Eichhorn’s prophet-as-artist move silently stripped prophets of divine calling

Evidence

Prophets, Eichhorn proposed disarmingly, were inspired artists. But what appears to have gone largely unnoticed was that while prophets were called, artists were not. Artists might commune with God’s creation—but they could not hear his voice. Not, at any rate, in their capacity as poets. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 205

Categorization

• XREF: This subtle asymmetry — the theologian ‘disarmingly’ equating prophets with artists while silently deleting prophecy’s divine calling — parallels Cooper’s account of how ideological moves smuggle in privileged norms unnoticed.
• DEFINE: Clarifies the rhetorical maneuver behind ‘prophets were inspired artists’: a resolution between skeptics and believers that carried an unnoticed cost to both.