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In Christian theology, the beatific vision () refers to the ultimate state of happiness that Christians will experience when they see God face to face in heaven. It is the ultimate direct self-communication of God to the angel and person. A person or angel possessing the beatific vision reaches, as a member of the communion of saints, perfect salvation in its entirety, i.e., heaven. The notion of vision stresses the intellectual component of salvation, i.e., the immediate contemplation of God, though it encompasses the whole of the experience of joy, with happiness coming from seeing God finally face to face and not imperfectly through faith. (1 Cor 13:11–12).Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 163, 1028, 1045Cf.
It is related to the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox belief in theosis, the Wesleyan notion of Christian perfection,Wesley, Charles. "Maker, in Whom We Live."
In Islamic theology, those who die as believers and enter Jannah will be given the vision of Allah.Qur'ān 75:22-3
According to rabbinic literature, all the prophets of the Tanakh (Old Testament) saw God dimly, as if through nine glass windows - save for Moses, who saw God clearly, as if through one glass window ((Yeb. 49b; Lev. R. i. 14)). Jewish Encyclopedia, Moses
Cyprian wrote of the saved's seeing God in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Edward A. Pace in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) defined the beatific vision:
Methodist co-founder Charles Wesley, in his 1747 hymn "Maker, in Whom We Live", described union with God through the Holy Spirit as "beatific sight":
According to Aquinas, the beatific vision surpasses both faith and reason. Rational knowledge does not fully satisfy humankind's innate desire to know God, since reason is primarily concerned with sensible objects and thus can only infer its conclusions about God indirectly.
The theological virtue of faith, too, is incomplete, since Aquinas states that it always implies some imperfection in the understanding. The believer does not wish to remain merely on the level of faith but to grasp directly the object of faith, who is God himself.
Thus only the fullness of the beatific vision satisfies this fundamental desire of the human soul to know God. Quoting Paul, Aquinas notes "We see now in a glass darkly, but then face to face" (). Moreover, affirms that "if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
The beatific vision is the final reward for those saints elected by God to partake in and "enjoy the same happiness wherewith God is happy, seeing Him in the way which He sees Himself" in the next life.
The Sacred College of Cardinals held a papal consistory on the problem in January 1334, and Pope John backed away from his novel views to the more standard understanding.
His successor, Pope Benedict XII, in the bull Benedictus Deus, taught that the saved see Heaven (and thus, God) before Judgement Day.
/ref> and is seen in most church denominations as the reward for Christians in the afterlife.
Etymology
"Beatific" is derived from the Latin past participle beatificum, made happy. Etymology Online: Beatific "Vision" comes from the Latin noun visio, sight; Etymology Online: Vision so beatifica visio is 'a sight that makes one happy'.
Judaism
According to Rashi, the face of God is twofold: God's care for Israel, and God's essence.
Christianity
New Testament
According to the New Testament, Jesus teaches that the pure of heart will see God (Matthew 5:8) and that children's angels see the face of God the Father (Matthew 18:10). Biblehub, Matt 5:8 Biblehub, Matt 18:10 The Apostles teach that "for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12), that without holiness "no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14), and that God's people "will see his face" (Revelation 22:4). Biblehub, 1 Cor 13:12 Biblehub, Heb 12:14 Biblehub, Rev 22:4
History
In Christianity, the Bible states that God "dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has even seen or can see" (1 Timothy 6:16), but when God reveals himself to us in heaven we will then see him face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). This concept has been termed "the beatific vision of God" by theologians of the Catholic Church and later on by various Protestant denominations, including the Lutheran Church and the Methodist Church.
In the Catholic Church
Official teaching
The church believes in the beatific vision because Jesus experienced it from conception to ascension, taught about it and promised it, and makes Catholics foretaste it by faith. Catechism of the Catholic Church 163 "Christ's Beatific Vision At His Conception". Catholic Answers.
