The implications of 'prophecy'

by Simon 50 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Simon

  Stories such as Lord of the Rings and Narnia always have some prophecy which usually involves some decendent of whoever becoming king and then everything being ok, yada yada yada. They never explain how it works ... because of course it cannot be explained - there is just some 'magic' that makes things work out.

  Of course the bible is the ultimate story jam packed full of prophecies. So, for the people who believe it, what are the implications?

  Well, if they were to be true then something has to make them work and bring them about right? Unless believers are willing to believe that there is just some 'magic' that does it then the obvious answer is that someone makes it happen. God. Simple.

  So ... when he makes some prophecy about there being wars and earthquakes and general bad-crap happening ... he must feel obliged to make it happen otherwise he then looks like a big chump who failed? So he does it. Thanks god.

  "Ah, no", the religious will claim, "he just sees the future" (to which anyone with half a brain replies 'cobblers!'). Where does free-will then fit into this if people are pre-destined to follow a particular course? What if it looks like they are going to keep on the straight and narrow ... is he going to make sure they go off the rails to keep to his plan?

  Of course, writers with some skill like C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkein know that is a pandoras box that shouldn't be opened or any attempt made to explain things - it is just a tool to tell a story so they leave it with 'the prophecy said ...' and along comes the hero of the piece to win the day. We get a good book to while away some hours and rent the movie from blockbuster when it comes out.

  The clowns who wrote the bible though were less skilled and end up way over on the L.Ron.Hubbard side of the writers rating scale ... they actually try to make a belief system out of the crap!

  Isn't that the implication of 'prophecy'?
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  Leolaia

  So ... when he makes some prophecy about there being wars and earthquakes and general bad-crap happening ... he must feel obliged to make it happen otherwise he then looks like a big chump who failed? So he does it. Thanks god.

  That is almost exactly the attitude that the prophet Jonah has in Jonah, a story that is a sort of parody or satire of the prophetic profession. Jonah is a prophet anti-hero, he is almost the exact opposite of the ideal. Jeremiah is an example of the ideal prophet, who really hopes that what he prophesies does not come to pass and says with the word of YHWH: "Perhaps they will listen and turn from his evil behavior; if so, I shall relent and not bring the disaster upon them which I intended" (Jeremiah 26:3). Prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel were less concerned with "predicting the future" than social reform -- they were the activists of their day. Isaiah demonstrating naked for three years, Jeremiah bearing a yoke to demonstrate the political reality of the nation, Ezekiel lying on his side for 390 days to illustrate what was wrong with the nation -- all that is pure activism. If Jeremiah achieved his goal in convincing the king and the populace to avoid political disaster by accepting Babylonian rule, he would have been more than happy to have his prophecies unfulfilled. Jonah however is the exact opposite and it is quite hilarious how the story portrays him (see my recent explication here: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/169191/3133211/post.ashx#3133211). He does everything wrong. Unlike the hardworking prophets like Jeremiah who try to change the hearts and minds of the people, Jonah first does everything he could to avoid his mission and then when he goes to Ninevah he gives his "prophecy" (just a few bare words) with minimal effort to no one in particular, with no explanation or pleas for repentance. And ironically he succeeds beyond the wildest imaginations of Jeremiah or Ezekiel -- EVERYBODY in the city heeds his word, even the silly animals who are absurdly dressed up in sackcloth by the honest-hearted but foolish populace. And this enrages Jonah who childishly pouts that he knew that God was not really going to destroy the city if he followed his mission. In other words, he wanted those people to die, he wanted to have his prophecy come true which is why he gave such piss-poor effort in delivering the prophecy (even the king of Ninevah hears the warning second-hand). The funny thing I like best about the story is that he tries to second-guess God who decided to spare the city once the Ninevites all repent. But Jonah had prophesied that the city would be destroyed in 40 days, and even though God had already made his decision, there were still the greater portion of the 40 days yet to pass. So Jonah pulls up a chair and sits outside the city to wait it out (Jonah 4:5). Just maybe, he thinks, God is going to change his mind after all and destroy the city. A comic satire like this was a perfect vehicle for giving sharp critique on the prophetic profession, and particularly on those prophets who were not in it for social reform but to stoke their own egos.
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  quietlyleaving

  that was funny Leo. I guess I also understand a little more why we need to work out the genre of texts
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  purplesofa

  I think it's easy to predict wars and earthquakes and such, they have always happened and will continue to do so.
  God does not have to do anything, it is already going to happen anyway.
  If you add in how mankind will treat each other, written out as a script as the bible is,
  Mankind will play out the script, just like Lord of the Rings.
  Certain things happen and they fit it in the script. The WT is great at this, well not really, but look at their constantly trying to fit in what's happening now to writings in the Bible. A date for everything. They want the script to play out. Make it fit and people will believe it to be prophecy.
  Think if an entirely different script was written, could things be any different?
  Would the masses be living another story?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  purps
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  LouBelle

  Don't forget the Golden Compass.

