Bruce Charlton's Notions

The problem with prophecy is that - when it is made public - it never seems to come true; or - even when some would interpret it as validated; prophecy never seems to do any good.

I have read many sincere, detailed prophecies made over the past fifty years or so; and they are often completely wrong - as wrong as it is possible to be.

There were, for example, from the 1970s - 1990s (and again leading up to 2012) many channelled messages about an imminent landing of aliens on earth and the consequences, and multiple predictions of an imminent planetary breakthrough to a higher 'frequency/ vibrational' level of consciousness. Didn't happen.


The only valid prophecy I have encountered has been Rudolf Steiner's of 1918 - about which I have written extensively. Perhaps significantly this was a pessimistic prophecy - about what bad things would happen if Western man continued to reject the reality of the spiritual; if we continued to assume the truth of materialism. And even in 1918 this was an extrapolation of a century-plus trend. 

But Steiner's main prophecy - of the Second Coming of Christ in c1933, was completely wrong - at many levels. Instead of Christ we got Hitler as Chancellor - although Anthroposophists actually interpret Hitler as a demonic reaction against the Second Coming. But if the 1918 prophecy is straightforwardly true, then the Second Coming prophecy is falsified by the same common sense criteria.

Another of Steiner's main prophecies was that Ahriman (Satan, the Antichrist) would be incarnated in c2000 - so I suppose that remains a possibility, although I think we might have noticed by now?

But from Steiner we can see that being A Prophet does not mean that one is correct about most things, most of the time. And if only a small percentage of  statements are accurate - and we don't know which percent until afterwards - then this really isn't much use.


There are several ways by which, it has been suggested, God could enable prophecy. But the question is why he would want to do this.

Prophecy essentially assumes divine planning to a timetable. And why would God (at least the Christian God) want to do that? And if he did, why would he want people to know about it. And if he did want people to know about it - why choose a human prophet as the mechanism - and expect the message to be accurately disseminated and understood?


There is no doubt that - through the ages - there has been a fascination with prophecies. But public, objective, social prophecy is beginning to strike me as a wrong idea at root. It may be a fascination - one I personally feel pretty strongly; but that fascination may be idle or evil rather than good.

I can certainly see the value in personal prophecy - among family, friends and the like. This can serve a function of retrospective validation - as apparently happened among Jesus's disciples when after his resurrection, they recalled some relevant prophecies. But something goes terribly wrong when these are made public, with 'general prophecy', when prophecies are made into objective statements, applicable to 'all'; when they are supposed to affect public policy.

Indeed, the most convincing stories of prophecy are when The Public disbelieve and ignore The Prophet, but a much smaller group of the prophet's family, friends, followers do believe; and these 'believers' are able to escape some prophesied disaster.

A good example is at the beginning of the Book of Mormon, when the prophet Lehi are ignored by the authorities, but he and his family escape the destruction of Jerusalem. Or in fiction when, in Watership Down, the shaman rabbit Fiver predicts the destruction of the burrow, is ognored by teh chief rabbit, but escapes with his brother and a small group of followers.   



I am certainly guilty, many times over, of worrying about what the future holds in general terms unless... or of trying to avert one or another prophecy. But surely this is a fault? Surely I ought to be discerning what I ought to do now - and (so far as possible) setting aside what might (but probably will not) happen as a consequence?

Or, if I did recieve a real prophecy, then this would surely not be about anything large scale - but about what should happen to myself or my family; something I can directly affect: where my personal decision is significant. 


Like most people, I want to be reassured that If I do X, then Y will eventuate; but we know that it is seldom possible really to know what will happen - too many factors impinge. Most importantly, all people (all Beings) have agency, and are capable of choosing. In principle, conscious behaviour cannot be known in advance - only guessed.

And therefore what we ought to do, ought not primarily to be aimed at consequences - especially when we know what it is right to do regardless of consequences. That seems the case in real prophecy - the future is not known with any great precision; but what ought to be done is clear. 

We may, if we are sincere, come to understand the reality of our situation - and this will include what we personally should do in consequence. To get back to that broadly-fulfilled 1918 prophecy of Steiner - we may reasonably infer that the bad consequences happened for broadly the reasons Steiner stated 100 years ago. But we only knew that for sure in (perhaps) the past generation or two; many decades after the prophecy was made.

And what we do not know is the consequences that would actually eventuate from here-and-now if we (from this point) did what Steiner rrecommended and remedied the defects Steiner outlined... If we (you and me, other people) regarded the spiritual realm as real, developed a more frequent and intense awareness of the spiritual realm etc.  What effect would this have?


In sum, even if we know that the prophecy was true, and what we ought to do about it  - this does not tell us what would happen if we actually went ahead and did it. If (for example) there was a general recognition that 'Steiner was right after all!' (at least, in that particular lecture of 1918).

What then: what would be the resulting consequences?

It seems we would need yet another prophecy!

Prophecy - in the sense of inspired and accurate prediction of the future - clearly worked in the past: history is brimming with examples. 

Yet nowadays most people don't believe in prophecy, nor are there any recognized prophets. 

That's a pretty big change in assumptions - and indeed experiences! How could it have happened? 

The usual modern explanation is that prophecy never did work, but people in the past were (some combination of) gullible and manipulated, whereas (implicitly) modern people are not.... Yaas, well...

Setting that aside; I think it reasonable to assume that people in the past were indeed capable of inspired and accurate prediction of the future; but modern people are not. 

The answer, I think, is due to changes in human consciousness. OK, but what changes?

Firstly; modern people are not often capable of inspiration - but even among those who are, accurate prediction of the future is very rare, and I would guess that no self-described prophet has much recognition... Or at least, not for long.

Personally, I think there still is some capacity for the not-many-people who are genuinely inspired to prophecy accurately about themselves; when they are inspired - but this kind of modern prophecy is not socially-generalizable in the way that prophecy used to be.

In other words; modern prophecy (insofar as it exists) is individual not social; and this is one reason why people do no believe-in prophets.    

My best explanation of the loss of prophecy and the role of prophet is that in the past (and the further back, the more this was the case) Men were mentally-immersed-in human society and nature, and were in communion with the world of 'the gods' and spirits. 

Therefore, prophecy was both from this immersed-state of knowing where the whole of creation currently-was, and was-going; and also the prophecy concerned a much-less-free creation. In the past; nothing was significantly insulated-from creation, or exempted from the insights of prophecy; because for the ancients nothing was independent-of or alienated-from creation. Men were unfree.  

In other words; the prophet knew where things were going, and nobody was sufficiently independent of the 'group mind' to resist or reject 'where things were going'.

Everybody shared this knowledge implicitly, unconsciously (and spontaneously) - and the prophet was ('simply') someone who was aware of this general knowledge, and could articulate it - and once articulated by a prophet, the knowledge could be recognized by others.  

