In the sacred Scriptures, the noun “prophet” and the verb “to prophesy” are usually taken in about six ways.
First, for singing or chanting divine praises in certain modes or with instruments. Thus we read that Jeduthun and Heman prophesied, and some take in this way the saying, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”
Second, for pagan seers and poets. Thus the Apostle calls Epimenides a prophet of the Cretans.
Third, for fanatics, who, alienated in mind after the manner of the possessed, pour out unusual, foolish, and senseless things. Thus Saul is said to have prophesied in his house when he was driven by an evil spirit; and the priests of Baal are also said to have prophesied.
Fourth, those are said to prophesy who perform some miracle by which they declare that they were true prophets. Thus the dead body of Elisha is said to have prophesied because by its touch it brought a robber’s corpse back to life.
Fifth, those who interpret and teach lofty and divine matters, things remote from human cognition, and the hidden things of sacred Scripture. St. Paul takes the word in this way when he compares the gift of tongues with the prophetic gift. Thus Aaron also, because he explained to Pharaoh the oracles which Moses had received from God, is called a prophet. Philo the Jew took it in this way when he defines a prophet as an interpreter of God’s oracles dictated within. Another signification also belongs here, when the term is taken for true worshipers of God and religious men, as certain people think it is taken in 1 Kings 18:4: Abulensis and Cajetan.
Sixth, for one who announces to human beings hidden secrets of God received by divine revelation.
We are now speaking only of this last species.
[margin: 1 Chronicles 25:3 and 5; 1 Samuel 10:12; Titus 1:12; 1 Samuel 18 and 1 Kings 18:29; Ecclesiasticus 48:14; 1 Corinthians 14:2, 5; Exodus 7:1; Philo, On Rewards and Punishments; Abulensis and Cajetan on 1 Kings 18:4]
The Greeks derived this name “prophecy” from speaking beforehand, prophemi. Among the Hebrews it is Nebua, whence Nabi, prophet, with the root of the word uncertain. For it can be Nub, that is, “to speak,” and Nabi would signify “speaker”; or it can be Ban, “to understand,” and it would signify one who understands, that is, most perfectly, as those who know things placed before trustworthy eyes. Hence prophets among the Hebrews were also called seers. Let this suffice about the name; let us look at the matter itself.
Cassiodorus’s more commonly received definition is more concise than that by which the nature can conveniently be understood. Say more explicitly: prophecy is a divine inspiration, foreknowing and announcing with unmoving truth and the greatest certainty the events of things far distant from us. Let us explain each member of the definition.
[margin: Exodus 7:1; Philo Judaeus, De praemiis et poenis, on prophecy as interpreter of divine oracles; Hebrew forms for Nebua, Nabi, Nub, and Ban; 1 Samuel/1 Kings 9:9 on prophets formerly called seers; preface to the Psalms]
I said “divine” against Artephius and Roger Bacon, who attribute prophecy to the influences of the stars; against Aristotle and the Peripatetics, who attribute it to bodily humors; and against Moses the Egyptian, Avicenna, and Algazel, who ascribe it to natural effort and study. All these people are mistaken, because all prophecy is a gift of the Holy Spirit, brought by no human will, as the two Catholic pillars, Peter and Paul, testify. Hence Blessed Jerome infers that only true prophets have spoken by the Spirit of God, and that none others deserve the name of prophets except those who, illuminated by the light of the Holy Spirit, predict future things.
For this no natural or human disposition is absolutely required. For God can infuse the disposition itself together with the light. But because he is accustomed to direct all things sweetly, he accommodates himself for the most part to the natures of things, so far as it pleases him. Therefore, since the disposition by which the mind is freed from sensible motions and from the cares of human affairs is very apt, we see that prophets have sometimes prepared themselves, as Elisha, perhaps somewhat moved to zeal and indignation at the sight of the impious king of Israel, prepared himself by the sweetness of music. Yet that disposition plainly helps prophecy only accidentally, and in no way deserves to be called its cause.
By contrast, the accidental cause of natural or demonic foreknowledge is a bodily disposition which powerfully draws the mind away from the use of the senses. For that reason Plato and Aristotle said that divination is more frequent in the foolish, the stunned, and the mad than in people of sound mind; in the sleeping than in the waking; in those near death than in those who will still long enjoy vital life; and in the melancholic than in the sanguine. For all those people are less intent on the senses, and melancholics, besides, dream while awake, so to speak.