Ex cathedra statement in Benedictus Deus
Pope Benedict XII taught ex cathedra in the papal encyclical Benedictus Deus that the beatific vision happens immediately after death: Benedictus Deus. Papal Encyclopedia.
Roman Catechism
According to the Roman Catechism, the saints in heaven see God, whereby they share in God's nature, wherewith they are truly and always happy. The catechism elaborates that the saints' happiness includes not just joy, but also glory (knowledge of one another's dignity), honor (reverence for one another as adopted sons of God), and peace (fulfillment of all the heart's desires). Moreover, the catechism adds, the beatific vision will, on Judgment Day, make the saints' resurrected bodies impassible (free from inconvenience, suffering, and death), bright as the angels, agile (free from the limitations of space-time), and subtle (as subject to the soul as the soul is subject to God).
Catechism of the Catholic Church
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the beatific vision is God opening himself in an inexhaustible way to the saints, so that they can see him face to face, and thereby share in his nature, and therefore enjoy eternal, definitive, supreme, perfect, and ever new happiness. The catechism teaches that this happiness includes not just communion and perfect life with the Trinity and the saints, but also the fulfillment of all the heart's desires – including, on Judgment Day, the body being glorified, even endowed with impassibility, brightness, agility, and subtlety – and continual cooperation with God's will – including praying for all other people, even proffering one's merits to God for others' sake. The catechism elaborates that the beatific vision is a grace and a privilege intended for everyone to attain, and that the beatific vision is attained immediately after death – or after purgatory – yet it is already foretasted in baptism and in the eucharist. The catechism also teaches that the beatific vision is expressed in different ways in the New Testament: the kingdom of God, the vision of God, eternal life, divine adoption, a share in the divine nature, the joy of the Lord, and rest in God.
Description of the vision of God
Doctrinal errors
The church has condemned many doctrinal errors about the vision of God. As a result, it teaches that the beatific vision is not natural (like a feeling, thought, dream, idea, desire, or mental image), indirect (like an apparition, locution, voice of God, Tabor light, odor of sanctity, religious ecstasy, or some other private revelation), mediate (involving a mediator between God and oneself, like how people saw, heard, felt, and otherwise perceived Jesus' humanity during his lifetime, including after resurrection), relative (God being seen not as he is but as he is reflected in creation and in the saints), dark (God being seen not as he is but as inaccessible light coming from God), earned (God being seen not as he is but according to one's merit), unsatisfactory (one not sharing in God's happiness, which includes – but is not limited to – all of one's wants and needs being fulfilled beyond superabundance), imperfect (one not sharing in God's perfection, whereby one's moral state is impeccable), or finite (one not sharing in God's life, which is limitless and eternal). "Heaven". Catholic Encyclopedia.
Nature of the vision of God
The beatific vision is when God, though transcendent, opens himself up to people and angels, giving them the capacity to contemplate God in all His heavenly glory. Contemplation is the prayer of silently focusing on God and heeding His word; in other words, contemplation is the prayer of uniting with God.
Sanctifying grace and the vision of God
The beatific vision is ultimate union with God. It comes from sharing in God's holy nature via sanctifying grace.
Effect of the vision of God
Because God is life (fullness, beatitude, and perfection) itself, the beatific vision entails fullness of life (perfect friendship with Jesus and his angels and saints, including a share in Jesus' and the angels' and saints' own glories and honors) Roman Catechism, Accessory Happiness and ultimate beatitude and perfection (supreme definitive happiness, including immortality, i.e., freedom from Satan, temptation, sin, error, inconvenience, suffering, death, and every other evil).
Judgment Day and the vision of God
On Judgment Day, the saints will experience the beatific vision with their bodies as well. Their bodies will be as deified as their souls. 1 Cor 15:37 Catechism of the Catholic Church 999 Deification entails:
Recipients of the vision of God
The beatific vision is a grace and a privilege intended for every person and angel, since God created people and angels to enjoy the beatific vision. The beatific vision is the ultimate purpose of each person's and angel's life.
