Prayer and discourse: Prayer as apocalyptical discourse in relation to the methods of Juergen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, and Johann Baptist Metz

This dissertation draws relations between prayer and discourse as defined in the work of Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida and Johann Baptist Metz. The argument is that the discourse of prayer criticizes the pietism of inter-subjective spheres by their relation to quietist perspectives or alterity. While Habermas characterizes the pious inter-subjectivity of communicative-action, this dissertation uses Derrida to illustrate a more quietistic approach to structures of language. Metz describes the practical reason of prayer that must not accept theodicy as closed or finished. Prayer is then the questioning of God that permits no closure on suffering and thus is an act of piety and the deepest quietude.;Chapter one offers a genesis of prayer, and describes it as fundamentally an apocalyptical word taking place in an overlap between brokenness and some beyond. This initial description of prayer leads into an analysis of Karl Barth's understanding of how the Church is a community of discourse that is fundamentally a community of prayer. Chapter two describes a philosophy of discourse in Jürgen Habermas' theory of communicative-action and how this might include pious contributions of prayer. Chapter three investigates the method of deconstruction in the early work of Jacques Derrida, and characterizes his performance of a double-bracketing of phenomena as an act of quietism. Chapter four describes the fundamental theology of Johann Baptist Metz who works with prayer as a practical questioning of God and suffering. Chapter five discusses the discourse of memory in connection to the reading of scripture as a response to past and present interpreters; for example Martin Luther to Augustine and Paul. The conclusion offers a few short principles for a prayerful approach to discourse.;In short, the dissertation explores how a pietistic communicative-action and deconstuction's inherent quietism may combine in prayer's contribution to a practical discourse that addresses brokenness and the faith that there is something beyond brokenness. This suggests a pedagogy of memory whereby language reconceives the relation of knowledge and faith in prayer. Within memory, prayer not only expresses utter brokenness but it listens for an answer; it expects suffering to be answered.