Christic Visions and the Resurrection Appearances of Jesus (2025)

Keywords: Christic visions; post-resurrection appearances; Paul; supernaturalism; Wiebe

1 Introduction

In recent times, interest has been shown by some scholars in claims made by various individuals to have experienced visions of Jesus– or Christic visions, as they have been labelled. In his ground-breaking work Visions of Jesus,¹ Phillip Wiebe has surveyed such occurrences through the ages, focusing in particular on twenty-eight twentieth-century case-studies. He has outlined various possible alternative natural explanations for these phenomena, ranging from mentalistic and psychological to neurophysiological, but he has also considered the possibility of “supernaturalistic” explanations, at least as a contributory factor, to which he seems favourable.

In this article, I propose to critically review Wiebe’s approach and consider the extent to which the general nature of Christic visions conforms to the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, as well as Paul’s Damascus road experience. Should it be decided that these contemporary “appearances” are imitative of Jesus’s appearances as recorded in the Gospels, it would be reasonable to suggest that whatever explanation is proposed with regard to the former (which can be examined at first hand), may serve also for the latter as well (which cannot). However, there are clearly circumstantial differences between these cases which may well determine the details of our conclusions. The appearances to the disciples occurred in the wake of the loss of an important attachment figure, raising the strong possibility that they were in a state of bereavement at the time, whereas in the Christic vision cases discussed by Wiebe, the causes, where any can be detected, are of a different order.

According to the Gospels, Acts and St. Paul, the risen Jesus was frequently seen by groups of disciples (Matt 28:8–10, 16–20; Luke 24:13–32, 36–53; John 20:19–23, 24–29; 21:4–14; Acts 1:4–8, 9–11; 1 Cor 15:5–7), whereas most contemporary visions occur to individual witnesses. However, Wiebe does present one interesting case in which a Christic vision was twice witnessed by an entire church congregation. In order to facilitate the best possible comparison with the Gospel accounts, therefore, I shall focus particularly on this case.

I shall conclude by arguing against the supernaturalist position of Wiebe, suggesting instead that the cases they examine can be sufficiently accounted for on a subjective basis. If the post-resurrection appearances are distinctive in any way, it is likely to be in regard to the particular circumstances that gave rise to them, and I would suggest that these are best-explained in terms of a psychological model.

2 Phillip Wiebe and Christic Visions

In one sense, Wiebe’s work is refreshingly original, since no one before him seems to have attempted a systematic classification of visions of Jesus in the years subsequent to the apostolic age, or to have suggested a formal connection between these and the original appearances. The chief asset of Wiebe’s method is its capacity for gathering data about Christic visions first hand in a manner which is impossible for Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances. What can be learned about these contemporary cases may serve to inform the nature of the post-resurrection appearances. Did the disciples really feel that Jesus could be seen in an ocular sense, that he could be touched and was physical enough to eat fish? Or were the appearances merely hallucinatory or delusional? Did the disciples in fact believe that their experiences were visionary, albeit veridical? Perhaps these modern occurrences may help to shed light on some of these questions.

Wiebe develops a classification of Christic visions based on the data gleaned from his case studies. His subjects varied widely in geographical, cultural, religious and academic background. Their ages at the time of their experience ranged from eight to ninety-one years old. Admittedly, these figures are based on a fairly limited sample, but only four individuals (14.28 %)² were aged over fifty, which seems to suggest a distinct correlation between the incidence of visionary experiences and age.

With one exception, Wiebe’s subjects testified to having been fully conscious and open-eyed during the occurrence of their vision. They also stated that their visions happened spontaneously and without any premeditated act of will or induction due to drug intervention, meditation, or ascetic practices. In each case the visionary figure was instantly identified as that of Jesus (even when he appeared in non-traditional forms) who adopted a solid 3D aspect, in most cases of normal human size. In some instances, the vision was auditory as well as visual, but percipients generally observed that the message did not emanate from Jesus’s lips, which remained closed, but seemingly from the percipients themselves. Moreover, whereas most percipients testified that they remained in their natural environment throughout their experience, a minority claimed that their normal surroundings temporarily disappeared, and that they were caught up into a different kind of world.

