The Experience of Prophecy and the Metaphysics of Providence in Aquinas

Abstract

This paper discusses the active role of the prophet within divine providence, namely her understanding of the prophetic message and her use of prophecy. I focus on Aquinas’ account of prophecy and I adopt two methods: the phenomenological method that describes the experience of prophecy and the metaphysical method that starts from the divine attribute of goodness and works through the order of divine providence. In Aquinas’ view, prophecy is a personal mission that the prophet receives to fulfill God’s plan for humankind. This mission involves the prophet’s mental operations and practical engagement. I start with the metaphysics of providence and then describe the prophetic experience. Finally, I address the issue of judgment in the understanding of the prophetic message and the use of prophecy.

In prophecy, God intervenes to enlighten the prophet’s mind and help humankind advance in history. Thus prophecy is both a cognitive and a moral matter. Its recipient is the prophet’s mind, and its scope is human action in history. The prophetic message impacts the moral orientation of a community or even of humankind. The prophet interprets her community’s situation in light of the divine message and indicates a specific direction of action. Her surrender to God’s will, courage to lift a veil over contemporary evil and issue uncomfortable warnings, and unabashed faith in the possibility of human redemption make up her active role in history. I believe philosophy has not fully explored this role, perhaps because it sees the prophet as merely instrumental to God’s message. Contemporary philosophers mainly discuss the divine foreknowledge of future contingents, pondering how God’s omniscience fares with the unstable nature of contingency.1 In this paper, I attempt to highlight the active role of the prophet within divine providence, namely her understanding of the prophetic message and her use of prophecy. I adopt two methods: the phenomenological method that describes the experience of prophecy and the metaphysical method that starts from the divine attribute of goodness and works through the order of divine providence. I have found both methods employed in Aquinas’ account of prophecy and providence. As Niels Christian Hvidt observes (Hvidt 2007, p. 140), Aquinas’ treatment of prophecy is phenomenological because it focuses on the experience of prophecy. At the same time, Aquinas’ metaphysics of providence helps untangle the role of prophecy in history as it outlines God’s care for humankind in general and individual human persons in particular. From this angle, prophecy is a personal mission that the prophet receives to fulfill God’s plan for humankind. This mission involves the prophet’s mental operations and practical engagement. I will start with the metaphysics of providence and then describe the prophetic experience. I will then focus on the issue of judgment in the understanding of the prophetic message and the use of prophecy.

1. Prophecy and Providence

According to Karl Rahner, theology insufficiently explored the connection between prophecy, providence, and divine action in history. Mystical theology preferred pure, infused contemplation to the prophetic element. Pure contemplation is less troublesome and challenging for the moral and political situation of a community, the Church, or humankind, as it raises above earthly concerns. Prophecy pierces, on the contrary, the historical whirlwind, constantly provoking the spirit of the time and calling for change. To avoid political instrumentalization, the ecclesial validation of prophecy takes a long time. Furthermore, although it had a doctrine of gifts, medieval theology lacked a proper sense of history and thus did not sufficiently account for the meaning of prophecy as “the vital stirring of the Spirit, for the growth and development of the Church”.2

I think that Aquinas escapes this criticism, though. His account of prophecy synthesizes and critically discusses the previous medieval views: Christian (especially Augustine and Albert), Jewish (especially Moses Maimonides), and Arab (especially Avicenna).3 Through this critical synthesis, Aquinas builds a coherent view of prophecy that harmonizes his metaphysics of providence with his epistemology. Prophecy occupies an important place in Aquinas’ metaphysics of divine providence, which affirms God’s government over human collective and personal history. The prophet’s mental contribution through judgment shows her active role within providence. This role follows the action of God in history, which enlightens the prophet’s mind and pushes her to guide her community in a given historical moment. Moreover, by placing judgment at the center of prophecy, Aquinas avoids the contrast between the unproblematic pure contemplation and the feared prophetic messiness. Judgment ensures that the prophet prudently interprets the divine message in light of the current historical situation and accord with the already existing revelation and Church doctrine. It also pushes the prophet to move the crowds in the right direction, with outrage against evil but hope for salvation. At the same time, Aquinas’ pragmatic interest in the concrete life of the faithful and the mental operations accompanying prophecy does not undermine its mystical pathos. On the contrary, prophecy requires a contemplative union with God, without which a prophet would be a mere fortune teller.4

