Part III, Chapter XXXVI, 2

When prophecy means prediction, or the foretelling of future contingencies, prophets include not only those who spoke on God's behalf and foretold to others what God had foretold to them, but also all the impostors who pretend, through the help of familiar spirits or through superstitious divination of past events from false causes, to foretell similar events to come. As I have already explained in the 12. chapter of this discourse, there are many kinds of these impostors. Among ordinary people, one chance event that can be twisted to suit their purpose gains them a greater reputation for prophecy than countless failures can take away. Prophecy is not an art, nor, when understood as prediction, a constant vocation; it is an extraordinary and temporary employment from God, most often of good people but sometimes also of the wicked. The woman of Endor, who is said to have had a familiar spirit and thereby to have raised a phantom of Samuel and foretold Saul's death, was not for that reason a prophetess. She had no knowledge by which she could raise such a phantom, nor does it appear that God commanded it to be raised; he merely directed her imposture to become a means of Saul's fear and discouragement, and consequently of the defeat in which he fell. As for incoherent speech, the Gentiles took it to be one kind of prophecy because the prophets of their oracles, intoxicated by a spirit or vapor from the cave of the Pythian oracle at Delphi, were for a time truly mad and spoke like madmen. Their unconnected words could be made to fit any event, in the same way that all bodies are said to be made from materia prima. I find it understood thus in Scripture as well (1 Sam. 18. 10.): “And the evil spirit came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the middle of the house.”

Although prophet has so many meanings in Scripture, it most frequently denotes someone to whom God speaks immediately, telling the prophet what to say on his behalf to another person or to the people. This raises a question: in what manner does God speak to such a prophet? Can God properly be said to have a voice and language, some may ask, when he cannot properly be said to have a tongue or other organs like a human being? The prophet David reasons thus: “Shall he who made the eye not see? or he who made the ear not hear?” But this may be said not, as is commonly supposed, to signify God's nature, but to signify our intention to honor him. Seeing and hearing are honorable attributes and may be given to God to express his almighty power so far as our understanding can conceive it. If the statement were taken in its strict and proper sense, one could also argue from his creation of every part of the human body that he put those parts to the same uses we do—many of which are so unbecoming that ascribing them to him would be the greatest insult in the world. We should therefore understand God's speaking immediately to people as whatever way God makes his will known to them. The ways he does this are many and must be sought only in Holy Scripture. Although it is often said there that God spoke to one person or another without specifying the manner, many other passages do tell of the signs by which people recognized his presence and command; from these we may understand how he spoke to many of the rest.

The manner in which God spoke to Adam, Eve, Cain, and Noah is not stated, nor is the manner in which he spoke to Abraham before Abraham left his own country for Sichem in the land of Canaan. Then (Gen. 12.7.) God is said to have appeared to him. One way, then, in which God made his presence known was by apparition or vision. Again (Gen. 15.1.), the Word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision: something appeared as a sign of God's presence, like his messenger, to speak to him. Again, the Lord appeared to Abraham (Gen. 18. 1.) in the apparition of three angels; to Abimelech (Gen. 20. 3.) in a dream; to Lot (Gen. 19. 1.) through the apparition of two angels; to Hagar (Gen. 21. 17.) through the apparition of one angel; and again to Abraham (Gen. 22. 11.) through the apparition of a voice from heaven. He appeared (Gen. 26. 24.) to Isaac at night, that is, in sleep or in a dream; to Jacob (Gen. 18. 12.) in a dream—that is, as the text says, “Jacob dreamed that he saw a ladder, etc.”—and (Gen. 32. 1.) in a vision of angels; and to Moses (Exod. 3.2.) in the apparition of a flame of fire in the midst of a bush. After Moses, whenever the manner in which God spoke immediately to a person in the Old Testament is specified, he always spoke by vision or dream: to Gideon, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the rest of the prophets. He often did the same in the New Testament: to Joseph, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John the Evangelist in the Apocalypse.

