John C. Peckham’s Why We Pray addresses questions that are simultaneously biblical, theological, pastoral and – for the Christian – existential: How does God relate to our prayers? Why do some prayers go unanswered? Does prayer to an omniscient and omnipotent God genuinely accomplish anything? Foregrounding a libertarian conception of human free will, Peckham, who is the professor of Theology and Christian Philosophy at the Seventh-day Adventist Seminary of Andrews University, offers a cosmic conflict framework in which God adopts certain ‘rules of engagement’ in his battle with Satan. God is morally prevented by these rules from accomplishing certain good things that he otherwise desires, and petitionary prayer opens up for God new avenues of permissible action. With this paradigm, Peckham charts a way towards answers regarding why God may not do or give what a seemingly good and desirable prayer requests and how it is that petitionary prayer truly influences God and effects real change.
Chapter 1 introduces two problems of petitionary prayer that the remainder of the book explores, both of which concern the relation of an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God to human requests. The problem of ‘seemingly unanswered prayer’ (p. 3) focuses on why this God sometimes does not respond to ostensibly good prayers in the ways petitioners expect. What Peckham calls the classical problem of petitionary prayer asks how this God can be influenced by prayer to bring about a good that, in the absence of such prayer, he would not have. Chapter 2 outlines the doctrine of God undergirding Peckham’s theology of prayer. In contrast to the immutable and impassible God of classical theism, Peckham endorses a covenantal theism in which God ‘freely commits himself to back-and-forth relationship with creatures’ (p. 36) and meaningfully responds to prayer by ‘often changing his course of action in direct response to human petitions’ (p. 35). Chapter 3 surveys the Lord’s Prayer and introduces two concepts integral to Peckham’s larger proposal: the distinction between God’s ideal will (what he prefers but is unactualised due to creaturely freedom) and God’s remedial will (what he plans in response to creaturely freedom), and the cosmic conflict – an ongoing, epistemic conflict between God and demonic powers over the character of God – a framework that, it should be noted, is consistent with the eighth Fundamental Belief of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Chapter 4 advances the claim that in this cosmic conflict, God has agreed to operate according to certain ‘rules of engagement, … which morally limit God’s action’ (p. 80), rules that temporarily afford a measure of authority and jurisdiction to demonic powers. Addressing the classical problem of petitionary prayer, Peckham posits that petitions neither inform nor persuade God but rather ‘might grant God increased jurisdiction to intervene in ways that otherwise would not be morally available to him within the rules of engagement’ (p. 91). Chapter 5 turns to the problem of seemingly unanswered prayer, positing that while effective prayer amid the cosmic conflict will be righteous, repentant, faithful, unselfish, persevering and submissive, God may yet be unable to answer a prayer that meets all of these conditions because it would 1) result in worse outcomes, 2) impinge upon creaturely freedom or 3) require breaking the rules of engagement. These three possibilities emerge again in chapter 6 as potential reasons why God may remain apparently hidden in response to prayer, and Peckham advocates that petitions for justice, laments over injustice and protests against demonic powers are appropriate modes of prayer as Christians await God’s eschatological victory in the cosmic conflict.
A theology of prayer is a subsidiary doctrinal construction, one that emerges from and has its potential contours delimited by more basic commitments such as theology proper, anthropology and hamartiology. Disagreements over matters related to the doctrines of God, humanity and the effects of sin will, therefore, invariably yield disagreements in a downstream theology of prayer, and in the exegesis and synthesis of relevant biblical texts by which such a theology is supported. Peckham is to be commended for clearly articulating his trajectory-setting positions on covenantal theism and the nature of creaturely free will, tenets that legitimate the theological moves necessary for his proposal on prayer. The result of his scriptural engagement and theological reasoning is a logically coherent framework for answering the two problems of petitionary prayer.
The plausibility of Peckham’s conclusions, however, depends to a considerable degree on the plausibility of his theological and anthropological foundations. Classical theists are likely to find Peckham’s readings of the Bible’s statements about God’s relationship to human prayer unpersuasive, and those unconvinced that Scripture teaches that God is constrained by a commitment to libertarian human freedom will almost certainly object to the lengths to which Peckham must go to develop a system in which prayer can be effective without God ever impinging upon creaturely free will so conceived. For readers like myself, who count themselves in both camps, the reliance of this paradigm upon alleged ‘rules of engagement’ and conjectures over ‘trigger clauses’ (p. 89), by which prayer activates new options for God that he was previously morally prevented from exercising, may generate the distinct sense that the God of Why We Pray is unfamiliar: a prisoner of hypothetical, and yet underdetermined, rules external to himself rather than the God who acts more trustworthily than our prayers could ever give permission, according to his character and good pleasure. From this perspective, Peckham’s proposal is simply too speculative to be considered credible.
Foundational theological concerns aside, however, Peckham is undeniably correct in asserting that ‘before we can address the problems of petitionary prayer … we must first address the prior question, “Who is the God to whom we pray?”’ (p. 22).