The prophet receives from God truths that are naturally inaccessible and benefit a community or humankind. Whereas public revelations like the Incarnation appear to everybody, prophecy is a private revelation, made to only one person (or a restraint group of persons), the prophet(s). Most prophecies are predictions of the future. Some do not predict the future but indicate God’s evaluation of the present situation and His request to humans to change their course. However, even in this wider form, prophecy still deals with the future, as it orients humankind in history. This divine intervention through one particular person, the prophet, rests on the order of divine providence. God would not intervene within history to help humankind if He had no plan for humans and withdrew from their drama. Likewise, there would be no disclosure of the future to the mind of a prophet if God did not order the future in an overarching providence. Aquinas highlights this connection in Book Three of Summa Contra Gentiles, dedicated to the theme of providence. This book outlines God’s plan for His creation, the way His plan is realized, and humans’ purpose, namely happiness. The last part of the book discusses how God helps humans achieve their ultimate purpose, focusing on grace: “So, if man is ordered to an end which exceeds his natural capacity, some help must be divinely provided for him, in a supernatural way, by which he may tend toward his end”.5 A prophecy is a form of such divine help. In this case, God helps a community through an intermediary, who receives objects of faith directly from Him and communicates them to the others: “But, since the things that come from God are enacted in a definite order, as we showed above, a certain order had to be observed in the manifestation of the objects of faith. That is to say, some persons had to receive them directly from God, then others from them, and so on in an orderly way down to the lowest person”.6

In his metaphysics of providence (See Kretzmann 2001; Shields and Pasnau 2012, chp. 5.3), Aquinas makes a rational case for God’s intervention in human history based on the attribute of divine goodness. Starting from the premise that God is good, Aquinas concludes that a good creator cannot leave His created world to itself but maintains it into existence and orders it toward its end, its perfection. “For as it belongs to the best, to produce the best, it is not fitting that the supreme goodness of God should produce things without giving them their perfection. Now a thing’s ultimate perfection consists in the attainment of its end. Therefore it belongs to the Divine goodness, as it brought things into existence, so to lead them to their end: and this is to govern” (Aquinas 1984, Part I, Q. 103, Art.1, p. 505). Therefore, a good creator takes care of His creation by governing it orderly and guiding it toward its perfection. Aquinas calls this divine plan providence. While God’s plan is eternal, its execution is temporal and mediated by secondary causes. These natural causes have their own operation, although their first cause remains God. For instance, when playing piano, the musician is the first cause, and the piano is the secondary cause. The piano operates both through itself and the motion given by the player. The effect, namely music, is produced simultaneously by the first cause, the musician, and the secondary cause, the piano. God’s providence occurs similarly: God is the first cause of natural agents that realize His plan through their own operations. We will see that this cooperation between God and secondary causes takes place also in the prophet’s case.

Being fully involved in every operation of natural agents, God does not rule only over universals but also singulars. His government does not stop at the general laws of nature and extends to every individual thing: the tree in front of my office, the planet Mars, my neighbor’s dog. Aquinas thinks this involvement has to do with the ontological status of singulars. Singular things have being even more than universals because the latter exist only in singulars. Since God maintains things into existence, He governs over them individually: “Moreover, since God is the cause of actual being because He is being, as was shown above, He must be the agent of providence for being, because He is being. Indeed, He does provide for things, because He is their cause. So, whatever a thing is, and whatever its mode of existing, it falls under His providence. Now, singulars are beings, and more so than universals, for universals do not subsist of themselves, but are only in singulars. Therefore, divine providence also applies to singulars”.7

Among singulars, humans have a special place within providence because they are free. God governs non-human singulars only for the sake of their species, as these singulars always follow the pattern of their species. By contrast, God governs humans for the sake of the species and their own sake. Indeed, human beings do not merely follow the species’ inclination in their free acts. If they did it, they would not be free, and their acts would not have much diversity. For this reason, God governs them through special providence or special care: “And yet there must be some special kind of providence bestowed on intellectual and rational creatures in preference to others”.8 God has a plan for each person; thus, each person has a personal life purpose, different from another person’s purpose. While a human person has a general purpose that pertains to the human species and entails union with God in the beatific vision, she also has a personal purpose in accord with the general purpose but tailored to her characteristics and situation. The Thomistic scholarship has widely focused on the general purpose, leaving the issue of special providence aside. I have argued elsewhere (Oliva, forthcoming) that the personal purpose is equally important and not limited to a person’s concrete application of the general purpose. If it were a mere application, the personal purpose would only be a matter of choice of the human person. It would mean that each person tries to reach the ultimate perfection in her way, making either the right or bad choices. However, the personal purpose is given to us by God, it is God’s calling for each of us and requires our cooperation. Therefore, it is not a matter left at the person’s discretion.