But in modern consciousness (what Steiner called the Consciousness Soul); from adolescence onward Men are no longer immersed-in 'the world'; and Men are instead (like it or not) cut-off from spontaneous knowledge of the group, nature, the gods and spirits... 

Modern Man is compelled to be free, and therefore compelled to choose. 

This is why Modern Man is now controlled by bureaucracy and the mass media, and by 'incentives' - this is 'necessary' because he lacks the old, spontaneous and mostly-unconscious immersive sociality and connection with the world. 

Now cohesion is from control, and control is top-down; and a matter of propaganda, bribes and threats - channeling choices (including denial of the reality of choice). 

Prophecy is lost because Men are no longer immersed in a common world, and prophecy is impossible because Men are all cut off from that communion with life and the world which used to enable prophecy - and which made it (all but) impossible for individuals to opt-out.

Now, we find our-selves already opted-out; and the necessity is to opt-in - and to choose that which is opted-into. 

I take some (but not most) prophecy - in the sense of prediction - seriously - as have almost all Men through history; therefore I need to understand how prophecy works. (I have written about this before.)

In a nutshell: a true prophecy tells us what God intends. 

Of course, Men are free agents, have 'free will', so God cannot compel any Man to make any particular choice. Nonetheless, since God is the creator, he can sooner or later make certain things happen - sooner or later events and decisions will line-up to make certain outcomes. 

This explains why it is seldom possible validly to put an exact date on prophesied true events. Because the date depends on the freedom of the agents involved in bringing about the prophecy, the achievement of the prophecy is affected by the cumulative effect of Men's choices. 

This also accounts for the well-known aspect of true prophecies - that they happen in unforeseen ways, such that they are recognized to have-happened only in retrospect. 

It also shows why true prophecies cannot be prevented from happening - because God (as creator) can (over time) find ways around anything that might tend to 'block' the prophecy. 

One problem of prophecy is the prophet himself; and from this the problem of communication. The prophet is a Man who will be - to some extent - fallible and sinful; so 'the medium' will affect the message. 

And the message itself - i.e. the prophecy expressed in language - will be subject to all the usual constraints of language: accurate expression and transmission, accurate interpretation and the psychology of the recipient etc...  

Therefore, the truth of prophecy cannot be sought in exact words and standard definitions; but needs to entail direct knowing; that process of heart-thinking or intuition by which we may be able to know directly and without mediation - by understanding forming in our minds. 

The actual event and words of the prophecy may, therefore, serve more like a stimulus or trigger to the directly-apprehending understanding. 

We read the true prophecy, and we gain understanding of it - but what has actually happened is that the words have opened us to direct knowing, and awakened our hearts to grasp it intuitively. 

(For my previous discussions of prophecy follow this link...)

When it comes to prophecy, and taking into account the nature of most true prophecies; there is disagreement as to how this is (or may be) possible. 

Precognition

For some reason, many people seem to regard prophecy as a form of 'precognition' - which entails 'seeing the future'. The idea is that, in some sense, the future has already happened and can therefore be perceived. 

This would entail that - from here and now, and by common sense analysis - the future is determined, and free will/ agency is unreal. 

This is then 'explained' by positing weird stuff about Time; such that there is ultimately no such thing as time, the linear sequential time of our mortal lives in this world is an illusion; and from a divine or real perspective - everything that has happened, is happening or can ever happen, is actually simultaneous. 

This philosophical idea dates back at least to Plato, and is famously deployed by Boethius to 'explain' the paradox of God's omniscience and Man's agency. 

The question is whether this really is an explanation at all. 

It posits weird abstract properties of Time that are counter-intuitive and incomprehensible to ordinary people; leads to the innumerable 'time paradoxes' of science fiction; and purports to explain the specific observation of prophecy by such a vast metaphysical assumption that it explains everything - hence nothing. 

In essence; it purports to explain evidence with metaphysics - which is the wrong way around. Metaphysics comes first (or should come first); observations may be consistent with metaphysics, but can neither confirm nor refute it; and changes metaphysics should therefore not be used expediently as a convenient way of accounting for observations. 

We ought first to establish our metaphysics assumptions - on grounds of intuition and coherence - and then use these to explain observations. My metaphysical assumptions exclude precognition rooted in weird-Time. 

Therefore - explaining prophecy by precognition I regard as illegitimate, invalid, Not really-real.  

Karma

I use the term Karma for the idea that that is derived from understanding the consequences of present metaphysics, attitudes and actions. 

In other words; by knowing and understanding the present situation; it is possible to predict what these will (sooner or later) entail. 

Thus, we might prophesy that if Men believe X, then (sooner or later) this-kind-of-thing will come to pass; or if Men do Y, then these will be the effects. Or (as a metaphysical example) if many Men's fundamental understanding of reality excludes God and assumes that all of reality is material - then such and such a human society will (sooner or later) happen. 

Much valid prophecy seems to be of this kind. 

Destiny

The cause of destiny is that God wills some-thing, and (sooner or later) arranges divine creation so that it happens. 

The free agency of Men (and other Beings) may thwart God's will again and again; yet if God continues to provide opportunities for Men to choose to do God's will - then eventually some Man will make the right choice, and the thing will happen. 

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We can see that the two valid explanations for prophecy - Karma and Destiny - have no problem about free will or human agency; because they do not state any particular time or date for the fulfillment of prophecy. 

But as soon as a prophecy is particular and exact; then we run up against the reality of agency, which may tend to thwart such specific prophecy.

Presumably, then; in principle exact prophecy can only be real insofar as it has nothing to do with free will or agency...

But in a living 'animistic' universe - consisting of Beings in relationships - this can never truly be the case; since everything that happens in divine creation must involve the choices of beings. 

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I have been, very belatedly, hooked by the Harry Potter series; which initially I was indifferent-to, or mildly hostile about.

It required that I read the end of the series (to 'get' what the books were doing) and then went back and read the earlier books (albeit in some peculiar order, which I cannot now recall).

Now I am very taken with them, and regard them as genuinely inspired (whereas, previously, I saw them as merely ingeniously contrived - the product of a magpie bricolateur, rather than of a wise and farseeing owl - as I now think).

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The most stunning, and heartening, thing about the series is their moral seriousness underpinned by a transcendental perspective: which is pretty much exactly what the modern world requires.

The Harry Potter books provide a rich Christian perspective - but not too rich nor too obvious (indeed, not-at-all obvious - there is their strength); they provide about as much as our deeply corrupt and barren modern world can reasonably digest.

Much more, and the books would have been merely a cult. As it is, there is a great deal in HP, and it has gone out to tens (or, more likely, hundreds) of millions of people - and the books have not merely been read-through, but devoured, multi-read, and assimilated. 

