Visions and Appearances of Jesus

June 15, 2014

Wiebe (philosophy, Trinity Western Univ.) uses case studies of reported encounters with or visions of the risen Christ to argue for the existence of a spiritual realm. These studies--found in his 1997 Visions of Jesus from New Testament Times to Today--are accompanied by accounts from the New Testament through the early 20th century and by images such as that on the Shroud of Turin. While the reported visions of Jesus themselves are fascinating, Wiebe's attempted arrangement from ethereal to very nearly concrete seems forced. His handling of biblical material is problematic, too, as it sometimes ignores the scholarly consensus. For instance, he prefers the longer, but less-well-attested ending to Mark, which includes postresurrection scenes, to the shorter conclusion, which does not. His treatment of apocryphal literature and the oldest church traditions regarding appearances is also less than rigorous. Wiebe concludes with a tantalizing call to recover experiential knowledge in an age of experimental knowledge, an idea that should have been further developed. VERDICT Serious readers of religious epistemology would be better served by works from William James, William Alston, or even Wiebe's previous book, God and Other Spirits.--James Wetherbee, Wingate Univ. Libs., NC

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