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Will we see God's essence? A defence of a Thomistic account of the beatific vision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2022

Gavin Ortlund
Gavin Ortlund*
Affiliation:
First Baptist Church of Ojai, Ojai, CA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Recent discussion regarding the beatific vision has concerned the object of the vision. Thomas Aquinas represents a robust account of the beatific vision according to which God will be seen in his essence by saints and angels in heaven. Others, however, have worried that such a view risks imperilling divine transcendence and incomprehensibility and favour instead an understanding of the beatific vision that is christologically oriented. This article offers a defence of the claim that we will see God's essence in heaven. First, it draws attention to various distinctions in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae concerning how we see the divine essence in heaven. Then, it demonstrates points of continuity between Thomas’ account and that of later Protestants, particularly Calvin and Turretin. Third, following Simon Gaine, it argues that Thomas’ account of the beatific vision is not christologically deficient. Finally, it argues that Thomas’ account has biblical support.

Keywords

Thomas Aquinasbeatific visiondivine essence
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 74 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 323 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 McDonald, Suzanne, ‘Beholding the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ: John Owen and the “Reforming” of the Beatific Vision’, in Kapic, Kelly and Jones, Mark (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen (New York: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar.

2 For a helpful overview of Edwards’ thought on this topic, see Strobel, Kyle, ‘Jonathan Edwards's Reformed Doctrine of the Beatific Vision’, in Minkema, Ken, Neale, Adrian and van Andel, Kelly (eds), Jonathan Edwards and Scotland (Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2011), pp. 171–88Google Scholar.

3 Boersma, Hans, ‘Thomas Aquinas on the Beatific Vision: A Christological Deficit’, TheoLogica 2/2 (2018), p. 137CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Boersma, Hans, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2018)Google Scholar.

4 These concerns are not limited to academic contexts. In his devotional book on prayer, Keller, Timothy, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York: Penguin, 2014), pp. 313–14, n. 291Google Scholar, extends some of the concerns of McDonald's article, particularly the claim that Owen's account of the beatific vision is more biblical and less speculative; Boersma, Seeing God, also reflects these concerns at various points (e.g. pp. 13, 32, 159–61). For a defence of Thomas’ account of the beatific vision against the concern that it deals with an abstraction rather the triune persons, see Smith, Timothy L., Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian Theology: A Study in Theological Method (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), p. 24Google Scholar, who references Carl Sträter's definition of ‘the divine essence’ in Thomas as referring to both to ‘the divine totality in qq. 2–26 and to the common essence in qq. 27–43’.

5 It should be noted that the divine essence and the ascended flesh of Christ are not the only two options with respect to the saints’ heavenly vision of God. Some, for example, have thought of the vision as concerning God (i.e. not God in Christ exclusively) but have nonetheless not spoken of the divine essence. For instance, some argue that we see God personally rather than essentially, or that we see God pro nobis (for us) rather in se (in himself). Thomas’ claim that in the beatific vision we will behold God's essence amounts to something like a consensus among medieval theologians, has strong precedent among the church fathers and is well represented among various modern theologians. On the other hand, there is a tradition of dissent from this view in the East. As Hans Boersma, ‘Thomas Aquinas on the Beatific Vision’, p. 137, argues, ‘Thomas Aquinas's viewpoint – that one day we will see the divine essence – is out of sync with much of the earlier, especially Eastern tradition and continues to be a point of controversy between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.’

6 McDonald quotes Owen as saying: ‘beholding of the glory of Christ given by the Father is indeed subordinate unto the ultimate vision of the essence of God’. Boersma, ‘Thomas Aquinas on the Beatific Vision’, p. 140, recognises two passages in which Owen states that we will see the divine essence, though he appears to downplay their importance. For a response to Boersma on this point, see Gaine, Simon, ‘Thomas Aquinas, the Beatific Vision and the Role of Christ: A Reply to Hans Boersma’, TheoLogica 2/2 (2018), pp. 148–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Gaine, Simon, ‘Thomas Aquinas and John Owen on the Beatific Vision: A Reply to Suzanne McDonald’, New Blackfriars 97/1070 (2016), pp. 432–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica [hereafter ST] 3.12.1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1948), p. 2949. I will cite this question in this way in what follows, but we should note that it is, strictly speaking, not part of the Summa, but rather a posthumous addition.

