Gratuitous Graces
171. Prophecy
1. Prophecy is the certain foretelling of a future event by a person supernaturally informed of it, and supernaturally moved to announce it. Prophecy consists primarily in the knowledge of future events; this knowledge is beyond the natural power of creatures to acquire, and is imparted by God to the prophet. Secondarily, prophecy is the "expression in speech" of the divinely imparted prophetic knowledge. And, in the third place, prophecy takes it fullness and perfection from the "certainty of the message" prophetically made. This certainty will have its proof when the event prophesied comes to pass, but it is requisite for perfect prophecy to have a backing and guarantee at the time the prophet speaks. This backing and guarantee of certainty is usually afforded by the aid of miracles.
2. Naturally acquired knowledge is in a person as an intellectual habit; it is something he has acquired and keeps; it stays with him, and serves as a permanent mental quality which tends to make the mind better or worse in its operation. Thus natural knowledge can be used at the knower's will. But the prophet's knowledge is not something he can use at will. It is knowledge specially given, by a special divine light, and given in the measure that God wills, for utterance as a divine help, guide, or warning to mankind. And, while both the prophet and the people who hear him can remember the prophecy, and in so far can make it an element of their knowledge, neither prophet nor people can work the prophecy into the common fabric of their natural knowledge to be pursued, developed, and correlated with other items of natural experience.
3. Prophetic knowledge includes more than future free events. The prophet may announce timeless things, as Isaias announced what was divinely revealed to him of the eternal perfections of God. Sometimes, indeed, a man is called a prophet when he tells of the past; so Moses prophesied when he wrote, under divine inspiration, of the creation of the world. In this way a prophecy is the certain knowledge and pronouncement of what is "remote from human knowledge." However, in its strict sense, prophecy is knowing and foretelling what is to come, that is, what is remote in time from human experience.
4. A prophet is not in possession of the whole field of prophecy; he does not know all that can possibly be prophesied. He knows what God gives him to know, and moves him to make known to others.
5. The prophet may not always be clear in his own mind about the precise line which divides the divinely revealed message from his own knowledge. But, as St. Gregory says, the Holy Ghost takes care that no erroneous human elements are mixed with the prophecy which God wills to have pronounced.
6. Nothing false, therefore, can enter into the prophecy as pronounced; it is a message from God Himself.
172. The Cause of Prophecy
1. The knowledge of the genuine prophet cannot be accounted for by any natural power in himself. This knowledge is from God. It is revealed knowledge, not acquired knowledge, and God is its cause. St. Peter says (II Pet. 1:21): "Prophecy came not by the will of man . . . but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost."
2. In the universe of creatures, lower things are regularly directed by higher things and so up to the highest. In the world of creatural intellects, the angelic is superior to the human. It is fitting, therefore, that the knowledge to be uttered in prophecy should be conveyed to the human prophet by angels.
3. It cannot be said that God selects as prophets men of a suitable disposition for the office of prophet. God chooses as prophets whom he will, regardless of natural abilities and dispositions. The infinite Creator can instantly produce in any man the qualifications naturally needed (as, for instance, the power to speak, or the ability to use an unfamiliar language), just as he produces the supernatural knowledge and the authority of the prophet.
4. Indeed, if God choose, the office of prophet may be exercised by a person who is not even in the state of grace. For prophecy is primarily a matter of knowledge, which pertains to the intellect, whereas grace or charity pertains primarily to the will. Yet it is most unlikely that a man of sinful and passionate life should be made a prophet.
5. The evil spirits are fallen angels; by their angelic intellect they know things that man cannot naturally know, and they can reveal these things to man. But this revelation is neither divine nor supernatural. One who proclaims knowledge acquired from demons is not, in a strict sense, a prophet; at best he is to be called "a false prophet."
6. Even such "a false prophet" may speak truth; indeed, he must offer some truth, or he would quickly be discredited, and could win no one to believe the essential falsity he wishes to propagate.
