The prophet

The prophets are revealers of the will of God, and of God’s nature, because they receive a Word of particular, transcendent revelation, a Word of God, which no human being could attain by his own efforts, and this “Word” is wholly independent of their personality. God chooses whom He will, as the instrument of His revelation. No human being, as such, is qualified to be a prophet; a prophet becomes one through something that happens, a call and an enabling from God. From time to time he receives a Word of God, which he has to proclaim with divine authority, not thanks to anything that he is, but thanks to God’s free communication. The authority lies wholly in the divine communication. The Word of the prophets contains, of course, also “general ethical truth” but it is not this, but something outside this sphere of what is common to man, which makes their Word a “revealed” Word. The moral laws, as such, are also known to the heathen; the new element of special revelation is their message of judgment and of promise. The Prophets are not teachers of true morals and piety, but they are men who proclaim the will of God, until then unknown to men, as men, here and now. Hence the Prophets speak with divine authority, but with an authority which does not belong to their personality, but to the Word given to them.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 333