Foretold By The Prophets

I've been dwelling on "Prophecy" a bit due to some academic reading I've been doing, and I thought that a fitting title for a post written on the Monday after the 4th Sunday of Advent, Christmas week. In the course of contemplating and predicting things - more below on the matter of "predictions" - based on the events atop the Astronomy Tower in HBP I have come to really be in awe of Rowling's genius and orthodox insight into these matters. Fore-telling and Forth-telling One day in a grad class on Biblical Theology a professor named Dr. Hahn spit something out that has been monumental in my understanding of these things. For the record, I side with the concept of a unified "Biblical Theology," which is a big matter because it is hotly contested in academia, but for myself, because of confusions existing in the current debate, I have found it necessary to make recourse to concepts that are more properly from "contemporary/post-modern" philosophy, such as the concept and question of "identity extended through time," in order to grasp the thing well. Anyway (returning to the real world from that of academic jargon lol), Dr Hahn said: "Prophecy is not primarily fore-telling, but rather forth-telling." That is too say that it is not primarily "knowing the future" but rather knowing what the present is REALLY about, knowing what is at the core of what is happening. Then you are a prophet because you can see how, to follow Dr Hahn's step by using his favorite (and well worn lol) quote from Mark Twain, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme." Dr Hahn has also tied this in to the New Testament. In lists of "gifts of the Spirit" you find that one of them is "prophecy." But what is there left to prophesy about? Is Revelations a "foretelling." Well, yes, but only because it is a forth-telling. It describes the true state of the Church Militant and its relation to the Church Triumphant through the Liturgy. NT prophecy is basically the authoritative teaching of the Church based in a typological reading of all history stemming from the typology between the Old and New Testaments. Note: As regards the liturgy, "Mystagogical Catechesis" which was prominent up through 4th century, was basically typology applied to the Sacraments of Christian Initiation. Rowling and Harry Potter In regards to JKR's work, I think she is exactly along these lines with Dumbledore's comments to Harry about the prophecy. She is like Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, "Long have I watched this one. Always looking to the future, never his mind on where he was, what he was doing!" You get the impressions that the centaurs know this when Firenze comes in to teach divination, that true prophecy is about something much deeper than tea cups and crystal balls, it involves reading the world (in his case the skies which he has the ceiling of the room transformed into) in a clearer way, looking at the world through new eyes (cf Pauli's comment on Harry "having his mother's eyes" as foretelling a new way of seeing Snape). In regards to my own predictions, it is my hope that my predictions are based in this same thing, in seeing how the themes and motifs of the novels have worked together thus far to produce a rich meaning. Tolkien One of my favorite scenes in the movie of The Two Towers is what I call Frodo's "Tiresian" moment (Tiresius being the blind prophet in the Oedipus and Antigone cycle from classical Greek drama). That scene at Osgiliath (not really "faithful" to the book but this is precisely one of the places I use in defense of not always being a materialistic fideist) where everything slows way down and Sam's speaking sounds like from a great distance through a tunnel and Frodo gets that possessed look in his eye, complete with a little bit of drool (prophets have always been thought to be possessed, the way poets are possessed by the muse - OT prophets were possessed by the Davar Yahweh, the "Word of the LORD") - and Frodo looks up and says "they're here." Because of his connection with the ring he can see into the situation and know what is really going down in a way the others cannot. Humorously, the "they're here" reminds me of the little girl in Poltergeist. But think about it, she is sitting in front of the mystery of a TV screen full of static, but she knows what it really means ("from the mouths of babes"). Prophets and the Incarnation So, anyone who has read much of my writing here knows I think the Incarnation is paramount beyond all reckoning. And these thoughts hit me, as I said, in doing some academic reading, so now I am full circle back around to that matter. I was reading an article titled "A Hammer That Breaks Rock in Pieces: Prophetic Critique in the Hebrew Bible." I was reading it because it was written by Mary C. Callaway, a professor in OT studies at Fordham U., which is the university and department I am applying to. She brought out a really incredible point. In Israel the prophet was a class of person who had a sort of "dual citizenship:" He really was a member of the People of Israel, but he was also a representative of Yahweh and His Word. My main point here is simply that the prophet is a type of Christ in the Hebrew Scriptures which I had never recognized before. If I go to Fordham I think I will like studying with her.