The Latin adage, “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi,” roughly translated as, “the law of praying, the law of believing,” has been used in recent decades as a popular shorthand description of the truth that the way in which we pray (or, more broadly stated, the way we worship) forms and shapes what we believe; and vice versa, what we believe forms and shapes the way that we pray and worship. Any number of examples can be given from throughout the history of the Church, and no doubt plenty of personal anecdotes that all of us might consider on the basis of our own experiences.
To be sure, faith is a matter of fear, love, and trust in the heart; and, as our Lord Himself says, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth” (St. John 4:24). Yet, the fact is that we are creatures of both body and soul, and the Lord does not deal with our souls apart from our bodies, nor does He save our souls without also redeeming, sanctifying, and saving our bodies for the Resurrection and the Life everlasting. He opens the ears of our bodies to hear and receive His Word, and He opens our lips to confess what He has spoken. He cleanses our hearts, souls, and consciences by washing our bodies with water purified by His Word and Spirit in Holy Baptism. And of course, He grants forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation by the giving of His own Body and His Blood into our bodies, as a down payment on the Resurrection.
So, it is surely no radical notion that our bodily exercise and expressions of prayer and worship are closely connected to the faith that we believe, teach, and confess, collectively as the Church and individually as Christians. What we believe does (or should) guide and govern what we do and how we do it. But so do our consistent habits and regular practices influence and gradually shape our approach to life, our perceptions, the way we think, and our attitude and convictions. That is true in all the mundane aspects of earthly life, and it is true of our spiritual life, as well.
Significantly, though, the “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” adage originated and developed out of a somewhat different point, which is well worth revisiting and seriously considering, not least of all because of the truism that what we believe and the way we pray and worship are interrelated.
The popular shorthand derives from a longer expression employed by a fifth-century monk, St. Prosper of Aquitaine, an admirer of St. Augustine of Hippo and a secretary to St. Leo the Great. In defending the necessity of divine grace for conversion and salvation, St. Prosper wrote, “ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi” (see Paul De Clerck, “‘Lex orandi, lex credendi’: The Original Sense and Historical Avatars of an Equivocal Adage,” tr. Thomas M. Winger, Studia Liturgica 24 [1994], 178-200). Here, “supplicandi” is synonymous with “orandi.” And what St. Prosper hereby asserts and argues is that the “law of praying” establishes the “law of believing.”
In making this point, St. Prosper had in mind a specific “law of praying,” namely, the admonition of St. Paul in his first epistle to St. Timothy: “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,” because God our Savior “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:1-4). In the light of that Word of the Lord, St. Prosper also then pointed to the actual practice of the whole Church in praying and interceding for the conversion and salvation of Jews, pagans, heretics, and so forth. And as it is necessary to pray for the conversion and salvation of “all people,” according to this “law of praying,” so is it established that the grace of God is necessary for anyone to be saved.
In other words, it is not simply the Church’s tradition or practice of prayer, but the Church’s obedience in praying according to the divinely-given “law of praying,” which attests to and confirms her faith. The Church prays as she has been commanded to pray (by the One who promises to hear), and that Lex Supplicandi undergirds the Church’s creed, that is, her teaching and confession – the Lex Credendi. For St. Prosper of Aquitaine, in the case he was addressing, the Lord’s command to pray “for all people” establishes the Church’s faith in divine grace.
Lutherans have argued in a similar fashion in defending the practice of infant Baptism. As the Lord Jesus commands His Apostles to make disciples of “all nations” by baptizing and teaching them, it follows that all people, including infants, should be baptized (and taught). Accordingly, Luther could also point to the Church’s actual historic practice as one of his arguments against the Anabaptists; for the Church had been doing what the Lord commanded, and He honored her obedient practice by the regeneration and faithful witness of those who were baptized as infants.
Luther likewise argued from the Fifth Petition, “forgive us our trespasses,” that forgiveness is a gracious gift of God, which even Christians need on a daily basis throughout their time on earth. The Lord’s command that we should pray in this way – and His promise to hear us – establishes and teaches both our need and God’s gift of forgiveness. By the same token, the fact that we are taught to pray at all demonstrates that we must look to Him in faith and rely upon Him for every good thing, for all that we need in both body and soul, for this life and the Life everlasting. Here, too, the Lex Orandi serves, supports, and substantiates the Lex Credendi. And this belongs not only to the Lord’s teaching of the Our Father (St. Matthew 6:9-13; St. Luke 11:1-4), but also to that other fundamental Lex Orandi: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17; also St. Luke 18:1).
Along with these passages teaching us to pray and to call upon the Name of the Lord in faith (Romans 10:10-13), considering the Lex Orandi more broadly to include the whole of worship, we look first of all to the Word of the Lord concerning the preaching and practice of the Gospel in the administration of His Means of Grace. For all that we believe, teach, confess, and practice depends upon what the Lord says and does and gives and promises by these ways and means of His mercy. The entire life of the Church on earth – from the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:42-47) to the close of the age (St. Matthew 28:20) – is established by the Word that our God and Father in heaven has spoken to us in these last days by His Son (Hebrews 1:2; St. Luke 9:35).
In the last chapter of St. Matthew, the Lord Jesus commands His Church to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (St. Matthew 28:19-20). And in the last chapter of St. Luke, He reveals from “the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” that, along with His Holy Cross and Passion and His Resurrection from the dead on the third day, it is divinely necessary “that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His Name to all nations” (St. Luke 24:44-47). In keeping with such proclamation, St. John records the Lord’s giving of the Keys: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld” (St. John 20:23). And St. Paul hands over to the Church what he received from the Lord, namely, that the same Lord Jesus Christ, having taken the Bread and the Cup, having given thanks to His God and Father, and having given His Body and Blood to the Apostles on the night when He was handed over to His voluntary suffering and death, commanded them to “do this in remembrance of Me.” And not only that, but, as often as they “do this,” they are to “proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).
These are the foremost and fundamental “laws of praying,” so to speak, which ought to define and determine the actual life and practice of the Church’s worship, and thereby confess – and catechize the people in – the “law of believing.” That is to say, all our preaching and practice of the faith should derive from, embody, and express the “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” revealed by our Lord in the Holy Scriptures and handed down by His grace from one generation to the next.