1 Answer to our Prayers: The Unsolved, General but Solvable Problem of Petitionary Prayer Abstract There is a concern about the effectiveness of petitionary prayer. If I pray for something good, wouldn’t God give it to me anyway? And if I pray for something bad, won’t God refrain from giving it to me even though I’ve asked? This problem has received significant attention. I will argue i) that the typical solutions are structurally misguided, ii) that the problem is a species of a more general problem and iii) that we should doubt an inference key to the argument, thereby opening up a new way to solve the problem. Petitionary prayer has a problem: it seems as though it is useless. Suppose I ask God for something in prayer. If that thing would overall be bad, a benevolent God would not grant my petition. If the thing would be overall good, a benevolent God would provide it whether I asked for it or not. In either case, the prayer itself is pointless. This argument gives us philosophical reasons to doubt whether petitionary prayer makes sense. 1 The argument, of course, needs to be spelt out in much more detail. But since Eleonore Stump raised a version of it in her (1979), efforts have been made to solve the problem. In this paper I have
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1
Answer to our Prayers: The Unsolved, General
but Solvable Problem of Petitionary Prayer
Abstract
There is a concern about the effectiveness of petitionary prayer. If I pray for something good,
wouldn’t God give it to me anyway? And if I pray for something bad, won’t God refrain from giving it
to me even though I’ve asked? This problem has received significant attention. I will argue i) that the
typical solutions are structurally misguided, ii) that the problem is a species of a more general
problem and iii) that we should doubt an inference key to the argument, thereby opening up a new
way to solve the problem.
Petitionary prayer has a problem: it seems as though it is useless. Suppose I ask God for something in
prayer. If that thing would overall be bad, a benevolent God would not grant my petition. If the thing
would be overall good, a benevolent God would provide it whether I asked for it or not. In either
case, the prayer itself is pointless. This argument gives us philosophical reasons to doubt whether
petitionary prayer makes sense.1
The argument, of course, needs to be spelt out in much more detail. But since Eleonore Stump
raised a version of it in her (1979), efforts have been made to solve the problem. In this paper I have
2
three aims. Firstly, I want to show that the structure of the problem makes a number of the typically
offered solutions to the problem misguided. The sorts of reasons that are given to support the
effectiveness of petitionary prayer are structurally incapable of fully addressing the problem. The
problem is therefore unsolved. Secondly, I want to show that Stump’s problem with petitionary
prayer is a specific instance of a more general problem that affects all human action.2 The problem is
therefore general. Finally, I want to indicate that an inference of the argument that is suppressed in
the normal formulations should be doubted. Attempts to respond to the problem of petitionary
prayer should focus on this inference (and, in particular, on discussion of it in the problem of evil
literature). The problem is therefore solvable. In these three ways, I hope to clarify the problem and
the appropriate means of addressing it.
So, the plan for the paper is as follow: I first, in Sect. 1, give the problem of petitionary prayer. In
Sect. 2 I argue that many of the current replies to the problem are systematically flawed. In Sect. 3, I
show how a more general form of the problem of petitionary prayer can be constructed. In Sect. 4, I
investigate a key inference in the argument and align the problem with the problem of evil. Finally, I
conclude in Sect. 5.
1. The Problem of Petitionary Prayer
The problem of petitionary prayer I am considering is a problem about the effectiveness of such
prayer given the nature of God. It is important to note that the type of prayer I’m interested in is
petitionary, in the sense that it asks God for something. It is therefore contrasted with, say,
contemplative or thanksgiving prayer. What is it for a prayer to be effective depends on what type of
prayer it is. Effective contemplative prayer may bring about certain fruits in the one who prays: this
might be what constitutes successful contemplative prayer. Similar things can be said for other
forms of prayer. What it is for a petitionary prayer to be effective or successful is for the prayer to be
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somehow appropriately related to the outcome that is asked for. To be effective, a petitionary
prayer must have something to do with the occurrence of the desired outcome.
This, of course, is vague. It’s a contentious issue what exactly the relationship between a petitionary
prayer and the outcome must be for it to be successful.3 In order to avoid controversy, therefore, I
will not take a stance on what it is for a petitionary prayer to be successful. But I will claim that,
whatever such success consists in, successful petitionary prayer requires that the outcome
counterfactually depends on the prayer. In other words, if the prayer hadn’t happened, the outcome
wouldn’t have either. Such counterfactual dependence might be what it is for a prayer to be
successful (this would appeal to those who favour both a causal approach to the success of
petitionary prayer and a counterfactual approach to causation). But I am not committed to this,
rather to the weaker claim that if there is no counterfactual dependence between outcome and
prayer then that prayer is not effective.
One way to try to disagree with what I say in the rest of the paper is to disagree that counterfactual
dependence is necessary for a prayer to be effective. The majority view accepts that counterfactual
dependence is required for effective petitionary prayer, but there are some dissenters.4 I want to
include these dissenters in the discussion. To do so, note that those rejecting the necessity of
counterfactual dependence for effective petitionary prayer will still accept that petitionary prayer
must be the (or a) reason for God to bring about the outcome. They will therefore think that the
outcome is not independent of the prayer (where independence indicates a broader notion than just
lack of counterfactual dependence). The argument that follows, and my investigation of it, works
just as well with a broader notion of dependence than simply counterfactual dependence.5 The
language of reasons is less clear than the language of counterfactual dependence, so with the
majority I will default to the latter. But the central issue I am concerned with about petitionary
prayer cannot be avoided in this way.6 I will therefore ignore this distinction in what follows.
