Faith and Philosophy, Part 1: Metaphysics of Prayer

Episode Topic: Metaphysics of Prayer (https://go.nd.edu/8e9338)

If God is all-wise and all-good, why ask Him for anything? Fr. Stephen L. Brock invites us to explore this mystery through the lenses of C.S. Lewis and St. Thomas Aquinas. While Lewis offers an intuitive account, it faces significant theoretical hurdles. In contrast, Aquinas’s metaphysical approach, though more challenging, ultimately provides a deeper answer. Join us to contemplate how his vision honors divine transcendence while surprisingly granting our prayers a more powerful role in shaping the course of events in our world.

Featured Speakers:

• Fr. Stephen L. Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome

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This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Faith and Philosophy. (https://go.nd.edu/a9a045)

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Transcript

Speaker 10 0:06

Welcome everyone. We're gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. My name is Alexa Kaki and I'm the president of our Graduate Maritime Fellows Program. We have a program for both graduate students and undergraduate students, so if you are not already a fellow. Definitely join us. You can scan the QR code on the flyers out here to have access to our application, or you can just go online to Mariton Center website through Notre Dame and you can see the application through there. It's not terribly difficult to fill out the application, and then you're welcome to join us for events like these other events, social events, and unique opportunities that we have. Speaking of if you are a fellow, either an undergrad or graduate fellow, we have a social coming up this week on Thursday at five in the Mariton Library, which is room 4 37 in Gettys Hall. Please join us there for just some light snacks, good community, and then you can hear a little bit more about what's up coming for the rest of the semester and for next spring. Speaking of, we have a lecture coming up in Chicago, so if you are a fellow, you can join us on November 21st, I believe. To go into Chicago to hear Maestro Han and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. So you'd have a unique opportunity to get both an interview experience with him at the beginning and then a trip to the Chicago Symphony. So if you have not already looked into this as a fellow, please, please do more information is coming as well. And we have an event on December 1st with Professor Phil Pot as well, who's somewhere in here I think, actually there he is. To deliver a lecture on politics, so we'll send more information out about that as well. Of course, thanks to come in the spring too, so if you're not already a fellow, please join us and otherwise, thank you so much for being here this evening. I'll go ahead and introduce our speaker and then let him get started. Father Stephen Brock became a professor of Medieval philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome in 1990. He was a visiting professor at the Catholic University of America in 1999, and since 2017 has been a visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, so he doesn't come too far to join us. His research has been mainly on the thought of Thomas Aquinas in the areas of ethics, action theory, and metaphysics with occasional ventures into theology, says his bio. So with that, please help me in welcoming Father Brock.

