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Prayer has an effect in the same way that all other causes have their effect. Prayer is just as much a cause as any other secondary causes in creation.
Do you believe that hitting a ball with a bat causes the ball to fly through the air? But how can the bat cause the ball to fly if God predestined everything? The bat was completely unnecessary, right? No. God ordained for the ball to fly; but He ordained that you would swing the bat to make the ball fly. God ordains the means and the ends.
We can take a further step: Secondary causes become causes only because of a primary cause. The effectiveness of secondary causes is not cancelled by the primary cause, but requires the primary cause. I build a table, and I am the cause of the table. But the secondary causes of the table include my hammer and nails and saw and other tools that I use. I couldn't build the table without tools, with my bare hands. Without these secondary causes, there wouldn't be any table. So God does all things, but He uses secondary causes to achieve those ends, and He uses created things so that everything is both a product of God's work, and a product of the creation.
As the Westminster Confession wisely says that God's decree does not cancel the reality and efficacy of secondary causes, but "establishes them." I cause a table to be built. That doesn't make the saw and the hammer and the nails useless or irrelevant. Rather, the hammer and the saw and the nails and all come into their own only because I use them, because I'm the primary cause. The saw and hammer and nails don't organize themselves to build tables. Without me, they aren't causes of anything. So also, when God uses the creation to accomplish things, He makes them causes. They would not be causes at all without Him as the primary cause. The creation doesn't organize itself to accomplish things. A created cause is a created cause only because God, who is the first cause, deploys them.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, August 06, 2006 at 08:58 AM
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