4
Perhaps the discussion above will encourage some readers to go further, and assert that for
petitionary prayer to be effective it is not even necessary that the prayer be a reason for the
outcome occurring. This would be odd. It is, I think, straightforwardly in tension with our intuitions
about such cases. If a petitionary prayer is successful, then it must do something. But what can it do,
if the outcome doesn’t depend on it counterfactually or even as a reason for its occurrence? To be
effective for the outcome, the prayer must factor into God’s decision to bring about the outcome in
some way. Denying this seems too high a cost. In particular, I take it that someone who offer a
petitionary prayer thinks that, if the prayer successful, the outcome will depend on the prayer. So it
is revisionary to our normal understanding of the aims of petitionary prayer to deny such a claim.
This connects to a broader question I wish to briefly address. Would it matter if petitionary prayer
were ineffective in the sense I’ve outlined? In other words, would it be a problem if prayed for
outcomes never counterfactually depend on prayers? I think that it would be a problem if
petitionary prayer were ineffective in this way. For what the petitioner thinks they are doing is
asking for a particular outcome. If they were told that the outcome doesn’t depend on their prayer,
they should not continue to petition. Perhaps they could perform a different sort of prayer, a prayer
of thanksgiving, or of apology, or of recognition of dependence or whatever and thereby gain the
alleged side-benefits of ineffective petitionary prayer. But they shouldn’t carry on asking if their
getting doesn’t depend on their asking.
By and large, though, my concern in this paper is not with the appropriateness of petitionary prayer
but with its effectiveness. From here on I’ll assume it is a valid and interesting question whether
petitionary prayer can be effective. So, to be explicit: I will say for simplicity that a petitionary prayer
is not effective when the petitioned outcome does not counterfactually depend on the prayer. This
is not to say that asking God for things would be without merit in such circumstances. For instance,
petitioning God for things might still be an appropriate activity, for the very act of petitioning might
involve a laudable recognition of our dependence on God. But such a prayer would still be ineffective
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in my terminology. For if the outcome doesn’t in fact depend on the prayer, the prayer is not
effective for the outcome, even though it may be effective for some other side-benefits. To put it
differently, if the problem of petitionary prayer shows that such prayer is ineffective, it is not
necessarily thereby inappropriate.
Before spelling out the problem, I wish to flag one final introductory issue. Very often, outcomes
that are prayed for are prayed for by many people at many times and in many places. In particular,
there are broad or general prayers (e.g. for all the sick or even for all those who are not prayed for).
So one single instance of a prayer for an outcome is often part of a collective prayer for that
outcome. For simplicity’s sake, I will consider the sum of petitionary prayers for a particular outcome
to be a single petition. There are interesting questions about how different prayers are related. Is my
prayer for my grandmother to recover from an illness a part of a prayer for all sick? Is a prayer for all
the sick partially a prayer for my grandmother to recover? Are repeated petitions for the same
outcome by the same person instances of one and the same prayer or distinct prayers? Can two
people pray the same prayer? These are good questions, and would involve a metaphysics of prayer
that considered the identity conditions of and mereological relations between prayers. But that is
not the task of this paper. So, pending an account of the metaphysics of prayers that shows it
illegitimate, I will consider the collection of all prayers for a certain outcome to be a single entity and
refer to single prayers from hereon. I will also assume that members of the collection of prayers for
an outcome are successful if and only if the collection is successful (though my argument will not
turn on this).7
***
With these preliminaries out of the way, we can turn to the problem with petitionary prayer. The
problem of petitionary prayer outlined in the first paragraph undermines the idea that any prayer
can be successful. For it tries to show that no outcome can counterfactually depend on a prayer. It
does so in two steps. Firstly, suppose that what is prayed for is overall bad. Then, it is argued, the
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God of classical theism would know this and hence not bring the outcome about despite the prayer.
In such a case, the outcome doesn’t counterfactually depend on the prayer because the prayer
occurs but the outcome does not. Secondly, suppose that what is prayed for is overall good. Then
the God of classical theism would bring it about regardless of the prayer. For, it is argued, a
benevolent God would bring about overall good things even if we didn’t ask for them. Thus, because
the outcome event would occur even without the prayer, the outcome does not counterfactually
depend on the prayer. So in this case too, the prayer is not effective. Hence, whether the outcome
occurs on not the prayer is not successful.
It will be useful to make this argument somewhat more precise. As I have sketched it, the problem is
a dilemma: either the outcome is overall bad, in which case it won’t occur even if prayed for, or
overall good, in which case it will occur whether or not it is prayed for. The problem is generally
presented this way in the literature. But for clarity I will follow a more simplistic argument structure.
