This volume presents a scholarly but accessible study of the doctrine of the beatific vision. The author, Samuel G. Parkison, writes with a clear aim in view: he is seeking to retrieve – specifically for the Reformed-Evangelical tradition – what he argues is a biblical, catholic and ecumenical doctrine of first importance, namely, the vision of God as the final goal and realisation of our human telos.
Parkison recognises that as a ‘classical realist’ (p. 12) who operates within a participatory metaphysics, he needs to confront and respond to both a biblicist-fundamentalist scriptural hermeneutic and a self-expressive individualism that are the fruits of the Enlightenment. To accomplish this, he offers a summary description of what the beatific vision is (chapter 1), making use of Thomas Aquinas’ account of the basic ‘causes’ to present God as the formal, efficient and final cause for human beings.
As a Reformed Evangelical, Parkison then turns in chapter 2 to the Scripture – Old and New Testaments – to present ‘the biblical warrant for the beatific vision’ (p. 23), but he maintains that the traditional Protestant approach of sola scriptura – which he upholds – does not exclude other authorities from the Christian tradition. The scriptural presentation of the beatific vision is representative rather than thorough but offers persuasive testimony that ‘seeing God’ in a transformative vision marks the biblical witness from first to last.
In the longest section of the book (chapters 3–4), Parkison presents a ‘cloud of witnesses’ to the beatific vision, first from the pre-Reformation period (Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas and Dante), and then from the Reformation and post-Reformation era (John Calvin, Johann Gerhard, Francis Turretin, John Owen and Jonathan Edwards). The final figure treated in the first section is Gregory Palamas, who offers a distinctively Eastern Orthodox version of the beatific vision. Parkison explains Palamas’ version of the beatific vision but then makes a critical decision to ‘stay within the Western tradition’ (p. 99) because of what Parkison considers to be the inherent strengths of the Western account and the corresponding weaknesses of the Eastern, Palamite account. Among these, weaknesses in Parkison’s view are an unwarranted expectation of the vision of divine glory in this life and the inadequacy of the distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies.
Parkison next offers a narrative of how the doctrine of the beatific vision fell into disfavour and was effectively abandoned in the Reformed Evangelical tradition (chapter 5). Through this narrative, Parkison not only seeks to retrieve this doctrine but also to show how a distinctively Reformed theological approach can enrich this doctrine for all Christians. Placing himself among other contemporary authors who are calling for retrieval of this doctrine (Suzanne McDonald, Kyle C. Strobel, Simon Francis Gaine and Hans Boersma), Parkison engages in a lively ‘in-house debate’ (p. 145) over how the beatific vision should be conceived. In the end, Parkison refuses to grant a dichotomy between an intellectualist, so-called christologically deficient account found in Aquinas and an enhanced christological and pneumatological description found in Owen and Edwards. While favouring the latter, Parkison believes that both accounts can be synthesised: ‘I propose instead a dogmatic synthesis that is big enough for both to live in’ (p. 154).
Parkison, however, also wants to display the positive soteriological distinctive that he believes a Protestant-Reformed account of the beatific vision has to offer. Defending traditional Protestant conceptions of original sin, justification and sanctification, Parkison argues that this soteriological context provides a better understanding of the beatific vision than, for example, a traditional Catholic approach because it is grounded not in human merit, but in the merit of Christ.
Parkison next identifies questions that perennially beset the doctrine of the beatific vision. One question is whether this beatific vision is ocular (received through physical eyes) or intellectual. Parkison rejects a strict dichotomy, suggesting that God could transform our ‘eyes’ to be able to see ‘spirit’ (p. 165). But if so, then it would seem that this vision is no longer ‘ocular’ but is a new kind of spiritual vision – and the two categories become confused. Further, God is not a limited ‘spirit’ (like an angel) that could potentially be seen. Holding to both ocular and intellectual aspects of the beatific vision, as Parkison does, seems warranted and beneficial, but proposing an ocular vision that sees ‘spirit’ is probably not the most promising way to bridge the two kinds of vision.
Second, Parkison raises the chicken-and-egg question of whether the beatific vision causes human deification or whether deification is the cause of the beatific vision. He rightly identifies the spiral relationship between the two – that beholding God even in this life increases deification, while growing in deification increases our ability to see God. Perhaps it is best to see ‘beholding God’ in this life as part of the process of deification, and beholding God in glory as part of what final deification entails.
Parkison concludes his theological investigation of the beatific vision with a helpful synthetic definition, weaving together the threads he has found in the Scripture and in the Christian tradition: ‘The beatific vision is the telos of humanity: the vision of God the saints will enjoy in the eschaton. The beatific vision is a vision of love, a participatory vision of God’s essence, in resurrected bodies, wherewith we will see this vision immediately and everywhere, particularly in the person of Christ, on account of our union with him’ (p. 176).
In a closing chapter, Parkison insightfully applies the doctrine of the beatific vision to daily Christian life and practice (prayer, common worship, mission, suffering and friendship). In all this, Parkison offers the reader a robust, ecumenically minded but Reformed-Evangelical account of the beatific vision that will be of significant benefit to all.
