Part III, Chapter XXXVI, 3

To Prophets of Perpetual Calling, but Subordinate, God Spoke by the Spirit. For subordinate prophets with a perpetual calling, I find no passage proving that God spoke to them supernaturally, but only that he spoke in the way he naturally inclines other Christian people toward piety, belief, righteousness, and other virtues. Although this way consists in constitution, instruction, education, and the opportunities and inducements people have for Christian virtues, it is rightly attributed to the operation of the Spirit of God, or Holy Spirit (which in our language we call the Holy Ghost); for every good inclination is God's work. But these operations are not always supernatural. Therefore, when a prophet is said to speak in the Spirit, or by the Spirit of God, we should understand only that he speaks according to God's will as declared by the supreme prophet. For the most common meaning of spirit is a person's intention, mind, or disposition.

In Moses' time there were seventy men besides Moses who prophesied in the camp of the Israelites. The manner in which God spoke to them is described in Numbers 11, verse 25: “The Lord came down in a cloud, and spoke to Moses, and took of the Spirit that was upon him, and gave it to the seventy elders. And it came to pass, when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease.” This shows, first, that their prophesying to the people served and was subordinate to Moses' prophesying, since God took of Moses' Spirit to place upon them. Thus they prophesied as Moses wanted them to; otherwise they would not have been permitted to prophesy at all. For (verse 27.) a complaint against them was brought to Moses, and Joshua wanted Moses to forbid them. He did not, but told Joshua, “Do not be jealous on my behalf.” Secondly, the Spirit of God in this passage means nothing but the mind and disposition to obey and assist Moses in administering the government. For if it meant that the substantial Spirit of God, that is, the divine nature, had been breathed into them, they would have possessed it no less fully than Christ himself, in whom alone the Spirit of God dwelt bodily. It therefore means God's gift and grace, directing them to cooperate with Moses, from whom their spirit was derived. And it appears (verse 16.) that they were people Moses himself was to appoint as elders and officers of the people: “Gather to me seventy men, whom you know to be elders and officers of the people.” Here “you know” means “you appoint” or “you have appointed to such offices.” For we are told earlier (Exod. 18.) that Moses, following the advice of his father-in-law Jethro, appointed as judges and officers over the people persons who feared God; and those seventy were selected from them. By putting Moses' spirit upon them, God inclined them to help Moses administer the Kingdom. In this sense the Spirit of God is said (1 Sam. 16. 13, 14.) to have come upon David and left Saul immediately after David was anointed: God gave his graces to the man he chose to govern his people and took them from the man he rejected. The Spirit therefore means an inclination to God's service, not a supernatural revelation.

God also often spoke through the results of lots, cast under the direction of those he had placed in authority over his people. Thus we read that, through the lots Saul ordered to be drawn (1 Sam. 14. 43.), God revealed Jonathan's offense of eating a honeycomb contrary to the oath the people had taken. And (Josh. 18. 10.) God divided the land of Canaan among the Israelites through the “lots that Joshua cast before the Lord in Shiloh.” It seems that God revealed Achan's crime in the same way (Joshua 7.16., etc.). These are the ways God declared his will in the Old Testament.

He used all these ways in the New Testament as well: he spoke to the Virgin Mary through a vision of an angel; to Joseph in a dream; to Paul on the road to Damascus in a vision of our Savior; to Peter in the vision of a sheet let down from heaven containing various kinds of flesh, from clean and unclean animals, and in prison through a vision of an angel; to all the apostles and writers of the New Testament through the graces of his Spirit; and again to the apostles, when they chose Matthias to take the place of Judas Iscariot, through a lot.