Wiebe groups his case studies into four categories: a) trance and dreamlike experiences; b) altered environment cases; c) private experiences; d) cases with observable effects (i.e., visions which leave some trace behind them after they have vanished), and discusses a few additional cases which do not fit any of these categories.³ Indeed, the difficulties of strict classification are evident from the table presented in the appendices of his book.⁴ Although the percentage figures presented there may suggest certain general trends, the overall picture is one of individuality, indicating that each case should be studied independently rather than as a member of a specific type or category, and the fact that each one has its own peculiarities further indicates the largely subjective nature of such experiences. Those who argue for the veridical nature of Christic visions are faced with adequately explaining why Jesus should have appeared in so many different guises to different individuals when, according to the Gospels, his appearances to his disciples following his resurrection seem to have taken much the same form on each occasion.

Wiebe acknowledges the difficulty of his having to rely for his data on the statements of witnesses who are emotionally involved with the events they are describing, and whose objectivity may leave something to be desired. Certainly, few, if any, could boast the kind of specialist training in psychology or neurophysiology necessary for a measured, unbiased evaluation of their experiences, and their personal interpretation of events was often embodied in the narrative process. Thus, many witnesses confidently testified to having seen Jesus when, in reality, that was their interpretation of the figure they saw.

In regard to such visions, some scholars, generally of a Christian disposition, argue that, in the absence of objections to the contrary, a witness’s testimony should be accepted as it stands,⁵ but some of Wiebe’s cases are so bizarre that it is surely legitimate to challenge this dictum and place the burden of proof on the witness. One such instance, in which Jesus is supposed to have appeared before an entire congregation, occurred at a Pentecostal church, the Lakeshore Gospel Chapel in Oakland, California, in 1954.⁶ One Sunday evening, during a service, the door of the auditorium opened and Jesus walked in. He made his way up the aisle, wearing traditional garb, but when he reached the pulpit, he walked through rather than around it, and laid his hand on the pastor’s shoulder, speaking to him in a foreign language, while a fifty-strong congregation looked on in amazement. Five years later something similar happened at the same venue. This time a female member of the congregation was sharing her testimony regarding a vision of Jesus she had experienced during a stay in hospital. While she was speaking, she suddenly disappeared to be replaced by Jesus. He wore a “glistening robe” and sandals, his hands were dripping with oil, and the stigmata were clearly visible. After a few minutes Jesus disappeared and was replaced by the woman. On this occasion, an estimated 200 congregational members witnessed the event, which was also (fortuitously) filmed using a cine camera.

Six years later, in 1965, Wiebe was able to speak to the pastor of the church, Kenneth Logie, and also to view the film. He interviewed him once more some thirty-five years later, by which time the film had been stolen from the pastor’s apartment. Others in the congregation supported Logie’s account, but, significantly, some of those who were known to have been present at the screening of the film in 1965 could not recall having viewed it. Still, as Wiebe states, “These allegations put the Christic apparition experience into the spatio-temporal domain and, if authentic, would challenge the reigning hegemony of physicalism within the scientific community.”⁷

Spectacular as all this sounds, several features about this case invite a sceptical approach. The convenient disappearance of the film, thereby preventing scientific analysis, is particularly suggestive. Although Wiebe did view it before it was stolen, he does not suggest that he had a good view of Jesus’s face, which the pastor claims was clearly visible. The fact that some of the witnesses had forgotten having seen the film is also curious: how would it have been possible to forget? And why should this church in particular have been the focus of so many wonders (mysterious images of hands, hearts and crosses also appeared on the walls of the church from time to time), when most churches, often comprising equally faithful Christians, have never witnessed any? Again, a number of intriguing questions that ought to have been addressed, were either overlooked or not furnished with answers by those who were in a position to do so. It would have been of some significance, for example, to discover what became of the woman who vanished to be replaced by Jesus. What was her personal experience of events? Since Wiebe was conducting his initial investigation a mere six years after these events, could she not have been made available to provide her own testimony?⁸ Yet, for whatever reason, there is no reference to one. Finally, it might be questioned what purpose these apparitions had. Even in the Gospels, the post-resurrection appearances always had some underlying motive, usually to provide encouragement for or instructions to the disciples. But here Jesus apparently appeared out of the blue without giving any reason at all as to why he was there.⁹