Only to Moses did he speak in a more extraordinary manner on Mount Sinai and in the Tabernacle, and to the High Priest in the Tabernacle and in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple. But Moses, and the High Priests after him, were prophets of higher standing and greater favor with God. God himself declares expressly that he spoke to other prophets in dreams and visions, but to his servant Moses as a man speaks to his friend. These are his words (Numb. 12. 6,7,8.): “If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all my house; with him I will speak mouth to mouth, plainly, not in dark sayings; and he shall behold the likeness of the Lord.” And (Exod. 33. 11.), “The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” Yet even God's speech to Moses was mediated by an angel or angels, as is expressly shown in Acts 7. ver. 35. and 53. and Gal. 3. 19.; therefore it was a vision, though a clearer one than those given to other prophets. Correspondingly, when God says (Deut. 13. 1.), “If there arises among you a prophet, or dreamer of dreams,” the latter expression merely interprets the former. And (Joel 2. 28.), “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions”: here again prophecy is explained through dreams and visions. Likewise God spoke to Solomon in promising him wisdom, riches, and honor; for the text says (1 Kings 3. 15.), “And Solomon awoke, and behold it was a dream.” Thus, in general, the extraordinary prophets of the Old Testament learned of the Word of God only from their dreams or visions: the images they experienced in sleep or ecstasy. In every true prophet these images were supernatural; in false prophets they were either natural or fabricated.

These same prophets were nevertheless said to speak by the Spirit; as (Zach. 7. 12.), where the prophet says of the Jews, “They made their hearts hard as adamant, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the Lord of Hosts sent in his Spirit by the former prophets.” Clearly speaking by the Spirit, or inspiration, was not a particular way in which God spoke distinct from vision, when those said to speak by the Spirit were extraordinary prophets who required a particular commission—or, equivalently, a new dream or vision—for every new message.

To Prophets of Perpetual Calling, and Supreme, God Spoke in the Old Testament from the Mercy Seat, in a Manner Not Explained in Scripture. Of those who were prophets by a perpetual calling in the Old Testament, some were supreme and some subordinate. First Moses was supreme, and after him each High Priest in his own time, as long as the priesthood was royal. After the Jewish people rejected God's reign over them, those kings who submitted to God's government were also his chief prophets, and the High Priest's office became ministerial. When God was to be consulted, the priests put on their sacred vestments and inquired of the Lord as the king commanded them, and were removed from office when the king thought fit. For King Saul (1 Sam. 13. 9.) ordered the burnt offering to be brought, and (1 Sam. 14. 18.) ordered the priest to bring the Ark near him, and then (ver. 19.) to leave it alone because he saw an advantage over his enemies. In the same chapter Saul seeks God's counsel. Likewise King David, after his anointing but before he possessed the Kingdom, is said to “inquire of the Lord” (1 Sam. 23. 2.) whether he should fight the Philistines at Keilah; and (verse 10.) David commands the priest to bring him the ephod to inquire whether he should remain in Keilah. And King Solomon (1 Kings 2. 27.) took the priesthood from Abiathar and gave it (verse 35.) to Zadoc. Therefore Moses, the High Priests, and the pious kings who inquired of God on all extraordinary occasions how they should act or what the outcome would be, were all Sovereign Prophets. But the manner in which God spoke to them is not clear. To say that when Moses went up to God on Mount Sinai he had a dream or vision such as other prophets had contradicts the distinction God made between Moses and other prophets in Numb. 12. 6,7,8. To say God spoke or appeared as he is in his own nature is to deny his infinity, invisibility, and incomprehensibility. To say he spoke through inspiration or the infusion of the Holy Spirit, meaning by Holy Spirit the Deity, is to make Moses equal to Christ, in whom alone, as St. Paul says (Col. 2.9.), the Godhead dwells bodily. Finally, to say he spoke through the Holy Spirit understood as the graces or gifts of the Holy Spirit is to attribute nothing supernatural to him. For God disposes people toward piety, justice, mercy, truth, faith, and every sort of moral and intellectual virtue through instruction, example, and various natural, ordinary occasions.

And just as these ways cannot be applied to God's speech to Moses on Mount Sinai, neither can they be applied to his speech to the High Priests from the Mercy Seat. Therefore the manner in which God spoke to those Sovereign Prophets of the Old Testament whose office was to consult him is unintelligible. In the time of the New Testament there was no Sovereign Prophet but our Savior, who was both the God who spoke and the prophet to whom he spoke.

