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This chapter explores the Protestant reaction against the Marian tradition of Catholicism, which was addressed by the reform of the Council of Trent. Topics discussed include the Catholic Reformation and two conspicuous events which characterized the Marian character of Catholicism in the 19th century: the definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and the rise of Marian apparitions and subsequent pilgrimage locations, most conspicuously at Lourdes in France.

Christian prophecy can only be judged on the backdrop of the theology of revelation. It is possible to consider revelation as a concept of experience with different modes of divine communication: visions, apparitions, locutions, etc., and where we must compare inspiration and experience. It is also possible to see revelation as a concept of reflection, identifying different models of revelation that lead to different models of prophecy: dogmatic, epiphanic, historical, dialectic, ontological, and personalistic models. From a rather dogmatic model with little room for prophecy, revelation has emerged into a more personalistic concept, where revelation is seen as God's gift of self, calling his people to respond to his truth, often through prophecy.

This chapter scrutinizes various explanatory proposals, either specifically for Christic apparitions or for apparition phenomena in general. It considers explanations suggesting transcendent causes, or what is more commonly called “supernaturalism.” It shows how recent developments in understanding the structure of scientific theories are relevant to understanding explanations offered by religious belief systems.

This chapter discusses the cult of the Virgin Mary in Herzegovina as it developed from the vision of a Croatian‐speaking Madonna at Medjugorje, western Herzegovina (an overwhelmingly Catholic Croat area), in 1981. Attitudes to this Marian apparition and later ones at the same place are discussed, and the politics of the visions analyzed. The last part of the chapter discusses the Marian apparitions at Medjugorje and other places in relation to the Yugoslav crisis of the 1980s, when Catholic–Orthodox tensions were reignited. They are viewed as a prelude not to a peace and prayer movement but as a prelude to partition, war, and genocide in Bosnia‐Herzegovina.

This chapter opens part II by introducing Emilie de Vialar, a noblewoman who founded her own active religious order, the Soeurs de St‐Joseph de l'Apparition (SSJA) in 1830. Within two years, she had not only attracted followers but was also invited to Algeria, immediately after the French conquest, to provide educational, charity, and health care services to European settlers and the indigenous population. After the appointment of a French bishop in 1839, however, Vialar found her scope of action reduced as Bishop Dupuch sought to limit Vialar's authority as a mother superior. The conflict was adjudicated by ecclesiastics in Rome, who supported the bishop, and the French government reluctantly expelled Vialar from Algeria. At issue were not only the lines of authority between a nun and a bishop but also the conversion activity of Catholics in a Muslim land.

Since the other resists conceptualization or thematization, it would never be a matter, this book suggests, of providing an exhaustive account of the descriptions of the other in Jacques Derrida's work but rather of how the other is written, each time singularly. The other, whose appearance appears without appearing, effaces itself in its coming. A thinking of the other—as that which never fully comes to presence, as that which does not present itself as such, and as that to which no direct access is possible—necessitates a new approach to appearing, visibility, and phenomenality in general. The other, then, never appears as such, yet one could say it appears as an apparition. An apparition, as Derrida uses this term in his writings, names the appearance, the coming to appear, of something and a phantomatic or ghostly form. Apparition thus names the structural instability between appearing and (“mere”) appearance.

This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to describe and critically reflect on the phenomenon of Christic visions and apparitions, particularly the experiences reported to the author by living visionaries. It then outlines the reasons for studying Christic visions and apparitions. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

The fact that Christic visions and apparitions have been experienced since the earliest days of Christianity is so well accepted that documentation is hardly needed. As in other experiences that are a part of common knowledge, visionary experiences exhibit a variety and complexity that is little understood. This chapter introduces the study of Christic visions and apparitions by describing some representative reports offered during the long history of the Christian church. The New Testament literature and apocryphal literature that circulated in the early churches also report encounters with the risen Jesus.

This chapter presents descriptions of the apparitions people have experienced as narrated to the author. The experiences are divided into five groups. The first group consists of experiences in which people appear to have fallen into trances, or where the experience began in what seemed to be the “normal” world but did not continue there, or where the experience had a dreamlike character. The second group of experiences consists of those in which percipients were aware of a significant change in the physical environment they knew themselves to be in. The third group of experiences consists of those in which the physical environment appeared to percipients as they knew it to be, apart from the visionary figure that appeared in it. The fourth group of experiences applies to those in which several percipients were simultaneously affected. The fifth group involves visions in which some event in the life of Jesus is apparently re-enacted, for example, an event of his childhood or his crucifixion.

The most obvious questions evoked by contemporary reports of Christic apparitions are whether the reports are credible, how the experiences that have occurred are to be explained, and whether contemporary experiences bear any similarity to those that seem to lie behind New Testament (NT) accounts of post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus. The first question has a direct bearing on the other two questions. If, for instance, all of the reports of Group IV apparition experiences are judged as having inadequate epistemic foundations, because so few plausible reports can be found, explanations that have been developed for such experiences can be ignored. Such a negative evaluation on reports about a unique class of experiences might warrant rejection of similar NT accounts as well. If such reports are deemed credible, however, this will have implications for explanations that are proposed, and for various critical views of the NT accounts. This chapter looks at the reports presented in Chapter 2, particularly in the light of various epistemic principles that have been thought of value in evaluating religious experience.

This chapter focuses on the nature of the New Testament (NT) post-Resurrection appearance accounts. It surveys critical positions advanced by selected authors that fall into three broad interpretive groups: traditional, reductionist, and fideist interpretations. It shows that contemporary visionary phenomena add an important perspective for reading the NT documents and assessing interpretative traditions. NT criticism that confines its attention to the documentary evidence of the 1st century alone (biblical and extra-biblical), as though ongoing phenomena could have no relevance to understanding and testing claims coming to us from antiquity, deprives itself of a vital tool. Claims about what happened in antiquity cannot be divorced from research that outlines the apparent range of empirical possibilities.

This chapter considers explanations coming from neurophysiology. These are among the most important, culturally speaking, given the widespread suspicion among philosophers and neural scientists about the value of the conceptual resources of mentalism. Topics covered include hallucination, the perceptual release theory, the information processing theory, and the overactive reticular system theory. It is argued that neurophysiology holds out some promise for explaining a number of apparition experiences. It appears to be a strong contender for experiences falling into the first three groups identified in Chapter 2, apart from those cases in which percipients could look away from and back to the apparition figure. It also appears to be capable of handling cases falling into Group V.

Christic visions are evidently more common than is ordinarily believed, although a lack of documentation currently makes this conclusion improvable. Christic visions seem to occur to people who are unlikely to be classified as “saints,” and who would resist being described in that way. The visions often occur quite spontaneously, rather than being generated by deliberate efforts to produce them through fasting, oxygen deprivation, focused meditation, or other similar techniques. The relationship between contemporary Christic visions and the phenomena that appear to lie behind the New Testament (NT) writings is unclear. However, the sharp distinction between NT appearances and visions commonly made by Christian theologians is questionable. This chapter outlines the conditions under which a theory of transcendence might be considered a tentative explanation for the Christic visionary experience and offers suggestions for further research.

This chapter summarizes the first twenty-five years of Spiritualism on a national level. The Banner of Light continues to be the premier Spiritualist newspaper, and Fanny Conant’s column, “The Messenger,” is profiled. The column was composed of responses to the families and friends of fallen soldiers, both Confederate and Union, who were denied the “good death.” This chapter also discusses the Anglo séance circles in New Orleans and their nocturnal paranormal events, such as rappings, apparitions, tipping tables and slate writing. The tradition of Spiritualist lectures continued at new venues such as Minerva Hall. James Peebles, the Spiritual Pilgrim, spent two winters in New Orleans lecturing and invoking his favorite spiritual guide, Black Hawk. The chief later become the favorite guide of the eclectic twentieth-century Spiritual churches. By the mid-1870s, the fabric of Spiritualism became frayed, faded, and torn apart by relentless truth seekers and their convicted multitudes.