Remarkable.

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The first and most vital thing is that the Harry Potter series is predicated on the reality of the immortal soul.

The reality of the soul is not argued; it is accepted: as indeed it must be.

It is there; indispensable and woven through the whole story: Death is real, necessary and irreversible; yet the soul is eternal.

And the soul is regarded as being a person's primary concern; susceptible of change as a result of choices.

(And free will is foundational, assumed, intrinsic to the series as well, as it must be.)

The soul can be maimed and diminished, irreversibly, by choices during life - as we discover from Harry's sight of Voldemort's maimed and diminished soul in the King's Cross chapter of Deathly Hallows.

Such damage cannot be undone after death.

That is what I mean by moral seriousness.

How many other works of late twentieth century mainstream literature can compare with this? I can't think of any at all.

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The second aspect is prophecy.

We moderns have a big, big problem with the reality of prophecy - which I take it is a self-made and artificial problem, because earlier generations did not share it.

That there were real prophecies was a given: the problems related to discerning the real prophets and prophecies from the fake; and understanding the real prophecies, and recognizing when they were being, or had been, fulfilled.

But the reality of the phenomenon of prophecy was not in question.

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In relation to Harry Potter the explicit explanation of prophecy (both from Dumbledore, and by JKR) is psychological - prophecies are real because (and only because) people believe them, and make them come true.

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/11/19/new-interview-with-j-k-rowling-for-release-of-dutch-edition-of-deathly-hallows

But as pointed out in this insightful blog posting...

http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2008/08/prophecy-potter.html

...this is not quite right, since Dumbledore clearly recognizes when Professor Trelawney is making a real prophecy (only twice, when she goes into an altered state of consciousness and is apparently unaware of what she is saying and does not recall it), and when she is just consciously making-up stuff.

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My feeling is that these are moments when JKR is pointing off-stage, beyond the world of HP, since true prophecy is supernaturally inspired (and is beyond the capability of 'magic'); ultimately true prophecy would imply God.

(Prophecy implies God even when a specific prophecy might well be 'demonic' - indeed it might well be that most true prophecies were indeed demonic - because the existence of demons is predicated on the existence of God)

Rowling must have known, or been inspired to act on the basis, that she could not bring God explicitly into Harry Potter, or else her book would have been restricted to a Christian genre and a Christian sub-culture.

The Harry Potter novels are therefore compatible with a Christian perspective, subtly point to that perspective, but in an entirely optional and 'deniable' fashion.

You don't need to acknowledge the presence of Christian underpinnings; but they are there if you notice them, want them, or need them.

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As CS Lewis recognized after publishing That Hideous Strength and Perelandra, it is one advantage for the Christian apologist in our secular public discourse that almost any amount of theology can be 'smuggled' into fantasy novels without being detected, but still having an effect - so long as it is not explicitly labelled as such.

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Given the sheer scale of their sales, and the obvious devotion of their readership (and no book can have much real influence on people unless it inspires multiple re-readings - which the series clearly does) - I would have to regard the Harry Potter books as one of the most hopeful and potentially fruitful recent phenomena of the Western world.

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As great a thinker as Blaise Pascal (1623-1662; in his Pensees) mentioned the miracles and fulfillment of prophecy as two of the most significant evidences of the truth of Jesus Christ. Yet in the centuries since, these lines of argument have all-but lost their effectiveness as Christian evidences. 

In particular the idea that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies concerning the Jewish Messiah is greatly enfeebled. To regard this as sufficiently strong evidence that one can base a strong and enduring faith upon it, now requires so many assumptions - such a lot of learning, so long a chain of inferences (few of which are nowadays accepted implicitly)... that it is hard to imagine that such a consideration could 'work' in creating or sustaining a Christian life. 

While Jesus's fulfillment of prophecies certainly seems to have been a very important fact in the conversion of the Apostles and many other early Christians; the situation now is very different. 

Before reaching such a conclusion; one would need to know the Old Testament, and understand and believe it - and the contextual significance of the Messiah. One would need to accept the claimed match-ups between the words of what was prophesied of Messiah, and what was reported actually to have happened to Jesus. 

One would need to consider the prophecies that did not seem to have been fulfilled - and in particular the prophecies that seem to say the Messiah was going to be the literal King of the Jews, and lead his people to freedom and a this-worldly paradisal political state. 

And one would also need to have some way of explaining why so many Jews at the time, and after, did Not accept that Jesus had fulfilled the prophecies. 

In sum - the argument from prophecy has - after 2000 years - become extremely complex; and (unlike 2000 years ago and among Jews) has also come to rely upon a great deal of scholarship, translation and detailed reasoning and careful discernment; such that it seems unlikely that fulfilled prophecy would nowadays be the basis of a conversion or the bedrock of faith.

At most, it would be accepted on the basis of trusting some external authority. In other words, if one has already, on other grounds, accepted the authority of a particular Church or tradition, and accepted that holier and more-informed people of the past have decided this matter on the basis of evidence and reasoning of which we our-selves are incapable - then the prophecy argument can be accepted as part of the 'package' of that church.    

Indeed, rather than proving Jesus's validity; the modern mind is more likely to reach the opposite conclusion. Looking back over so many years, and so much contention; I think it probable that a modern person would not be fully-satisfied by some or other link, somewhere in this great chain of reasoning and evidence. 

The result would be that an emphasis on prophecy would therefore be more likely to lead a person to reject Christianity than embrace it; if a church was to insist (as many do) that evidence of prophecy must be believed - if it is insisted that this was an essential aspect of the work of Jesus Christ.

(As well, this insistence is usually part of a mistaken emphasis on the essence of what Jesus did and how.) 

What do I personally think? Well, the role of prophecy has receded and receded in my own faith, to the point that I regard it as inessential. Indeed, although he was a Jew - I would regard this as a contingent fact about Jesus - that might have been otherwise without imperiling his cosmic gift to all of mankind.

That Jesus was a Jew made a difference, clearly - and the difference may be, probably was, one that was helpful to the propagation of Christianity; as was the fact that Christianity grew in the Roman Empire.  

I think that if Jesus had not been a Jew, and had not fulfilled any of the Jewish prophecies - he could nonetheless perfectly well have done what he came to do for us. 

Which is Just As Well, given the way that the vast background of the Old Testament including prophecy has all but ceased to be comprehensible or authoritative... except second-hand, and taken on trust - from external institutions who cannot and should not be trusted with the fundamentals of our faith. 

The way it works now is almost the opposite of the way it once worked. We need to be Christians from our own direct experience (Romantic Christians). 

From this, we may choose to accept aspects external authority; but always retaining discernment and never uncritically as 'a package'. Part of this may be acceptance into our faith of Jesus's fulfillment of prophecies - as when we choose to trust an authority (e.g. a particular theologian, scholar or Holy Man) who, we are satisfied, has taken all relevant evidence and discerned it as valid. 

