One of the points of dispute in historical reflection on the nature of the beatific vision has concerned its object: will the saints and angels in heaven see the divine essence, or will the object of the vision be christologically mediated in some way? Recently it has been argued that Protestant theologians, with some exceptions, have tended toward a more christologically oriented view of the beatific vision, reforming the doctrine as it had developed in the earlier Catholic tradition. For instance, Suzanne McDonald has described John Owen's view as maintaining that both the means and the object of the vision are rooted in Christ in his ascended humanity.Footnote 1 Kyle Strobel has drawn attention to similar themes in Jonathan Edwards’ account of the beatific vision;Footnote 2 and Hans Boersma has argued that Protestant accounts of the beatific vision correct a christological deficiency in the view of Thomas Aquinas.Footnote 3 Various reasons are introduced for the superiority of a christological construal of the beatific vision: it is said to be more biblical and less speculative; to be more trinitarian in explicitly tying the object of vision to the divine persons; and to avoid imperilling divine transcendence and incomprehensibility.Footnote 4
This article addresses whether the content of the beatific vision concerns God's essence or the glorified, ascended flesh of Christ.Footnote 5 On McDonald's account of Owen's thought, the glory of God in heaven will be beheld in the person of Christ, both human and divine, such that the deity is hidden in the humanity. As McDonald acknowledges, there are passages in Owen's writings that present a more complicated picture, but here we leave aside questions of how to categorise Owen.Footnote 6 There are also a number of other questions raised by this view that we will not explore – for instance, if the object of the beatific vision is Christ in his glorified flesh, upon what (if anything) did the angels, Enoch and Elijah gaze prior to Christ's ascension? Were they deprived of the beatific vision? In this article we have a more basic concern: that while it is right to insist upon the importance of the continued mediatorial role of Christ in heaven, and his continued status as both human and divine into eternity, it goes too far to suggest that the object of the beatific vision is located specifically in the glorified, ascended humanity of Christ.
Instead, we argue that we will indeed see God's essence in heaven. First, we ward off some of the common concerns expressed against this view by recounting six distinctions in Thomas Aquinas’ account of the beatific vision in the Summa Theologiae. Second, we explore areas of continuity between Thomas’ account of the beatific vision and that of other Protestant theologians (particularly John Calvin and Francis Turretin). Third, following Simon Gaine, we propose that the account of the beatific vision taught by Thomas and these others is not necessarily christologically deficient. Finally, we conclude by briefly registering one particular strength of the claim that we will see God's essence in heaven: namely, that it is biblical.Footnote 7
Distinctions in Thomas on the beatific vision
In Summa Theologiae 3.92.1, Thomas Aquinas lists no less than sixteen objections to the claim that the human intellect can attain to the vision of God in his essence. Thomas’ various replies to these objections are more fulsome than his treatment of the same question in Summa Theologiae 1.12.1. Both of these sections develop a series of nuanced distinctions concerning the sense in which Thomas thinks the divine essence will be seen.
