ABSTRACT
The prophet, the seer, the ecstatic, the diviner, the oracle and the poet are all compacted of the imagination; they are dealers in images of transformation. Because Christianity understands itself as a comprehensive fulfilment of the prophets, even though we remain in an interim or 'Middle Age' before consummation, it makes more of the prophetic books, above all the 'fifth gospel' of Isaiah. Central to Christian art and liturgy is the idea that Christ provides the summation of all types and figures. In a powerful reference to the second death of John's Apocalypse the Welsh hymn sums it up: The prophet is a kind of advance guard of hope, spying out the contours of the promised land, mapping the pilgrimage of grace to the gate of a better city. Prophets depicted in this manner emphasize the continuity of the Christian dispensation with pre-Christian sacred history and so lend legitimacy to popes and monarchs.