Jesus and the vision of God
Because Jesus is considered God and man, His human nature experienced the beatific vision from conception to His ascension into heaven. CCC 473 Despite this, Jesus suffered, was crucified, and died as a human being. Roman Catechism Article IV Although human nature was united to the Divine Person, He felt the bitterness of His Passion as acutely as if no such union had existed "because in the one Person of Jesus Christ were preserved the properties of both natures" human and divine; and therefore what was passible and mortal remained passible and mortal; while what was impassible and immortal, that is, His Divine Nature, continued impassible and immortal.
Unofficial teaching
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas defined the beatific vision as the human being's "final end" in which one attains to a perfect happiness. Thomas reasons that one is perfectly happy only when all one's desires are perfectly satisfied, to the degree that happiness could not increase and could not be lost. "Man is not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to desire and seek." But this kind of perfect happiness cannot be found in any physical pleasure, any amount of worldly power, any degree of temporal fame or honor, or indeed in any finite reality. It can only be found in something that is infinite and perfect – and this is God. And since God is not a material thing but is pure spirit, we are united to God by knowing and loving Him. Consequently, the union with God is the most perfect human happiness and the ultimate goal of human life. But we cannot attain to this happiness by our own natural powers; it is a gift that must be given us by God, who strengthens us by the "light of glory" so that we can see Him as he is, without any intermediary. (Thomas quotes Psalm 36:9 on this point: "In your light we shall see light.") Further, since every created image or likeness of God (including even the most perfect "ideas" or "images" of God we might generate in our minds) is necessarily finite, it would thus be infinitely less than God himself. The only perfect and infinite good, therefore, is God Himself, which is why Aquinas argues that our perfect happiness and final end can only be the direct union with God Himself and not with any created image of Him. This union comes about by a kind of "seeing" perfectly the divine essence itself, a gift given to our intellects when God joins them directly to Himself without any intermediary. And since in seeing this perfect vision of what (and who) God is, we grasp also His perfect goodness, this act of "seeing" is at the same time a perfect act of loving God as the highest and infinite goodness.Summa Theologica]], I–II, qq. 2–5.
Pope John XXII and the beatific vision controversy
Pope John XXII (1316–1334) caused a controversy involving the beatific vision,Marc Dykmans, Les sermons de Jean XXII sur la vision béatifique, Rome, 1973 saying – not as Pope but as a private theologian – the saved do not attain the beatific vision until Judgment Day, a view more consistent with soul sleep.Louise Bourdua, Anne Dunlop. Art and the Augustinian order in early Renaissance Italy The general understanding at the time was that the saved attained Heaven after being purified and before Judgment Day. He never proclaimed his belief as doctrine but rather as an opinion ( ex cathedra, as defined at the First Vatican Council in 1870).
Catholic Encyclopedia
The Catholic Encyclopedia defines the beatific vision as the immediate knowledge of God enjoyed by all the heavenly creatures. It explains that the vision of God is called "beatific" because by seeing God the mind finds perfect happiness, and called "vision" because the sight of God in heaven is not the same as mediate knowledge of God.
Private revelations
Catholic saints who are regarded as having seen or visited heaven have not mentioned the beatific vision. Instead, they have sometimes given materialistic descriptions of heaven (garden, mansion, city, etc.) and sometimes given spiritual descriptions of heaven (joy, peace, lack of time, etc.). "These Saints Had Visions of Heaven and Hell and Revealed What They Saw". National Catholic Register.
Islam
According to the Quran, on Judgment Day "some faces will be bright, looking at the Lord" (75:22-23). Quran.Com, Surah 75 Ala-Maududi comments that some commentators "have understood this allegorically", and that as for himself, he believes "in the Hereafter the dwellers of Paradise will not see Allah in the specific form in which man sees something in the world, but their nature of seeing will be different, which we cannot comprehend here." Surah Al-Qiyamah Ayat 23 (75:23 Quran) With Tafsir. Myislam.com.
Notes
(2025). 9780192802903, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192802903
Further reading
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