Speaker 2 2:38

I hope everybody can hear me. I have to turn on the

Father Brock's Lecture: The Metaphysics of Prayer

C.S. Lewis on Petitionary Prayer

Thomas Aquinas on Prayer

The Role of Free Will and Divine Providence

Speaker 3 2:45

Can everybody hear me? Yeah. Is that okay? Well, thank you very much, Alexa. It's a pleasure to be here again. I've been to Notre Dame many times. I always enjoy it. Campus is really beautiful right now too, so. Well, I'll just get started. what first got me into this topic, the Thomas Aquinas on the metaphysics of Prayer was an essay published in 1945 by see as Lewis Lewis addresses a common objection to the practice of Petitionary prayer. At least in relation to the Christian conception of God, this practice can seem to make little sense. After all, if God is all wise and all good, what's the point of asking him for things? He's already perfectly aware of our true needs and he already wants to provide for them. Many of our requests will be ignorant and misguided. The other requests, it seems will be unnecessary and superfluous. Judging from my own experience, this question comes up fairly often in people's minds. It's raised sometimes by people who do not pray as a reason for not praying, and I think even more often by people who do pray, and I think it should be addressed right in order to remove what is maybe an obstacle to pray. And in order to help those of us who do pray to get a little clearer about what we're doing right. Usually the better you understand what you're doing, the better you do it, I think. So the first thing I wanna do is just to present Louis's own answer to this question. It's very clear, it's very straightforward, and I think it has a kind of strong initial plausibility. In fact, I suspect that it kind of gives voice to the way in which many thoughtful people who pray for things conceive of what they're doing. Then I'll point out a one problem that I think it faces Lewis's account in the essay on prayer. In that essay, he doesn't address this problem, but I think from things that he says in other places, I think we can gather. what he would say it's a problem about the relation between temporal events and God's knowledge of them. So I'll get to that afterwards. I, I imagine that at least many of you will find what I think his solution would be. You'll find it a little bit strange, at least I do. I find it's change myself. From there, I'll turn to the account of prayer that St. Thomas Aquinas lays out. I was surprised by this. Thomas's view is, is really strikingly different from Lewis's. They have some things in common of course, but it's surprisingly different. And in the end I do find it more satisfactory. unfortunately, my discussion of the St. Thomas has to be a con considerably longer than that of Lewis, and it has to involve a good deal of metaphysics. I'm sorry about that, but there's no way to avoid it. I think when we really get into this topic. So Lucia is Lewis on Petitionary Prayer. Lewis's basic strategy and defense of Petitionary prayer is kind of a reduxio at absurdum. If God's wisdom and goodness make it senseless to pray for things, then they would also make it senseless to do anything he says, quote, if it is foolish and impudent to ask for victory in a war. On the ground that God might be expected to know best, it would be equally foolish and impudent to put on a raincoat. Does not God know best whether you ought to be wet or dry? He presses this comparison, Lewis does. Between prayer and action. When we act, we cause things to happen. They would not happen if we did not act. They depend on our action. Of course our power to act. Where does it come from? It comes from God, and he says that's just how we should think of prayer as a divinely ordained way of causing things. God has made some things that happen. He, he has made some things depend upon our prayer. They wouldn't happen if we did not pray. Everything else being. Of course there's a difference in the case of action, he says at least its immediate effect is quite certain. Quote, you can be sure that if you pull up one weed, that one weed will no longer be there. Praying for things does not make them so certain it's efficacy is at God's discretion. But this he, he suggests is not because prayer is a weaker kind of cause. Because it's stronger. It is not intrinsically limited by space and time as our physical action is. We're very limited, right? Prayer can extend as far as you want, and so God has retained a discretionary power about it so it doesn't get out of hand, let's say. But he says this difference between prayer and action is, in any case, it's not an objection to the causality of prayer. If God lets us cause things at all, there's no reason why he should not let us cause some things through prayer. Lewis quotes a line from Pascal, God quote, instituted prayer in order to allow his creatures the dignity of causality. Now, Lewis offers an analogy to convey the whole situation that he envisions the big picture. It's a very simple analogy. I think it's very important for assessing his view. So take note of it. Take careful note of this. He says God has not chosen to write the whole of history with his own hand. Most events that go on in the universe are indeed out of our control, but not all. It's like a play in which the scene. The general outline of the story is fixed by the author, but certain minor events are left for the actors to improvise. He made the matter of the universe such that we can, in those limits, do things to it, and similarly, he made his own plan or plot of history such that it admits a certain amount of free play and can be modified in response to our prayers. So keep that in mind, that comparison with the with the play. So now let me explain the problem that I think this account faces one problem anyway. It does seem to make prayer fit in with God's being all wise. God's wisdom enables him to judge rightly about any event in any request that comes before him. Whatever happens, whatever we may ask for. God, of course can discern how best to respond. However, on Lewis's account, what God has originally decided all on his own is only the outline of the history of the world. Certain actions, at least certain, some minor ones are improvised by the actors and so are the