173. The Conveying of Prophetic Knowledge
1. The prophetic vision which gives the prophet his knowledge is not the vision of God in heaven. If a prophet were to see God in the beatific vision, he would be instantly glorified and confirmed in grace, and this is impossible to man while he is a wayfarer, that is, is living this earthly life.
2. The revelation made to a prophet by divine power is sometimes an infusing of new ideas; sometimes, a new arrangement of ideas the prophet already possesses; and sometimes, a light that shows hitherto unseen implications in old ideas in their old arrangement.
7. Man forms ideas in the natural way by abstraction which draws intelligible species (that is, understandable essences) from the findings of sense represented in imagination-images or phantasms. This process is not always followed in the conveying of prophetic knowledge. Divinely imparted knowledge is sometimes directly impressed without the service of senses or phantasms. And sometimes it is an infused light which makes manifest what was not known in the natural process of human knowing.
4. It is possible that the prophet himself should not understand what the Holy Ghost means by the prophetic utterance. David understood that he had prophesied when he said (II Kings 23:2): "The spirit of the Lord hath spoken by me." But Caiphas did not understand when he prophesied (John 11:51): "And this he spoke, not of himself, but being the high-priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation."
174. The Types of Prophecy
1. Prophecy is divided into prophecy of foreknowledge which tells what is certainly to come, and prophecy of denunciation which tells what will come if the present situation does not change. The first type is prophecy of information; the second type is prophecy of warning. When the prophet Jonas told the people of sinful Ninive that in three days their city would be destroyed, he uttered a prophecy of denunciation. He did not tell the people that their being destroyed or being spared would depend on how they received and acted upon what he prophesied; indeed, he did not know that escape from disaster was possible for them. Yet his prophecy was actually, as it turned out, conditioned upon the way the Ninivites behaved; they and their king fasted, and did penance, and called on God; in consequence, they were spared, and the dire prophecy of destruction was not fulfilled. Now, the point to remember is this: Jonas made a true prophecy. The causes that would destroy Ninive were in action and were to produce their effect unless God should intervene to stop them. When Jonas told the people that destruction was coming, it was coming. Jonas was given foreknowledge of destruction to come in a certain situation, but not foreknowledge of what was to come if the situation should change; and the situation did change. Therefore, in distinguishing these two types of prophecy (that is, of full knowledge, and of denunciation) we may say: prophecy of full foreknowledge must be fulfilled; prophecy of denunciation must be fulfilled if the conditions in which it is uttered remain the same. And the prophet may or may not know which type of prophecy he is uttering.
2. The most excellent of prophecies comes from the inspiration of the Holy Ghost without sensible signs, words, dreams, or visions of material things.
3. Prophecy may be typed or classified according to the fact that it is imparted by pure inspiration or by material indications. And the indications themselves are various, and can be used for further classification. And so we can speak of prophetic knowledge imparted to the prophet when he is awake, when he is asleep, by signs of truth, by words of truth, by the word of an angel, by the word of our Lord in apparition, and so on.
4. Of all the prophets Moses was the greatest. Scripture tells us that the Lord spoke to Moses "face to face," and the prophecies of Moses were authenticated by very great miracles. In Deuteronomy (34:10, 11) we read: "There arose no more in Israel a prophet like unto Moses." Of course, when we call Moses the greatest of prophets, we are speaking of merely human prophets, divinely enlightened to speak prophecies; we do not include our Lord (who made the most wonderful of all prophecies concerning man's redemption, and the Resurrection, and the Holy Eucharist, and the Church), for our Lord is God himself as well as man, and he has no need of enlightenment about the future, for as God he knows it perfectly.
5. Prophecy has no place among the blessed in heaven. They who dwell in light itself have no need of enlightenment. Prophecy is a gratuitous grace imparted by God to help, guide, and warn man the wayfarer, that is, man living here on earth. Prophecy is meant to help get man safe home to heaven; those who are at home need no help and guide to get there.