  Perhaps we should read the bible as we would one of these novels, a great read, can take some lesson from it, but it's all fantasy at the end of the day. It's less complicated then. The bible leaves itself open to sooooo many interpretations and thus confustion reigns.
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  Narkissos

  The "implications" of predictive prophecy (which, as Leolaia has pointed out, is only a secondary feature of Biblical "prophetism") are nearly explicit in one key formula of "Solomon's prayer" (1 Kings 8:15 etc.): what Yhwh says with his mouth he fulfills with his hand. A more sophisticated representation, avoiding the above anthropomorphism through a quasi-magical metaphor, depicts the "word of Yhwh" as self-fulfilling (Isaiah 55:11) -- paving the way for the hypostatisation of the prophetic word which will eventually combine with the Wisdom tradition and the Greek logos in Philo and later Christian christology. The flip side being that, along this path from mythology to theology, "God" gradually loses a god's ability to "change his mind" (which is constitutive of the earlier or deliberately archaistic Yhwh stories). Otoh, the late apocalyptical tradition (Daniel etc.) doesn't seem to be very far from an autonomous view of "history" as merely foreseen by God, even though he is still posited as the Master of history at its beginning (by writing the script, as it were) and at its end.
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  Leolaia

  That was quite insightful. And it is interesting to see how this trajectory of development was aided and abetted by Hellenistic philosophy, logos becoming reason, God becoming all-rational and therefore the epitome of enkrateia -- who by definition would not make rash reversals of decision. The author of 2 Peter was influenced to a small extent by this kind of philosophy (e.g. 1:3-6, 2:12, wherein the divine nature promotes self-control in contrast to the false prophets who give in to irrational vices), and his epistle is essentially a defense of prophecy against those critical of its predictive failure (1:19-21, 2:1, 3:2-7). He takes a view somewhat concordant with that in Jonah, that God "is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (3:9). But unlike the author of Jonah, he is unwilling to have God relent and change his mind. It might take a thousand years, but the "day of the Lord" will come as foretold (3:8, 10). It is rather an exercise in restraint, in self-control, for God to maintain his patience while people are still repenting. Having God abandon his promises entirely on account of repentance (as in Jonah) does not seem to be within the scheme presupposed in 2 Peter.
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  slimboyfat

  This is why I think the Witnesses' claim that Jehovah has selective foreknowledge is actually quite clever and makes more sense than Calvin's predestination doctrine.

  It seems to me that if God is omnipotent then there can be no distinction between foreknowledge and foreordination, because if God knew what would be the result of his creation before he created he can reasonably be held responsible for man's fall and all subsequent suffering because he chose to create knowing fully what the result would be.

  If on the other hand, as Jehovah's Witnesses argue, foreknowledge is an ability Jehovah only uses selectively, and although it was a possible outcome he did not know that men would rebel and suffer when he created, then free will is preserved on the one hand and neither can Jehovah be held responsible for sin, death and suffering.

  Having said that I don't find it easy to believe in the JW version of God either, but I do think he makes more sense than other versions of God in the Christian tradtion. Events such as the tsunami of 2005 however convince me that there is probably not loving, all-powerful being because I cannot understand how he would allow that.
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  Leolaia

  Maybe a few passages that might be difficult to reconcile with a notion of selective foreknowledge:

  Psalm 139:15-16: "My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be".

  Hebrews 4:13: "Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight, everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him".
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  slimboyfat

  Those are pretty poor verses in support of complete foreknowledge I have to say. The translation seems to be in dispute in the first and the second doesn't talk about the future. And Leolaia there are many more passages that strongly suggest God does not know everything in advance.

  I think, as well as intuitively appearing more reasonable, the JW idea of selective foreknowledge makes better sense of a Bible story constructed as a whole than Calvinism. There are no doubt passages that can be used against it, in as much as the Bible pretty much never seems to agree with itself on any subject. Romans 8-11 for instance strongly suggests complete foreknowledge. On the other hand:

  Genesis 18:20 And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; 21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. 22 And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the LORD.

  Genesis 22:11 And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. 12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.