Jamie (who seems to be a conduit for lots of blogging lately) posted something yesterday that caught my attention. I have several friends who profess to be Calvinists, and so I have an honest question for you: How can you pray for the salvation of the lost? I'm sure you have an answer, and I think I've heard some, but I'm asking for some good, intellectually-honest reasoning.
I have some questions to ask:
1. If God has chosen whom he has chosen, why would my prayers make any difference? Couldn't I pray for the next billion years for Essau, yet God would still hate him?
2. Is it just an act of obedience as a Christian? If this is the case, am I really praying for that other person or for myself? What I mean by this is that if my prayers do not affect the outcome, and they are only an act of obedience on my part, then I am praying for my benefit, not theirs.
3. If my prayers do somehow sway God in his choosing, is he sovereign? To give man any credit for the working of God is to take a measure of credit away from God, and doesn't this negate the doctrine of Calvinism (maybe it doesn't....I really don't know)?
My past dogmatism in almost all areas has suffered a violent death, and so I find myself somewhere in a postmodern-middle ground on most issues, including Calvinism (I know, you'll say that's not possible....sue me). I wrestle with prayer as it is, but it seems to me that a professed Calvinist would run into some of these problems.
So, Calvinists, Unite!!! Let me know.
Hola.. check my comment on the "I give up" post. Moore to come.. :)
Back to teaching...
Great post. There are a handful of questions that every believer has when confronted with Calvinism, specifically the point of unconditional election. Your post brings up one of the most common, overshadowed only by "why then should we share the gospel?"
The quick answer to both of these questions would be "because God commands that we do so." That alone should be sufficient. But when dealing with our own motivation to pray there is more that can be said. But I must defer to men wiser than myself for this particular issue.
John Piper, Arthur Pink and R.C. Sproul all deal with this topic (separately) to the same conclusion. They claim (and I obviously agree with them or I would not be trumpeting their argument) that God has ordained the salvation of men THROUGH the prayers of the Godly. That means that God will SURELY save his chosen, but only when his people pray for that end.
This argument makes sense if you follow Paul's argument for missions in Romans 10 right after he gives his theology for unconditional election in Romans 9. His teaching in chapter 9 concerning Jacob and Esau says "before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad--in order that God's purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls--she was told, 'The older will serve the younger.' Just as it is written: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.'"
Paul then is concerned with believers SENDING the very gospel he defends in 10:14. "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!'"
Both God's foreordination and man's responsibility are taught. Both must work for man to be saved. But only God receives credit because God ordained the salvation of man through the prayers of man.
About the only thing that is clear here is that this is officially the longest comment I have ever left.
I completely agree with Chad. Prayer is one of God's foreordained means of dispersing his grace to sinful human beings.
The clearest way I've found to explain it is this: We live in a world in which all events are determined by other events. Most major events are the direct result of a prior number of minor events. (Example: You setting your alarm clock to wake you up at 6:30 is only one of the determining factors in you waking up that early. Your waking up is also dependent on you hearing the alarm. So there are multiple events that bring about that major event, each of which is essential in order for the major event to occur.) The same is true for the dispersion of God's grace, whether it be every day grace or the grace necessary for salvation. God, then, often foreordains that prayer be one of the many minor events that leads to the dispersion of his grace.
We, as Christians, realizing that prayer is a means for the dispersion of grace, that it is commanded of us by God, and also realizing that we are completley unaware of the means/events by which God will choose to disperse his grace at any given time must pray and pray with all our might. If we don't pray, we have no reason to expect grace in any form. Because of who God is and how he has revealed himself to us in scripture we can be certain that when we pray, he hears and answers.