NOTES for Jam 5:17

Recalling Elijah's prayer in connection with confessing sins to one another, James points to the simple fact, forgotten by many, that God not only hears a person but also comes to meet him, in the case, of course, when two wills, God's and the human will, coincide. Outwardly this looks like a miracle, but in reality we should speak here of divine-human co-creation, without which neither the world nor human life is conceivable.

After all, the Bible is not accidentally unfamiliar with such a concept, so widespread everywhere in antiquity, as fate, destiny, or fatality: God's will and fatalism are incompatible; where one exists, there is no place for the other. It would seem that there is an external reality in relation to the human person that is often partly or completely beyond his control, yet in fact reality is not so simple. Indeed, today even scientists are increasingly inclined to think that any existing reality can exist only as observed reality.

Without an observer it ceases to exist. Such a view requires the postulation of an absolute Observer for the existence of the universe, and here we have another version of the cosmological proof of God's existence. What matters, however, is that the human person is also an observer, creating his own reality, which is real to the extent that the being of the person creating it is spiritually whole. Only God can create absolute reality; any other will by definition be relative. But what will happen if two wills, God's and a human will, begin to create one reality?

In such a reality, everything possible to God will open to the human person and include the person with his freedom to the extent that such inclusion is possible for him. The person finds himself in a world of miracles, in a world of higher reality created by God, but in the creation of which his human will also participates, for example through that same prayer. Within and in the context of such a reality, called the Kingdom of God, Christ acts, and every one of His followers is also called to act there, if he is a Christian not only in name.