Moreover, the special providence for each person also entails special interventions of God in a person’s life. God intervenes to help (as in the case of grace), or to punish. For instance, in his interpretation of the Book of Job, Aquinas observes that Job knows his hardship comes through a divine test (Aquinas 1989, p. 246). He is, thus, aware that God has an individual plan for him and intervenes in his life to stir its course in the right direction. Job’s exhortation well expresses this awareness: “What is man that you should exalt him, that you should set your heart upon him, that you attend to him every morning, and test him every moment?” (Job 7:17).

How does prophecy fit into this account of providence? Prophecy is a type of grace given to a person to benefit the common good. The prophetic message refers to a future situation whose significance surpasses the individual good of the prophet. For instance, the prophet Joshua foretold the cutting off of the waters of Jordan. (Joshua, 3:13) While sanctifying grace is a habit given to a person for her moral and spiritual development, prophecy is a momentarily gift given to a person for the benefit of a community or humankind. In prophecy, the individual and the collective converge, as the individually given grace works directly for the common good. Indeed, the way God stirs the global history of humankind accords with His plans for individual persons. For this reason, the prophet is not a mere instrument, as if she were governed exclusively for the sake of humankind. Instead, the prophet’s individuality emerges in the experience of prophecy, which involves the prophet’s understanding, judgment, and communication. This experience, I argue, reinforces the metaphysical idea of special providence, insufficiently recognized in the Thomistic scholarship.

2. The Experience of Prophecy

Aquinas’ description of a prophet’s experience engages an Aristotelian epistemology centered on the reception of the representative species and judgment about this representation (Torrell 1992, p. 220). This distinguishes him from Augustine’s Platonic account of prophecy9, in which the prophet is rather a passive recipient of a vision given by God. While he maintains the passivity in the reception of prophetic knowledge, Aquinas insists on the active role of the prophet’s mind in judgment and the use of prophecy. Considering his analysis of the mental faculties involved in the prophecy and the keen description of the experience, we can classify his account as phenomenological. However, this descriptive approach does not result in a naturalizing of prophecy. It emphasizes, on the contrary, its supernatural character. God has the initiative in prophecy, not the prophet. Thus, Aquinas insists—against some of his Jewish and Arab predecessors (Decker 1940, p. 204)—that prophecy is not a habit and that the prophet does not need exceptional moral qualities to receive it. At the same time, once she receives the prophecy, the prophet is called to interpret it, announce it, and orient the community in the direction indicated by God.

The main writings in which Aquinas describes the prophetic experience are Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 171–174, De veritate, Q. 12, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III, Part II, Chapter 154, Commentary on Isaiah, and Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Most of his examples come from prophets in the Hebrew Bible, the prophetic model for medieval scholars. Hans Urs von Balthasar notes, in this sense, that Aquinas never mentions Hildegard of Bingen’s prophecies, although she lived before him (Balthasar 1996, pp. 276, 302–5). However, Aquinas defends the need for post-Incarnation prophecies, and his view also yields in these latter cases. Therefore, to illustrate his ideas, I will also present some of Saint Hildegard of Bingen’s prophecies, in addition to his examples. Hildegard is one of the most prolific medieval prophets. She not only prophesied but often reflected on her prophetic experience. I believe that her prophecies and self-reflection well confirm Aquinas’ prophetic phenomenology.

Prophecy is a divine gift given to a person to help a community or humankind. Aquinas distinguishes between the gratuitous grace (gratia gratis data) given for the sanctification of others and the grace given to the person for her own sanctification (gratia gratum faciens). The gratuitous graces, or gifts, are grouped in three categories according to the type of act involved: (1) knowledge: prophecy, rapture; (2) speech: the gift of tongues, the gift of words; (3) action: the gift of miracles.

