The term “prophetic” is sometimes used to indicate the church’s task and mission in the world. When used in its broad and general sense the term means to say that the church must be faithful in proclaiming the message of God to both church and world. It must do so concretely and without respect to persons or circumstances. Understood that way the term has a certain validity although as will be pointed out it can easily be misunderstood.
Political Use of the Word
Not infrequently, however, the term “prophetic” has been used more narrowly in connection with the social and political situation that confronts the church both at home and on the mission field. It is in that narrower sense that one meets the term in recent Acts of Synod of the Christian Reformed Church (1982 and 1983) . This is done in connection with the Boards of World Missions and of World Relief. In 1982 the BWM stated that “the prophets of Scripture provide us a striking example of the need for a clear, godly voice in a fallen world.” As one reads on it becomes evident that the BWM thinks specifically of the prophet’s bold testimony against the unrighteousness both within Israel and the surrounding kingdoms. The board then proceeds to focus the idea of a prophetic witness upon the need “to speak the gospel clearly to our day and to carry out our Christian civic responsibilities.” Later in its statement, the BWM speaks of injustice found on both the right and the left of the political spectrum and it argues that we have the “right. duty and privilege to address our own governments when injustice demands our testimony” (Acts, 1982, p. 189).
It is obvious that the term “prophetic,” when used in this context, is focused entirely in the prophetic protest against injustice and social wrong. Moreover, it is linked with possible public declarations to governments for the redress of such injustice. The Board requests the 1982 synod to call on the church to be “prophetic in responding to injustice, oppression, etc.” The synod of 1982 issued such a call.
The same focused use of the term “prophetic” is encountered in the report of the Ad Hoc Committee on World Missions and World Relief which one finds in the Acts of 1983. On p. 467 this report, in many ways a model of conciseness and clarity of analysis, speaks of the “necessity and feasibility of a prophetic witness in places where the CRC conducts its world mission.” From the context one may conclude that the word is used in the narrower sense as mentioned earlier, concerning the area of human rights and social justice.
Because of the present writer’s long–standing interest in the use of the term “prophetic,” also in conjunction, and often in opposition with the term “priestly,” which one encounters in theological writing, he wishes to explore these terms a bit more fully. It is his conviction that a loose and ill-defined use of them can result in theological and practical confusion. Since presently there is evidence of a struggle between diverse strategies of the two boards mentioned the examination of a term that functions prominently in writings pertaining to missions and relief may be of some small help toward a solution of the conflict. Much of what I have to say has been said long ago in an article I published in the Calvin Theological Journal, Vol. 1, 1966.
Earlier Misunderstanding and Correction
The problem we are talking of here is by no means new. It has its roots in the picture which 19th century Liberalism drew of the Old Testament prophets. According to that picture the prophet was a lone individual who stood against the crowd, preached the God of ethical monotheism (something not yet known supposedly before the prophets’s time) and was quite opposed to the formal manifestations of religion such as sacrifice and priesthood in general. One could say that in this obviously distorted picture of the prophet he was made out to be in favor of Protestantism rather than the more liturgical forms of religion. In fact, he was considered to be closer to the sect than to the church and was believed to be a friend of the “laity” over against the “clergy.”
Biblical scholarship since the days of the old-time Liberalism has long corrected this one-sided picture. At a certain moment the pendulum swung almost completely to the opposite side. There were scholars who believed that prophets mostly functioned, not as opponents of the cultic center but as functionaries of it! This was held in light of data gathered from the religions of the Near East and also in light of some Biblical information culled from the Psalms, the Prophets and the historical books. It would take too much time to develop this line of thought further. Suffice it to say that a moderating trend has since set in in Biblical studies.
