John the Forerunner: The Seal of the Prophets

John the Baptist stands at the hinge of the two Testaments: the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets, and more than a prophet — the Forerunner who pointed with his finger to the Christ the others had only foretold. This file treats John as the seal of the prophets, and defers his biography in full to his own collection.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Last and Greatest

The line of the prophets that runs from Moses to Malachi does not simply stop; it comes to a point in one man. John the son of Zacharias — the Baptist, whom the Christian East calls above all the Forerunner (Prodromos) — is honored by the Church as the seal of the prophets, the one in whom the whole Old Covenant witness is gathered and fulfilled. Christ Himself sets him at the summit of the prophetic order and then past it: “Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11); “For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John” (Matthew 11:13); and, most precisely, “What went ye out for to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet” (Matthew 11:9). John is the terminus of the prophetic line — “the law and the prophets were until John” (Luke 16:16) — and, at the same time, its transcending, because he does what no prophet before him could do.

More Than a Prophet: From Foretelling to Pointing

The difference the Church draws between John and the prophets before him is the difference between foretelling and pointing. The prophets spoke of a Christ still to come, across the distance of centuries; John stood in the same water as Him and pointed with his hand: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Where Isaiah described the Servant and David sang of the Lord at the right hand, John identified the person — “this is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me” (John 1:30). This is why the Fathers call him the seal: in him prophecy passes from word to finger, from expectation to presence. He is himself the fulfilment of the last prophecy of the Old Testament — the messenger sent “in the spirit and power of Elias” to prepare the way (Malachi 3:1; 4:5; Luke 1:17; Matthew 11:14; see Elijah the Fiery Prophet) — and the fulfilment of Isaiah’s “voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:3; Matthew 3:3). The prophet who was himself foretold, and who then pointed to the One all the prophets foretold: this is John’s unique place at the seam of the Testaments.

The Church marks his standing liturgically. In the iconography of the Deesis — the great central image of the icon-screen — John stands on one side of the enthroned Christ and the Theotokos on the other, the two chief intercessors of the human race; and John is often depicted winged, as “the Angel of the Desert,” the messenger (Greek angelos, “messenger”) of Malachi’s prophecy. Among the saints, only the Theotokos is given higher liturgical honor than the Forerunner. He belongs to this compendium as the seal who closes the prophetic line treated throughout it — but he belongs, properly and fully, to his own collection.

Deferred to His Own Collection

The life of John the Forerunner — his miraculous birth to the aged Zacharias and Elizabeth, his desert asceticism, his baptism of repentance, his baptism of Christ at the Jordan (the feast of Theophany), his rebuke of Herod and his beheading, and the Orthodox tradition of his preaching in Hades as the Forerunner even among the dead — is treated in full in the dedicated collection, to which this file defers entirely rather than duplicating (see St. John the Forerunner; and, on his standing as “greatest born of women,” The Greatest Born of Women). This compendium on the prophets treats John only under the one aspect proper to it: his place as the last of the prophets and more than a prophet, the seal in whom the witness of Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, David, and all the choir of the prophets comes to its point and its end. What the prophets awaited, John announced; where they foretold, he pointed; and with him the long Advent of the Old Covenant gives way to the presence of the One it had prepared.

From the Seal to the Continuation

John seals the Old Testament office of prophecy — the line of those who prepared the way of the Lord before His coming. But prophecy does not simply cease with the coming of Christ: the New Testament knows prophets in the Church (Acts 11:27–28; 21:9–11; 1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4:11), and the tradition speaks of a prophetic charism that continues, transformed, in the life of the Church and her saints. The nature of that continuation — its reality, its limits, its dangers, and the Church’s sober criteria for discerning true prophetic gifts from delusion — is the subject of the companion and closing file of this compendium (see The Prophetic Charism in the Church).

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, KJV (Isaiah 40:3; Malachi 3:1; 4:5; Matthew 3:3; 11:9–14; Luke 1:17; 16:16; John 1:29–30).
  • St. John the Forerunner collection, this repository (the full biography and veneration; deferred here).
  • The Menaion and the Deesis iconography (John as Forerunner and “Angel of the Desert”; his standing beside the Theotokos as chief intercessor); Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, SVS Press, 1982, on the Deesis.