Providence and God's emergent will through prayer as it relates to determinism and healing

Abstract

The paper has a twofold purpose. The first is to explore: if God has settled His plans and He will do what He is going to do, then does it matter whether one prays or not? This section will also deal with the aspect of healing and prayer, specifically from a scientific perspective. The important question is: How should one treat reports of miraculous healings, and the belief that prayer can affect healing? Secondly, if prayer has any effect on what happens, then it would seem that God's plans are not fixed in the first place, and then the idea of an open-future would seem to be valid. As a result, one could no longer see the world as a mechanistic Newtonian picture. Rather, the picture portrayed would be of a world of flexibility and openness to change. The question would then be: What is the manner and scope of divine action and wherein lies the causal joint? Regarding this, areas related to determinism will be explored as determinism states that all events in the world are the result of some previous event, or events. Bringing clarity to these questions is important, as is it has a direct bearing on how one will view miracles recorded in the Scriptures, and how far one will go in trusting God to meet one's needs through prayer.