First, Thomas distinguishes between seeing God's essence and comprehending God's essence. Responding to the objection that John 1:18 (‘No one has ever seen God’) excludes the possibility of seeing God's essence, Thomas draws from Augustine and John Chrysostom's treatment of this passage to argue that it excludes three kinds of vision with respect to God: first, a corporeal vision; second, an intellectual vision in this mortal life; and third, what he calls ‘the vision of comprehension’.Footnote 8 All three stand in contrast to the intellectual vision of heaven. A bit later he argues that our intellect, though finite, may be described as ‘proportionate to the vision of the Divine essence; but not to comprehension thereof, on account of its immensity’.Footnote 9 This distinction is given a more systematic development in Summa Theologiae 1.12.7, where Thomas responds to three arguments that seeing must include comprehending by distinguishing various ways that something can be comprehended. Here he indicates that the divine essence cannot be comprehended by any created intellect, but will rather be known more or less perfectly in proportion to greater and lesser lights of glory given to the saints and angels.Footnote 10
Several further distinctions follow from this first one, all concerned with the imperfection of our beatific sight of God. Thomas’ second distinction is between our vision of God's essence and God's vision of his own essence. Thomas insists that we will not see God as He sees Himself because, although the object of our vision is the same, the effectiveness of our vision is different. As he puts it, ‘in that vision we shall see the same thing that God sees, namely His essence, but not so effectively’.Footnote 11 Thirdly, very much related to this, Thomas distinguishes between seeing God's essence and seeing all that God sees. Thomas argues that effects are seen more or less clearly based on how clearly the cause is seen, and thus we will see what God sees (e.g., future contingent things) only to the degree that we see God clearly.Footnote 12 For Thomas, some will see God's essence more clearly than others, and thus can teach those who see less concerning the divine essence.Footnote 13
The net result of these first three distinctions is that, for Thomas, the beatific vision does not obliterate the distinction between creaturely knowledge of God and divine self-knowledge. Instead, Thomas understands the beatific vision to result from a kind of sharing or participation in God. As Joseph Wawrykow explains:
While the vision provides a knowledge of God in God's essence, Aquinas is insistent that the knowledge granted the human is not total, in the sense of utterly comprehensive. The light of glory is a created light, and the human remains human even in this rising to God; the finite is unable to totally grasp God as God is. Such total knowing of the divine essence remains the preserve of God; beatific vision is but a sharing, a participation in the manner set by God for the creature in God's own life.Footnote 14
This notion of participation with God is crucial to Thomas’ view of the beatific vision. Thomas understands the beatific vision to consist in a kind of union between a created intellect and the divine essence. As he puts it, ‘God is able to be united to the intellect by His essence.’Footnote 15 But here Thomas introduces another distinction (the fourth distinction we note here) between a union of understanding and a union of being.Footnote 16 Thus, it does not follow from our union with God that our intellect becomes a part of God in some way; rather, Thomas speaks of this union as a kind of intuitive, immediate act in the understanding (hence the metaphor of vision). As an ‘illustration’ of this blissful union with God in heaven, Thomas suggests the union between body and soul.Footnote 17
In explicating the nature of this union with God in heaven in which the beatific vision consists, Thomas introduces a fifth distinction: God will be seen according to his own mode of being seen, not according to the saints’ and angels’ mode of seeing. Thus, God will not be seen through any external medium; rather, God himself will be the form of the intellect by which he is seen. As Thomas puts it, ‘the essence itself of God will be that whereby our intellect will see God’.Footnote 18 This draws from his earlier response to the objection that God is infinite, and that which is infinite cannot be known – against which Thomas argues that God is not an infinity of matter made perfect by form, but rather the infinity of form not limited by matter.Footnote 19 Thus, the ability to see God's essence is not made possible by any power inherent in the creature doing the seeing.Footnote 20 Rather, it is made possible by an act of grace in which God communicates himself to the creature in a manner made possible only by his own condescension. As Thomas writes earlier, ‘the created intellect cannot see the essence of God unless God by his grace unites Himself to the created intellect, as an object made intelligible to it’.Footnote 21 Thus, for Thomas, God will not be seen according to any inherent creaturely capacity that could function apart from God's own gracious act of uniting himself to the creature. The beatific vision is entirely sustained on the divine side: ‘the created intellect will not have so great an efficacy in seeing, as the Divine essence has to the effect of being seen’.Footnote 22
