The objection
If Jesus is God, does God pray to himself? A praying Jesus seems instead to be a human facing another, the actual God.
1. The Son prays to the Father, not to the Son
The objection equates “God” with a single person and then holds this premise against Trinitarian doctrine. But this doctrine teaches precisely that the Son is not the Father. When Jesus addresses the Father, the same person is not addressing himself under another name. John 17,24 even traces this personal relationship to before creation.
This answers the question of the counterpart. What remains to be explained is why the divine Son asks at all. Here incarnation is decisive.
2. Incarnation encompasses a truly human life
Hebrews 2,17 says that the Son had to become like his brothers to act as a merciful and faithful high priest. This includes more than a body and visible needs. It includes human knowing, willing, trust and obedience. A Jesus whose human life were merely the facade of divine omnipotence would not be this text's high priest.
Hebrews 5,7–9 connects his prayers with tears to his obedience in suffering. Prayer is no performance intended merely to show how other humans could pray. The incarnate Son lives before the Father the human trust we owe him.
3. One agent—two natures
It would likewise be wrong to place a human petitioner beside a divine Son within Jesus. The agent is the one Son. He prays according to his human nature. The same person who is divinely omnipotent simultaneously lives a truly human life whose powers are created and limited.
Thomas Aquinas therefore explains Christ's prayer through the distinction between divine and human will: The divine will possesses the power to realize its willing; the human will turns to God in petition.[1] Prayer no more refutes Christ's deity than does his hunger. Both attest the reality of his assumed humanity.
4. Prayer belongs to our salvation
In John 17 Jesus does not ask like an alien mediator who first has to make an unwilling God friendly. The Father sent him and loves his own; the Son fulfills this shared saving will. In Hebrews 7,25 his priestly ministry continues in intercession for believers.
Precisely for this reason, the praying Jesus is no embarrassing special case for the Christian understanding of God. He shows that God does more than give us an external commission. The eternal Son has become our brother and high priest. The follow-up question is not: Why does a god pray at all? More precisely it is: How could the Son assume our real humanity without also living its trusting turning toward the Father?
Biblical texts in context
Sources and further study
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiaeIII, q. 21, a. 1: Christ's prayer arising from his human nature and human will.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiaeIII, q. 18, a. 1: full divine and full human will in the one Christ.