Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Wahre, falsche Propheten: Prophezeiung nicht als Vorhersage; Dialektik der Widerspenstigen (stubborn of heart)

Kurzinhalt: prophecies: senseless if they are understood as flat predictions of future events, the prophetic concern is not with future events but with the existential order in the present

Textausschnitt: ... The symbolism of the thornbush episode, in which Yahweh revealed himself to Moses as the I AM WHO I AM, has been brought by the prophetic faith close to unfolding the metaphysics of being contained in it. When the prophets struggle with the meaning of the Message, the principles of a philosophy of history become at least discernible, though they do not achieve conceptual articulation. (461; Fs) (notabene)

64/13 In the first place, the prophets penetrated what in modern terminology may be called the dialectics of divine foreknowledge and human decision. On the side of divine foreknowledge they knew: God had chosen Israel as the holy nation of the new order; since God did not use the method of trial and error, the revealed order had to be realized; whatever Israel did, it had to remain the Chosen People. On the side of human decision they knew: The empirical Israel did not realize the revealed order; and a terrible disaster, amounting to extinction, was impending in pragmatic politics. In the face of this conflict between revealed and empirical order, the prophets spoke the word of Yahweh in the dual symbolism of the prophecies of punishment and salvation. The prophecies of the terrible day were intended to induce the change of heart that would avert the punishment; and the prophecies of ultimate salvation held out the future that would follow the concrete change of heart. The prophecies will become senseless if they are understood as flat predictions of future events, without any bearing on the attunement of human to divine order through the change of heart. This proposition, that the prophecies will become senseless unless they are understood as the alternatives hinging on the change of heart, is valid, however, only on the level of prophetic existence. The literal, or fundamentalist, understanding of prophecy as flat information about the future acquires a sinister and even deadly sense if it is the deliberate misunderstanding by the people of whom the change of heart is demanded. For the dialectics of divinely foreknown and humanly realized order is not merely a "theoretical problem," but the ontologically real struggle for order conducted in every man's existence. Moreover, it is the struggle for the order in society conducted among the men who take sides for or against the attunement to divine order. And in this struggle no holds are barred on the side of the resisters. Precisely because the prophetic concern is not with future events but with the existential order in the present, the prophecies will be understood by the people to whom they are addressed as literal information about the future. The stubborn of heart are clever dialecticians themselves; they know quite as well as the prophets that the will of God, expressed in his choice, cannot be stultified by the people. Hence, they will pretend not to hear the existential appeal in the prophecy of disaster; for if they do not hear it, they not only need not respond to the appeal, but can construe the prophecy as an insult to God and his choice, and gain the right to persecute and martyrize the "prophet of doom." (461f; Fs) (notabene)

65/13 The prophecy of salvation, in its turn, lends itself so easily to the not-hearing of the appeal, that its misuse for evading the issue of existential order had become the prosperous business of the "false prophets," against whom Jeremiah conducted his lifelong campaign. The authentic prophets were forced, as a consequence, to lay their accents in public on the prophecy of disaster, thus exposing themselves even more to the fate of the "prophet of doom" who blasphemously attacks the revealed order, as in the case of Jeremiah. And Isaiah, in his endeavor to prevent the misuse of his words, apparently went even so far as to entrust his prophecies of salvation to a circle of disciples, to be kept secret for the time being. (462f; Fs) (notabene)