The 4thTimeLucky Prayer Question Thread

[4thTimeLucky]

Lebell

Thanks for the PM.
For those following this and confused by my earlier post, this was a sperate thread but has been merged. I suspect/hope that this discussion may go on a bit, so might be demerged if things get too complicated - I will leave that up to Lebell's good judgement.

So.....

Lebell, you use the common analogy that petitionary prayer is like a child asking their father for help. I am happy to take that as our starting point. Let me lay out the four necessary and together sufficient conditions for a child's (C) petition to their father (F) to be efficacious:

1) Child C chooses to make a petition to father F for him to do S.
2) C’s petition brings about a change in F’s intentions.*
3) F does S.
4) If F had not been petitioned he would not have done S.

* Note that this change in intention can occur for one, or all, of three reasons:
- A change of knowledge [F never knew that C wanted a pony]
- A change of heart [F was either moved or pestered into buying the pony]
- Empowerment. The requests gives the petitioned person new authority or options for action.

Now for my questions...

i) Condition (2) requires a change in the intention of F. God's intentions do not change.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
- James 1:17 (NIV)

Would it therefore be right to say that petitionary prayer cannot be efficacious, because condition 2 can never met?


Okay, so let's assume (though you will have to convince me why I should) that God can change.....

ii) We saw that there were two reasons why a petition may be efficacious. A change of knowledge or a change of heart.
God is omniscient and so no gaining of new knowledge can occur.

“… for your Father knows what you need before you ask him”
- Matthew 6:8 (NIV)

“See the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.”
- Isaiah 42:9 (NIV)

God is completely good and therefore will always do what is best for us. Therefore no change of heart can occur, because God's heart is already as full of love and caring as it can be.

“For the LORD is good and his love endures forever”
- Psalms 100:5 (NIV)

God is omnipotent and possesses all authority. Therefore our prayers cannot empower him with power or permission that he did not already have.

“I know that you can do all things;
no plan of yours can be thwarted.”
- Job 42:2 (NIV)

How then, even if God can change, is the petition to be efficacious, if it can change neither knowledge, heart or power?

iii) Assuming that there are answers to (i) and (ii). Does it make sense to pray for God to help people in the past? If so, why does the church rarely call upon us to do so. [One exception being in the Tridentine Mass: "Delivee us, we Beseech thee, O Lord, from all evils past, present and future."]


I do have a couple of other questions, but those will do for now.
You may now see why I started a new thread.
At the outset I should acknowledge that a thread is certainly not the best forum for discussing such things as a solution to the issue of petitionary prayer will require many interwoven strands. Nonetheless I hope that you will enjoy at least throwing a few ideas out there and seeing if we can't make a little headway.

I look forward to your response

[3leggedfrog]

ahhh logic, gottra love it. I know you asked Lebell, 4thTimeLucky but i am guilty of huburs (overweanning pride) so i have to throw my two cents in.

to answer your question you first must figure out how you see God or your God view.

Do you see God as a being who is outside of space and time.
This view states that god is truely omnipotent and all knowing and so he created the world perfictly at the beginging of time. Free will comes into play here because God is all knowing, he already knows what you will do. "He" would already know that the child will change her mind. So to answer your question in this view "He" already answered the prayer at the beginging of time knowing full well the out come. Good and bad are outcomes for the greater good "God works in misterious ways." "He" has a set plan for the human race so what we think is evil is just something that will effect "His" plan for the greater good.

Or do you see god as ominpresent? This view states that God is here on earth (this view also incompasses the view that we are all part of god, or holism). In this view god is ever changing along with human beings. Freewill here is God not knowing the true outcome of free will or if he does he ignores it. So if the child does change her mind it is free will. Thus the quote "becareful what you wish for you might get it." God here has no set plans for the humans race or if he does it is very general ie the betterment of mankind. Here good and evil are outcomes of some form of free will. Natural disasters can be thought of in this view as a teaching tools. hey your not doing something that i want done or to strengthen the peoples will, morals, valuse. ect...

