BEATIFIC VISION
Beatific vision is the intuitive knowledge of God, reserved for souls that have passed into the other life in the state of grace and have been completely purified of every imperfection (v. Purgatory).
BEATIFIC VISION – A miniature from a Book of Hours, according to the Paris liturgical use (15th century) – Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, ms. lat. 9471, f. 143v.
### I. EXISTENCE OF THE BEATIFIC VISION
#### 1. Documents of Revelation
In the Old Testament there is only a distant preparation for the doctrine of the intuitive vision of God reserved for perfect souls (A. Van Hove, *Praeparatur in V. T. revelatio dogmatis Visionis beatificae*, in *Collectanea Mecklinensis*, 35 [1950], pp. 177-180). In the New Testament, however, the doctrine is fully enunciated: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8). “Their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 18:10), and later (Mt 22:30) Jesus, affirming that at the resurrection the elect will be like the angels, implicitly asserts their elevation to intuitive knowledge of God.
The classic text is 1 Cor 13:9-12: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” St Paul here affirms that charity will never pass away even in eternal life, while knowledge, even if charismatic (προφητεία, γλώσσα, γνῶσις), will cease. For the knowledge of the future life will be absolutely superior to that of this life, since while present knowledge is partial (τὸ ἐκ μέρους), mediated (διὰ ἐκδόσεως), obscure (ἐν αἰνίγματι), the future knowledge will be total (τὸ τέλειον), face to face (πρὸς πρόσωπον), that is, immediate and clear (*cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum* [by God]; cf. also 2 Cor 5:7 sq.).
Extremely clear is 1 Jn 3:1-2: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be. We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (*videbimus eum sicut est*: διὰ ὀφθαλμῶν αὐτὸν καθὼς ἐστιν).
Despite differing exegetical nuances regarding *apparuerit* (some referring it to the parousia of Jesus Christ, others to the full manifestation of adoptive sonship: cf. F. Ceuppens, *Theologia Biblica: De Deo Uno et Trino*, Rome 1938, p. 120; P. De Ambroggi, *Le Epistole cattoliche*, Rome 1949, pp. 245-47), the text offers the most precise testimony to the intuitive vision of the divine essence (*sicut est*). And in Rev: “He showed me the holy city Jerusalem... having the glory of God” (21:11): “They will see his face (*ὀψονται τό πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ*) and his name will be on their foreheads” (22:4).
Tradition follows this luminous path: St Ignatius of Antioch desires martyrdom to attain God (*δόξαν ἐπιστήσειν*: Rom 4:1) and therefore begs the faithful of Rome not to prevent his death, through which he will obtain “pure light” (*καθαρόν φῶς*: Rom 6:2). Theophilus of Antioch assures Autolycus that, once the corruption of the body is laid aside, he will see God according to the merits acquired in life (*Ad Autolycum*, I, 7: PG 6, 1036). St Irenaeus presents a first precise and complete doctrinal synthesis: “Those who see God are in God and share in his splendor. Thus those who see God participate in life. Now this participation consists in the vision of God and in the enjoyment of his goodness” (*Adv. Haeres.*, IV, 20: PG 7, 1032).
Clement of Alexandria adds an important clarification: through baptismal illumination one will be able to intuit (*ἐπιστεύσασθαι*) the holy and salvific light, which will enable one to see God in a face-to-face manifestation (col. 292). Henceforth Christian teaching is focused on the *visio Dei*; individual authors merely express the same concept in different ways (Origen, *In Io.*, I, 116: PG 14, 49); St Cyprian (*De zelo et livore*, 18: PL 4, 460); St Basil (*Ep.*, 8, 7: PG 32, 257); St Gregory Nazianzen (*Oratio*, 28, 17: PG 36, 48); St Hilary (*In Ps.* 118, 58: PL 9, 555); St Ambrose (*De bono mortis*, 11: PL 14, 562); St Augustine (*Ep.* 147, 8: PL 33, 605).