Sixth, Thomas distinguishes between bodily and spiritual vision. Thomas insists that the beatific vision is intellectual and spiritual vision, rather than a vision of the resurrected eyeballs: ‘God can nowise be seen with the eyes of the body, or perceived by any of the senses, as that which is seen directly, neither here, nor in heaven.’Footnote 23 The language of vision and sight with respect to this heavenly perception of God is metaphorical, deriving from the language of scripture (Pss 11:7, 17:15, 27:4, Rev 22:4, etc.), and from the fact that, of all creaturely senses, vision indicates the most immediate, direct kind of perception. As Edward Pace put it, ‘it is called “vision” to distinguish it from the mediate knowledge of God which the human mind may attain in the present life’.Footnote 24 At times Thomas will speak of the beatific vision as a kind of ‘indirect vision’ to distinguish it from bodily (direct) vision.Footnote 25
Thomas does affirm, of course, that our bodily vision in heaven will include the glorified flesh of Christ. In responding to the objection that, since we will be beatified in both body and soul, we must see God in both body and soul, Thomas emphasises the priority of the soul but further stipulates that our beatitude ‘passes from the soul on to the body by a kind of overflow’.Footnote 26 Thus, Thomas maintains that in heaven the glory of God will in some respects be discernible in corporeal bodies, through bodily vision: ‘our body will have a certain beatitude from seeing God in sensible creatures: and especially in Christ's body’.Footnote 27 This bodily vision is distinguished from the beatific vision proper; but that does not mean Thomas denies its importance. That Thomas affirms both bodily and intellectual vision of God in the heavenly life undermines two common criticisms against him: 1) that his view of the afterlife is too Platonic, and 2) that it has too little account for bodily resurrection (more on this in a moment). In reality, Thomas’ emphasis on spiritual vision is not at odds with bodily vision; in fact, he insists that both kinds of vision are a necessary part of glorification.Footnote 28
Continuity between Thomas and later Protestants on the beatific vision
Thomas’ view that we shall see the divine essence is sometimes regarded as a more Catholic view, in distinction from more christologically oriented Protestant views, such as McDonald's portrayal of John Owen. However, it is important to highlight several points of continuity between Thomas’ view and the approach of later Protestants. Francis Turretin, for example, broaches the beatific vision in the context of asking whether the happiness of heaven consists of vision (the view he associates with Thomas) or love (the view he associates with Scotus). Turretin argues that these are two complementary aspects of the eternal enjoyment of God, not to be set at odds with one another.Footnote 29 In explicating his understanding of the beatific vision, Turretin agrees with Thomas that the beatific vision is not achieved with bodily vision; he speaks of it as a ‘mental vision’, an ‘intuitive vision’ and a ‘spiritual and internal vision’.Footnote 30 Like Thomas, Turretin introduces various distinctions to protect the infinity and transcendence of God in the context of the beatific vision, and to preserve the distinction between Creator and creature. He insists, for example, that the heavenly vision of God is not ‘adequate and comprehensive’, but rather ‘inadequate and apprehensive’.Footnote 31 His stated reason for this is that ‘the finite is not capacious of the infinite’; in support of this, he cites John of Damascus’ assertion that ‘the deity is incomprehensible’.Footnote 32
Turretin also appears to share Thomas’ view that the object of the vision is God's essence, though he is more cautious on this point. Thus, he speaks of the beatific vision as ‘beholding God face to face’;Footnote 33 and he describes this kind of vision as one which ‘apprehends the thing itself, every veil being removed’.Footnote 34 At the same time, he qualifies this language by suggesting, ‘whether the soul will immediately see the very essence of God or only some reflection of it, rather the brightness and glory suitable to the other life, because the Scripture does not disclose it to us, so neither should we rashly define anything concerning it’.Footnote 35 Turretin ultimately leaves open which of these possibilities is correct, though favouring the latter.Footnote 36 Nonetheless, in either case Turretin clearly imagines our seeing the divine essence in some sense. At no point does he envision Christ as the object of the vision; rather, he is considering whether 1) we will ‘immediately’ perceive the divine essence, or 2) we will see some reflection (apaugasma) of the divine essence. Just after this he further qualifies option 1) by speaking of it as seeing the divine essence ‘just as it is’.Footnote 37 These qualifications reflect similar concerns to those involved in the first five distinctions we noted in Thomas above.