9 Aquinas, ST 3.12.1, p. 2950.

10 Aquinas, ST 1.12.7, p. 54.

11 Aquinas, ST 3.12.1, p. 2949; emphasis added.

12 Aquinas, ST 1.12.8, p. 55.

13 Aquinas, ST 3.12.3, p. 2955. Here he also states that the saints and angels will grow in the clarity with which they see God until the day of judgment and then no more, because ‘in that state it is possible that all will know everything that God knows by the knowledge of vision’.

14 Wawrykow, Joseph Peter, The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005), p. 18Google Scholar.

15 Aquinas, ST 3.12.1, p. 2951.

16 E.g. see the reply to objection 8 in Aquinas, ST 3.12.1, p. 2950.

17 Aquinas, ST 3.12.1, p. 2949.

18 Aquinas, ST 3.12.1, p. 2951. Cf. also 1.12.9, p. 56.

19 Aquinas, ST 1.12.1, p. 49.

20 On this point, see Aquinas, ST 1.12,4, pp. 51–2.

21 Aquinas, ST 1.12.4, p. 52.

22 Aquinas, ST 3.12.1, p. 2951.

23 Aquinas, ST 3.12.2, p. 2953.

24 E. A. Pace, ‘Beatific Vision’, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, 17 vols. (New York: Encyclopedia Press, 1907–14), vol. 2, p. 364.

25 Aquinas, ST 3.12.2, p. 2953. This is another point of distinction between Aquinas and some later Protestant views – Owen, for instance, appears to regard the vision of God as a physical, bodily one.

26 Aquinas, ST 3.12.2, p. 2953.

27 Ibid.

28 E.g. Aquinas, ST 1.12.2, p. 50.

29 Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 20.8.5–6, ed. James T. Denniston, trans. George M. Giger, 3 vols. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1997), vol. 3, p. 609.

30 See, respectively, Turretin, Institutes, 20.8.11, p. 610; cf. 20.8.8, p. 610; and 20.8.14, p. 611. Here he likewise treats many of the relevant biblical texts with respect to this claim (e.g. Job 19:25, 1 John 3:2) in a similar manner to Thomas.

31 Turretin, Institutes, 20.8.11, pp. 610–11.

32 Turretin, Institutes, 20.8.13, p. 611. The assertion from the Damascene is from An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 1.4.

33 Turretin, Institutes, 20.8.6, p. 609.

34 Turretin, Institutes, 20.8.8, p. 610. Here he protects the Creator/creature distinction by insisting that only a similarity, not an equality, between our knowledge of God and his knowledge of us, as depicted in 1 Cor 13:12.

35 Turretin, Institutes, 20.8.14, p. 611.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 John Calvin, Commentaries on St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, vol. 2, trans. William Pringle and John King (Altenmünster: Jazzybee Verlag, n.d.), p. 17.

39 Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, John T., trans. Battles, Ford Lewis, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), pp. 485–6Google Scholar.

40 Gaine, Simon, ‘The Beatific Vision and the Heavenly Meditation of Christ’, TheoLogica 2/2 (2018), pp. 127–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 For instance, McDonald, ‘Beholding the Glory of God’, p. 153.

42 Ibid., p. 154.

43 See Boersma, ‘Thomas Aquinas on the Beatific Vision’, pp. 131–6.

44 McDonald, ‘Beholding the Glory of God’, p. 154.

45 Gaine, ‘Thomas Aquinas and John Owen’, p. 436.

46 On this point, see ibid., p. 439.

47 ST 3.9.2, p. 2077.

48 As Gaine (‘Thomas Aquinas and John Owen’, p. 439) puts it: ‘one cannot see God without being “in Christ”, actually related to him as member to Head, and ever in dependence on him for that light under which the Blessed Trinity is seen’.

49 ST 3.22.5, p. 2140.

50 Gaine, ‘Beatific Vision and Heavenly Meditation’, pp. 120–1.

51 For discussion, see Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1973), p. 107.

52 Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), p. 142.

53 For more on this epistle, epistula 147, probably written in 413, see Frederick van Fleteren, ‘Vivendo Deo, De’, in Allan D. Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), p. 869.

54 As cited in Boersma, Seeing God, p. 116. Regarding whether Augustine contradicts himself on whether God's substance can be seen in this life, van Fleteren, ‘Vivendo Deo, De’, p. 869, offers a possible synthesis: ‘the vision of God is a divine gift which no one has attained or can attain permanently in this life. This conclusion should not be taken to contradict Augustine's continuing opinion, based partially on his own experience, that some humans have had a fleeting vision of God here below.’