6. Prophecies and prophets are not more and more excellent as time goes on, so that the predictions are better or greater as they near fulfillment. Moses was the greatest of the prophets, but he preceded most of the others. Indeed, it seems that the most essential and therefore the most excellent of doctrinal prophecies came earliest.
175. Rapture
1. Rapture is the state of being transported emotionally or spiritually; it is being carried out of oneself by a kind of ecstasy. In our present use, the word rapture means the uplifting of a person by the Spirit of God to things supernatural, by a movement so engrossing and powerful as to blot out the person's sense-awareness of his surroundings. St. Paul (II Cor. 12:2) tells of his being "rapt even to the third heaven."
2. Rapture is of the intellectual order rather than of the appetitive order. It deals with, and is occasioned by, revelations that enthrall the soul; and revelations are manifestations of truth to the intellect. Yet the will may so ardently desire what the intellect considers, that it contributes to the state of rapture. Besides, the intellect beholds, but the will enjoys.
3. St. Paul (II Cor. 12), speaking of himself in the third person, says he was rapt to heaven and heard secret words which it is not permitted to man to utter. Doubtless, he saw the essence of God, and had, in some way, a foretaste of the joy of heaven. But he had not the fullness of the light of glory and the beatific vision; else he would have been instantly glorified and confirmed in grace and beatitude; and, for man the wayfarer, this is impossible.
4. That St. Paul in his rapture was withdrawn from his senses is evident from the fact that he did not know whether he was in heaven in a bodily way or in vision-"whether in the body or out of the body, I know not."
5. We are not to suppose that St. Paul's soul was separated from his body during his rapture (that is, that he died, and was afterwards restored to life), but that his intellect was withdrawn from its natural operation of dealing with sense-images, and was raised, and filled supernaturally with the revelations of God.
6. As we have noted, St. Paul himself was not sure of just how his rapture was effected. He was sure of one thing: that his whole mind was supernaturally raised, and focused upon divine things to the exclusion of everything else.
176. Tongues
1. The "gift of tongues" is the divinely imparted knowledge of a variety of languages. The apostles had this gift, and were able to speak the languages of all the peoples to whom they were sent. We read in Scripture (Acts 2:6) that when the apostles spoke to the people of many nations, "every man heard them speak in his own tongue." This was rather that they spoke in the various languages than that, speaking their own language, they were understood by all. For their own language could not, without illusion, sound differently in different ears.
2. The gift of tongues is not so great a gift (that is, a gratuitous grace) as that of prophecy. For prophetic knowledge comes by divine enlightenment. Now, it is more excellent to have knowledge than to have words to express knowledge. And prophecy is likely to be more powerful than the gift of tongues in its effect upon souls. The gift of tongues seems, sometimes, to have stirred up more astonishment than conviction.
177. The Gift of Words
1. A gratuitous grace is one given less for the benefit of the person who receives it than for the benefit of others. Such a grace is the gift of effective speaking for the benefit and enlightenment of souls. The gift of tongues makes understood the knowledge that is expressed; the gift of words makes the expression effective in convincing and converting souls. St. Gregory (Hom. xxx in Ev.) says: "Unless the Holy Ghost fill the hearts of those who hear, the teacher's voice sounds vainly in their bodily ears."
2. The grace of the word of God to be preached publicly to the faithful of the Church, is given to men, not to women.
178. Miracles
1. The knowledge brought to men by prophecy, by the gift of tongues, and by the gift of words, needs to be authenticated as revealed truth. This is done by the working of miracles. The gift of performing miracles is, therefore, a gratuitous gift and grace.
2. A miracle is a wondrous fact or event, beyond the power of any creature, and produced by almighty God. In the working of a miracle, God often uses a human being as his instrument; in this case, the human being has the gratuitous grace and gift of miracles. Now, it is possible that the human instrument of a divine work should not be himself a holy man. For the divine work of miracles is meant to prove truth, and even a sinner can teach truth. But there are miracles which are wrought to prove the holiness of the person who is their instrument; in this case, to be sure, the truth confirmed by the miracle and the holiness of the instrument are one and the same thing.