“I’ve sent your manuscript to Don Carson.” I confess those words were more than enough to strike fear into my heart when I first read them! David Kingdon, then Theological Books Editor at IVP, went on to tell me that a new series was about to be launched, to be called “New Studies in Biblical Theology.” To be honest, I wasn’t really listening, because I was still reeling at the thought of Don casting his rigorously piercing eyes over my ill-formed prose!¹By the way, he was immensely kind about the book, which eventually saw the light as Now Choose Life: Theology and Ethics in Deuteronomy, NSBT 6 (Leicester: Apollos, 1998).

I hadn’t met Don at this stage, but after reading his Pillar commentary on John (as well as A Call to Spiritual Reformation, Showing the Spirit, The Sermon on the Mount and From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, alongside the volumes on Scripture and hermeneutics) I did associate him with peerless exegetical insight and relentless logic. I think it’s fair to say that more than anyone else, Don has been my model in this: he is the epitome of careful, rigorous, humble, warm-hearted exegesis. But the more I read (and the more I heard Don speak), something else stood out—Don’s relentless commitment to and championing of biblical theology.

This was not, of course, a solo project. In the 1990s there was a gathering tide of interest in biblical theology. People like Graeme Goldsworthy (in Gospel and Kingdom) and Ed Clowney were leading the way in recovering this discipline. But for me, it was Don Carson’s quiet influence which ultimately had the greatest impact.

I think there were several reasons for this. The first was that Don is, first and foremost, a brilliant exegete. This was vital in persuading many of us of the importance of biblical theology as a vital and a rigorous discipline, rather than a vague if spiritual activity. The second is that Don understands the hermeneutical importance of biblical theology. His exegesis was not only immensely rich but also thoroughly gospel-shaped. It was this ability to bridge a careful reading of the text with a Christocentric application which made him a trusted teacher across the English-speaking world and beyond. In addition, Don captured the richness of biblical theology in a way which transcended the tyranny of a single metaphor. I think this is a particularly significant insight, which laid the foundation for the New Studies in Biblical Theology and much more besides.

Don would often say that the rich tapestry of biblical theology is made up of around twenty key themes which interweave from Genesis to Revelation. I pressed several times for the “canonical” list, but he was strangely evasive. Eventually, he sent me the course he had taught for many years at Trinity, in which he outlined “about 20 themes”! The uncertainty flows from how we distinguish overlapping concepts (e.g., sacrifice, atonement, holiness, cleanness, etc.), but Don’s insight was that the precise taxonomy is less important than the recognition that no one theme or category can successfully “rule” the others. This vital insight provided a framework for people introduced to biblical theology by works like Gospel and Kingdom or God’s Big Picture by Vaughn Roberts to press more deeply into the richness of the biblical witness.

In all this, the remarkable thing was that Don saw the kingdom significance of this new awakening of biblical theology. The impact of the gospel-centred movement (and The Gospel Coalition in particular) outside the US, and particularly in the UK, Ireland, and Australia was deeply dependent on its solid theological footing in the work and personal reputation of D. A. Carson. He was relentlessly willing to travel the world, modelling biblical-theological exegesis and preaching and encouraging like-minded people wherever he found them. For all this and more, I thank God for him.

1. A Biblical Theology of Prayer

I am also indebted to Don for his encouragement to undertake the daunting challenge of writing a biblical theology of prayer.²J. Gary Millar, Calling on the Name of the Lord: A Biblical Theology of Prayer, NSBT 38 (London: Apollos, 2016). The idea for attempting this was born when I was asked to do a series of talks on prayer at a young adults’ conference here in Brisbane. I went looking for a broad biblical-theological survey of the biblical material and couldn’t find one.³The closest thing was Carson’s own edited volume, Teach Us to Pray: Prayer in the Bible and the World (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990). However, despite some excellent chapters in the collection (e.g., Ed Clowney on “A Biblical Theology of Prayer” [pp. 136–73], the approach was not uniformly biblical-theological. Carson’s own magisterial study of Paul’s prayers (A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers [Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1992]) does exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. However, it obviously only covers a fraction of the prayers of the Bible. There are one or two academic studies from various theological perspectives which attempt this (e.g., Patrick D. Miller, They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994], but there had not been a reformed evangelical contribution from a biblical-theological perspective for at least a quarter of a century. There were, of course, all manner of helpful books on the practice of prayer (e.g., Paul Miller’s A Praying Life⁴Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2009).), including many based on key New Testament prayers (most often the Lord’s Prayer), but nothing that I could find attempting a Genesis-Revelation cumulative study which explores the nature and development of prayer in the Scriptures. This led me to go looking for the first prayer in the Bible.

