How the Visions Genre Correlates in the Protestant and Orthodox Christian Culture of the Nineteenth Century: a Theological and Philosophical Analysis

Abstract

The increasing interest of the mass audience to various types of fantasy art triggered an interest for the genre of religious vision, a phenomenon of the theological literature of the XIX century. The present research featured a philosophical and theological analysis of the genre of vision in the Western European and Russian religious culture of the XIX century. The research objective was to identify the origins of the genre of vision that arose in the religious culture of the XIX century and to give it a general description. The author compared the visionary experiences of the Protestant author Ellen G. White and an anonymous Orthodox author. The study helped to reveal that people's idea of the existence of the other world is an integral component of the imaginary world that underlies any religion and can be a subject of comprehensive analysis in modern theology and cultural studies. The author used the following research methods to comprehend the spiritual experiences embodied in the genre of visions and recorded in the doctrinal literature of Protestantism and Orthodoxy: the comparative historical method and the textual analysis of visionary texts, theological literature, and ontopsychological studies. The theoretical basis included various works by Russian philosophers, cultural scholars, and theologists, who elevated the visionary literature to the level of meta-scientific synthesis. The scientific novelty of the research is that it compares the spiritual experiences of Protestantism and Orthodoxy. The paper introduces a method that can be used to study other religious confessions in philosophical and religious discourse.