Prophet, Priest, and King is the usual description of Christ’s tripartite office. Prophet and king have come up in blogging lately — including Clyde Grubbs’s timely entry on not choosing prophets — but I’ve not added my piece both because of wrist conservation, and because I’m meditating on the “missing” priest part. No public ideas, yet, except that James Luther Adams’s construction of “the prophethood of all believers” continues to strike me as a misplaced parallelism to the “priesthood of all believers.” In what way does belief shape prophethood? I can’t put my finger on it now, but something else should probably stand in its place.
These are important foundational issues as we gatter the resources and world orientation to do the work — the specific work — that God has for us.
— It seems to me that prophethood is an issue of inspiration / revelation; and not merely a matter of belief. In the Hebrew Bible, prophets are often introduced with the ritual phrase, “And the word of the LORD came to…”
Every person is a potential prophet, but not every believer will realize her/his prophethood. And to parallel Clyde, I would also say that no person can choose to become a prophet. Circumstances and the Spirit of God choose you for prophetic witness.
Which are the theological sources for the three roles? The Racovian Catechism deals with them quite at length.