On Retroactive Prayer

God, prayer, and mystery:

As someone who has long loved, studied and taught theology and philosophy, I at least find interesting the sorts of things I will discuss here. But some folks at least might be a bit puzzled by my title. We all know what prayer is, I assume. But what is retroactive prayer?

Well, the term itself is easy enough to define. One definition says this: “taking effect from a date in the past”. Another says, “extending in scope or effect to a prior time or to conditions that existed or originated in the past”. The way I am using the phrase here is this: can – or should – we pray for past events, for those things which have already occurred?

If it were possible to do so, one could imagine praying for so many different things:
-Lord, please allow Hitler to never have been born.
-God, could you please have prevented the Civil War from occurring.
-Jesus, help me to have better prepared for that test I failed last year.
-Lord help my team win the 1998 Superbowl.

You get my drift. But the question is, are such prayers nonsensical and meaningless? ‘What is past is past,’ one can rightly argue. But other believers might want to say that God is God, so he can do anything. As to the latter proposition, well, not quite. There are many things God cannot do, such as lie, deny himself, or do that which is logically impossible. But see much more detail on that here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2017/01/15/can-god-anything/

However, another matter that arises here is how God relates to time – and to us. Most theologians will argue that God created both time and space, so God transcends both things. And yet we know that the eternal God is fully capable of interacting and getting involved with both time and space. The Incarnation is a primary example of this.

But how do we understand God in this regard? What does it mean to say that he is eternal or everlasting? Is he outside of time, is he in an ‘eternal now,’ or some other option? All these issues and much more have been discussed by philosophers, theologians and philosophers of religion for many centuries now. See my recommended reading list on this below.

Case in point

The reason I speak to all this now has to do with a practical and spiritual consideration. Let me explain. Several years ago I learned of one great suffering saint in the US and his battle with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. I refer to John Paine.

A video had been made about him and was quite moving. In it he shared his powerful testimony, even though he was in so much pain and suffering. Thankfully he had a great Christian family who supported him throughout all this. I wrote up his story here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/09/15/pain-gain-and-christ/

I was interested in his case for a number of reasons, including the fact that my own wife struggled with cancer, including in her brain, and I knew of some great champs here in Australia who were also dealing with this. I also learned that he had told his story in a book: The Luckiest Man: How a Seventeen-Year Battle with ALS Led Me to Intimacy with God (Thomas Nelson, 2018).

I ordered it back then, hoping to write more about his story. But for some reason I was never able to secure a copy. But here is the thing: ever since I learned about him and his plight, I have been praying for him on a daily basis. He and some of the others I referred to have been on my regular prayer list.

As I would pray for him each night, I would often wonder how he was getting on. So today I finally got around to looking him up. After a quick online search, I learned that he had in fact passed away mid-May, 2021! I had found this brief mention on his Facebook site. It said this:

John R. Paine

15 May 2021

I want everyone to know that John Paine went home to be with his Savior and Lord on Wednesday morning. We are so grateful for the love poured out on our family!

-The Paine Family

So he had died on May 12, 2021. But then some obvious questions arose: Were my prayers wasted then? Was it of no avail for me to have been asking God all along to give him grace and strength and comfort, even though he had been dead for a while now?

Good questions. But I thought to myself, ‘No, at the very least I was also praying for his family. I had been asking God to comfort and uplift them as well during this difficult time.’ So my prayers were certainly of use to his family members and loved ones.

Again, the issues of God and his relationship to time arise in situations like his. If God is above time, and is aware of all events in time, past, present and future, then how do our particular prayers that ARE rooted in a particular moment in time work with God, in terms of him hearing and answering them?

Were my prayers of the past year or two for John heard by God in eternity past, or in some other fashion? Even though my prayer took place AFTER John had passed away, could God still somehow hear or answer or work those prayers into his purposes – in this case for a past event? Does God respond to and answer retrospective prayers?

How does all this even work? We finite and fallen creatures cannot of course get our heads around all this. We cannot know all the answers here to these perplexing questions and conundrums. We dare not weaken in faith because such things remain as puzzling mysteries to us.

But we DO know certain biblical truths:
-Prayer is important
-God commands us to pray
-He answers prayer
-His answers can be ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘wait’
-What we do in love and faith for him will not be wasted

Yes, we should seek to pray wisely and in line with the will of God. One might argue that I was not praying wisely here. I clearly was praying in ignorance. I assumed he was still alive, and I prayed accordingly. But I had kept wondering how he was doing, so it took me a while to do what I should have done earlier on: try to ascertain his present condition.