[margin: 2 Peter 1:20; Romans 12:6; 1 Corinthians 12:10; Jerome on Daniel; St. Thomas, Secunda Secundae, question 171, article 3; 2 Kings 3; Valesius, On Sacred Philosophy, chapter 30]
Second, I said “inspiration,” taking the word broadly for any influx, instinct, illumination, or revelation. God sometimes grants this to good angels, who predict to others, as we have learned concerning the overthrow of Sodom, concerning the posterity of Ishmael, concerning Samson, concerning Tobias’s wife, concerning Christ the Lord and his precursor, or so that they may explain visions to human beings. Sometimes God confers this gift on human beings, both men and women, especially the upright and holy, such as Elijah, Isaiah, Deborah, Huldah, and very many others whose praise is in the sacred histories.
Sometimes, however, he confers it also on the evil and unrighteous, as on some Gentiles and perhaps the Sibyls, and on Balaam and Caiaphas. He sometimes confers it on those who do not know that they are prophesying, as on the said Caiaphas and, according to St. Ambrose, on Abraham when he said, “After we have adored, we shall return to you”; but St. Augustine judged that in that case it is improperly called prophecy. Sometimes, however, this happens to those who know that they are being illumined by God, as to Balaam already mentioned. Sometimes too this gift is conferred on the unwilling, as on Saul according to some interpretations; but more often on those who receive the Spirit of God willingly.
In that respect prophecy can be called voluntary, because they do not receive the influx of God unwillingly. Nevertheless it will be involuntary insofar as they receive it not whenever they please, but when God pleases; and because they receive it not in the measure they themselves wish, but in the measure God grants; and because they receive it not as long as they themselves wish, but only as long as seems good to God, as we said about ecstasy in book 2, question 2, which is also voluntary in this way and no otherwise.
[margin: Genesis 19 and 21; Judges 13; Tobit 5; Luke 2; the end of Mark; Luke 1; Daniel 8 and 9 and often in the Apocalypse; Numbers 22 and 23; John 11:51; Ambrose, book 1 On Abraham, chapter 8; Augustine on the same matter; 1 Samuel 10]
Another difference of inspirations is also sought from the fact that sometimes no conversation is added to it, but only bare instruction or showing, as is discerned in most prophecies of the Old Testament; sometimes, however, a kind of dialogue between the prophet and the Holy Spirit is added.
[margin: Exodus 3 and 4]
Theologians posit two species of this illumination or inspiration: imaginary and intellectual. They call it imaginary or sensible, not because it does not reach the intellect, for such an inspiration would improperly be called prophetic, but because it occurs primarily through a sensible or imaginary representation, from which the mind’s conception arises and to which it is, as it were, proportioned. They call that one intellectual which does not take origin from sense or imagination, but arises immediately through a light infused into the intellect and through intelligible species, either newly implanted or preexisting but applied by divine power to form some natural conception of the mind.
This elevation occurs in two ways. First, when the intellect is elevated so that it knows without the operation of the phantasy; this is rarely granted by special privilege. Second, when the phantasy cooperates with intellection, not indeed with the intellect first moved by the phantasy, but with the phantasy itself moved and applied by the intellect so that it may work and concur with it. See Francisco Suarez, third part, question 30, article 1, disputation 9, section 2.
[margin: examples of dialogue in Exodus, Jonah, and Habakkuk; Francisco Suarez, third part, question 30, article 1, disputation 9, section 2]
For the most part God is accustomed to inspire prophecy through an angel as mediator: first revealing to the angel, so that the angel then reveals to the human being what he has been ordered to reveal, and this either by showing it with a body assumed by the angel, or by presenting to the human mind in a spiritual apparition the species of the things which the Holy Spirit wishes to signify beforehand to the human being. Thus the law was given to Moses in the hand of a mediator; thus in Zechariah, and to Zechariah, the angel of the Lord was speaking; thus in the Apocalypse Christ manifests to the angel, the angel to John, and John to others, the things which the Father had revealed to Christ, as human being, from the beginning of his conception. This is most suited to the sweetness of divine governance, which is accustomed to use mediating things.