The gift of prophecy pertains to knowledge. Prophets know things that are far from natural human knowledge. In this sense, prophetic knowledge includes more than future contingencies. Aquinas classifies three types of things remote from human knowledge. First, things remote from one particular person but not from another. For instance, Eliseus knew prophetically what his disciple Giezi did in his absence (4 Kings, 5: 26). Likewise, Saint Hildegard of Bingen got a glimpse into the life of Saint Rupert through divine vision: “Now, as I see in true vision, our blessed patron Rupert, bereaved by his father, lived with his widowed mother in this place. /…/ I will speak of him as the living light showed me in true vision and as it taught me” (St. Hildegard of Bingen 2010, p. 45).

Second, Aquinas shows that prophecy may refer to some things that surpass the knowledge of all humans not because they are unknowable but because of a defect in human knowledge. For instance, the Seraphim revealed the mystery of the Trinity to Isaiah (Isaiah, 6:3).

Third, prophecy also deals with things that are in themselves unknowable, namely the future contingencies. Since they are the farthest away from human knowledge, they most properly belong to prophecy. For instance, Saint Hildegard of Bingen prophesied a time of extraordinary peaceful flourishing before the second coming of Christ and the end of the world: “But what is more, such new and unknown ordinances of justice and peace will develop in that time that people will be amazed, explaining that this is because they had neither heard nor known of such things before, and because this peace was being granted to them before Judgment Day” (St. Hildegard of Bingen 2018, Part III, Vision 5, p. 451). In that blooming time, prophecy will increase because the vicinity of the Last Day will be evident: “Indeed, prophecy will in that time be laid open, as described above, and wisdom will be cheerful and strong; and in them all the faithful will reflect upon themselves as in a mirror. /…/ Those days will surely be strong and praiseworthy in their peace and stability, but they will also be like armed soldiers who lie along a cliff-top, waiting in ambush for their enemies, whom they then follow for the kill. For they will declare the coming of the Last Day, because whatever the prophets have foretold of goodness and grace will be fulfilled in their time”.10

While the nature of prophecy is cognitive, its scope is practical. Aquinas underlines these traits of prophecy, which instructs in faith and guides our actions: “… prophecy is directed to the knowledge of Divine truth, by the contemplation of which we are not only instructed in faith, but also guided in our actions. According to Ps. XLII:3, Send forth thy light and Thy truth: they have conducted me”.11 In this sense, prophecy discloses matters pertaining to the doctrine of faith, evaluates the present time, and indicates God’s will for the future. Here, Aquinas defends what became the standard Catholic stance on prophecy, namely the idea that up until Christ, prophecy’s goal was both doctrinaire and moral, whereas after Christ, the doctrine of faith is complete, and prophecy will only have a guiding goal. He upholds the actuality of prophecy against those who thought there would and should not be any other prophecies after Christ because He fulfilled the revelation about divine truth. “… at all times there have not been lacking persons having the spirit of prophecy, not indeed for the declaration of new doctrine of faith, but for the direction of human acts”.12 Thus, before Christ, prophecy builds the doctrine of faith and orients human action in history; after Christ, it only orients human action in history.13 However, this limitation does not necessarily mean temporal reduction. On the contrary, Aquinas thinks that prophecy has increased over time: “Accordingly, if we speak of prophecy as directed to the Godhead as its end, it progressed according to three divisions of time, namely before the law, under the law, and under grace”.14

Aquinas’ defense of post-Christ prophetic possibilities highlights prophecy’s historical nature and its stable place in the human vocation. These characteristics exalt the active role of the prophet within the order of providence. Indeed, the increase in prophecy mirrors the historical development of humankind and reveals the prophet as a historical agent.15 Moreover, the permanence of prophecy throughout history shows that prophecy is not an extremely rare phenomenon but belongs, on the contrary, to the universal vocation of each human being called to testify the love of God. Thus, rather than being an occasional instrument of God, the prophet actively responds to God’s call, taking charge of her vocation. Mary Hayden Lemmons highlights this vocational aspect of prophecy, so crucial for understanding a prophet’s place in the providence: “Although prophesying specific messages from God can be a special gift given to the few like Moses and John the Baptist, within Christianity, it is also a Baptismal gift given to all. Prophesying is accordingly a part of the Christian vocation” (Hayden Lemmons 2016, p. 34). This universally open possibility of prophecy is visible also in the proliferation of women prophets after Christ, and even of child prophets in the 20th Century (for instance, the prophecies from Fatima).16 The Church’s prudence and long discernment in approving prophecies should not undermine the recognition of prophetic vocation.

