Whoever vows (naw-dar') a vow (neh'-der), setting a price upon his soul to the Lord, his price, if a male from twenty to sixty years, shall be fifty didrachims of silver, sanctuary standard. And in Numbers: And the Lord spoke to Moses saying: Speak to the Children of Israel; and you shall say unto them: Man or woman, whoever vows (naw-dar') a great vow of consecration to the Lord, shall be consecrate from wine and strong drink—and so on of the so-called Nazarite; then, shortly after: and shall hallow his head in that day in which he was hallowed to the Lord for the days of the vow.
And again shortly after: This is the law for him that has vowed when he shall have fulfilled the days of his vow . . . ; and again shortly after: And after that, he that has vowed will drink wine. This is the law for him that has vowed, whoever has vowed his votive gift to the Lord, apart from what his hand may find by virtue of his vow which he has vowed according to the law of consecration. And towards the end of Numbers: And Moses spoke to the rulers of the tribes of the Children of Israel saying, This is the thing which the Lord has decreed: A man who has vowed a vow to the Lord or sworn an oath or entered a bond, on his soul shall not desecrate his word: all that has gone out of his mouth shall he do.
And if a woman has vowed a vow to the Lord or entered a bond in the house of her father in her youth, and her father has heard her vows and her bonds that she entered into against her soul, and her father has let them pass in silence, all her vows shall stand, and her bonds that she entered into against her soul shall remain: after which he lays down sundry other laws for such a woman. In this sense it is written in Proverbs: [I have a peace offering: today I pay my vows; and a foolish son is a father's shame: unhallowed are vows from a harlot's hire; and] it is a snare to a man to hallow hastily anything of his own: for after vowing comes repenting.
And in Ecclesiastes: Better not vow than vow without paying; and in the Acts of the Apostles: There are among us four men of their own accord under a vow. I thought it not out of place first to distinguish the meaning of prayer (aw-thar') in its two senses, and similarly of prayer (neh'-der), for the latter turn in addition to its common and customary general usage, is also employed, in the sense which we are accustomed to attach to vow in what is told of Hannah in the first book of Samuel: Now Eli the priest was sitting on a seat at the doorway of the temple of the Lord.
And she was in bitterness of soul and prayed (paw-lal') unto the Lord and wept sore. And she vowed (naw-dar') a vow (neh'-der) and said: O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the humiliation of your bondwoman and remember me and forget not your bondwoman and will give to your bondwoman male seed, then will I give him in gift to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head. And yet in this instance, one may, not without plausibility, with special regard to the words "she prayed (paw-lal') unto the Lord," "and she vowed a vow," Ask whether, as she has done both of two things, that is "prayed unto the Lord" "and vowed a vow," the word prayed ( paw-lal') on the one hand is not employed in our customary signification of prayer (aw-thar'), and "vowed a vow" on the other hand in the sense in which it is employed in Leviticus and Numbers.
For "I will give him in gift to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head" is strictly not a prayer but such a vow as Jephthah also vowed in the passage; and Jephthah vowed a vow to the Lord and said: If you will indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me on my return in peace from the Children of Ammon shall be the Lord's and I will offer him up as a burnt offering.
III. OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER
If then I must next, as you have urged, set forth in the first place the arguments of those who told that nothing is accomplished as a result of prayers and therefore allege that prayer is superfluous, I shall not hesitate to do that also according to my ability—the term prayer being now used in its more common and general sense. In such disrepute indeed is the view and to such a degree has it failed to obtain champions of distinction that, among those who admit a Providence and set a God over the universe, not a soul can be found who does not believe in prayer.
The opinion (sentiment) belongs either to utter atheists who deny the existence of God, or assume a God, as far as the name goes, but deprive Him of providence. Already, it must be said, the adverse inworking, with intent to wrap the most impious of opinions around the name of Christ and around the teaching of the Son of God, has made some converts on the needlessness of prayer—a sentiment which find champions in those who by every means do away with outward forms, eschewing baptism and eucharist alike, misrepresenting the Scriptures as not actually meaning this that we call prayer but as teaching something quite different from it.
Those who reject prayers, while, that is to say, setting a God over the universe and affirming Providence—for it is not my present task to consider the statements of those who by every means do away with a God or Providence—might reason as follows: God knows all things before they come to be. There is nothing that upon its entrance into existence is then first known by Him as previously unknown. What need to send up prayer to One who, even before we pray, knows what things we have need of? For the heavenly Father knows what things we have need of before we ask Him.
It is reasonable to believe that as Father and Artificer of the universe who loves all things that are and abhors nothing that He has made, quite apart from prayer He safely manages the affairs of each like a father who champions his infant children without awaiting their entreaty when they are either utterly incapable of asking or through ignorance often desirous of getting the opposite of what is to their profit and advantage. We men come further short of God even than the merest children of the intelligence of their parents. And in all likelihood the things that are to be are not only foreknown but prearranged by God, and nothing takes place contrary to His prearrangement. Were anyone to pray for sunrise he would be thought a simpleton for entreating through prayer for the occurrence of what was to take place quite apart from his prayer: In like manner a man would be a fool to believe that his prayer was responsible for the occurrence of what was to take place in any case even had he never prayed.
And again, as it is the height of madness to imagine that, because one suffers discomfort and fever under the sun at Summer Solstice, the Sun is through prayer to be transferred to the Springtime Zodiac, in order that one may have the benefit of temperate air, so it would be the height of infatuation to imagine that by reason of prayer one would not experience the misfortunes that meet the race of men by necessity. Moreover, if it be true that sinners are estranged from birth and the righteous man has been set apart from his mother's womb, and if, while as yet they are unborn and have done neither good nor evil, it is said the elder shall serve the younger, that the elective purpose of God may stand based not on works but on the Caller, it is in vain that we entreat for forgiveness of sins or to receive a spirit of strength to the end that, Christ empowering us, we may have strength for all things.
