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Single Idea 19437

[filed under theme 29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 1. Religious Commitment / a. Religious Belief ]

Full Idea

Not only cares and labours but also prayers are useful; God having had these prayers in view before he regulated things.

Gist of Idea

Prayers are useful, because God foresaw them in his great plan

Source

Gottfried Leibniz (The Theodicy [1710], Abridge III)

Book Ref

Leibniz,Gottfried: 'Leibniz Selections', ed/tr. Wiener,Philip P. [Scribners 1951], p.514

A Reaction

Hm. I'm struggling with this one. So I can't skip prayers today, because God has foreseen them and included them in his great plan? Hard to motivate yourself, like starting a game of chess after you've already been declared the winner.

The 16 ideas from 'The Theodicy'

19437 Prayers are useful, because God foresaw them in his great plan [Leibniz]
19337 How can an all-good, wise and powerful being allow evil, sin and apparent injustice? [Leibniz]
19345 Being confident of God's goodness, we disregard the apparent local evils in the visible world [Leibniz]
19325 God is the first reason of things; our experiences are contingent, and contain no necessity [Leibniz]
19326 God must be intelligible, to select the actual world from the possibilities [Leibniz]
19327 The intelligent cause must be unique and all-perfect, to handle all the interconnected possibilities [Leibniz]
19346 Most people facing death would happily re-live a similar life, with just a bit of variety [Leibniz]
19340 Metaphysical evil is imperfection; physical evil is suffering; moral evil is sin [Leibniz]
19331 Will is an inclination to pursue something good [Leibniz]
19367 Saying we must will whatever we decide to will leads to an infinite regress [Leibniz]
19351 Perfections of soul subordinate the body, but imperfections of soul submit to the body [Leibniz]
19344 God prefers men to lions, but might not exterminate lions to save one man [Leibniz]
19335 Reasonings have a natural ordering in God's understanding, but only a temporal order in ours [Leibniz]
19330 If justice is arbitrary, or fixed but not observed, or not human justice, this undermines God [Leibniz]
19329 The laws of physics are wonderful evidence of an intelligent and free being [Leibniz]
19366 You can't assess moral actions without referring to the qualities of character that produce them [Leibniz]