In post #21 Witherington on Sovereignty I mentioned that I would be looking into the relationship between prayer and sovereignty in future posts. This is due to the fact that the two don’t seem to jive in my mind. See post #21 for more detail on what I mean. To start, I wanted to go ahead and list out some ideas I had for how I would conduct this study, like a plan of attack. If I don’t write them down, I’ll forget.
Research Biblical references:
All references to prayer
When they pray, what do they pray for?
Do they pray with a sense of inevitability?
Or a sense that things can change?
Does God ever change his mind or plan?
Is this a mere illusion in the cases where he seems to?
Examples of how a phrase such as “not my will but thine” can have a meaning only applicable to that particular situation and not as a universal principle governing the ideas of prayer and sovereignty.
References to causation whether by God or something else
Any applicable references to sovereignty
How does the word predestination relate to the word by the Biblical definition?
If predestined, does predestination apply to our final destination only or every move we make?
Be careful with words like sovereignty and predestination because of numerous and varied definitions.
When using these words, use them in the sense the person or text you’re interacting with uses them.
Determine which events are attributed to God.
Determine which events are attributed to something else.
Determine then whether these attributions are the opinion of the writer/characters in the story or God’s opinion.
How does sovereignty relate?
Sovereignty may be related when using the normal definition of sovereignty.
However, there is a distinct possibility that it is not related once we were to discover the Biblical definition of sovereignty.
Technorati Tags: Prayer, Sovereignty, Predestination
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