When “prophecy” means predicting future events that may or may not happen, prophets include more than God’s spokespeople who tell others what God foretold to them. They also include impostors who claim that familiar spirits help them predict the future, or who use superstitious methods to infer future events from past ones while misunderstanding their causes. As I explained in chapter 12 of this work, there are many kinds of these impostors. Among ordinary people, a single chance event that can be forced to fit their prediction may win them a reputation as prophets that countless failures cannot destroy. Prophecy is not an art. Nor, when it means prediction, is it a permanent calling. It is an exceptional, temporary task given by God, usually to good people but sometimes to wicked ones. The woman of Endor was said to have a familiar spirit, to have raised an image of Samuel with its help, and to have foretold Saul’s death. That did not make her a prophetess. She had no knowledge that would enable her to raise such an image, and nothing shows that God ordered her to raise it. Rather, God used her deception to frighten and discourage Saul, contributing to the defeat in which he died. Pagans also regarded confused speech as a kind of prophecy. The prophets of their oracles were intoxicated by a spirit or vapor from the cave of the Pythian oracle at Delphi. For a time they truly lost their reason and spoke like mad people. Their disconnected words could be made to fit any event, just as people claim that any body can be made from primal matter. Scripture uses “prophecy” in this sense too, in 1 Sam. 18. 10.: “An evil spirit came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the middle of the house.”

Although “prophet” has all these meanings in Scripture, it most often means someone to whom God speaks directly, giving that prophet a message for another person or for the people. That raises the question of how God speaks to such a prophet. Some may ask how God can literally have a voice and language if he cannot literally have a tongue or other organs like a human being. The prophet David argues, “Should he who made the eye not see? Or he who made the ear not hear?” But perhaps this is said not to describe God’s nature, as people usually suppose, but to express our wish to honor him. Seeing and hearing are honorable qualities. We may attribute them to God to convey his almighty power as far as we are able to understand it. But if David’s argument were meant literally, we could also argue that God uses every part of the human body as we do because he made every part of it. Many such uses would be so indecent that attributing them to him would be the greatest insult imaginable. So when God is said to speak directly to people, we should understand that he makes them know his will in some way, whatever that way may be. There are many ways he does this, and we must look for them only in Holy Scripture. Scripture often says that God spoke to someone without telling us how. But it also often gives the signs by which people could recognize his presence and command. Those signs can help us understand how he spoke in many of the other cases.

Scripture does not say how God spoke to Adam, Eve, Cain, or Noah. Nor does it say how he spoke to Abraham before Abraham left his own country for Shechem in Canaan. There, in Gen. 12.7., God is said to have appeared to him. An appearance or vision, then, is one way God made his presence known. Again, Gen. 15.1. says the Word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. Something appeared as a sign of God’s presence and spoke to him as God’s messenger. God appeared to Abraham again as three angels (Gen. 18. 1.). He appeared to Abimelech in a dream (Gen. 20. 3.), to Lot as two angels (Gen. 19. 1.), and to Hagar as one angel (Gen. 21. 17.). He appeared to Abraham again as a voice from heaven (Gen. 22. 11.). He appeared to Isaac at night (Gen. 26. 24.), that is, in his sleep or in a dream. He appeared to Jacob in a dream (Gen. 18. 12.): as the text says, “Jacob dreamed that he saw a ladder, etc.” He also appeared to Jacob in a vision of angels (Gen. 32. 1.). He appeared to Moses as a flame of fire in a bush (Exod. 3.2.). After Moses, whenever the Old Testament explains how God spoke directly to someone, he always spoke in a vision or a dream. This was so with Gideon, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the other prophets. It often happened in the New Testament too, with Joseph, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John the Evangelist in the Apocalypse.

