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One more point: “Appeared in a vision” and “visited” meant exactly the same thing back in the day. If Joseph had a vision of the Father and the Son, it would have been perfectly natural for him and anyone else at that time to say they visited him. We distinguish between the two phrasings, so we can end up making someone an offender for a word over something that ought not cause offense – or we can read “visited” and assume a physical, non-visionary event (like Pres. Hinckley obviously did). Neither of those views is consistent with the understanding of the time, but both are understandable in a different time. No dishonesty – just different perspectives and linguistic interpretations.
Look at the example of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the angel Gabriel’s “visit”. The account says an angel “appeared unto her” – and, based on our modern understanding of that phrase, we tend to assume a “visitation”. However, there is nothing in the description that requires any degree of physicality – and, in fact, our own theology says Gabriel was a spirit at the time. Thus, it seems to me that a more “true” reading of that event (meaning one more consistent with the understanding of the time) would be in terms of a vision, not a visitation.
Again, however, that is modern semantics, since the people of Mary’s time would have used the two words interchangeably.
Curtis, how do you know how the people of JS time or Mary’s time would view it differently than how we do now. When Jesus was born the people were looking for physical freedom from the Romans and not a spiritual one. Remember his followers were very few compared to the population as a whole. Many people thought that an angel had given JS real gold plates and they tried to get those gold plates. Those that hired JS to find buried treasure took someone’s word that he could find real treasure and I can only assume that what they were seeking was something that would bring them material wealth and not spiritual wealth. The people who wanted to steal the plates didn’t believe there was an angel involved. They thought Joseph had found gold. The people who hired Joseph didn’t believe in any vision or visitation. They believed in divination as a gift / natural ability.
The ancient Jews’ expectations of their Messiah were independent of the question of this post and the example I used of Mary and Gabriel and the words used to describe whatever happened.
How do I know how people at both times viewed this central question? I am a former History teacher with a degree focused on Comparative Religion and a thesis written about Manifest Destiny and the religious views of 19th Century America. My understanding is based on what they wrote that I have read. Visions often were framed in what we would call visitation terms.
I’m not being an apologist in this thread. It’s an area of relative expertise.
Cadence wrote:The issue for me is that visions are not transferable. When someone has a vision it may have great meaning to them. It may be real or imagined. It may be a grand vision or something simple. But it is their vision not mine. It has value to them not me. The mistake is when others attempt to use their vision to compel someone else to behave in a certain way, or pay them money, or believe without being able to reproduce that vision for others. In this way Joseph’s vision has no more validity to others than a hundred other claims of visions to others that we discount as delusion.
If god were to want you to know or believe something he would need to give you the vision also. Then you would have confirmation. Short of that I think there should be no expectation that one person should chart their course in life based on the supernatural claims of another.
One of the conflicts I have with my wife deals with this. She’s a true believer due to an experience she had as a teenager (I won’t go into details). She believes that it came from God, with all her heart, and it’s the basis of her faith in the church. On the other hand, I’ve never had such a witness and strongly doubt that it’s possible to know much of anything that falls in the spiritual realm. Even if I were to have an experience like that, I’m not sure I would really believe it. Maybe I would, but I can’t know until it happens.My wife and I both value education, and our respect for each other’s intelligence is one of the foundations of our relationship. I do believe that she really had her own experience, that it wasn’t necessarily “made up,” but since I didn’t have the experience myself, it can’t truly be meaningful to me. This really bothers her. She feels like I must think she’s misguided, weak and in need of a crutch, or just downright wrong. I don’t think that, but not having experienced what she did, I just can’t make it meaningful to me. She has a hard time accepting that. I told her that the experience she had was for her, not for me, but that comment didn’t seem to help.
SamBee wrote:If a vision is internal, it is not necessarily imaginary. I think we miss that aspect. The whole point of a vision is that it comes from outside the person.
Thanks for that clarification. The source of the vision matters.Curtis wrote:How do I know how people at both times viewed this central question? I am a former History teacher with a degree focused on Comparative Religion and a thesis written about Manifest Destiny and the religious views of 19th Century America. My understanding is based on what they wrote that I have read. Visions often were framed in what we would call visitation terms.
I appreciate you backing up your statements with this information. I think the original idea for this thread came from something you said elsewhere, and it’s been on my mind. Knowing that you have some expertise in this area helps me put proper context to your comments.Curtis makes a good point… some people DID want the plates, for reasons of greed. They seem to have believed in the gold as a physical reality regardless of Joseph’s spiritual beliefs… strange but true. I must admit, I always used to think of a vision as being close to a movie, or even a hallucination, with the one difference that it came from outside the person. Funnily enough, some people who have taken LSD, have claimed interactions with beings that didn’t come from their imagination but were possibly interdimensional or invisible otherwise.
I have never had a vision in front of my eyes, but once or twice, I have had pictures in my head and actually wondered if they originated there. If they appear to give information I could not have known, I suspect that very much.
Roy wrote:Apologists also have theorized that the story of the trip inside the hill Cumorah (to see the room full of records and the sword of Laban) was either a vision or being transported to a different place as the hill is not hollow and does not contain the things mentioned.
I just ran across the following quote from Heber C. Kimball:
Quote:How does it compare with the
visionthat Joseph and others had, when they went into a cave in the hill Cumorah, and saw more records than ten men could carry? There were books piled up on tables, book upon book. Those records this people will yet have, if they accept of the Book of Mormon and observe its precepts, and keep the commandments. Journal of Discourses Vol.4, Page 105
Every other person that relayed this story about the cave, the records, and the sword described it as though it was a physical event. But if HCK was able to speak to the assembled congregation and call it a vision – there must have been some murkiness or fluidity involved in how the event was perceived. This is yet another point that people in the 1800s were not as dogged in distinguishing physical manifestations from spiritual visions.
Maybe “visions” like this is what caused the WOW to be made into a commandment Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The 1844 account makes it pretty clear Joseph considered it a vision: Quote:I retired to a secret place in a grove, and began to call upon the Lord. While fervently engaged in supplication, my mind was taken away from the objects with which I was surrounded, and I was enrapt in a heavenly vision, and saw two glorious personages, who exactly resembled each other in features and likeness, surrounded with a brilliant light, which eclipsed the sun at noonday.
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