Wiebe (Philosophy/Trinity Western Univ., Canada) draws on 30
contemporary visionaries and a wide range of scholarship in an
attempt to produce a philosophically coherent critique of visions
of Jesus. Many people claim to have experienced these visions, so
that dismissing all such reports as hoaxes or hallucinations can
look like prejudice. But the question remains, what sense are we to
make of what the visionaries tell us? Wiebe's answer is that
visions of Jesus do not exactly prove anything about the truth of
Christianity or even the existence of God, but they are symbolic of
a transcendent realm that is as real as that of conventional
Western science. Wiebe's approach involves issues of epistemology
and philosophy of religion; for example, he uses the thought of
Richard Swinburne and Alvin Platinga and looks at various theories
of how mind and body interact. Wiebe is also a disciple of William
James and Alistair Hardy in his attitude to religious experience.
Our author offers as the empirical basis of his study 30
contemporary cases of alleged visions that he has personally
investigated. These include not only dreamlike encounters but also
experiences shared by groups of people and even recorded on film.
Not all of the visionaries were religiously active, but in spite of
Wiebe's protestations of heterogeneity, most of them seem to have
been influenced by an Evangelical or Pentecostalist setting. An
important part of Wiebe's thesis is his controversial belief that
these visions are basically the same as, and thus shed light on,
those recorded in the New Testament. It is a pity that in a
multidisciplinary study of religion Wiebe largely bypasses theology
and the nuanced Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions of
discerning the authenticity of visions and situating them in the
larger context of religious growth and practice. (Kirkus Reviews)
Visions and apparitions of Jesus have been reported since the earliest days of Christianity, and it is widely known that such events are still being experienced. Surprisingly, however, this book is the first recent critical study of this fascinating phenomenon. Wiebe focuses on modern visions of Jesus, as described to him by thirty contemporary visionaries - most of them ordinary people without prior or subsequent experiences of this kind. He recounts each of the visions in vivid detail, reviews recent biblical scholarship on the subject, and examines current literature on the psychology and neurology of visual hallucinations. He ultimately concludes that contemporary visions of Jesus represent genuine religious experiences of a mystical character and he calls for further discussion of their philosophical and theological implications.
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