(1) An agent S prays prayer p for outcome e
(2) The God of classical theism exists
(3) p is effective for e only if e counterfactually depends on p
(4) e's value is independent of p
(5) Whether or not e occurs depends solely on its value (from 2)
(6) Whether or not e occurs is independent of p (from 4, 5)
(7) e doesn’t counterfactually depend on p (from 6)
(8) p isn’t effective (from 3, 7)
Some explanation of this argument is in order. (1) is a general statement of a prayer case and (2) a
statement of God’s existence. (3) is discussed above as a condition for effective petitionary prayer.
(4) is more controversial and, as we shall see, is challenged by many of the defenders of petitionary
prayer. It is a suppressed premise in most formulations of the problem. (5) is supposed to follow
from (2). I will later argue that rejecting this inference is the best way to solve the problem. But the
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reasoning behind it is something like the following: God is omniscience, omnipotent and morally
perfect. Therefore God will have the knowledge, power and desire to ensure that appropriately
valuable events occur. Note that this does not require that God create the best possible world, but
just that value is the only relevant factor for God’s permitting an event. From God’s omniscience,
omnipotence and moral perfection we infer that value is all that matters to an event’s occurrence.
This inference, or something like it, is in play in all version of the problem, but again is typically
supressed. Given (4) and (5) we reach (6), that prayers do not matter for any event’s occurrence.
And from (6) we can infer that an event cannot counterfactually depend on a prayer (7). Thus, from
(7) and our condition for effectiveness, a prayer cannot be effective for an outcome. Generalising:
petitionary prayer is not effective.
I have flagged a couple of places the argument can be challenged. The first is premise (4). The
second is the inference from (2) to (5). Although premise (4) seems to me to be false, its falsity does
not deliver the robust solution the problem needs, as I aim to show in the next section. We should
therefore focus on the inference from (2) to (5), and I do so later in the paper.
2. Failures of current solutions
As noted in the previous section, the problem of petitionary prayer requires a premise, usually
supressed, that the prayer itself makes no difference to the value of the outcome. This is premise (4)
in my version of the argument. In the typical dilemma formulations, the outcome is presented as
either overall good or overall bad independent of the prayer. This is where the suppressed premise
operates. For the dilemma misses out a further alternative. This is that the outcome is overall bad
before the prayer and overall good after the prayer, because the prayer itself alters the value of the
event. In other words, prayer makes an event which was antecedently not good for God to bring
about into an event that is, post-prayer, good for God to bring about.
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A number of philosophers have noticed this problem with the argument. The dominant strategy is
therefore to find ways that the value of the outcome event might be connected to its being prayed
for. Examples of this approach include Murray and Meyers (1994), Flint (1998), Swinburne (1998),
the Howard-Snyders (2011) Cohoe (2014), Choi (2016) and, arguably, Stump (1979) herself. They
point to different beneficial effects that answered petitionary prayer brings that will add to the
overall value of the outcome’s coming about. In this part of the paper, I want to show why such
attempts are in general misguided.
Let me be clear, though. I think that premise (4) is false, and that the standard reply is therefore
strictly correct. I also see the plausibility of the claim that praying for an outcome and that outcome
coming about adds to the value of the event. But I wish to raise a structural problem with the reply
that makes it inadequate.8 To see how this works, it will be useful to focus on particular examples of
this style of solution. So consider the defence offered by Cohoe an exemplar of this approach. In
short, his idea is that the value of some event can depend on how it is brought about. If I bring about
my friend’s recovery from illness via petitionary prayer, this is better than God bringing about this
recovery without my prayer (of course, God is required in either case). Thus the overall value of the
recovery is increased by my praying for it.9 As another example, consider the Swinburnian view.
According to Swinburne, petitionary prayer extends our responsibility and so God’s bringing about
some event due to a petition has more value as an exercise of this responsibility than if God brought
the event about without the petition. More schematically, e has a value n if brought about without
the prayer p and a value of n+m if brought about with p.
So proponents of such a defence of petitionary prayer argue that the prayer itself contributes to the
overall value of the event. Note that, for there to be counterfactual dependence between a prayer
and an outcome, it must be the case that the outcome wouldn’t occur without the prayer. In other
words, the values of n and m must be such that if e had value n it wouldn’t occur, but if it had value
n+m then it would.10 Consider: if n is enough for e to occur then e would have occurred even without
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p. So we might well have reason to keep praying for such events, but we don’t have reason to see
our prayer as effective.11 If n+m is not enough for e to occur then e won’t occur even with p and p
won’t be effective in such a case either. Thus the only situation in which e counterfactually depends
on p is when m brings the value of n+m up to the required level. The effectiveness of petitionary
prayer is therefore very sensitive to the values of n and m.
There are a number of issues with the structure of such defences of petitionary prayer. The first is
that the values that are claimed for petitionary prayer, even considered all together, may not be
particularly large by comparison to the outcomes prayed for.12 So m is may be comparatively small.
