ABSTRACT

St. Paul conceives prayer as an activity of the divine in human beings, so that intercessory prayer becomes an extension of Christ's own heavenly intercession. In the course of this discussion of divine providence a number of contributions to the debate were judged to be unhelpful to the formulation of an understanding of intercessory prayer. Prayer, for H. H. Farmer, is rooted in the religious awareness of God as personal and makes possible the realization of the divine purpose through personal cooperation with God. Of course, the prayer of intercession has a higher probability of effectiveness when the person prayed for also acknowledges a personal relationship to God, since such a person is more open to receive what God wants to give. So the most fruitful framework for an understanding of prayer in relation to the providential activity of God remains that provided by the concept of double action, as first introduced by Farrer and as developed more recently by Brummer.