Introduction
Prophetic agency in early Christian culture included visions (seeing into the spirit world) and enthusiasm (speaking while possessed by a spirit). Historically, early Christian prophecy was enthusiastic, not unlike Greco-Roman oracles.Footnote 1 Second-century Christian thinkers such as Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Hippolytus, and Clement of Alexandria employed a trope for Greco-Roman enthusiasm to describe biblical and Christian prophets.Footnote 2 The trope illustrates automatic speech—a “modern term used to explain cases of possession reported from ancient times”Footnote 3—by comparing a prophet to a musical instrument (lyre or flute) that is played by a musician with a plectrum or the mouth in analogy to a spirit speaking through a passive human agent.Footnote 4 The prophet's rational faculties are suspended, rendering him unconscious and unaware of the automatism, a mental state for which the term “ecstasy” was sometimes used.Footnote 5
The use of the musical-instrument trope for true prophecy suggests that automatism thrived in early Christian culture.Footnote 6 By the late second century, automatic speech was jarring to church leaders who—in assessing Montanism—ruled that speaking in ecstasy was never present in the church and should be rejected. Reflecting on this period, the fourth-century heresiologist Epiphanius of Salamis explained that the musical-instrument trope for prophecy depicted an ecstasy that had no precedent in Christian or biblical prophecy; authentic prophetic ecstasy was only of the visionary type.Footnote 7 Once speaking in ecstasy was denied a biblical pedigree, via arguments against Montanism, the trope for automatism became the face for nonbiblical prophecy.Footnote 8
I will theorize that the trope's shifting interpretation from true prophecy to false prophecy was a symptom of a gradual decline of automatic speech in local communal gatherings; as a result, church leaders became increasingly unfamiliar with automatism. The impact of this is apparent by the end of the second century, when automatism was ruled as false prophecy by church leaders. Such a verdict failed to appreciate fully and understand the historical significance of automatism as divine prophecy in early Christian culture and reveals the extent to which church leaders had lost touch with the practice and purpose of early Christian automatism. The rest of this introductory section will provide the necessary background material for such theorization. The next section is an analysis of a selection of automatisms, both prophetic and demonic, in the New Testament. The third section is an analysis of prophetic automatisms in Didache 11 and the Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 11. And finally, the fourth is an analysis of automatism's dispute in Montanist texts.
The earliest Christians received revelations from invisible spirits whose speech and behavior were made perceptible through the agency of a prophet.Footnote 9 In early Christian prophecy, moral distinctions between spirits of error and spirits of truth guaranteed successful discrimination in principle (1 Cor 12:10; 1 John 4:1–6), but this was difficult to maintain in practice because early Christians warned that evil spirits impersonate good ones in prophecy.Footnote 10 A false prophet does not appear recognizably false, the biblical metaphor for which occurs in warnings against “a wolf in sheep's clothing” (Matt 7:15). Christians were warned about hastily believing a spirit (1 John 4:1); the spirit world was an ambiguous place—“Satan masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor 14:11)—and such ambiguities would necessarily be a part of any careful adjudication of spirit activity.Footnote 11 Indeed, discerning spirits was considered an important gift in early Christian gatherings (1 Cor 12:10). Christians were told what to expect a holy spirit to say (1 Cor 12:3; 1 John 4:2; 1 Pet 1:12) and what to expect a demon to say (1 Tim 4:1–3), but there is no clarity on how to unmask a deceitful spirit; what if a false spirit speaks highly of Jesus or behaves like a good spirit?Footnote 12 Jannes Reiling summarized this problem as follows: “Even the false prophets of Matthew 7:15–23 performed miracles. The power was there, but not the Spirit. Here we are face to face with the deepest problem of prophecy in the Christian church. Even the test by the demonstration of Spirit and power is inadequate, since it fails to reveal the true nature and origin of the spirit that is at work.”Footnote 13
During the late first and early second centuries, discerning automatism as “true” and “false” occupies Christians in the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas. Did. 11 warns that not every prophet who speaks “by means of a spirit” can be trusted. The Shepherd of Hermas is equally aware of this and contains the first clear question in early Christian literature about discerning prophecy: “How will a person know which of them is a prophet and which is a false prophet?”Footnote 14 The Shepherd answers this question by distinguishing the speech and behavior of a spirit from God and a spirit from the devil with the caveat that spirits from the devil may speak some true words and thereby appear to be from God. Nothing in this Mandate (or in the Didache) suggests that automatism itself (or any type of ecstasy) is to be discerned as a sign of false prophecy.
