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.
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