As we have seen, prophecy is bound to a particular historical moment. This temporal conditioning determines its transitory cognitive status. Aquinas vigorously denies that prophecy is a habit permanently inhering in the prophet. If so, a prophet could prophesy every time she wanted to. But this is not the case. No prophet was ever able to prophesize 24 h a day. For instance, the prophet Eliseus confesses not knowing about the thoughts of a Shunammite woman: “Her soul is in anguish, and the Lord hath hid it from me, and hath not told me”. (4 Kings 4:27) Furthermore, if the prophetic light would permanently inhere in the prophet, it would fully transfigure her mind and render it capable of knowing all things. Such perfect knowledge would come from grasping the principle of all things, namely from seeing God’s essence. But the prophets do not see God’s essence. Thus, the prophetic light is only a transient impression in the prophet’s mind, and a momentary inspiration meant to enlighten the prophet’s understanding regarding a particular moment in history.

This limitation on prophecy is, however, not a defect. While the general human incapacity to see the divine essence is a result of the original sin, the lack of full sight in the prophet is due to the peculiar arrangement of providence. The confined contents of a prophecy reflect the singular moment in which God intervenes by giving each what they need for providential orientation: “The prophetic light, once infused, does not give knowledge of all that can be prophesied, but only of those things for the knowledge of which it is given. This limitation does not come from lack of power in the giver, but from the ordination of His wisdom, which distributes to each as He wishes” (Aquinas 2008, Vol. II, Q. 12, A.1, p. 108). Thus, the lack of full sight is not a predicament of the prophet who must content himself with a limited vision but a condition for historical orientation. It elevates the role of the prophet. Bound to a specific moment and lacking perfect contemplative knowledge, the prophet must evaluate the vision he receives and transmit the message to his community according to the present historical situation. The prophet receives, in this sense, all that he needs for communicating a message in a particular moment: “The Lord reveals to the prophets all things that are necessary for the instruction of the faithful; yet not all to every one, but some to one, some to another. /…/ Consequently it does not follow that nothing is lacking to prophetic revelation, but that it lacks none of those things to which prophecy is directed”.17

Prophecy entails sight and declaration. In both of them, judgment plays a key role. Prophetic sight represents the reception of a message and the judgment of this message. The declaration is knowledge transmitted to the community through speech and sometimes confirmed or strengthened through miracles. The prophet’s use of what she receives requires her judgment, both in regard to the significance of the contents for the community’s situation and the action needed in light of the message.

The first layer of prophecy is thus passive. But even at this stage, there is a potency waiting to be actualized in the receiver. Aquinas calls it an obediential potency (potentia obedientialis). The obediential potency is the ability of every creature to be changed by God in ways unavailable to a natural agent: “… the whole of creation has some capacity to obey, insofar as every creature obeys God, to the extent of receiving in itself whatever God wills” (Aquinas 2005, Q. 1, Art. 10, #13, p. 69). For instance, the seawater can be warmed up by the sun but can be separated only by God. Similarly, all human beings have the obediential potency of receiving prophetic light: “In human nature there is a passive potency for the reception of prophetic light, which is not natural but only obediential, like the potency which is in physical nature for those things which happen miraculously”.18

The reception of a divine vision occurs in several modes of representation. The prophet’s mind can receive sensible forms in three ways: through the senses, imagination, or direct impression of a mental representation in the mind. In the first case, the prophet sees with her senses a concrete image. For instance, Daniel saw writing on the wall in the palace of Belshazzar. In the second case, the prophet’s imagination either receives a new species or receives coordination of an already existing species. In the first situation, a blind person can receive color; in the second, a person can see something already seen with senses but represented in a new way. For instance, Jeremiah saw the boiling cauldron from the face of the north (Jeremiah, 1:13). Finally, a prophet can receive infused scientific knowledge of wisdom, like Solomon or the apostle.