#### 2. Deviations and Errors
After Eunomius (d. c. 395) affirmed the perfect intelligibility of God even in this life and by natural faculties alone: “I know God as well as I know myself, or rather, I know God better than myself” (St Epiphanius, *Haeres.*, 76: PG 13, 516; cf. X. Le Bachelet, *Eunomius*, in DThC, V, cols. 1597-11), a current of anti-Eunomian polemicists arose among the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers of the East. Insisting on the Pauline text “No man has seen God at any time, nor can see him” (1 Tim 6:16), they held that even in the future life the vision of the divine essence is impossible and therefore maintained that all biblical and patristic passages alluding to a *visio Dei* must be interpreted as referring to a vision of realities emanating from God, just as the human eye, unable to gaze directly at the sun, can only sustain its rays. The first to open this path seems to be St John Chrysostom, who, although he had repeatedly affirmed outside of any polemic the intuitive vision of God by the blessed (cf. *Ad Theodorum*, I, 11: PG 47, 292; *Hom.* 15 in *Io.* 1, 118: PG 59, 99), in the famous *Hom.* 3 *de incomprehensibili*, 3: PG 48, 722, polemicizing against Eunomius, asserted: “Why do they cover their faces and stretch out their wings? Why, I ask, if not because the lightning that proceeds from the throne and those rays cannot bear it? And they did not see the light itself without mixture (*συγκράτησις*), nor the pure substance itself, but what they saw was a kind of mixture.” While with these ambiguous phrases Chrysostom was probably alluding only to the “incomprehensibility” of the nature of God by all creatures, both angels and men, Theodore sharply distinguished the vision of the substance of God from that of divine glory and therefore explicitly affirmed that the angels do not contemplate the essence of God, but a certain splendor adapted to their nature (ἀλλὰ δόξαν τινὰ αὐτῶν φῶς συμμετρούμενον, *Erantistes*, 1: PG 83, 49). He was followed by various Eastern authors, who formed a doctrinal current parallel and opposed to the orthodox one: Basil of Seleucia: PG 85, 454; Anastasius Sinaita, *Ὀδηγός*, c. 7: PG 89, 132; Oecumenius, *In I Io.* 3, 2: PG 119, 648; followed by PALMAS (v.), who, on the distinction between divine essence and the splendor of the essence (Taboric light), created an entire theological system that deeply agitated the Greek Church in the fourteenth century (cf. M. Jugie, *Palamas* [in DThC, XI, cols. 1735-76]; id., *Palamite (controverses)*, ibid., XI, cols. 1777-1818).
Error also penetrated into the West. Already St Gregory noted this (Moralia, 18, 54; PL 76, 93). But the doctrinal deviation gained greater currency after Hilduin and John Scotus Eriugena translated, in the 9th century, the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who in De divinis nominibus, ch. 1, § 2 (PG 3, 588-89) overemphasises, with evident exaggeration, the transcendence of God considered absolutely inaccessible to any nature. Areopagitic and Greek veins are found in authors, otherwise orthodox, such as Alain of Lille (Distinctiones dictionum theologicarum: PL 210, 971), Alexander of Hales, Hugh of St Cher, the Quaestio ducisensis (cf. H. F. Donadieu, L'objet et le medium de la vision béatifique chez les théologiens du XIIIe siècle, in Rech. de théol. anc. et méd., 19 [1952], pp. 60-130).
This current of thought came into conflict around 1240 with the common tradition and provoked the following year the condemnation, by the Bishop of Paris, of the proposition: “Divina essentia in se nec ab homine nec ab angelo videtur et videbitur.” St Thomas constantly recalls this theory, which he takes care to refute thoroughly (e.g., in De veritate, q. 8, a. 1; cf. Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 12, a. 1).
This doctrinal deviation reappeared in the West in the 14th century, when Benedict XII condemned in 1341 the fifth error attributed to the Armenians (cf. F. Jansen, La cinquième erreur arménienne, in Eph. theol. Lovan., 16 [1939], pp. 94-100).
