Intercessory Prayer

Modern Theology, Biblical Teaching and Philosophical Thought

Philip Clements-Jewery

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754638285
• eBook ISBN: 9781317114697
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

How is prayer possible? How does prayer work? Why is it necessary to ask for God's gifts? Intercessory Prayer attempts to provide answers to questions about the nature of intercessory prayer. Critically examining biblical teaching and modern theological and philosophical thinking, this book shows how intercessory prayer may be seen as one of the means by which God enlists the freely-given cooperation of human persons in the realisation of the divine purpose. Clements-Jewery adopts a process view of the universe to show how intercession both makes certain possibilities greater and strengthens the likelihood of response, so that people who pray may have every confidence that their prayers will make a difference to the world through the God who both influences and is influenced by the creation.

Chapter 1 Issues in Practising and Understanding Intercessory Prayer

DOI: 10.4324/9781315589213-1

Preliminary Considerations

Do we really need yet another book about prayer? As a glance at the display in any religious bookshop will confirm, the number of books about prayer written for a Christian readership at the popular level appears greater than on any other spiritual topic. Furthermore, on superficial inspection, it would appear that there is no problem about the offering of prayers of intercession so far as most Christians are concerned. For Anglicans and Roman Catholics in particular there are the intercessions at the Eucharist. Prayer meetings also abound in homes and in Churches of all kinds. People get together in informal prayer groups. Business men and women and politicians gather for prayer breakfasts. So why write a book based on the presupposition of the possibility of doubt with respect to the validity of intercessory prayer?

The reason why this book has been written is that it is uncertain whether many of the numerous published books about prayer deal with the kind of issues that it is intended to address here. On the whole, academic works on the subject of biblical prayer seem to be descriptive and exegetical rather than enquire into the theological and philosophical basis of the matter.¹ And most popular books about prayer are of the ‘how to’ kind, or are exhortations to pray more. Few appear to be considering questions such as ‘Why is it necessary to ask for God’s gifts?’, ‘How is prayer possible?’ and ‘How does prayer work?’

A closer examination of the present-day scene might suggest that, in fact, all is not well in relation to the practice of prayer, particularly of the intercessory and petitionary kind. It is often the case that, in the public worship of Churches whose services are non-liturgical, particularly those of a ‘charismatic’ or ‘renewed’ nature, so much time may be given over to worship and praise that intercession may sometimes be left out altogether. It is possible that the practice of public intercession over a wide area of the current ecclesiastical scene may actually be in decline. If this is so, then it might prove instructive to speculate about the reasons why.

Although we can only guess, it is possible to think of some reasons for this malaise. The liturgical impoverishment of much modern Free Church and charismatic worship probably plays some part. There are also occasions when public intercession seems to be more concerned with informing human listeners about a given need than with asking God to do anything about it. At other times, the intercessions may be reduced to little more than a ‘shopping list’ or a ‘tour around the world’. All this may have led to some disillusionment in the matter of intercessory prayer. Of course, at the same time there have been some imaginative attempts to breathe new life into the concept of intercession. The development of ‘prayer walking’, particularly in the form of public marches of witness, with the procession stopping by buildings of importance to the wider community in order to pray for that particular aspect of the life of society, is one instance that comes to mind here.

However, the source of the problem with regard to intercessory prayer may not lie on the surface, but may come from deep within our psychosocial character. Society in general today has become more inward-looking and parochial. Post-modern culture promotes a hedonistic kind of individualism, with the result that we live in a ‘me-first’ generation where individuals expect there to be something for them in whatever they choose to do. The practice of intercession, however, does not easily fit in with this prevailing cultural ethos. There are few immediate rewards connected with the exercise of intercessory prayer. Sometimes there may be none at all. Indeed, we may never know this side of eternity whether our prayers have resulted in any tangible change in the world or in the lives of the people for whom we pray. Contrast this situation with that of a highly charged praise and worship event. It is obvious that in the latter the rewards for the worshipper are immediate. There is a ‘buzz’ in the atmosphere that anyone can pick up.

Psychologically speaking, what we are thinking about here is what is called ‘instant gratification’. ‘I know what I want, and I want it now!’ is the watchword by which many live today. However, instant gratification is what children often ask for and, as suggested in the last paragraph, there is often no instant gratification so far as our prayers of intercession are concerned. Growing to adulthood means, among much else, learning how to accept delayed gratification and putting aside immediate rewards for the sake of some longer-term purpose or goal. It is possible, then, that the absence of public intercession in the worship of some Churches is a reflection of an immature spirituality. But I am also reminded of the frequent injunctions in the New Testament that Christians should be weaned off baby-food and consume something rather meatier (1 Cor. 3:2 and 14:20; 1 Pet. 2:2). It is for that reason that I intend to offer in this book a theological and philosophical rationale for the validity of intercessory prayer.