Wiebe devotes the remainder of his book to a consideration of the possible explanations behind the data in his case-studies, discussing in turn supernaturalist, mentalist/psychological, and neurophysiological approaches. Once all Wiebe’s material is taken into consideration, it is remarkable to find how diverse his cases are, which in itself presents formidable problems for every type of theory discussed. If supernaturalism is accepted as an explanation, and Jesus is truly alive, if only in spirit, there is no reason to exclude the possibility that at least some of these contemporary visions might be veridical. If so, and God is to be introduced into the equation, there are likely to be no limits on what he can effect, and all Wiebe’s case studies can be explained with ease on this basis. But, as he admits, the formulation of supernaturalist explanations may suffer from a “lack of specification of the conditions under which they should be considered refuted,”¹⁰ while Larry Shapiro adds perceptively: “Because miracles are far less probable than routine historical events …, the evidence necessary to justify beliefs about them must be many times better than that which would justify our beliefs in run-of-the-mill historical events.”¹¹

Wiebe’s next category of potential explanations is labelled mentalist/psychological, and takes account of the classic psychoanalytical approaches of Freud and Jung, as well as less celebrated ones such as Jaynes’s Theory of Stress.¹² In one sense, this class of theories, although internally contentious, appears to hold out more hope of a solution than the class of supernaturalist theories, which are not really explanations at all, but merely interpretations of the phenomena. Wiebe acknowledges that although some kind of psychological theory might reasonably explain some cases of Christic visions, it would be more hard-put to account for those collective cases such as the Oakland affair, considered above, in which an entire congregation testified to having witnessed the events described.¹³

The basis of both the aforementioned categories must inevitably be the physical brain, and so Wiebe turns finally to a survey of neurophysiological explanations, which in itself is an enormous undertaking. One common view is that the individual visions described by Wiebe and others are hallucinatory, but the nature of hallucinations alone presents formidable difficulties, even in respect of classification, and it is better to understand hallucinations not in terms of a single phenomenon, but as an entire range of phenomena, some of which may be more conceptually interrelated than others. Fulford devised a ten-point classification, most items of which are irrelevant to our enquiry, the final item, “visions”, being potentially the most useful.¹⁴ Wiebe acknowledges that some form of hallucination hypothesis could reasonably explain many of his Christic vision cases, but not those with observable after-effects or involving multiple percipients. In the final analysis, however, the buck must stop with neuroscience, and the fact that it does not yet have all the answers does not imply that researchers should resort to some dubious metaphysical or supernaturalist explanation. Yet, while accepting that no firm conclusions can be drawn, this is precisely what Wiebe seems to do.¹⁵ Given our present state of understanding, however, the term supernaturalism (or transcendentalism, a term which Wiebe considers interchangeable with it) is a euphemism for ignorance– which is not to imply that everything we can potentially know will turn out to be explicable only in terms of our present scientific categories. The problem for supernaturalism at present is that it is based entirely on speculation, which is well-exemplified by Wiebe himself in considering the question of how so many of the visionaries in his sample instantly identified their vision with Jesus. He opines: “This is quite inexplicable, suggesting a kind of experience that is self-disclosing or revelatory. The existence of God has long been regarded by theorists in the antievidentialist school of theological thought as having that character.”¹⁶ He then cites the philosopher William Alston as suggesting that transcendent experience could be epistemologically similar to ordinary physical perception,¹⁷ adding the following explanatory note: “… [J]ust as I am justified in claiming that my dog is wagging his tail because something is occurring that looks as if my dog is wagging his tail … [In the same way,] I am justified in claiming that I am experiencing God because that is how the experience presents itself.”¹⁸

To be fair to Wiebe, he has more to say about supernaturalism than this,¹⁹ and is not as naively simplistic as might be supposed from the above comments. However, my point is clear, and Wiebe’s passing reference to the “antievidentialist school” only serves to reiterate it. We shall hardly advance our knowledge by clothing our ignorance in esoteric terminology, or cloaking it in “mystery” as if that were some kind of virtue. It is surely wiser to take heed of Wittgenstein’s parting shot in the Tractatus: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”²⁰

At this point it may be worth reiterating two important considerations. First, Wiebe’s survey must inevitably rely on self-reported accounts by subjects who had little expertise in critical thinking in terms of psychology and religion, and who frequently wanted to believe what they claim to have witnessed. These narratives generally are rife with presupposition and interpretation. For instance, the figure seen is always identified by the visionaries as Jesus, even though no formal identification is possible. Anthony Flew long ago recognised this phenomenon to be culturally loaded, declaring: “[T]he expert historian of religious experience would be altogether astounded to hear of the vision of Bernadette Soubirois [sic] occurring not to a Roman Catholic at Lourdes but to an Hindu in Benares, or of Apollo manifest not in classical Delphi but in Kyoto under the Shoguns.”²¹ In addition, there is the observation that those who claim to experience Christic visions are in a relatively small minority of Christians, and an even smaller one of the general population. The most suggestive question psychologically is not why these visions occur to the few, but why they do not occur to the large majority of the believing community.

