Abstract:
In the Christian scriptures, two prominent figures for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit are prophecy and adoption. This essay explores the possibility that these two figures for spiritual inspiration are more closely related than they would initially appear: the experience of adoption may be a condition for the capacity for prophecy. Through its readings of Romans 8, Ephesians 1, and Acts 2, it considers two scriptural models of adoption—what I term the absorptive and the dislocative—as possible ways to think about how adoption may enable prophetic gifts. It offers a critique of absorptive models, which track more closely with justifications for extant systems of international and domestic adoption, and argues that the dislocative conception of adoption offers a different sense of prophetic insight, through its openness to the fractured and complex dimensions of adoptees’ experience.