The words of Jesus Christ, ‘all the prophets and the law prophesied
until John,’ are clearly not to be understood as excluding prophecy from His
kingdom. If His own language is not without ambiguity, yet in the apostolic
writings the evidence is abundant. There are prophets in the Church who rank
only next to apostles: Eph. Vi. 11; iii. 5; ii. 20; 1 Cor. xii. 28; Acts xiii.
1, xiv. 4, and xv. 32. We should gather that not all persons who received at
one moment or another the gift of prophecy, as in Acts xix. 6, would have
ranked as prophets. The prophet would have been a person who habitually possessed
the prophetic inspiration. There was an abundance of the prophetic gift in the
Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xiv. 29-36), and the prophets appear here as members simply
of the local community; but speaking generally they long to the general, as
opposed to the local, ministry and rank with apostles and evangelists and
teachers (see esp. Eph. iv. 11, iii. 5, ii. 20, and Acts xiii. 1, where
Barnabas and Saul rank amongst prophets and teachers). . . . We should gather
form the Acts that Christian prophets foretold, like Agabus; see Acts xi. 28,
xxi. 11. So St. Peter exercises prophetic power (Acts v. 3-10) and the Spirit
guides the Apostles on critical occasions by specially communicated directions of
prohibitions (Acts x. 19, xiii. 2, xvi. 6, xx. 22, 23, xxiii. 11, xxvii. 23) .
. . The gift of prophecy continued as a recognized endowment of the Church into
the second or third centuries. Certain people were recognized as prophets, e.g.
Ignatius, Polycarp, and Quadratus, already referred to (cf. Euseb. H. E.
v. 1.49 on Alexander the Phrygian). As in the apostolic Church. As in the
apostolic Church there had been prophetesses, so too they had their late
representative in Ammia at Philadelphia (Euseb. H. E. v. 17). St.
Irenaeus, besides denouncing false prophets (adv. Haer. iv.33.6)
protests against those who would banish prophecy form the Church under pretense
of exposing such pretenders (iii.11.9: ‘propheticam . . . gratiam repellent ab
ecclesia’) and witnesses like Justin Martyr to the continuance of prophetic
gifts in his day (ii.32, 4, v.6.1; Justin c. Tryph. 82). Even an opponent of the false prophets of Montanism recognizes
that prophecy must continue in the whole Church to the end (ad. Euseb. H. E.
v. 17). The Montanist prophets were rejected by the Church specially on
account of the ecstatic and irrational character of their supposed gift. Their rejection
involved no slight at all on the gift of prophecy and no denial of its claims.
As a matter of fact, however, the genuine gift seems to have become exceedingly
rare; Origen speaks of slight traces of it remaining to his time (c. Cels.
i. 46, vii. 8). (Charles Gore, The Church and the Ministry [5th ed.; London:
Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902], 359-60, 361)