By the beginning of the second century, a sedentary clergy of bishops and deacons (presbyteros and episkopos) was forming in local churches.Footnote 15 Turning to itinerancy, prophets were no longer permanent fixtures in communal gatherings (see 1 John 4:1; Did. 11; Herm. Mand. 11), and so with each passing generation Christians went without prophets.Footnote 16 This situation may explain why ecstatic automatism took many aback when it (re)appeared in Montanism ca. 150/165. Members of the formative Catholic church argued that Montanus's automatism had never before been seen in the church, and that there was no evidence for it as true prophecy in scripture.Footnote 17
Montanus, a Christian convert from Cybele in Phrygia, developed a reputation for automatic speech, along with two prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla. The group adopted the title “the New Prophets” for themselves.Footnote 18 As an emerging Christian movement, Montanism arose near Asia, where Christian prophecy was primarily Johannine.Footnote 19 Montanist prophecy had much in common with Johannine prophetic phenomena, particularly spirits' utterances through prophets (1 John 4:1–6) and visions (Rev 1:10, 4:2, 17:3, and 21:10).Footnote 20 Hence, the “new prophets” were a “new generation” of early Christian prophets whose inspired utterances perpetuated the promise made by Jesus to subsequent generations in John 16:12, 13.Footnote 21
But others did not see it that way. Opponents argued that “new” meant Montanus's ecstasy was an unprecedented phenomenon in Christian prophecy that included enthousian, katochē, and mania.Footnote 22 Catholics feared that these new prophets not only experienced an ecstasy foreign to early Christian prophets but also spoke extra-biblical “revelatory novelties” while in this ecstasy that challenged apostolic doctrine found in “authorized books.”Footnote 23 Montanists, however, read those selfsame apostolic books, namely, John 16:13, to mean that revelation “continued beyond the post-apostolic era,”Footnote 24 thereby confirming their identity as true prophets. Opponents brought charges against Montanus that explained why he and his ecstasy failed to show succession with the apostolic era.Footnote 25 Of all these charges, and despite Montanus's former associations with Cybele, he is never accused of bringing pagan elements into Christianity.Footnote 26
The debate concerning Montanism as the “new prophecy” was largely a matter of deciding whether automatic speech aligned with the apostolic era: Was speaking in ecstasy new to Christian prophecy or, did it renew Christian prophecy from the past? This question mattered because during the mid-second century legitimizing new Christian movements was determined by their historical and doctrinal link to the apostles.Footnote 27 Authenticating Christian prophecy by establishing its continuity with the past “appears first in Christian writings with the New Prophets.”Footnote 28 The authenticating process “came to rest on the definition of ‘ecstasy,’”Footnote 29 and by the late second century onward, opponents of Montanism made their case against the new prophets according to the effects of ecstasy.Footnote 30 In Eusebius's sources, ecstasy that brings forth automatism is “a type of ‘ecstasy' which orthodox Christian opinion promptly defined out of court”Footnote 31 because it suspends the mental faculties and is compulsory, reminiscent of demonic possession; no true prophet of the past ever prophesied in this manner.Footnote 32 But not all prophetic ecstasies were compulsory.Footnote 33 In Epiphanius's source, vision ecstasy occurs among Hebrew prophets whose minds are intact, so that revelation from God is unimpeded.Footnote 34 Ecstasy that suspends the mental faculties in the automatism of Montanus displaces the mind, so that God's message cannot be delivered.Footnote 35 Epiphanius is our clearest source for discerning the ethics (as he sees it) of the two forms of prophetic agency as to their (in)ability for transmitting God's message. Montanists, however, embraced both types of ecstasy as legitimate technologies for communicating the divine will.Footnote 36
For a time, Montanus and his prophetesses had the support of the formative Catholic church. Apollinarius, bishop of Hierapolis, who composed a treatise against the Montanists,Footnote 37 convened a synod, ca. 177, which condemned Montanism, a decision sent to Eleutherus, the bishop of Rome (174–189). Eleutherus rejected Apollinarius's verdict, and both he and his successor, Victor I (189–199), approved the prophetic gifts of the Montanists and recommended that they be “accepted into the Eucharistic fellowship of the Catholic Church.”Footnote 38 Under the influence of Praxeas, a monarchian from Asia Minor and a man whom Tertullian charged with destroying the gifts of God,Footnote 39 Victor I, however, changed his mind and rejected the Montanists.Footnote 40 The spirit speaking through Montanus was charged with blaspheming the Catholic church, and Montanism was officially condemned in Rome under Victor's successor, Zephyrinus (199–217), and in Antioch and Asia under bishop Serapion (190–211).Footnote 41 The condemnation of Montanism was not uniform, however, as it flourished in Carthage during much of the third century, and ca. 207 Tertullian became its champion.Footnote 42 The church's initial acceptance of Montanism seems remarkable in the light of its subsequent and vicious rejection of it. Epiphanius writes that the Montanists “agreed with the holy catholic church”Footnote 43 on certain doctrinal issues, which may explain Montanism's piecemeal rejection and uneven criticism.
This ends the necessary background material for theorizing why automatism, once common among Christians, was later condemned by the church. The material shows in diachronic fashion that whereas anti-Montanists presumed automatism was foreign to Christian norms, earlier Christians would not have conceded to such a view. The analysis of early Christian texts below will show that a certain level of familiarity with automatic speech was required for assessing its value as divine prophecy and discerning its ambiguity whenever deceptive spirits manifested. This level of familiarity, as we will see, does not exist among anti-Montanists who defined automatic speech as false prophecy and demonic only.
Scholars explain the decline of ecstatic prophecy in the early church for various reasons, e.g., inconsistency with scripture, rural barbarism, and capriciousness.Footnote 44 I will add to the discussion by explaining why church leaders reacted negatively toward automatism with the following claim: critics who argued that automatism had no precedent in early Christian culture were unaware that, at one time, speaking in ecstasy functioned as Christian prophecy. The discernment of automatism as either true or false would have been lost on these critics (for lack of experience with it), who were alarmed by its presence among Christians.