This means that the number of cases in which petitionary prayer is actually effective may also be
small. To emphasise this criticism, it’s worth pointing out that petitionary prayers seem to be most
appropriate when major tragedies or life events are concerned. We pray that friends recover from
cancer, that babies are healthy, that terrorist attacks are unsuccessful, that money worries are
resolved and so on. This seems quite appropriate. But it seems less appropriate to pray that our
sports team wins, or that we find our car keys, or that a traffic jam clears (though perhaps not
inappropriate). There seems to be a connection between the overall values involved in the events
and the appropriateness of petitionary prayer. The higher the values involved, the more we should
pray. But the logic of the above seems to suggest the opposite: when the value of n is lower, prayers
will be comparatively more effective. So we should pray more often for the little things, and less
often for the big things. This seems to turn intuition on its head.13
Perhaps, though, we can offer a reply on behalf of the standard type of defence. The values that are
acquired by events in virtue of their being prayed for might be proportional to the importance of the
event prayed for. For instance, taking Swinburne’s proposal, the amount of responsibility we gain
seems proportional to how valuable the outcome is. If this were so, the value of m would be
proportional to the value of n and thus it would be equivalently appropriate to pray for significant
events as for insignificant ones. It could even be suggested that m’s value was related to n in a scalar
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way, so that the increase of the value of n actually increased the proportional value of m: by raising
n we would therefore raise m by a comparatively larger amount. This would recapture the intuition
that important events are those that are more appropriately prayed for, but of course would depend
on the defender of the standard reply giving reasons that there is such a relationship between the
values of n and m.14
However, there is a second and more serious issue with the typical form of defence of petitionary
prayer. All such defences require us to say the following: considered in isolation from p, e doesn’t
have sufficient value to occur. But, by praying, I alter the scales so that in virtue of the prayer, the
event is now valuable enough to occur.15 In other words, p makes e of sufficient value for it to be
included in the world. But this is a concern. For n is not enough for e to be worth having in the world.
So the prayed for outcome is, without the prayer, not worth occurring. This means that a prayer is
only effective when what is being asked for is, on its own merits, not good enough for God to bring
about.
This sounds strange. According to this view it is only sensible to pray for an outcome when that
outcome is, without the prayer, not worth happening. If I realise this and am offering a petitionary
prayer I am put in an odd position. When I contemplate whether or not to pray for something,
oughtn’t I to now to think: ‘Hold on, if this prayer is to be effective then what I am asking for is not
worth happening, overall, unless I pray. The outcome is therefore deficient in some way. I should
therefore not pray, so that the deficient thing doesn’t happen’. This seems a morally reasonable
thing to do. The event itself, e, has overall value of n without p, and n is not enough for God to bring
e about. So what in fact is happening in successful prayer is that God allows something to happen
that would otherwise be overall deficient so that the benefits of successful petitionary prayer can be
obtained. Note too that these benefits can only be obtained when n is not enough for e to occur
anyway, as that is the only time that petitionary prayer is actually successful.
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So on this model petitionary prayer only has a self-generated benefit: prayer is effective simply
because of the role that the prayer itself plays in altering the values of events. But if I’m praying for
something, I must believe that that thing is worthwhile even before my prayer! I should want e to
come about regardless of my own prayer. But I now know that e will either come about anyway (if
valuable enough), not come about even if prayed for (if e would still be too low valued), or, finally,
come about because of my prayer only on account of the side-benefits of prayer. In effect, then, I
am praying for the benefits of prayer to come about at the cost of the event prayed for.
I suggest this this is fundamentally confused. Petitionary prayer is a process by which we ask for
certain events we believe are worth coming about. But according to this view the events we pray for,
by definition, cannot be above the threshold of value for God to bring them about if the petitionary
prayer is to be effective. So our prayer can only make a difference by adding external benefits in
addition to the intrinsic value of the outcome that make it sufficiently valuable for God to bring
about. It must be that m drags up the overall value n+m to above the threshold: the extent to which
n is a not good enough on its own is the extent to which the tangential benefits of prayer must
compensate before the prayer is effective. The point of petitionary prayer, on this view, is simply to
gain the benefits of effective petitionary prayer. Not only is this circularity wildly at odds with the
actual practice of petitionary prayer, it is philosophically unsatisfying.
So, to sum up: the dominant style of response to the problem denies premise (4), that the value of
an event is independent of prayers for its occurrence. While it may be right to deny this premise, this
constrains petitionary prayer in unacceptable ways. Firstly, it rules that only a small number of cases
of petitionary prayer can be effective. Secondly, and more importantly, it says of every instance of
effective petitionary prayer that the outcome is antecedently overall not good enough to obtain.
With the prayer having been offered, the antecedently overall deficient event then occurs in order
for the benefits of effective petitionary prayer to be gained. In effect, the benefits of effective
petitionary prayer are themselves the positive outcome, which are compensation for allowing an
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event otherwise not good enough to obtain. Thus while effective prayer might in fact occur and be
worthwhile, the prayed for events are themselves otherwise not valuable enough for God to choose.
This is not how petitionary prayer is supposed to look.
I thus contend that all responses to the problem of petitionary prayer that rely on a rejection of (4)
are missing the point. The dependence of the value of some event on its being prayed for is not a
viable solution, as it incorrectly understands the motivation for petitionary prayer and gives an
unsatisfying account of when prayers are effective. As it stands, then, the problem of petitionary
prayer is unanswered.
In the coming section, I shall show how this unanswered problem is in fact worse than previously
thought: the problem is a species of a more general problem.