Interestingly, this search opened up all kinds of rich avenues of inquiry. For a start, it instantly highlighted that enjoying a relationship with God and praying to God may be related, but they are not equivalent categories. Adam “walks with God” in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:8), as Enoch would as an outlier after the Fall (Gen 5:24). Presumably he “talks with God as a man would with his friend,” as Moses did in the remarkable events at Sinai (Exod 33:11). This kind of relational immediacy (and intimacy) is what humanity is made for, is what is interrupted in Genesis 3, and is the goal of God’s grand redemption project (so, e.g., Revelation 21:3; 22). This, perhaps surprisingly, has significant ramifications for how we understand what the rest of the Bible says about prayer. Not least, it means that we must be careful not to collapse our relationship with God into the single category of prayer. If the relationship between God and his creatures precedes prayer, and eventually transcends prayer, then no matter how important prayer is, it cannot be equated with this relationship.⁵So for example, the title of James Houston’s book Prayer: A Transforming Friendship (Oxford: Lion, 1989), whilst having much to teach us, is slightly misleading. Prayer may be a means through which we experience this ‘friendship’, but it is not constitutive of the friendship. This kind of relational (or experiential) language is often used in church without much thought or theological justification. But that does beg the crucial question: what is prayer?

2. So What Is Prayer?

This almost seems too obvious to ask, but it is a vital question. Too often, we simply assume that we know what prayer is, draw on the vague stock of common ideas which many religions share, or construct a simple definition without really rooting it in the language or thought-world of Scripture (e.g., prayer is “talking to God,” which, while not exactly wrong, is painfully inadequate and without much textual warrant).⁶Bruce Waltke, Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion? (Gresham, OR: Vision House, 1995). This is where thinking biblical-theologically really helps.

If prayer doesn’t appear necessary in Genesis 2 or Revelation 21–22, then it seems reasonable to say that prayer is a gift which God gives us for use in our fallen world—in the period between Genesis 3 and the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is something which God invites us to do in the interim.

So what, then, is the purpose of prayer? It is tempting to answer instinctively that prayer is to allow human beings to continue to enjoy God’s presence this side of the Fall—to allow us to taste what Adam, Enoch, and Moses experienced. The problem is, that simply isn’t what the text says. In the Old Testament, prayer is simply “calling on the name of the Lord,” which is where Genesis 4:26 comes in.

3. Why Enosh Matters

Initially, it was John Calvin who drew my attention to the theological significance of “calling on God’s name.” In his section on prayer in the Institutes, he writes: “Just as faith is born from the gospel, so through it our hearts are trained to call upon God’s name [Rom. 10:14–17].”⁷John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.20, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 850–51. For Calvin, prayer is something which is stirred up by God himself and is basically asking him in faith to do what he has promised. It is God’s gospel initiative which makes prayer possible, and it is the gospel which defines both who we need to ask and what we need to ask for most. With those words percolating in my mind, I came to Genesis 4:25–26:

And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.

In Calling on the Name of the Lord, I argue at some length that this is not only the first example of prayer in the Bible but sets the pattern for what is to follow. When the promised rescuer of Genesis 3:15 does not show up immediately (neither Seth nor Enosh do anything to suggest that they are the expected “serpent-crusher”), humanity starts to call on the name of Yahweh. Whilst this could simply mean that a couple of generations after Eden people start to feel a general need, I would argue in the context of Genesis that this prayer is much better understood as crying to God, asking him to act as he has said he would. The prominence of the “seed” in Genesis is so significant that it is hard to justify reading Genesis 4:26 in any other way.⁸See the foundational articles: T. Desmond Alexander, “Genealogies, Seed and the Compositional Unity of Genesis,” TynBul 44 (1993): 255–70; “Further Observations on the Term ‘Seed’ in Genesis,” TynBul 48 (1997): 363–67.

The rest of the book demonstrates that virtually every prayer in the Bible has at its core a cry to God to do what he has promised. Obviously, in the Old Testament these prayers revolve around his promise to Abraham and those who follow, whilst in the New Testament the focus of both the prayers we are urged to pray and those that are prayed by the writers for God’s people (including us) are what has been achieved for us by the Lord Jesus Christ. But the basic structure is the same. Biblical prayer is essentially “calling on the name of the Lord,” asking him to come through on his promises.

4. Something I Wish I Had Expressed More Clearly

This is not to say that this is the sum total of our relationship with God. There are a variety of ways in which we are called to relate to God and even a range of things that we are to say to God. We are, of course, urged to adore God, called to confess our sins and to give thanks to him, as well as ask (to use the classic formulation of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication). My contention is that in biblical usage these are activities which are related to prayer (and, in some contexts, necessary steps to prayer), but that the language of “prayer” is not an umbrella term which can be broken down into a series of constituent parts—the “prayer” bit is essentially focused on calling on God to do his work and to keep his promises.