In some writing done by prominent theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, as well as in that by “secular” writers such as H.L. Mencken and F. Nietzsche, there continue to be strong echoes of the earlier view concerning prophecy and priesthood. In my article cited above I have given many instances of this. Tillich speaks disparagingly of a “priestcraft that purports to transmit a spiritual guaranty that is not subject to the insecurity of man’s existence” (The Protestant Era, 1948, p . 199), whereas according to Tillich Protestantism is to “appear as the prophetic spirit which blows where it wills without ecclesiastical conditions, organizations, and traditions” (idem, p. 232). It is obvious that in Tillich’s use of the term “prophetic” the institution of the church, with its ordinances and sacraments, counts for little if anything at all. Prophets are opposed to priests with their “craft.” Laity is pitted against clergy.
A False Clergy – Laity Division
Is there no need, in the light of such usage of the term “prophetic,” to make very sure how the term is meant and how not? All the more so since in the conflict of strategies between the two boards of which we spoke earlier the terms “laity” and “clergy” have sometimes been used to describe the difference between what the World Relief Committee is doing and what is attempted by the World Missions Board. (See the Ad Hoc Committee’s report Acts 1983, p. 467). Even though this pair of expressions: laity-clergy, is not explicitly linked with the prophetic-priestly conflict, chances are that unconsciously the nomenclature may be influenced by it.
What makes things rather confusing is that it was originally the Missions Board which asked the Synod of 1982 to issue a “prophetic” testimony. This shows that the label “clergy” which some try to attach to the BWM does not accurately describe the situation. We should, in passing , recall the fact that the whole distinction “clergy-laity,” though increasingly used in Christian Reformed circles, has no reason to exist.
In the Reformed tradition we recognize the office of all believers and next to that the offices of deacon, elder and minister. Those who administer the CRWRC as deacons are just as much “ordained,” that is installed into a special office, as those who handle the affairs of world missions. Although they are not ordained for life as are ministers, that does not by any means warrant the clergy-laity distinction. Agitation for “lay representation” on all our boards and committees ought, in the present writer’s opinion, to be rephrased in order to avoid faulty notions which can well result in unnecessary conflicts and tensions. If our “diaconal dynamic,” in which we may rightly rejoice, would be bought at the price of a clergy-laity standoff, the price would be far too high and the cause of Christ would suffer needlessly among us.
Biblical Correction of our “Prophesying”
Let us also consider the various aspects which the word “prophet” has when measured by the full Biblical revelation of the two Testaments. Prophets were far more than protesters against injustice. They also spoke of God in the most exalted terms (Isaiah 40), they spoke words of comfort to those who truly feared God (Malachi 3:17, 18) and they foretold the coming of the Messiah in human flesh (Luke 24:44; Acts 3:24; Romans 1:2 etc). To be “prophetic” therefore means more than to raise a protest against social oppression, though it may include this.
Even if the word “prophetic” were to be used in the narrower sense and without all the encumbrances which presently attach to its use, there still would be the question of how we today can be prophetic in that specific sense. The Old Testament prophets were direct spokesmen for God; we are not. We must determine the “prophetic” meaning of Scripture by the painstaking method of exegesis and then we must transfer that meaning to a situation which in many ways is quite diverse from that which the prophets faced in Old Testament time. Can prophets really serve as our “examples” in this respect?
Calvinism since the days of Abraham Kuyper has been associated with social concern, as we ll as with the proper respect for the special office. The roots of this go back far before the times of Kuyper, to the Reformation itself. In our attempt at clarifying some much used terms we have not wanted to deny the social implications of the gospel for today’s world. But we believe that the need for such clarification of terms is obvious in the light of current usage.
How “prophetic” should the church be? Should it be “prophetic” at all? The term can mean many things to many people. A clear definition, in contrast to the theological aberrations which have misused the term and are still misusing it, is called for. In the meantime perhaps we would be better off if we put a moratorium on its use as a means for describing the church’s task in the world. There are other and better ways to describe this task than by means of a term that is so fraught with ambiguity as is the term “prophetic.” Abstaining from its use for reasons suggested above might be a small step toward the solution of the conflict which concerns all the people in the Christian Reformed Church.
Marten H. Woudstra is a Professor of Old Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary at Grand Rapids, Michigan.