prayers that they address to him. He certainly knows how to answer them. He's never puzzled about what to do about them, but to say that his plan can be modified in response to our prayers sounds as though he did not always know about them, and as though he is continually adjusting his plan as he finds out about them. Why is this a problem? Well, because it clashes with a very basic attribute of the Christian God, his immutability or unchangeable ness. God quote, there is no change or shadow of alteration. That's James Epistle Saint James chapter one, verse 17. As the great guitar evangelist, blind Willie Johnson sang, God Don't Never change, and if God does not change, then of course he never comes to acquiring new knowledge. He never has to adjust his plans, right? Always. It's always fixed. Now, how Lewis would likely resolve that issue, I think it comes out in other writings. He suggests that time itself is only, quote, our mode of perception and that things are not really in time. The way they really are is as God sees them and to him, they are all present in an eternal now. And so God eternally knows all the things that ever happen, including our prayers and his responses to them are eternal as well. That they introduce modifications into his plan does not then imply any change in him. Now, I think some people might also be interested in another conclusion that Lewis draws about prayer. From the assumption that things are, that all things really are eternal and not in time. He argues that it can make sense to pray for past events. Like some of us might pray that the Cubs have won the other night instead of lost to the brewers, right? In other words, events that we conceive is past the way Louis would put it. Events that we conceive is past. At least when we don't already know how they've turned out. Now we know how they've turned. That one turned out, so that's another case. But he says such prayers can make just as much sense as prayers for things that we conceive of as future, because in reality, they stand in the same relation to the things prayed for and to God's responses. It is not really a matter of fulfillment fulfillments that proceed what they fulfill, that proceed in time. That would be strange, but that's not what, that's not the real case. He thinks further on, I'll say a little more about the idea of praying for past things. What strikes me most, however, is the idea that God has a general plan that will be executed no matter what we do, and that our actions and prayers only fill in details if these details are indeed contingent and not predetermined. It is because they are minor events, incidental to the outcome and it's essentials. The execution of the plan is inexorable and does not depend on our choices in any way. Now, maybe Lewis would would recoil from this thought the way I just put it. At least I hope he would. Right? But what he says, it seems to me it surely does suggest that anyway. Okay, that's Lewis. So now Thomas Aquinas, this is in different parts. first of all, just I wanna lay out Thomas's account of what prayer is and then it's causality. So I'll do that first and I'll indicate what the extent to which he does agree with Lewis. There is definitely some agreement there. Then I'll explain how his, how his view differs from Lewis's. First is regards to the issue of God's immutability, and then as regards to the significance that our prayers and actions can have. And then finally, I'll close with a couple of general remarks about what Thomas thinks we really are doing when we pray, at least when we pray the way we should. Now, St. Thomas would certainly agree with Lewis that what makes Petitionary prayer sensible. As Thomas puts it suitable is its causality. Lewis Thomas argues that if God's perfect wisdom and goodness ruled out asking him for things, then also actions such as this is Thomas's example, walking in order to get somewhere or eating in order to be nourished eating Chick-fil-A or anything else would be ruled out, which is absurd, which is crazy. Of course, God. God does bring many things about for us without our asking for them, but Thomas says, God wishes to bestow certain things on us at our asking, and he does so quote for the sake of our good, namely, that we may acquire a certain confidence in turning to him and that we may recognizing, recognize in him the author of our goods. Now Thomas goes into the causality of prayer in some detail. In general, he explains petition or request is one way. In which reason the mind causes something. Another way in which it does so is command. A command. He says it's directed to some agent or some power that is subordinate to the commander's reason. It puts the agent or the, at the power in question, under a, a kind of necessity to fulfill it. It makes it necessary in some way for the, for the agent to fulfill the command. A request on the other hand, is directed to another rational agent, one that may be an equal or even a superior to the one who makes the request. Unlike a command, the request does not impose any necessity. To fulfill it upon the agent to whom it's addressed, but it still does serve as a kind of cause of its fulfillment when it's fulfilled. It's a contingent cause, but it's still a real cause. It does. So Thomas says by quote, disposing for the granting of the thing requested. It's a disposing cause of a certain kind. At least in the case of prayer. However, the person whom the request disposes to fulfill it for its fulfillment is not the person to whom the request is directed. Prayer. Neither informs God of the petitioner's need for what is requested nor bends his will toward granting it. The person whom prayer disposes is the person who prays. The causality property to prayer for Thomas is just this. It makes the one who prays fit to receive that which is prayed for. It does so by orienting toward God the person's desire for that, which is prayed for. The theologians call this, this efficacy. The efficacy proper to prayer. They call it itration. It comes from the Latin in Petro in Petra. Which originally meant simply to achieve something or to bring something about it came to mean to get or to obtain something, and eventually to obtain something or procure something by asking for it. So the soul and prayer, this is the way