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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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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =

<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/petitionary-prayer/>.

---- 2009, “Petitionary Prayer” in Michael Rea and Thomas P. Flint (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of

Philosophical Theology, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 286–305.

25

Flew, Anthony, 1955, "Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom", in Anthony Flew and Alasdair

MacIntyre (eds.), New Essays in Philosophical Theology. New York: Macmillan.

Flint, Thomas P., 1998, Divine Providence: The Molinist Account, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press

Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Frances, 2011, “The Puzzle of Petitionary Prayer,” European Journal for

Philosophy of Religion, 3: 43–68.

Kvanvig, Jonathan and David Vander Laan, 2014, "Creation and Conservation", The Stanford

Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =

<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/creation-conservation/>.

Mackie, J. L., 1955, "Evil and Omnipotence", Mind 64: 200–212.

Murray, Michael and Kurt Meyers, 1994, “Ask and It Will be Given to You,” Religious Studies, 30:

311–30.

Parker, Ryan Matthew, and Bradley Rettler, forthcoming, “A Possible Worlds Solution to The Puzzle

of Petitionary Prayer”, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion.

Plantinga, Alvin, 1974, The Nature of Necessity, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Senor, Thomas, 2008, “Defending Divine Freedom”, in Jonathan Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in

Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Vol. 1: 168–95

Schultz, Walter and Lisanne Winslow, 2014, "Divine Compositionalism: A Form of Occasionalism or a

Preferable Alternative View of Divine Action?" Theology and Science 12.3 (2014): 216–235.

Stump, Eleonore, 1979, “Petitionary Prayer”, American Philosophical Quarterly, 16: 81–91.

Swinburne, Richard, 1998, Providence and the Problem of Evil, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

NOTES

26

1 There are other philosophical arguments against the coherence of petitionary prayer. Some are also

metaphysical in nature, for instance those drawing on God’s knowledge of the future, and some

epistemological, for instance questioning whether we could ever know a prayer had been successful. See

Davidson (2009) and (2014) for introductions to these other problems.

2 Caleb Cohoe (2014) has recently made a similar argument in this journal (which I only became aware of after

working on this paper). I discuss his view below, and why his case needs to be supplemented.

3 One promising initial thought is that the relationship must be causal: the prayer must be a (or the) cause of

the outcome. Of course, exactly how to understand the causal relation is a major and ongoing metaphysical

question.

4 Davidson (2009) fn 3 gives a list of those supporting the condition. He and Cohoe (2014) are in the minority

who disagree. See especially Davidson (2009): 287-288 for discussion. Note that I am only proposing

counterfactual dependence as a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition, for effective prayer. Davidson

denies both.

5 To be specific, and to foreshadow what is coming, the premise that an event’s occurrence depends solely on

its value works just as well against a reasons account as it does against a counterfactual account.

6 Davidson (2009) agrees with this (see Sect. 4).

7 Thanks to [***] for highlighting this issue, which I hope to investigate in more detail in further work. Looking

at the mereology of prayer might help with cases of seeming overdetermination, and thereby defend the

counterfactual account against objection. Given that my argument doesn’t turn on the counterfactual account,

as noted above, I won’t explore this here.

8 For different reasons, Parker and Rettler (forthcoming: 2-3) argue against some of these defences of

petitionary prayer (and give a separate argument against the Howard-Snyders, which I won’t consider). I

confess I don’t fully follow the argument. They say, “there are several responses that locate the worth of

petitionary prayer in something other than its effectiveness in prompting God to act… These may very well be

true, but they do not show that prayer is effective in influencing God’s actions.” The idea seems to be that, if

the worth of petitionary prayer is not in its effectiveness, then the benefits are not effective. But this seems

obviously false: the benefits might only be obtainable if the prayer is effective and hence the reason God

brings about the outcome even if the benefits don’t consist in the outcome. As a parallel, I might sometimes

give my son an unhealthy snack when he asks nicely in order to promote his politeness. The worth of the

27

asking is not in my giving the snack (as it is unhealthy), but rather in promoting the politeness. Nevertheless,

my son’s request is effective in influencing my action.