The origin of this book lies in a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Manchester in 1996. As I began the research for my dissertation I became aware of the considerable lack of attention given by the world of scholarship to the subject of prayer in general and of intercession in particular. So far as I am aware, no major academic work on the theological and philosophical foundation of petitionary and intercessory prayer has been published in this area since the mid-1980s, at least so far as the UK is concerned, although there are signs that the situation is beginning to change.² There has also been some work done on the subject in the USA and, of course, there are paragraphs, sections and even whole chapters in works of a more general theological nature,³ but there are few books at any level that deal at length or in depth with the kind of issues in connection with intercessory prayer that are intended to be addressed in this book.

It is possible, of course, that the answers to such questions are assumed from the start, or are not even considered to be relevant. But another possible reason for this gap in the available literature on prayer might be doubt as to the basic validity of the exercise of prayer in the first place. Or, rather, to put it the other way round, the comparative lack of academic interest may also have made its contribution to the general malaise in connection with intercessory prayer that I have already described. Believers may not be interceding as much or even at all because they are not sure what they are doing when they do pray. The trouble is that they may not have been provided with the tools they need for such an understanding. Furthermore, they may hold back from praying because they have a suspicion of sub-Christian ideas of what prayer involves. No doubt, there are many ‘magical’ views of prayer held, if only unconsciously, by large numbers of Christians. I mean, for example, the kind of view that supposes that only if we pray harder and longer, or enlist more people to pray with us, God will in the end be bound to give us what we ask for, as if prayer in some way puts pressure on God so that eventually God caves in. The image here is of a somewhat harassed parent who, for the sake of a bit of peace and quiet, gives way at last to the repeated requests of the child who has gone on asking in the face of the parental ‘no’. If that is the only concept of prayer on offer, then it is not surprising that some should find it unworthy of the God who has been revealed in Jesus Christ and, as a result, give up interceding altogether.

This raises an important issue so far as an understanding of intercessory prayer is concerned: that of the relationship, on one hand, between the kind of beliefs held by the person who prays and, on the other, the actual practice of that person’s prayer. There is no doubt that the practice of prayer has had an effect, not only on beliefs about prayer, but on Christian doctrine generally. However, it is open to question whether this has always been the effect that it should have had (Wiles, 1967, pp.93, 164, 168). There is a tension between taking spiritual experience as the starting point for theological reflection and wanting to develop an argument within the limits of philosophical theism. One example of what is meant here is given at the end of the previous paragraph, where the practice of persistence in prayer may in some circumstances give rise to unworthy images of God. But the process works in the opposite direction as well, for a view of God reached independently of devotional practice and starting from a more philosophical view of the divine may result in the reduction of intercessory prayer to what is theologically acceptable, for instance, to a mere ‘Your will be done’. If intercession is thus restricted to a seeking and an accepting of God’s will as it concerns the person or situation being prayed for, possibly with a commitment also to personal action in relation to that person or situation, then many intellectual problems in connection with intercessory prayer will simply evaporate. Whether this is necessary is another matter, and is an issue to which this study will address itself. On the other hand, allowing devotional practice to affect the formation of views of the nature of God exposes one, especially in relation to this particular study, to the charge of assuming from the start what we want to prove, so that we become involved in a certain circularity of argument.

The answer to this dilemma is surely to admit that the relationship between the practice of prayer and doctrinal beliefs can only be a dynamic one. In fact, theology and the practice of prayer have a mutual influence. As Patrick D. Miller says, ‘prayer and theology exist in relation to one another in a correcting circle, the one learning from the other and correcting the other’ (Miller, 1994, p.1). It is right that devotional excess should be subject to the corrective influence of a sound and reasonable belief. On the other hand, the cold and abstract view of God as ‘the God of the philosophers’ may be overcome by recognizing that prayer belongs to a relationship with God that is fully and warmly personal.

It is already becoming clear that an enquiry into the nature of intercessory prayer will require us to reflect deeply on the nature of the God to whom we pray. The development of a theology of prayer is a test-bed for our doctrine of God. In the course of this study we will need to consider the precise nature of God’s knowledge and power. We will need to take a fresh look at the classical doctrine of God’s impassibility or immutability: the question as to whether God is affected in any way by what happens in the world. We shall have to ask questions about the basic structure of the world, what is known as metaphysics. The Christian doctrine of God as Trinity will also be brought in at some point.

There is another matter to be dealt with before we embark upon our study. Possibly there is another way to establish the validity of intercession that may avoid the necessity of hard thinking. Would putting prayer to the test of scientific experiment serve to short-cut all the philosophizing and theologizing? Over recent decades there have been a number of scientific experiments to test the efficacy of prayer. As this introductory chapter was being written there was considerable publicity in the media concerning this experimental evidence for the efficacy of prayer, including a prime time TV programme entitled Does Prayer Work? A recent study in the British Medical Journal (Leibovici, 2001) generated considerable discussion, much of it, however, cautious or sceptical.⁴ Another was reported at the Festival of Science, held in Manchester in September 2003 under the auspices of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, where neuropsychiatrist Dr Peter Fenwick gave delegates the results of separate studies⁵ into prayer by groups of strangers for cardiac patients and for women having IVF pregnancy treatment. He reported that nearly 400 San Francisco cardiac patients took part, not knowing if they were in the sample being prayed for. Those in the group prayed for had fewer complications, needed less drug treatment and recovered more quickly. In the IVF study, success rates doubled when patients in Australia, USA and Canada were prayed for by Christians in Korea (Kwang et al., 2001).