Secondly, if these visions are veridical, they cannot be explicable solely on psychological and neurophysiological bases, which begs the question as to the nature of the X-factor. Believers naturally assume this to be God; but even if we disregard the more fanciful theories– for example, that God telepathically communicated visions of the post-resurrection Jesus to the disciples, whose minds were somehow attuned to the mind of God,²² and that God could presumably do the same in other cases, including those reported by Wiebe– we are still left in the dark. What is God supposed to contribute that the human psyche and brain cannot? After all, a good deal of progress has been made regarding the neurophysiological basis of hallucinations and related phenomena,²³ and the fact that there is work still to do in order to paint a complete picture does not justify us in resorting to a God-of-the-gaps approach. We need to be patient and see what transpires.

It may be pertinent to add at this point that although Wiebe is widely considered to have initiated the systematic study of Christic visions, he is not the only scholar to have focused attention on the matter. The Swedish psychologist Mikael Lundmark mounted an independent study of a patient undergoing treatment for cancer, during which she claimed to have seen a vision of Jesus, and even subsequently painted a picture of what she saw.²⁴ Although there is no space to elaborate here, Lundmark’s study is well worth comparing with those of Wiebe, not least because of the specific circumstances under which they were undertaken and the differing methodologies used. Wiebe’s method was generally to interview his subjects once only, and in most cases (though not all) about experiences that had occurred long in the past– as much as thirty or even forty years previously. Lundmark, on the other hand, was alerted to his subject’s case (Mrs. B) at the time she was still undergoing her treatment, and very shortly after her Christic experience. He also conducted two interviews one year apart, noticing some minor but interesting discrepancies. For example, she initially claimed to have been praying shortly before her vision, but later contradicted this by affirming that although she was accustomed to praying, she had not been doing so on that day. More intriguing, however, is that in the later interview, she sounded more confident about her experience: what she initially only thought was the image of Jesus later became a certainty.²⁵ Although Mrs. B’s initial testimony was comparatively vague, Lundmark nevertheless thought that it provided the more accurate data. The later account may have been sanitized through reflection, and perhaps by the subject’s recognition that she was a participant in a formal psychological study. Interestingly, Lundmark judged it to be more apologetic in tone, as if Mrs. B was intent on reaffirming the objective reality of the experience. If so, we have to reckon with the creative process, given that memory is considered by many contemporary psychologists to be instrumental in reconstructing the past in and for the present.²⁶

3 Christic Visions and Jesus’s Post-resurrection Appearances

It might be argued that the efforts of Wiebe and others²⁷ to demonstrate a line of continuity between the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples and the Christic visions of the later centuries do not take sufficient account of the obvious differences. Several Christian scholars have urged against drawing such parallels, arguing instead in favour of the post-resurrection appearances as unique events, regardless of the veracity of Christic visions.²⁸ It is certainly the case that significant differences exist. The Gospel narratives, despite their diversity, manifest an internal coherence. Whenever the risen Jesus appears, his physical and personal identity is assumed, even in those cases where some initial doubt is experienced (Matt 28:17; Luke 24:16; John 20:14; 21:4). The disciples are able to draw this conclusion because they had been intimately acquainted with the earthly Jesus. By contrast, the Christic visions studied by Wiebe are extremely diverse in form, as he found when he attempted to classify his cases.

Another interesting divergence concerns the effect of the experience on the percipients. New Testament texts and believers alike are agreed that for the disciples, their meeting of the risen Jesus was a hugely transformative experience, whereas in the case of many of the Christic visions, this seems not to have been the case. In only 34.28 % of Wiebe’s cases does life transformation appear to have been a significant factor. On the contrary, in one case, reported by Maxwell and Tschudin, a couple claim to have encountered Jesus while walking down the road.²⁹ The figure, in traditional garb, was resplendent as he slid by, and then slowly faded from view, beginning “from the bottom of the gown up to the head”, but despite this, one of the percipients concludes: “We still remember every detail, [and] our views on religion have deepened; although, still, we are not too religious.” Similarly, although, after her experience, Lundmark’s Mrs. B does become slightly more willing to share her faith, there is no really profound transformation.

