The Calling of Isaiah

Human Transformation and the Divine Encounter

Randolfo R. Pozos, PhDDecember 6, 2013

The Calling (Isaiah 6:1-13)

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4 The pivots[a] on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” 9 And he said, “Go and say to this people:

‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend;keep looking, but do not understand.’10 Make the mind of this people dull,

and stop their ears, and shut their eyes,

so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears,

and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.”

11 Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said:“Until cities lie waste without inhabitant,

and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate;

12 until the Lord sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.

13 Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again,like a terebinth or an oak

whose stump remains standing when it is felled.”

The holy seed is its stump.

- New Revised Standard Catholic Edition

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The Calling of Isaiah: Human Transformation and the Divine Encounter

Introduction

Two key figures of the 20th century, Abraham Heschel and Marshall McLuhan, have achieved

prophetic status. Heschel championed the civil rights and anti-war movements in the United

States at times and places when it was not safe to so. In 1965 he joined Martin Luther King, Jr.

in 1965 on the Voting Rights March in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery. (Heschel, 2001:xiv)

“The opposite of good is not evil. It is indifference.” (Heschel 2001:xviii) Marchand (1989) in his

biography of Marshall McLuhan presents him as someone who read the signs of the times in

the transformation of communication and published widely read “prophecies” on

dehumanization, nuclear war, and the coming of the global village. War and Peace in the

Global Village (McLuhan, 1968) is an excellent example of his prophetic style. Both of these

20th century prophets can give us important ways to approach Isaiah as messenger and

message. In keeping with Heschel’s approach, we need to have a better understanding of the

messenger. (Heschel, 2001) Following McLuhan, we need to have a better understanding that

the messenger and the message are extensions and metaphors of each other. (Sanderson,

1989)

In order to get some glimpse of the effect of the divine encounter on the person and personality

of Isaiah, it is important gain some sense of the culture in which he lived and his historical

context. We also need to have some idea of what a prophet was, since prophets were a

widespread feature of the religions and peoples of Mesopotamia in the first and second

millennia BC. Since Isaiah was not a 21st century person, we cannot apply our contemporary

notions of psychology to him, even if we had access to a time machine. Despite what we might

think within the bounds of our own mass media world, the human person as an experiential

entity comes from the social construction of reality in which he or she is socialized. One of the

best ways in which we can begin to encounter Isaiah as a person is in his poetry and the first

person “I statements” within that poetry. Before we begin our look at transformation and the

divine encounter, let’s take a closer look at Isaiah in cultural context.

Cultural Context

The prophets of Israel are important to the world because they can be seen as the continuing

source of Israel’s identity and religious strength despite conquest, deportation, and oppression

after the fall of the Northern Kingdom and Judah. Max Weber, the pioneering social scientist,

saw the prophets as an institution that would result not only in the ongoing development of

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Judaism but would give rise to Christianity and Islam. Consequently, the teachings of the

prophets are of great importance in the history of the world and its ongoing development.

Weber concluded that the social and cultural foundations of the institution of the prophet were

based on a weak monarchy and a state under constant threat. Consequently, the prophets

could not be censored or silenced completely. Not only were they court oracles but their vision

and voice had power to rally the people. According to Weber the continuation of prophecy in

exile after the destruction of the state ensures the continuation of the Jews as an ethnic group

and Judaism as a religion. (Fahey 1982) This is especially remarkable since Aramaic replaced

Hebrew as the daily language of Israel, since language is central to ethnic identity. (Schwartz,

1995) The long rabbinical tradition of commentary on Isaiah is an example of this continuity.

(Porton, 1997)

Moshe Weinfeld begins his article, “Ancient Near Eastern Patterns in Prophetic Literature”

(1977), by contesting Yechezkel Kaufmann’s argument that the Jewish prophets differed from

other Mesopotamian prophets. Kaufmann’s main contribution as in The Religion of Israel

(Kaufmann, 1961) was his position that Israel was monotheistic dating from the time of Moses.

According to Kaufmann, the Israelite prophet is a messenger sent by God, in contrast to the

pagan prophets who “acted by a divine power that had become embodied in them.” (Weinfeld,

1977:178) The mid-20th century publication of the Mari texts from the 18th century BC has

provided a point of comparison. Israelite and pagan prophets shared many common patterns,

but he emphasis among the Mari is on the message and not the mission. Of special interest for

our purposes here is the common pattern: the messages were delivered in a prophetic frenzy.