But this is secondary to our personal choice to trust a particular authority - at least to trust it in this respect. And may choose that this should become an element in our faith. 

However, prophecy is not Now likely to be an instance of that direct and personal kind of knowing upon which a modernity-resistant Christian faith is founded.

Prophecy is not essentially about foretelling - it is really a matter of describing destinies and the consequences of refusing it. Because; when it comes to serious matters there are only two main choices - assent or refusal.

Prophecy is therefore a description of the destined path - and by 'destined' I mean the specific path that is a consequence of how the individual harmonises with the divine plan. This path may be functional and not precise: it may be that there are several functional possibilities that fulfil the divine plan and our own specific nature...

The threatening side of prophecy, the consequences (usually dire) of refusing the destined path, describes what will happen if.

Any timescale attached to prophecy is also functional - a depends on future acts of agency - so the only way that highly specific dates, times and places can be attached to prophecy is when there is a direct divine intervention scheduled - and there aren't may situations when that is appropriate from a functional perspective.

True prophecy provides understanding of what we ought to do - and what happens if we don't do it.

I have just finished a first-reading of Pascal's Pensees - which turned out to be very different from what I had expected.

(By which I mean that I had picked-up a false impression concerning the nature of the book.)

I was especially surprised at Pascal's emphasis on fulfilled-prophecies as major proofs of Christianity.

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(I was also surprised at Pascal's use of miracles as major proofs of Christianity - and his discussion of miracles in general. However, I had previously thought-about this subject; while I have never once considered the importance of prophecies. Literally never. --- In passing, and in addition, I was surprised at Pascal's - devastating - critique of Islam; since I did not think people were writing about that subject at that time in that way.)

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Of course, my suprise at a serious discussion of prophecy merely shows the extent to which I am a child of my time - since the Bible is full of prophecies; and the New Testament makes frequent use of the fulfillment of prophecies as evidence of the validity of Christ's claims.

But, somehow, I had managed to ignore, bracket-out, the argument based on prophecy - without really being aware that I was doing it; unwittingly deploying the typical modern strategy of making invisible that which strikes one as dull or absurd.

And what strikes one as dull or absurd is something which can be culturally shaped, quite easily it seems. It is one of the main ways of rendering invisible that which is hostile to the prevailing liberal/ PC worldview.

(i.e. Labelling - by satire or mockery - as boring/ nutty anything which is beyond the pale.)

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Anyway, this matter of prophecy is now revealed to me as yet another major area in which modernity is unique.

All previous societies, and nearly everyone until very recently, believed that while of course *most* prophecies by *most* people are bogus, manipulative, false or mistaken: there *is* such as thing as true prophecy.

Since prophecy was believed in eras when the prevailing opinion was much sounder than it is now, and when there were at least *some* profoundly wise and insightful people - such as Pascal - (whereas now there are apparently no such people at all); it would seem sensible to try and recover such beliefs; and to overcome that shallow modern fastidiousness which expresses itself in reflexive sniggering at the idea of true prophecy.

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(Maybe someone could translate 'The argument by sniggering' into good Latin - as a name for one of the primary logical or rhetorical tactics used by liberalism? Or is this perhaps just an instance of the 'Reductio ad ridiculum' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule)

I do not believe that divine destiny is organised in terms of numbers, therefore it cannot be predicted from numerical patterns. I don't believe that God follows a timetable for human salvation and theosis; nor do I believe that theological history is following an abstract geometrical master plan expressive of specific proportions.

I regard time as serial and sequential; as implied by the fact that Christianity is an historical religion and the fact of free agency (hence non-predictability).

And therefore, I am sure that all prophecies of divinely-ordained events which are tied to specific dates are intrinsically wrong - because derived from false premises.

However, the validity of prophecy as such is not ruled-out - indeed it would be difficult and inconsistent for a Christian to rule-out the validity of prophecy, considering its emphasis in the Gospels (as well as elsewhere in the Bible).

All that is uncertain concerning the validity of prophecy as a general phenomenon (not each specific prophecy, of course) is the mechanisms by which prophecy is made to be fulfilled - and here there are presumably many ways and means by which a prophesied event can be made to come to fulfilment - ranging from predictions based upon extrapolation from a very complete basis of knowledge, to direct divine interventions (whether explicit and miraculous, or behind-the-scenes imperceptible)...


More specific aspects of exactly which prophecy I currently live by, and the aim of my living, can be found in the rest of this essay, at Albion Awakening. 

 

As I keep revisiting Rudolf Steiner's now-validated century old prophecy; I realise that, although the prophecy is about Western society, and what it needed to do - but hasn't done; and although the prophecy has been fulfilled at this social level - its true implications are for the individual.

The prophecy was based upon an understanding of what would happen if Western man continued in the path of increasing materialism/ positivism, scientism/ reductionism in public discourse and private thinking - and we did continue.

The spiritual realm is now regarded as purely 'subjective' - hence not really real, hence without relevance for social living. Reality is mainstream-structurally-regarded as meaningless, hope-less, going-nowhere; and we our-selves as irrelevant.

It is, of course, a disaster that The West has made these choices; but the lesson of the prophecy was actually for individuals primarily - it was that we must (and must means must) develop our spiritual consciousness into new realms - more exactly into a 'animism of thinking': a recognition that ultimate reality consists of living, conscious, purposive Beings in a creation that has been transformed by Christ.

This means that the modern public discourse has become - in rejecting God, Christ and the Holy Ghost - (quite literally) insane - as well as calamitous and dull.

But this operates at the individual level - and the social level cannot budge without first the transformation of individual consciousness - and this transformation can only be done by conscious choice; it cannot be coerced or compelled; nor can people be induced to do it by unconscious manipulation/ propaganda/ habit-training.

We must now choose the Good - because evil is the default. 

The the lesson of the true prophecy is for you, and me, and everyone as an individual. It tells us what we must do if we are to avoid the general fate of our society: mental sickness, despair and demotivation.

It seems to be a rule, in narrative as well as real life, that when a prophecy comes true and is fulfilled, it will be in some unexpected and surprising fashion. This is the case for the Old Testament prophecies of Christ.

Hence, while some will regard a prophecy as having been-fulfilled, another person may feel that it was fulfilled in some unexpected way - this is, of course, a staple of narrative fiction and myth: that prophecies cannot be eluded, because they are fulfilled in unexpected ways.

< Why? My explanation is that the reason is that prophecies come true not because the future is foreseen, but because the future is influenced such that the prophecy is made to come true.

For example in Psalm 22 of the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible verses 16-18:

For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

These predictions are taken to have been fulfilled by Jesus having been nailed, his bones not broken and his possessions having being divided by the onlooking soldiers. But the manner of fulfilment could not have been predicted from the words of the prophecy which does not mention nails, or a cross, or soldiers.

