I was aware of Finney’s account (Finney was the one who, quite literally, wrote the book on revivalism). But I don’t think it changes the story a whole lot. That is, it fits into the generally recognized interpretation of the First Vision in Mormon academia: Joseph had an experience in 1820 that he originally interpreted as a very personal experience of forgiveness; eventually, he began to see it in a different light, as revealed in the 1838/9 account. In other words, Joseph originally thought that his experience was not too out of the ordinary: it was the kind of thing that lots of a folks were going through.

I have been reading The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet. On page 74 forward he gives the conversion story of Charles Finney. His conversion is VERY SIMILAR in many ways to Joseph Smith’s. You can read Sharlet’s version of Finney’s conversion by going to Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Family-Secret-Fundamentalism-Heart-American/dp/0060559799 and typing in the key words in the Search INside this Book: October 7, 1821. When you read as far as Amazon will let you, type in new keywords: mind realized nothing tool — and you will be able to read the rest of this section.

Doesn’t this sound like a similar experience to Joseph Smith’s?

And didn’t we all study the wrong subjects at university? I certainly did as an undergraduate, and I’m convinced most of the time now that I’m working on a master’s degree that I’m still studying the wrong subjects! Luckily, I’ve read, studied, listened, discussed, written, and taught a great deal more outside of the university than I ever did while I was there!

Thanks. Keep it coming.

Kim: Always glad to make you smile. I doubt I’ll ever see you smile without hearing you say: “Joe! I’m not going to hell!” :)

That made me smile! Oh, Joe…

Matt W.: Robert is right, I’m drawing on Lacanian thought here. I’m not sure yet exactly how I understand Lacan’s conception of the imaginary (I’m presently working through his Ecrits, which has only been published in English in full quite recently). In this post, I’m taking the imaginary as roughly parallel to the political: it is imaginary in that it is something we have imagined up, something that is given to images rather than to symbolism or to the real, something we neurotically dream and daydream about but which never satisfies us. The imaginary is the world of supposedly concrete “objects,” the realm in which we are structured through and through by desire—the fallen world (carnal, sensual, and devilish). The imaginary is the world we now live in, the world where we are convinced that labor is what defines us, where living is just the process of dying, where money secures the supremacy of the “natural” world. The imaginary is, in a world, the Shadowlands.

I would then situate that in relation to the real and the symbolic, but I think it would be more helpful to re-read the post with the above paragraph in mind.

(Robert: as always, thanks for your helpful explanations of my writing!)

This exactly what I’ve been looking for. I’ll be a regular reader.

I’m adding a link on my blog to yours.

http://dayofpraise.blogspot.com/

Matt W., I’m anxious to hear Joe’s response to your question, but in an effort to think through this better myself, I think Joe means “imaginary” in a rather Lacanian sense. Lacan talks about three orders: the Real, which is completely unarticulable; the Imaginary, which is articulable in principle, at least in part, but not yet articulated; and the Symbolic, which is articulated. (See here for a longer-but-still-very-brief intro to Lacan.)

So, I take Joe as trying to loosen up what is probably a more typical “materialist reading” of Joseph Smith’s vision, esp. the phrase, “not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world” (here is a link to the lesson): instead of “imaginary” referring (merely) to something that is not physical, “imaginary” might be referring to something that is possible to imagine. So, rather than thinking about the First Vision simply in materialist/physical terms, it seems to me that Joe is calling for a more . . . well, structural . . . understanding of the First Vision. What happened to Joseph Smith was something that was completely out of the blue and unexpected, so much so that we might think of him as being thrown outside of all possibilities of articulation.

I have typically, like most members I think, thought about this darkness that Joseph experienced before seeing the pillar of light simply in terms of an example of the principle that there is a trial of faith before there is a miracle. Joe’s post, however, forces me to rethink this “simple principle” on a much deeper level than I have before. Why is there a period of darkness before the light shines forth for Joseph Smith, and how might this be related to others’ experiences (like Isaiah and Zecharias)? It is in answer to these questions that I think the Lacanian connection is very interesting.

(Joe also seems to be using a lot of terms here that allude to the philosophy of Alain Badiou who has done a lot of thinking about the structure of an event, allusions that suggest rich ways in which we might think more carefully about what it means to read scripture, receive revelation, undergo conversion, etc.)