I think of it, right? It's kind of like a hungry nestling, a little chick opening. Its beak to squawk, right? Doing that is what enables it to receive the food that its mother already wants to give it. Right. So prayer, at least good and efficacious prayer is like the opening of our soul's beak and our squawking. Right? That's, that's the analogy. I think that that's, that's pretty accurate. Anyway. What is it that makes prayer good and efficacious? Thomas lists a number of conditions that are necessary for praying as we should. I won't go through all of those now. It's very interesting to do that. But the most fundamental condition he says is faith. This efficacy the iation that's proper to prayer. He says, rest primarily upon the faith of the one who prays. Faith moves mountains. And we see this, we get an idea of this in the gospel, don't we? Over and over again. It's faith that moves Jesus. It moves his heart by faith. One is certain Thomas says of God's wisdom and God's omnipotence and God's mercy, and one thereby hopes for his gifts. So the root of prayer's, efficacy is faith in God's wisdom and love and power, faith in his loving care for us. In other words, faith in his providence. And that brings us to the question of God's immutability, because the precise issue is the immutability of providence. So Thomas on prayer and its effects as falling entirely under God's plan, yet free as the next section. Prayer would of course be useless. He observes. If God did not care about the world, there must be such a thing as providence, God's overseeing what happens here below prayer would also be useless. He says, if Providence predetermined everything or made all things necessary, that his prayer presupposes contingency in things. Now, Thomas holds the contingency, only regards the future, quote. The past is not contingent. Very simple. It cannot be altered or undone. So I think Thomas would say that praying for past events makes no sense that an event happened because you prayed for it means that it depended on your prayer, which is to say that had you not prayed, then other things being equal, it would not have happened. Of course God can foresee things and ordain one thing in provision of another. There's no question about that, but the issue here is not what God can do. It's what we can intelligibly pray for or asking for, asking for something to happen. Supposes both that both it's happening and it's not happening or possible, but if it has already happened, then it's not having happened then. Impossible implying a contradiction whether or not you pray for it. Now, it is still happened then, and if it has not happened then, then it's having happened then is likewise impossible. You may not know which one is the case, but you can hardly say something like, well, if it has happened, thank you, but if it has not happened, then please make it to have happened. Prayer can only regard matters that are understood as still open, not yet determined. Moreover, if some of the future is truly contingent or open in this way, then the future is not on an equal footing with the past or the present. That is things must really be in time. They cannot all be together in an eternal, now merely seeming to us to be successive. If they were all eternal, they would all be already fixed or determined and not contingent. Nothing would be open to being determined in one way or another. But praying for something to happen implies precisely that it may happen and that it may not, not even the prayer itself can fully determine it to happen. The prayer itself is a contingent cause. I heard that before. That's, that's what I said. The causality property to prayer is a contingent kind of causality. Thomas is explicit about that it can fail, it can succeed, or it can fail. And finally, and this is where I think he really parts company with Lewis Thomas, totally. I rejects the idea that our prayers are our choices or actions somehow fill in details that God's original plan leaves open. For Thomas, the Eternal Plan of Divine Providence covers every single event that ever occurs, however small and indeed it is eternal. That means that no part of God's plan is a result of creaturely input. God receives no information from us. His knowledge of the world and of all the changes in it is eternally perfect and utterly changeless. He eternally v visualizes or, or envisions, everything that happens, he sees all things in his eternal plan. His plan does not depend on the things that he knows. They depend on it. This is why his knowledge and he can be eternal and unchangeable even though the things that he knows are not. This also means that for Thomas, God always knows everything future. Not by contemplating something that is not always there to be contemplated, but by a practical sort of knowledge. He knows it insofar as he is willed, either to bring it about or to permit it. Notice that I do not say that he predetermines everything that would exclude contingency in things. He does not predetermine everything, and yet his knowledge of all that ever happens is certain and infallible. I'll come back to that. Now, the idea is not at all that God is the only cause of things. His vision of the world includes creatures that are causes. They get their causality from him of course, and he knows how they will exercise it. They cause what he eternally envisions them to cause. However, God makes different created causes work in different ways. Some of them produce their effects by necessity. Which means that they have no potency not to produce those effects. Neither they nor any other creature can obstruct or prevent those effects. But other causes do have such potency. They may act and they may not act. They may do this and they may do that. In some cases, they themselves determine whether and how they will act. We're like that. We have free choice. This is crucial. Our choices are truly free. When you make a choice, there is nothing prior to it. Nothing other than the choice itself that rules out the opposite choice. Absolutely. We're not determined to make the choices we make by any cause, not even by God. Again, the fact that God eternally and infallibly envisions everything that we do does not mean that everything we do. We do by necessity. This is not so easy to understand,