My impression of this, and other, prophecies is that they are not a result of God having (as it were) seen a picture of what would come - but as God having influenced the on-going situation at the time of the crucifixion such that the prophecies were fulfilled.

But what about free will? Suppose that who put Christ on trial had acquitted him? What then? Well, the prophecies, or some of them, would have been fulfilled in some different way - presumably at a later time - by God's direct action.

Suppose some soldier had tried to break Christ's bones? Well, perhaps the bones would not have broken - having been miraculously strengthened by God's will, or perhaps the blow would have missed its mark (after all, the spear thrust into Christ's side was directed such that it - surprisingly - did not break a bone).

Or, perhaps the bones would have broken and that specific prophecy would not have been fulfilled - but others would have.

My point is that - if God wants a prophecy to be fulfilled, He can make it happen - not by coercing human will, but by great knowledge of men, by the multiplicity of possibly pathways and timescales leading to the same outcome, and great direct power of action on things.

Prophecy comes-into the stream of primary thinking - and its expression should be in that context; which implies that the expression of prophecy intends to recreate the stream of thinking including intuitive and prophetic insights. Thinking and noting occur together; prophecy is creation in real-time - and perfectly consciously (no unconscious speaking or automatic writing here and now, however matters were in past eras...) The result may be, probably will be, first-draft, instantaneously recorded, and unexplained.


English people are unaware of their positive values, explicitly those which hold Albion together - they are, indeed, unaware of what is Albion; of our bounds and content.

These were made by past genius - and not by known work, but ultimately by the thinking of past genius; these discovered, remade, added to the soul of Albion.

William Blake wrote poems, such as Jerusalem - which is widely known and sung; he painted and illustrated, composed lyric poems, aphorisms, and vast prophetic verses... But Blake's true role in Albion was to remake the nation at so deep (or high) a level that it is beyond perception; and not fully-knowable as a communication.

The principle act of Blake was his direct knowledge of reality, and then his shaping of reality... The reality of God's creation; that reality which can be known directly by you, or by me, or by anybody (now, or in the future). This is the imperishable legacy of Blake - and there were other as well as Blake (Langland, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton...).

So Blake's poem Jerusalem (to take an example) is true - when it was conceived it became true because it was written-into creation; that is the nature of prophecy.

For you and I to talk or write or read about creation involves us in indirectness, in symbolism, in 'communication'. But we can understand each other when both of us stand-before the poem Jerusalem as it is written into creation.

(Everything else is indirect and second-order; to contemplate creation alone is primary, sure; because direct.)

**
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire;
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold;
Bring me my Chariot of fire.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land.

Of all archetypal characters (also, I believe, an historical character - or more than one), perhaps Merlin is the one who most interests and excites me - and I set to thinking about what a modern Merlin would be like.

The original Merlin was probably the last of the druids, perhaps a Christian pagan with one foot in each camp; and one of the last great spiritual leaders who retained the ancient shamanic ability to perceive and work with the spiritual realm - the realm of the 'old gods' and natural entities.

A modern Merlin would be a throw-forward rather than back; he would be one who had moved forward, partly but significantly, to the world of 'final participation' - that is, he would think in harmony with the spiritual world, and thereby his own personal creativity would be woven-into the divine creation.

The new Merlin would be creative, therefore, but in a way that would be knowable only to those who could also follow him across into the new mode of spirituality. He would be working on transforming the matrix of being in which we all dwell, but of which only few are explicitly aware. Nonetheless - he would transform and expand the possibilities for his 'nation' - which nation would, I imagine, be the nation of Albion/ Logres - that spiritual nation of the ideal Britain.

The original Merlin was perhaps mainly a prophet - and this has come down to us as cryptic prophecies of the kind that are only understood after they have come to pass. The main value of this seems to be validation of the wisdom and authority of the prophet, who may then be of value as a counsellor, and adviser for the King.

What would prophecy be like in this time and place, at the end of the age of Ahrimanic materialism? Well, Merlin must be valuable, and that kind of prophecy is not what is needed. Valid prophecy is ignored or denied. And we have no Kings, nor anybody in power that would heed wise counsel (the word wizard is linked to wise). And his wisdom would need to be accessible without mediation of communication media - since he would surely be censored and deplatformed....

Instead what is needed is inspirational prophecy, encouragement - that is, a prophet who will fill us with courage and guide us in the right direction.

So, I can imagine a modern Merlin who would fill the spiritual world with all manner of such guidance and joy; so that anyone who asked for help would be able to tap-into this source. Anyone who was aligned with divine destiny would be able to draw upon the inspiration and courage that Merlin had woven into the spiritual life of the nation - would be filled by that wisdom.

Such a Merlin might therefore be invisible, unknown - he could be anyone, anywhere within the grounds of 'Merlin's Precinct' of Britain, who was doing this spiritual work from which all who were capable of benefiting could benefit. Quite likely he would - in this mortal life, anyway - be known only by what he had done, and not at all by who he was.

I have blogged before on the strange revelation or prophecy from the early 1900s onward and standing at the heart of Rudolf Steiner's entire (vast) corpus - and therefore - presumably, although I'm not sure - that also of Owen Barfield.

You will need to read that post first...

Now; I find that I cannot just put this prophecy aside and move-on, but I keep returning to think about and consider the matter. Because if it was true - this would, of course, be the most important fact in the world - and, although Steiner (in his later works) was often/ usually wrong in detail, he was nearly-always right in essence.

Thus I shall entertain the thought that Rudolf Steiner was factually correct that the Second Coming of Christ has by-now already happened, and not as an incarnation of the bodily Christ but in 'the etheric'; and I shall further assume that while the core revelation is true, the details are mistaken - so that there needs to be a clarification.

Then, I shall see where this experimental-assumption gets-me; and whether it makes any kind of sense...


1. If Steiner genuinely knew that Christ was to return in the Etheric; my understanding is that this was not a chronologically exact foreseeing of the future - because I believe such predictions to be an impossibility.

So that in reality Steiner's prophecy was actually an announcement of a current state of affairs; and it meant that the Second Coming had already happened, which is (I infer) how Steiner knew about it.

So instead of something going-to-happen circa 1933, let's assume instead that there was a return of Christ from circa 1750 - in other words from the beginnings of the movement called Romanticism.

This is how Steiner could sense the event; sense it both directly - as an ongoing reality; a fact of daily life; and he could also sense it from his profound studies of Goethe and the other German Romantics, and the change that had come over their thinking.


2. What about the Etheric? What does that mean?

Translating Steiner's categories of The Self (as I understand them) the Etheric comes in-between the Physical Body and Consciousness (the Astral Body) - so Christ's return is not in his body (i.e. he is not incarnated), and it is also not in a way of which people are conscious.

