Prayer, Divine Action, and Creation

…This idea of a divine foreknowledge that is complete and integrates every part of reality in light of every other part, and all in light of who God is, also provides an answer to the objection that God cannot answer our prayers without “intervening” in the world at the present moment and breaking the laws of physics so that our prayers are answered. This need not be true. Rather, if God foreknows our prayers as well as his answers from eternity past, he can build his answers into the creation of the world. He can structure the initial physical conditions of the universe at the Big Bang such that a causal “web” is begun that will end in our answered prayers. God can answer us here and now by acting at the foundation of the world (see “Theology, Causation, and Quantum Mechanics”). This is not to say that this world is deterministic and that there is no room for God to “intervene” here and now. God certainly may do that, but he need not act only in that way – he is a much bigger God, and his sovereignty over his creation is probably more extensive than we realize. Everything that happens in the world was in part set by God at creation…