3. The general problem
In this section, I will argue that the problem of petitionary prayer is in fact a species of a more
general problem. In this I follow Cohoe (2014), but supplement his argument. I will suggest that all
human action is susceptible to an argument of the same form as the one given in the first section
against petitionary prayer.
So, let’s consider a more general problem concerning all human action. It is easy to do so if we
simply restate the argument against petitionary prayer with a more general first premise. This
general premise will describe an agent’s attempt to act. The rest of the argument can remain the
same.
(9) An agent S has intention p for outcome e
(2) The God of classical theism exists
(3) p is effective for e only if e counterfactually depends on p
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(4) e's value is independent of p
(5) Whether or not e occurs depends solely on its value (from 2)
(6) Whether or not e occurs is independent of p (from 4, 5)
(7) e doesn’t counterfactually depend on p (from 6)
(8) p isn’t effective (from 3, 7)
This new, general argument concludes that no human intentions are effective, i.e. that our aims in
performing actions cannot be successful. The reasoning is the same. Because my intention doesn’t
alter the value of the event, and the value of the event is the sole determinant of its occurrence, my
intention makes no different to the obtaining of the event.
We can also express this general argument against the efficacy of all human action in the more
informal, dilemma structure of the problem. Assume that counterfactual dependence is necessary
for effectiveness and that I try to act to bring about a certain outcome. The dilemma is as follows:
firstly, suppose that what I intend is overall bad. Then the God of classical theism would know this
and hence not bring the outcome about despite my intention. In such a case, the outcome doesn’t
counterfactually depend on the intention because the intention occurs but the outcome does not.
Secondly, suppose that what I intend is overall good. Then, the God of classical theism would bring it
about whether or not I had the intention to so act. For a benevolent God would being about overall
good things even if we didn’t try to do them. Thus, because the outcome event would occur even
without the intention, the outcome does not counterfactually depend on the intention. So in this
case too, my intention to bring something about is not effective. Hence, whether the outcome
occurs or not the intention is not successful.
So it seems like reasoning that led to doubt about the efficacy of petitionary prayer also leads to
doubt about the efficacy of all human action. I am not the first to consider this: Caleb Cohoe (2014)
makes a point along these lines. But I want to bolster the case in a way Cohoe does not by defending
it against an obvious retort. The obvious retort is that there is an important difference between
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petitionary prayer and typical human action. Petitionary prayer is a request that God do something,
while human action is something we ourselves do. So petitionary prayer is a mechanism by which we
ask God to intervene in the world to bring something about, whereas our intentions are the
mechanism by which we ourselves intervene to bring something about.
But this obvious retort isn’t enough on its own. Why does this difference matter to the arguments?
Perhaps the thought is that premise (3), which claims that counterfactual dependence is necessary
for effectiveness, is true for petitionary prayer but not for intentional action. If I ask God to do
something but there is no counterfactual dependence between my asking and the outcome, then it
seems God’s decision to bring about or not bring about an event is independent of my asking. It is
plausible to think that my prayer is therefore not effective. (This is so even on account of the
effectiveness of prayer that only involves providing God with a reason.) But, by contrast, if I have an
intention to bring about an event myself and there is no counterfactual dependence between my
intention and the outcome because God would bring it about through other means if I did not act, it
might still seem my intention is effective for the outcome nevertheless. Thus a petitionary prayer
might seem like an extraneous event to the process of God bringing something valuable about, while
an intention to act might seem like a case of overdetermination, where God stands ready to bring
the outcome about if I do not. So the difference between the petitionary prayer and intentional
action cases might make one argument sound and the other unsound.
I believe this difference is not as important as it first seems, and that there is therefore no
corresponding difference between the soundness of the arguments. To show this, I’ll have to take a
brief detour.
Traditional theism takes God to not only create the world, but to sustain it at every moment. This is
to be contrasted with a deistic view according to which God creates the world and then leaves it to
run itself. God, as creator, brings everything into existence. But this is not all (according to traditional
15
views). God also brings about the continued existence of everything. It is this aspect of God’s
creative action that is labelled the ‘sustaining’ or ‘conserving’ of the world.
There is, of course, a question of how such conservation or sustaining is supposed to happen: what is
the mechanism by which this comes about? There are different possible answers.16 But however the
mechanism works, God is directly involved in the continued existence of the world and therefore
(either directly or indirectly) in all the events of the world. In other words, given God’s role as
sustainer of the universe, God’s activity is a requirement for any particular state of affairs to come
about.
God’s role as sustainer has interesting connections to questions about the relative place for divine
and human action. The issue here is the extent to which humans have causal power (in fact, more
generally, the issue is about the extent to which anything non-divine has causal power: agential or
otherwise). At one extreme we have the view that only God can be properly said to perform
effective actions: according to this picture, everything that happens in the world is a direct result of
divine action. While it may appear that I brought about the typing of this sentence, in fact my
volitions were ineffective. The sentence was typed by a series of movements of my fingers that were
directly brought about by God. The label for this sort of view is Occasionalism. Of course, the
occasionalist must explain the illusion of effective non-divine action, and also faces problems
concerning responsibility. At the other extreme, we have the view that human power (or, more
generally, the power of non-divine things) is sufficient for performing actions. This is the view that
we bring things about entirely under our own steam, and are not assisted in any way to do so. God is
not involved, directly or indirectly, in the typing of the sentence above: this is solely down to me.
