Motives of Credibility: Prophecies

The dating of the books of the Old and New Testaments is an inexact science. Yet, as I learned in my undergraduate religious studies courses at the University of Virginia, one of the most consequential criteria secular scholars use to date the books of the Bible is a curious one: prophecies. The reason is a bit paradoxical. If a book of the Bible foretells details about future historical events, these scholars conclude, then the book must have been written after those events transpired. Of course, this line of reasoning exposes a blatant presupposition that undergirds this entire academic discipline: prophecies don’t happen.

Take, for example, Jesus’ foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem in the Gospel of Luke:

When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near…. For great distress shall be upon the earth and wrath upon this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. (21:20, 23-24)

As we know from such ancient sources as Josephus’s The Jewish War, this is precisely what happened in A.D. 70, when the Roman general (and future emperor) Titus besieged and subsequently destroyed Jerusalem and took many of the captured survivors back to Rome as part of his victory procession. How could Jesus possibly have known this would happen? He couldn’t, many scholars surmise, and thus the Gospel of Luke must have been written after A.D. 70. (They say the same of the Gospel of Matthew, which describes the burning of Jerusalem and the demolition of the Temple.)

There are, however, problems with this line of reasoning. First, we must remember that the Gospel of Luke is the first in a two-part series with the Book of Acts, as nearly all biblical experts agree. Yet, as Protestant scholars D.A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo observe in An Introduction to the New Testament (2nd ed., 2005), Acts makes no mention of many key events in the years leading up to A.D. 70, such as the Neronian persecution, the deaths of SS Peter and Paul, and the destruction of Jerusalem (which would be expected if the author were trying to demonstrate fulfilled prophecy!). Moreover, in Matthew 24:40 and Mark 13:18, Jesus expressly prays that the destruction of Jerusalem “may not be in winter,” which would be an odd thing to include if the events had already happened (the fall of the city actually occurred in summer). Furthermore, the language Jesus employs in His prophecy regarding Jerusalem draws heavily on the wording and imagery of judgment oracles found in the Old Testament (cf. Jer. 6:6-8, 52:4; Ezek. 4:1-3). Absent from the various Gospel accounts are the kinds of extended description or specific details we might expect if their authors were fabricating a story about Jesus’ prophesying (such as accurately predicting the season). In other words, there is a certain character to prophecy — predicting an unlikely event with some detail but not enough to make it appear ex post facto — that makes it difficult to wave off as a mere literary concoction.

Of course, if the Gospel of Luke (and the Gospel of Matthew, for that matter) was written prior to A.D. 70, it would open up the possibility that Jesus did indeed predict the destruction of Jerusalem. Taken together, the details He provides in the two Gospels are specific enough — armies surrounding and demolishing the city, massacring large numbers of Jews, and destroying the Temple — that they would be difficult for someone to conjure based on mere speculation. In fact, when Jesus made His statement approximately 40 years earlier, the Romans and their puppet king Herod Antipas were in firm control of Judea, and though there was periodic unrest, there was no indication of an impending widespread insurrection that could trigger the Romans’ razing Jerusalem.

In the Catholic tradition, Jesus’ prediction is properly labeled a prophecy, which the First Vatican Council defines as “divine facts which, since they manifestly display the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, are the most certain signs of the divine revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all men.” Prophecies are thus one of several motives of credibility, which, like the miracles of Christ and the saints I discussed previously in these pages (Sept. and Nov. 2025), demonstrate that “the assent of faith is ‘by no means a blind impulse of the mind’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 156). Catholic theologian Lawrence Feingold describes prophecy as a “foretelling of future free events in the name of God, which then occur as foretold.” As such supernatural foreknowledge can come only from God, explains Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., prophecies display God’s infinite knowledge and, by extension, divine approbation of the one who accurately prophesies.

St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae (II-II, q. 171, art. 3, a. 1) teaches that prophecy is concerned with the working of miracles and “those things that are distant from our knowledge.” Thus the more remote things are from our knowledge, the more they may pertain to prophecy. In other words, accurately predicting that your favorite quarterback will throw for exactly 288 yards in his next game is impressive and could even win you some money, but it is within the realm of what is reasonably possible for a professional quarterback to achieve on any given Sunday. And because it has to do with sports, and not the things of salvation, it would not be properly defined as prophecy.

The understanding of prophecy as demonstrating God’s foreknowledge and proving the authority of the prophet by doing what no man by himself could do originates in the Torah. There we read:

If you say in your heart, “How may we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?” — when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you need not be afraid of him. (Deut. 18:21-22)

Even for the faithful who are willing to grant the possibility that an omniscient God may provide supernatural information to individual men, it is reasonable to ask how we know a self-proclaimed prophet is legitimate. The answer is straightforward: If he accurately predicts the future, His word can be trusted as deriving from the Lord.

