If saving people is God’s predestined choice, what’s the point of me praying for people to be saved?
Thinking about God and studying the Bible should grow our sense of worship and prayer. Sometimes, though, we bump up against a truth that seems to make things feel off.
This is one of those that people find hard, but you and I are not the first people to ask this question. Most people already find prayer hard, which makes doubts about prayer even harder.
If God has planned everything, what’s the point in praying for things? What if it’s not in his plan? Do my prayers make a difference?
Let’s focus on this question: If I pray for someone to become a Christian, does that play a part in God’s predestined plan?
Thomas Aquinas was an Italian thinker who wrote a chunky set of theology books answering as many questions about our faith as he could. He died in the year 1274 before finishing it. While we as Protestants might not agree with everything in it, still much of it is very helpful.
He asks whether our prayers make a difference to God’s choice of who is saved – or as he puts it, “Whether predestination can be furthered by the prayers of the saints.” By ‘saint’, don’t think St. Whatshisname. By ‘saint’, think Christian! Someone made holy in Jesus.
Below I’ll quote his words and summarise what he says. He first raises a few extra questions and objections. He likes to dig himself into a deep hole with each question before showing us how to climb out of it.
- How can we influence something eternal? “Nothing eternal can be preceded by anything temporal.” Our prayers at 7:08am on a Tuesday cannot happen before God’s choice to save someone before time was created. “Nothing temporal can help towards making something else eternal.” My prayers cannot change God’s eternal choice.
- If my prayers play a part in God’s choice, then am I saying God isn’t all knowing or all powerful? “As there is no need of advice except on account of defective knowledge, so there is not need of help except through defective power. But neither of these things can be said of God when He predestines.”
- If my prayers can play a part in God’s choice before time, then they might also stand in his way! Impossible! “If a thing can be helped, it can also be hindered.” So, it seems like it’s not possible to help his choice either.
So what’s the answer?
Thomas sets up every question with extra objections first before he announces: “On the contrary!” He always does so with a mic-drop quote from the Bible or a Christian teacher to prove his point.
So he says:
“On the contrary, it is said that “Isaac besought the Lord for his wife because she was barren; and He heard him and made Rebecca to conceive” (Genesis 25:21). But from that conception Jacob was born, and he was predestined. Now his predestination would not have happened if he had never been born. Therefore predestination can be furthered by the prayers of the saints.”
In other words, in the Book of Genesis we see that Isaac prayed for Rebekah to conceive. She does! One of her sons is Jacob. We know that Jacob was chosen by God before time (predestined) to carry on the promised line (Abraham -> Isaac -> Jacob…). So, yes! Isaac’s prayer played a part in God’s predestined plan.
The Bible teaches it, so we believe it.
If you’re content to not know, you can end it there. But Thomas wants you and I to see how it works.
While “because the Bible says so!” is enough to define our beliefs, it doesn’t do much to help our heads and hearts grapple with our doubts. So Thomas expands on this answer.
The next bit is to ask, “How?”
He says people get this question wrong in a few ways.
On the one side, some people “said prayers were superfluous”, as useless as anything else we try to use to gain salvation. Those God chooses are saved regardless of our good works. “But against this opinion are all the warnings of Holy Scripture”. Why would the Bible warn us to believe in Jesus and follow him if we play no part in being saved?
On the other side, people “declared that the divine predestination was altered through prayer.” Thomas says this is how Egyptians used to think and was why they prayed and made sacrifices to change ‘fate’. “Against this also is the authority of Scripture. For it is said: ‘But the triumpher in Israel will not spare and will not be moved to repentance’ (1 Samuel 15:29); and that ‘the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance’ (Romans 11:29).” In other words, God cannot change his mind!
So no: Our prayers aren’t useless but neither do our prayers alter God’s choice. We can’t say either of those. So what can we say?
“Two things are to be considered—namely, the divine ordination; and its effect,” he says.
When it comes to God’s divine ordination (his choice), “in no possible way can predestination be furthered by the prayers of the saints. For it is not due to their prayers that anyone is predestined by God.”
