Praying with Confidence: Aquinas on the Lord’s Prayer

by Paul Murray

Publisher:

Continuum

, 2010

Overview

Those readers who, in the past, have found the study of Aquinas especially daunting, will be grateful to the Dominican Paul Murray for the freshness and clarity he brings to his task. Praying with Confidence is both a stimulating scholarly study and an ideal introduction for the general reader. Never before have the most important reflections by Aquinas on the Lord’s Prayer been drawn together and considered in a single book. Here, Aquinas comes alive not merely as a profound, speculative theologian, but also as an impressive master and guide of the spiritual and moral life. Aquinas also was a teacher capable of saying the unexpected, openly confessing, “… it is hardly possible to say a single Our Father without our minds wandering off to other things.” The style of Aquinas is plain and expository, but evident on every page is the serene, unmistakable mark of wisdom—Aquinas’ own, and that of the great tradition.

Contents

Top Highlights

“McCabe in this context: ‘It is God who prays. Not just God who answers prayers but God who prays in us in the first place. In prayer, we become the locus of the dialogue between the Father and the Son.’” (Pages x–xi)

“The first error is the idea that God is simply not concerned about us. ‘On this view,’ Thomas says, ‘it is a waste of time asking God for anything.’¹⁹ The second error is the idea that since everything in the world is, from the beginning, subject to a fixed fate there is no point whatever in praying. ‘The third error,’ Thomas says, ‘concedes too much, saying that the loving providence of God is, in some way, radically changed by our prayer.” (Page 26)

“The confidence a human being has in God ought to be most certain.” (Page 21)

“Of all the things required of us when we pray confidence is of great avail.’^{3” (Page 21)}

“God wills three things in our regard, which we pray to be fulfilled’: the first is ‘that we may have eternal life’; the second is ‘that we keep his commandments’; and the third is ‘that we be restored to the state and dignity in which the first man was created.” (Page 60)

Product Details

• Title: Praying with Confidence: Aquinas on the Lord’s Prayer
• Author: Paul Murray
• Publisher: Continuum
• Print Publication Date: 2010
• Logos Release Date: 2017
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274; Lord’s prayer
• ISBNs: 9781441147134, 9781441168160, 1441147136, 1441168168
• Resource ID: LLS:PRYNGCNFDNC
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T20:41:57Z