The one common factor with regard to the Christic visions is that all the percipients involved unquestionably identified the apparition as that of Jesus, even though, unlike the disciples, they had never met him in the flesh. Their identification of the figure, therefore, must have been faith- or culture-based. Most of Wiebe’s cases, as well as that of Mrs. B, are founded on traditional expectations which are reinforced by the Christian communities to which most of the visionaries belong. Ironically, it is some of the very people who did know Jesus in the flesh who sometimes had difficulty in identifying him in resurrected form (Luke 24:16; John 20:14; 21:4).

There is no doubt that the later Gospels aim at impressing upon their readers the physicality of Jesus’s resurrection body. He walks with the disciples (Luke 24:13–29), he eats with them (Luke 24:41–43; John 21:12) and converses with them (Luke 24:13–27, 38–41; John 20:15–17, 19–23, 26–29; 21:4–6, 15–23), he can be touched (Matt 28:9), and he invites them to do so (Luke 24:39; John 20:27), and he shows them his wounds (Luke 24:39; John 20:27). In most cases he appears to them collectively (Matt 28:8–10, 16–20; Luke 24:13–32, 36–49). Although Wiebe’s subjects all claim to have seen Jesus, it is clear that they did so in a variety of guises, some of them under trance-like conditions, and of those who testified to hearing him (33.33 %), some of these deposed that his words seemed to be transmitted rather than spoken through his lips, and even to emanate from the percipient. Fewer still (25 %) admitted to any kind of haptic sensation.

As they stand, none of the appearance stories as reported in the Gospels date from earlier than around 75 C.E., although, of course, the underlying traditions must be earlier. What can be said is that the first text to mention appearances to the disciples is 1 Cor 15:5–7, and here we find that Paul’s account, brief as it is, has none of the physicalist implications found in the Gospels. It will be instructive, therefore, to briefly examine this text.

4 Christic Visions and Paul’s Damascus Road Experience

First Corinthians 15:3–8, attests only that certain disciples, whether as individuals or in groups, “saw” the risen Jesus. Paul’s use of the word ōphthē is the passive form of the verb horāo, which in its literal sense means “was seen (by),” although it was frequently accorded an active sense. Paul cannot reveal how the disciples saw Jesus because he was not a witness to these events, but he uses the same verb in the same voice to describe his own conversion/call experience (1 Cor 15:8) which, if the details in the three accounts in Acts (9:1–9; 22:4–16; 26:9–18) are correct, was some sort of vision, since Paul’s companions on that occasion did not see what he saw, nor heard what he heard (Acts 9:7; 22:9; 26:14). There is no direct evidence that Paul understood his experience as any different in kind to those of the disciples.³⁰ Neither is there any indication, despite William Lane Craig’s claims to the contrary,³¹ that he knew of an empty tomb to suggest that the manifestations of Jesus to the disciples were corporeal. Paul says only that Christ died and was buried (etaphē), a term which may or may not mean that he was placed in a tomb, but which is completely non-committal on whether or not he was taken or raised from it.

Like one or two of the subjects of Wiebe’s study, Paul seems to have been vision-prone. His apparent translation to the third heaven, in which he was unable to say whether he was in or out of his body (1 Cor 12:2–4),³² sounds similar in kind to those Christic visions which Wiebe classifies as “altered environment cases,”³³ with perhaps some dream or trance-like element involved, but it does appear to be different from his initial encounter with Christ which might best be understood as a Christophany– an appearance of Christ from heaven, rather than a Christepiphany– an appearance within an earthly environment. In all probability, Paul considered that what he had experienced was an objective vision of some kind; but then we are faced with the problem of determining how we distinguish between objective and subjective visions. We may even need to reckon with the possibility that all visions are ultimately subjective.

The subjective nature of Paul’s Damascus road experience has been suggested, among many others, by the great Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung,³⁴ who opined that Paul was undergoing a psychological crisis at the time of his conversion, caused by a dissonance between his overt fanaticism for the Pharisaic-Jewish faith (Acts 22:3; Gal 1:14) and an unconscious acceptance of the Christian faith which he was intent on stamping out.³⁵ Paul’s blindness on that occasion, it is claimed, was psychogenic, marking his conscious unwillingness to accept what his unconscious had already accepted, and might these days be regarded as a clear case of conversion disorder.³⁶ He recovered his sight once he had consciously embraced the new faith by receiving baptism (Acts 9:18).