(Weinfeld, 1977:179) Indeed, Israel was distinctive in the ancient near east with its emerging

emphasis on monotheism, but it shared many features in common with the religion of its

surrounding neighbors. (Albright, 1940) (Whitelam, 1994) (de Jong, 1989)The images of

ancient near eastern literature and its poetic richness overlap with those of Israelite

compositions. Depicting chaotic scenarios in terms of a world turned on its head is a widely

shared image. (Kruger, 2012)

One of the more difficult challenges for us as post-modern rationalists is to apprehend the

notion of reality as arising from a shared collective unconscious. This collective focus on the

priority of the tribe and family creates a tight sense of social integration, identification, and

subordination. Our current frame of reference for understanding this radically different view is

the structuralism of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

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The source of human nature, according to Levi-Strauss, is the transmission of certain human

“structures” that are ways of thinking that create social reality. In my own view, much of Levi-

Strauss’ work among aboriginal people conveyed the diminished sense of the individual self

that is prominent in those cultures. As post-modern people, we have a shared basic cultural

construction of individual autonomy and isolation. However, the reverse was true in ancient

Israel. The importance of the collective in the perception and social construction of reality was

paramount. In this context, the prophet and more broadly, the oracular, is the product of the

collective upwelling of the collective unconscious. The utterance of the prophet is not that of an

individual. Rather, the prophet, in the cultural context of ancient Israel, is the irruption of God’s

word from within the group’s collective unconscious into its poetic consciousness. If we view

prophecy as some sort of divine chat session or email “flame” we risk missing the invitation to

enter the divine word by not apprehending the unsayable truth. Thus the prophecy is fulfilled:

“Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.” (Is 6:9)

The Call

The human encounter with the divine results in a profound personal transformation. This

phenomenon of religious conversion is now an expected feature of Christian religious

experience in terms of the conversion experience and testimony. Contemporary pastoral

leadership relies on prophecy as seen in contemporary Nigeria. In this case, the author

presents an overview of the calling of Isaiah and his message. The interpretation then becomes

a contemporary prophecy for the abandonment of greed, social oppression and environmental

degradation. (Olanguju, 2011)

Isaiah’s call echoes the one Moses received in the vision of the Burning Bush. “Now go I send

you to Pharaoh” (Ex 3:10) and Isaiah’s variation “whom shall I send and who will go for us?” (Is

6:8). This is a formula that is used when high gods impose a mission on someone in ancient

Mesopotamia. (Weinfeld, 1977:179) Isaiah’s vision of the heavenly court and his response to

the call establishes Isaiah as a prophet in the line of Moses.

Specifically, if we take a closer look at the initiation of the prophets in Israel and Judah, there

are very close similarities. (Merkur, 1988) The prophet is caught up in a vision and admitted to

the presence of the heavenly court. This dream state is brought on by some type of sensory

deprivation in an “inner chamber without windows or a Holy of Holies in a temple.” The term

dream was a general term for an hallucination in the Tanakh. (Merkur, 1988:39) The vision

establishes the prophet’s credibility. The prophets of Israel were distinctive in several ways. The

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prophet apprehends the presence of God but is not allowed to see God. Indeed, the prophet

knows that the vision of God would mean sudden death. The experience of God makes the

prophet realize his own sinfulness and that of his people. A purification ritual follows. In Isaiah’s

case his lips are touched with a burning coal. After the release of his guilt and sin, God issues

the invitation: “Who will go for us?” Isaiah’s affirmative response is followed by God’s message

to His people.

Transformation

The prophet’s transformation begins with his utterance of prophecy. In the person of Isaiah, we

find a deep transformation manifested in his vision and voice after this encounter. (Landy 2000)

In fact, Isaiah’s transformation involves replacing physical vision with insight; replacing physical

voice with a stunning silence in which all is understood, perceived, and received. “We listen

beyond the signs to that which does not form words, to that in the person which borders on the

unconscious and the invisible.” (Landy, 2000:23)

In Isaiah, vision and hearing are key metaphors. They are the first elements of the oracle:

And he said, “Go and say to this people:‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend;

keep looking, but do not understand.’(Isaiah 6:9)

Landy (2000:24) correlates hearing with the interior, with immanence, and seeing with the

exterior, with transcendence. Again, their meaning is presented as metaphor. Landy goes on to

cite Isaiah 50: 4-5

”He wakens morning by morning,he wakens the ear for me, to listen like those taught.