The Etheric implies that Christ is felt; a transformation of Life, an unconscious feeling, at the level of instinct.

The presence of Christ in the Etheric is known as an instinctive feeling.  


3. Does this make general sense? Yes, it does.

The impulse of Romanticism came upon Western culture beginning from 1750 - affecting poetry, literature - including the invention of the novel almost exactly in 1750, music, visual arts, philosophy...

Romanticism also affected Western culture, through several later waves - eg the 1890s, the 1920s, the 1960s-70s) in terms of a new and strong (often destructive) impulse of individualism, political radicalism and revolution, the sexual revolution, an assertion of the instinctive (and 'primitive', or 'tribal').

In religion and spirituality we could point to Quakerism, the US New Religions of the middle 1900s, New England Transcendentalism, Walt Whitman, DH Lawrence, the Beats, the New Age... Every movement (good, and - mostly - bad) that contains a theme of instinct, personal revelation, intuition, utopia, altered consciousness, hopes of transcendence or higher evolution; all such could be interpreted as having some degree of unconscious awareness of the new possibilities deriving from the actual felt presence of Christ. 

We could posit that there was indeed a second coming of Christ perceptible at an unconsicous level; but distorted, and indeed twisted to evil by such factors as adherence to materialism; the pro-instinctive, short-termist and hedonic theories of the sexual revolution; consumerism; and by the cultivated spite and resentments of the various Leftisms and, in general, politics conceived as primary.

Probably the main evil-tending distortion is that Modern Man will not allow himself to become conscious of Christ. 

In other words, we could ascribe the malign phenomena of Steiner's own amazing 1918 true-prophecy to Western Man's failure to respond properly to the Second Coming; indeed, by our wicked choice to have perverted and inverted our instinctively-felt urgings of Christ.


4. What would be the implications? (Continuing to entertain the notion that this understanding is correct.)

Well, one implication would be that we need to become conscious of Christ's presence... This needs stating more strongly: we must become conscious of Christ's presence in this world, and of his direct influences on each of us, individually.

To become conscious of an instinctive-feeling means that we each need to do 'scientific' work - because that is the core nature of science: to do science is to become explicitly conscious of phenomena.

Therefore we each need to become scientists of our-selves.

And that is exactly what Steiner and Owen Barfield (and, of course - following them, myself) have argued is the primary task of Modern Man; which is to embark on a 'scientific' introspection, to develop a clear knowledge of our own thinking, to make intuitions both primary and explicit; and to do all this is the Christian context of its being done in light of the first and second commandments to love God, and neighbour.


5. Does this kind of 'Second Coming' even make sense to a Christian?

Well, maybe. I am more inclined to think so than before I embarked on this exercise.

It may make sense if our understanding is that this mortal life is about experiences from-which we need to learn in order to become more divine. If, in other words, our main task (as mature adults) is theosis rather than salvation - because salvation, while not universal, is by-default; and Hell must positively be chosen.

On such a basis, it is imaginable that a return of Christ at the level of unconscious instinctive awareness may be a means to this end.


In sum; I am surprised what good sense can be made from making the contingent assumption that Steiner was correct-but-with-errors when he announced the Return of Christ in the Etheric...

*

It puzzles me that altered states of consciousness should be necessary for prophecies and revelations - I mean for real prophecies and revelations.

Because, this fact of happening during 'altered states' is nowadays taken to confirm that prophecy and revelation are bogus, a pathological product of a malfunctioning brain - and that is indeed pretty much how I used to see things before I was a Christian, e.g.

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/alienation-and-animism.html

*

But that wasn't how people saw things through most of human history.

Past societies knew perfectly well that abnormally functioning brains could and did produce hallucinations, delusions and the like - but they also believed that altered states of consciousness were associated with genuine prophecy and divine communications.

*

But why the association between prophecy, revelation and altered states?

Most plausibly, it is as if altered states are necessary to overcome some bias or resistance in us - some resistance to divine communications - that is, to communications which come neither from the external environment nor from inside our own brains and bodies but otherwise.

The bias is that attending to environmental and personal stimuli is 'biological' - and seems to overwhelm other possible activities; the resistance is - in a nutshell - sin: that we do not want to perceive divine communications, we resist divine communications, and therefore these must come when our resistance is down.

*

It is important to consider this question in terms of the absolute reality of human agency, of free will - and that God is not able (or perhaps will not allow Himself) to overcome human agency, but rather that free will is a fact of the situation - free will must be 'worked around' because it cannot/ will-not be overcome.

So even though God can force a communication to be seen or heard, He cannot force it to be understood correctly.

And even when God is able to communicate his will on a matter, He cannot force the prophet to agree to that will - the prophet might (because he is free) hear the word of God, understand it, yet and oppose God's will.

*

Therefore, the mode of divine communication needs to take into account that the prophet is a free agent, and mode must therefore be persuasive of choice; because free will, if properly understood, is the kind of thing which simply cannot be coerced.

*

(Indeed, some persuasive techniques - ancient and modern - exploit this fact, in that they may successfully persuade free will and result in the desired choice by asserting that free will has no choice! That free will does not exist, or can be/ has been, coerced - 'therefore' the agent 'might as well agree' to what is being asserted. This is, indeed, a routine of the modern era - telling people they are blank slates formed by the environment and/or helpless robots controlled by their genes, and 'therefore' they 'ought' to choose to do whatever propaganda tells them!)

*

Among genuine divine communications, it is notable that there are some prophets who see God (in some form) and receive direct communications while wide awake, in clear consciousness;  some who receive messages brought by angelic visitations; many example of receiving a message in a dream; and also there are visions during prayer of possible trance states.

Probably, an interesting approximate typology could be devised which examined the nature and circumstances of these modes in the context of the strength and weaknesses and roles of the specific prophets concerned, and the needs of God - maybe even a hierarchy of prophets, ranked in terms of their openness to God's communications... but I don't know enough even to begin this.

*

If it is accepted that Rudolf Steiner was inspired in the remarkably exact and accurate prophecy of 1918 about which I posted recently

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/rudolf-steiners-remarkable-prophecy-of.html

Then it is worth thinking for a while about the causes.

I will attempt here to explain what I think Steiner was saying, in some mere generic version of his frame of understanding - rather than my own beliefs; and I think this exercise may be worthwhile given the validity of his prophecy.


To summarize (as I understand it); Steiner was arguing from a belief that humanity is supposed to move towards a new kind of consciousness - that is a new relationship between Man and the world - one which combined the 'immersive' awareness of spiritual realities that characterized the most ancient human societies (think about the shamans of hunter gatherers), with the alert self-consciousness of more recent eras (think about an archetypical scientist skeptic).

