The Prophetic Charism in the Church

Prophecy did not end with John. The New Testament knows prophets in the Church, and the Orthodox tradition speaks of a continuing prophetic charism — in the apostles and the early Church, and, later, in the “clairvoyant” elders whose gift of insight is honored but hedged with the strictest cautions against spiritual delusion. This file treats the continuation of prophecy, its sober criteria, and closes the compendium with an assessment of what the Church confesses in venerating the prophets.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Prophecy in the New Testament Church

With John the seal of the Old Testament prophets (see John the Seal of the Prophets), the office of prophecy does not disappear; it is transformed and poured out more widely. At Pentecost St. Peter proclaims Joel’s prophecy fulfilled — “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:16–18) — and the apostolic Church is full of prophets: Agabus foretells a famine and, later, Paul’s binding at Jerusalem (Acts 11:27–28; 21:10–11); the daughters of Philip prophesy (Acts 21:9); prophets are named among the ministries God has set in the Church, “first apostles, secondarily prophets” (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11). St. Paul devotes a long treatment to the gift of prophecy, ranking it above tongues because it “edifieth the church,” and — crucially — subjecting it to discernment: “Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge” (1 Corinthians 14:1–4, 29). From the beginning, then, the New Testament prophetic gift is real but tested: it is exercised within the Church, under judgment, and measured against the apostolic faith. The early Church knew both the genuine charism and its counterfeits: the Didache already gives rules for distinguishing true itinerant prophets from false ones by their conduct (Didache 11), and the Montanist crisis of the second century — a movement of “new prophecy” the Church came to reject — set the pattern by which ecstatic prophecy claiming to supersede or bypass the Church’s order is refused (see The Church Fathers, for the early Church’s discernment of charism and order).

The Prophetic Charism in the Saints: The Clairvoyant Elders

In the later tradition the prophetic gift is most often spoken of not as public oracle but as a charism of certain holy ones — above all the monastic elders (startsy, gerontes) — who are granted, by the purification of long ascetic struggle, a gift the tradition calls diorasis or prozorlivost: spiritual sight, clairvoyance, the discernment of hearts and of things hidden or to come. The Desert Fathers already display it; the Lives of the great elders — St. Seraphim of Sarov, who answered the unspoken questions of those who came to him; the elders of Optina; St. Paisios and St. Porphyrios in the twentieth century — are full of such episodes, in which the elder reads the visitor’s secret sin, foretells a death or a birth, or gives counsel that only later reveals its foreknowledge (see St. Seraphim of Sarov; and, on the elder–disciple relation, Monasticism). This is the continuation, in the Church’s own idiom, of the prophetic charism: not the covenant-enforcing public office of an Isaiah, but the Spirit-given insight of the purified heart, given for the salvation of the one who seeks counsel.

The tradition is emphatic, however, that this gift is not to be sought, and that its pursuit is spiritually perilous. The reason is the doctrine of prelest (Greek plani), spiritual delusion — the state in which a person, deceived by vainglory and the demons, mistakes the products of his own imagination or of demonic suggestion for divine revelation. The ascetic Fathers hold that visions, “prophecies,” and spiritual experiences actively sought or received without deep humility are the classic gateway to delusion; St. Ignatius Brianchaninov and the whole Philokalic tradition warn that the safest path is to distrust one’s own spiritual experiences, to receive nothing without the discernment of a mature spiritual father, and never to desire visions or the gift of prophecy (the theology of prelest and the discernment of true from false spiritual experience is treated at depth in the collections on the ascetic life; see The Jesus Prayer, and St. Ignatius Brianchaninov). The genuine clairvoyant elder is, by the tradition’s own criteria, precisely the one who did not seek the gift, who conceals rather than displays it, who bears it in humility and uses it only for others’ good — the opposite of the self-appointed “prophet” who trades on spiritual sensation. This compendium defers the full treatment of prelest and the discernment of spirits to those collections; here it notes only that the Church’s reception of a continuing prophetic charism is inseparable from her strictest cautions about it.