My lord YHWH opens the ear for me.”

The metaphor of hearing conveys light and consciousness. “Waking is listening.” (Landy,

2000:25) Similarly, vision as metaphor in Isaiah makes visible what was not previously visible.

According to Landy, the Hebrew work for ‘vision’ ןֹוזו ן chazon is prophetic vision which is beyond regular seeing. �feld��������Ș�����C�file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Roaming/OpenOffice.org/3/user/config������������������������������������������������������������������������������������Oח chazon is prophetic vision which is beyond

regular seeing.

“If vision is equivalent to hearing, speech, and text, then that which is heard, spoken, and read is likewise the unheard, the unsayable, the unreadable. The book cannot be read because it is sealed (29.9)” (Landy, 2000:26)

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These contradictory approaches to seeing and hearing contained in the metaphors of Isaiah’s

poetry brings up the broader issue of metaphor. Landy cites Ricoeur’s view that metaphor

functions as a “thinking more.” (Landy, 2000: 27) The prophetic word brings about changes in

one’s perception of the world. Since it is metaphorical it does not just establish a relationship

between two terms but it takes us to “a different place, unsettling, and destroying the familiar.”

Metaphor takes us beyond to a different conception.

Landy cites the work of Lakoff and Johnson in Metaphors We Live By (1980) that claims

metaphors are the basis of thinking. There is a “catch 22” in Isaiah’s metaphors since they

communicate clarity and incomprehensibility at the same time. According to Landy, Isaiah can

only carry out the prophetic task in a way that means it will not be understood and will thus

remain unfulfilled. This lack of fulfillment incapacitates the metaphor’s ability to generate insight,

create meaning, and transform perception. The metaphor, the poetry of Isaiah, becomes “a

mode of negation, overturning, transformation of being into un-being. Landy call this the poet’s

“other” voice. (Landy, 2000: 30-31)

Landy cites Harold Fisch’s Poetry with a Purpose – Biblical Poetics and Interpretation (1988).

Fisch observes the close parallel between the death of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 and the first

chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah’s vision returns to the death of Moses and God’s plan for Israel. The

people are then called to hear the fulfillment of the prophecy.

Leung takes a more textual approach to attempting to uncover the personality of Isaiah,

focusing on the prophet’s first person statements. (Leung, 2007) In my view, this approach is

less successful than Landy’s exegesis of Isaiah’s poetry. Leung takes on the complexity of the

text in terms of interweaving of first person statements, dialog, and divine utterance. What is

clear from Leung’s approach is the transformation of Isaiah’s perception. By this, I do not mean

to imply that Isaiah went around speaking unintelligibly. Rather, he conveyed his experience of

the divine in a very rich poetry which is a combination of clarity, if received on a higher level,

and confusion, if read literally or on the base of its metaphors. The message and the

messenger can only be received by those who share the prophetic gift.

Understanding the psychology of the prophetic dream in terms of our own culture is not terribly

difficult. Daniel Merkur defines the prophetic dream:

“In theoretic terms, hypnotic dreams may be characterized as daydreams that, occurring during a trance state undergo reification… and become hallucinations. They also

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associate with ordinarily unconscious materials and serve as conduit for the latter into consciousness.” (Merkur, 1988:37-38)

Essentially, the prophet enters a trance or “space out” induced by fatigue (vigil), hunger

(fasting), or sensory deprivation (deep meditation). One begins to have daydreams that appear

to become very real and tangible. The content of the daydream draws from images and

archetypes from the unconscious and brings them to consciousness as symbol, image and

metaphor.

Prophecy and Conversion

Isaiah’s vision becomes a paradigm for future prophetic experience as seen dramatically in the

Book of Daniel. The visions of Daniel (Dan 7-12) follow an Isaian formula which appears to date

from and earlier vision tradition going back to the vision of Isaiah in chapter 6. (Nichol, 1979) In

fact, our contemporary notion of conversion still bears two conflicting paradigms from this

tradition. Often there is a focus on the change in the internal being of a person and a second

focus on the change in one’s apprehension of the truth. (Evans, 1986) While one may be more

pronounced than another in a given case, they are complementary. Hefling (1985) in

“Redemption and Intellectual Conversion: Notes on Lonergan’s Christology Today” shows how

Lonergan blends these two foci by showing how redemption in the context of conversion

changes a person’s perception of the world. In turn, this changes the way in which a person

creates knowledge.

