Christ’s Seer Office in the South Sudanese Context

Christ's Seer Office (CSO) has a hotchpotch of controversies encompassing it. Among these polemical trajectories that obtains in these controversies is the African’s prophetic office. This is certainly due to the close parallelism that CSO matches the prophetic office of Christ. In the South Sudanese context, some African communities view Christ as a magician, medicine practitioner, or a traditional healer. This misconception should not be taken lightly. It needs a deeper introspection from the African Christian theologians, as the concerned communities may abandon the church and revert to their ancestral shrines for worship. The Nuer in South Sudan has embraced prophet Ngundeng as their Christ just because of some similarities that exist between Christ’s Seer Office and Ngundeng. This article fully reconnoitered the two prophetic offices by comparing them by using the principle of Nexus mysteriorum and Analogia entis to enhance the Nuer understanding of Christ. In its findings, this article reveals Christ as a prophet; the whom all the Old Testament prophets prefigured in their speeches and actions. Moreover, the study concluded that Jesus is Nuer’s Ngundeng par excellence.

Thomas Torrance, Mark 16:19–20 and the ascended Christ's prophetic role

This article argues that, unlike some exegetes (e.g. Francis Moloney), Thomas Torrance correctly interpreted Mark 16:19–20 in support of a theology of the ascended Christ's continuing prophetic activity. In the ministry of the Word, Christ remains present and at work witnessing to himself. This prophetic office, associated with and not to be separated from his kingly and priestly functions, is not to be played down. He is the primary agent forever actively involved in Christian proclamation.

Prophetic Conflict in Jeremiah 27-28 and the Question of True and False Prophecy

The Old Testament text of Jeremiah 27-28 presents prophetic conflict between Jeremiah and Hananiah. Jeremiah proclaimed a message of God’s judgment against the rulers and the people of Judah because of their violation of the religious and the legal traditions of the nation but Hananiah opposed him preaching a message of peace and salvation and predicted the deliverance of Israelite nation from the hands of their enemies. Both claimed to have God’s authority. Jeremiah 27-28 provides a window into the problem of discerning a true prophet from a false one. Contemporary Nigerian Christians are also being challenged with such opposing prophecies by prophets who claim that their prophecies come from God. This study adopts exegetical method of interpretation and application of the message of Jeremiah 27-28 to the fact of truity and falsity in prophecy in contemporary Christianity. This study discovered that true prophetic office is a call, and not all comers’ affair. Prophecy lacks empirical proof and is sometimes manipulative and susceptible to barratry. The study further discovered that true prophets prophesy by the spirit of God while false Prophets prophesy from their own mind but also claim to do so by the spirit of God. Just like Prophet Hananiah, there are prophets who could be genuinely called but have refused to stay within their call because of loss of focus and desire for material gains. Thus the prevalent worldview of contemporary Nigerians concerning easy solution to life’s problems that leads to abuse of prophetic consultations needs to be changed.

Eyes Westward

The Smithification of the American West refers to the process whereby Utah Mormons embraced and emphasized a historical narrative that proclaimed that the prophet Joseph Smith had known all along that the Mormons would wind up in Utah. It suggests not only that Brigham Young was the rightful heir to Smith’s prophetic office but also that Smith knew the landscapes of the American West intimately because he had seen them in prophetic vision.

Sacraments

In this chapter, four sets of coordinates are used to chart how Barth viewed ‘sacrament’ and ‘sacraments’ in Church Dogmatics. They are: (a) witness and mediation (with their objective and subjective poles); (b) instrumentalism and parallelism; (c) the relation of divine and human activity; and (d) the threefold office of Christ. These coordinates prove useful in analysing how Barth viewed Word and sacrament not only in the early volumes of Church Dogmatics, but also in volume IV, where he significantly changed his mind. It is shown that in discussing ‘sacrament’ and ‘sacraments’, Barth paid more attention to witness than mediation; that he tended towards instrumentalism rather than occasionalism (although not conclusively so); that he worked with a non-synergistic account of divine and human activity from the beginning of his dogmatics through to the end; and that he heavily emphasized Christ’s prophetic office over his royal office and—especially—over his priestly office.

Prophecy and the Pastoral Office

Luther and Zwingli employed the prophet and biblical prophecy later in their careers to define the key functions of the pastoral office and consolidate Protestant clerical authority. Luther emphasized the duties of the prophet-pastor to preach Christ and the Gospel and guard true doctrine. Zwingli presented a dual conception of the prophetic office—as gifted exegete and as watchman of Christian society—and distinctively emphasized the cooperative relationship between the Protestant pastor and the civil magistrate in fostering Christian piety and an ethical society. New in both of their accounts was an emphasis on knowledge of the biblical languages in the prophet-pastor’s work as exegete. Their uses of the prophet and biblical prophecy helped them establish the prime authority of Scripture and furthered their visions of the reform of worship.

Reforming our ‘Barth’?

Against the backdrop of the Reformation as catalyst for many church and societal reforms, this article wants to reflect upon the transformation of the past 40 years of Barth studies in South Africa. Not only have we consciously read Barth in South Africa, but we also differed in the way we made Barth our own. Therefore, in reforming our ‘Barth’, we will look into particular trajectory of first discerning Willie Jonker’s Barth, followed by that of Dirkie Smit, and lastly proposing another emerging Barth for the way we read him in South Africa today. It is especially the role and significance of the prophetic office in Barth’s theology which will emerge in challenging ways.

Albertino Mussato and Humanist Prophecy

The work of the Paduan humanist Albertino Mussato is the focus of this chapter. Mussato shared many of Nicholas Trevet’s views on the nature and purview of prophetic inspiration: he turned away from a predictive, apocalyptic understanding of prophecy and saw the workings of the Spirit in philosophical poetry, which combined harmonious expression with ethical import. Yet unlike Trevet, Mussato was a layman, and he staked his claim to prophetic status as a poet in opposition to much of scholastic and clerical tradition. Mussato thus became involved in a polemical exchange with a local Dominican more concerned with articulating limits than with furthering the implications of work such as Trevet’s. By insisting that the prophetic office could not be restricted to the professional theologian, Mussato encapsulated the complicated manner in which multiple strands of the medieval prophetic tradition intertwined.