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Visions and Visualizations in the Here and Hereafter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2005

Bernard McGinn
Bernard McGinn
Affiliation:
Divinity School, University of Chicago
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Abstract

On 10 March 2005, Professor Bernard McGinn delivered the William James Lecture on Religious Experience at the Harvard Divinity School. The founding bequest of this annual lectureship was made for the purpose of having an outstanding scholar or scholars lecture on some aspect of this subject, which received classic treatment in William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience. James's aim was not to defend religion by scientific proof, but to stake out his own position as a “piecemeal supernaturalist, one who admits miracles and providential leadings, and finds no intellectual difficulty in mixing the ideal and real worlds together” to locate where the “ideal region” interacts with “the real world's details” to cause experiences—prayer, epiphany, or visions—that generate faith.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 98 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 227 - 246
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

A more detailed account of the late medieval debate over the beatific vision touched on here will appear in my essay, “Visio Dei: Seeing God in Medieval Theology and Mysticism,” in Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages (ed. Carolyn Muessig and Ad Putter; Abingdon: Routledge, 2006).