St. Patrick's Dreams

Introduction

            Stories of the accolades of great men and woman of faith are inspiring. One such story is that of Saint Patrick. Patrick persevered through great suffering and hardship. He willingly chose this suffering and hardship to evangelize the people of Ireland. A common theme throughout Patrick’s journey is the presence of dreams at major turning points in his story, which directed him along his way.[1] In his Confession, Patrick almost controversially describes his dreams as though they rival Scripture in authority. However, these dreams undoubtedly cultivate faith within Patrick to persevere through/choose suffering. While there are more than likely other extraneous variables that would have added to his faithful perseverance, the prominence of dreams within his story cannot be overlooked. Through a biblical lens, dreams can be observed within the Old Testament on numerous occasions (i.e., Gen. 28:10-22; 37:1-11; Dan. 2) and the prophet Joel spoke of dreams occurring as an effect of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.[2] What is the purpose of God giving dreams to His people? The journey of St. Patrick reveals an answer to this question, which is described in the thesis of this paper. Dreams from God can imbue faithful perseverance within its recipient to choose and/or endure through suffering.

            To support this thesis, this paper will include two main sections. The first will be devoted to an overview of the life of Patrick and the ways in which three of his most prominent dreams helped him to choose/persevere through suffering. The final section will provide a short analysis of whether Patrick viewed dreams as possessing the same authority as Scripture.

A Brief Overview of Patrick’s Life and Three Most Prominent Dreams

With entire books having been written on the events of Patrick’s life, this overview, in alignment with the thesis of this paper, will only highlight the three most prominent dreams/visions that influenced Patrick on his journey.

While Patrick is renowned for his work in Ireland, it is undebated that he was British, born in Britain of British parents.[3] It is assumed that Patrick would have fulfilled his career in the first half of the fifth century.[4]At the age of sixteen, Patrick was captured by Irish raiders and brought to Ireland where he was enslaved.[5] It was in Ireland that Patrick had his first vision, which resulted in him making a daring escape to the coastline where he was taken aboard a ship that eventually brought him back home to Britain. The first vision is as follows:

And it was there that one night I heard a voice saying to me in a dream, “You have been right to fast because you will soon return to your country,” and next after a little time I heard a Message saying to me, “Look, your ship is ready” – and it was nowhere near but lay perhaps two hundred miles away and I had never been there before nor did I have any acquaintance among the people there – and at last after a while I took to flight and deserted the man with whom I had been for six years and I came in the power of God who was guiding my way for a good purpose and I had no fear all the time until I reached the ship.[6]

After having returned home, Patrick then had a dream within which he is called back to Ireland. Patrick does not indicate whether he had this dream immediately after having returned home from slavery or after a longer period being home.[7] Either way, it is estimated that Patrick would have spent about twenty years back home before returning to Ireland.[8] The vision that urged Patrick to return to Ireland is as follows:

I saw in a vision of the night a man coming apparently from Ireland whose name was Victoriocus, with an uncountable number of letters, and he gave me one of them and I read the heading of the letter which ran, “The Cry of the Irish,” and while I was reading aloud the heading of the letter I was imagining that at that very moment I heard the voice of those who were by the Wood of Voculut which is near the Western Sea, and this is what they cried, as with one voice, “Holy boy, we are asking you to come and walk among us again,” and I was struck deeply to the heart and I was not able to read any further and at that I woke up.[9]

After having this vision, Patrick would eventually become bishop before journeying to Ireland, but not before suffering a seemingly major defeat. In Patrick’s confession, he makes mention of a sin which he committed in his boyhood years, which worried him up until he wrote his Confession, possibly fifty years after he committed the sin. Patrick made known this sin to a close friend of his after he had been appointed deacon.[10] When Patrick was about to interview to be bishop, it appears that this close friend told his interviewers about his boyhood sin which led those interviewing him, as one scholar suggests, to “lead against him a campaign of extreme bitterness, secret intrigue, and even treachery.”[11] It was in the midst of this tumultuous time that Patrick had another dream:

On that day in which I was rejected by the people already mentioned above, that night I saw in a vision of the night a dishonouring inscription placed against my face, and at the same time I heard the divine Message saying to me, “We have seen with displeasure the face of the man denounced here,” revealing the name. And he did not declare, like this, “You have seen”,” but “We have seen,” as if he would have taken his side, just like the text, “who touches you touches as it were the apple of my eye.”[12]

For Patrick, these three visions were instrumental in in his decisions to flee from slavery, his choice to return to Ireland, and his willingness to persevere in becoming bishop despite harsh accusations. Patrick would eventually go on to baptize “so many thousands of persons”[13] and have monasteries established to allow for Ireland to becoming a place of learning of antiquity.[14]

            The following section will investigate all three of the dreams mentioned above, and how they influenced Patrick in his decision to choose a path of difficulty and suffering while concomitantly encouraging him to persevere through those sufferings.