Scholars have likewise speculated that inexperience with prophecy contributed to negative assessments of Montanism.Footnote 45 Such inexperience can be explained by the decline of automatism in many congregations.Footnote 46 The name “the New Prophets” may indicate a resurgence of prophetic activity that had lulled for a time in certain regions just prior to Montanus's appearance. Many anti-Montanist statements misconstrue the “I” first-person form of Montanist oracles as Montanus himself, further evidence of church leaders' inexperience with prophecy.Footnote 47 Judgments about prophecy were made by those not used to discerning automatisms as true or false. Origen described automatism as demonic possession and mantic prophecy.Footnote 48 Gregory of Nazianzus and Didymus the Blind identified Montanist possession with the ritual possession of Bacchism and Maenadism.Footnote 49
Automatism was a hallmark of early Christian prophecy, as we will see in the primary sources below.Footnote 50 Anti-Montanists, however, argued that automatism was false prophecy (so Eusebius) and made this case by means of taxonomy that favored vision ecstasy over possession ecstasy (so Epiphanius). Taxonomizing ecstasies as a way to determine true and false prophecy was a discussion most likely unheard of in the first and early second centuries. Prior to Montanism, the word ekstasis was typically not included in expressions for Christian automatism, namely, lalōn en pneumati, echein pneuma, plēroō pneuma, and pneumatophorōn. After the rise of Montanism, the term “ecstasy” became prominent in Christian dialogue that sought to define true prophets as those who prophesied while mentally sound, thereby marginalizing any ecstasy that displaced the mental faculties, such as Montanus's ecstasy, as unacceptable.Footnote 51 Montanus's (disputed) excommunication cast a long shadow over subsequent attitudes about automatism, especially among those with only secondhand knowledge of it.Footnote 52
The debate about automatism sparked off two conflicting accounts—speaking in ecstasy produced psychotic states and demonic automatisms (the anti-Montanist position) and speaking in ecstasy was true prophecy (the Montanist position)—which yielded two different kinds of discernment: 1) all automatisms are signs of demonic inspiration; and 2) automatisms may be either divine or demonic. Yet in both cases it was believed that a demonic spirit could be mistaken for a good spirit.Footnote 53 For anti-Montanists this meant that deceptive spirits impersonate good spirits on the analogy of exorcism in which demons who sound heavenly—thereby giving the false impression that automatisms originate in the divine—are only stating the truth in claiming Jesus is Lord.Footnote 54 Discerning automatisms was simply a matter of diagnosing demonic possession.Footnote 55 For Montanists, not all automatisms originated in demonic spirits, but demons might, indeed, produce automatisms. And herein lay the great challenge in discerning true prophecy: the demonic ruse was not to convince Christians that automatism, although false, was true prophecy, but rather to convince percipients in the habit of hearing holy-spirit automatisms that the spirit speaking at that moment was a holy spirit (even though it was really a demon).
Historically, the spirit producing automatic speech was a demon, a deceased human being, or a good spirit.Footnote 56 Ancient and Christian authors wrote that holy and divine spirits uttered cognitively intelligible speech through a prophet whose mind was suspended “in an ecstasy” with the prophet's subsequent amnesia of the event.Footnote 57 This ekstasis logismōn was once called mania to indicate a change in mood during divine possession.Footnote 58 In his Plea for Christians 9.1, Athenagoras could describe true prophecy as automatism by means of a trope of a prophet as an instrument (hos ei kai aulētēs aulon empneusai) played by a divine spirit (theou pneumatos) while in an ecstasy of reason (ekstasin logismōn), without any repercussion from church leaders.Footnote 59 By the fourth century, Epiphanius denounced the trope and ekstasis logismōn as false prophecy and manipulated the definition of ecstasy “in such a way as to preclude mania from the purview of Christian prophecy.”Footnote 60 Fourth-century polemics against Montanus described his “far-out ecstasy” (parekstasis) as an “involuntary psychosis” (akousion manian), calling him a “madman” (aphrainonta) and “an ecstatic in transport” (en ekstasei ginomenon ekstatikon anthrōpon) who is unconscious when he speaks, i.e., “he does not know what he is saying” (agnoei gar ha phthengetai).Footnote 61 The shift in the orthodoxy of automatism may have arisen in an atmosphere that provided little or no opportunity for church leaders to recognize automatism as a regular practice in regional communal gatherings.
The paradox of rational speech uttered in an irrational state of mind must have been perplexing to those not used to automatism.Footnote 62 Temporarily “removing” or “displacing” the mind of an agent seemed too vicious to come from God and so could only be the work of an evil spirit who affects demoniacs.Footnote 63 The ecstatic state of an automatist that rendered him or her temporarily unconscious was demonic and dangerous.Footnote 64 The characterization of Montanist ecstatic automatisms as “mad” (ekphronōs), “improper” (akairōs), “strange” (allotriotropōs), “demonic” (daimonōnti), “erroneous” (planēs pneumati), and “blasphemy” (blasphēmein) may suggest, then, that by ca. late second century, holy-spirit automatism among many Christians had all but disappeared, leaving only presumptions of demonic/mantic automatism in its wake.Footnote 65
In sum, I see two interrelated factors that explain church leaders' condemnation of automatic speech by the turn of the third century: 1) inexperience with (or ignorance of) discerning automatisms as true or false; and 2) the claim that automatism was a novelty that lacked precedent in early Christian prophecy. These two positions emerged because a decline in itinerant prophets during the second century made automatism less and less recognizable to church leaders, which contributed to an increasing discomfort with (and misunderstanding of) automatism's ecstasy among members of a developing organization of the formative Catholic church who were not used to such phenomena.
A Selection of Automatisms in the New Testament
In the New Testament, good spirits and bad spirits are depicted as sentient beings capable of expressing cognition through the agency of a human host. Acts 19:13 records “Jewish exorcists” (Ioudaiōn exorkistōn) who confront an evil spirit in a man that speaks to the exorcists: “the evil spirit answered” (apokrithen de to pneuma to ponēron). The spirit “in” (en) the man exhibits personal cognition and the ability to ask questions of its human interlocutors: “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?” (v. 15). Likewise, in Acts 16:16–18 Paul becomes annoyed by a spirit speaking to him through the agency of a slave girl. This spirit recognizes Paul and his traveling coterie as “servants of the Most High God” (v. 17). Paul “turned and said to the spirit” (epistrepsas tō pneumati eipen). Evil spirits also identify Jesus as “the Holy One of God” or “Son of God” through their human hosts (Matt 8:29; Mark 1:24, 5:7). These spirits are characterized with agency and cognition.