John Calvin perhaps went even further than Thomas regarding the object of the divine vision, asserting that in the eschaton Christ will abdicate his mediatorial role and we shall behold the glory of God directly: ‘the veil being then removed, we shall openly behold God reigning in his majesty and Christ's humanity will then no longer be interposed to keep us back from a closer view of God’.Footnote 38 In the Institutes, Calvin speaks of the beatific vision as a ‘direct vision of the Godhead’, in which we ‘see God as he is’ and ‘see his divine majesty face to face’.Footnote 39 Such language suggests that Calvin has no anxiety about denying Christ as both the object of the vision as well as its means. Indeed, Simon Gaine has suggested that Thomas represents a sort of via media between Calvin's view and that of Owen and Jonathan Edwards with respect to Christ's role in the beatific vision.Footnote 40 This would make it difficult to charge Thomas with a christological deficiency in his account of the beatific vision without charging Calvin of the same, or worse.
Is Thomas’ account of the beatific vision christologically deficient?
Calvin's openness to the cessation of Christ's mediatorial office in heaven draws attention to an underlying concern in Protestant criticism of Thomas: the role of the glorified human nature of Christ in the heavenly experience of the saints. McDonald, for example, suggests that John Owen's christologically oriented view of the beatific vision ‘is in profound contrast to the Thomist tradition which struggles to accommodate Christ's glorified humanity within an account of the beatific vision’.Footnote 41 McDonald acknowledges that Thomas has an understanding of the glorified humanity of the ascended Christ, but argues that, for Thomas, ‘there still seems to be no explicit place for the humanity of Christ in the actual reality of the beatific vision. Christ seems to fade from view when Aquinas speaks of the beatific vision itself.’Footnote 42 Hans Boersma likewise objects that the particular role Christ's humanity plays in Thomas’ account of the beatific vision has a christological deficit.Footnote 43 McDonald faults Francis Turretin along these lines as well, suggesting that his view of the beatific vision ‘is barely Trinitarian at all. On the whole, it seems as though the God whom we are being invited to behold in glory could equally be the Neo-Platonic One.’Footnote 44
But perhaps the contrast between Thomas and Owen (or between Owen and other Protestants like Turretin) need not be so stark here. In the first place, as we have noted, it is not clear that Owen understands the object of the beatific vision as exclusively focused upon Christ. More basically, Thomas’ account of the beatific vision has an important role for the glorified flesh of Christ, more so than is often realised. For starters, as Simon Gaine has noted, in his Compendium Theologiae Aquinas included the glorified humanity of Christ with the divine essence as the object of the beatific vision. We must remember, as we have previously noted, Thomas does not regard the beholding of the divine essence as excluding the knowledge of other things – on the contrary, he maintains that, in seeing God's essence, the saints and angels, to greater or lesser proportion, see something of what God sees. Hence, for Thomas, the importance of the incarnation entails that the humanity of Christ will be included within the knowledge yielded by the beatific vision. As Gaine summarises:
Where Owen does differ from Aquinas in terms of the content of vision is in its order: for Aquinas, divinity is thus the primary object and Christ's humanity secondary, such that the humanity is seen in the divinity, while for Owen the humanity is first in order, such that the divinity is seen in the humanity.Footnote 45
Furthermore, Thomas believes that the vision of God in heaven is christologically mediated in the sense that it is the result of the light of glory imparted to the saints, which is imparted to the saints through Christ – indeed, it is received by an act of participation in Christ as their head.Footnote 46 For Thomas, the ascended Christ possesses the beatific vision par excellence, and our beholding of it is a participation in his. Thus, Thomas writes, ‘men are brought to this end of beatitude by the humanity of Christ. … Hence it was necessary that the beatific knowledge, which consists in the vision of God, should belong to Christ pre-eminently, since the cause ought always to be more efficacious than the effect.’Footnote 47 Thus, for Thomas not only is the ascended flesh of Christ included within the object of the beatific vision, but it is also the causal means by which we can see God. We see God only because Christ sees God, and our vision is in constant and direct dependence upon his.Footnote 48
Thomas’ view thus appears to afford Christ a more important role in the beatific vision than Calvin's does. Later, for example, Thomas argues that, while the saints in heaven will no longer need to receive expiation of their sins through Christ's priesthood, nonetheless, their sins having been expiated, ‘they will need consummation through Christ himself, on Whom their glory depends’.Footnote 49 Simon Gaine argues that the ‘glory’ Thomas speaks of here refers to the beatific vision, and thus the saints’ heavenly beholding of God is casually dependent on Christ's own humanity being glorified, which consummates the saints’ glorification.Footnote 50
The beatific vision in the Bible
What reasons might we have for upholding this more robust, Thomistic account of the beatific vision, according to which we will behold God's very essence in heaven? We might give various answers to this, but in conclusion we will briefly note just one: such a view is a plausible synthesis of the relevant biblical material.