So to answer you question you must first know your god view. This is a very dry and acidemic answer to your question so Lebell may give you a better spirtual answer.

Lebell Rocks

[Lebell]

4thTimeLucky,

At this time, i have to ask this question: Were you trying to draw me into a conversation for the purpose of debate (in otherwords, you already had your answer but wanted to hear mine) or is this a real question?

If the former, perhaps you were right about making this a seperate thread.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but debate wasn't the purpose of this thread

[Mael]

Originally posted by 3leggedfrog
Do you see God as a being who is outside of space and time.
This view states that god is truely omnipotent and all knowing and so he created the world perfictly at the beginging of time. Free will comes into play here because God is all knowing, he already knows what you will do. "He" would already know that the child will change her mind. So to answer your question in this view "He" already answered the prayer at the beginging of time knowing full well the out come. Good and bad are outcomes for the greater good "God works in misterious ways." "He" has a set plan for the human race so what we think is evil is just something that will effect "His" plan for the greater good.


Lebell Rocks

Why is "his" plan for teh greater good? Why does god have to be outside the universe in order for him to be omnipotent and all knowing? How do we know that his plan is perfect, and that there is a greater good? How do we know he's not a bastard that likes to play with us the way little kids like to burn ants with a magnifying glass? I'm really curious. It seems to me that to have the outer presence perspective, you're using the Christian version of god, and there are many more versions/ideas of what god is. Maybe there's one god and he's Loki, just having fun with us? (In case any of this sounds like flaming material or me trying to be an ass, it's not meant that way, Lebell, edit/delete as you see fit).

[Lebell]

Heh,

Ok, I see 4thTimeLucky's original wisdom about making this a separate thread, so here it is. Now back to the fun

[Lebell]

Now,

4thTimeLucky,

Looking at your list and my own thoughts, option 3 is the one that comes closest to what I believe.

I believe that petitionary prayer has two (and possibly more) purposes.

1) it empowers God to act from self imposed restrictions on what God will and will not do in this reality and

2) it has the effect of making humans seek out the divine, which (I believe) is something that He/She desires.

I think it is also helpful in understanding me and my position to know that I am NOT a Biblical literalist. What that means is that I won't try to resolve every conflicting quote.

Instead, I have tried to distill what I consider the truths concerning God and this life from what I know of the Bible and a few other religions plus my own personal experience and work from there.

[4thTimeLucky]

Lebell

They are a genuine set of questions that I genuinely want to discover the answers to. I'm afraid that by starting the ASK LEBELL thread you made yourself something of a shining beacon of knowledge that my moth like questions were drawn to. Having said this, I did suspect that your open invitation for questions may not be the right forum for my thoughts, hence the new thread. Also, my innocent leading question was intended to set a simple groundwork for the discussion to build upon - your child-father analogy did this perfectly.

My questions are very much open to everyone and I hope that they will give some people pause for thought.

As you might expect I do have a set of responses to the posts in this thread, but I am at work now so will have to wait till later for them. For the moment I think it would help to say that I have found Petitionary Prayer to be one of those issues that can really shine light on the nature of God and also to be a topic that people can discuss without it getting personal (unlike so many discussion of homosexuality, hell, abortion etc.). For this reason I think it is well suited to the new Philosophy board on TFP.

[PS: I include the quotes I do so that discussions have some Biblical grounding. After all, the Bible is where Christians take their insipration from and I think it only fair that if I am to say "God is green", I provide so some sort of basis for my statement. This is a purely self-imposed discipline and I do not expect it of others, who are often better versed in the Bible than me.]

Until the next post, have a nice day

[4thTimeLucky]

Back again. Sorry, work is a bit heavy at the moment.

I notice that (iii), about prayer for the past, goes unanswered, but that’s okay. I asked quite a lot and maybe we can return to it later.