There is yet another qualifier worth mentioning when discussing the nature of prophecy. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, relying on Aquinas, observes that there are different degrees, or grades, of prophecy. For example, sometimes prophecies are articulated with enough detail that we may have reasonable confidence in the general timing of the prophecy, its meaning, and its divine origin. Alternatively, when the timing of the future event is entirely unknown and the meaning of the thing foretold obscure, it is reasonable not to have certainty concerning the divine origin of the prophecy. (To anticipate an objection: The Book of Revelation, the prophecies of which have been debated regarding both timing and meaning, is considered authoritative because of its apostolic authorship and ecclesial approbation as canonical Scripture.)

Let’s consider some examples from the Old Testament that reveal these differences. Few at the time would have interpreted the pagan prophet Balaam’s fourth oracle — “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab” (Num. 24:17) — as a messianic prophecy. Only many centuries later would this be ascertained as a description of Jesus’ birth being announced by a star, an omen that would threaten an Edomite king (Herod the Great). In contrast to Balaam’s cryptic prediction of events more than a thousand years in the future, the prophet Nathan tells King David that because of his sin against Uriah the Hittite, evil will arise from David’s own house, David’s wives will be given to his neighbor before his own eyes, and this will be done “before the sun” (2 Sam. 12:9-12). Such a prophecy presumably would need to be fulfilled in David’s lifetime. A little over four years later, David’s son Absalom usurps his father’s throne, pitches a tent in Jerusalem, and sleeps with David’s concubines “in the sight of all Israel” (cf. 2 Sam. 15:1-16:22). Or sometimes the information in the prophecy is specific in some respects but obscure in others. Isaiah describes a king specifically named Cyrus, the Lord’s “anointed,” who would “subdue nations before him” and rebuild the Temple. This happens, but not for more than a century (Isa. 44:28-45:7; cf. 2 Chron. 36:22-23).

Of course, most relevant for Christians, the Old Testament (including the deuterocanonical books) contains some 50 prophetic texts that allude to a remarkably diverse series of traits of the Messiah’s life and work that quite demonstrably correlate with the life of Jesus. In Genesis 3:15 we read that there will be “enmity” between the offspring of the serpent (the Devil) and that of the woman (Mary) — “he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel” — which Christian tradition has interpreted as a reference to Christ’s victory on the cross over Satan. Centuries later, Nathan relates to David that God will establish “the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam. 7:12-16), which He does through Jesus, a descendant of David. Psalm 22 quite accurately describes what will happen to Jesus during His Passion, as does the second chapter of the deuterocanonical Book of Wisdom. Isaiah 7 and 9, in turn, speak of a virgin giving birth, and that the child, despite being a human person, “will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” presaging that the Messiah to come will somehow be both man and God. These texts were written by an assortment of people over at least 1,500 years, perhaps as many as 2,000 years. As Blaise Pascal notes in his Pensées, if a single man had written a book containing such prophecies, we would be amazed. “But there is even more here,” he says. “Here is a succession of men…constantly and invariably following one after another to foretell this same coming. Here is an entire people proclaiming it.”

The New Testament writers certainly seemed to think these Old Testament texts were prophecies regarding Christ. Throughout the Gospels we read such phrases as “This is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah” (Mt. 3:3); “Let the Scriptures be fulfilled” (Mk. 14:49); “Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Lk. 24:27); and “This was to fulfil the Scripture” (Jn. 19:24). St. Peter in his Pentecost homily (cf. Acts 2:25) declares that Psalm 16:8-11 is David speaking of Jesus. And St. Paul asserts that Christ “died for our sins” and was “raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-5).

This recognition of prophetic fulfillment was articulated often in the patristic era. St. Ignatius of Antioch, one of the earliest Church Fathers, wrote, “The prophets also we love, because they too have announced the gospel; and they hoped in Him and awaited Him” (Letter to the Philadelphians). Having noted a number of these fulfilled prophecies, St. Justin Martyr in the second century similarly declares in First Apology:

We could produce many other prophecies, but we refrain from doing so, since we think that those above-mentioned are sufficient to convince those who have ears to hear and understand, and we assume that these persons are also capable of perceiving that we do not make bare statements, such as the fables of the supposed sons of Jupiter, without being able to prove them.

