Monday, May 20, 2024

Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange on Conditional Prophecy

  

AS REGARDS THE NATURE OF THE FUTURE THINGS ANNOUNCED, inasmuch as the future contingent in question is either absolute or conditional, prophecy is subdivided into absolute prophecy (prophecy of foresight) and conditional prophecy (prophecy of denunciation or promise).

 

The prophecy of foresight designates foreknowledge of future events inasmuch as they are to be fulfilled in themselves and forever. However, prophecy of denunciation is not always fulfilled, but it foretells the order of cause to effect that sometimes is impeded by other supervening events.

 

Thus, Jonah, sent by God, preached by the Ninevites: “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed” (Jonah 3;4 DR). However, the Ninevites did penance, saying: “How can tell if God will turn, and forgive: and will turn away from his fierce anger, and we shall not perish? And God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not” (Jonah 3:9-10 DR) Likewise Isaiah foretold to King Hezekiah in his illness:

 

Thus saith the Lord: Take order with thy house, for thou shalt die, and not live. And Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, and said: I beseech thee, O Lord, remember how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept with great weeping. And the word of the Lord came to Isaias, saying: Go and say to Hezekiah: Thus saith the Lord the God of David thy father: I have heard thy prayer, and I have seen thy tears. Behold I will add to thy days fifteen years; and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of the Assyrians, and I will protect it. (Isa 38:1-6 [DR])

 

This distinction between the prophecy of foresight and prophecy of denunciation was not invented in order to explain prophecies that are not fulfilled, but rather, God himself through the prophets explains the reason for this prophecy of denunciation. {{107}} Indeed, he said to Jeremiah (in Jer 18:7-8, DR): “I will suddenly speak against a nation, and against a kingdom, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy it. If that nation against which I have spoken shall repent of their evil, I will also repent of the evil that I have thought to do to them.”

 

Likewise, the fittingness of the prophecy of denunciation is clear a priori, given how it manifests God’s mercy. Indeed, God announces punishments so that he might turn a sinner from his sin and from damnation. Likewise, he can conditionally foretell a promise. However, conditional prophecy “is denominated more so from denunciation, because God is more inclined to relax punishment than to withdraw promised favors.” (ST II-II, q. 174, a. 1, ad 2) Hence, prophecy of promise is generally fulfilled and from this perspective pertains to prophecy of foresight. (Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation: The Teaching of the Catholic Faith, 2 vols. [trans. Matthew K. Minerd; Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2022], 2:154-55)