How Puzzles of Petitionary Prayer Solve Themselves: Divine Omnirationality, Interest-Relative Explanation, and Answered Prayer

Faith and Philosophy 37 (2):137-157 (2020)
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Abstract

Some have seen in the divine attribute of omnirationality, identified by Alexander R. Pruss, the promise of a dissolution of the usual puzzles of petitionary prayer. Scott Davison has challenged this line of thought with a series of example cases. I will argue that Davison is only partially correct, and that the reasons for this reveal an important new way to approach the puzzles of petitionary prayer. Because explanations are typically interest-relative, there is not one correct account of “answered prayer” but many, corresponding to a variety of reasons to care whether God might answer our prayers. It follows from this that the omnirationality solution can be vindicated and that puzzles of petitionary prayer that are not dissolved thereby will typically contain within themselves the seeds of their own solutions.

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Daniel Johnson
Shawnee State University

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References found in this work

The scientific image.C. Van Fraassen Bas - 1980 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Providence and the Problem of Evil.Richard Swinburne - 1998 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
God, Causality, and Petitionary Prayer.Caleb Murray Cohoe - 2014 - Faith and Philosophy 31 (1):24-45.
The Puzzle of Petitionary Prayer.Daniel Howard-Snyder & Frances Howard-Snyder - 2010 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 2 (2):43-68.

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