And thus the most weighty saints have judged that, in fact, God has been accustomed to inspire prophecy only through angels. Yet it must not be denied that God, if he wishes, can in this way flow immediately into human minds. Neither Damascene nor any other Fathers denied this; and St. Jerome, St. Gregory, and the more recent Torquemada affirmed it. Jerome, while he grants the former mode, contends that this latter mode has sometimes been used by God. I know that God can do it if he wishes; whether he has done it, I do not know, and it matters little to know.
That former influx which occurs through an angel is not without difficulty either, since an angel can neither create that spiritual light nor enter into the human intellect. Moreover, Scotus denies that this light, created by God, can be sent into a human mind by an angel without the service of the senses. But Albertus and Henry of Hesse affirm it. St. Thomas seems at one time to deny and at another to concede it; yet in such a way that when a light of this kind is sent into the intellect without a sensible apparition or species, as happens in intellectual revelation, he acknowledges that this is sent immediately by God, who alone can create that light. Francisco Pico taught this accurately from the opinion of these scholastics, book 2 of On Foreknowledge, chapter 3.
[margin: Acts 7:38; Galatians 3:19; Revelation 1; St. Thomas, Secunda Secundae, question 171, article 2; Dionysius the Areopagite, Celestial Hierarchy, chapter 4; Augustine, book 3 On the Trinity; Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith; Jerome on Isaiah and Ezekiel; Gregory, Moralia, book 18; Torquemada in the prologue to the Revelations of St. Bridget, chapter 4; Scotus, Albertus, Henry of Hesse, St. Thomas, and Francisco Pico, On Foreknowledge, book 2, chapter 3]
Third, I said “of things far distant from us.” Things of this kind are, first, those which by their nature are far removed from human cognition, such as the more hidden counsels of God, the mysteries of faith, and similar divine matters. In this sense Christ the Lord is foretold as a future prophet: “A prophet from your nation and from your brothers, like me, the Lord will raise up for you,” and so forth.
[margin: Deuteronomy 18:15]
And to this should be referred the prophecy which the Apostle compares with the gift of tongues. Second, there are also things which are removed from our cognition by reason of the mode of knowing: when what is announced cannot be known except by supernatural light, as when Elisha learned what Gehazi had agreed upon with Naaman, and Blessed Peter learned what had passed between Ananias and Sapphira.
Third, finally, there are other things far distant by reason of time. Either they have already been so erased by forgetfulness that they can be known only by divine revelation; in this way St. Gregory writes on Ezekiel that Moses prophesied about the creation of the world. Or else the time is still future, and the event contingent, and therefore clearly known to God alone, according to that saying: “Announce the things that are to come, and we shall know that you are gods.” And this is the more frequent signification of the word prophecy, so much so that, in proper speech, only those are called prophets who predict future contingents. Speaking generally, however, the others too are called prophets.
[margin: 1 Corinthians 14:3-4; 2 Kings 5; Acts 5; Isaiah 41:23; Gregory on Ezekiel; St. Thomas, De veritate, question 12]
The evident cognition of future contingents is reserved to God alone, because for perfect cognition it is necessary that a thing be known as present. But to God alone, just as past and present things, so also future things are always before his eyes, because eternity lacks a beginning, lacks an end, and in it all things are known at once. God alone is eternal. Therefore, when God grants this prophetic light of future contingents to a human being, he then communicates with that human being that privilege which belongs to eternity and follows upon it. In this sense Jerome of Ferrara used to say that prophets are made by God participants in eternity.
I said, fourth, “with unmoving truth.” This must be understood of absolute prophecy, which they call prophecy of sentence without foreknowledge, whose event always corresponds to the prediction, because then things are considered as they exist in God himself and depend on him alone, who alone is immutable. But this part of the definition does not proceed in prophecy of threats or counsel insofar as that prophecy is conditional, and in it things are considered as they depend on secondary causes, which are mutable.
That conditional prophecy is indeed mutable in itself, according to the mutability of human actions; nevertheless, in God’s foreknowledge even this is immutable. Since prophets know this well, and compare the nature of their threat with the will of God, it follows that they have neither been deceived nor deceived others when what they predicted did not occur, as happened to Jonah with the Ninevites and to Isaiah with Hezekiah. Not only the Fathers but also sacred Scripture itself very clearly confirms this distinction.