So, yes. You go for option three: Empowerment. In fact that’s what I would go for too, so I’m glad you chose it. I hope you don’t mind if I elaborate a bit on the issue of Empowerment in an aside and then ask some more questions:

----
ASIDE: skip this part if you want

There are three ways in which the Empowerment option could work (why always three?!):
- God limits himself such that he cannot intervene to do S unless C prays for it.
- God sets himself, or by nature has, a binding objective that cannot be achieved unless he only does S if C prays for it.
- God chooses not to do certain things, Ss, unless C prays for them.

Personally I go for option three (again), because the first leaves Him open to charges of abrogating sovereignty and the second leaves Him open to the possibility that his objectives will be thwarted by humans [we may never pray for anything], and Job 42:2 tells us that this cannot happen. Option three gives Him the most flexibility and power. I also think (and correct me if I’m wrong) that option three is close enough to your point (1) Lebell. But anyhow it may not matter which option we choose. It may be enough to say that an omnipotent God can simply decide withhold his power until it asked for, even if that means letting bad things happen when noone prays.
---

So, the big issue:
WHY would God choose to limit his power and make good things be dependent upon the actions of fallible humans?

Two possible reasons:
I) Doing S is a good. But making S prayer dependent, even if this means sometimes not doing S, leads to an even greater good. [This, I believe, is your point (2) Lebell. If I can make the leap that God, being omnibenevolent, desires what is most good.]

II) Doing S is a good. But not making S prayer dependent leads to a harm would outweigh the good of S.

Interestingly Lebell went for option (I), which is again a smart move because option (II) falls down even faster [if anyone cares to know why, then just ask].

So how are we to make sense of (I). Well first it will help to take a break with a nice picture and then we can have go…..

[4thTimeLucky]

What reason could God have for not doing good things?

Lebell suggests that the greater good referred to in (I) is “making humans seek out the divine”. This seems fair enough, but covers quite a wide area so I’ll try and tease out some finer possibilities [if you want to know who’s ideas these are then, also, just ask]:

a) Reminds us of our dependence upon God and keeps us from idolatry
b) Teaches us God’s will. [I prayed for a Playstation and got nothing. I prayed for Smith to get beaten up and he wasn't. I prayed for my Aunt to get better and she did.]
c) Allows a personal relationship with God to develop. Great quote: “a personal relationship is not possible unless both partners adopt the attitude toward one another which is expressed in petition” (Vincent Brummer).

So all is looking well. We have theory (I) and we have three (a,b,c) greater goods that might justify holding back the good of S if it isn’t prayed for.

BUT – and now comes the challenge – a, b and c have flaws.
I’ve gone on too long to expound on the flaws at length so I will end with this…

What do you think of the chain of thought so far?
Which of (a, b or c) do you think explains petitionary prayer? [Could be all or none of course].
And some food for thought…
What conditions do you think need to pertain for the teaching argument to work?
Would an all-good, all-powerful God use PP to keep us from idolatry or would he do something else?
Is petition really essential to a personal relationship?

If people want to let this one die out, then that’s okay.
But if anyone feels fired up by these issues, then get back to me and we can have a chat about them.

All best,
4th

[Lebell]

4thTimeLucky

Without going through your (rather daunting) logic and post point by point, I think that the reason there is a reason for suffering in this world, and it doesn't hinge on God being a sadist or a clock maker.

-Suffering is necessary to the human soul for growth.
-Suffering is a consequence of free will.
-Excessive suffering in this plane of existance is irrelevant and forgotten beyond it (one of the primary purposes for Jesus existance here was to show us this, IMHO.)

[4thTimeLucky]

Interesting thoughts on suffering.
And indeed suffering does come into petitionary prayer, but only tangentaly.

I must admit it was probably far too long a post.
I get excited about PP though because I think it really does give an insight into the Christian God. I believe that IF PP is efficacious (as the Bible tells us it is) then there can only be one, very specific, set of divine attributes that would be compatible with it. And even more interestingly, none of the academic commentators on PP champion this set of attributes.

That however, is probably just my own fetish!