Dream One

            For Patrick to act upon his first dream was no small thing. A two-hundred-mile trek, as a slave, with no known friends or places of lodging along the way was almost a death sentence. Patrick would have likely been running from his owner while negotiating forest, bog, mountains, and unavoidable detours while exercising the caution of a fugitive.[15]This journey would have been dangerous, uncomfortable, and required incredible perseverance to make it two-hundred-miles to the coast. For Patrick to undertake this venture, he must have had great faith that his dream was from God and that it was leading him through this immense suffering towards a result that would be positive. The dream provided this positive result in the form of a ship that was waiting for Patrick. The Scriptures describe how Jesus was able to endure the cross because of the “joy set before him.”[16] Even for Jesus, suffering was bearable because there was a positive result to look towards. Perhaps in the the same way, Patrick’s dream, received by faith as from God, allowed him to endure the sufferings of his two-hundred-mile journey as he looked forward to his “joy set before him”, which in his case was the ship described in his dream.

Dream Two

            Patrick’s decision to return to Ireland seems absurd. Why would he go back to the place from where he escaped? It has been presumed that Patrick’s reasoning for including his dreams within his Confession was to show that he had no personal motives for returning to Ireland, as some may have speculated, but he was truly summoned by God to go back.[17] This is significant because it shows how Patrick’s dreams were the primary reason why he chose to return to Ireland. A decision which would take him away from his homeland, friends, and family into so much uncertainty. This dream provided Patrick with a “joy set before him” with the prospect of being “victorious” and evangelizing to many people. However, when Patrick fled from slavery, he was running from a situation that was already very uncomfortable. To choose to leave the comfort of home to enter back into a place of discomfort was a momentous choice. Why did Patrick choose to obey this dream?

            A possible answer to this question may be found in the theory of self-efficacy, which can be defined as “the belief in one’s ability to perform some action or to control one’s behaviour or environment, to reach some goal or to make something happen.”[18] In the development of self-efficacy, there are four primary modalities through which self-efficacy is improved with the most powerful modality being “past performance experiences.”[19] Within this modality, a successful past performance in overcoming a difficult challenge improves self-efficacy to engage in another difficult challenge, with enhanced belief in attaining a positive result. Following this vein, the “past performance experience” that Patrick had with his previous vision, which enabled him to successfully escape from slavery, would have likely increased his “self-efficacy” to believe that if he were to follow another vision from God, he would have another successful result. In this way the first vision may have cultivated deeper faith within Patrick to believe that God would be faithful if he were to choose a path of potential suffering in choosing to return to Ireland as a missionary.

Dream 3

The third dream is an obscure one, but it is significant for the purpose of this paper, specifically in how it encouraged Patrick to continue persevering through difficulty to reach his goal, which was Ireland. This dream is somewhat difficult to interpret, and so it is beneficial to glean from a commentator’s conclusion on the meaning of it.

The best explanation is that Patrick saw in his dream his own face as if on a coin with an inscription round it and the inscription, instead of being a eulogistic one (as in the coins of Roman Emperors) was derogatory of Patrick. This divine Message then expressed displeasure that these derogatory words should have been pronounced against Patrick, and declared that God, the author of the Message, was on Patrick’s side.[20]

It is important to read this explanation of the dream within the context of Patrick’s life at this time. Patrick received this dream when he was interviewing to be Bishop, and Patrick’s friend had just revealed his boyhood sin to his interviewers. He was being vehemently accused by these interviewers. During this difficulty, to receive a vision from God affirming that the accusations against Patrick were wrong, and that God was on Patrick’s side would have been remarkably comforting for Patrick. This assurance from God would have likely fueled Patrick to continue persevering in his pursuit of becoming a Bishop, which he would eventually achieve before setting sail for Ireland. It is important to note that it is not so much the dream, as the message the dream communicates that would have equipped Patrick to persevere through this time of suffering at the hands of his interviewers.

The revelation that God was on Patrick’s side, and that God was not accusing Patrick would have been very encouraging. What is interesting about this message, however, is that this truth can be found noticeably in Scripture (i.e.., Romans 8:1; John 8:11). Why did Patrick’s revelation of this truth not come through Scripture?

