I think I mentioned a week or so ago that I’d been reading Anglican theologian Austin Farrer’s Saving Belief. Well, I just finished another work of his called Lord I Belive: Suggestions for Turning the Creed Into Prayer, and it’s another great read.

Farrer argues that “prayer and dogma are inseparable” (p. 9). To be a Christian is not just to coolly consider the truths of the faith, but to incorporate them into one’s innermost self. And the best way to do this is to incorporate the dogmas of the church into one’s prayer. The creed, as a summary of Christian belief, is the ideal guide for this, because it gives us an image of God and his dealings with us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

Though God be in me, yet without the creed to guide me I should know neither how to call upon God, nor on what God to call. God may be the very sap of my growth and substance of my action; but the tree has grown so crooked and is so deformed and cankered in its parts, that I should be at a loss to distinguish the divine power among the misuses of the power given. Were I to worship God as the principle of my life, I should merely worship myself under another name, with all my good and evil. So I take refuge in that image of God which we have described as branded from outside upon the bark. Here is a token I can trust, for he branded it there himself; he branded it on the stock of man when he stretched out his hands and feet and shed his precious blood. The pattern of the brand was traced on me by those who gave the creed to me; God will deepen it and burn it into me, as I submit my thoughts to him in meditation. (p. 14)

This strikes me as very Lutheran with its emphasis on the word that comes from outside ourselves, and in its emphasis on the importance of meditating on the creed. Luther, of course, commended this as one of the main parts of his Small Catechism.

Farrer’s remaining chapters provide expositions/meditations of the various parts of the creed, each one culminating in a prayer. They show the mark of the same generous orthodoxy that characterized Saving Belief. Finally, there is a chapter on the Rosary called “The Heaven-Sent Aid,” where Farrer commends it as one of the best ways to meditate on the mysteries of our faith:

If I had been asked two dozen years ago for an example of what Christ forbade when he said “Use not vain repetitions,” I should very likely have referred to the fingering of beads. But now if I wished to name a special sort of private devotion most likely to be of general profit, prayer on the beads is what I should name. Since my previous opinion was based on ignorance and my present opinion is based on experience, I am not ashamed of changing my mind. Christ did not, in fact, prohibit repitition in prayer, the translation is false; he prohibited gabbling, whether we repeat or whether we do not. Rosaries, like any other prayers, can be gabbled, and if they are gabbled, they will certainly not be profitable. Devout persons who take to the beads as a way of meditating are not likely to gabble, for their object is to meditate. (p. 80)

Farrer’s book is a good illustration of what I was trying to get at in emphasizing the importance of dogma in yesterday’s post. The soul needs something concrete to feed on, and to lead it to God. Yes, if we’re honest, we’ll admit that our dogma and doctrine provide a blurred and incomplete picture of the divine nature. But we also trust that they’re reliable pointers that will lead us deeper into that inexhaustible Truth.