Does the way Jesus teaches prayer fit more naturally with a worldview in which our requests genuinely matter, or with a worldview in which every request and every answer was already unalterably fixed before creation? If every prayer and every answer has already been exhaustively determined, what purpose is served by Jesus spending so much time teaching us how to pray?
The entire SOTERIOLOGY 101 Podcast can be heard HERE. Sot 101’s description:
- Again we address the impractical implications of Calvinism. This time by unpacking Wayne Grudem’s teaching about the purpose and function of prayer. If God has determined all things then why pray? Does God really respond to us when we pray or is that just an illusion? Let’s dive in.
QUESTIONER – SANDY:
You were so persuasive, Wayne, a few weeks ago that I have become a happy evangelical Calvinist. And so in my mind, this raises the issue of God’s sovereignty. And I wonder if in that illustration on the board, I’m looking at that and I am visually putting a sort of umbrella of God’s transcendent, eternal, immutable sovereignty over all of that. So that, because otherwise, and maybe it’s just my split pea-sized brain not able to understand what you’re saying, but otherwise it sounds like God is vacillating in His intent and plans in response to whether or not we pray. And I doubt that that’s what you’re saying. So tell me now, as a fellow happy, evangelical Calvinist, how God’s transcendent, eternal, immutable sovereignty fits in all.
GRUDEM:
I think God planned before the foundation of the world, I think God planned that Moses would pray and that he would answer. But Moses didn’t know that. Okay? What Moses knew is he’s supposed to pray. I think God planned before the foundation of the world that Amos would pray and that God would answer. But it was still real. I mean, this intercession of Moses is still real. And if you do not have, because you do not ask, that’s true. And asking you will receive. Knock and it will be open. God didn’t set up the world to work in some way that we have to pray for Him to grant things, but He did. And then, yes. In his secret, unchangeable, eternal plan, yes, I think when I look back on all of it, I’ll say that he planned it, but I don’t know that. What I do know is if I pray, he answers, and if I don’t, he won’t.
The central argument can be summarized as:
If God unconditionally decreed both the prayer and the answer, then the prayer cannot be the real cause of the answer in the ordinary sense.
That’s very close to the objection you heard raised against Grudem.
The Moses Problem (Exodus 32)
The commentator makes an interesting point: Grudem says Moses didn’t know the eternal decree. But then Moses’ experience of prayer appears to be more realistic than the Calvinist explanation.
Moses believed:
- God announced judgment.
- Moses interceded.
- God relented.
Exodus presents the narrative exactly that way. The Calvinist explanation becomes:
- God decreed the announcement.
- God decreed the intercession.
- God decreed the relenting.
The question then becomes:
Is the biblical narrative showing what really happened, or is it only describing how it appeared from Moses’ perspective?
Where the Lord’s Prayer Comes In
This is where Calvinists prayer understanding connect:
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
On Grudem’s model:
- God eternally decreed whether you receive daily bread.
- God eternally decreed whether you pray for daily bread.
- God eternally decreed the answer.
The Calvinist answer is:
God ordained prayer as the means.
The non-Calvinist answer is:
The language sounds like a genuine petition affecting a genuinely contingent outcome.
The Lord’s Prayer assumes that God is:
- Listening.
- Caring.
- Responding.
- Providing.
- Forgiving.
- Leading.
- Delivering.
The entire prayer is relational.
Does the prayer read more naturally as a conversation with a Father who genuinely responds to His children, or as participation in a script whose every line was already fixed before the world began?
Why is the entire prayer structured around requests if requests have no bearing on what occurs? Why teach believers to ask for forgiveness if the granting of forgiveness is already fixed regardless of the request?
THE LORD’S PRAYER
Our Father in heaven,
May Your name be hallowed by those whom You have eternally decreed to hallow it.
May Your kingdom come exactly as You have immutably ordained from before the foundation of the world.
May Your will be done, because it cannot possibly be otherwise.
Give us this day the bread You have already decreed we will receive whether through our asking or not, though You have also decreed that we would ask for it.
Forgive us our debts, because You have already determined from eternity which debts would be forgiven and which sinners would remain under condemnation.
As we forgive our debtors according to the measure of sanctification You have irresistibly produced within us.
Lead us not into the temptations You have eternally ordained for our good and Your glory, though we acknowledge that those temptations cannot fail to occur if You have decreed them.
But deliver us from the evil You have likewise ordained to accomplish Your sovereign purposes.
For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, because all things without exception have been decreed by You and come to pass exactly as ordained.
Amen, which You also decreed before the foundation of the world.
GRAPHICS to further elucidate:
Prayer & Calvinism with Ronnie Rogers
Pastor Ronnie Rogers is back with us today to discuss his new book “IF ONLY YOU WOULD ASK: Praying God’s Conditional Promises” This book is a MUST READ for anyone curious, confused, or convinced about Calvinism’s (mistaken) determinism.