If we are sinners, we are estranged from birth: if on the other hand we were set apart from our mother's womb, the best of things will come our way even though we do not pray. It is prophesied before his birth that Jacob shall be over Esau and that his brother shall serve him: what has prayer to do with that? Of what impiety is Esau guilty that he is hated before his birth? To what purpose does Moses pray, as is found in the ninetieth psalm, if God is his refuge since before the mountains were settled and the earth and world were formed. Besides, of all that are to be saved, it is recorded in the Epistle to Ephesians that the Father elected them in Him, in Christ, before the world's foundation, that they should be holy and blameless before Him, preordaining them unto adoption as His sons through Christ.
Either, therefore, a man is elect, of the number of those who are so since before the world's foundation, and can by no means fall from his election in which case he has therefore no need of prayer; or he is not elect nor yet preordained, in which case he prays in vain, since, though he should pray ten thousand times, he will not be listened to. For whom God foreknew, them He also preordained to conformity with the image of His Son's glory; and whom He preordained, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified.
Why is Josiah distressed, or why has he anxiety as to whether or not he will be listened to in prayer, when, many generations before, he was prophesied by name and his future action not only foreknown but foretold in the hearing of many. To what purpose, too, does Judas pray with the result that even his prayer turned to sin, when from David's times it is pre-announced that he will lose his overseership, another receiving it in his stead.
It is self-evidently absurd, God being unchangeable and having pre-comprehended all things and adhering to His prearrangements, to pray in the belief that through prayer one will change His purpose, or, as though He had not already prearranged but awaited each individual's prayer, to make intercession that He may arrange what suits the supplicant by reason of his prayer, there and then appointing what He approves as reasonable though He has previously not contemplated it. At this point the propositions you formulated in your letter to me may be set down word for word thus: Firstly, if God is foreknower of the future and it must come to pass, prayer is vain. Secondly, if all things come to pass by virtue of God's will, and His decrees are fixed, and nothing that He wills can be changed, prayer is vain. Towards a solution of the difficulties which benumb the instinct of prayer, the following, as I believe, helpful considerations may be advanced.
IV. ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS: MAN'S FREEWILL AND GOD'S FOREKNOWLEDGE
Of objects that move, some have the cause of motion outside them. Such are objects which are lifeless and in passive motion simply by force of condition, and those which are moved by force of nature and of life in the same manner and not like things which move occasionally, for stones and stocks that have been quarried or cut off from growth, being in passive motion simply by force of condition, have the cause of motion outside them.
Such too are dead bodies of animals and movable parts of plants, which change position under compulsion and not as animals and plants themselves change their position but in the same manner as stones and stocks cut off from growth—although even these may be said to move in respect that, all bodies in decay being in flux, they possess the motion inherently attendant upon decay. Besides these a second class of moving objects are those which move by force of their internal nature or life, which are said by those who use terms in their stricter sense to move of themselves.
A third kind of movement is that in animals, which is termed spontaneous movement, whereas, in my opinion, the movement of rational beings is independent movement. If we withdraw from an animal spontaneous movement, it cannot be any longer conceived as even an animal; it will be like either a plant moving by mere force of nature or a stone borne along by some force external to it: Whenever an object follows its own peculiar movement, since that is what we have termed independent movement, it must needs be rational. Thinkers therefore who will have it that nothing is in our power, will necessarily assent to a most foolish statement, firstly that we are not animals, and secondly that neither are we rational beings, but that, what we are believed to do, we may be said to do by force as it were of some external cause of motion and in no sense moving ourselves.
Let anyone, moreover, with special regard to his own feelings, see whether without shame he can deny that it is himself that wills, eats, walks, gives assent to and accepts certain opinions, dissents from others as false. There are certain opinions to which a man cannot possibly assent though he puts them with innumerable refinements of argument and with plausible reasoning: and similarly it is impossible to assent to any view of human affairs in which our free will is in no sense preserved.
Who assents to the view that nothing is comprehensible, or lives as in complete suspense of judgement: Who that has received a sense perception of a domestic misdeed, forebears to reprove the servant? And who is there that does not censure a son who fails to pay the duty owed to parents, or does not blame and find fault with an adulteress as having committed a shameful act? Truth forces and compels us, in spite of innumerable refinements, to impulsive praise and blame, on the basis of our retention of free will with the responsibility in which it involves us.
If our free will is in truth preserved with innumerable inclinations towards virtue or vice, towards either duty or its opposite, its future must like other things have been known by God, before coming to pass, from the world's creation and foundation; and in all things prearranged by God in accordance with what He has seen of each act of our free wills. He has with due regard to each movement of our free wills prearranged what also is at once to occur in His providence and to take place according to the train of future events. God's foreknowledge is not the cause of all future events including those that are to have their efficient cause in our freewill guided by impulse.
Even though we should suppose God ignorant of the future, we shall not on that account be incapacitated for effecting this and willing that. Rather it ensues from His foreknowledge that our individual free wills receive adjustment to suit the universal arrangement needful for the constitution of the world. If, therefore, our individual free wills have been known by Him, and if in His providence He has on that account been careful to make due arrangement for each one, it is reasonable to believe that He has also pre-comprehended what a particular man is to pray in that faith, what his disposition, and what his desire.
That being so, in His arrangement it will accordingly have been ordained somewhat after this wise: This man I will hear for the sake of the prayer that he will pray, because he will pray wisely: but that man I will not hear, either because he will be unworthy of being heard, or because his prayer will be for things neither profitable for the suppliant to receive nor becoming me to bestow: and in the case of this prayer, of some particular person, let us say, I will not hear him, but in the case of that I will.