God spoke in a more extraordinary manner only to Moses on Mount Sinai and in the Tabernacle, and to the High Priest in the Tabernacle and in the Temple’s Holy of Holies. Moses and, after him, the High Priests were prophets of higher standing and more highly favored by God. God himself expressly says that he spoke to other prophets in dreams and visions, but spoke to his servant Moses as a man speaks to a friend. In Numb. 12. 6,7,8. he says: “If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision and speak to him in a dream. My servant Moses is different. He is faithful in all my house. I will speak with him mouth to mouth, clearly, not in obscure sayings, and he shall see the likeness of the Lord.” Exod. 33. 11. says, “The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” Even so, God’s speech to Moses was mediated by an angel or angels, as Acts 7. ver. 35. and 53. and Gal. 3. 19. expressly show. It was therefore a vision, though clearer than the visions given to other prophets. In line with this, when God says in Deut. 13. 1., “If a prophet or dreamer of dreams arises among you,” the second term explains the first. Likewise, Joel 2. 28. says, “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.” Again, dreams and visions explain prophecy. God also spoke in this way to Solomon when promising him wisdom, riches, and honor. The text says (1 Kings 3. 15.), “Solomon awoke, and saw that it was a dream.” In general, then, extraordinary Old Testament prophets learned the Word of God from dreams or visions: images they experienced while asleep or in a trance. In every true prophet those images were supernatural. In false prophets they were either natural or invented.

Yet these same prophets were also said to speak by the Spirit. In Zach. 7. 12. the prophet says of the Jews, “They made their hearts hard as diamond, so they would not hear the law and the words that the Lord of Hosts sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets.” This shows that, for extraordinary prophets who needed a separate commission for each new message—that is, a new dream or vision—speaking by the Spirit, or inspiration, was not a different way for God to speak from speaking by a vision.

To prophets with a permanent calling who held the highest authority, God spoke in the Old Testament from the Mercy Seat, in a way Scripture does not explain. Of the Old Testament prophets with a permanent calling, some had supreme authority and some were subordinate. Moses was the first supreme prophet. After him, each High Priest in turn held that position for as long as the priesthood held royal authority. Once the Jews had rejected God as their ruler, kings who submitted to God’s government became his chief prophets too, and the High Priest’s role became one of service. When they needed to ask God a question, the priests put on their holy garments and asked the Lord at the king’s command. The king could remove them from office when he saw fit. King Saul ordered that a burnt offering be brought (1 Sam. 13. 9.). He ordered the priest to bring the Ark near him (1 Sam. 14. 18.), then told him to stop (ver. 19.) when he saw an opportunity to attack his enemies. Saul also asked God for advice in the same chapter. Likewise, after being anointed but before taking possession of the Kingdom, King David “asked the Lord” (1 Sam. 23. 2.) whether he should fight the Philistines at Keilah. David then ordered the priest to bring the ephod (verse 10.) so he could ask whether he should stay in Keilah. King Solomon removed Abiathar from the priesthood (1 Kings 2. 27.) and appointed Zadok instead (verse 35.). Moses, the High Priests, and the godly kings were therefore all sovereign prophets, since they asked God how to act or what would happen whenever an exceptional occasion arose. But it is not clear how God spoke to them. To say that Moses had an ordinary prophet’s dream or vision when he went up to God on Mount Sinai contradicts God’s distinction between Moses and the other prophets in Numb. 12. 6,7,8. To say that God spoke or appeared as he is in his own nature denies that he is infinite, invisible, and beyond our understanding. To say that he spoke by inspiration or by infusing the Holy Spirit, when “Holy Spirit” means God himself, would make Moses equal to Christ. Only in Christ does the Godhead dwell bodily, as St. Paul says in Col. 2.9. Finally, to say that God spoke through the Holy Spirit when that means the Spirit’s gifts or graces would attribute nothing supernatural to Moses. For God leads people toward piety, justice, mercy, truth, faith, and every moral and intellectual virtue by teaching, example, and various natural, ordinary circumstances.

Just as none of these accounts explains how God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, none explains how he spoke to the High Priests from the Mercy Seat. We therefore cannot understand how God spoke to those sovereign prophets of the Old Testament whose duty was to ask him questions. In the New Testament there was no sovereign prophet except our Savior, who was both the God who spoke and the prophet to whom he spoke.