Karl Barth claims in Church Dogmatics that calling upon God as Father in prayer (invocation) is exemplary human action. Barth’s treatment of prayer in this way provides a different vantage point on the topic of prayer than is often studied in contemporary Christian scholarship, where Christian prayer is studied to establish its devotional or community value. Barth’s presentation of prayer is worth studying because it reveals prayer as the vehicle through which humans learn about themselves and about God. Moreover, prayer reveals God’s divine nature as He connects with the Christian pray-er. Barth calls this relationship between God and the Christian divine–human correspondence. My focus is to explore Barth’s theology to determine the significance of prayer in the context of divine–human correspondence and then to relate it to prayer in everyday Christian life. I conclude that prayer, as effective human action, is inherent to human correspondence with God.
