A Wayfarer's Faith: Aspects of the common basis of religious life

by T. Edmund Harvey

The prophet is God's spokesman. He must lose thought of himself in his message. He is [p.37] translating for others and to others in the presence of the Giver of the message. He must keep in touch with those to whom he is speaking. He must remember too how easy it is for interpreters to expand and embroider upon the original, and thus to mar it. And, therefore, the prophet should keep very close to the Giver of the message, who may have given to others its fuller exposition.

One danger of the prophets of Corinth was very present to St. Paul's mind.

Some of them seem to have got so wrapt up in a sense of the Divine communion that they did not keep that control of their whole nature, which would lead them to find expression in the language of intelligence. Carried away by their feelings they gave utterance to the experience of their spirit in words broken and unintelligible, the channels of word and thought over which their brains had control seemed too small for the flood of emotion which swept out in overmastering power, so that their tongues moved and they spoke without knowing what they said. Paul knew better than any of them the hidden things of the Spirit, the groanings that cannot be uttered, the thoughts that flash upon us and cannot be caught up by our halting reason, following slowly after, the striving of the soul that no words can compass, the God-given intuitions which cannot be imprisoned in words.

But he knew too that language was given us not for the joy of expressing what we feel but as [p.38] a means of sharing our experience with others. To speak with an unknown tongue, to abandon oneself to the ecstasy of the moment, may be right for our own life, he writes, but it is useless for our fellows. We must not be content to soar up ourselves into the world of life and light, we must try to bring back into our world of sense some symbols of the truths of the world beyond, imprisoning in words which men may understand fragments of the truths which can never wholly be expressed in words.

At times the message burns so within the prophet's breast that he feels he must speak, no matter what is happening about him. Thus it seems that sometimes at Corinth two or three prophets would speak at once, and mar each other's messages. But this was to lose sight of their true place, to forget that the message was given them that others might receive it.

The prophet, he writes, is still master of his own spirit: he is not to allow his reason to lose its right control. He has to use his intelligence in deciding when he is to speak and when he must hold silence. He has not to let his conscious self be submerged in the sub-conscious, like an island beneath the waves of the surrounding sea; rather is he to gather on to its dry land the goods the waves have brought him, before he sends them forth again to other shores. In this way may the Divine message not only bring help to him but comfort to all to whom it is sent. [p.39] Thus the picture of the Church of Corinth and St. Paul's advice for its needs is one to which men may look who are seeking to-day for that true prophetic ministry which seemed to the Apostle the most important of the gifts of the Spirit to the Christian Church.

It may help us too to consider how far that gift has been present throughout the succeeding ages, and how far it has been hindered by the Church from finding its true exercise.

When next we get a glimpse of the Church at Corinth, more than a generation has passed away, and probably few of those who were members when St. Paul wrote are still alive. The majority of the church is in disagreement with its Elders or Bishops, and has deposed them from their positions; and the Bishop of Rome, Clement writes in the name of his church, in reply to some letter from the Corinthians, to urge them to be reconciled, and give once more the honour that is their due to these worthy presbyters. The first epistle of Clement is a long and beautiful letter, and enters with tact and deep concern into a discussion of the dissension that is troubling the peace of the Corinthians, but it makes no mention whatever of the place of prophecy in the Church. The word prophet does occur twice in the epistle, but only in reference to the Old Testament.

At the same time it is clear that Clement is very sensible of the importance of the position of [p.40] the bishops or presbyters, though it is not quite clear whether these are wholly distinct offices. Apparently the Church at Corinth was trying, in the spirit of Greek democracy, to dispense with its church officers. Clement tells them [4] how the Apostles went about setting up bishops and deacons amongst the first fruits of their converts in different cities; these offices had even been foreseen ages before, he notes, by the prophet Isaiah (Ix. 17). [5]

It was not right, he urges, that men who had been appointed by the apostles and afterwards by other men of renown, with the consent and approval of the whole Church, who had fulfilled their duties without blame, should now be cast out of their offices.