3. Church definitions
The erroneous personal opinion of John XXII (v. GIUDIZIO DI DIO), according to which the beatific vision would be deferred for the souls of the just until the resurrection of the flesh, was partly shared by the Franciscans, but was violently attacked by the Dominicans, especially by the Englishman Thomas Waley, who for this reason suffered trials and imprisonment (cf. Th. Kappeli, Le procès contre Thomas Waley O. P. Études et documents, Rome 1936). Benedict XII issued in 1336 the dogmatic constitution Benedictus Deus, which contains the clearest definition regarding the beatific vision: “By apostolic authority we define that the souls of all the Saints... even before the resurrection of the bodies and the final judgment, have been, are, and will be in heaven... and see the divine essence, an intuitive and facial vision, having nothing of a creature as the ratio of the object seen, but the divine essence itself immediately, nakedly, clearly, and openly revealing itself to them” (Denz-U, 530); a definition substantially repeated by the Council of Florence in 1439 (Denz-U, 633), by Gregory XIII (ibid., 870), and by Benedict XIV (ibid., 875). Pius XII in the encyclical Mystici Corporis (29 June 1943) inserted a notable aside regarding the object of the beatific vision: “It will be granted to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, with the eye of the mind, illumined by a heavenly light, to be contemplated, to stand eternally present at the divine processions, and to be blessed with a joy most like that by which the blessed and most holy and undivided Trinity is blessed” (AAS, 35 [1943] p. 232).II. ESSENCE OF THE BEATIFIC VISION
I. Essential beatitude
Beatitude is that state in which, through the presence of every good, man attains his perfection (cf. Boethius: “Status omnium bonorum aggregatione perfectus,” De consolatione philosophiae, III, 2), fulfilling every desire (cf. St Thomas, Sum. Theol., 1ª-2ª, q. 2, a. 8: “bonum perfectum, quod totaliter quietat appetitum”). No created thing can constitute man’s beatitude; therefore man’s happiness must be placed in God (beatitudo obiectiva, cf. St Thomas, Sum. Theol., 1ª-2ª, q. 2, a. 1-8).Man attains beatitude when, through acts corresponding to his nature, he is united irrevocably with God (cf. Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 26, a. 3; 1ª-2ª, q. 3, a. 4). Since man is essentially intellect and will, only in the actuation of these spiritual powers (cf. Sum. Theol., 1ª-2ª, q. 3, a. 3) can he realise his union with God (beatitudo subiectiva). Therefore at the moment when, by actuating the vital dynamism of his spiritual being, he knows God intuitively and loves Him with a love proportionate to that full knowledge, and inwardly enjoys that possession, man is blessed. Hence knowledge (visio), love (dilectio), and enjoyment (fruitio) are the essential moments of the subjective happiness of man, elevated to the supernatural order (cf. Sum. Theol., 1a-2a, q. 4, a. 3).
For centuries there has been debate over which of these three acts is the principal one, almost the formal constituent of beatitude. Peter Auriol gave preference to fruitio (cf. M. Siri, Theologia scholastica de novissimis, Valencia 1707, tr. 3, cap. 4), St Bonaventure (III Sent., d. 31, a. 3, q. a., cf. F. Rauti, Dottrina della beatitudine in s. Bonaventura, Roma 1949) and Scotus to dilectio, while St Thomas gives primacy to visio (Sum. Theol., 1a-2a, q. 3, a. 4; q. 4, a. 1-2; cf. Dante, Paradiso, XXVIII, 106-111; T. Cucchi, Se la beatitudine sia operazione dell'intelletto o della volontà, Roma 1889). The holy Doctor in his admirable Expositio in Evang. Johannis, ch. 17, lect. 1, gives this speculative formulation of his doctrine: “Among all vital operations the highest is that of the intellect (altius est opus intelligentiae), namely understanding; therefore the act of understanding is the most perfect form of life... Since intelligence is life and understanding is living, it follows that understanding (intelligentia) an eternal thing is to live eternal life. Hence the Lord says that eternal life consists in seeing God (haec est vita aeterna ut cognoscant), namely principally, as in its essence (principaliter secundum totam suam substantiam). Love, on the other hand, impels to vision and is also its complement; for from the complacency that derives from the divine fruitio produced by charity, there emanates as it were a complement and adornment of beatitude, which formally, however, consists in vision: ‘vivendum sicut est.’ Even when young (In IV Sent., d. 49, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 2) he had proposed another no less profound reason: ‘Since God, the ultimate end, is not immanent to the human will, it is not possible that an act of will should be intrinsic to the end; rather that act will be intrinsic to the end by which for the first time such a relationship with God is established, whereby the will will attain its full satisfaction. This act is the intellectual vision of God, since through it there is realised almost a contact of God with the intelligence; for every thing known is in the knowing in so far as it is known.’”