Since, then, all prophecy presupposes a vision or dream (which, when natural, are the same thing), or some special gift of God so rarely seen in human beings that its appearance inspires wonder; and since both such gifts and even the most extraordinary dreams and visions may proceed from God not only through his immediate, supernatural operation but also through his natural operation and the mediation of secondary causes, reason and judgment are needed to distinguish natural from supernatural gifts and natural from supernatural visions or dreams. Consequently, people must be very circumspect and cautious about obeying anyone who claims to be a prophet and, in God's name, requires them to obey God in what he calls the path to happiness. For whoever claims to teach people the way to so great a happiness claims to govern them—that is, to rule and reign over them. As all people naturally desire such power, his claim deserves suspicion of ambition and imposture, and everyone should examine and test it before yielding obedience—unless they have already yielded it in establishing a Common-wealth, as when the prophet is the civil Sovereign or is authorized by the civil Sovereign. If everyone among the people were not allowed to examine prophets and spirits in this way, it would have been pointless to set out the marks by which each person could distinguish whom they should follow from whom they should not. Since such marks are provided (Deut. 13. 1, etc.) for recognizing a prophet, and (1 John 4.1. etc.) for recognizing a spirit; since the Old Testament contains so much prophesying and the New Testament so much preaching against prophets; and since false prophets ordinarily far outnumber true ones, everyone must beware of obeying their directions at their own peril. That there were many more false prophets than true ones appears, first, from Ahab's consultation (1 Kings 12.) of four hundred prophets, all of them false impostors except Michaiah alone. Shortly before the Captivity the prophets were generally liars. “The prophets,” says the Lord through Jerem. cha. 14. verse 14., “prophesy lies in my name. I did not send them, neither have I commanded them nor spoken to them; they prophesy to you a false vision, a worthless thing, and the deceit of their heart.” Accordingly, God commanded the people through the prophet Jeremiah (chap. 23. 16.) not to obey them: “Thus says the Lord of Hosts, do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you vain; they speak a vision of their own heart, and not from the mouth of the Lord.”

Since, then, in Old Testament times there were such quarrels among visionary prophets, one challenging another and asking, “When did the Spirit depart from me to go to you?” as Michaiah and the other four hundred did; since they called one another liars, as in Jerem. 14.14.; and since there are such controversies today among the spiritual prophets of the New Testament, everyone was then, and is now, obliged to use natural reason to apply to all prophecy the rules God has given us for distinguishing the true from the false. In the Old Testament one rule was that the doctrine should conform to what Moses, the Sovereign Prophet, had taught them; the other was the miraculous power to foretell what God would bring to pass, as I have already shown from Deut. 13. 1. etc. In the New Testament there was only one mark: preaching the doctrine that Jesus Is the Christ, that is, the King of the Jews promised in the Old Testament. Whoever denied that article was a false prophet, whatever miracles he seemed to work; and whoever taught it was a true prophet. For St. John (1 Epist, 4. 2, etc.), speaking expressly of the means of testing spirits to see whether they are of God, after telling his readers that false prophets would arise, says: “By this you know the Spirit of God. Every Spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God”; that is, is approved and recognized as a prophet of God—not because confessing, professing, or preaching that Jesus is the Christ makes him a godly man or one of the elect, but because it makes him an acknowledged prophet. For God sometimes speaks through prophets whose persons he has not accepted, as he did through Balaam, and as he foretold Saul's death through the witch of Endor. Again, in the next verse: “Every Spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of Christ. And this is the Spirit of Antichrist.” Thus the rule holds on both sides: whoever preaches that the Messiah has already come in the person of Jesus is a true prophet; whoever denies his coming and looks for him in a future impostor who will falsely claim that honor is a false one, and the apostle properly calls that impostor Antichrist. Everyone should therefore consider who is the Sovereign Prophet: that is, who is God's vice-regent on earth and, immediately under God, has authority to govern Christian people. They should take as their rule the doctrine he commands to be taught in God's name, and thereby examine and test the truth of any doctrines that would-be prophets advance, whether with miracles or without them. If they find the doctrines contrary to that rule, they should act as those did who came to Moses complaining that some were prophesying in the camp without an authority they could be sure of, and leave it to the Sovereign, as those people left it to Moses, to uphold or forbid the prophets as he sees cause. If he disavows them, they must no longer obey their voice; if he approves them, they must obey them as people to whom God has given a share of their Sovereign's Spirit. For when Christians do not take their Christian Sovereign to be God's prophet, they must either take their own dreams for the prophecy by which they intend to be governed, and the swelling of their own hearts for the Spirit of God; or else let themselves be led by some foreign prince, or by fellow subjects who can, through slander of the government, bewitch them into rebellion, with no miracle to confirm their calling beyond occasional extraordinary success and impunity. By this means they destroy all laws, divine and human, and reduce every order, government, and society to the first chaos of violence and civil war.