Of course, between these extremes there are many intermediate positions. These either suggest
that God is indirectly involved in non-divine action or that some subset of actions that we thought
were non-divine are in fact so.17 But what we should note is that any view of God as sustaining the
universe rules out the second extreme we considered. For if God is required to sustain the universe
16
for anything to exist at all from moment to moment, non-divine action cannot be sufficient for some
effect (except possibly in cases of simultaneous or backwards causation, if we allow these). Thus the
traditional theist is required to accept some role for God in any and all human action.
Now, this role may be simply permissive. I expect it is stronger than that. But at the least, it shows
that any action has the following form: if God were not to act (in sustaining the universe), S’s
intention p to bring about e would not be effective. That is, for any outcome of an intentional action,
the following counterfactual is true: if God were not to act, the outcome would not come about.
Though this is a loaded term, I shall describe this as the ‘cooperation’ of God with human (and other
non-divine) action.
God’s cooperation with human action undermines the difference drawn between intentional action
and petitionary prayer. Given that God is required to act (in some sense) for any human action to be
effective, God is involved in bringing about the outcome. The fact that God is required to act for the
outcome to occur suggests that all human action can be seen as a supressed form of petition. To put
it differently: if I begin to type this sentence, I require God’s sustaining of the universe for the
sentence to be completed. By acting on the intention to type the sentence, then, I am partially
petitioning God to sustain the universe in order that my action be successful. Any action involves
and requires God’s cooperation, and thereby tacitly petitioning for it.
Therefore the right way of thinking about God’s relationship to the outcome event e is not as a
guarantor of its occurrence but as an active participant in its occurrence. God cooperates with all
actions. God is necessary for any effective action, and any non-divine action is not sufficient for
successful outcome. What the argument given above furthermore show is that God is not only
necessary for any effective action, but also that an event’s value is sufficient for its occurrence. For if
the value of an event is all that matters to its occurrence (as premise (5) claims), it can’t depend on
our intentions.
17
I therefore suggest that once we bear in mind the role God plays in sustaining the universe, in
classical theism, we no longer have reason to reject premise (3) in this general argument. For God’s
independent action is both necessary and sufficient for the outcome; God’s role is required for the
outcome and enough for it. It is therefore reasonable to claim that, if the outcome doesn’t
counterfactually depend on my intention, my intention is not effective for the outcome. Indeed, this
seems to be the case on the basis of the argument given.
So, let’s sum up the above argument. Cohoe was correct to identify the problem of petitionary
prayer as a species of a more general problem of non-divine action. But we need to recognise the
role of God in all human actions before this general problem is established. This is because, without
God’s involvement, human actions might appear to be effective despite the outcome not being
counterfactually dependent on the action. Human action initially appears to be importantly different
from petitionary prayer. But once we do recognise God’s role, and God’s relationship with the world
more generally, we see that this initial appearance was mistaken. God participates in all human
action as, at the very least, a necessary condition for success. Human action requires God’s
cooperation and, as such, the even the most exalted view of human agency must consider human
actions as joint endeavours. Given premise (5), not only is God’s cooperation a necessary condition
for an outcome to come about, but the value of the outcome is sufficient for it coming about
independently of our intentions. The question is then whether an action performed by an agent
which has God’s participation and where the outcome would come about anyway can be described
as effective. I submit it cannot: a lack of counterfactual dependence combined with the need for
divine cooperation makes all human action suffer from the problem that besets petitionary prayer.
I therefore conclude that the unanswered problem is also more general than it is given credit for.
Thus we have a double cause for concern: the problem threatens the efficacy of all human action
and usual way to respond to the threat is found wanting. The problem appears both more
18
dangerous and more durable than often thought. However, in the next section I wish to offer some
countervailing considerations that might provide reassurance nevertheless.
4. An attack on premise (5)
The argument that petitionary prayer, and in fact all human action, is ineffective has been shown to
be worrying. In particular, the standard approach to replying to this problem is mistaken. In this
section, I wish to offer a different reply to the problem.
In short, this reply is to deny the inference from premise (2) to premise (5). I will argue that (5) does
not follow from (2), and is in fact false. As a reminder, these two premises are:
(2) The God of classical theism exists
(5) Whether or not e occurs depends solely on its value (from 2)
And reasoning behind this inference is that the God of classical theism will, because of the divine
attributes, ensure that all and only appropriately valued events occur. God’s decision about which
events to actualise will be governed solely by the value of the events.
This inference has some surface plausibility. For wouldn’t God want to and be able to select any
(compatible) events to bring about? And wouldn’t the (combined, overall) value of these events be
the most appropriate way for God to choose which to bring about? Of course, this thinking naturally
leads to the stronger claim that God will bring about, and hence the world contain, all and only the
overall best events; the claim that this is the best of all possible worlds. Though (5) is explicitly
weaker than this, the warrant for the inference from (2) might seem as plausible for the stronger
claim. Although this would appeal to those with a Leibnizian frame of mind, it has also been widely
criticised.18 My focus here is on the weaker claim, but this too, I argue, is susceptible to criticism.
