The Conveying of Prophetic Knowledge

The prophetic vision which gives the prophet his knowledge is not the vision of God in heaven. If a prophet were tosee God in the beatific vision, he would be instantly glorified and confirmed in grace, and this is impossible to man while he is awayfarer, that is, is living this earthly life.

The revelation made to a prophet by divine power is sometimes an infusing of new ideas; sometimes, a new arrangement of ideas the prophet already possesses; and sometimes, a light that shows hitherto unseen implications in old ideas in their old arrangement.

It is possible that the prophet himself should not understand what the Holy Ghost means by the prophetic utterance. David understood that he had prophesied when he said (II Kings 23:2):“The spirit of the Lord hath spoken by me.” But Caiphasdid not understand when he prophesied (John 11:51): “And this he spoke, not of himself, but being the high-priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation.”

Man forms ideas in the natural way by abstraction which draws intelligible species(that is, understandable essences) from the findings of sense represented in imagination-images or phantasms. This process is not always followed in the conveying of prophetic knowledge. Divinelyimparted knowledge is sometimes directly impressed without the service of senses or phantasms. And sometimes it is an infusedlight which makes manifest what was not known in the natural process of human knowing.