Prophecy

For the first time I was destined to be absent from the Fellowship conference (of the Commonwealth of St. Albania and St. Sergius), but spiritually I am still present at it. I send my love and greetings to all friends and members, Russian and English, His Eminence, our Chairman Bishop Darby, members and visitors from different countries and denominations. May God bless our work. I was expressed a desire that I give at least a brief summary of my report. I can do this in the most imperfect form. The main idea of ​​my report is that prophecy is an act of religious life as a personal meeting with God, which takes place, can and should take place in the life of every person, in its image and to the extent of it. For Moses says to the people of God: “...that all the Lord’s people would be prophets, that the Lord would send His Spirit upon them!” (Numbers, 11, 29). Through his life, a person is called to its prophetic perception; he can heed or not heed this appeal to him. It varies, from great to small. God calls his chosen ones for his great revelations, for the proclamation of his will, but even these little ones are given the opportunity to touch the right hand of God. If I felt able, my first task upon this return to your midst would be to tell about what was experienced and revealed to me during these terrible and at the same time marvelous days of illness, on the verge of death. By the merciful right hand of God I was returned to life in this world, and I was given these new meetings with my brothers. To pour out and comprehend this experience, to one way or another tell what was sent by God, is a difficult and responsible task for me in later life. However, such a task is inevitably one of the images of the prophetic revelation of life, no matter what its content and no matter how weak the silent word may be. It is inevitable for each of us to follow this path to the prophetic revelation of life and death. Everyone is called to the final revelation in death, to a personal encounter with God on the edge of life, if not on the paths of it. I would also like to tell you this feeling of the brink of life and death opening up on both sides. But this is indescribable. However, even on this side of this line, in our earthly life, we already have sufficient evidence that meeting God and hearing His voice is accomplished by man, and this is the basis of prophecy. And Revelation itself testifies to this. Let us leave the Old Testament aside here and dwell only on the New. Prophecy in the New Testament was not a general gift given through the laying on of apostolic hands. It is deliberate, characteristic only of certain individuals, along with other gifts: “Are all apostles? are all prophets? Are all teachers?...” (1 Cor. 12:29). “And He appointed some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some shepherds and teachers.” (Eph. 4:11). We have a special emphasis on the prophetic ministry as relating primarily to the foreknowledge of the future (for example, Acts 11:28; 21:4; 29:11, especially in Revelation about “what must soon take place” 1:1), as well as to special boldness in preaching (as, for example, in addressing the preaching to the pagans: Acts 13:46, or questioning and prophecy (Apostle Paul about the destinies of Israel, Rom. 9-11). But along with this special prophetic ministry, Revelation also knows general prophecy, about which it is said without any limitation: “... be zealous for spiritual gifts, especially to prophesy.” (1 Cor. 14: 1, cf. p. 39). You can prophesy, so that everyone can learn and everyone can be comforted.” (31) Here prophecy is elevated, as it were, to a liturgical rank, like modern preaching, although it is apparently not associated with any ordination, but is a general charismatic gift, in all its power, but also in all its indefinability. Such a gift is the power of Pentecost, according to the interpretation given by St. Peter to the prophecy of Joel: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; And on my servants and on my handmaids in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they will prophesy.” (Acts 11, 17–18; Joel 2, 28–29). Adjacent to this text are the above words of Moses: 11, 29. According to this text, the very power of Pentecost lies in the gift of prophecy. This is not about the particular gift of prophetic ministry among other gifts and ministries, but about the general and fundamental gift of Pentecost. Those who accepted this gift gave the impression to those around them that they were in a state of madness or obsession: “they were drunk with sweet wine” (Acts 11:13). The gift of prophecy made a person seem to be different from himself, living in himself a life that was not his own, which, however, was perceived as his own. This is at the same time a coming out of oneself, ecstasy, frenzy, and the entry into a person of a new beginning of life. In other words, prophecy is a meeting and union of the human spirit with another, divine principle (and false prophecy, or a meeting with a false spirit, is also possible, but still a meeting). Therefore, prophecy is an active state of the spirit in which it rushes towards a higher principle in order, having accepted it, to be fertilized by it, to identify with it. In this sense, it is an extremely creative state of mind. It is what we call inspiration, moreover, it is identical with it, like the joy and delight of this inspiration. Life is sad and empty “without deity, without inspiration” (Pushkin). For prophecy, it is not critical what its subject or topic is, and the biblical prophets prophesied about a variety of things. What is essential for him is a creative and inspired attitude towards life, the implementation of its internal tasks and opportunities, spiritual activity, the acceptance of history as a creative act and task. The gift of prophecy, like the gift of Pentecost, means that a Christian person makes history with inspiration and prophecy and is responsible for it. Pentecost, in the sense of this interpretation, is precisely the universal dedication to prophecy, for which everyone receives their main gift in the sacrament of confirmation: “the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit,” and in this sense in the church there are no people who are not gifted, who are deprived of the gift of grace. These gifts may be different, but the prophetic spirit in them remains indispensable, as the special quality of these gifts. And it is in this qualitative sense that the apostle says: “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit, and diversities of ministries, but the same Lord, and diversities of actions, but the same Lord, who works all things in all.” And to clarify this general thought, the apostle adds a list of various gifts: “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the benefit: to one is given the word of wisdom (philosophy) by the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge (science) by the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit; to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy (obviously in a deliberate sense), to another divers tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. Yet one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He pleases.” (1 Cor. 12:7-11). Here the diversity of the gifts of the one Spirit is indicated, and at the same time the presence of Himself in each of the gifts. However, it is necessary to distinguish and even contrast prophecy as a general gift of the Holy Spirit, expressed in the ability to receive revelation, and prophecy as this revelation itself. Prophecy therefore means the universal spirituality of Christian humanity after Pentecost, which in its created, human inspiration is capable of receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and being inspired by it. In this case, human inspiration becomes divine-human... The difference in gifts means a variety of types of prophetic inspiration, among which prophetic ministry stands out as a creative aspiration for the future: “and he will tell you what is to come” (the Holy Spirit) (John 16:13). This is the deification of the human spirit occurring from within through the union of created and uncreated nature in it. Of course, this idea cannot in any way be understood in the sense that after Pentecost, all human inspiration is prophetic and divine-human, and that this is, as it were, a given fact. Quite the opposite. This is the highest, ultimate predetermination, which, however, is not only given, but thereby internally given, as a possibility, at Pentecost. In it, the Holy Spirit descended on people, without depriving them of human freedom and their own human inspiration. Prophecy in general is creativity, inspired by daring and ignited by inspiration. As such, it is addressed to the future, but not above or outside the present, but through this present, which is fraught with the future. Let us remember to what extent the thought of the Old Testament prophets is saturated with history and addressed to the surrounding reality, which cannot even be understood without a special historical commentary. It was essentially historical, i.e. came from a living sense of modernity, its needs and problems. Thus, the true subject of prophecy is history, understood in its internal content as an apocalypse, and even more than that, as something that lies beyond the boundaries of history itself, i.e. eschatology. History, like the apocalypse, is the “last time”, which is included in supertime, in eschatology. It is the true subject of prophetic contemplation, and it must not only simply expire, but also be creatively accomplished. Prophecy is characterized, along with insight into the future, comprehension of divine things, knowledge of God. Revelation about God was given through the prophets, and it was cast into dogmatic crystals of the teaching about God. Dogmatic revelations were communicated to Old and New Testament humanity through the prophets as its bearers: Moses, David and Solomon, great and minor prophets, apostles and teachers, and even to this day. What is the common feature of their dogmatic ministry? How is divine truth revealed and proclaimed to these chosen ones of God? Are they a passive instrument through which divine words are, as it were, dictated? Or, on the contrary, here too revelation retains a divine-human character, in which human searching and questioning receives a divine answer: “seek and ye shall find”? Of course, the latter. Revelation is given not to a cold heart, an indifferent mind, but to the fiery Elijah, asking the Lord about the righteous remnant, and the fiery Paul, tormented by the mystery of the rejection and salvation of Israel, and the suffering Job, crying out to heaven about his suffering. It is given to the seer Daniel, in repentance for the sins of his people and in long lamentation to the one inquiring of the Lord. But if this was the case with the great prophets and spiritual leaders, then it should not be otherwise, even if to an invariably weaker degree, with these little ones. Persistent thought and searching invariably precede that enlightenment of the mind, which contains the grain of revelation. This is prophecy as dogmatic creativity and revelation. But even this divine illumination of the mind cannot and should not stop [omission in the manuscript] prophetic knowledge. It is also called upon to further comprehend and clarify a previously given or newly revealed revelation. In other words, prophecy includes - not for everyone, but for the chosen - both the work of theological revelation and the formulation of what has been revealed. In other words, it also embraces theology, not only or not so much as a rational study, but as a perception by the mind. 1 So it was in Jewish theology, in the Talmud, and so it remains in our New Testament theology. Let us not exaggerate, but we will not diminish the prophetic character of theology. Without it, it loses its inspirational power and becomes abstract scholasticism. Of course, theology is not characterized by infallibility, but even when it leads to false paths, it retains its inspiration, and therefore its prophetic character. Old Testament piety knew prophetic schools, “a host of prophets”, in union with which an individual, like Saul, also prophesies, “becomes a different person” (1 Sam. 10, 6). But aren’t our theological schools, and to the extent that they rise to the height of their calling, similar to these prophetic schools, shouldn’t they also seek the “descent of the Spirit of God”? (1 Kings 10, 10). And isn’t this also applicable to the theological communication that now constitutes diverse conferences, and in particular the Anglo-Russian conferences that are so close and dear to us? do they not become for us in their own way “prophetic schools” of comparative theology and Christian revelation? Let us remember what has now become familiar to us and, as it were, taken for granted, our liturgical communion. What a fiery stream of unexpected revelations these mutual liturgical contacts were for us in the first days of the conferences! And in the continuation of our work, aren’t our theological touches a source of new inspirations and - it must be said frankly - revelations? Are these new prophetic schools emerging before our eyes? However, such a character is possible only if there is one condition: they must be imbued with the spirit of inspiring quest and believing love. For others, our communication is dubious and even dangerous, like a betrayal of the purity of their confession; they do not need prophetic schools, they are content with the isolation of the scholastic school. But for us, who have already felt the air of grace-filled communication, this prophetic spirit, which breathes where it wants, becomes essential. The experience of life precedes the dogmatic formula; it prepares it. He calls for a new understanding of universal truth. He promises not new dogmas, but their new knowledge, in which we become different from ourselves, we find ourselves, like King Saul, in the host of prophets. Option: how much as reasonable absorption.