Metaphysics of Prayer

If God is all-wise and all-good, what is the point of asking Him for things in prayer? Fr. Stephen L. Brock, professor of medieval philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome and a visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, considers how this question is answered by two Christian thinkers: C. S. Lewis and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Both regard petitionary prayer as a divinely instituted way of causing things. They differ widely, however, on how such prayer is related to God’s plan for the world. Lewis’s account is fairly easy to understand, and at least at first glance, it seems to be quite plausible. However, it runs into a serious theoretical difficulty, and how Lewis would evidently respond to this difficulty is, at best, counter-intuitive. Saint Thomas’s account is far more challenging than Lewis’s, because of all the metaphysics involved. On the other hand, for Thomas the aforesaid difficulty is no difficulty at all, and (Prof. Brock argues) his account not only does greater justice to the divine transcendence, but also, surprisingly, assigns to us—to our prayers and our actions—a far stronger role in determining the course of events in the world.