Speaker 7 27:32

right?

The Significance of Prayer in God's Plan

Speaker 3 27:34

One reason why it is hard is that it is something unique to God. Nothing within our direct experiences like that. No other causes like that. Thomas says that we ourselves are certainly not like that when we in our limited domain, can make certain that something will happen. It is only because we can take away or block the possibility of it's not happening. I can make certain that the, that the pen will fall a moment from now because I know that it tends to fall and I can remove every obstacle to its falling a moment from now, right? I can determine it to fall a moment from now. By contrast, God does not have to make it impossible for things to act otherwise. In order for him to be certain of how they will act or in order for them to act exactly as he wills or permits them to act. Thomas's ultimate explanation of this is quite metaphysical. The divine will must be understood as outside the whole order of beings, ensim as a cause, pouring forth being as a whole, and all its differences. That's pretty metaphysical. This means that God does not just cause all the things that there are all the beings. He causes the nature of being itself, we can put it that way. And he causes all the different ways of being. And these differences of being include both necessity and its opposite, which he calls contingency the power to be one way or another. According to his plan. God does predetermine some things. He causes them to act in a certain way by necessity with no possibility to fail. But he causes others to be able either to act in a certain way or not. He enables them to choose how to act. He knows how they actually will choose, but that is not because he makes them unable to choose or to act otherwise. His plan never fails if some created cause fails to produce some effect. The failure itself was part of God's plan. But if the cause succeeds, that is not always because it has no power to fail, nor is it because God has blocked its failure. He has known eternally that it would not fail, but not because it could not fail. It could quote, the divine will is unfailing, and yet not all of its effects are necessary, but some are contingent. But here's something extremely important. Our prayers are themselves among the things that fall under God's eternal plan. They do not come into his mind from the outside, so to speak, and lead him to change or modify his plan. Thomas knows that it can seem as though the immutability of God's plan makes prayer useless, but this he says is because we imagine that our prayers fall outside his original plan. We find it hard not to think that we are trying to give him information. To change his mind. We failed to consider that our prayers themselves are part of his plan too. It is perhaps not surprising that the immutability of God and of his providence tends to puzzle us more when we are thinking of prayer than when we are thinking of our ordinary actions. When we are thinking about what to do here below, we are focused on the things around us. God is at least a little bit in the background. Even if we know that the success or failure of our actions depends on him. We are not led to imagine that our efforts are aimed at producing a change in him or in his plan. But when we are speaking directly to him, that's how it can look. Well, we have to make a special effort to get past that. Look. We have to make a special effort of faith. In short, if as the saying goes, man proposes and God disposes, God disposes for the proposal too, right? We pray, Thomas says, not in order to change the divine disposition, but in order to infiltrate that word, infiltrate that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by the prayers of the saints, or in other words, as Gregory the Great says. So that by asking men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give. And yet we pray freely. That's part of the plan too. And what happens, because we pray for it, would not happen if we did not. Last section Thomas, on how, how, and how far prayer contributes to Providence. Now I wanna consider how significant for him the things that depend on our prayer are. Remember on his account, neither our actions nor our prayers can modify God's plan. They have no effect whatsoever on the plan's formation. He uses that word, the formation of the plan for Lewis. Remember, our prayers do have some effect on the plan's formation, but a very small effect. It fills in some details. For Lewis, the things that depend on our prayer are incidental or marginal to God's overall purposes to the plot of the drama. Okay. Is that how Thomas sees it? Really Not at all. Quite the contrary. Regarding God's plan, Thomas draws a distinction he distinguishes between the plan's formation and its execution. In the plan's formation. We play no role at all. Not even a small one, but in its execution we can play a huge role. Our role is no, by no means confined to minor events. That's Lewis's expression, at least not unless the salvation of God's elect is a minor event, which would be strange to say. I think I'm referring to his understanding of that special part of divine providence. Which is called predestination. So let me spell this out. I think this is pretty important. The eternal plan of predestination Thomas Explains is quite certain and fixed in every particular, but this is not at all to say that the persons who are predestined will be saved no matter what they do. Inexorably their salvation depends on what they do, and they are not predetermined to do it. They do it freely, having the potential not to do it, and God does not block that potential so as to make them do it necessarily. He knows that they will do it, but he does not determine them to do it. As Saint John Dames says, God neither once malice nor compels virtue predestination Thomas is explicit about this is not predetermination. Thomas goes so far as to say that in its execution, predestination is quote helped. It's helped by the prayers of the saints for quote, A person's salvation is predestined by God in such a way that whatever leads that person towards salvation also falls under the order of predestination. Whether it be one's own prayers or those of another or other good works and such like. Without which one does not attain salvation, and therefore the predestined must strive to work and pray well because through means of this sort, the effect of predestination is accomplished in a sure way. For this reason, it is said strive so that by good works you may make sure of your calling and election. That's from second Epi St. Peter. A few lines later, substantially anticipating that remark by Pascal, which Lewis quoted. Thomas says that God uses intermediate causes of this sort like prayer, so that the beauty of order be observed in things and to communicate even to creatures, the dignity of causality. And this is no mere ornament, right? This beauty, a great deal can hang on a creature's causality. In fact, on Thomas's view, it's already clear. The things that it makes the most sense to work and pray for are the very biggest things, grace and virtue and final perseverance, which we cannot merit, you know? But we can certainly pray for it and we should, and think how great are the things that Jesus teaches us to pray for in our Father? Well, let me wrap up with just a couple of points. The first point is connected with what we just considered, that a creature's causality can extend very far in order to be sure of accomplishing his will. God does not have to limit our efficacy to minor things or incidentals. To say that he does is in effect to make his causality and mere parts of a scenario that is larger than either of them. It is though, God were the majority shareholder in a commercial venture. He would call the the shots, but our little, little investments would still add some capital to his and on minor issues, he would let us have some say that's not how it's creator and creature as such are not in any sense, partners. Okay. Just as God is cause of the whole order of reality. Cause of the nature of reality itself, of being and all its differences. So he is cause of the nature of causality and all its hierarchies. We do not pray to Zeus or to the force or to chat GPT. Right? Even version number five, right? We, we pray to God Almighty, right maker of heaven and earth, the universal cause of being as being. Christian prayer, we might say, is an exquisitely metaphysical act. The other point I wanted to make is that Thomas treats prayer as an act of the virtue of religion. This virtue, he says, is really the same thing as sanctity or holiness. Some of you're probably familiar with the great platonic dialogue on holiness. The youth are fro. At one point in that dialogue, Socrates gets his young friend to admit reluctantly that he, the young friend, RO, thinks of religion as a kind of commercial arrangement with the gods. The idea would be that with our sacrifices, we offer the gods things they would want, and in return they give us things we want an answer to our prayers. Socrates clearly finds this idea ridiculous. On Thomas's view, he is quite right for one thing. Our sacrifices do not benefit God in any way. It is entirely to our benefit, not his, that by sacrifice we can acknowledge our subjection to him and honor him as the creator and the highest good, but also quite generally according to Thomas religion or holiness, is the virtue by which we hand ourselves over to the worship and service of God. Prayer is part of that. In true prayer, we hand our very minds over to God, subjecting our thoughts and desires to him with reverence and in a way presenting them to him to use as he sees fit. In short, all good prayer has, as its underlying motif, thy will be done. And if we find it hard to pray like that sometimes. All we have to do is pray for help, right then. We are already praying like that because he always wants to help us. When we ask him for help, we can be sure we, that's his will. He wants to help us, but he wants us to ask. He's just waiting for us to ask and if we understand the metaphysics of prayer, we see that it really could not be otherwise. Thank you.

