Calvin can also speak of prophecy as still existing within the Christian church of his day. He does this in comments on Romans 12:6. He first asserts that “Christ and his gospel have put an end to all the former prophecies and to all the oracles of God,” but follows this by arguing for a continuation of the spiritual gift. In “the Christian Church today prophecy is (prophetia hodie . . . est) almost nothing except a correct understanding of the scripture and a singular ability in explaining them well” (Iohannis Calvini Commentarius in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed. T. H. L. Parker [Leiden: Brill, 1981], 270). Plainly by referring to prophecy “today,” he intimates that prophecy and, hence, prophets still exist. Further support for this second strand of material can be garnered from the Frenchman’s sermons. In a sermon on Deuteronomy 18:14-22, Calvin teaches that God promises prophets to the New Testament church. He summarizes the basic point to God’s promise to the church with the declaration that: “there will always be prophets” (CO [Corpus Reformatorum: Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia] 27:499 [Sermon on Deuteronomy 18:9-15]). To make his point more explicit, he declares: “God promised a prophet not only to the Jews but also to us . . .” (CO 27:519 [Sermon on Deuteronomy 18:16-20]). “I have proved already,” he says in a later sermon on the same chapter, that Deuteronomy 18:15 “is not meant of Moses alone, or of those who lived under the Old Testament but that it extends even to us also and comprehends in it the whole reign of our Lord Jesus Christ” (CO 27:527 [Sermon on Deuteronomy 18:16-20]). The same basic point is expressed n his exposition of 1 Corinthians 14:29-31 (CO 49:499-500 [Commentary on 1 Corinthians 12:10] and CO 49:529-30 [on 1 Corinthians 14:29-31]). These examples provide hints of a second strand, or trajectory which not only allows for the existence of prophets in the Early Modern church but seems to take for granted that they do exist and have been promised by God to “us.” (Jon Balserak, John Calvin as Sixteenth-Century Prophet [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 10-11)
Analysis of Calvin on prophecy may be
continued for a moment longer by noting the different senses which Calvin seems
to have ascribed to it. We have seen that, for Calvin, prophecy is interpreting.
I have shown this in relation to Romans 12:6, for instance. He makes the same
point in comments on 1 Thessalonians 5:20, observing that, by the term
prophesying, the writer of Thessalonians does not mean the “gift of foretelling
the future” but, as in 1 Corinthians 14:3, the science of the interpretation of
scripture, so that a prophet is the interpreter of the divine will (CO
49:517-18). Yet, when expounding Daniel 7:10 (“And I, Daniel, alone saw the
vision”), Calvin clearly holds that prophecy is prognostication. He
states that Daniel “alone was the recipient of these prophecies, as he alone
was endued with the power of predicting future events” (CO 41:55-7). Calvin can
also express a broader conception of prophecy. In his homily on Deuteronomy
18:21-2, he can ascribe to prophecy a range of activities.
The office of prophet was not only to tell of
things to come, but also to give people good instruction, to exhort them to
amend their lives, and to edify them in the faith. As, for example, we see that
the prophets did not only say such a thing will befall you but also confirmed
the covenant by which God had adopted the people of Israel and told them of the
coming of the redeemer on whom the hope of all God’s children was grounded.
Moreover, the comforted the sorrowful by preaching the promises of God’s favor
to them; further they threatened the people when they became disordered; they
discovered their faults and transgressions; they cited sinners to God’s
judgement to make them humble themselves. (CO 27:529-30 [Sermon on Deuteronomy
18:21-2)
Here prophecy would appear to include a range
of activities including urging hearers towards personal reform, predicting the
coming messiah, comforting, threatening, preaching, and other actions. Hence,
we might ascribe to Calvin various positions. (1) Prophecy is the special gift
of interpreting the divine will. (2) Prophecy is predicting the future. (3)
Prophecy is a range of activities which includes not only predicting the future
but also comforting, warning, and other functions, which are often associated
with preaching and the preaching office. (Ibid., 12)
On Calvin’s understanding of 1 Cor 12:28-31:
Could it be that in his mind there simply did
not exist a clear, strong, unambiguous conception of what it means to be a New
Testament prophet? This is, of course, speculation, but it seems, nonetheless,
to be credible. It finds support, furthermore, from Calvin’s handling of the
New Testament office of prophet in the 1543 edition of his Institutio,
in which he declares: By prophets, he means not all interpreters of the divine
will, but those who excelled by special revelation; none such now exist, or
they are less manifest (qualles nunc vel nulli exstant, vel minus sunt
conspicui)”(CO 2:779 [this is Institutio 4.3.4 in the 1559 edn.])
Such ambiguity seems peculiar and yet seems to typify his feelings towards the
New Testament version of the office. (Ibid., 72)