Sacred Matter

It is common to think of prophecy as a matter of words, and biblical literature frequently portrays and presents prophecy as precisely that. Yet biblical narrative also frequently portrays prophets interacting with the material world. Within that broader nexus of interactions, this book focuses on prophetic interactions with material objects, or things. Things feature prominently in prophetic acts of power and symbolic actions. In these acts, things are more than tools or props. They exercise agency. They mediate and reveal. A focus on the mediatory, revelatory, responsive, and transformative agency of things introduces a wider set of actors and partners and thematizes the entangled agency of prophet, God, and material world.

Undergirding biblical understandings of the mediatory agency of things is a symbolic imagination that is shared between biblical prophetic literature and Christian sacramental theology. Applying the concept of performance to prophetic symbolic actions further illuminates these commonalities. Braiding together these seemingly disparate threads allows us to develop an integrative approach to the mediatory and revelatory agency of things that is both interactive and relational.