In this new contribution to a classic debate, Simon Francis Gaine makes the case for the human Jesus experiencing the beatific vision (the sight of God enjoyed by the blessed in heaven) from the first moment of his earthly existence. To advance this position, famously endorsed by Thomas Aquinas, Gaine systematically tackles objections that have been voiced by its contemporary opponents, many of whom are Thomists themselves. These include a lack of biblical and patristic support, as well as theological objections concerning Jesus’ faith, knowledge, freedom, and passibility. While the table of contents might not indicate it, this work is frequently quite technical. The primary intended audience seems to be other Catholic theologians, and by the end of his argumentation, Gaine declares, “For the Catholic theologian, the earthly Christ's possession of the beatific vision should be a moral certainty” (200).
Gaine's work will find a warmer reception among some theologians than others. The author indicates his own method and commitments in the first chapter, telling the story of this now-unpopular theory's predominance from Thomas’ day up to the mid-twentieth century, and then calling for its revival by arguing for a hermeneutic of “continuity” rather than “rupture” with the Catholic intellectual past. Gaine's depiction of Thomism waning and then “collaps[ing] almost altogether” with the Second Vatican Council suggests that the true Thomism he wants retrieved is neo-Thomism, specifically (8). Although Gaine certainly engages with other Catholic scholars, his own method seems very much in “continuity” with this early twentieth-century school.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the work is notable for its rigor and clarity of presentation. Gaine's meticulous research by itself makes this volume an important contribution to the field. The most effective of Gaine's chapters are the penultimate two on Jesus’ knowledge and freedom, in which Gaine deftly wields Thomas’ principle of grace perfecting rather than destroying nature. He also makes a strong case for Jesus’ own beatific vision playing an important teleological role in our own (though why it should obtain from Jesus’ conception is often less clear). Other aspects of the volume are far less compelling.
While Gaine appeals to the Bible frequently, his engagement with contemporary Scripture scholarship is most often by way of suspicion. After expressing wariness about even the Pontifical Biblical Commission's perception of a “post-resurrection perspective” in the gospels (20), Gaine seems to proceed throughout by presuming that the words placed on Jesus’ lips can consistently serve as windows into his mental state. By doing so, he shortchanges the role of the Evangelists’ theology. Gaine also insists on a strained reading of Mark 2:26 (in which Jesus names the wrong high priest), when even Ratzinger has recognized it simply as an error according to “a practically irrefutable consensus of historians” (Jared Wicks, SJ, “Six Texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger,” Gregorianum 89, no. 2 [2008]: 280).
As with Scripture, Gaine responsibly admits that there is at best “meagre” evidence for Jesus’ beatific vision in the Fathers, and thus makes the modest claim that the theory explains some theological puzzles contained therein. But elsewhere he makes startling leaps of logic, including the following head-scratcher that concludes chapter 3: “Though the Fathers are almost entirely silent about this vision, they were certainly not in the business of actively advocating an alternative account of the impact of his divine knowledge on his human mind. Thus, if the Fathers can be supposed to offer support to any theory at all, it can only be to the earthly Christ's beatific vision” (70). And so, meagre evidence and all, he proceeds to refer to the theory subsequently as a “biblical and patristic doctrine” (74). Later chapters argue from what many readers will detect as an excessively dualistic anthropology as well.
The debate boils down to whether, in this respect, Christ became as we are now or as we are ordered to be. Gaine has done an impressive job of compiling research and articulating the points of contention to set up his arguments for the latter and against the former. That said, the quality of the arguments themselves is troublingly broad, and the method employed will seriously restrict the number of Catholic theologians who end up “morally certain” about Gaine's thesis.