Once we take account of the Acts of the Apostles, along with Paul’s letters, we find that he experienced a variety of phenomena, including visions (horama, Acts 16:8–9; 18:9–10; 23:11; optasia, Acts 26:19; 2 Cor 12:1) and trance-states (ekstasis, Acts 22:17) through which, he believed, divine messages pertaining to his own life and mission were transmitted. His Damascus experience, as related by Luke,³⁷ shares features in common with a number of modern Christic visions, including the fact that although it took place on the earthly plane, the actual vision was understood to be a heavenly Christophany,³⁸ occurring in the presence of onlookers who were vaguely aware that Paul was undergoing an anomalous experience.³⁹ Both Luke and Paul himself testify to its being a life-transforming one.

Paul’s apparent translation to the “third heaven” (2 Cor 12:2–4) is also paralleled by some of Wiebe’s cases. In the Kinsey case, for instance, the subject falls into a trance witnessed by her church congregation (which just happens to be that of Kenneth Logie’s Lakeshore Gospel Chapel), and feels herself transported to a heavenly temple where she meets with Jesus, who, however, forbids her to enter the inner sanctum. This is broadly reminiscent of Paul’s vision in 2 Cor 12 in which he is privy to secrets which he may not disclose, but is himself not permitted to venture beyond the third heaven.⁴⁰

Elsewhere in the New Testament, Stephen’s Christophany (Acts 7:55–56) and John’s apotheosis in Revelation both correspond effectively with a number of Wiebe’s cases. Stephen clearly has his feet on terra firma when the heavenly Jesus appears to him, while the revelation to John involves an altered environment element, as well as the use of vivid symbolism. In this latter regard, too, there is some affinity with certain contemporary Christic visions. In the Kinsey case, the heavenly temple has strong hierarchical associations. She is unable to enter the holiest place because, like all humans, she is not spotless. This is reaffirmed in a further part of her vision in which she sees a kite caught in a tree. The owner tugs at the string and manages to free it, but in doing so, part of the tail is left behind– a paradigm, perhaps, of the subject’s own life up to this point. Now Jesus reappears, bidding her to drink the wine of blessing from a golden goblet, the heady aroma of which is supposedly experienced even by those surrounding the prostrate figure in the church. None of this would have been unfamiliar in the world of first-century Jewish apocalypticism.

Although dreams, visions, and even Christepiphanies (Mark 9:2–8) are not completely absent from the Gospels, visions of heavenly beings communing with those on earth (as in the visions of Paul and Stephen), and apotheoses like those of Paul’s “third heaven” experience and John’s revelation, are generally the province of Acts and the Epistles, and their characteristics have much in common with modern Christic visions. The line of formal continuity is a strong one, and, knowingly or otherwise, those experiencing Christic visions in the modern era lie in direct line of descent from the kind of vision tradition with which Paul, John and Stephen were familiar.

By contrast, the post-resurrection narratives in the Gospels seem at odds with the rest of the New Testament, given their insistence on physical appearances of the risen Jesus, and then only from the time of Matthew’s Gospel onwards. Further, it is only Luke and John who consciously stress what seems to be a developing late first-century trend some fifty years after Jesus’s crucifixion.⁴¹ The most common explanation of this physicalist interpretation is that it was intended to counter a perceived threat from fledgling Gnosticism which in some forms sought to challenge the view that Christ had been a physical human being at all, and that he had never died on the cross. The ensuing conflict peaked over the second and third centuries, and what the Church later came to regard as the time-honoured traditional position won out; but had Gnosticism prevailed, it would be hard to believe that Christians today would be aware of any fundamental discrepancy between Gnosticism and the brand of Jewish eschatology embraced by Paul and applied to Jesus. No doubt Paul acknowledged the genuine humanity of Jesus (which Docetism did not) and endorsed the objectivity of the post-resurrection appearances by announcing that Peter and James, along with whole groups of disciples and apostles, had experienced them as well as himself (1 Cor 15:5–8). There is little suggestion, however, that Paul considered these appearances to be corporeal; if they had been, he could easily have taken the course that Luke and John took subsequently.

