The late H. P. Owen was Professor of Christian Doctrine at King’s College, London. A prolific author, Owen died in 1966; the present, posthumous volume reflects the author’s mature reflection on the subject of prayer. It is published with a helpful, sympathetic, but not uncritical introduction by Stephen N. Williams, who introduces the reader unfamiliar with Owen to the author.

Although brief in compass and in a style that is succinct and clear, the book offers a quintessential but profound analysis that reflects both the reality of the author’s own prayer life and provides what might well appear an outline ‘course’ on the subject. Owen focuses especially on vocal prayer and, within such self-defined limits, is comprehensive in scope and wide-ranging in the sources upon which he draws. Nevertheless, attention is given to the Lord’s Prayer as a model and exemplary prayer and issues such as meditation, contemplation, and mystical prayer.

Discussion is reverential and God-centred, reflecting Owen’s conviction that prayer has essentially to do with that which is proper to God rather than human need. His discussion is provocative (in the positive sense) in that it encourages thought and reflection on behalf of those of us that have thought relatively little about our prayers. He addresses critical debates regarding prayer, belief, religious experience, and language and emotion in prayer.

Owen explicitly presents his material for a wide readership and avoids technicalities. At the same time, his approach is theological and philosophical in emphasis and grounded in Owen’s conviction that how we think about God will determine how we pray. He emphasises, above all, that Christian prayer arises from its Trinitarian belief system.

Williams’ introduction highlights those areas with which the readers of the present journal may well differ from Owen. The author was a classic Theist and in a theological world that moved away from divine impassibility gravitated in the opposite direction. This, perhaps surprisingly, was linked with a near neo-Platonism and an errantist rationalism in his exegetical method. As such his analysis can sometimes seem sub-culturally defined and, frankly, wrong. His discussion of prayer for the dead may also fail to win over the doubters.

While all this is true and while Owen’s style might cause the inattentive reader to miss the deep warmth of the author’s spirituality, this is a most useful little book that the reviewer expects to consult regularly. If others need to be convinced of its value, then here is an enticement:

Prayer … is a unique and irreplaceable part of our response to God. Most obviously it is so in the sense that in it we are responding to him in ways appropriate to his being and self-revelation. In prayer too we are responding to God in ways appropriate to our own nature as creatures who are made in his image and meant for eternal life with him. Prayer is furthermore a response to God’s invitation. God desires us to pray in order that by praying we may enter into communion with him and so fulfil his purpose for us. Prayer therefore is a wholly natural activity because it is in accordance with the nature of God, the nature of human beings, and the nature of that relation that God wills to establish with us. This does not mean that prayer is always easy.… Yet it remains a profoundly natural act that, as such, ought to be marked increasingly by spontaneity and joy (14).