People have understood and defined the Christian Prophetic Tradition in many ways during the history of the Church. In short, several sub-traditions have developed within the much larger and more epic Christian Prophetic Tradition, each with its own unique tendencies, followers, and disciples. Because none of these sub-traditions represents the complete picture (even though many of their proponents think they do) there is a desperate need to uncover, recover, and weave together the best of these prophetic traditions while also exposing their limitations and blind spots. So what are these sub-traditions? And how, at their most mature and wisest, are they part of the great tradition of the Christian prophetic way?
First, we have the “apocalyptic prophetic tradition.” In this realm, a prophet is defined as one who predicts the future. Those who nod to this perspective often link interpretations of the Bible to current events. Such interpretations usually point the way to the end of time, and, in its more extreme versions, to support Christian-Jewish Zionism. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, and variations of populist evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity often doff their dutiful caps to this understanding of the prophetic. Authors such as Hal Lindsay, William Goetz, Grant Jeffries, Jack Van Impe, and Tim LaHaye have cornered this lucrative market of interest. Frank Perreti’s novels and Michael O’Brien’s Children of the Last Days series and Father Elijah: An Apocalypse also tap into this perspective.
On the positive side, this tradition does try to speak to and for those who seek to understand how God is working in and through history. However, the darker side of this notion and interpretation (mainly an evangelical right of centre tradition) was soundly challenged in a book edited by Carl Amerding and Ward Gasque called Dreams, Visions and Oracles: The Layman’s Guide to Biblical Prophecy (1977). This collection of essays reflects the centrist and mainstream evangelical ethos. The main problem they see with the apocalyptic view of the prophetic is that it is often inaccurate. As history moves on, events inevitably disprove the predictions, thus discrediting the prophecies and those who gave them. History is littered with the wrecks of those who have bought into this agenda uncritically and been betrayed by it. Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements and Katz and Popkin’s Messianic Revolution: Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium also speak clearly to those who are addicted to this reductionistic and one-dimensional view of the prophetic.
The second main prophetic sub-tradition is characterized by those within charismatic and renewal movements who tend to see the prophetic mainly as personal and interpersonal words of insight or as some predicted event (and its fulfillment). The assumption is that God has spoken a direct word to the prophet for an individual, to address some situation in the life of a local congregation or to address some situation of divine significance (as defined by that particular community, of course). We can call this the “pietistic prophetic tradition.” Books such as Bruce Collins’ Prophesy or David Pytches Some Said it Thundered: A Personal Encounter with the Kansas City Prophets reflect this way of interpreting the prophetic. The problem with this “Word of the Lord” view is that it reduces the prophetic role to the personal or the interpersonal while ignoring the larger political, social, and economic questions that Jewish-Christian prophets always addressed. The pietistic tradition rarely bridges the personal and public domains in a meaningful or mature way. It appears to be open to God, but by reducing words of God merely to the personal, this sub-tradition domesticates, tames, and sanitizes the prophetic. There is no doubt that God does speak personal words, but there is much more to God’s speech and action in the world than this. Prophecy may begin in the prayer closet, but it cannot stay there.
Adherents to the third prophetic sub-tradition see the prophetic mainly as a gift to the Church, calling her back to material, formal, and spiritual unity. This view of the prophetic was articulated in its finest form by J. H. Newman in his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church. Like a prophet of old, Newman called the historic Church to remember its calling, to be rooted and grounded in the Great Tradition of old, to reunite and be one as Christ is one with the Father and the Spirit. The unio mystica to which Newman was so committed can be called the “ecclesiastical prophetic tradition.” While this view appeals to the unity of the Church, its weakness is that it is soft on larger moral and political thought as the Church engages the world.
The fourth prophetic sub-tradition includes those who see the prophetic as, above all else, a call to justice, mercy, and peace within the Church and the World. This understanding of the prophetic is critical of a type and form of religion that reduces the life of faith to a highly charged circus of prayer, worship, Bible study, devotionals, and church attendance but ignores the marginalized, the poor, the unborn, refugees, single parents, militarism, multi-national corporations, environmental devastation, empires, and the structural causes of poverty in our new feudal world order. Voicing the concerns of this tradition, Bishop Dom Helder Camera once said, “When I feed the poor, I am called a saint. When I ask why the poor are poor, I am called a communist.” We can call this lineage the “political and liberationist prophetic tradition.” It is concerned with both personal and public holiness, integrity, and authenticity. The weakness of this approach is that the political can easily be taken captive by the political perspective of the left, right or centre, and, if not careful, run roughshod over the pastoral and relational aspects of the journey.
The Christian Prophetic Tradition transcends the ethical tribalism that besets the political right, left, and centre in our era of culture wars and political correctness. At any given time, a genuine prophet may appear on the political left, in the centre or on the political right. In Canada, for example, political philosopher George Grant embodied such a consistent and integrated ethical vision of faith and prophetic insight, and he spoke such a vision in a national way. Like Grant, Milton Acorn, the “People’s Poet of Canada,” spoke a prophetic vision in a poetic way to his fellow Canadians. Such a perspective will seem to be on the political left when it questions things like American imperialism, corporate capitalism, environmental devastation, and structural poverty. It will seem to be on the political right when issues like the family and the pro-life agenda are defended and the gay lifestyle questioned. We need more people of Grant and Acorn’s caliber to speak the public prophetic word to our excessively liberal time and ethos.
What then, in conclusion, is the Christian Prophetic Tradition? It is in the
meeting and merging of the four traditions described above. This can only be
understood in a meaningful and spiritually mature manner when we see the
validity and limitations of the apocalyptic, pietistic, ecclesiastical, and
political sub-traditions that have developed and how the strengths of each can
compensate for the weaknesses of the others. When this linking of arms occurs,
we have the true and authentic round dance of the Christian Prophetic
Tradition. It is to such a round dance that the Church is called.
rsd
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