Beginning today, I’m starting a weekly series on visions. My immediate interest in the question stems from my recent foray into the history of Mormonism, a movement that now traces itself to Joseph Smith’s theophany of God the Father and Jesus Christ. (See this recent statement on the subject published last year by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).
Visions, theophanies and others, have a very long history in human religious experience, predating both Judaism and Christianity. In terms of Christianity, visions of Paul, Peter, John of Patmos, and others play key roles in the New Testament. From the Roman Emperor Constantine to Hildegard of Bingen, visions have played critical roles in Christian piety, missionary expansion, and developments both theological and political. Joseph Smith famously reported that a Methodist preacher rebuked him with the contention that “there was no such thing as visions or revelations in these days, that all such things had ceased with the apostles.” Of course, there were a goodly number of Methodists in the early 1800s who also saw and heard Jesus Christ and his Father. Today, many believers around the world live Christianity as a visionary faith. Most American Protestants, I reckon, do not.
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