Speaker 8 40:40

Okay. We have some time for questions, so if you'll just raise your hand. I'll bring the mic to you.

Speaker 9 40:56

Hello. I am, uh, Sam MCee. I'm an undergrad. And, um, I just wanted to ask with St. Thomas saying that our prayers cannot affect the past. How does that affect prayers for the dead? I had always heard that prayers for the dead would somehow make them more virtuous in life. So as to, uh. Limit their time in purgatory or get them out of hell. But I'm assuming that isn't the case.

Speaker 3 41:20

I had never heard that actually. no. My understanding is that it, if assuming they're in purgatory, it gets them out of purgatory more quickly. Right. That kinda speeds up the, the process of their purification somehow. Right. It's kind of mysterious how it does that, but, but no, it's not, it, it can't affect how they lived their lives. Mm. I, that's my understanding anyway. Yeah. And I think that's pretty significant, right? It's pretty important if you know what purgatory is like, right. Anyway. Yeah.

Speaker 7 41:52

yes. Hi, father Steve. just, um, so I'm not a, that would thank you for that. And, uh, I, my, my question was along the lines of, of the student who just asked, so imagine like a parent who knows. Okay. Little, Johnny is only five, but when Johnny's 15, they might want X. So I'm gonna keep X for them and I will give it to them, you know, I don't know, like a necklace or something. Or for girl, you know, for for Jill, I'm just thinking like, doesn't it make sense that one could pray for the salvation? Just like you pray for the salvation of everybody on the planet now and in the future. You also want the salvation of everyone who's ever lived and that somehow God could take, like, that somehow one could pray for everyone's salvation and sanctification, and God could know, okay, he knew I was gonna pray for that. And somehow take that into account, uh, earlier. Mm-hmm. I don't know. Mm-hmm. It just, I, that's the one part of the lecture that I, I couldn't quite get on

Speaker 3 43:00

board with. These are the question I get on this stuff is always, always there about this. did anybody else wanna add to, if we're on this topic, maybe before I Yeah. Father,

Speaker 5 43:09

yeah, I, well, my question right, too. I, I find myself resisting only at that point.

Speaker 3 43:15

Okay, good. Good. I got some pushback anyway.

Speaker 5 43:21

We don't know the outcome.

Speaker 3 43:23

Right. Yeah.

Speaker 5 43:23

And, and I guess my question is, as a potential sort of way toward resolving it, maybe within Thomas Aquinas of framework, but maybe not, was does, does Thomas Aquinas actually draw that?

Speaker 3 43:40

No, that's my conclusion. That's, he doesn't say that himself. That's my conclusion. Well,

Speaker 5 43:45

I wonder if it's. If it's sort of not, I think it might be better to say that the passive, not passive events are not necessary per se. so long as they pertain to like pre human actions, which he generally doesn't wanna say are necessary, but are necessary given sort of certain knowledge, and we never have that knowledge of givens about the future. If that sort of brings open an avenue in which, in Thomas

Speaker 3 44:12

Yeah, I understand.

Speaker 5 44:13

Yeah. Still look at past, past free actions as being, just as contingent as future free actions and therefore open to being effective.

Speaker 3 44:22

Right, right. Okay. Okay. Well, um, yeah, that's a good way to put it. let me start with the business about necessity. I would distinguish between. the necessity of the thing and the necessity of our knowledge of it. Our knowledge may be the truth of our knowledge may not be necessary because we don't, we haven't seen what happened or we haven't been told whatever, right? So the truth is, our, our, our consideration of it might just be an opinion, or we might have, it might just be open. I don't know whether it happened or not, but the necessity, the, the being of it. Thomas, I quoted that the past is not contingent. It's necessary. He thinks that it's impossible for it now to have been otherwise. Right before it happened, it was free. Before you did the CHO made the choice. It was free. But once you've made it, you have made it. And you can't help having, we've, I suppose we've all made choices that we kind of wish we hadn't made, but that's too bad, right. We've made them and there they are, right? And we've gotta deal with the con, maybe we can, you know, affect the consequences somehow. often when this, when this topic comes up, people, talk about, people bring in the immaculate conception in that as, as it's usually taught, the our lady was given the grace of being conceived without a original sin in provision of her son's merits. And provision of, so God foresaw that