But when it comes to God’s choice having an effect in saving people, “predestination is said to be helped by the prayers of the saints, and by other good works.” Praying for friends to know Jesus and inviting them to church has a real effect!
How? Because the way God works in the world (called ‘providence’) “does not do away with secondary causes but so provides effects, that the order of secondary causes falls also under providence.”
In other words, if God’s choice the the first cause of someone being saved, your prayer can be a a secondary cause. That’s because your prayers are part of how God works in his world.
Just like how God makes things happen in nature, he says:
“The salvation of a person is predestined by God in such a way, that whatever helps that person towards salvation falls under the order of predestination; whether it be one’s own prayers or those of another.”
God uses your prayers for real!
But what about those objections from earlier?
- “Nothing temporal can help towards making something else eternal,” some might say. Thomas says… yeah! That isn’t what’s happening in prayer though. Prayer doesn’t change God’s eternal plan. It is part of his eternal plan!
- “As there is no need of advice except on account of defective knowledge, so there is not need of help except through defective power. But neither of these things can be said of God when He predestines.” Thomas replies, “One is said to be helped by another in two ways.” The first is to be helped by someone more powerful than you, so ‘to be helped thus belongs to the weak; but this cannot be said of God.’ So we rule that out. God’s not weak and needs us. “In another way one is said to be helped by a person through whom he carries out his work, as a master through a servant. In this way God is helped by us.” We help God as a servant helps their master. This is not ‘any defect in the power of God’ but so ‘that He may communicate to creatures the dignity of causality.’
- Lastly, if my prayers can play a part in God’s choice before time, then can they also stand in his way? No. A secondary cause of someone being saved (you praying for them) ‘cannot escape the order of the first universal cause’ (God’s choice for it to happen). Our prayers ‘execute that order’, he says, ‘and therefore predestination can be furthered by creatures, but it cannot be impeded by them.’
But I have a question. Why would God use our prayers as a secondary cause? Why involve us at all? Thomas answers this elsewhere in his book summary of theology. He says:
“God bestows many things on us out of His liberality, even without our asking for them: but that He wishes to bestow certain things on us at our asking, is for the sake of our good, namely, that we may acquire confidence in having recourse to God, and that we may recognize in Him the Author of our goods.”
Let’s break that down. God gives us many good things that we don’t ask for. But some things he wants us to ask him for. Why? For our good. It’s for our good that we have confidence that we can talk to God. It’s for our good that we recognise him as the giver of all good things.
He quotes a famous preacher, John Chrysostom (meaning John the Golden Mouth because of his great preaching):
“Think what happiness is granted thee, what honor bestowed on thee, when thou conversest with God in prayer, when thou talkest with Christ, when thou askest what thou wilt, whatever thou desirest.”
God invites you to pray so that you would be happy simply talking with Jesus!
About the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father who is in heaven…“) he says:
“Prayer is offered up to God, not that we may bend Him, but that we may excite in ourselves the confidence to ask.”
As I quoted earlier, Thomas says God invites us to pray and set things up this way ‘that He may communicate to creatures the dignity of causality.’ The dignity of causality. Think about that. Through prayer, you are invited to God’s throne room and given the royal dignity of causing things to happen in his world.
So…
Who are you praying for to begin believing so they might have life in Jesus?
God has given you the dignity of causality. He wants you to have the happiness of talking to Jesus. He wants you to know he’s generous. He wants you to have confidence to ask.
Your prayer might be the thing God uses to turn their life around.
If you’ve ever thought, “I could never read some of that theology stuff from dusty old books,” well… you just did!
In fact, if you read the original, it would take you less time without my comments and attempts to make the language more everyday.
Read it for yourself here. His way of writing might look weird. The main question is the title. Then he lists objections to it. Then he give his answer in “on the contrary…”. He explains it with “I answer that…”. Then he replies to each objection. It’s quite a good way of structuring an answer when you know what to look for.