However, the reception is not only visual and representative. Aquinas holds auditive prophecies in higher esteem than the visual ones: “A third basis is the manner of perceiving these things, for the more distinctly the things prophesied are signified, the higher is the grade of prophecy. But no signs portray anything more distinctly than words. Therefore, when one perceives words expressly indicating the thing prophesied, as we read of Samuel in the first Book of Kings (3:11), the grade of prophecy is higher than when certain figures which are likenesses of things are shown to us, as the boiling caldron which was shown to Jeremias (1:13)”.19

But reception by itself is not enough; it needs judgment20 which depends on the inflow of divine light. Therefore, it is possible that persons who receive representations through divine action can lack judgment. This is a case of imperfect or improper prophecy: “Wherefore if certain things are divinely represented to any man by means of imaginary likenesses, as happened to Pharaoh (Gen. Xli. 1–7) and to Nabuchodonosor (Dan. iv.1–2), or even by bodily likenesses, as happened to Balthasar (Dan. v.5), such a man is not to be considered a prophet, unless his mind be enlightened for the purpose of judgment; and such an apparition is something imperfect in the genus of prophecy”.21 Thus, Joseph, who interpreted Pharaoh’s dream, is more a prophet than Pharaoh himself. Joseph does not have a supernatural vision; nonetheless, he receives a supernatural light that allows him to judge. It is, therefore, possible to have prophecy without any supernaturally given representations. Indeed, a prophet can also interpret, through infused light, sensible images that he receives through natural senses without supernaturally infused images. For instance, the prophet Amos saw a fruit basket and interpreted it as a symbol of a ripe time in which God evaluates the situation of Israel and urges her to change: “This is what the Lord God showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. ‘What do you see, Amos?’, he asked. I answered: “A basket of ripe fruit.’ Then the Lord said to me: The time is ripe to have done with my people Israel; I will forgive them no longer” (Amos, 8: 1–3).

Ideally, a prophet should have both vision and judgment. But the possibility of prophecy based on intellectual light without vision shows that judgment is the necessary condition of prophecy. The active role of the prophet is thus at the core of prophecy.

The judgment gives the prophet the certainty of the divine origin of the message. For instance, Jeremiah was sure about the message he received: “In truth the Lord sent me to you, to speak all these words in your hearing”. (Jer. 26:15) The prophet must discern, with the help of prophetic light, whether what she received is of a divine origin: “Thus, in speech with which God is said to have spoken to the prophets in Holy Scripture, we consider not only the species of things which are imprinted, but also the light which is given, by which the mind of the prophet is made certain of something”.22

Furthermore, judgment discerns the meaning of a message or a command. For instance, David knew that the message he received from God regarded the covenant with Israel: “The spirit of the Lord spoke through me; his word was on my tongue. /…/ He has made an eternal covenant with me, set forth and secured”. (2 Samuel, 23:2–5) The judgment of a message often recurs to the doctrine of faith. It interprets this new message in light of an already existing religious knowledge.23 This is the case of Saint Hildegard of Bingen’s prophecy of a pre-apocalyptic flourishing time. She interprets her vision of such a peaceful time in accord with a Biblical situation that saw a peaceful time before the first coming of Christ: “Yet after the flood, as in that middle time between the flood and the coming of God’s Son into the world, flowers blossomed with the new sap and with every sprout in a different order than before, because the earth was baked then with the moisture of water and the heat of the sun”.24 Hildegard sees in her vision of that peaceful time a continuation of the peace that preceded Incarnation: “For the peace that had preceded the coming of my Son’s Incarnation will be fully accomplished in those days, because strong men will rise up then in great prophecy”.25 Furthermore, she connects her prophecy with Isaiah’s Biblical prophecy in Isaiah 4:2: “Every bud of justice will also flourish then among human sons and daughters, as was foretold at my will by my prophet and servant: ‘In that day the bud of the Lord shall be magnificent and glorious, and the fruit of the earth high, the joy of those who had been saved of Israel.’”26

However, there are cases of prophetic predictions in which the receiver does not know the meaning of what he prophecies. For instance, Caiaphas prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation without knowing the significance of this message. Aquinas thinks Caiaphas has prophetic instinct but is not a true prophet (See Rodolfi 2020). Divine providence can turn evil into good; thus, Caiaphas was a prophetic instrument without being a true and proper prophet because he lacked judgment.

An action commanded by God can have a meaning only a discerning prophet can understand. It is the case of Jeremiah, whom God ordered to buy a linen loincloth, wear it, and then bury it. After a long interval, God ordered him to unbury the cloth, which was completely rotten. This action symbolized the decay of the people of Israel because of their pride: “Thus says the Lord: So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot, the great pride of Jerusalem. These wicked people who refuse to obey my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts, and follow strange gods to serve and adore them, shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing”. (Jeremiah 13:9–10) Unlike Jeremiah, the soldiers who divided Christ’s garments did not understand the meaning of what they did.

