recently committed an egregious wrong against Brown, enters the room, sits down and begins to watch the game. Brown says, "Aren't you going to apologize?" A few minutes later, Black utters the phrase, "I'm sorry," all the while gazing intently at the TV. Does this count as an apology? If not, then neither does a mere prayer-like utterance count as prayer. If someone would defend this as a legitimate apology, then I don't know what to say to them.

So then, it seems that AT1 stands up to our brief inquiry. But what of AT2? Can we imagine a counter-example where someone is focusing their thought upon God, and yet is not praying? this seems less clear. In fact, this is the key to Weil's view of prayer. She thinks any such attention would count as an act of prayer.

One objection to AT2 might go like this: I can think about God without praying in the same way that I can think of my wife without talking to her. But as I have already pointed out, thinking about a person is not necessarily the same as paying attention to them. If my wife is in Rome, and I am in Kansas City, and we are not communicating in any way, then thinking about her amounts to thinking about my memory of her or my idea of her (I am pining for her). If my wife is before me, and I am thinking of her while looking at her intently, then I am attending to her. Can I do this without any communication whatsoever? That seems unlikely, given the significance of body language, facial expression, etc. Just the mere fact that I am paying attention to her so intently communicates something, e.g., adoration or anger. I am bound to give away my thoughts by looking at her in a certain way, or being silent.

So if attending to a human being in this manner makes it extrememly likely that communication is occurring, then attending to God in this manner entails that prayer is occurring. This is because God can know my very thoughts. And if, ex hypothesi, I am thinking about him, his knowing my thoughts amounts to communication, i.e., prayer. So AT2 seems true.

Given the truth of AT1 and AT2, it follows that AT itself is true. Thus, Weil's definition stands. This is only my first pass at a philosophical treatment of prayer, so comments are appreciated.