Update One

Just a little critique of a provacative view on Prophecy and the Christian life:

Critique of “Historical Contingencies and Biblical Predictions”

Richard Pratt, in his essay “Historical Contingencies and Biblical Predictions”[1], challenges the “wide spread hermeneutical orientation”[2] held by many evangelicals which reads the predictions and prophecies of old testament prophets as absolute deterministic depictions of future events. This goal being given at the outset of the essay sets up his argument as though it will be a blatant attack against some of the foundational beliefs of the evangelical portion of the Church, namely beliefs in the omniscience and omnipotence of God and the infallibility of His written Word. However, instead of rashly attacking these beliefs, Pratt gently and graciously goes through a short explanation of the history behind the theology of Biblical prophecies. He continues to set up his argument on this historical basis, looking at the theologies professed by historically significant people and confessions such as Calvin and the Westminster Confession. Through these historical points Pratt sets up in his argument the immutability and providence of God, two things no evangelical would deny. Within this tension between these two aspects of God, those aspects being a God who does not change yet a God who acts ceaselessly, Pratt places his belief that “God’s immutability does not negate the importance of historical contingencies or especially the importance of human choice.”[3] Breaking from traditional teaching by evangelicals on prophecies, Pratt declares,
Old Testament prophets revealed the word of the unchanging Yahweh, but they spoke for God in space and time, not before the foundations of the world. By definition, therefore, they did not utter immutable decrees but providential declarations.[4] From this Pratt closes his initial argument by concluding that historical contingencies do have significant effect on the outcomes of prophecy.
To back up his argument, Pratt continues his essay by analyzing the different forms that prophecies take. While placating evangelical readers enough to continue reading with his historical analyses, the meat of his argument lays within this larger segment of his essay. Upon embarking on this study, Pratt lays out a general overview of Biblical predictions broken into three categories. These categories are predictions qualified by conditions, predictions qualified by assurances, and predictions without qualifications. The first set of predictions Pratt describes as those predictions that include a necessary action required of the hearer for the prediction to be fulfilled. These predictions can be bipolar or unipolar, either describing a path leading to blessing or describing two paths, one leading to blessing and one leading to cursing. From the unipolar predictions Pratt pulls out an important feature for his argument, that not all contingencies are described. In these instances the “OT prophets did not state every applicable condition to their predictions,”[5] therefore, according to Pratt, “considering unexpressed conditions is vital to a proper interpretation of prophecy.”[6]
The second set of predictions are those predictions that God makes clear will undoubtedly come to pass. As in the example from Jeremiah 11, at some points God would have prophet even forbid prayer against coming wrath because it was so certain a thing. At other points God expressly clearly through the prophets that His intentions “will not be reversed”[7] Crucial to these predictions are the phrases I will not turn back and I will not repent. The other way that God gives an assurance through the prophets is through Him taking oaths. To the delight of evangelicals Pratt summarizes this section by showing there are indeed predicted events that are inevitable. However, he continues to extrapolate from this that this means, contrary to popular evangelical thought, prophecies not particularly assured in fact are not assured. At least they are not assured in the sense of a deterministic future.
This leads to the third set of predictions, those without a word of assurance. These are the prophecies in which God did not give qualifications or directed assurances beyond the prophet’s word. According to Pratt, “we may say without hesitation that intervening historical contingencies had some bearing on this class of predictions.”[8] Indeed, Pratt brings up several Biblical examples to support this fact. These are the strongest arguments for his view directly coming out of Scripture. But opposed to these passages and presented directly after them in his essay is the Mosaic criteria for a true Prophet, that what they say must occur. His defense in this section amounts to the weakest point in his argument. While there are several examples where this criterion is not followed through in Scripture, Pratt’s only explanation of the criteria is that the people in Moses’ time would not have read the criteria as it is written and now read by us. According to Pratt, the people would have expected this criterion to take into account contingencies that flow from the covenantal promises of God. This seems to be making large assumption of the earlier readers of the text. To his credit, Pratt does not go from here to lead a brash attack against the complex answers evangelicals have constructed. Instead, using more Biblical examples he shows the flaws in the evangelical view without resorting to outright confrontation, except perhaps with his cry for “lack of argumentation”.[9]
In the final section pre-conclusion of Pratt’s essay, Pratt gives his greatest argument for his position. More than an argument, what he gives a picture of beauty in the weaving together of history by God through His solemn covenants. Instead of viewing the prophets as men speaking out condemnation and blessing somewhat randomly at whatever nearby nations that were in trouble, Pratt pictures them as covenant declarers speaking out the unchangeable covenants God set forth through Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. Therefore, when the prophets speak, it is not from vacuum or a sense of wrongdoing, but it is speaking the covenant to people. If the people would listen, God would turn away the promised wrath. This view explains well the times when prophecy is not fulfilled in scripture, such as with Jonah and Nineveh. Pratt is careful, however, to preserve the providence of God showing that God does not always relent, as in the case of David’s first son by Bathsheba. God is the decider of what will happen. This does add uncertainty into prophecy, as only God knows what He will do, but by focusing on the covenantal promises “the original recipients of OT predictions could be confident that Yahweh would fulfill His covenant promises.”[10]
To conclude, Pratt calls for evangelicals to have a hermeneutical shift away from debates over complex eschatological schemes based on deterministic prediction towards a humbling view of a future that is truly affected by our actions. Pratt calls us to stop fitting current events into the prophetic scheme of God but to live with the prophecies in mind that we live not in view of “foreknowledge of the future”[11] but the “formation of the future.”[12] Pratt has made a convincing, though not perfect, argument for this view of prophecy. With it he reveals much beauty within the work of God in the world. While there are some points that he seems to inadequately argue for, he opens a new view on a topic more than worth discussing.



[1] Richard L. Pratt Jr., “Historical Contingencies and Biblical Predictions” in The Way of Wisdom, ed. J.I Packer and Sven K. Soderlund (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000): 180-203
[2] Ibid 180
[3] Ibid 183
[4] Ibid 183
[5] Ibid 185
[6] Ibid 185
[7] Ibid 186
[8] Ibid 188
[9] Ibid 190
[10] Ibid 195
[11] Ibid 196
[12] Ibid 196