(The following is from “A Study of Christianity as Organized,” published in 1910 by Methodist theologian John A. Kern. The particular chapter that provides these quotes appears to be an overwrought defense of Wesleyan polity, but it contains some tantalizing reflection on the role of the prophet in church life. Please excuse the sexist language.)
“For the administration of government in the church there is demanded not only administrative skill, but at the same time a distinctly higher personal quality – namely, spiritual insight. In the Church of the Old Covenant, these two functions may be described as prophecy and kingship. In the Church of the New Covenant, essentially the same two functions, though of course under other than the ancient forms, made their appearance.
In brief, there was a prophetic ministry – Apostles, prophets, teachers; and there was also a ministry of government – presbyter-bishops and deacons. In the course of the second century, the prophetic ministry declined under the encroachments of the ministry of government. At the close of the second century, we find Iranaeus urging obedience not to the prophet, but to the presbyter in his office of both superintendency and teaching…
… It was only after a vigorous and prolonged protest, however, that prophetism yielded its position. And its defeat was due not wholly to episcopal domination, but in large measure to its own inherent weakness. For the prophet, like the bishop, was imperfect in spiritual character; and the heavenly light of truth that was in him proved sometimes to be darkness. He might be the subject of more or less serious error, vagaries, excesses…
… but the loss resulting from the suppression was irreparable. For eccelesiasticism had all things now in its hands, and the result in due course of time was Romanism with stereotyped dogmas of its teaching and ruling hierarchy. The prophet was slighted or forbidden, as an intruder: the priest claimed for himself every needed illumination and the absolute right to rule. Administration had become all; authority, the substitute for truth; the rulers, the Church…
… The Christian prophet may or may not be a man of conspicuous intellectual ability. He may or may not be an eloquent orator. He may either write or speak. The essential thing is that he shall live “as seeing Him who is invisible,” in personal communion with the Highest; and that he shall have the inner constraint and vocation to make known to others, so far as he himself may have received it, the mind of the Spirit…
… but what others may refuse to see or may see less clearly in this light of God, or may feel less keenly, or may hold as a creed of the intellect rather than a personal experience and law of daily life, becomes on the prophet’s fire-touched lips a present and tremendous reality…
… he will be a preacher of righteousness. Falsehood, dishonesty, unrighteous means for the gaining of even righteous ends, whether practiced by the individual or by the community, will not interpret to him in terms of bright-witted expediency or pardonable weakness, but as sin against God. The conventional morality of the world will acquire no sanctity in his eyes because of its intrusion into the Church. He will expose, not indeed without compassion and a painful sense of his own imperfections, the moral illusions and compromises of the heart.”
