What is the definition of a vision?
- A religious vision occurs when an individual believes that they have seen or heard something super natural or a supernatural being.
What are the 5 main types of visions?
- Corporeal- the object is eternal but only visible to one person.
- Imaginative- no external existence the vision is produced by the person’s mind.
- Intellectual- brings knowledge and understanding such as revelation from God.
- Private/Individual- seen by only 1 person.
- Public/Corporate- seen by more than 1 person.
Assess how reliable Corporeal visions are.
That are experienced through the senses this gives the person physical evidence. They are also not ineffable and the physical, external objects make it way more reliable.
However they are only visible to one certain people, could be lying for attention, all interpreted differently and could be put down to medical materialism.
Assess the validity of Imaginative visions.
The effects of such visions have strengthened faith or caused changes in behaviour, e.g. in Josephs vision he trusted in it so much he did exactly what he was warned to do in the vision. However imaginative visions, hence the name can be put down as unreliable due to their nature, they could be drug induced, dreamt up or simply a figment of the imagination.
Assess how trustworthy intellectual visions are.
We can see positive changes in behaviour and what they do with the knowledge they gain from the experience.
However such visions may be biased and just used as a social construct. They may also be interpreted as being different by different people e.g. Peter’s vision had 2 main interpretations.
What are the 5 different contents of visions?
- An image or an event which there is a message, e.g. Peter’s vision “Do not call anything empire that God has made clean”.
- Places : Heaven/Hell e.g. Lucia in Fatima “demons promised to take us to heaven”.
- Fantastic Creatures: e.g. Ezekiel “four faces and four wings”.
- Religious figures: e.g. St Teresa “I saw a divine face”.
- Future (end of the world/final judgement) e.g. Revelation 20 “the dead will be judged”.
Give examples of Corporeal, Imaginative, Intellectual, Private and Public visions.
Corporeal/Individual- St Bernadette of Lourdes vision of Mary.
Imaginative- Joseph, Angel Gabriel dream.
Intellectual- Julian of Norwich “it is all that it made”.
Public- Battle of Mons.
Give religious interpretations of visions.
St Teresa of Avila: “they fabricate what they fancy”- wishful thinking could lead someone to believe they have had a genuine vision. Such visions don’t produce any effect on the persons mentality, are unhelpful and fake.
St John of Cross: they may be conjured up by the devil and these visions go against God’s will and should be ignored if they do- cause people to lose their holy fear which means they can never go back onto the virtuous path.