[margin: Jerome of Ferrara, Compendium of Revelations; scriptural and patristic notes on conditional prophecy, including Jonah, Isaiah and Hezekiah, Chrysostom, Gregory, and 2 Kings 20/4 Kings 20]
I said, fifth, “with the greatest certainty,” because those to whom a divine revelation is made are usually so illumined in mind by God, so affected in will, and so made more certain concerning the trustworthiness and truth of the revelation, that they openly recognize and most firmly believe that God is the author of the revelation or vision. They are able, by some inward savor, as St. Gregory says, to discern that they are not being mocked by human dreams or by the fraud of the Devil, but know more certainly than certain that this light has been granted to them by God’s gift.
Blessed Augustine handed this down concerning his mother, and Blessed Angela of Foligno repeatedly professes it concerning herself. They see future things so clearly and give assent to them so firmly that they would just as easily deny the first, most received, and most familiar principles of the sciences, as Savonarola boasted about himself, and as Pico affirms about a certain familiar of his whom he does not name. I think this was that Jerome. But, more truly and certainly, Thomas Anglicus deservedly judged that all the revelations made to the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and the other preachers and doctors of the nascent Church were of this kind, both in his commentary on Genesis and in that commentary which was falsely attributed to the Angelic Doctor by the addition of one little letter. Some think that the same kind of imposture befell the commentaries on the Apocalypse and on the Canonical Epistles.
[margin: Gregory, Dialogues, book 4, chapter 48; Augustine, Confessions, book 6; Blessed Angela of Foligno, chapters 19, 21, 27, 28, 29, and elsewhere; Pico, Compendium of Revelations; Thomas Anglicus, chapter 12, with comments on the Genesis and other attributed commentaries]
But whatever may be the case about this author, theologians, contemplatives, or mystics call this light, which is usually infused from heaven together with true revelations, by various names: internal savor, intimate inspiration, experimental sweetness, divine illumination sensible beyond the senses, hidden manna, and finally the discernment of spirits. It is still disputed whether this light is the same as the light of faith, or something different from it and superadded to it. The latter seems truer to Pico, and to me also, at least by a formal distinction. Perhaps it is the same in reality, and, having taken on new matter, it extends and stretches itself in a certain new way. But I do not wish now to discuss these subtler and more minute matters. Whether it is the same thing or different, when this is given together with revelation, then the person who does not give faith to such a revelation sins gravely. Let Zacharias be the example, deprived of the use of his tongue, and in the history of Kings, the man who did not wound the prophet who ordered him to do so, and who because of his disobedience was torn apart by a lion.
I said, sixth, “foreknowing,” because I am defining prophecy in the most genuine sense, to which it is proper that it knows itself to be speaking beforehand what it announces, according to that passage of Daniel: “A word was revealed to Daniel, and the word was true, and he understood the word.” For understanding is needed in a vision. Therefore it is necessary to understand, and also to announce to others. Therefore:
I said, seventh, “and announcing.” For the gift of prophecy is given for the usefulness of the Church, so that the things which holy persons have known by God’s inspiration may be announced to the rest. Finally, it is customary to ask to which species of quality this light should be referred. The common opinion is that of St. Thomas: that it is reduced to a passible quality, because it is a certain sudden impression, similar to a passing affection and easily receding. For it is not always present to prophets; often it leaves them. You may not inappropriately compare them to people staying in a dark place: when the light of a candle is brought in, they begin to see the things around them; when it is carried away, all things again grow dark for them. Hence Micah says, “When I sit in darkness, the Lord is my light”; and Blessed Peter says, “We have the prophetic word, to which you do well to attend as to a lamp shining in a dark place.”
Yet this light has so many things in common with supernatural habits that Julius Sirenius, a learned man, tries to prove that it is better reduced to a habit. In his book 7 On Fate, chapter 14, you will find the arguments by which he attacks the common opinion. I neither wish nor have leisure to say more.
[margin: Luke 1; 1 Kings 20:36; Daniel 10:1; St. Thomas on the passible quality of prophetic light; Micah 7:8; 2 Peter 1:19; Julius Sirenius, On Fate, book 7, chapter 14]