The Sober Criteria

The criteria by which the Orthodox tradition tests any claim to prophetic or charismatic gift can be stated briefly, and they are continuous from the New Testament to the elders:

Conformity to the apostolic faith. A “prophecy” that contradicts the Church’s dogma or Scripture is thereby false, whatever wonders attend it (1 John 4:1–3; Galatians 1:8).
The fruit of humility, not vainglory. The true gift is borne in self-abasement and concealment; the counterfeit feeds pride and display (Matthew 7:15–20; the ascetic doctrine of prelest).
Submission to the Church’s discernment. The genuine charism is exercised under judgment and obedience, not as a private authority above the Church (1 Corinthians 14:29; the rejection of Montanism).
Edification, not sensation. Prophecy is given “to edification, and exhortation, and comfort” (1 Corinthians 14:3), for the building of the Church, not for spectacle or the prophet’s reputation.

These criteria are the Church’s inheritance from the prophets themselves, who were tested in Israel by the same standards — the true prophet distinguished from the false by fidelity to the covenant God rather than by the mere occurrence of a sign (Deuteronomy 13:1–5; 18:20–22; Jeremiah against the false prophets of “peace, peace”). Prophecy, in the Church as in Israel, is real, dangerous, and always subject to discernment.

Assessment: What the Veneration of the Prophets Confesses

To close the compendium: what does the Church confess in venerating the Old Testament prophets as saints? Three things, gathered from the whole of this collection.

First, she confesses the unity of the two Testaments and the one economy of salvation. In honoring Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Daniel, and David as saints with feasts and icons and intercessions, the Church declares that the God of the Old Covenant is the God of the New, that the Spirit who spoke by the prophets is the Spirit of Christ, and that the prophets belong to the one Church of all ages — not to a superseded past but to the communion of saints, already redeemed by the Christ they foretold and He descended to deliver (see What a Prophet Is; The Prophets as Saints of the Church).

Second, she confesses that all of Scripture testifies to Christ. The prophets are venerated as those who saw His day and were glad — the burning bush, the closed gate, the suffering servant, the sign of Jonah, the stone cut without hands, the Lord at the right hand — so that the whole Old Testament is read, sung, and painted as a converging witness to the Incarnation, its choir turned, on the icon-screen, toward the Virgin and her Son. This christological reading is not a Christian imposition on the texts but, for the Church, the disclosure of their true sense; and it is confessed in worship before it is argued in theology (see Christ the Key to the Scriptures).

Third, she confesses the sober truth about her own knowledge. The prophets’ prophecies and their sainthood rest on Scripture and on the Church’s reception; the traditions of their deaths and tombs rest on the Lives of the Prophets and the synaxaria, of contested date and named authority (see The Prophets in Icon, Relic, and Legend). To hold these in their proper relation — venerating the prophets without asking a pseudepigraphon to bear the weight of the Gospel — is itself part of what the Church confesses: a veneration that is honest about its sources is a truer veneration, and a Church that can read the prophets both christologically and critically loses neither. The prophets stand, at the last, where they have always stood: at the threshold of the Gospel, pointing beyond themselves to the Christ, sealed in John the Forerunner, and honored by the Church as the friends of God who longed to see His day.

References

The Holy Bible, KJV (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:16–18; 11:27–28; 21:9–11; 1 Corinthians 12:28; 14:1–4, 29; Ephesians 4:11; Deuteronomy 13:1–5; 18:20–22; Matthew 7:15–20; 1 John 4:1–3; Galatians 1:8).
The Didache 11 (the testing of itinerant prophets); the early Church’s rejection of Montanism (the discernment of charism and order).
Ignatius (Brianchaninov), The Arena and On the Prayer of Jesus (the doctrine of prelest and the distrust of self-sought spiritual experience); and the Philokalic tradition on discernment.
The Lives of the clairvoyant elders (St. Seraphim of Sarov; the Optina elders; St. Paisios and St. Porphyrios) for the continuing charism of diorasis / prozorlivost, reported as tradition.
Pentiuc, Eugen J. The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. (The unity of the Testaments and the christological reading.)