The understanding and judgment involved in prophecy also require the evaluation of the present moment in light of the divine message. Prophetic lucidity should trump, in this sense, the mere human curiosity regarding the future. The Vatican’s document on the message of Fatima distinguishes mere fortunetellers from prophets based on a faithful understanding of the signs of time: “On this point, it should be kept in mind that prophecy in the biblical sense does not mean to predict the future but to explain the will of God for the present, and therefore show the right path to take for the future. A person who foretells what is going to happen responds to the curiosity of the mind, which wants to draw back the veil on the future. The prophet speaks to the blindness of the will and of reason, and declares the will of God as an indication and demand for the present time. /…/ In this sense, there is a link between the charism of prophecy and the category of ‘signs of the time’” (Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith 2000).

This prophetic lucidity and insight into the Zeitgeist may sometimes take exacerbated forms. In his analysis of prophetic consciousness, Abraham Heschel (2001) shows that prophets have an unusual sensitivity to evil. They may even exaggerate the gravity of facts because they want to shake their contemporaries’ complacency and bring them to a moral awareness and a faithful return to God. This is the case of Hosea’s harsh predicament: “There is no truth, no love, and no knowledge of God in the land; Swearing and lying, killing and stealing, and committing adultery, they break all bonds, and blood touches blood”. (Hosea 4:1–2) In Heschel’s eyes, the sometimes unfair accusations of Israel’s prophets against their own people aim at rallying Israel to her divine mission: “The countries of the world were full of abominations, violence, falsehood. Here was one land, one people, cherished and chosen for the purpose of transforming the world. This people’s failure was most serious”.27 Saint Hildegard of Bingen strikes similar harsh tones against the people of her time, including the Church, accused of corruption and apathy28. In her case, too, this rash criticism intends to awaken her contemporaries to the need for conversion and repentance in view of salvation.

Finally, judgment is also involved in the use of prophecy. Prophecy is given, indeed, for practical reasons, to discern “truthfully and efficaciously what is to be done”. 29 Although it does not, per se, make people virtuous, it aims at a virtuous life. Indeed, neither the prophet nor those to whom she announces the prophecy are automatically virtuous merely by this reception. However, the way she uses prophecy acquires a moral value: “… the use of any prophecy is within the power of the prophet”.30 A prophet must be careful to use prophecy for holiness and not, for instance, to obtain favors from others. Thus she must also maintain a life that is minimally detached from “the entanglement in the pleasures and cares of this world”31, a condition Aquinas borrows from Moses Maimonides. Indeed, according to the Scriptures, one knows the false prophets by their fruits. (Matthew 7:16)

The use of prophecy consists of a declaration or announcement, which can be done either by words or deeds. The prophetic announcement needs a certain boldness that empowers the prophet to speak even though opponents of the truth might persecute her.32 At the same time, the prophet needs to maintain sobriety so that she does not come across as erratic. In her announcement, she must use the right sensible signs: “The prophet does the announcement either by words or even by deeds, as is clear in Jeremias (13:5), inasmuch as he put his girdle near the river to rot. But in whichever of the two ways the prophetic announcement is made, it is always made by a man not transported out of its senses, for such an announcing takes place through certain sensible signs. Hence, the prophet doing the announcing has to use his senses for his announcement to be perfect. Otherwise, he would make the announcement like an insane person”.33

