Who Comes After?
I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’ John 1:33 NASB
This is the One – The prophets spoke God’s word to the people. The apostles commented on the actions of the Messiah and the Torah. The genres were quite different. This means the “New Testament” is a significant departure from the prophetic tradition of the Tanakh. What does this mean for the believing communities of each era?
We can start by noticing that apostolic material is narrative and letters, not words of warning and exhortations for remedy. In fact, in the apostolic writings only the vision of John comes close to the messages of the prophets, and even John’s vision is apocalyptic, not necessarily intended for a specific audience at a specific time. The prophets, on the other hand, were focused on the present activity of the people and God’s displeasure with their devotion, or lack of devotion. The prophets, as Heschel points out, don’t sing. “The prophet seldom tells a story, but casts events. He rarely sings, but castigates. He does more than translate reality into a poetic key: he is a preacher whose purpose is not self-expression or ‘the purgation of emotions,’ but communication. His images must not shine, they must burn.”[1]
Do Yeshua’s words burn? Well, yes, maybe they do. Maybe he was in the line of the prophets. We could read his words that way, but we can’t read the narratives about him like we read the prophets. This creates a little problem. “While Buddhism and Islam are based primarily on the teaching of the Buddha and Mohammed, respectively, Christianity is based primarily on the person of Christ. Christianity is not belief in the teachings of Jesus, but what is taught about him . . .[2] The problem is that Yeshua didn’t come to teach about himself. He came to deliver a message, just like the prophets before him. But Christianity, by and large, has turned his prophetic message into a set of doctrines about him, and in the process, pays little attention to what he actually had to say. Now all that is necessary for faith is to acknowledge the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the Church. But when the prophets spoke, they cared little about themselves. They cared about what God was speaking through them.
“The prophet claims to be far more than a messenger. He is a person who stands in the presence of God.”[3]
“[The prophet’s] essential task is to . . . disclose the future in order to illuminate what is involved in the present.”[4]
“ . . . the fundamental experience of the prophet is a fellowship with the feelings of God, a sympathy with the divine pathos, . .”[5]
Perhaps on this day, the day after the Western world celebrates a doctrinal idea, we might want to read some of the words of the prophet from Galilee rather than listen to another message about his holy status.
Topical Index: prophet, Yeshua, John 1:33
[1] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol 1, p. 7.
[2] Kegan A. Chandler, The God of Jesus in Light of Christian Dogma, pp. 248-249, citing Harold Brown, Heresies, p. 13.
[3] op. cit., Vol 1, p. 21.
[4] Ibid., p. 13
[5] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol 1, p. 26.