The doctrine of St Thomas is founded on Holy Scripture, which frequently identifies happiness and eternal life with the vision of God. The Fathers also emphasise the intellectual character of eternal happiness (St Augustine: “The beatitude of man consists in having the highest contemplation [of God]” [Contra Julianum, I. III, n. 88; PG 76, 627]). Reason confirms and clarifies these elements; for essentially beatitude cannot be placed except in that act by which one obtains directly and per se the possession of the Supreme Good, which renders one happy. Since love, from which fruitio emanates, although an act that tends per se to the union with the beloved reality, is not however capable of rendering it present, one must grant primacy to the act of vision, which immediately and inseparably unites the human intellect with God as the highest intelligible form; from this union at the apex of the mind there follow, as necessary effects, dilectio and gaudium. Such an immediate union of the intellect with God occurs through a supernatural elevation of all the elements (the cognitive power, the act of knowing, the object known), from which emerges the noetic structure of man.
a) The “lumen gloriae.” It is a supernatural virtue that strengthens the cognitive faculty, rendering it capable of fixing upon and penetrating intentionally the infinite essence of God. The necessity of the lumen gloriae was defined by the Council of Vienne (1311) against the Beghards, who asserted “quod quaelibet intellectualis natura in seipsa naturaliter est beata, quodque anima non indiget lumine gloriae ipsam elevante ad Deum videndum et eo beate fruendum” (Denz-U, 745). From the solemn condemnation of this proposition it follows that the Church presents as a truth of faith the existence of the lumen gloriae in beatific vision.
This truth is implicitly contained in Holy Scripture: “claritas Dei illuminabit eam... Deus illuminabit illos” (Apoc. 21, 23); “Similes ei erimus, quoniam videbimus eum sicut est” (1 Io. 3, 2): allusion is made to a deiformitas (similes erimus) as a disposition elevating the intellect to the vision of the divine essence, “videbimus sicut est.” The Fathers and the Scholastics made much use of Ps. 35, 10 (“in lumine tuo videbimus lumen”) and Ps. 55, 13 (“ut placeam coram Deo in lumine viventium”).
Patristic tradition developed the seeds contained in the Bible and arrived at a clearer formulation of the truth, e.g., Origen, De principiis, I, 1; PG 11, 121: “What else is the light of God (lumen Dei) if not a divine force by which whoever is illumined knows thoroughly the truth of things, indeed knows God Himself, that is, absolute truth?” (cf. also St Epiphanius, Haeres., 70; PG 42, 349; St Augustine, Enarr. in Ps., 55, no. 20; PL 36, 661). St Thomas, drawing on these elements and the tentative efforts of his predecessors, constructed a definitive doctrinal synthesis. Whatever entity is elevated to produce an effect that surpasses the capacity of its nature must necessarily be prepared for this by a proportionate strengthening. Since no created intellect has a natural aptitude to see the essence of God, it must be granted this capacity by an interior and supernatural increase of intellectual strength, which constitutes an interior light called the lumen gloriae (cf. Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 12, a. 5). Therefore the lumen gloriae is a permanent quality communicated by God, which, by intrinsically modifying the intellect, perfects and elevates it, rendering it capable of intuitively seeing the intimate nature of God (ibid., a. 2). It must not therefore be conceived as an increase of visual power determined by an external instrument, but as an interior strengthening that perfects and elevates the “optic nerve,” so that it may better see and penetrate the knowable reality. St Thomas calls it “fortificatio” (Contra Gentes, III, 53) and “confortatio” (ibid., cap. 54; Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 12, a. 2 and a. 5, ad 2) of the intellect, that is, an ontological and therefore intrinsic strengthening of the very intellectual power, by which it attains contact and intentional union with the divine essence as an infinite “forma intelligibilis” (cf. De verit., q. 10, a. 11), whereby the blessed become “deiform” (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 12, a. 5).
In the light of these clear principles, the various theories advanced by other theologians over the centuries appear either insufficient or exaggerated. Undoubtedly exaggerated are the explanations of Hugh of St Victor (a crossed act of vision intrinsically communicated to the created intellect, cf. I. Kathschtaler, Eschatologia, Ratisbona 1878, p. 129), of Henry of Ghent (the transformation of the soul into God, so that it may intrinsically receive the essence: Quodlibet 13, q. 12), and of Thomassin (the person of the Holy Spirit, insofar as, by an analogy with the hypostatic union, it unites with the minds of the blessed, penetrates and irradiates them with divine light: De Deo, I. VI, cap. 16).