Because the scope of prophecy is practical, the prophet is not just a microphone but a person on a mission, as Heschel observes.34 Her declaration is a call to action. Through her judgment, she must orient the action of her community in light of the message she receives. For example, Jeremiah receives from God the historical mission to bring about radical moral change: “See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant”. (Jeremiah, 1:10) Although it is not a habit, prophecy imbues everything a prophet does. Saint Hildegard, for example, realized her prophetic ministry in various ways: writing, painting, musical compositions, and preaching trips.35 Called the “Sibyl of the Rhine”, she advised a wide variety of leaders on religious and political matters, either at her own initiative or at their request. Her intense correspondence with leaders of the time testifies to her practical engagement. For instance, in her letter to Pope Eugenius III, she warns him of a peril coming from a bear, most probably a metaphor for Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Henry, Bishop of Liège, avails himself of her prophetic gift asking for guidance: “Do reply to this letter and tell me what the living light has revealed to you so that I can rouse myself from sleep. May the most merciful God grant that through you I will perceive a most certain comfort in your writings. And may he grant me through your intercessions to enter the final dwelling-place of eternal peace”. (St. Hildegard of Bingen 2011, p. 183). The solicitation of prophetic guidance shows that even the audience recognizes the prophet’s pragmatic autonomy and employment of personal operations. As Aquinas observes, the use of prophecy lies in the prophet’s power, and the latter might even decide not to use a particular prophecy.36 At the same time, this pragmatic autonomy is not arbitrary, and prophecy is not simply consulting on demand. While prophecy deals with concrete situations, its final end is salvation. Indeed, the prophet must ensure that her engagement does not stop at mundane matters but aims at salvation.37 Her judgment must thus make the best use of prophecy following this compass.

3. Conclusions

We have seen that judgment is at the core of prophecy. The prophet is not merely instrumental but plays an active role. While Aquinas sometimes calls the prophet’s mind an instrument of the Holy Spirit, his emphasis on judgment and the use of prophecy avoids instrumentalism. According to Paul Synave, Aquinas uses the term “instrument” broadly to indicate the dependence of prophecy on divine inspiration. He surely does not use it in its proper sense of a cause that does not have the source of movement in itself (Synave and Benoit 1961, p. 77). If that were the case, the prophet would not judge and interpret the meaning of what God transmitted to her. Aquinas’ rejection of such reductive views on prophecies is visible also in his criticism of Montanus, whose errors compromised the good standing of prophecy in Christian theology. According to Aquinas, Montanus (second century AD) committed two main errors. First, he denied the role of judgment in prophecy. Second, he claimed that prophets were out of their senses when announcing as if they were mad or talking in their sleep.38 Both errors boil down to instrumentalism because they negate a prophet’s creative autonomy in (1) the understanding of the message and (2) the use of prophecy. For this reason, a correct phenomenology of the prophetic experience would give a prophet her due recognition and re-establish prophecy among meaningful religious experiences that theology cannot neglect.

Through her active role, the prophet has a privileged position within the divine providence and, thus, a specific God-given purpose. Indeed, God orders the communication of faith matters on a scale that starts from God, moves to the angels, then to the humans who receive charismatic gifts (among them, the prophets), and stops with the faithful who receive these matters from the beings above.39 The prophet’s place is high on this scale. Her mission is to transmit God’s message to her community for holiness and salvation. Indeed, the gift of prophecy, along with other gifts, is given for the sanctification of others. It differs from the grace given to one person for her sanctification. Prophecy and sainthood40 often meet in one person (for instance, in Saint Hildegard of Bingen), but prophecy’s very nature is social and not individual. However, while the prophet receives the prophecy for the good of the others and not for her confined individual good, prophecy contributes to her life purpose and becomes part of her destiny. For instance, Jeremiah reports that God revealed to him his prophetic calling: “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations”. (Jeremiah 1, 4–5)

Looking back at Aquinas’ distinction between providence for the sake of the species and providence for the sake of the individual, we can conclude that a person receives prophecy for the good of the species (humankind), but she must accomplish it freely through her judgment and thus must make it her mission. The prophetic experience’s phenomenology reveals the prophet’s particular place in the providential order insofar as the individual mission of the prophet aims at the salvation of humankind.

Aquinas’ phenomenology of prophetic experience reaches two objectives. First, it highlights the active feature of prophetic consciousness, namely, judgment. While many scholars before and after him think that prophecy is a passive reception and communication of divine messages, Aquinas has a more complex view of mental operations involved in prophecy and thus assigns an active role to prophets. His view aligns with the Biblical text and the post-Incarnation prophecies, as we could see in the case of Fatima or the experience of Saint Hildegard of Bingen. Second, his description of prophetic experience sheds light upon a less known aspect of his metaphysics of providence, namely the distinction between providence for the sake of the species and providence for the sake of the individual. Many interpreters of Aquinas focus on the general purpose of human beings, shared by all of us, and disregard the personal purpose given to each of us by God. In prophecy, the two purposes converge in exemplary fashion because the prophet’s personal call aims at humanity’s salvation.41