Definitions




  • Maimonides suggested that "prophecy is, in truth and reality, an emanation sent forth by Divine Being through the medium of the Active Intellect, in the first instance to man's rational faculty, and then to his imaginative faculty".
  • The views of Maimonides closely relate to the definition by Al-Fârâbî, who developed the theory of prophecy in Islam.
  • Much of the activity of Old Testament prophets involved conditional warnings rather than immutable futures. A summary of a standard Old Testament prophetic formula might run: Repent of sin X and turn to righteousness, otherwise consequence Y will occur.
  • Saint Paul emphasizes edification, exhortation and comfort in a definition of prophesying.
  • The Catholic Encyclopedia defines a Christian conception of prophecy as "understood in its strict sense, it means the foreknowledge of future events, though it may sometimes apply to past events of which there is no memory, and to present hidden things which cannot be known by the natural light of reason".
  • According to Western esotericist Rosemary Guiley, clairvoyance has been usedby whom? as an adjunct to "divination, prophecy, and magic".
  • From a skeptical point of view, a Latin maxim exists: "prophecy written after the fact" (vaticinium ex eventu). The Jewish Torah already deals with the topic of the false prophet (Deuteronomy 13:2-6, 18:20-22).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Etymology

Image
The English noun "prophecy", in the sense of "function of a prophet" appeared from about 1225, from Old French profecie (12th century), and from prophetia , Greek propheteia "gift of interpreting the will of God", from Greek prophetes (see prophet). The related meaning, "thing spoken or written by a prophet", dates from c. 1300, while the verb "to prophesy" is recorded by 1377.
Read more

Poetry and Prophecy

For the ancient Greeks, prediction, prophesy, and poetry were often intertwined. Prophecies were given in verse, and a word for poet in Latin is “vates” or prophet. Both poets and oracles claimed to be inspired by forces outside themselves. In ancient China, divination is regarded as the oldest form of occult inquiry and was often expressed in verse. In contemporary Western cultures, theological revelation and poetry are typically seen as distinct and often even as opposed to each other. Yet the two still are often understood together as symbiotic in their origins, aims, and purposes. Middle English poems of a political nature are linked with Latin and vernacular prophecies. Prophecies in this sense are predictions concerning kingdoms or peoples; and these predictions are often eschatological or apocalyptic. The prophetic tradition in English derives in from Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (1136), otherwise called "Prophecies of Merlin;" this work...
Read more

Christianity

Image
The New Testament refers to prophecy as one of the spiritual gifts given by the indwelling Holy SpiritRom 12:. From this, many Christians believe that the gift of prophecy is the supernatural ability to receive and convey a message from God. The purpose of the message may be to "edify, exhort and comfort" the members of the Church. In this context, not all prophecies contain predictions about the future. The Apostle Paul teaches in First Corinthians that prophecy is for the benefit of the whole Church and not just of the individual exercising the gift.1 Cor. 14: According to Walter Brueggemann, the task of prophetic (Christian) ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture. A recognized form of Christian prophecy is the "prophetic drama" which Frederick Dillistone describes as a "metaphorical conjunction between present situations and future events". Later Ch...
Read more