Prophecy

PROPHECY

PROPHECY. Early modern Europeans inherited from their ancient and medieval forebears a vast and complex range of ideas and practices to which the term "prophecy" was, and still is, loosely applied. While prophecy often denotes simply the prediction of future events, the Greek prophetes referred more broadly to one who delivered divine messages. The Old Testament prophets warned and consoled through visions that encompassed past, present, and future. Christian prophecy had inherent (if often latent) apocalyptic tendencies, which surfaced when perceptions of crisis evoked urgent efforts to glimpse God's universal blueprint. Medieval and early modern prophecy also incorporated various forms of natural divination and the mantic, or prophetic arts. This entry highlights biblical and spiritual strains and the varied functions of prophecy.

Comprising both divine messages and their interpretation, prophecy was both an inspiration and an art. Prophetic forecasts did not need to be fulfilled in order to be regarded as true, nor did the failure of a particular prophecy make it false, for the prophetic spirit, by foreseeing events, also worked to influence and change them. As Jonah told the Ninevites, true repentance could sway God's will and hence turn away disaster (Jonah 3: 7–9). Here the outward failure of a prophetic expectation was proof of its deeper truth. The most significant and influential messages were at least implicitly connected with divine judgment and the "last things"; such associations allowed prophecy to function as both a weapon of dissent and a shield for the powerful throughout the early modern era.

SOURCES OF PROPHETIC AUTHORITY

The issue of prophetic authority was central to the establishment and maintenance of power well into the early modern period. The central fount of authority lay in Scripture, the interpretation of which could be seen as a prophetic act. In the late Middle Ages the main prophetic texts of the Bible became crucial battlegrounds on which established powers, both sacred and secular, were contested and defended. But the same was true of venerable ancient sources such as the sibylline oracles, numerous pseudonymous texts, and legends such as the predictions of Merlin. Nature presented another key source of prophecy. The reading of wonders, both celestial and terrestrial, became a major obsession by the sixteenth century; almost anything unusual could be taken to herald war, rebellion, natural disaster, the death of a great prince, or even the Last Judgment. Attention to wonders overlapped closely the various arts of divination, the most pervasive of which was astrology. Moreover, the spirit could communicate to individuals through direct revelation, angels, dreams, or visions.

PROPHETIC HISTORY

The prophetic understanding of history was manifest in several competing schemes, such as the Augustinian six ages corresponding to the ages of man, and the Four Empires of the Book of Daniel. The triadic "Prophecy of Elias," derived from the Talmud, posited three 2000-year periods before, under, and after the Law. More radical was the Trinitarian vision of Joachim of Fiore (c. 1130–c. 1202), in which the world-historical stages of the Father and Son would be followed by that of the Holy Spirit, a time of spiritual fulfillment before the Judgment. Through at least the seventeenth century, thinkers debated these schemes and their application with great intensity. Not only the outlines but also the details of prophetic world-chronology took on immense importance in efforts to legitimize governments, religious movements, and programs of reform.

REFORMATION PROPHECY

The late fifteenth century saw a surging confluence of older currents, evident for instance in the 1488 Pronosticatio of Johann Lichtenberger, a grab bag of biblical, astrological, Joachimist, and other ideas. Hopes and fears regarding the fate of the church, the empire, or Christendom fed on one another. Governments worked hard to control the spread of popular prophecies, volatile and dangerous as they often were. Nonetheless, growing lay involvement in all realms of culture brought a proliferation of competing claims to prophetic insight.

The religious explosion of the Reformation saw a dramatic escalation in this contest; the evangelical movement itself was interpreted by Martin Luther as a fulfillment of scriptural as well as extrascriptural prophecies. The reformers placed new emphasis on the prophetic dimensions of preaching and faith. At Zurich, Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) introduced a form of public biblical teaching, based on learned discussion, known as "the prophecy." But did the Spirit speak only through Scripture? The prophet Joel spoke of a general spiritual outpouring in the last days, and many souls felt the flow of a mystical spiritualism that challenged all limits on prophetic inspiration.