St. Augustine, in an argument in Concerning Faith of Things Not Seen regarding Christ’s divinity, assumes as a given the prophecies about His person and work. He explains in colorful language: “Since it did happen just as it was foretold, who is there who is so demented that he would say that the Apostles lied about Christ, and preached that He had come just as the prophets preached beforehand that He would come?”

So far, what I’ve described regarding biblical miracles is something we Catholics share with many, but not all, of our Protestant brethren. Thus, like the first motive of credibility (the miracles of Christ), prophecies, at least if we are talking only about those in the Bible, are a motive of credibility many of our Protestant brethren would acknowledge. They would, however, qualify it as a motive of credibility only for the authenticity of Holy Scripture’s divine origin and Christ’s identity, not for the Catholic Church (more on that distinction below). That said, there are some examples of post-biblical prophecies that could serve as a motive of credibility for the Church. Yet we must be careful, as the most often touted prophecies do not have the official endorsement of the Church.

One such prophecy was uttered on October 7, 1571, by Pope St. Pius V, who though hundreds of miles from the naval battle of Lepanto, declared that the Christian fleet had defeated that of the Ottomans (Rome would not receive definite news of this victory for two weeks). Another is the “second secret” of Fatima, which Mary entrusted to three Portuguese children, Lúcia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto. Mary reportedly told them in July 1917 that a “worse war” than World War I would begin during the pontificate of Pius XI, and that Russia, if unconverted, would “spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.” Both “secrets” came true, the former with World War II (fighting in the Pacific Theater between Japan and China began 18 months before Pius XI’s pontificate ended in February 1939), and the latter only a few years after the 1917 prophecy, as the militant and oppressive Soviet Union rose from the ashes of the Russian Empire.

I confess I am somewhat ambivalent regarding post-biblical prophecies. Unlike actual miracles associated with certain Marian apparitions, which are well attested by many sources and have been confirmed by the Church, much debate and intrigue attend the “three secrets” of Fatima. Other Catholic prophecies, whether papal visions or those reportedly granted to, say, St. Edward the Confessor or St. Paul of the Cross (both regarding the future of the Church in England), may indeed be true, but they seem difficult to interpret and lack the kind of overwhelming, clear evidence found in the miracles of various Catholic saints. That the Church has not officially labeled these as fulfilled prophecies should also give us pause — not in privately believing them, which we are welcome to do, but in proposing them to non-Catholics as defensible demonstrations of the Church’s identity and authority, which, I submit, they are not. Moreover, to place the Church’s credibility on data that is contentious and difficult (if not impossible) to verify risks undermining, rather than reinforcing, the Church’s witness in the world.

Even the biblical prophecies themselves, though they have sufficient warrant to serve as a motive of credibility, are, in a sense, different from the previous two motives: the miracles of Christ and the miracles of the saints. To perceive biblical prophecies as legitimate, one must first recognize them as possible, thereby granting the possibility of miracles, and acknowledge that Scripture is at least moderately historically accurate, thereby making a fulfilled prophecy possible. It would almost seem, then, that this motive of credibility might best be directed at those non-Christians who already acknowledge the authority of Scripture, such as Jews or Muslims.

Nevertheless, both Catholic and non-Catholic scholars have recognized that the Bible’s prediction of future events, particularly regarding the identity of the Messiah, are far from strange curiosities of antiquity and are thus difficult to explain away. If four different Gospel writers really did creatively craft a narrative about Jesus of Nazareth in such a manner that He just so happened to fulfill a wide diversity of predictions about a future Messiah, then they are the most impressive composers of elaborate fiction (and the greatest scholars of the Hebrew Bible). That would be quite the feat for a tiny collection of men who were not nearly as educated as their contemporaries elsewhere in the Roman Empire (e.g., Seneca, Ovid, Tacitus) and who wrote no other works besides those that bear their names in the New Testament canon.

Finally, we should remember that though the primary import of the messianic prophecies is to prove that Jesus is precisely who He claimed to be, they also serve to confirm the authority of those who claimed to bear Him witness after His Ascension. And that, in a sense, is a motive of credibility not only for Jesus and the Bible but for the Church that proclaims Him. For the phrase Christ uttered more than any other in the New Testament is “kingdom of God” (or “kingdom of heaven”), and it is His Church that asserts even today that she bears the responsibility to labor to bring about the fulfillment of that kingdom. If the messianic prophecies confirm Jesus as our Lord, they also confirm the institution that preaches Him and that defines and protects the divine revelation in which the fulfillment of those prophecies is described. Only God knows the future, but He has revealed some of the mysteries of that future to His Church. The world would do well to listen.

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