The Ivory Tower Prophet
In the last post I wrote about, "the leadership of the prophets" which describes the unique way prophets lead the people of God.
For this post I want to explore why there are very few saints in church history who can be described as "ivory tower prophets."
Prophets are not think tanks, they do not attend the elite schools, they do not write monographs, they do not get PhDs. They are not delicate academics with tweed jackets, reading Foucault and Nietzsche who have never known an honest day's work.
Prophets are God's elite laborers. They sweat, they toil. Their sermons are costly. They have titles like "a reed not shaken by the wind" and men "not wearing soft clothing."
It is not like an academic, or sensitive soul could not be a prophet (because God is able to use such a one), but rather because to be a prophet is to stand against, rather than for the sway of things in religion.
To be an academic is to be a member of a system - a cog of an institution running lockstep with it. You must, by nature of being "an ivory tower prophet," tone down the message, and make it palatable to the committee.
But a prophet does not simply say "this apostate generation" and conclude by tucking the sermon manuscript under the arm as he descends the conference stage with claps. The prophet is under the hand of God, living the same message he speaks.
The prophet says "this apostate generation" to their face, and lives like it is true. He does not sit down with them for coffee. He does not call them "brother." He says, "if I am a man of God let fire fall and consume you."
And so, despite the fact that God can use an academic, God is usually devoid of "ivory tower prophets,” because, as much as the prophet wants to sit with his "parchments and the books" (Paul), his calling leaves him cold and shivering in prison, or at the bottom of a muddy well (Jeremiah).
The prophet's message may have monographs written about it in a more comfortable time, when his message is not so controversial, but rather mainstream. But in the prophet's own time, it costs him dearly.
He must live the message, as Ezekiel leaving the city of Jerusalem under the wall, Isaiah walking stark naked for '3 years,' a nameless prophet demanding to be struck with the sword merely to get a hearing with a passing king, Jeremiah's dirty undergarments, and on.
An academic - or someone who sits aloft from the world while thinking, reading, writing, and lecturing - has all the luxury of quiet, but he has none of the pains of "Athanasius Contra Mundum" - "Athanasius Against The World."
Athanasius Contra Mundum refers to the costly resistance of Athanasius of Alexandria who paid for his Nicene defense of the Trinity with several exiles including one in the middle of his homily by an entire army.
Athanasius observed the majority of the church of his day turn to Arianism (the idea that Christ is a creation, not God), which overtook even the emperor who in-turn, turned out Athanasius and his friends from their pulpits and homes.
In contemporary evangelicalism, we are asked to "trust the experts" by which they mean academics. These academics ‘have the answers.’ But they do not have the lives to prove it.
We must refuse these ivory tower prophets.
Nate