19
First, let us consider an apparent counterexample to (5) that is consistent with (2) (and hence
undermines the inference from the latter to the former). It is plausible to think that different worlds
can have the same value (in fact, it is plausible to think that there are many ‘best’ possible worlds19).
Suppose there are two possible worlds of equal value, and in one e occurs and in the other e does
not. Suppose, further, that the value that these two worlds is such that, were there only one world
of this value, God would create it. In other words, whatever the appropriate value required for God
to actualise a world is, these worlds have that value. This means that e is neither required for a
world to be an appropriately valued world nor does containing e preclude a world from being an
appropriately valued world. Which world does God choose? If (5) is true, it seems God cannot make
a choice, as the value of the two world is the same. Thus if (5) is true, there must be a unique world
of the value that warrants creation by God. There’s no reason to suppose this is so. This sort of
scenario has been used to provide a direct defence of the effectiveness of petitionary prayer: Parker
and Rettler argue that prayer is effective precisely when there are two worlds of equal value such
that one contains the outcome and the other does not.20 The prayer, then, nudges God to choose
one world over the other (even without adding to the world’s value, and hence maintaining premise
(4)).21 This is how an outcome can counterfactually depend on a prayer, and hence be effective. Thus
it seems that (5) is false and shouldn’t be accepted. The argument seems defeated.
This, however, is a bit fast. Although the scenario discussed is indeed a counterexample to (5), it is
not enough to save petitionary prayer (and more generally human action) from trouble. For, much
the same criticism I levelled at the typical responses to the problem can also be applied to Parker
and Rettler’s. In the first instance, there will be a vanishingly small number of cases where
petitionary prayer is actually effective. For the scales of value need to be so precisely calibrated that
there is no difference at all between the relevant world with e and the relevant world without e. This
is an even more dramatic restriction on which prayers are effective than the earlier attempts, where
the additional value added by the prayer had to tip the scales. So very few petitionary prayers will be
able to be successful.22 This might save the coherence of petitionary prayer, but at the cost of a
20
defence of its worth in practice. More importantly, though, the second criticism above also stands.
The petitioner who becomes aware of their situation, if Parker and Rettler are right, will now know
that their prayer can only be effective when it is deciding between two equally valuable options. But
shouldn’t this itself undermine the preference the petitioner has for one of the alternatives (the one
containing e, say)? Perhaps we could reconstruct a model of decision-making procedure under which
prayer increases the chances that I and my nearest and dearest receive a greater share of the overall
value of the world. But it doesn’t sound like the right model of religious behaviour to engage in such
prayer with the knowledge that improving my own situation will necessarily come at a cost to
someone else’s. If prayer is, as it were, a zero sum game, then petitionary prayer might be formally
effective but morally suspect. This doesn’t give the right philosophical account of successful
petitionary prayer.
So we are better served to consider scenarios like the one described as undermining the inference
from (2) to (5), as they are counterexamples to (5) that are consistent with (2), without committing
to the claim that this is the mechanism by which petitionary prayer works. Such counterexamples
flag an underlying problem with the inference. It presents a view of God as a value-calculating
machine who simply computes the world with the appropriate value and then creates it. I wish to
challenge this view on two counts.
Firstly, it requires that all values are commensurate. For if not all values are commensurate, there is
no way to calculate an overall value. As an example, suppose that both aesthetic and moral values
play a role in God’s choice between alternative events, and that these are incommensurate. Suppose
two inconsistent events e and f have different values such that e’s aesthetic value is higher than f’s
but f’s moral value is higher than e’s. Which event occurs? If the values are incommensurate then
there is obviously no way of comparing them. How, then, can God choose between them, if God’s
choice only depends on their values? The same problem arises if different moral values are
incommensurate. If value is the only determinant of an event’s occurrence, then incommensurate
21
values have to be ruled out. But we shouldn’t rule out incommensurate values, at least not without
examining the evidence.
Secondly, and relatedly, premise (5) it is beholden to a utilitarian-style value calculus. It conceives of
God’s actions as being constrained by some value-aggregation model through God’s moral
perfection. Of course, this relies on a view of moral perfection as consisting in choosing things based
solely on their overall value. This kind of consequentialist moral picture is by no means
unreasonable, especially for the divine, but nor is it indubitable. If one rejects consequentialism as a
moral theory governing God’s choice of actions, then the problem of petitionary prayer disappears.
But even for consequentialists it isn’t clear that God’s moral perfection consist in some sort of value
optimisation that leads from (2) to (5). Whether or not we take the further step and see God as
maximising the value of the world (with Leibniz), understanding God as acting only in accordance
with events’ values already accepts a picture of God that can be criticised.
In order to make this clear, I want to point to the force of premise (5) in a different context. In
particular, premise (5) is closely connected to the problem of evil. If whether or not an event occurs
depends solely on the value of that event, then there should be no events in the world that are not
of the appropriate value. Whatever this appropriate value is, it appears the world contains many
events where it is obvious that they are below any plausible threshold. So it seems that, given the
view of God and God’s relationship to creation described by (5), the problem of evil is a natural
consequence. This is important because it gives the theist additional reason to suspect the inference
from (2) to (5).
