ETHOS AND PATHOS OF PROPHECY
This background highlights a historical theological problem in our attempt to unpack the Message of the Kingdom of God – what Brueggeman (2001) terms Mosaic Prophecy. Firstly, we reject it because it does not identify with the prophetic ethos of the Kingdom and, secondly, because, as we package it in acceptable designs within the pathos of the situation, we are not able to back the tide of the Davidic prophecy.
As we shall see later in the case of Chikane, this prophetic-oscillation also introduced a crisis of conscience and identity. When the lines of Mosaic prophecy are not clearly drawn out it is impossible to play out Mosaic and Davidic at the same time. We are confronted with what Moltmann (1974:7) termed the “identity involvement dilemma.” In marrying the spirit of a new era we inadvertently become political widows without a voice in the next era. In our preoccupation with the spirit of our times and because we switched the cross for a cause in history, we lose the Spirit of Christ, which transcends all times. When history finally
overthrows its tyrants we are left with a yawning vacuum in which there is a yearning for deeper and more dynamic experiences.
It is not possible to consider the Message of the Kingdom of God in an experiential or existential vacuum. However, experience or context should not be the criterion against which the message is measured but, instead, the message should be the criterion against which experience is measured. As Moltmann (1974:2) says: “It is not the experiences which are important, but the one who has been experienced in them”.
Christ in God is the experience in which every other experience must be experienced or measured. Kingdom, in the context of biblical Israel was geographical – a space on earth in which Israel would determine her own direction, free from imperial intrusion. When Christ spoke of the Kingdom, he meant one thing but his hearers understood another. This problem is as old as it is forever new. Our crisis lies in trying to reduce the Message of the Kingdom of
God to the tensions and contradictions of the “Empire”.
There was a degree of urgency about this Kingdom assignment – God seemed to have been looking from above the situation and, in his omniscience and omnipotence, decided that an intervention in the crisis of human history was inevitable and urgent. As Paul wrote, Galatians 4:4 “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law” – Christ came, not as an offspring of his environment, but as a messenger of hope from God. Prophets are sent by God. Christ was not only the Word from God, but also the Word that was with God, and the Word that was God.
Religion has always struggled with the tensions and contradictions found in the paradox of John1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God”. Many have readily accepted the historical reality of
Jesus of Nazareth but experience problems with the claim that he is God and from God – all rolled into one. However, the tension between the divine and human nature of Christ is resolved in the Pauline epistles, and was settled at the Council of Chalcedon. Nevertheless, it has continued to relentlessly plague human intelligence.
For the Pharisees and the other teachers of the Law, Jesus represented a case of shattered utopias; he was nothing like what they had thought the Messiah would be. They had hoped for a Messiah from God who would be touched by their infirmities but on their own terms. This is the precise point at which Christianity negated the very message it intended to spread. He must come in recognised garb, otherwise we will miss him. The question arises as to which one is the Christ in the many designs we have presented over history and time.
To be sure, God in Christ is God revealing God to humanity in human form, but not on human terms. The revelation of Christ was the only plausible way in which humanity could come know anything about God in both Word and in physical terms. Only he was from God.
The Matthew 6:33 Imperative introduces us to a kingdom journey of tensions and contradictions, and it is these tensions and contradictions in hope that keep the journey alive. Our hope is not only in what we hope for, but also in him who calls us to hope. The challenge is not in conforming him to the rational patterns and
designs within our grasp but to allowing ourselves to participate and to be transformed in the Christ experience. The prophetic hope in the Christ of God is centred in humanity’s reconciliation to God.
There are very few theologians in public life in South Africa who have defined prophetic ministry as did Boesak. In his address to the Victoria University and Emmanuel College in Toronto Canada in 1983, he devoted much of the time to the subject of Church and Politics (Boesak 1987).
Boesak’s ecclesiology was right when he defined the church as:
… the people of God, those who confess not only that they believe God exists but also that in his Son Jesus Christ they have found new life, new meaning and, indeed, have become a new creation (Boesak 1987:13). Thus, this definition of Boesak’s isolates the true ecclesia from the denominational taint that had come to define the word Church. The people of God are found in every denomination and may be identified by a common confession in the Christ of God. It is these people who are called to a Mosaic prophetic ministry. Yet again, the history of Christianity has shown that the same people of God will, more often than not, find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide. Prophets sometimes allow the conditions into which they should prophesy to dim their prophetic insights. Thus, the question, where have all the prophets gone in South Africa? Is raised somewhere in between.
When Allan Boesak and Frank Chikane were able to identify apartheid as their enemy, their prophetic roles were clearly defined. The problem arose came when they became part of the new democratic dispensation after 1994. Chikane, for example, was a high-ranking official in the governments of both Nelson Mandela
and Thabo Mbeki. His prophetic stance during apartheid, his tenure in government and his resignation after Mbeki’s political demise in Polokwane are clear. This may, perhaps, suggest that no prophet is a prophet for all generations. Some analysis of one of his recent books, Eight days in September, may be helpful in driving this point home.