The emergence of confessional orthodoxies was partly a reaction to the threatening anarchy of prophetic voices; confessional identities reflected shared prophetic understandings. Protestants almost universally assumed that the Antichrist had been revealed in the Roman papacy. Among Lutherans, apocalyptic expectancy became virtually a mark of true gospel teaching; Luther himself, who denounced many of his enemies as false prophets, became widely viewed as a "last Elijah." Calvinists, though often dispersed and embattled, took a more confident and aggressive stance, buoyed by a sense of God's plan for the elect. Catholic orders such as the Franciscans found missionary inspiration in powerful traditions such as Joachimism.

Early modern concepts of rulership and nationhood had major prophetic dimensions. Well known is the image of Queen Elizabeth as Deborah, prophetess and savior of her people. Conflicts such as the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War evoked countless prophecies, both political and religious; in fact, the early and mid-seventeenth century appears to mark a peak of stridency in efforts to sanction political goals through Biblical prophecy. Calvinist millenarianism was among the most fertile breeding grounds for a variety of radical political programs.

THE SLOW RETREAT

During this same period, however, a reaction against prophecy set in, moderating this surfeit of the spirit. The slow demise of prophetic history had already begun in the 1560s when Jean Bodin (1530–1596) attacked the traditional scheme of world empires; the dismantling of this framework accelerated in the following century. By 1700 the traditional prophetic worldview was in rapid retreat, at least among intellectuals, along with belief in miracles and most aspects of medieval cosmology. Yet the break between that worldview and a more enlightened outlook was by no means complete. Millenarian hopes, for example, have been convincingly linked to modern conceptions of historical progress as well as to positive attitudes toward the investigation of nature. Similarly, the transition from such prophetic notions as the Quaker "inner light" to the idea of natural reason was subtle, especially in an age when the distinction between nature and spirit was a matter of intense speculation.

While biblical prophecy was broadly attacked and ridiculed in the Enlightenment era, its retreat was both slow and stubborn. Isaac Newton was among the learned figures who worked to pare away the non-biblical accretions to prophecy in order to establish a purer science while preserving true prophecy. Major religious movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Pietism and Methodism, seethed with prophetic conviction. Eighteenth-century rulers and churchmen still had to reckon with perceptions based on long-standing prophetic traditions. The new age of reason was frequently understood in terms of prophetic fulfillment, even if the framework was often no longer biblical. The French Revolution was accompanied by a groundswell of prophetic interpretation and debate, much of which drew directly on the traditional biblical imagery. Certain prophecies had the potential to be self-fulfilling by creating a shared psychological readiness for the predicted outcomes.

Among European elites, however, spiritual prophecy was increasingly relegated to the subjective sphere, in which its public, political role was radically limited. In the eighteenth century spiritual inspiration was already frequently conceived in terms of artistic and literary genius. As biblical and supernatural imagery lost potency, Europeans encountered a world in which the realms of personal and political experience had lost their common prophetic ground.

See also Apocalypticism ; Astrology ; Leyden, Jan van ; Lutheranism ; Magic ; Miracles ; Reformation, Protestant ; Zwingli, Huldrych .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barnes, Robin Bruce. Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation. Stanford, 1988.

Froom, Le Roy Edwin. The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers. 4 vols. Washington, D.C., 1946–1954. An older but still useful survey by a Seventh Day Adventist. Volume two addresses the early modern era.

Lerner, Robert. The Powers of Prophecy: The Cedar of Lebanon Vision from the Mongol Onslaught to the Dawn of the Enlightenment. Berkeley, 1983. Fine survey of a single prophetic tradition.

Niccoli, Ottavia. Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy. Princeton, 1990.

Petersen, Rodney L. Preaching in the Last Days: The Theme of "Two Witnesses" in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York, 1993.

Reeves, Marjorie. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism. Oxford, 1969.

——. Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future. New York, 1977. Studies aspects of Joachimism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Schwartz, Hillel. The French Prophets: The History of a Millenarian Group in Eighteenth-Century England. Berkeley, 1980.

Taithe, Bertrand, and Tim Thornton, eds. Prophecy: The Power of Inspired Language in History, 1300–2000. Gloucestershire, U.K., 1997. Includes several helpful articles on the early modern scene.

Wilks, Michael, ed. Prophecy and Eschatology. Oxford, 1994.

Robin B. Barnes