Against these excesses Petavius reacted by identifying the lumen gloriae with the divine essence insofar as it is manifested to the intellect of the blessed (De Deo, I. VI, cap. 16); an explanation, however, that errs by defect, since the Council of Vienne distinguishes between the lumen gloriae and the divine essence (Denz-U, 475). Moreover, the best theological tradition has always regarded the lumen gloriae as a created supernatural reality and therefore distinct from God.
b) The absence of intelligible species in beatific vision. In natural knowledge there are two representations of the object known, called the impressed species and the expressed species. The impressed species is a similitude that the thing to be known impresses upon the cognitive power, by which it is as it were fecundated and rendered capable of knowing the object thus made present (cf. Contra Gentes, II, 77; 4, 11; Quodlibet, 7, q. 1, a. 1). The expressed species, on the other hand, is the internal word (verbum mentale) that the intellect knows with form and in which it contemplates the object known. Therefore the impressed species is the similitude of the object insofar as it is knowable, the expressed species is the similitude of the same insofar as it is known. In beatific vision the impressed species is absolutely superfluous (and therefore does not exist), because God is supremely present to the blessed soul and perfectly knowable (Sum. Theol., 3ª, q. 9, a. 3, ad 3; 1ª, q. 12, a. 2; cf. Contra Gentes, I, 46; Compendium theologiae, II, 9); it is moreover impossible, because it is repugnant that the infinite essence of God should be qualitatively represented by a finite similitude (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 12, a. 2). For the same reason the impressed species is impossible in beatific vision. This does not, however, exclude the verbum mentis, since it is the vital, interior, and conscious act by which the intellect is, so to speak, in contact with the divine essence itself immediately, without implying the production of any intermediate representation. The divine essence, therefore, present per se and united as a forma intelligibilis to the mind of the blessed, supremely supplies every impressed and expressed species (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 12, a. 2, ad 3; Compendium theologiae, II, 9).
c) The object of beatific vision. All the blessed see what is formally and necessarily found in the Supreme Being, namely God in His unity of nature and Trinity of persons (Council of Florence: Denz-U, 588), and they know thoroughly the divine attributes and their intimate reconciliation in the eminentia deitatis (primary object).
There is, however, a difference in the degree of beatitude, not in the object itself, but in the manner or perfection of knowing, which varies among the blessed according to the greater or lesser degree of perfection attained on earth.
This truth, denied by Jovinian (v.) on account of the Stoic theory of the equality of all human actions, and by Protestants (Lutherans and Calvinists) on account of the theory of justification by faith alone, which equally saves all, is a dogma of faith defined by the Council of Florence (Denz-U, 693; cf. ibid., 842), and clearly affirmed by Scripture (Mt. 17, 27; 1 Cor. 3, 8; 2 Tim. 4, 8; cf. Jn. 14, 2; 1 Cor. 15, 41) and by the Fathers, especially in the exegesis of the parable of the workers who receive the same wage (cf. St Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 40, 20; PG 36, 384; St Augustine, Sermo 137, 19; PL 38, 533; St Gregory the Great, Hom. 19 in Evang.: PL 76, 1155-57). The intimate reason for this difference lies in the varying degree of charity attained by the elect in this life: to that degree is proportioned the lumen gloriae, upon whose greater or lesser perfection depends the greater or lesser clarity of the vision (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 12, a. 6; cf. IV Sent., d. 40, q. 2, a. 4; In Evang. Io. expositio, cap. 14, lect. 1).
This inequality will not be a cause of envy, because the elect are fully subject to the will of God (“In His will is our peace”: Dante, Paradiso, III, 64-102), and because each will be content to see according to his capacity and merit. All therefore will be equally happy: a small cup or a large cup is equally full of liquor, and one cannot say that one is fuller than the other (P. Parente, Dio e l'uomo, Roma 1946, p. 398).
JULIAN OF TOLEDO (*Prognosticon futuri saeculi*, 2: PL 96, 475-96), PETER LOMBARD (*IV Sent.* d. 45, c. 1), ST ALBERT THE GREAT (*In IV Sent.* d. 49, a. 11), ST BONAVENTURE (*In IV Sent.* d. 49, pars 2, sect. 1, a. 1) and the young ST THOMAS AQUINAS (*In IV Sent.* d. 49, q. 1, a. 4) held that after the resurrection of the bodies the souls of the elect would experience an intensive increase in essential glory. In his maturity, St Thomas rejected this view (*Sum. Theol.*, 1a, q. 2, a. 4, ad 4; q. 5, ad 4) and was followed by the majority of theologians (cf. F. Padalino, *L’aumento intensivo della beatitudine essenziale*, Agrigento 1953).