CHAPTER XXXVII. OF MIRACLES, AND THEIR USE

To prophets with a permanent but subordinate calling, God spoke by the Spirit. I find no passage proving that God spoke supernaturally to subordinate prophets with a permanent calling. He spoke to them only in the way he naturally guides all other Christian people toward piety, belief, righteousness, and other virtues. This happens through a person’s nature, teaching, education, and the opportunities and encouragements people receive to practice Christian virtues. Yet it is right to attribute it to the work of the Spirit of God, or Holy Spirit, which in our language we call the Holy Ghost. Every good inclination comes from God’s work. But that work is not always supernatural. When a prophet is said to speak in or by the Spirit of God, we should understand only that he speaks according to God’s will as declared by the supreme prophet. For the most common meaning of “spirit” is a person’s purpose, mind, or disposition.

In Moses’ time, seventy other men prophesied in the Israelite camp. Numbers 11, verse 25, explains how God spoke to them: “The Lord came down in a cloud and spoke to Moses. He took some of the Spirit that was upon him and gave it to the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied and did not stop.” First, this clearly shows that their prophecy to the people served and was subordinate to Moses’ prophecy. God took some of Moses’ Spirit to put upon them, so they prophesied as Moses wanted. Otherwise they would not have been allowed to prophesy at all. Someone complained about them to Moses (verse 27.), and Joshua wanted Moses to forbid them. Moses did not, but said to Joshua, “Do not be jealous on my behalf.” Second, in this passage the Spirit of God means only their willingness to obey and help Moses administer the government. If it meant that God’s Spirit as a substance—his divine nature—was breathed into them, then they would have received it no less than Christ himself. Yet only in Christ did the Spirit of God dwell bodily. Here it means the gift and grace of God that led them to cooperate with Moses, from whom their spirit came. Verse 16. shows that they were people Moses himself was to appoint as elders and officers of the people: “Gather for me seventy men whom you know to be elders and officers of the people.” “Whom you know” here means “whom you appoint,” or “whom you have appointed to these positions.” For we are told earlier (Exod. 18.) that Moses, following the advice of his father-in-law Jethro, appointed God-fearing judges and officers over the people. The seventy came from this group. By putting Moses’ spirit upon them, God inclined them to help him administer the Kingdom. In the same sense, the Spirit of God is said to have come upon David as soon as he was anointed and to have left Saul (1 Sam. 16. 13, 14.). God gave his graces to the man he chose to govern his people and took them from the man he rejected. “Spirit” therefore means an inclination to serve God, not any supernatural revelation.

God also often spoke through the outcome of lots, which were cast under the direction of those he had given authority over his people. The lots Saul ordered to be drawn (1 Sam. 14. 43.) revealed Jonathan’s offense: eating honeycomb against the oath taken by the people. God divided Canaan among the Israelites through “the lots Joshua cast before the Lord in Shiloh” (Josh. 18. 10.). It seems God also revealed Achan’s crime this way (Joshua 7.16., etc.). These were the ways God made his will known in the Old Testament.

He used all these ways in the New Testament too. He spoke to the Virgin Mary through a vision of an angel; to Joseph in a dream; to Paul on the road to Damascus in a vision of our Savior; and to Peter in a vision of a sheet lowered from heaven containing the flesh of different clean and unclean animals, and later in prison through a vision of an angel. He spoke to all the apostles and writers of the New Testament through the graces of his Spirit. He spoke to the apostles through a lot when they chose Matthias to replace Judas Iscariot.

