Abstract
A primary issue that pertains to all epiphanic experiences, and scriptural and other reports of epiphanic experience, is the issue of veridicality, or genuineness. This chapter deals with that issue whether epiphanic apprehensions are veridical or false, whether they are genuinely of or from the divine or not. This relates to visions but also to other religious apprehensions, including locutions (or auditory apprehensions) and prophetic revelations. We observe how a concern with false prophets is expressed in the Torah and the prophetic books of the Tanakh, and present the concerns of St. Teresa of Ávila and others in the modern period about the veridicality of received visions, locutions, and raptures, noting the form of those concerns. Furthermore, we consider the traditional criteria for genuine epiphanic apprehensions, accepted by more than one religious tradition, and attend to the underlying concern of St. Teresa, and others sharing her religious sensibility, with the motives of those seeking visions and other apprehensions.
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Notes
- 1.
In Ezek. 13.1 in the RSV translation false prophets prophesy “out of their own minds.” In Ezek. 13.1 in the Tanakh translation false prophets prophesy “out of their own imagination.”
- 2.
St. Teresa refers to “locutions which are of many kinds” in Interior Castle, Sixth Mansions, Chap. 3, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers (London: Sheed and Ward, 1972), vol. 2, p. 279. The typology of locutions and visions followed by Teresa is outlined p. 279, n. 1. Evelyn Underhill acknowledges these three types of visions and discusses intellectual and imaginary visions in Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness (New York: Meridian Books, 1995), pp. 281–290.
- 3.
St. Teresa, Interior Castle, Third Mansions, Chap. 3, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 2, pp. 281–282, and Life, Chap. 28, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 1, pp. 179 and 184. In the first, Teresa’s concern is with locutions; in the second, she makes it plain that her concern relates also to visions.
- 4.
St. Teresa, Life, Chap. 31, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 1, pp. 204–205 and 208.
- 5.
St. Teresa, Life, Chap. 29, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 1, p. 187.
- 6.
St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, in Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, trans. Suzanne Noffke, O.P. (New York, Ramsey, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1980), pp. 132–133.
- 7.
St. Teresa, Life, Chap. 20, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 1, p. 121.
- 8.
St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, in Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, pp. 133–134.
- 9.
St. Teresa, Life, Chap. 20, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 1, pp. 125–126.
- 10.
St. Teresa, Life, Chap. 20, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 1, p. 128.
- 11.
St. Teresa, Interior Castle, Sixth Mansions, Chap. 3, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 2, pp. 280–281.
- 12.
St. Teresa, Interior Castle, Sixth Mansions, Chap. 3, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 2, pp. 283–284.
- 13.
St. Teresa, Interior Castle, Sixth Mansions, Chap. 3, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 2, p. 284.
- 14.
St. Teresa, Life, Chap. 25, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 1, pp. 157–158.
- 15.
St. Teresa, Life, Chap. 28, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 1, pp. 183–185.
- 16.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: The Modern Library, 1902), p. 66.
- 17.
William R. Miller and Janet C’de Baca, Quantum Change: When Epiphanies and Sudden Insights Transform Ordinary Lives (New York and London: The Guilford Press, 2001), pp. 104–108, 112–113, 115, 117, and 125.
- 18.
Miller and C’de Baca, Quantum Change, p. 127.
- 19.
Miller and C’de Baca, Quantum Change, pp. 128, 129, 133, 136, and 145. In making these summary observations, Miller and C’de Baca are referring to quantum changes of both the “insightful” and the “mystical,” or epiphanic, type.
- 20.
John Hick, The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Religious Experience, Neuroscience and the Transcendent (New York and Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 42. William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience also recognized the importance of a “fruits” criterion (p. 21).
- 21.
St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, bk. 2, Chap. 23, in John of the Cross: Selected Writings, ed. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 136–137.
- 22.
St. Teresa, Interior Castle, Sixth Mansions, Chap. 3, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 2, p. 279.
- 23.
St. Teresa, Life, Chap. 12, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 1, p. 73.
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Kellenberger, J. (2017). Concerns About False Apprehensions. In: Religious Epiphanies Across Traditions and Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53264-6_18
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