So for this whole time of praying for him on a daily basis, perhaps much of that prayer may not have been relevant or appropriate or in line with the will of God. Maybe. As I say, I will not think for a moment that these prayers were all futile or wasted. As mentioned, at least his family would have received some of the benefits of my prayers.

I guess however that when I go through my mental list of the many folks to pray for tonight, I will not be praying for John any longer. I still might do a few prayers for his remaining loved ones – even four years on from his passing.

Like ants wondering what we humans are on about, we might be in the same place in regard to God. There is so much mystery. There is so much we do not know. There are so many unanswered questions. There is so much wonder and so much to marvel at.

We serve a mighty God, a marvellous God, and a mind-blowing God. Just this morning I again read this from Psalm 36:4-9:

Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens,
    your faithfulness to the skies.
Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,
    your justice like the great deep.
    You, Lord, preserve both people and animals.
How priceless is your unfailing love, O God!
    People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house;
    you give them drink from your river of delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
    in your light we see light.

Even though we might have a million questions, we can still fully trust and follow our Lord. God has revealed enough about himself and his purposes to enable us to have full confidence in who he is and what he is seeking to do on planet earth. That should be sufficient for all of his children.

For further reading

For those who are interested in such topics, there are plenty of important titles out there worth exploring. Here is a small sampling of some of the better ones from a more scholarly and academic perspective, broken down into two main sections:

God and time

Beilby, James, ed., Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views. IVP, 2001.
Craig, William Lane, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom. Wipf and Stock, 1987, 2000.
Craig, William Lane, Time and Eternity. Crossway Books, 2001.
Cullman, Oscar, Christ and Time. SCM, 1962.
Deweese, Garrett, God and the Nature of Time. Ashgate Publishing, 2004.
Ganssle, Gregory, ed., God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature. Oxford University Press, 2002.
Ganssle, Gregory, ed., God and Time: Four Views. IVP, 2001.
Hasker, William, God, Time and Knowledge. Cornell University Press, 1989.
Helm, Paul, Eternal God. Clarendon Press, 1988.
Padgett, Alan, God, Eternity and the Nature of Time. Palgrave Macmillan: 1992.
Picirilli, Robert, God in Eternity and Time: A New Case for Human Freedom. B&H, 2022.
Pike, Nelson, God and Timelessness. Schocken Books, 1970.
Roy, Steven, How Much Does God Foreknow? IVP, 2006.
Tapp, Christian and Edmund Runggaldier, eds., God, Eternity, and Time. Ashgate, 2011.

God – Philosophical discussions

Craig, William Lane , Systematic Philosophical Theology, Vol. 1: Prolegomena, On Scripture, On Faith. Wiley-Blackwell, 2025.
Craig, William Lane , Systematic Philosophical Theology, Vol. 2a: On God: Attributes of God. Wiley-Blackwell, 2025.
Davis, Stephen, God, Reason and Theistic Proofs. Edinburgh University Press, 1997.
Davis, Stephen, Logic and the Nature of God. Eerdmans, 1983.
Dolezal, James, God Without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness. Pickwick, 2011.
Ganssle, Gregory, ed., Philosophical Essays on Divine Causation. Routledge, 2021.
Huffman, Douglas and Eric Johnson, eds., God Under Fire. Zondervan, 2002.
Kenny, Anthony, The God of the Philosophers. Oxford University Press, 1979.
Morris, Thomas, The Concept of God. Oxford University Press, 1987.
Morris, Thomas, The Logic of God Incarnate. Cornell University Press, 1986.
Morris, Thomas, Our Idea of God. IVP, 1991.
Nash, Ronald, The Concept of God. Academie Books, 1983.
Plantinga, Alvin, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God. Cornell University Press, 1990.
Richards, Jay Wesley, The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Simplicity and Immutability. IVP, 2003.
Swinburne, Richard, The Coherence of Theism. Oxford University Press, 1977.
Vardy, Peter, The Puzzle of God. Fount, 1990, 1999.
Ward, Keith, God and the Philosophers. Fortress Press, 2009.
Wierenga, Edward, The Nature of God. Cornell University Press, 1989.

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