One intended mechanism for this evolution was the work of angels operating on what Steiner terms the Astral body - which I understand to mean the alert, awake consciousness... I think this means that we are supposed to know, explicitly, about this change of consciousness and to choose it.

The spiritual problems of our day are said to derive from the fact that instead we consciously fight, deny, and reject spiritual evolution; and instead of working on the Astral body, the angels are forced to work upon us while we sleep - and cannot resist them.

But this means that the angels are forced to work on us at an unconscious, inexplicit, instinctive level - they 'show us' (I presume he means in dreams, mostly un-recalled but still having an effect) images and simple ideas about the future goals.

I think Steiner is saying that the deep problems of our day derive from unspiritual attempts to enact spiritual goals - so that we actually enact in modern unspiritual society something like a hideous parody of spiritual goals.


The spiritual gaols which angels are attempting to communicate are threefold:

1. Brotherhood of Man - a sense of direct empathic communication between all people.
2. Divinity of Man - a direct appreciation of the divinity of all Men which will render formal religious practice unnecessary because all of life will then become a sacrament.
3. Final Participation - the change in consciousness whereby Man will be able to relate with spiritual realities through alert, conscious thought.

The effects of consciously rejecting this step includes, according to Steiner, the threefold consequences of disordered sexuality, the deployment of medical knowledge to harm and manipulate, and the abuse of powerful physical forces.


How do we get from the spiritual goals to the consequences? My understanding is that what happens is that good instincts are perverted by a culture which is spirit-denying.

So, for instance, the good and necessary spiritual instinct to regarding all Men as brothers is taken by modern society and made, on the one hand, into the utterly un-spiritual indeed anti-spiritual form of political and economic organization that used to be known as socialism, or Leftism.

In sum; in the un-spiritual context of modernity, spiritual brotherhood is re-made into social equality.

And this is made the focus of existence - as if it was a religion.


But on the other hand, spirituality cannot in practice be expunged from humanity - and the goal of brotherhood works at an instinctive level via the sexual instincts; to drive the sexual revolution - an incremental expansion of ever-more disordered sexual possibilities and practices.

In a sense, the sexual revolution can be regarded as a distortion of the impulse to universal Brotherhood - an impulse towards a kind of utopia of universal unrestricted sexuality.  

And this is made the focus of existence - as if it were a religion.


The direct perception of the divinity of Man, and the goal of a world where spiritual realities are so immediate that 'the church' is not needed, is something foreseen in the Book of Revelations of The Bible - but that is in The New Jerusalem, on the other side of death, and as Heaven.

The unspiritual parody of this unconscious impulse is anti-clericalism (a major feature of early communism), hostility to the Christian church, and the dismantling and destruction of 'organized religion'.

The church is discarded, but not because Man has moved to a higher level of spiritual consciousness and the need for formal structures has been transcended; not because Man no longer needs the church, being spiritually-perfected; but because the church is seen by modernity as something which is preventing progress to the ideal state of divinity of Man.

So, instead of the divine impulse that church organization will at some point disappear because Man has spiritually progressed to the point that the church is no longer needed; in modernity the church organization is destroyed because it is regarded as preventing spiritual progression.


This is part of the inversion-of-the Good which Steiner also predicts, in an exact description of our times:



In sum - the prophecy presents an interpretation of our current malaise which suggests that the evils of modernity can be seen as unconscious, un-spiritual and instinctive parodic distortions of Good impulses - impulses that are, indeed, being divinely encouraged and inspired (which perhaps explains their near universality, their simultaneous occurrence in many cultures).

Modern Man chooses consciously to reject these Good impulses by believing only in anti-spiritual rationality on the one hand and the unrestricted expression of instincts on the other hand - therefore the impulses emerge in horribly distorted forms; and yet their Good origins and benign intentions somehow make these evil distortions very difficult to defend against or to attack: our culture seems somehow helpless to resist them.


The answer? (Using Steiner's frame, more-or-less.)

We must (presumably) acknowledge the badness of our current situation, including the inadequacy of our consciousness; we must stop resisting the divine impulses so that they do not merely influence us against our will and during sleep, but also in our awake state; we must acknowledge spiritual realities - and allow ourselves to acknowledge, think about and experience spiritual realities in a state of full, alert awareness and in public discourse.

In sum, we need to stop fighting God's plans, and admit that God does have plans - and that we already-know enough of what these plans are (because this knowledge is built-into us); indeed, we need to stop actively denying the truth of God and of the spiritual, divine realm of reality - that would be a first step!

And the personal test of our success in moving towards this goal would - I think - be the advent and development of direct conscious experience of spiritual realities - including some kind of perception of the work of the angels.

I post this prophecy from before the birdemic for you to exercise your discernment upon. I do so because I found it both thought-provoking and cheering. 

I am satisfied that both the 'prophet' - a pastor called Chris Wickland - and the host of this web site (Richard Barker) are decent and sincere men who have taken the right side in the spiritual war of these times. 

The podcast is probably the best way to get it; but here is an excerpt from the transcript:

Sadly, My own Church has failed to see how impoverished and how weakened she has become. She is literally now a remnant in this country. Yet I will do great things with a remnant...

Mark My words, punishment will come for the sins that have covered this land. But ... this punishment is not to destroy this nation. This punishment is to humble her and to chastise her, that she may repent of her wicked ways and turn back to Me. 

...I will bring Revival, but it will not be like any revival that has been before. It will be uncontainable; it will be uncontrollable; and the world will HATE it because it will be so strong and it will be so powerful that they cannot ignore it. ... 

Men will just drop into two distinct camps: those that love Me and those that absolutely hate Me. This is why in many respects these days are dangerous days, because it will polarize people, in ways stronger than they are now; but you will know the righteous and you will know the evil... 

Mark My words, I will do something wonderful with this country; I will restore law and order to this country. This country has become lawless and it has no more order to it... 

I am going to do a new thing. And many men will lay down their crowns and place down their swords before Me and repent and give their lives to me. And many powerful men and women who vehemently hate My name, will come to know Me and love My name. 

The very ones that brought in those [evil] laws, I will turn into trophies of grace to make the enemy despised in his own camp, for I will make those who passed those wicked laws be the ones that undo them, for they will reveal the secrets and the dark intent and heart of sinful wicked flesh. And the world or this country at least, will look on in horror at the things that they’ve released and allowed in this country, and they will be rescinded and retracted.

As you can see - this is a very precise prophecy. If some of the very same leaders who have introduced so many evil laws to this nation were publicly to repent, resign their power, and place themselves in God's service - then such an extraordinarily unlikely event should be very obvious. 

*

Divine Accommodation: "God's revelations are always limited to the current capacity of humans to comprehend." - Rodney Stark, Discovering God - 2008, p6.