I would also argue that even in the New Testament, when God has announced a vigorous “yes” to all his promises in the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Cor 1:20), this is still the essential nature of prayer. Whilst it is gloriously true that we now pray as those who through the Spirit share (somehow) in the sonship of Christ, which enables us to cry “Abba, Father”(Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6), the focus of this privilege is free access to ask rather than experiential intimacy. This is confirmed by Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount:

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matt 7:7–11)

This takes us to the very heart of New Covenant prayer. Like in the Old Testament, prayer is basically asking God to fulfill his promises by faith—however, on this side of the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have much greater clarity on what God is doing and will do in our world. This is foreshadowed powerfully in the Lord’s Prayer. It is not an amalgam of adoration, confession, etc., nor is it an attempt to say everything about our relationship with God. Rather, it is a series of foundational, gospel-shaped requests for God to advance his redemptive work in our world.

Of course, there is so much to say about the relationship with God we have been drawn into through our union with Christ by faith. But we must remember that prayer (our freedom to ask our Father to do what he loves to do) is just one aspect of this filial relationship. Yes, we are invited to “cast our anxieties upon the Lord” (1 Pet 5:7), to “draw near to God” (Heb 7:25), and even to “draw near to his throne of grace with confidence” (Heb 4:16). These are some of the many rich privileges announced in the New Testament, but in the language of the Bible they are not described as “prayer.”

5. Jeremiah and the Prohibition of Prayer (An Exception that Proves the Rule)

This very specific definition of prayer finds unexpected support in one of the most puzzling texts in the Bible concerning prayer, which I did not address in the NSBT volume. Three times in the book of Jeremiah, the prophet is told not to pray for the people of Judah.⁹See Jer 7:16; 11:14; 14:11. A similar New Testament example is found in 1 John 5:16. That is an astonishing (and problematic) prohibition, especially if prayer is simply a matter of talking to God. But if prayer is asking God to come through on his covenant promises, the prohibition starts to make sense.

In Deuteronomy 27 and 28, God promised that his covenant people living in his land would experience either blessing or curse (culminating in exile). The command to stop praying is simply an announcement that the tipping point has been reached, and the curse of exile is about to be experienced by the people. There is no place for praying that God will keep his promise, when his “promise” of exile has already been set in motion. In the same way that the blessings and curses of the covenant cannot be mapped directly onto salvation and damnation in the New Testament, so the prohibition on prayer needs to be understood as placing a time-specific pause on requests which will not (and cannot) be met.

Interestingly, a similar perspective is found in 1 Peter 4:7, where the apostle offers this reminder:

The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.

The logic of the first part of the verse seems quite straightforward: the Lord is about to return in triumph and judgment, so it makes sense to live in a focused and Christ-like way. What is puzzling is that the apostle adds “for the sake of your prayers.” What will happen if we lose sight of the “end of all things”? If we become selfish and irresponsible, then our prayers too will lose focus. We will stop asking God to work in us and those around us as he has promised before it’s too late. For the apostle Peter, to pray is to ask God to work in the gospel-shaped ways that he has committed to work.

6. The Implications

Allowing the Bible itself to define and explain what God invites us to do and why when he calls us to pray really matters. It is not theological nitpicking, nor does it undermine the need for us to pray; rather, it should bring a greater urgency and energy to the task.

Understanding that prayer, at its core, is asking God to do what he has promised in and through the gospel will do four things:

1. It will change our attitude to prayer: recognizing that prayer is basically asking God to work (and not an arcane spiritual exercise, or even an exercise in relationship, where we are to “practice the presence of God”) should free all of us to get on with the task at hand. We pray because God has told us to and because he has said he will answer when we do it!

2. It will change what we pray for ourselves: of course, we can ask God for anything, but the Bible clearly encourages us to focus on the things that God has already promised to do in us through the gospel. “Just as God’s Word must reform our theology, our ethics and our practices, so also must it reform our praying.”¹⁰Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, 17.

3. It will change the way we pray for the church: when we understand that prayer is focused on asking God to do his kingdom work in and through his people, it will reorient our prayers away from our immediate needs to the sweeping plans of God. Of course, we can still pray for “daily bread” (see discussion on what this means), but as Jesus taught us, those prayers will be embedded in cries for God to reveal his glory to the world through his church.

4. It will change what we pray for other people: if we are praying for God to do his work in us, then it will flow naturally into praying the same for other people. The best thing we can pray for those around us is that God would bring them to Christ, enable them to be faithful to Christ, and make them look like Christ. To do anything less is to sell them short.

7. Conclusion

Recovering (or discovering) a biblical theology of prayer is not an academic exercise—it should free us and motivate us to pray. God has given us the gift and task of crying out to him in this fallen world as part of his strategy to reconcile this world to himself. This is no small thing. As individuals and as the church, we need to devote ourselves to calling on his name.

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