Main news for 4 October 2022

The apostle appears to contrast prayer 'with the spirit' and prayer 'with the mind.' What does he mean? By 'spirit' Paul means what today, without any theological background, we would simply call breath.

The issue may be either the 'breath of life' that God gave to the human being at creation, or God's breath, whose presence within themselves the prophets feel during ecstasy. In any case, the issue is precisely an ecstatic experience, the feeling of a certain divine power acting on a person and sometimes not only embracing him from outside but also penetrating within.

As a rule, God's power is felt as something impersonal, so that a person can only give himself to it, supposing that behind it stands God Himself, abiding beside the person and leading him after Himself. At the same time it often turns out that a person under the influence of God's power not only does not control himself, but does not always remember everything that happened to him after the ecstasy ends. Glossolalia may, or may not, be an element of such an ecstatic state.

Meanwhile, such ecstasy is of little use to those around: it can only become a vivid witness to how God's power acts and what it can do with a person. That is why Paul calls such phenomena a witness for unbelievers: a person who has no idea what God's power and His action are can, by looking at such ecstasy, form a more or less clear idea of it.

But for Christians themselves such ecstasy brings nothing new. Prayer 'with the mind' is different. By mind the apostle here means not intellect, but that spiritual center of the human person which in the Bible is usually called the heart; Greek philosophers called it the mind, and Paul uses this word in his letters written in Greek. The issue is conscious prayer, conscious communion with God, which can also become prophetic if God gives a person prophetic revelation.

Here not only God's power is revealed, but also His will, which a person feels and recognizes as part of his own spiritual space. Accordingly, he can consciously follow this will. Consciously commune with God. In a word, live a conscious spiritual life. And that means, if God entrusts this to him, instructing others as well: he does not merely experience certain ecstasies, but also understands the meaning and significance of what is revealed to him and what happens to him. As is proper for an inhabitant of the Kingdom.