Shouldn’t the “First Vision” be changed to the “First Visitation?”
Question
Dear Gramps,
The thought came to me when I was reading about The First Vision. My question is:- If God and Jesus were resurrected beings with flesh and bone bodies and were not spirits. When they visited Joseph would they not have come with their bodies of flesh and bone and not as spirits? If this be the case should not “The First Vision” be changed to read “The First Visitation”?
Robert
Answer
Robert,
In our scriptures, we are informed that Jesus and Heavenly Father appeared, in person, to Joseph Smith as he declared, “I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description standing above me in the air.”
The idea of changing “The First Vision” to “The First Visitation” is a matter of semantics, and both are equally true depending on the connotation used for “vision.” A vision offers more than one definition. In this case, your question entertains the definition of a vision as a dream, or a trance, a supernatural appearance through our cognitive senses.
The Church’s description entertains the definition being our “special sense by which the qualities of an object (as color, luminosity, shape, and size) constituting its appearance are perceived through a process in which light rays entering the eye are transformed by the retina into electrical signals that are transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve.”
The Church referring to Joseph Smith’s experience as “The First Vision” appears to be an appropriate reference for this visitation of the Father and Son.
Gramps
Maybe God the Father and Jesus Christ weren’t literally present. Consider the vision of Saul on the road to Damascus. Those who were with him saw a light, but heard no voice, like Saul heard. We can infer that Jesus wasn’t literally present in that vision. Does that diminish the value of the Vision? No. Ezekiel saw God in a dream, but that doesn’t mean the vision was less valuable than if God had come to him in person. Lehi’s dream was a dream, but that doesn’t mean it was a spiritually inferior experience than when Nephi has a vision and is shown the dream and its interpretation.
Is there a citation by Joseph Smith that he gave 100% certainty that the First Vision was a literal experience? It doesn’t really challenge our doctrine or our faith if Jesus and the Father were actually there, or if it were just a Vision, as it is called.
If this were really a Vision instead of a Visitation, it would explain why Joseph tells some slightly different accounts of the First Vision, because the meaning and nature of the Vision would become more clear to him as he spiritually matured.
Horace,
Thank you for your explanation to my original question. On thinking about it somewhat, I believe that you are right in stating that it is immaterial as to whether it was a vision or an (As I asked) an actual physical visitation. The fact is if we believe in what Joseph claimed to have seen was true.
How many of us have come up with different versions of some event in our lives, yet all meaning the same thing.
Respectfully
Robert