In his recent book Petitionary Prayer, Scott Davison presents an epistemological challenge to petitionary prayer. He asks: If S prays for God to bring about event E, and E in fact occurs, how could one be justified in believing that E was an answer to S’s prayer? Apart from direct revelation in which God explicitly provides reasons for believing that E was an answer to prayer, Davison argues, S could not know that S’s prayer had been answered by God. Thus, the person praying should remain agnostic about answered prayers. I argue that in failing to attend to two theological resources available in the Christian tradition—the concept of spiritual senses and teachings about the relational nature of prayer—Davison’s conclusion is premature. Drawing upon recent literature on the epistemology of perception and the theology of prayer, I argue that one can be confident that God has answered one’s prayers.

在他最近的书《请愿祈祷》中，斯科特·戴维森（Scott Davison）对请愿祈祷提出了认识论的挑战。他问：如果S为上帝祈祷而促成事件E，而E确实发生了，那么如何相信E是对S祈祷的答案呢？戴维森认为，除了直接启示中上帝明确提供了相信E是祷告的答案的理由之外，S还不知道S的祷告是上帝的回答。因此，祈祷的人应该对已回答的祈祷保持不可知论。我认为，由于未能关注基督教传统中可用的两种神学资源-精神感觉的概念和关于祈祷的关系本质的教导-戴维森的结论为时过早。借鉴有关感知认识论和祈祷神学的最新文献，