Thursday, January 18, 2007

A Mathematician on Prayer   [John Derbyshire]

I have been reading up Leonhard Euler, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, for a magazine piece.  (It's his tercentenary this year.)  Euler was a Calvinist in doctrine.  Here is an Euler quote on the subject of prayer.  I thought it was interesting as a way of squaring Calvinist belief in predestination with belief in the power of prayer.  (I have taken it from an essay by B.F. Finkel in the American Mathematical Monthly for December 1897, reproduced in a book titled The Genius of Euler, just published by the MAA, Ed. William Dunham.)  Here's Euler:

"I remark, first, that when God established the course of the universe, and arranged all the events which must come to pass in it, he paid attention to all the circumstances which should accompany each event; and particularly to the dispositions, to the desires, and prayers of every intelligent being; and that the arrangement of all events was disposed in perfect harmony with all these circumstances.  When, therefore, a man addresses God a prayer worthy of being heard it must not be imagined that such a prayer came not to the knowledge of God till the moment it was formed.  That prayer was already heard from all eternity; and if the Father of Mercies deemed it worthy of being answered, he arranged the world expressly in favor of that prayer, so that the accomplishment should be a consequence of the natural course of events.  It is thus that God answers the prayers of men without working a miracle." 

01/18 09:32 AMShare