Concerns About False Apprehensions

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 Avila 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.