I had better pause here to address an anticipated objection. It may well be pointed out that Paul was no stranger to bodily resurrection. He tackles the issue in some depth in 1 Corinthians 15, and more briefly in 2 Cor 5:1–10, and in both cases finds in favour of the idea of some form of bodily resurrection. Although he affirms that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50), he may simply mean that it is only the person attuned to God’s spirit (sōma pneumatikon) who is fit for the kingdom, and not the person attuned to the natural world (sōma psychikon). The distinguishing feature, therefore, is not the physical as opposed to the spiritual, but rather a matter of disposition– whether one is attuned to human nature or to the spirit of God. Paul’s statement above does not indicate his adherence to a spiritual resurrection. As a self-respecting Pharisee (Acts 23:6; 26:5; Phil 3:5), his apocalyptic stance would have coincided with his fellow Pharisees who expected a general resurrection of the righteous in some kind of bodily form at the end of the age. However, although for the early Christians Jesus’s resurrection undoubtedly had eschatological implications, it did not herald an immediate end of all things; life went on as normal. Thus, there need be no contradiction between what Paul and his colleagues believed regarding the end-time and their understanding of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. They would probably have regarded his resurrection as a heavenly assumption and his appearances in terms of a visionary Christophany.

In Paul’s view, this vision would no doubt have been regarded as objectively real. But the objectivity of personal visions opens up a whole can of worms which there is no space to tackle here. It is obvious that many visions, including several from Wiebe’s sample, are purely subjective and, lacking further evidence, it is possible that those of Paul and the apostles were likewise subjective.⁴² I have argued for this view elsewhere,⁴³ so I shall not labour the point here. More pertinent to the present discussion is the point that if there is a broad line of continuity linking occurrences of Christic visions with the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus presented in the New Testament, it involves only those instances in which claims are made to have “seen” Jesus in some form (Acts 7:55–56; 9:1–9; 22:4–16; 26:9–18; 1 Cor 9:1; 15:3–8; Gal 1:12, 16; Rev 1:10–20); it does not include those Gospel accounts formed with the express intention of stressing the physicality of this “seeing” (Luke 24:13–35, 36–49; John 20:10–18, 19–23, 24–29; 21:1–14), as well as auditory and even haptic elements.⁴⁴ These were conceived in the late first century with the object of countering the growing gnosticising influence within the Church, and cannot be regarded as authoritative, either in regard to the disciples’ experience as they understood it, or in regard to its true source.

5 Conclusion

Wiebe attempts to show that the occurrence of Christian visions down the centuries lies in direct line of descent from Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances as reported in the New Testament. He argues that the great variety of modern Christian experiences, well-exemplified by his case studies, reflects the variety of experiences found in the Gospels. That such variety exists can hardly be denied, but in stressing the fact, Wiebe overlooks the discernible trends in the biblical material, notably the distinction between the stories about mere sightings of the risen Jesus (Matt 28:1–20; Luke 24:34; 1 Cor 15:3–7) and those stressing his physicality (Luke 24:13–32, 36–49; John 20:10–18, 19–23, 24–29; 21:1–14; Acts 1:3–8). Michael Goulder is right to point this out, and in my view is also correct in his judgement that the more primitive material belongs to the “seeing” tradition. While physicalist interpreters of resurrection were not unknown in first century Judaism, they were invariably related to the expectation of a general resurrection at the eschaton rather than to individuals living in the natural world. Heavenly visions of the patriarchs and saints, by contrast, were generally thought possible, so visions of Jesus to his disciples might not have been regarded as out of the question.

Wiebe concludes as follows: “Contemporary Christic visions and apparitions suggest that the appearance phenomena in first century Christian experience were probably quite varied and provide modest evidence for the claim that there was an objective source for them.”⁴⁵ But surely it is this very variety which is best explained on the basis of subjective experience. Further, it is doubtful that modern Christic experiences can truly inform our understanding of the first disciples’ post-resurrection experiences unless we can apply to them historical-anthropological and other social science methodologies in an attempt to understand something of the polyphasic world-view of the first-century agrarian Mediterranean society with which they were familiar⁴⁶– which is what Wiebe seems not to do.

Despite his foray into the possible psychological and neurophysiological basis for Christic visions, Wiebe ultimately opts for a supernaturalist solution, at least as a contributory factor; but while the former categories are evidence-based, the latter is strictly anti-evidentialist. The question facing Wiebe and those sharing his view is a formidable one: What is it that a supernatural explanation can contribute independently of the scientific ones? Until that question can be addressed convincingly, it may be wiser to rely on what can be gleaned from the natural and social sciences– a judgement which applies both to contemporary Christic visions and Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances.