The First Theologians... Thomas Gillespie

An interesting book on a timely subject. Many of our brotherly opponents insist that prophecy was a miraculous, supernatural event. Not for Christians today.

The author of this book - then President of Princeton Theological School, claims to have demonstrated several unique contributions:

• a central thesis that early Christian prophecy functioned as theology
• the view that the use of "glossolalia" was understood as an ecstatic event which was a sign of genuine prophetic inspiration
• the argument that prophetic speech was extended discourse of a sermonic kind rather than brief ejaculatory oracles

Think about it - if every prophecy was directly from God, bypassing human faculties, why would prophecies need to be weighed and possibly rejected? And why would The Almighty give prophecies to several people at the exact same time, thus resulting in confusion and persons being interrupted before others could finish their own prophecy?

Personally, I do not have all the answers on this subject. Still, we are especially encouraged to covet to prophesy. If 2 or 3 prophets were to speak on one occasion, would 4 be OK? Likewise... What about the needy widows, required to be 60 years? Could an exception be made for one a year or two younger? For sure, we see numbers rounded off throughout the Bible. Think of Jesus feeding the large crowds, for example.

Anyway, I am getting off the subject. This book was published in the 90's. So it shows the present drift of modern scholarship on this fascinating but misunderstood subject.