Stark's idea is that Christ's incarnation was a divine revelation that had the features necessary to convince people of his divinity, in the Jewish and Pagan context of that era. This is why Christ was presented as primarily a sacrifice and a propitiation, because of the then-current focus on sacrifice and propitiation - especially among Pagans, but also Jews. That was why there was a focus on the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy (to convince the Jews), and on miracles of healing (to convince pagans). People understood that death was not the end, but were terrified about what might happen after death.

*

I found this idea pregnant when I revisited it recently, I mean the idea that God works in the context of the time; when I considered how relatively ineffective this focus would be (and is?) in the modern context of 2000 years later - because modern culture is not concerned with sacrifice and propitiation, disbelieves or is indifferent to prophecy, and regards healing as a medical-scientific (or perhaps 'psychosomatic') affair.

If Christ had been incarnated into the modern world and needed to prove his divinity (silly idea, I know), or if a modern prophet wanted to proclaim the message of Christ, then it would simply be ineffective to focus on sacrifice, prophecy and healing. People would not be interested - most importantly, people would not be convinced - because these are not modern concerns.

*

So, what would be the equivalent focus? What are the concerns of modern people? If Romans around 30 AD were afraid of God/ the gods, then what are we afraid of? 

Well, my understanding of 'the modern predicament' is that it is related to three main deficiencies which are, at root, not so much beliefs as fears: and they relate to purpose, meaning and relationship.

1. Purpose: Moderns have come to fear that life and the world are going nowhere, that there is no destiny or direction.

2. Meaning: Moderns have come to fear that nothing means anything, it is all just cause-and-effect. Stuff happens!

3. Relationship: Moderns fear that each is ultimately alone, that there is nothing real that is binding humans, there is no genuine communication, and that the rest of the world is dead.

So, divine revelations for modernity would tend to accommodate to these current fears and concerns - to explain (presumably in a single and interlinked package) the direction of human life, and to emphasize that each person is not alone in the world - but actually and always embedded in a network of relationships and communications.

*

Perhaps this modern predicament or primary concern can all be summarized by the dominance of each person's fear of the insignificance and isolation of his own, specific life.

The message of Christ to modern people would perhaps need to be addressed to this - to accommodate to this; such that every individual could appreciate it as an explanation of the unique necessity and meaning and purpose of my own particular life in relationship to other people's lives, and the world as a whole.

 *

*

As it turns-out: in several conceivable ways.

*

Excerpted from The Mormon Concept of God - A philosophical analysis, by Blake Ostler:

*

How then do those who believe God's foreknowledge is limited explain biblical prophecy and faith in God's certain triumph over evil?

God can ensure triumph over evil though the future is not absolutely foreknown because he is like a master chess player. Even though he does not know exactly which moves free persons will make, he knows all possible moves that can be made and that he can meet any such moves and eventually win the game.

God may lose some pieces during the games, just as some persons may freely choose to reject God and thwart his plans so far as they are concerned individually, but God can guarantee ultimate victory...

*

God can ensure ultimate victory and the realization of all of his purposes not because of his omniscience, but because of his almighty power. 

These features of God's knowledge ensure that God knows all possibilities and future events which are now certain given causal implications ... This view also allows for free choices among genuinely open alternatives ... These provisions suggest that God knows all possible avenues of choices... and, coupled with God's maximal power, entail that God's plans and declarations of future events will be realized... 

Thus a complete picture of God's providence is possible even though God does not have infallible and complete foreknowledge.

*

Nevertheless, can limited foreknowledge be squared with scriptural predictions of the future? I will argue that: (a) scripture is consistent with limited foreknowledge, and (b) a number of scriptures require limited foreknowledge. There are several different types of prophecy, each of which is consistent with God's limited foreknowledge:

*

1. Predictions about what God will bring about through his own power regardless of human decisions

God can clearly predict his own actions and promises regardless of human decisions. If human cooperation is not involved, then God can unilaterally guarantee the occurrence of a particular event and predict it ahead of time.

For example, God can guarantee that his plan will be fulfilled because he will intervene to bring it about. Thus God can show prophets a panoramic vision of his plan from beginning to end. God can declare that he knows the beginning from the end in terms of his plan and what he will bring about himself...

However, the fact that God's plan will be carried out does not mean that he has to know each individual's free actions beforehand...

*

2. Conditional prophecies. Numerous prophecies express what God will do if certain conditions obtain

For example, several prophecies are predictions as to what will happen if human beings behave in one way rather than another... Conditional prophecies do not require absolute foreknowledge because God waits upon conditions to occur before a course of action is finally decided. Indeed, conditional prophecies are incomprehensible if God has complete foreknowledge. There would be no "ifs," only absolutes.

*

3. Prophecies of Inevitable Consequences of Factors Already Present 

Since God's knowledge of present conditions is complete, it follows that he knows all things that are inevitable as a causal result of present conditions. He also knows the probability of any future event based on current conditions. For example, a skilled physician can predict the death of certain individuals because the causes of that death are already present. Similarly, God can predict future events that are causally implicated by present circumstances or otherwise inevitable...

*

4. Absolute Election of Nations and Conditional Election of Individuals 

A number of passages in the New Testament speak of God's foreknowledge in the context of election or foreordination...

For example, Ephesians 1:11 discusses God's foreordination of persons, "in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined (prooristhentes) according to the purpose (prothesin) of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will (kata ten boulen tou thelmatos autou)."

This passage does not speak about what persons do to earn election; rather, it focuses exclusively on God's decision to choose a certain group of persons.

Now if individual persons were "predestined" or "elected" to salvation on the basis of God's own counsel alone, then free will would play no role in individual salvation. God would arbitrarily damn some and leave others to damnation for no act of their own...

However, passages speaking about God's election do not address individual election; rather, they speak of the corporate election of Israel, or the church, or of God's people as a whole...

Thus election is not a reward for an individual exercise of free will but a divine decision unilaterally made to elect a group of people as his "chosen" or "promised" people. Although the election is certain, the promises made to any individual member of the elect group are conditional upon faithfulness to God. Such corporate election is not inconsistent with individual free will.

By Blake Ostler:

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=8&num=2&id=226

**

Frank Berger has provided a detailed, stepwise account of the sexual revolution during the past half century or so.

In course of explaining the spiritual causes of what is going on in Western Societies, he references Rudolf Steiner's 1918 prophecy (contained in Work of the Angels in Man's Astral Body) that I have discussed often on this blog.

In terms of prophecy, I would add the short dystopian novella Night Operation by Owen Barfield (1975) - a section of which can be seen here.

In short, Barfield was aware that human sexuality was likely to become perverted, inverted and evil - as a matter of official approval and public policy. Significantly, Barfield was a co-translator of the Steiner 1918 lecture.