The manifestation of the utterances of good spirits through human intermediaries occurs whenever intercession is made to God in early Christian circles.Footnote 66 First Corinthians 12 and 14 are examples of this: “since you strive eagerly for spirits, seek to have an abundance of them for building up the church” (1 Cor 14:12, NAB).Footnote 67 These spirits are known by their speech through human intermediaries who speak en pneumati (1 Cor 12:3 and 1 Cor 14:2, 15, 16). Examples of en pneumati that depict spirits speaking through a human agent are found elsewhere, namely, Mark 1:23 and 5:2, anthrōpos en pneumati akathartō (a man with an unclean spirit).Footnote 68 An exegesis of the preposition en in Mark 1:23 and 5:2 to mean “with” explains the preposition as meaning that a spirit controls the person: the person moves and speaks en, “with,” i.e., “by means of” a spirit.Footnote 69 The prepositional phrase en pneumati in 1 Cor 12:3 is analogous in meaning to Mark 1:23 and 5:2, for in all three texts someone speaks en pneumati, “with a spirit.” We might render the prepositional phrases in 1 Cor 12:3 as “nobody who is speaking with a spirit of God says” (oudeis en pneumati theou lalōn legei) and “nobody is able to say ‘Jesus is Lord' except with a holy spirit” (oudeis dynatai eipein Kyrios Iēsous ei mē en pneumati hagiō). An expanded translation of 1 Cor 12:3 shows that spirits identify Jesus as Lord: “For this reason, I want you to know that no spirit of God speaking through someone can say ‘Jesus is accursed,' and only a holy spirit speaking through someone can say ‘Jesus is Lord.’”
Paul writes of himself in 1 Cor 14:15 as an automatist, as one praying en pneumati. This is a favorite verse of scholars who love to claim that prophecy in Paul was not ecstatic, i.e., not “without the mind present.” The proof for this interpretation is believed to be in the phrase tō noi (with the mind), where Paul says that he will not only “pray en pneumati” but also “pray [en] tō noi.” For some, Paul is saying that he is in full possession of his mental faculties while praying en pneumati.Footnote 70 But, as we have seen above, a speech act performed en pneumati can suggest automatism. The phrase tō noi does not represent the mental state of Paul so much as it refers to the intelligibility of the prayer itself.Footnote 71 Paul is saying that whenever he prays “with a spirit,” the prayer uttered by a spirit should be intelligible to those present; hence what comes next, in vv. 16–19, shows Paul's insistence on the occurrence of intelligible automatisms—over against unintelligible automatisms that he calls glossolalia uttered en pneumati—in the Christian ekklēsia.
Paul's recommendation to seek “a number of spirits” (1 Cor 14:12) reflects his culture's and era's pre-theological awareness of many holy spirits. His explicit reference to “the one and the same spirit” (1 Cor 12:11, 13: to hen kai to auto pneuma) is a part of a pre-theological worldview in which hen pneuma means many pneumata.Footnote 72 This awareness shows up in 1 John 4:1–6, where “the spirit of God” is any spirit making confessions through prophets. Any spirit (pan pneuma) who does not confess (ho mē homolegei) that Jesus has come in the flesh is not from God. The confession is in the form of automatic speech, for the initial warning against “believing every spirit” is made with the caveat about “false prophets” (pseudoprophētai). The warning against false prophets is a warning against the means by which any spirit will not confess Jesus has come in the flesh. Despite such warnings, the cunning that contrary spirits were believed to have suggests that even an impious spirit may proclaim something about Jesus and dupe its percipients.Footnote 73
So why were Christians, wary of deceptive spirits, encouraged to communicate with spirits? Spirits represented a source of truth and knowledge unattainable in human beings. Paul makes this point in 1 Cor 2:13: “This is what we speak, not in words taught to us by human wisdom but in words taught by a spirit” (all' en didaktois pneumatos). Paul's insight is echoed in Jesus's promise to send “the spirit of truth” that “guides into all truth” (John 16:12–14) and in the Johannine epistles where “spirits from God,” identified collectively as “the spirit of truth,” communicate truths about Jesus (1 John 4:1–6). With the possibility for both human error and deceptive-spirit intrusion into Christian teaching, e.g., 2 Pet 3:15–16 and 1 Tim 4:1, “spirits of truth” would see to it that “truth” was preserved. Stevan Davies explains: “In theory, what is said by the spirit is drawn from what is known by the spirit and not from what is known by the possessed individual. Accordingly, the idea of spirit speech entails the idea of spirit knowledge and it follows that the spirit is not simply a source of verbal formulations but a source of information.”Footnote 74 The identity of a truth-bearing spirit depended on the spirit's utterances as it pertained to Christ's identity (John 16:13, 14; 1 Cor 12:3; 1 John 4:2) and the gospel message (1 Pet 1:12). These identity markers were meant to safeguard against unacceptable spirits and false doctrine. Since good and bad spirits were close at hand, those seeking good spirits with whom to communicate had to be aware of other spirits potentially interfering.Footnote 75 Paul experienced pesky spirits himself (e.g., Acts 16:16–18). Whereas he gives no clear instructions for unmasking a deceitful spirit, he encourages guarded communication with spirits (1 Cor 12:10; 1 Thess 5:19–22).
The Problem of Discerning Automatisms: When False Prophecy Looks Like True Prophecy
This section explores the continued presence of early Christian automatism beyond the New Testament in Did. 11 and Herm. Mand. 11.
A. Did. 11.7, 8, 9, 12: Spirits and Prophets in the Early Christian Gathering
The Didache is a late first-century or early second-century church manual. Did. 11 discusses visitations by itinerant prophets to Christian households. The prepositional phrase en pneumati occurs in Did. 11.7, 9 ,12, just as it does in Mark 1:23 and 5:2 and in 1 Cor 12:3 and 14:2, 16. Did. 11.7 states that whereas “every prophet speaks with a spirit” (panta prophētēn lalounta en pneumati), not every prophet speaks by means of a truth-bearing spirit. Cyril C. Richardson observed the usage of en pneumati by reading lalounta en pneumati in Did. 11 to mean “literally ‘speaking in a spirit,' i.e., speaking while possessed by a divine or demonic spirit.”Footnote 76 So, how was one to tell the difference between true en pneumati and false en pneumati? Did. 11.9, 12 says that two requests spoken en pneumati reveal a false prophet: 1) a prophet “orders a meal with a spirit” (11.9: horizōn trapezan en pneumati); and 2) a prophet “says with a spirit, ‘Give me money’” (11.12: eipē en pneumati dos moi argyria). These two utterances are signs of a deviation from “the ways of the Lord” (11.8: tous tropous Kyriou). Just as the Lord, as an itinerant, did not ask for money or a meal, so too itinerant prophets do not channel spirits who ask for such things.
Did. 11.7 seems to contradict prescriptions we find for adjudicating spirits through a prophet: “And every prophet speaking with a spirit, you should neither test nor evaluate” (kai panta prophētēn lalounta en pneumati, ou peirasete. oude diakrineite). The real issue here, however, is found a few lines later, at Did. 11.11, where prophets who meet the standards for truth have already been “proven to be genuine” (dedokimasmenon alēthinous) and are “not to be judged by you” (ou krithēsetai eph' humōn), for judgment lies with God (meta theou).Footnote 77 The prophet in 11.7, then, is one who has already been evaluated as a true prophet and so bears responsibility only to God.Footnote 78
Did. 11.9 and 11.12 clearly show that not all prophets who voluntarily allow a spirit to speak through them are acceptable, the upshot of which means that false prophecy could appear as true prophecy, and this is where trouble lies: “The charge that false prophets were mediums through which evil spirits spoke accounted for the fact that both true and false prophets claimed inspiration for their utterances.”Footnote 79 A false prophet might go unrecognized for some time, and so early Christian households would have practiced great caution during visitations by itinerant prophets.Footnote 80 Once communication with spirits had actually been initiated through a prophet, only then could the discernment process begin. The Shepherd of Hermas illustrates this problem in even more descriptive terms.
B. Herm. Mand. 11: How to Recognize the False Prophet in the Synagōgē
The Shepherd of Hermas is one of the most enigmatic texts to come out of the postapostolic period, structured with five visions, twelve mandates, and ten parables. Herm. Mand. 11 reveals that God's spirits and the Devil's spirits manifest speech automatisms through itinerant prophets during the synagōgē: “When the prophet speaks it is either the Spirit of God which speaks through him or an earthly spirit.”Footnote 81 This Mandate is “the longest discussion in all of early Christian literature, prior to the middle of the second century, of the problem of true and false prophets.”Footnote 82
Herm. Mand. 11 discerns two types of spirits. The spirit of the true prophet is “divine,” “given from God,” “from above,” and “has power.” The spirit of the false prophet “comes from the Devil,” is “earthly,” and “has no power.”Footnote 83 At first blush, one may wonder how such contrasts between spirits could ever become entangled in ambiguity. And yet, despite their clear moral differences, these spirits manifest identically through a prophet. Both true and false prophets are “filled” (plēroun) with a spirit (11.3, 9),Footnote 84 “have” (echein) a spirit (11.2, 9) that speaks truth (11.3, 5), are “borne along [to speak] by a spirit” (11.16, pneumatophoros), and are possessed by a spirit that “speaks from itself” (11.5, 12, aph' heautou). Reiling agrees that “the divine Spirit and the earthly spirit cannot be distinguished by the form of their speaking … in so far as both use understandable speech.”Footnote 85 In early Christian prophecy “the problem of authentication [of automatisms] did exist,” because both true and false prophets are “inspired and commissioned.”Footnote 86
The difficulty of authenticating automatisms is rooted in the ambiguity created by the presence of the false prophet. The false prophet, initially, may appear as a potentially true prophet when he comes to an assembly full of righteous men (11.12, 14). In Herm. Mand. 11.3, a spirit from the devil (diabolos plēroi auton tō autou pneumati) impersonates a divine spirit by “speaking some true words” (rhēmata alēthē lalei) “to see if he will be able to break down any of the righteous.” For this reason “prophets cannot [always] be distinguished on the basis of what they proclaim.”Footnote 87 Those who are swayed by “such spirits” (toioutois pneumasin) are dipsychoi, “indecisive,” in their discernment. Only when intercession is made to God—something that these dipsuchoi do not do, because they “practice divination like the pagans” (manteuontai hōs kai ta ethnē)—is the false prophet unmasked and the spirit found to be “the earthly spirit” who flees from the scene (11.14). Which spirit speaks, and how can one tell?
Herm. Mand. 11 begins with a general standard for discriminating spirit communication through prophets: God's spirits (pan pneuma apo theou dothen, “every spirit given from God”) “are not to be consulted” (11.5: ouk eperōtatai) “according to the desires of the people” (11.6: kata tas epithumias tōn anthrōpōn) but according to what God desires (11.5: hoti anōthen estin). God's spirits stand aloof from answering questions that are “earthly and fickle” (epigeion esti kai elaphron), e.g., “what will happen to me?” (11.2: ti ara estai autois), a question answered only by the “false prophet, not having the power of a divine spirit in himself” (11.2).Footnote 88
The righteous assembly communicates with God's spirits when intercession is made to God alone. Such intercession suggests a regular and known procedure that helps secure the likelihood of the manifestation of a divine spirit from God in the congregation: “So, then, when the man who has the divine spirit comes into an assembly of righteous men who have faith in a divine spirit, and intercession is made to God by the assembly of those men, then the angel of the prophetic spirit which is assigned to him fills the man, and being filled with the holy spirit the man speaks to the multitude, just as the Lord wills” (11.9). The inspired man echōn to pneuma to theion (has the divine spirit), an early Christian idiom for spirit possession, namely, echein pneuma (to have a spirit), and here depicts automatism.Footnote 89 The inspired man also speaks [en] tō pneumati tō hagiō, “[with] the holy spirit,” the instrumental dative that we have seen elsewhere in 1 Cor 12:3, 14:15–16, and Did. 11 for holy-spirit automatisms: “and once he is filled, that one speaks in [‘with'] the holy spirit to the congregation” (kai plēstheis ho anthrōpos ekeinos tō pneumati tō hagiō lalei eis to plēthos).Footnote 90 The curious phrase “the angel of the prophetic spirit” is an appositional genitive: “the angel who is the prophetic spirit,” for both “the holy spirit” (tō pneumati tō hagiō) and “the angel” (ho angelos) are subjects of the verb “fills” (plēroō). The pneumatological variety in Herm. Mand. 11.9—holy spirit, angel, divine spirit, and prophetic spirit—all point to the same agent: a spirit from God (11.5).
In Herm. Mand. 11.12, prophesying is a speech act performed by a spirit: “Can a divine spirit receive money and still prophesy? It is impossible for a prophet of God to do this, but the spirit of such prophets who do so is earthly.” The confluence of a divine spirit and a prophet in the act of prophesying clearly expresses the performance of speech automatisms: I “see” the prophet speaking; I “hear” a spirit speaking. If spirits receive remuneration for their lectures through prophets, then they are not from God, “but the spirit of such prophets who do so is earthly” (11.12).Footnote 91
Sometimes, spirits discerned and exorcised other spirits via automatists in the Christian synagōgē. In 11.14 a congregation, similar to what Paul describes in 1 Cor 14:26,Footnote 92 is “an assembly full of righteous men who have a divine spirit,” among whom an automatist, through spontaneous instrumental agency, reveals the spirit of the false prophet that comes to this assembly: “intercession to God is made from them, that man is emptied, and the earthly spirit flees from him in fear.” Reiling similarly noted: “diakrisis pneumatōn which we find in the 11th Mandate is performed by the Spirit itself [i.e., by the divine spirits themselves] through the gathered congregation.”Footnote 93
Herm. Mand. 11 shows not only the existence of automatisms in early Christian prophecy prior to Montanism but also that ambiguous automatism was manifestly real. After Matt 7:15 and 2 Cor 14:11, Herm. Mand. 11.3 is the clearest warning of impersonation by a spirit through a false prophet. The false prophet is characterized ambiguously as ho dokōn pneuma echein (one who seems to have a [divine] spirit) (11.12). This may express either the false prophet's misplaced confidence in his own automatisms or his cunning.Footnote 94 Although there are signs to determine the nature of the spirit, e.g., by examining the life of the prophet and monetary compensation for prophecy (11.4, 7, 8, 12, 13),Footnote 95 debates could have easily arisen as to whose automatisms originated in a genuinely divine spirit. Such controversies are just below the surface in Herm. Mand. 11 (e.g., some Hebrew prophets received monetary compensation), but they bubble up and froth over in sources on Montanism.
Montanism: Disputing Automatism as a Christian Practice
In sources on Montanism, the ambiguity of discerning spirit identity continues well into the late second century. Discerning spirits by their words, as it had been in the past (1 Cor 12:3; 1 Tim 4:1, 2; Did. 11.9, 12; Herm. Mand. 11.3, 5), is now augmented by considering the mental state of the prophet while prophesying. Anti-Montanists were captivated by recognizing types of ecstasies and the mental states they produce in the prophet. For them, discerning spirits was just as much a matter as discerning ecstasies.
A. Anti-Montanist Sources in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History
Eusebius's sources in the Ecclesiastical History (ca. 324/25) assert that “a prophet must not speak in ecstasy” (mē dein prophētēn en ekstasei lalein) and a “false prophet [speaks] in ecstasy (all' ho ge pseudoprophētēs en parekstasei).”Footnote 96 Montanus's passive prophetic state was an “involuntary madness” (akousion manian) that included “possession” (enthousian) and was “filled” (plērōsai) with a “bastard spirit” (nothou pneumatos); no Hebrew or early Christian prophet was ever “inspired” (pneumatophorēthenta) in this way. Thus, Montanus's ecstasy—even though portrayed by him as true prophecy—was strange and novel, and Montanists were not successors of the true prophetic gift.Footnote 97 In support of this position, Eusebius notes that Montanists failed to prove that their prophecy was a continuation of the early Christian prophetic activity of Agabus, Judas (Acts 11:27–28), Silas (Acts 15:32), the daughters of Philip (Acts 21:9), and postapostolic prophets Ammia and Quadratus.Footnote 98 This catalogue of prophets bears witness “to a detailed prophetic succession list that was being adduced among Asian Christians in the 190s to establish where—that is, with whom—the true church was to be found.”Footnote 99 The debate over automatism as legitimate prophecy was a part of the issue of determining prophetic succession.Footnote 100 Montanists claimed that they belonged to this authoritative succession.Footnote 101 If Montanists' lineage with New Testament prophets was authentic, “then ecstatic possession must represent normative ancient practice,”Footnote 102 but if not, then automatism was diabolical. Opponents opted for the latter since Maximilla's inspired prognostications went unfulfilled and, most importantly, no new Montanist prophets appeared after Maximilla's death, proof that Montanists were not in apostolic succession: “the apostle grants that the prophetic gift shall be in all the church until the final coming, but this they [Montanists] could not show, seeing that it is already the fourteenth year from the death of Maximilla.”Footnote 103
Much of the conflict caused by speaking in ecstasy originated in the way in which the two sides were arguing about it. Anti-Montanists identified automatism as false prophecy and, in Montanus's case, as solely demonic. Montanus was “possessed by a devil” (energoumenō kai daimonōnti) and “subordinated by a spirit of error” (en planēs pneumati hyparchonti). Montanists claimed that the automatisms originated in a good spirit: “the spirit gave blessings” (makarizontos tou pneumatos) through Montanus, whose followers behaved “as though elevated by a holy spirit and a prophetic gift” (hos hagiō pneumati kai prophētikō charismati epairomenoi).Footnote 104 Opponents fired back: “the spirit in Maximilla” (to en tē Maximillē pneuma) was a “false spirit” (pseudes pneuma).Footnote 105 This back and forth is exhibited in the spirit's complaint through Maximilla: “I am driven away like a wolf from the sheep. I am not a wolf, I am rational, a [holy] spirit, and power.”Footnote 106 Maximilla's oracle shows that Montanists believed in the possibility that one might mistake a good spirit for a bad one. Anti-Montanists argued that the spirit duped its followers by its blessings and by rebuking them (deceptively) to give only the appearance of its heavenly origin, i.e., “that it might seem to be critical” (hina kai elenktikon einai dokē).Footnote 107 Kirsopp Lake once identified the problem of discerning ambiguous spirit identity in Montanism as its greatest source of controversy.Footnote 108 Ambiguous spirit identity had, indeed, been a problem in early Christianity.Footnote 109 Anti-Montanists, however, argued that automatisms were not ambiguous because only a “false prophet [speaks] in ecstasy.” They warned that those who did discern holy spirits in automatism, like the Montanists, have been “seduced by a mind-injuring and people-misleading spirit (laoplanon pneuma).”Footnote 110 Epiphanius makes the same point below.
B. Epiphanius's Panarion as an Anti-Montanist Source
In his Panarion (ca. 377/78), Epiphanius discerns true and false prophecy on the basis of what prophets say and the mental state in which they say it.Footnote 111 Epiphanius's discernment of prophecy is guided by two things: 1) prophecy was limited to the past and ended with the apostles; and 2) the historical authority of a canon of scripture reveals words inspired by “the true Spirit” through prophets who prophesied “with sound mind and a rational intellect.”Footnote 112 Epiphanius and Eusebius agree that Montanism lacks prophetic succession with the past because no new prophets arose after Maximilla, and Maximilla's prognostications went unfulfilled.Footnote 113 Epiphanius also concurs with Eusebius that no true prophet ever prophesied like Montanus, but he does so by discriminating an ecstasy for true prophets and an ecstasy for false prophets: “The prophets fell into ecstasies, but not into ecstasies of [the] reasoning faculties” (gegonasi de en ekstasei hoi prophētai, ouk en ekstasei logismōn).Footnote 114 Here, Epiphanius is thinking of the Hebrew prophets and the ekstasis of Peter and Paul in Acts 10:10 and 11:5 in contrast to the ekstasis of Montanus. Authentic ecstasy is a prophet's stupefaction from profound awe and amazement while prophesying what has been revealed in visions from God (ekstasis di' hyperbolēn thaumatos, “ecstasy through extreme amazement”).Footnote 115 Although unusually transfixed, prophets such as Isaiah and Ezekiel maintain full possession of their mental faculties and free will while prophesying what comes from God.Footnote 116 Ecstasy of the Montanist type suspends the mind and free will (ekstasis phrenōn, “ecstasy of mind”); God's message cannot be delivered without the alert mind of a prophet, and so Montanist ecstasy has no precedent as divine prophecy in scripture.Footnote 117 In protest, Montanists appealed to scripture for their ecstasy, namely, Gen 2:21 (LXX), Adam's “unconsciousness of sleep” (ekstasin tou hypnou), and while Epiphanius conceded to that point, he insisted that no biblical prophet experienced unconscious ecstasy like Montanus, “an abeyance of the senses and wits” (ekstasei phrenōn kai dianoēmatōn).Footnote 118
How one discerns the unsoundness of this ecstasy and the stability of that ecstasy “is difficult to define.”Footnote 119 Epiphanius explains the unsoundness of Montanus's ecstasy by appealing to the content of his oracles as odd, ambiguous, and inconsistent with scripture:Footnote 120 “Lo, the man is like a lyre and I [the spirit] fly over him like a pick, the man is asleep [in a trance] while I am awake.”Footnote 121 Epiphanius writes that these are “the words of an ecstatic” (ekstatikou rhēmata) and “not of a rational person” (ouchi parakolouthountos); they sound nothing like scripture and nothing like what a prophet would say.Footnote 122 We might have expected this musical-instrument trope for automatism to provide ample opportunity for Epiphanius to wax polemic against Montanist ecstasy in derogatory terms of ecstatic madness, as we find in Origen, Lactantius, and Eusebius.Footnote 123 But he does not describe Montanus's and Maximilla's behavior as mantic frenzy. Instead, he identifies the spirit in Montanists as deceitful and their ecstasy as aphrosunē, “folly.”Footnote 124 For Epiphanius's purposes, the trope serves not as an example for incorrect ecstasy (which it is) but rather for the incorrect words of a true prophet,Footnote 125 the “madness” of which is that they (along with other intelligible Montanist oracles) are passed off as equal in importance to scripture.Footnote 126
Epiphanius warns that automatisms may appear divine. The spirit sounds like a holy spirit when it says through Maximilla, “Do not listen to me, but listen to Christ.”Footnote 127 Whereas this utterance “seems” (edoxe) to glorify Christ, in reality, it is a lying spirit simply stating the truth, not unlike unclean spirits forced to admit during exorcism who their true Lord really is.Footnote 128 Epiphanius identifies Maximilla's automatism—he calls it anankazomenē elegen (speaking under compulsion)—with the spirit possessing a slave girl in Acts 16:16 that said some true things but whom Paul nonetheless exorcises.Footnote 129 No holy spirit drives out the mind of a prophet and speaks through him or her as an automatist: “each legitimate prophet's actions and speech are not compulsory.”Footnote 130 Some may have believed that a holy spirit was in Montanus,Footnote 131 but for Epiphanius, there is nothing ambiguous about speech automatisms; all originate in a false spirit.
C. The Reliability of Anti-Montanist Statements about Ecstasy and Early Christian Prophecy
The Montanist debate arose within a culture of spiritual ambiguities and diverse ecstasies that captivated (and bewildered) the ancient world. As opposition to Montanism grew stronger, Catholic bishops' discernment of automatism became a matter of diagnosing demoniacs. The two catholic bishops, Zoticus of Cumane and Julian of Apamea, who “tested and conversed with the spirit as it spoke” through Maximilla, appear initially to be carrying out discernment reminiscent of 1 John 4:1.Footnote 132 Might the spirit have passed the test? A verdict of “true prophecy” by the bishops would have normalized automatism. Anti-Montanist statements, however, anathematized it as an example for how not to prophesy in church, and so the bishops were anticipating an exorcism rather than a discernment à la 1 John 4:1–6 and Herm. Mand. 11.Footnote 133 From the Montanist side, the bishops' behavior was none other than a misreading of spirit identity. Maximilla's supporters, apparently aware of their motives, stopped Zoticus and Julian from performing an exorcism on her.Footnote 134 This scene clearly shows the controversy that ambiguous automatisms were causing Christian communities at that time, as Robin Lane Fox once put it: “Five generations, at most, after ‘Pentecost,' Christian leaders were exorcising fellow Christians, mouthpieces of the Holy Spirit.”Footnote 135
Early Christian texts—canonical, noncanonical, and apologetic—demonstrate the existence of automatism as true prophecy in early Christian cultures predating Montanism, even though the word “ecstasy” itself is not always present in the texts.Footnote 136 The backlash against speaking in ecstasy, however, was so strong in the late second century that Montanist prophets were susceptible to charges of demonic possession. Such backlash occurred, in part, because the spirit was charged with speaking “blasphemy” through Montanus.Footnote 137 Uttering blasphemy in ecstasy may have called into question the propriety of automatism itself, which eventually led those inexperienced with discerning spirits in automatism to claim that only “the false prophet speaks in ecstasy.”Footnote 138
As shown in this paper, automatisms were typically not classed exclusively as demonic or mental derangement among early Christians but rather were discerned as true or false, and so anti-Montanist statements about ecstasy and discernment are not (historically) reliable. For instance, Epiphanius discerns the holy spirit from evil spirits on the basis of the prophet's sound mental state (of ecstasy), rationality of inspired speech (i.e., scriptural-sounding speech), and fulfilled prognostications, all of which, he argues, are lacking in the Montanists.Footnote 139 Of these three discernment criteria, early Christians would have recognized only fulfilled prognostications as a sign that a spirit was from God (see 1 Tim 4:1).Footnote 140 Rational, inspired speech was, indeed, a concern shared by both Paul and Epiphanius, but in different contexts. Paul wants to regulate the intelligibility of automatic speech in the local ekklēsia to avoid linguistic confusion (1 Cor 14:15–19), whereas Epiphanius (for whom automatism was never present in the local ekklēsia) wants to determine whether Montanus's oracles are in accordance with the words of scripture (Pan. 4.1–6). But he goes one step further: even automatism that sounds like scripture, e.g., glorifying Christ, does not count, for only a prophet whose mind is alert can receive and transmit God's oracles.Footnote 141
Epiphanius's taxonomy—ecstasy of amazement (vision) and ecstasy of mind (possession)—mistakes the examination of a mental state for discerning the character of a spirit. Types of ecstasy are not indicators for true and false prophecy.Footnote 142 With all of his talk about Abraham, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel as exhibiting the proper visionary ecstasy, Epiphanius never mentions the prophetic experience of either Saul or the “school of the prophets” (1 Sam 10:5–12, 19:18–24) that, arguably, was akin to Montanus's.Footnote 143 Epiphanius also fails to mention that visions occurred among Greco-Romans and Montanists and provides no criteria for discerning true and false visions, even though false visions abounded in biblical and Christian cultures;Footnote 144 instead, he asserts automatisms are false and visions are true on the basis of the type of ecstasy that accompany each, a rational ecstasy for visions and an irrational ecstasy for possession, a critique of prophecy that seems oversimplified.Footnote 145
In contrast to anti-Montanists, the expectation among the earliest Christians was that the identity of the prophet be replaced with the consciousness and identity of a possessing spirit. Early Christians were warned to expect ambiguous prophecy and therefore to maintain a discerning posture. The nature of the spirit's words (1 Cor 12:3; 1 John 4:1–6; 1 Pet 1:12)—sans the later Epiphanian criteria for such words that required a sense of history, church, and canon of scripture unavailable to early Christians—and the spirit's intelligibility (1 Cor 14:16) were primary points of evaluation, not ecstatic states.Footnote 146 “Montanus was neither novel nor blasphemous when he claimed that the divine spoke through him.”Footnote 147 A diachronic reading of early Christian texts reveals a shift in the ethics of discerning prophetic agency, from “do not believe every spirit” of the first- and second-century Christians to “do not believe any automatism” of the early third-century formative Catholic church.
Conclusion
Early Christians faced two formidable realities that complicated discerning automatisms: 1) true and false spirits manifested identical ecstatic symptoms in a prophet;Footnote 148 and 2) deceptive spirits were believed, at times, to behave and speak like true ones. As Christian communities grew more diverse and widespread throughout the ancient Mediterranean basin, these phenomena dwindled as prophets became scarcer and a clerical bishopric matured with an authoritative voice. Both Did. 11 and Herm. Mand. 11 describe prophets who “come to” or “are received by” an assembly, but only for limited time. Itinerant prophets did not create a permanent presence in congregations. Thus, prophecy was spotty and many Christian congregations may have gone without experiencing prophets. The increasingly tenuous presence of prophecy throughout the second century made automatism—as true prophecy—unrecognizable to some church leaders, a situation that guided their judgment concerning its impropriety in the church when it resurfaced in Montanism. Discerning the ethics of prophetic agency in early Christian culture stood on the shifting sands of competing views on the nature of true and false prophecy.
Montanus's excommunication ca. 170s/190s had a grave impact on the reception of automatism in subsequent decades. Fourth-century Christian chroniclers such as Eusebius and heresiologists such as Epiphanius reminisced on the church's rejection of automatism with polemical jabs that mistook speaking in ecstasy as foreign to early Christian practice. Anti-Montanist's preoccupation with ecstasy as a mechanism for discernment, however, was the true novelty in Christian prophecy at that time, and not automatism. Opponents of automatic speech were most likely unfamiliar with an earlier belief that deceptive spirits appeared in phenomena in which holy spirits were expected to appear also. Formative Catholic Christians unwittingly eliminated the good (holy spirit automatisms) while denouncing the bad (evil spirit automatisms) for reasons motivated more by what the church had become—an organized Catholic church with a burgeoning canon of sacred Christian scripture whose apostolic lineage had gained a consensus—than by knowledge of what the church had been—prophets whose automatisms were the expected norm and manner of prophesying, subject to discernment as either true or false within local social groups.