In the Psalms, for instance, we read:
• ‘For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face’ (Ps 11:7).
• ‘As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness’ (Ps 17:15).
• ‘One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple’ (Ps 27:4).
In none of these Psalms, all attributed to David, is it natural to conceptualise David's hope as realised in Christ specifically; the object of beholding is the Lord (YHWH), and reference is made to his face, and his temple. Moreover, in at least one of them (Ps 17:15), David appears to be conceptualising his experience of God after this life is over, for the phrase ‘when I awake’ is best taken as an indication of the hope of resurrection. This interpretation best accounts for related language of ‘waking’ in the Old Testament (cf. Isa 26:19, Dan 12:2), as well as the climactic position of this phrase at the end of Psalm.Footnote 51
Similarly, in the New Testament, there are various references to seeing God that are not easy to read christologically. Gaines focuses on 1 John 3:2, but there are other relevant texts that do not appear to be focusing on Christ specifically (e.g. 1 Cor 13:12). Perhaps most emphatically, in Revelation 22:3–4 we read, ‘no longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.’ The object of vision in verse 4 appears to be God the Father, who has just been distinguished from ‘the Lamb’ in the immediately preceding verse, since the Father is the natural recipient of worship in the immediately preceding clause, as well as the natural referent for the one whose name is put on their foreheads (as is often pointed out, the High Priest would wear the divine name on his head once a year upon entering the Holy of Holies). As Richard Bauckham puts it:
‘They shall see his face’ (22:4). This is the face of God that no one in mortal life could see and survive (Exod. 33:20–3; Judg. 6:22–3), but to see which is the deepest human religious aspiration, to be realized only beyond this mortal life (Ps. 17:15; I Cor. 13:12; cf. 4 Ezra 7:98). … This will be the heart of humanity's eternal joy in their eternal worship of God.Footnote 52
Another relevant strand of biblical material concerns theophanies. For instance, Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai in Exodus 34:5–7 has generally been correlated with the beatific vision all the saints will enjoy in the next life, and though some have read this passage christologically, it is not clear that this is the meaning of the distinction between God's ‘face’ and God's ‘back’ (cf. Exod 33:23). In his epistle On Seeing God (De Vivendo Deo), Augustine insisted that the sight of God's essence awaits heaven and is not attainable in this life, following 1 John 3:2; yet Augustine understood Paul's experience of heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4 and Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus 34 to be exceptions to this.Footnote 53 Thus, Augustine understood Numbers 12:8 (‘he beholds the form of the Lord’) to make it clear that Moses actually saw the divine substance in this life: ‘he saw God as he is (sicuti est), which is the same contemplation that is promised to all his children in the end’.Footnote 54 For Augustine, what Moses saw in this life awaits all the saints in heaven.
To sum up, we have drawn attention to some of the nuances in Thomas’ account of the beatific vision, and points of continuity it has with later Protestant thought. Such an account – in which we will see the very essence of God in heaven – is not necessarily christologically deficient, and has deep roots in biblical language and hope. The upshot is that we should conceptualise our heavenly beholding of God as involving more than the ascended flesh of Christ. To put it another way, the beatific vision is not simply the heavenly analogue to Paul's experience on the Damascus road; it encapsulates Moses’ experience on Mount Sinai as well, as Augustine understood it. In some ineffable way, we will see very God himself.