Prophecy and the Encounter with the Holy Spirit

For Christians, the divine encounter today occurs with Christ in the Holy Spirit. Prophecy and

prophets occur in the writing of St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles. The prophetic

proclamation is a sign of the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit. Christ’s proclamation of

the Kingdom still reserves much of the spiritual and linguistic heritage of Isaiah in direct

quotations and allusions. Enlightened by the Holy Spirit, our call into the Pascal mystery follows

the journey of Christ at the time of His baptism by John and Jesus subsequently being “hurled”

by the Spirit into the desert. In fact, much of the opposition to Christ objected to His prophecy:

His proclamation of the Rule of Heaven. In an interesting article “Religion as Opiate or

Prophetic Stimulant” H. Wesley Perkins (1983) demonstrates that for the majority of members

in two comparable congregations in New Haven, Connecticut and London, England there is

less of an interest in social justice since they are more socially conformist. However, to the

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extent that faith is deeply internalized, an awareness of social inequality and the need to

address these issues becomes more prominent.

Christ, who is truly human and truly divine, literally embodies God’s complete Godself

expression as the Eternal Word in complete harmony in Jesus of Nazareth. In Christ Jesus, the

Divine does not overpower or crush human nature but brings it to the fullness of perfection.

Insofar as we are born into Christ through water and the Spirit, we enter into the realm of the

unsayable, of that which can be pointed to in metaphor and poetry. The ecstatic singing,

vocalizations, prophecies, healings experienced by initiates in the Holy Spirit abandon the

gloom of the prophets hoping for the Messiah; but the word of God is still a double-edged

sword. The obscurity of the divine for the prophets has become the fullness of God’s complete

Godself-disclosure in the Risen Christ. Yet, the proclamation of the Kingdom is prophetic at its

core since it involves the condemnation of the comfortable and the parallel consolation of the

afflicted. Jesus is explicit in his lament that people will see but not perceive; they will hear but

not listen.

Prophecy Today

Heschel and McLuhan provide an interesting contrast in prophetic styles. Heschel, as a Jew,

did not live and work in the context of Christian belief. Heschel’s view of the prophets in his

writing reveals much of his concept of himself as a prophet. In the introduction to the Perennial

Classics Edition, Susanna Heschel summarizes her father’s definition of the prophet:

“Hence the prophet is neither a messenger, an oracle, a seer, nor an ecstatic, but a witness to the divine pathos, one who bears testimony to God’s concern for human beings.” (Heschel, 2001:xviii)

In his introduction, Heschel emphasizes that the

“prophet is a person, not a microphone.”… “The prophet’s task is to convey the divine view.”…”He is also poet, preacher, patriot, statesman, social critic, moralist.” (Heschel, 2001:xxii)

Given Heschel’s central European origins and his last-minute departure from Nazi Germany, his

prophetic task of witness in the context of the Shoah is as remarkable as it is daunting. The

dedication of his book “To the martyrs of 1940 – 45” is taken from Psalm 44:

All this has come upon us,Though we have not forgotten Thee,

Or been false to Thy covenant,

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Our heart has not turned back,Nor have our steps departed from Thy way…

…for Thy sake we are slain..Why dost Thou hide Thy face?

In fact all of Psalm 44 appears to be a prophecy of the European holocaust. It traces God’s

establishment of His people, the land and the victories he had given them, but now he has

abandoned them for no justifiable reason. “Thou hast made us like sheep for the slaughter.“

The psalm concludes with an anger filled with hope.

Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake! Do not cast us off forever!

Why dost thou hide thy face? Why dost thou forget our affliction and oppression?

For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our body cleaves to the ground.

Rise up, come to our help! Deliver us for the sake of thy steadfast love!

Despite or because of the Shoah, Heschel moves forward as God’s witness of divine pathos in

the promotion of civil rights and the struggle to end the war in Vietnam. Despite everything that

had happened, Heschel believed that God cares, that he is anguished, and that God is the

“most moved mover.” For Heschel “the prophets’ experience of God is characterized as a

communion with the divine consciousness, a sympathy with divine pathos, a deep concern by

God for humanity.” (Heschel, 2001:xv). In fact, Susanna Heschel, points out that his views were

not popular in Jewish congregations, For Heschel, evil is not the climax of history for the

prophet. “There is bound to come a renewal of our sense of wonder and radical amazement, a

revival of reverence, an emergence of a sense of ultimate embarrassment, and ultimate

indebtedness.” (Heschel, 2001:xx). The prophet provides a divine perspective on a human

situation. Prophecy is “the exegesis of existence from a divine perspective.” (Heschel,

2001:xxvii)

Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy came from a radically different social and cultural background.