All prophecy, then, involves a vision or dream (which, when they are natural, are the same thing), or some special gift from God so rarely seen among people that it inspires wonder. But special gifts, and even very extraordinary dreams and visions, may come from God not just through his direct supernatural action, but through his natural action and through other causes. We therefore need reason and judgment to tell natural gifts from supernatural ones, and natural visions and dreams from supernatural ones. We must be very cautious about obeying someone who claims to be a prophet and tells us, in God’s name, to follow his way to happiness as an act of obedience to God. Anyone claiming to teach the path to such great happiness also claims to govern people, to rule and reign over them. Since people naturally desire that power, we should suspect ambition and fraud. Everyone should examine and test such a person before obeying him, unless they have already agreed to obey him by establishing a Commonwealth, as when the prophet is the civil sovereign or is authorized by that sovereign. If ordinary people were not allowed to examine prophets and spirits, there would be no point in giving everyone signs by which to tell whom to follow and whom not to follow. Deut. 13. 1, etc., gives signs for recognizing a prophet, and 1 John 4.1. etc., gives signs for recognizing a spirit. Moreover, there is much prophesying in the Old Testament and much preaching in the New Testament against prophets. False prophets have ordinarily far outnumbered true ones. So everyone must beware of following their instructions at their own risk. The number of false prophets is clear from what happened when Ahab (1 Kings 12.) consulted four hundred prophets: all but one, Michaiah, were lying impostors. Not long before the Captivity, prophets generally told lies. “The prophets,” says the Lord through Jerem. cha. 14. verse 14., “prophesy lies in my name. I did not send them, command them, or speak to them. They prophesy a false vision to you, something worthless, a deception from their own hearts.” God therefore told the people through the prophet Jeremiah (chap. 23. 16.) not to obey them: “Thus says the Lord of Hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They deceive you. They speak a vision from their own hearts, not from the mouth of the Lord.”

The visionary prophets in Old Testament times quarreled. One challenged another, “When did the Spirit leave me to go to you?” as Michaiah and the other four hundred did. They called one another liars, as in Jerem. 14.14. There are similar controversies among spiritual prophets in the New Testament today. Everyone then was, and everyone now is, obliged to use natural reason to apply God’s rules to all prophecy and tell true prophecy from false. In the Old Testament, one rule was whether a prophet’s teaching agreed with what Moses, the sovereign prophet, taught. The other was a miraculous ability to predict what God would bring about, as I have already shown from Deut. 13. 1. etc. In the New Testament there was only one test: whether the prophet preached the teaching that Jesus is the Christ, the King of the Jews promised in the Old Testament. Anyone denying that teaching was a false prophet, whatever miracles he seemed to perform. Anyone teaching it was a true prophet. For St. John, expressly explaining how to test whether spirits are from God (1 Epist, 4. 2, etc.), warns first that false prophets will arise and then says: “By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” This means that such a person is recognized and accepted as God’s prophet. It does not mean that confessing, professing, or preaching that Jesus is the Christ proves he is godly or among the elect. It means he is an acknowledged prophet. God sometimes speaks through prophets whose persons he has not accepted, as he did through Balaam and as he foretold Saul’s death through the witch of Endor. The next verse says, “Every spirit that does not acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of Christ. This is the spirit of Antichrist.” The rule thus works in both directions. A true prophet preaches that the Messiah has already come as Jesus. A false prophet denies that he has come and expects some future impostor who will falsely claim that honor. The apostle rightly calls that impostor Antichrist. Everyone should therefore consider who the sovereign prophet is: who serves as God’s deputy on earth and holds, immediately under God, the authority to govern Christians. They should use as their rule the teaching he commands to be taught in God’s name. By this rule they should test the truth of what self-proclaimed prophets offer, with or without miracles. If their teaching conflicts with the rule, people should do as those who went to Moses to complain that some people in the camp were prophesying without clear authority. They should leave it to the sovereign, as the people left it to Moses, to permit or forbid them as he sees fit. If he rejects them, they should no longer listen to them. If he approves them, they should obey them as people to whom God has given a share of their sovereign’s Spirit. For if Christians do not accept their Christian sovereign as God’s prophet, they must either accept their own dreams as the prophecy that governs them and the swelling of their own hearts as God’s Spirit, or allow themselves to be led by a foreign prince or by fellow subjects. Such subjects can use slander of the government to charm them into rebellion, without any miracle to confirm their calling except occasional extraordinary success and escape from punishment. This destroys all laws, divine and human, and reduces all order, government, and society to the original chaos of violence and civil war.

Chapter XXXVII. On Miracles and Their Use