Speaker 6 45:49

right

Speaker 3 45:50

as a future event. And he gave her that grace as in, in view of that. And so, again, I'm not denying that God can foresee one thing and do another thing in view of that, right? it's about what we cant intelligibly do now. That is the causality of the merits of Jesus, right? And Thomas explicitly distinguishes between the causality of merit. The causality of prayer. He says, a given prayer can have both merit. The basis of merit. The essential basis of merit is charity. And if you pray out of charity, that can be a meritorious thing to do. And perhaps God in provision of the merit of your prayer, he could do something in provision of that. And that's fine, right? But another thing is the, the efficacy property prayer, the infiltration I called it, right? Which is based on faith. And there it's not a que again, it's not a question of God foresee, it's just a question of what you cant intelligibly think. Even if you don't know how it's turned out, if you put it in the past, then you think it has turned out one way rather than the other. Right. And so the, the claim is, I have a pa, there's a passage from Peter Gee, which I think is about this, which I think he's right about this. the claim is simply that you're, you're, you're kind of making a, an incoherent act. Now if you do something incoherent out of charity, well, God can reward the charity. So go ahead. If you wanna pray for the ha, go ahead. That's great. Fine. But he's not rewarding the incoherence, he's re rewarding the charity. And personally, I don't think that incoherence particularly favors charity. Right. I think we, we, so that's kind of my, my quick answer to the, to the problem. Okay.

Speaker 10 47:45

Hi, father. Thanks. That was cool. so my question is sort of, so it's kind of like a two part question. first part is just if I'm understanding you right, it sort of seems like his account of. God as cause and humans as cause in relation to prayer is sort of like modeling this like concurrent framework that he has for like physical causes. Does that seem, can

Speaker 3 48:10

you explain that?

Speaker 10 48:11

Yeah, sure. So, um, as I understand it, I'm no medievals, but as I understand it, it seems that like God is the primary cause of everything, but like human beings can still cause stuff and we don't have these like over determination worries. We can be causes of things, but God is still like ultimately the fundamental cause of everything. But he is designed things such that like we can still, uh, have causal efficacy. And it seems that you're, it seems like this framework that you're drawing up is sort of like a spiritual mirror of that. So like humans are like these physical and spiritual creatures and like this concurrent is picture of causality for us as physical beings like seems to mirror. Like concurrent is to picture for us as like spiritual beings. So I guess like the first question is like, does that seem right?

Speaker 3 49:02

Yeah. I, I don't, why do you use the word, I know this is a, is a common word now, but I don't Why do you use, use the word concurrent. What does that mean?

Speaker 10 49:09

just that like, God concurs in like with us as causes. So like, it's sort of situated opposite, like

Speaker 3 49:19

it causes us the cause.

Speaker 10 49:22

I don't think the terminology is like super important. Okay.

Speaker 3 49:25

Alright.

Speaker 10 49:25

So maybe, maybe a, alright

Speaker 3 49:26

worry.

Speaker 10 49:26

Maybe a sort of like

Speaker 3 49:27

kind

49:28

of

Speaker 10 49:28

connotations, a bigger question is like, how is grace factoring in here? Like, could you say a little bit about that? Just because like on the physical side of things, it's, it's clearer to me like how thi how God is a primary cause and we're secondary causes. But could you say a little bit about how us as having any sort of causal efficacy in prayer, like it seems that grace is playing. Like additional role. Could you just, could you say a little bit about that?

Speaker 3 49:54

Well, to the extent that, that the best prayer certainly is prayer that's, that's, that's, uh, engaged out of charity. I mentioned in charity depends on grace, right? Absolutely on, on sanctifying grace and the, the theological virtues. But even without charity faith. Depends upon some kind of grace usually, or at least some kind of gift of God. Right. So, so, um, to the extent that we're praying, I think to, to some extent, at least we're getting close to the supernatural order. I think that's true. And to that extent, it's at least close to grace. I think that's right. But grace is a reality too, right? Grace is, is part of being right, is that it's, and Thomas thinks it is, you know, it's a kind of quality in the soul. It has its own, its own, it's a form. He even treats it as a, as a form in the soul, right? With its own consequences and its own efficacy. Right. And without it, we can't perform any kind of supernatural actions. So it's certainly, it, it's, it's an, it's an elevation of our capacity to do things and to cause Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great.

Speaker 11 51:05

Thank you. This was extremely helpful. Um, and I wanted, but I wanted to get a little bit more detail on the way that you're understanding the causality of prayer according to Aquinas. so if you think about the natural case, right where I, my hand is holding this microphone, so there's the causality of my will on. The muscles to hold the microphone and God is acting through my causality to He, he's causing me to cause holding the microphone. but in, in that case, what I've got is an act of the will that terminates and holding the microphone. So they're kind of like horizontal line of causality there, right? With God acting through it. It's

Speaker 3 51:52

good. Yeah. Good. Yeah.