Do Dreams Rival Scripture for Patrick?

            Scholars assume that Patrick was writing his Confession to his critics as a way of proving that it was God who had directed him to go back to Ireland.[21] At one point in his writing, Patrick cites several Scriptures which would support his decision to go to Ireland. However, Patrick also includes a nearly identical number of dreams to support this decision and one of the Scriptures he cites is Joel 2:28 which would add authority to his dreams. For Patrick, his dreams seemed to be almost on par with Scripture. He also appears to take no account of the opinion held by many Christians that some dreams might be sent by demons or evil spirits, to mislead the dreamer.[22] Patrick’s confession of the Trinity at the beginning of his writing reveals his understanding of theology.[23] He evidently had a good understanding of the Scriptures. However, when it came to making decisions at major junctions in his life, he seems to lean more heavily on what God spoke to him through dreams, rather than what was written in Scripture. In the case of his first vision, this is not surprising as Patrick was confessedly not following God before captivity, and he would have likely not had a Bible available to him in captivity. However, it is surprising that Scripture did not play as prominent a role as dreams in his decision to return to Ireland because at home and would have had ample access to a Bible.

While it is difficult, based off the primary source documents available to find a clear answer to this question, it is evident that for Patrick, dreams possessed more authority in his life than they did for the average Christian.

Conclusion

The life of Saint Patrick is inspiring. His journey took him into slavery in Ireland, and then out of slavery back to Britain where he rose to the status of Bishop before returning to Ireland to evangelize to thousands. Along Patrick’s journey, his key junctures were determined by dreams that he received from God. These dreams cultivated faith in Patrick to persevere through sufferings in pursuit of a “joy set before him” which was provided in two of his most prominent dreams. Patrick’s first dream, which initiated his escape from slavery can be viewed as a “past performance experience” which cultivated “self-efficacy” in Patrick to have the faith to follow his second dream which called him to return to Ireland. Patrick’s third dream provided encouragement that God was with him and for him to help him persevere through a difficult trial in his pursuit of becoming a Bishop. This third dream communicated truths that are prominent within Scripture, which raised the question of whether Scripture or dreams held greater authority in the mind of Patrick. Whether or not this is true, it is hard to deny that Patrick’s dreams were from God. They directed Patrick’s course in such a way that thousands of Irish came to salvation in Christ. The testimony of Patrick reveals that dreams from God, when believed with faith, have the power to produce perseverance through suffering, to attain the joy of completing God’s “good works” that “he has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”[24]

 Notes

[1]           Thompson, E.A. Who Was Saint Patrick. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1985), 44-45.

[2]           Joel 2:28, ESV.

[3]           Hanson, R.P.C. The Life and Writings of Saint Patrick. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1983), 2.

[4]           Ibid., 25.

[5]           González, Justo L. The Story of Christianity: Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (HarperCollins, Kindle Edition), 257.

[6]           Hanson, Life and Writings of Saint Patrick, 86.

[7]           Thompson, Who Was Saint Patrick, 49.

[8]           Hanson, Life and Writings of Saint Patrick, 25.

[9]           Ibid., 92.

[10]          Thompson, Who Was Saint Patrick, 13.

[11]         Ibid., 74.

[12]         Hanson, Life and Writings of Saint Patrick, 100.

[13]         Thompson, Who Was Saint Patrick, 84.

[14]         Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, 257.

[15]         Thompson, Who Was Saint Patrick, 20.

[16]         Hebrews 12:2 ESV.

[17]         Thompson, Who Was Saint Patrick, 50.

[18]         Boyd, D. Lifespan Development (Canada: Pearson Education, 2020), 376.

[19]         Bandura, A. “Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change.” (Psychological Review, 1977), 91.

[20]         Hanson, Life and Writings of Saint Patrick, 101.

[21]         Thompson, Who Was Saint Patrick, 45.

[22]         Ibid.

[23]         Hanson, Life and Writings of Saint Patrick, 78-80.

[24] Ephesians 2:10 ESV.

References

Bandura, A. “Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change.” Psychological Review, 1977.

Boyd, D. Lifespan Development Canada: Pearson Education.

González, Justo L. The Story of Christianity: Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation. HarperCollins, Kindle Edition.

Hanson, R.P.C. The Life and Writings of Saint Patrick. New York: The Seabury Press, 1983.

Thompson, E.A. Who Was Saint Patrick. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1985.