I hear it a lot. I’ve probably said it a lot. “Jesus is a great prophet.” “Great man” works just as well. Or “great teacher.”
But what does it mean? Or, better, what does it mean that’s worth saying?
Sometimes it seems like a brush off. Other times it feels like an honest to god honorific. And then there are the times it gets confused with references to Muhammad.
Are we trying to say anything specific when we say Jesus or Buddha or whoever is a great prophet? Or are we trying to say nothing in particular?
I suspect we’re echoing our low-christology Unitarian forebears, who called Jesus a prophet as a way of setting him in the line of Hebrew prophets — divinely inspired mortals — rather than in the role of deity or only-begotten son. But continuing to use this phrase, when we’ve stopped thinking about “prophets” or “revelation,” is probably as atavistic as continuing to treat anti-Trinitarianism as a key feature of Unitarian Universalism.
I give special reverence to Jesus for the character of his prophecy: His proclamations in the parables about the kingdom of God offer a distinctive and, to me, very appealing portrayal of God’s intentions. I also think they allow a relatively naturalistic and emergent interpretation of divine will, too.
But I don’t speak of Jesus as a prophet. I think of him as my teacher, and I like the concept of discipleship.
Would guru work as well? Or too New Agey?
The great prophets in the Jewish tradition were those who spoke truth to power, who criticized the status quo, who challenged the powerful, who afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted.
Sounds like an apt description of Jesus to me. Maybe not a complete description. Maybe he was other things besides a prophet. But I think that he was definitely a prophet. The New Testament claims that he himself used that word to describe himself (“A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house.”)
D’oh! Mystical Seeker offers a very current and widespread definition of “prophet” that I often use myself. I must have been so pleased with my own idea about holdover notions and simply overlooked it! Oops. Thanks, Seeker!
As for guru: That word doesn’t hold any special resonance for me, but I think it gets at the basic idea that matters to me fairly well.
I guess I’d say that it’s not entirely Jesus’ social critique that appeals to me; it’s his inward-out way of revealing how people can live in the kingdom of God.
I think it means we don’t want to brush him off completely as just being some guy. We want to give him some tribute to the legacy he left and as a UU “Teacher” is the highest honor I can think of. He belongs in my mind at the same level of Ghandi, Mandela, Jefferson… just men who have taught us to be a little bit better at being human.
this is my brain 25 hours into the work week and sans caffeine today, but you know, when i read this before i looked at the comments, i was thinking that you were talking about the use of the adjective “great” to describe the j-man as a prophet/man/teacher being kind of peculiar.
you know, as opposed to all those other mediocre and terrible prophets out there. like there is some 1-to-5 scale on which we rate prophets that i missed.
i do see, though, that your devoted commenters have kind of interchangeably used “great prophet” and “prophet” to respond to this, and i’m wondering if the prophet-rating system is a relic of our christian past.
like does “great” add meaning to him being a prophet? or is great prophet just redundant, and they’re all great? huh.
All prophets are equal but some are more equal than others?
jesus is first among equals…like the prime prophet?
I think the greatness of a prophet lies in how relevant his/her message remains outside of the particular context of their original declarations. The Old Testament is full of prophets who made observations, declarations, and revelations to the Hebrews that were important at the time, things like “don’t trust that particular king” or “this trouble we’re going through is a result of our irresponsibility and infidelity in the past.” Good stuff at the time, but not always so relevant to us today, or even to some other ethnic group that was contemporaneous.
On the other hand, a great prophet such as Jesus (for example) offers comments and ideas that can have a wider application and enduring value. Jesus’ message has certainly resonated beyond the Jewish community in which he originally preached, and his concepts tend to have a universal relevancy. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” is not a message that is only fully relevant in one time and place among one particular group of people. That’s what makes him really great. It isn’t that everything he (allegedly) said was universal, but on the whole his sayings do have a higher universal application than many of the other Biblical (and otherwise) prophets.
So that’s what makes him “great” as a prophet. In terms of being a great “prophet,” it seems that the term is applicable to him because he was a person of deep and serious religiosity, who was relatively unrestrained by the traditions and customs of his day, willing to risk unpopularity and even death in the face of the authorities in order to declare what he felt was a mode of religion more faithful to the reality of God/the divine.
And to add to what you said, Jeff, I’d say the great prophet must be of such a singular personality, and at such a critical moment, that the message gets passed along with great urgency.