Speaker 11 51:53

Yeah. So, so is prayer like that That's, that's what I'm wondering. Oh, so like, is is, would you see a prayer sort of having a, a, a vertical and that like, so it goes up and God makes a decision based on your prayer and then it sort of comes down to what God is doing in the world based on the decision that he made or prayer something more like a kind of spiritual cause in the world.

Speaker 3 52:17

I mean, I mean, is God somehow. When he answers my prayers, he somehow Does the answer somehow also come about through me? The way you're holding the microphone

Speaker 11 52:29

Yeah. Comes

Speaker 3 52:29

about. Is that what you mean?

Speaker 11 52:30

Yeah. Because I, I'm seeing the difference between, uh, it seems like Lewis's view is that, your exercise, God is allowing you to exercise some kind of causality on him.

Speaker 3 52:41

Sure.

Speaker 11 52:41

Sort of. Right? And where he says, well, I'm open to you. Changing my mind or convincing me or something to do something differently. Right. And that's just, oh, I see. The divine plan to be open that way.

Speaker 3 52:53

Okay.

Speaker 11 52:53

And it seems like that's closed off for quite,

Speaker 3 52:55

yeah. That's not sure. Divine ability. Yeah. That's closed off.

Speaker 11 52:56

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm wondering if he thinks about prayer more in that way as a kind of horizontal cause, or whether it's really a, still a kind of psychological picture where God makes a decision about what to do.

Speaker 3 53:06

I see.

Speaker 11 53:07

Based on your prayer.

Speaker 3 53:08

Okay. I see. Good. Yeah, I think it's kind of in between.

Speaker 11 53:10

Okay.

Speaker 3 53:11

Maybe let's, let's see if this answers the question. You're absolutely right. It doesn't change God's mind. but I don't think it's kind of okay, God sort of unleashes some power in me to bring about something. You know, suppose I pray for something on the other side of the world, right? Somehow. Whoa, you know, that's, that's pretty, you know, some kind of hidden mechanism there. It's, I don't know, I don't quite know how to picture it, but it's so he's got these gifts stored up. and they're gonna be unleashed in answer to the prayer. So it's the, it's, it's the unleashing of the gift. Now, where are they? I don't that that's, that's kind of crude in that sense, but it's not changing him. It's, it's, it's that quotation from Gregory. God has prepared these things to be given in answer to the prayer, but it's still in response to the prayer. This is when you ask someone else for something, they, or you ask someone else to do something. They do it right. You don't do it, they do it, but you caused, it's being done without acting, in this case, without influencing them, but you sort of release the doing of it or something like that. I, I don't know how to put, I mean, say again, it's a unique case, but you see what I mean? It's kind of in between.

Speaker 8 54:29

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 54:30

The, the changing the agent and, and then my doing it somehow making me do it or doing it through me because I don't think it is through me. It's an answer to, it's an answer to, to me.

Speaker 8 54:40

Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 3 54:42

Okay.

Speaker 8 54:44

One last question.

Speaker 6 54:46

All the way over there. You go ahead. Can shout

Speaker 4 54:52

so you Great. All of, CS Lewis'. Metaphor analogy of, of play, but I was wondering if we rehabilitated that analogy.'cause it is, well, it's used by many people including and used to kind of describe life. And I think it's a pretty good analogy. And it does seem to contain both contingency and necessity, like you're talking about in consequences view of prop.

Speaker 2 55:22

Sure.

Speaker 4 55:23

because some things are kind of necessarily going to happen, the set on the stage and other things or other things are contingent depending on how the actors perform. So it seems like the problem with Lewis's metaphor is not the actors that's going on quite, but more misconception of the author is that the author kind just writes the script and then leaves other things like improvisation of, so if, if we had a better conception of what the author as a market divine author

Speaker 8 55:56

mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 55:57

You think that metaphor maybe could

Speaker 8 55:59

Oh, I see

Speaker 4 56:00

Acquaints understand.

Speaker 3 56:03

I think it could be better. Yeah. Yeah.'cause you would have sort of the basic structure of reality, which is in, in Thomas's world, it's more fixed than ours is.'cause the, you know, the, the, the spheres of the, of the world are quite fixed and everything. The stage is set and the props are right, and it is kind of fixed. Right. And we're these little guys down here, right. Doing our, doing our thing. The only thing I kind of, I still don't like is the idea that, well, we just do minor stuff. For Thomas, the whole purpose of the physical universe is the salvation of, of the elect. Right. And we, and what we do has an influence on that. Right? So to call that minor is odd. Independent. Yeah. That, that does save, you know, the question of God changing. But that's, that's really for me, that's even, that's, that's a secondary issue to this. I, I just wanna stress how, I just wanna stress how important what we do in, you know, in our career is basically, and I don't think Lewis really conveys that right. We're the main actors in the in, in the play. Right. And what the main actors do. Right. Well, if it's not up to them, what they, you know, that's kind of strange, isn't it? You see what I mean? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 8 57:14

Well, let's thank Father.

Speaker 3 57:16

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.