However, more probably cannot be claimed at present than that these experiments are inconclusive or, rather, that the conclusions drawn are debatable. Over the whole range of studies, criticisms are aimed both at the experimental methods employed and at the interpretation of the results. One objection is that in this area there can be no such thing as a controlled experiment. The researcher cannot know whether or not other people outside the experiment are praying for those involved, so that if outsiders, such as family or friends, were praying for those in the control group (that is, those not being prayed for by people in the experiment), this would seriously affect the results, provided, of course, that prayer actually works. Moreover, experiments can only show whether or not there is a statistically significant difference in outcome between those prayed for and those not prayed for, so that it is possible that other conclusions may be drawn from the data than simply that prayer either does or does not work. Even if the experiment showed that there was no significant difference in outcome between the prayed-for and those not prayed for, this still might not prove that prayer does not work, since the lack of statistically significant difference might still be due to the effect of unknown prayer on the control group who might have received as much prayer as the others even though they were considered to be unprayed for.

There are other objections, too. It is possible to argue that the model of prayer that is used in such experiments is too mechanical. Its somewhat ‘coin-in-the-slot’ approach to the matter seems to compromise the freedom of God in responding to the prayer. Indeed, the personal agency of God is left out altogether from the scientist’s considerations, and this is at odds with the kind of personal relationship with God which, it will be argued in this book, lies at the heart of the activity of intercession. It is also unlikely that believers will be satisfied by being told that there is a ‘statistical probability’ that their prayers will be answered, since faith operates with an ‘all-or-nothing’ approach. In other words, the scientific study of prayer suggests a degree of tentativeness that contradicts the sort of faith and wholehearted commitment considered necessary to the exercise of intercessory prayer.

Brümmer (1984, pp.2–7) amplifies these and other reasons why scientific research into the efficacy of intercessory prayer may be flawed. Firstly, in an argument similar to the one employed above in the previous paragraph, the person who prays comes to that activity with a heart and mind fixed on God and committed to seeking, discovering and submitting to God’s will. However, the open-mindedness with which scientists approach their experiments precisely rules out this kind of commitment. Hypotheses being tested in a scientific experiment are always held tentatively until they are either verified or falsified, but no one ought to expect prayer to be answered on that basis, for it excludes the kind of faith that is necessary for prayer to be effective. Subjecting prayer to a scientific examination might also be considered as falling into the category of presuming upon God. Furthermore, all scientific theories are generalizations, and experiments must always be repeatable, but it is doubtful whether the conditions under which a specific prayer is made are ever repeatable. Finally, even if the efficacy of prayer appeared to be falsified by the experiment it would still be possible for believers to say that it was their fault because they were wrongly seeking to put God to the test. In short, therefore, putting prayer to the test of scientific experiment may not, in fact, prove anything.

So we still have to find answers to the three basic questions that need to be asked in connection with an understanding of what happens when we pray: (i) Why is prayer necessary? Why does a good God need to be asked before giving us what we need? (ii) How is prayer possible in the light of certain historical views about God? And (iii) how does prayer ‘work’? Is it really conceivable, given the world-view which most people hold today? Consideration of these issues will be preceded by a look at part of the biblical material relating to our theme. Out of all this, it is hoped, will emerge a fresh understanding of the nature of petitionary and intercessory prayer leading to a renewed confidence in its validity and relevance.

The purpose of this book, then, is to show that an intellectually respectable, logically coherent and theologically satisfying account of petitionary and intercessory prayer is possible in the light of certain strands of biblical teaching and of modern theological and philosophical understanding. It will be argued that prayer is a means by which the supremely personal God enlists the freely-given cooperation of human persons in the realization of the divine purpose. Through prayer, God gets certain things done in a way that may not have been fully possible had the prayer not been made. In other words, prayer must be seen as a personal partnership, not only between God and the one who prays, but also between God and the people (and situations?) prayed for. The act of intercession thus reinforces the personal nature of the universe. As an instance of faith active in love, prayer both makes certain possibilities greater and strengthens the likelihood of divine res...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Issues in Practising and Understanding Intercessory Prayer
• 2 What does the New Testament Teach us about Prayer?
• 3 Why is it Necessary to Pray?
• 4 Is God Capable of Answering Prayer?
• 5 How does God Work in the World?
• 6 How does Prayer ‘Work’?
• 7 Towards a Theology of Intercessory Prayer
• Bibliography
• Index