The Prayer of the Other: Anselm’s Substitutionary Principle of Prayer

In my essay, I examine Anselm’s “Prayer to Saint Paul” as indicative of key features of Anselmian prayer and theology. I draw on recent scholarship that looks at praying as a craft and prayers as the tools of this craft. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s account of tools as present-at-hand, I argue that treating prayers as tools cannot fully account for Anselm’s approach to prayer. Anselm depicts prayer as an activity in which the orator finds that she cannot pray. The orator, in taking up the tools of prayer, realizes that prayer is absent because the skill necessary is lacking due to the absence of faith and hope. Unable to pray, the orator must pray for the possibility of being able to pray through another. By this vicarious prayer, the orator can be vicariously prayed for. In the absencing of prayer itself, prayer presents itself per signum crucis, which is the event of prayer. This absence functions as a redemptive gift: by realizing the absence of prayer, we can be opened to the event of prayer in the compassionate substitutionary prayer of Christ on the cross.