Nevertheless, he too witnessed to God’s concern for the suffering of humanity and the

accountability of men and women to God. Thomas Wolfe details the life and times of Marshall

McLuhan in the context of Wolfe’s critique of American culture at the turn of the millennium in

his article, “McLuhan’s New World.” (Wolfe, 2004) Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian from

Edmonton, Alberta, was raised a Baptist and converted to Catholicism when he studied at

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Oxford in the 1930’s. Like many, he was influenced by the Catholic writers Chesterton and

Belloc, who made Catholicism “exciting and even smart in literary circles.” McLuhan also

became interested in popular culture. Movies, radio, advertisements, and even comic books

were being treated as a new language. According to Wolfe, McLuhan’s Catholic faith and his

analysis of popular culture created McLuhanism. He spent most of his career at Catholic

universities. In 1946, at the age of 35, McLuhan joined the faculty of St. Michael’s College at the

University of Toronto. He was an expert in 16th and 17th century English literature and the work

of James Joyce. McLuhan captivated groups of students and faculty in his informal Socratic

gatherings on the “folklore of industrial man”. (Wolfe, 2004:21)

McLuhan’s prophetic vision encompassed the future in terms of reading the signs of the times.

In fact he was one of the first types of seers who would become more prominent as secular

economic, technological, and social forecasters called “futurists”. McLuhan’s vision is at the

center of his prophecy. It is communication. In the emergence of mass media in the 20th

century and the rise of consumerism and advertising, McLuhan saw the way in which the

medium is the message and the way in which the message transforms the messenger.

Essentially, the introduction of any new medium of communication changes the way in which

people see themselves. In very brief terms, he saw the way in which people were being “sold”

war, prejudice, and violence. He also predicted the social and cultural distortions of the

emerging global village. McLuhan did more than contemplate and warn people of the future. He

exercised his prophecy in the advancement of civil rights, ending the war in Vietnam, and

working for a nuclear free world. He did not believe in utopia as the end point of human

technological development since it is a secular concept. His great vision was that everyone

becomes a member of the Mystical Body due to the changes brought about by electronic

media.

Pope Francis has recently issued a prophetic apostolic exhortation, Evangeli Gaudium: The Joy

of the Gospel. The language is amazingly pointed for a papal document:

“27. I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.”

Barely eight months into his papacy, Jorge Bergoglio, now Francis I, conveys a strong prophetic

voice and vision. The Pope reproaches the Church and her institutions as well the powerful of

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this world. He has not hesitated to impugn global capitalism, the Mafia, bad sermons, and

officious clerics. Yet it is also a document of encouragement, a recognition of efforts to preach

and to live the gospel.

Conclusion

The call of Isaiah, that is Isaiah’s encounter with God, transformed Isaiah as a person in a very

profound way as seen in his voice and vision. This was the point of his initiation as a prophet

which led him to a level of insight beyond human seeing and speaking. The poetry of Isaiah, in

its richness and contradictions, reveals many strands of communication. Isaiah’s initiation in its

basic form was similar to Israelite and pagan prophets in Mesopotamia at the time. However, it

is also distinctive with its emphasis on the one God and the mission to proclaim that message.

This experience will set the pattern for subsequent prophets and will become the model of

Christian conversion. Prophecy continues today in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In the

Jewish tradition, Heschel sees the prophet as one bearing witness to the divine pathos – God’s

fundamental concern for humanity and creation. In his own prophecy, Heschel becomes the

voice and vision of God on behalf of those marginalized by racism and those ground up by the

war machine. McLuhan’s faith led him to see the God of history in a time of rapid technological

and social change. Just as he warns of the dangers and challenges of the global community, he

also see the emergence of the Mystical Body. McLuhan’s voice and vision blaze through the

injustices of racism and war. Like Isaiah, Heschel and McLuhan provide a divine perspective on

a human situation. Pope Francis, in his words and deeds, is renewing the proclamation of the

Rule of Heaven. These prophets are models for us to plunge into the mystery of God and to

emerge with the new voices and visions of a new Pentecost.

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