9 See Cohoe (2014) sect. IV

10 I mentioned in Sect. 1 that my argument applies equally to an account of the effectiveness of petitionary

prayer that denies counterfactual dependence is necessary and instead considers a prayer effective only when

it is a (partial) reason for God to act. To be explicit: everything that follows can be rephrased by saying that m

is the value added to n so that the prayer becomes a (partial) reason God acts.

11 Whether or not it would increase an event’s value if we pray for it even though it is going to come about

anyway will depend on the particular defence of petitionary prayer. For some of the defences, I have

Swinburne’s particularly in mind, if the prayer makes no difference to the coming about of the event then it

doesn’t add value. For such views, once n is high enough, p doesn’t add m to e’s value.

12 Of course, this will depend on how much value one attaches to the benefits claimed by various authors (and

whether these benefits are really accrued). As[***] has pointed out, God might find additional values in

petitionary prayer that we have not yet discovered too.

13 Compare this also with the literature on horrendous evils: it seems that praying to avoid terrible things is

better than praying to avoid inconveniences. But because with terrible things that would otherwise occur the

values involved on both sides are so large, the prayer itself seems relatively less effective. (It might still be

effective on this view, of course, if the scales are incredibly finely balanced).

14 [***] suggests that God might be more pleased by our prayers concerning more valuable events, and that

the degree to which our prayer pleases God might increase over the rate of increase in the events prayed for.

If so, this might give a scalar model. I set this aside from now on.

15 I am here assuming that the act of praying does not alter the intrinsic properties of the outcome itself. [***]

has pointed out that if the accidental properties of the outcome can be changed by being prayed for, then the

value of the outcome can increase even setting aside the value contributed by the fact of my praying. Such an

account would cut against my point here, but needs to be spelt out.

16 See Kvanvig and Vander Laan (2014)’s Stanford Encyclopedia entry for an introduction.

17 Leibniz’s pre-established harmony is a form of this latter: the internal states of individual substances are

brought about by the previous states of these substances, but everything else, i.e. all external actions, are

brought about by God. He conjoins this with the idea that God’s bringing about of external actions consists in

28

the coordination of the internal states of various substances so that they appear to be affecting one another.

See also Schultz and Winslow (2014) for a dispositional account.

18 See [*author citation removed*] for some discussion of the issues this raises for Leibniz. Another issue with

the best possible world approach, in this context, is that there could be an infinite series of ever more valuable

worlds and therefore no best possible world (a shortage of best possible worlds). See Forrest (1981). My

thanks to [***] for discussion of this, and of the next notes.

19 See Senor (2008) for an argument to this effect (especially Sect. V). We would, in this case, have a surplus of

best possible worlds.

20 To be precise, they also countenance prayer when two worlds are both above a threshold for creation but

one contains an event and the other doesn’t. This complicates the criticism of their view that I present in the

next paragraph of the main text, but doesn’t avoid it. For if two worlds are both above the threshold and one

contains e while the other does not, why should we want the world containing e to obtain? If the answer is

that the world containing e has a higher value, then we are back in the original problem. If the answer is that e

is somehow favoured once prayed for even though it doesn’t add value then it violates (5) without giving a

reason to doubt (5). It also makes it mysterious why we should want e to obtain.

21 [***] independently offered me a similar suggestion in correspondence.

22 As Parker and Rettler point out (Sect. 4), not all prayers satisfying the criteria they impose will necessarily be

successful. So not only will a small number of prayers be able to be answered, given the constraints of

balancing values, but not all of these permissible prayers to be answered are in fact answered. So the number

of successful prayers is even lower than the criteria allow.

23 As an example, see Cohoe (2014). He argues that the problem of petitionary prayer is a specific version of

the problem of evil, and hence generalises the former problem not only to all human action but to all events.

24 It is easy to see how theodicies which restrict God’s power, knowledge or goodness would thereby alter (2)

and hence the inference to (5). For instance, if God is less than perfectly powerful then factors outside God’s

control might influence which events come about, and so events’ values are not the sole determinant of their

occurrence. But these sorts of theodicies might not uphold the God of classical theism, and I wish to show how

(2) can be held fixed without (5) following.

29

25 There is an interesting debate on this point: couldn’t God have actualised a world in which we all freely

choose the right actions? Mackie (1955) and Flew (1955) raise this issue, which is responded to by Plantinga

(1974).