The Interpretive Stasis of Assimilation: Evangelical Arguments against the “Magical” Use of The Prayer of Jabez

Abstract

In his bestselling book The Prayer of Jabez, Bruce Wilkinson claims that believers can reap guaranteed blessings from God by praying an obscure biblical prayer. But for many evangelicals, Wilkinson’s book teaches magic not prayer. At issue is the appropriate use of this biblical prayer. How might rhetoricians and other scholars of religion analyze this biblical debate? This article argues that the legal or interpretive stases, a neglected part of stasis theory, constitute an important rhetorical method for analyzing arguments over the meaning of texts, religious or not, thereby shedding light on the nature, motivations, and implications of such debates.

Notes

1. ¹I thank Elizabeth Ellis, Bill FitzGerald, and Meaghan O’Keefe for their generous, supportive, and incredibly helpful feedback on this article. I also thank RR reviewers James Zappen and Blake Scott for their many useful suggestions.

2. ²Scholars dispute when 1 and 2 Chronicles were composed, positing dates from the sixth to the second century BCE (Knoppers 101).

3. ³Wilkinson uses the New King James Version in Jabez. Unless noted, scriptural quotations are taken from this version.

4. ⁴Wilkinson does not treat the last request of the prayer: “that I may not cause pain.”

5. ⁵One exception is James Dobson, founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family (Oppenheimer). Although his opinion would have been influential, it does not appear to have been widely shared among other evangelical leaders.

6. ⁶See Pernot on how the study of religious rhetoric can illuminate operations of persuasion more generally.

7. ⁷Ancient rhetoricians sometimes listed jurisdiction (Quintilian 3.6.66) and disputes over the definition of terms (Cicero 1.13.17) as legal stases.

8. ⁸Ancient rhetoricians recognized that the legal stases could be applied to disputes over any written document (Cicero 1.12.17–1.13.17).

9. ⁹After this time, the influence of the interpretive stases may have persisted in realms such as biblical hermeneutics and law. However, to my knowledge there is no existing scholarship on this point.

10. ¹⁰Later, we will see there is disagreement over the basic meaning of the last clause of Jabez’s prayer: “that I may not cause pain.”

11. ¹¹Ancient rhetoricians classified disputes in which a proposed interpretation, usually grounded in the author’s supposed intention, negates the text’s apparent meaning under the stasis of letter versus intent (for example, Cicero 1.13.17).

12. ¹²I take the English term from Heath’s translation of Hermogenes’ On Issues. Other translators render the Greek (syllogismos) and Latin (ratiocinatio, collectio) terms for this stasis as syllogism, inference, or reasoning by analogy. I prefer assimilation because it avoids confusion with other rhetorical concepts.

13. ¹³Let Us Reason Ministries considers a number of religious denominations “cults,” including Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ, and Christian Science.

14. ¹⁴A mantra is not necessarily a magical speech act but a repeated phrase that aids in meditation. Evangelical critics generally used the word to attack Wilkinson’s teaching as encouraging meaningless repetitions and to further associate his teaching with “paganism.”

15. ¹⁵Except when there is sin in the believer’s life (Wilkinson 85).

16. ¹⁶Paul’s physical infirmity (2 Corinthians 12:7–10).

17. ¹⁷There is some disagreement among originalists over these premises. For example, traditional originalists believe legal decisions are restricted not to the text’s original public meaning but to the intention of the framers (Solum 2–4).

18. ¹⁸Gaonkar focuses on the rhetoric of science, but his critique is aimed at rhetorical analysis more generally (36).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin Camper

Martin Camper is Assistant Professor of Writing at Loyola University Maryland where he teaches courses in writing and rhetoric. His research interests include the history of rhetoric, the rhetoric of religion, rhetorical and argumentation theory, and the rhetorical processes of textual interpretation. He is currently working on a book-length manuscript detailing a rhetorical method for analyzing arguments over the meaning of texts based on the interpretive stases. He can be reached at [email protected].