Now the relationship between the problem of petitionary prayer and the problem of evil is a
contentious one. Stump herself, indeed, recognizes that the puzzle of petitionary prayer she
presents is a form of the problem of evil. However, this has not been widely accepted in the
literature. The Howard-Snyders, for instance, rely on a distinction between the problem of evil and
the problem of petitionary prayer in their 2010 article, stating that “We have been addressing the
22
puzzle of petitionary prayer. We take it that that puzzle is not, at bottom, just the problem of evil”
(p66). Nevertheless, there are some who do see the problem of petitionary prayer as a special case
of the problem of evil.23 I am not committed here to the problem of petitionary prayer being no
more than an instance of the problem of evil. But I do want to suggest that the problem with
petitionary prayer, as I have presented it, does indeed rely on (some of) the same mechanisms as
the problem of evil. Even if it is not just the problem of evil, the central dynamic is shared.
As I have said above, this means that the theist should be wary of (5). But it also means, more
concretely, that theodicies which undermine premise (5) can also be deployed to undermine the
problem of petitionary prayer. I won’t have space here to elaborate on the ways that (5) can be
challenged by work in the problem of evil literature (not least due to the voluminous nature of that
literature). But I offer an example to show how a response to the problem of evil can apply to the
inference from (2) to (5), and hence to the problems for petitionary prayer and human action.24
Consider the free-will defence. The free-will defence claims that some evil is a necessary
consequence of God giving us freedom, which is in turn a great good. The defence does subscribe to
a model of God’s decision-making about which world to create that involves assessment of relative
values. But the defence nevertheless challenges the inference from (2) to (5). For it does not follow
from God’s nature that for all events their occurrence depends solely on their value. In order for the
world to contain free-will, God self-constrains so that there are some events over which God allows
our (sometimes poor) decisions to have a role. God risks misuse of our freedom. The misuse of our
freedom in a particular case it is not strictly necessary for the goods of free will, because we could
have chosen the better outcome. But it is necessary that there is a risk of the misuse of freedom.25
So there is an event e such that its occurrence depends not just on its value but also on my fallible
decision. This is consistent with the existence of the God of classical theism, so (5) does not follow
from (2).
23
In sum, then, it is far from clear that (5) follows from (2). What (5) proposes is that God’s decisions
about which events the world contains is a unilateral and determinate process which relies only on
the values that those events have. There are a number of reasons to doubt that the existence of God
of classical theism leads to a world in which the occurrence of events depends solely on their value.
Firstly, there seem counterexample cases such as worlds which are tied in value and above the
threshold. Secondly, it requires the implausible premise that all values are commensurate. Thirdly,
the view requires a strong consequentialist view of God’s moral decision making. Finally, responses
to the problem of evil additionally undermine the inference. Replies to the problem of petitionary
prayer are therefore available, and numerous, if we approach it through the problem of evil.
For what it’s worth, my own preference in undermining the inference from (2) to (5) is to reject the
consequentialist model of God’s decision about which world to create. It isn’t obvious that classical
theism requires God to bring about events based just on their value. God needn’t be thought of as
the infallible social choice theorist in the sky. But I hope to have shown the more general point that
the right place to focus attention in replying to the problem of petitionary prayer, and its
generalisation to all human action, is on the move from (2) to (5).
***
To conclude this section, let me recap. When we began this part of the paper, we had an
unanswered and general problem. I have argued that this problem shouldn’t worry us. That is
because, as formulated, it requires premise (5), that value is the sole determinant for the coming
about of an event. This is implausible, and it is implausible that this follows from classical theism.
This can be bolstered by comparison with the problem of evil case. The problems outlined in the
previous sections can be seen to operate by the same mechanism as arguments from evil.
Notwithstanding the serious issues that evil raises for belief in the God of theism, petitionary prayer
and non-divine action don’t add to the worries of the theist. Although the problem of petitionary
prayer is unsolved and general, it is solvable.
24
5. Conclusion
This paper has focused on the effectiveness of petitionary prayer given the benevolent and
omnipotent nature of God. By casting the argument in a more formal structure, rather than the
usual dilemma form, we have been able to make some progress. I hope to have established the
following: (i) the typical solutions to the problem are not satisfactory, (ii) the argument can be
generalised to all non-divine action, (iii) this generalisation requires that God is cooperative in all
actions, (iv) the argument as given makes a dubious inference from classical theism to value as the
only thing that determines an event’s occurrence and (v) this inference is also at play in the problem
of evil, and can be undermined.
In this way, I aim to have demonstrated that petitionary prayer is not something that should be
additional source of concern for the theist.
REFERENCES
Choi, Isaac, 2016, “Is Petitionary Prayer Superfluous?” in Jonathan Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in
Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Vol. 7: 168–95
Cohoe, Caleb, 2014, “God, Causality, and Petitionary Prayer”, Faith and Philosophy 31: 24–45.
Davison, Scott, 2014, "Petitionary Prayer", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014