It is also interesting to see how hardened positions like this were, even through to 1980 or so and how common it is now to read, hear and see people who feel inspiration and revelation in the individual life is important.

From twelve step programs to television evangelists, there is a constant stream of expressed, public belief in personal revelation of the sort that major Churches would have rejected in the 1950s.

Thanks for the post, Steve. It seems to me that cessationism is the big counterpoint to early Mormonism. More so than just about anything.

Heyd also notes that sola scriptura was used to argue for cessation of revelation: if the scriptures were perfect and complete then no more revelation was needed.

That’s interesting about Luther publishing those works. Hildegard did have some prophecies that sounded like foretelling the Reformation: that the church was corrupt and the lay leaders would take it over to reform it (or something).

Pres. Woodruff, I know your being facetious, but that is a good point. Not everyone has to be a good proto-Mormon in order to have made important contributions.

An interesting wrinkle is that even for Luther and his colleagues, revelation and vision had their polemical uses (but as something you printed, not as something you received). Luther wrote prefaces for new editions of Lichtenberger and Bruder Claus, and Andreas Osiander did the same for a tract attributed to Hildegard of Bingen and the Vaticinia de summis Pontificibus.