Did the Saviour See the Father?

Did the Savior see the Father by Simon Francis Gaine

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If we are honest, the idea of the Beatific Vision has been lost to the lay Catholic. The average Catholic may think of “going to Heaven” as the aim of life, but the idea that Catholics in heaven and after the Resurrection will perpetually be able to see God in His essence and, thereby know truth and joy, is something that would probably surprise most Catholics.

Once this was not so. The Beatific Vision is an essential doctrine of Catholicism. Prior to the 20th century, the Beatific Vision was in the common parlance of theologians, albeit I don't know how much this language was used by the lay Catholic. I suspect that most understood that joy consisted of the contemplation of God.

The idea that Jesus in his human nature also shared in the Beatific Vision in similar fashion as the saints in Heaven. St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica (“ST”) posited that Jesus in his human nature possessed the fullness of knowledge in three ways. First, Jesus possessed “infused knowledge” about everything as a kind of data bank that could be accessed by Him as he chose. Second, Jesus shared knowledge acquired by experience as other humans. Finally, Jesus possessed the Beatific Vision at all times during his life by which He saw God in God's true essence, and therefore knew all things through the divine mind as the saints in heaven did. (The concept of “knowing all things” is qualified by the fact that Jesus possessed a finite human mind; Jesus could only actually know things until He chose to know them.)

I suspect that modern Catholics find all of this bizarre. I know that when I read this in the ST, I found it novel and not at all consistent with very human picture of Jesus that I have been reared to. It is a feature of Aquinas's theology that while he acknowledges that Jesus voluntarily accepted the limitations of human pain and suffering, he puts no such limitation on Jesus's knowledge. Aquinas explains this latter feature from the necessity of Jesus to act as a human judge of humanity.

The author Simon Francis Gaine tackles the issue of whether Jesus had the beatific vision and the conceptual problems that arise from accepting that concept.

In the first chapter – “No one thinks that anymore” - Gaine forthrightly acknowledges that while the theory that the Jesus had the Beatific Vision was well-established prior to the 20th century, and is alluded to in the teachings of popes, in the 20th century several major religious thinkers have called it into question or have offered variant theories for Jesus's unusual knowledge. Previously, I would have said that Jesus's possession of the Beatific Vision was a Catholic doctrine, but at this point I will have to accept it as in the area of permissible speculation. However, it does seem that the Beatific Vision has been left behind in modern theology.

Chapter two – “It's not in the Bible” – makes the point that the Bible nowhere says that Jesus possessed the Beatific Vision. What Bible does say is that the saints in heaven will see God as he is and it acknowledges that Jesus had knowledge that was not known by merely human resources. In Gaine's view, the Beatific Vision is the leading candidate for explaining Jesus's knowledge inasmuch as saints see the essence of God.

Chapter three – “It's not in the Father” – also acknowledges that Jesus's possession of the Beatific Vision is contested ground. Modern theologians claim that this principle was not known to the early Church Fathers and was thought to run close to Nestorianism. On the other hand, some early Church Fathers, such as Augustine, came close to the concept:

“Now not only is Augustine speaking of the beatific vision, but very definitely also of Christ's human nature, since he immediately calls attention to the difference between the humanity ‘which the Wisdom of God assumed, through which we are freed' and the humanity of all other human beings. This difference, he says, can be understood from the fact that Lazarus, unlike Jesus, was only released after he had come out from the tomb. Augustine interpreted this to mean that our souls, which now have only an obscure vision in a mirror, cannot be entirely free of ignorance until after the soul is released from the body. What this implies is that in our case it is only after death that the veils are removed and we can possess the beatific vision, the beatific vision thus being responsible for definitively removing defects of knowledge. However, things are different with Christ, and it seems only with Christ, who has no such defect. In contrast to the case of Lazarus, the cloth over the face of the one who was ‘not ignorant' was instead found in the tomb – unlike Lazarus, Christ did not walk out from the tomb still needing to be released (Jn 20.5–7). Given that our being freed of ignorance is associated by Augustine with our coming to the beatific vision after death, it is implied that Christ's freedom from ignorance even before death is associated with a pre-mortem possession of the same vision.

Gaine, Simon Francis. Did the Saviour See the Father? (pp. 54-55). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The anti-Nestorian impulse led to the formulation of the Agnoetist principle that held that Christ was ignorant of things in his humanity. Holding that Jesus was ignorant in his humanity was problematic:
“Contrary to Agnoetist intentions, Gregory held that ascribing real ignorance to Christ could only end up introducing into him a second person. In no way then can it be doubted that the Fathers took Christ's human mind to have benefit from divine knowledge. The general tendency among the Fathers was to exclude all ignorance from the human mind of Christ and regard it as endowed with knowledge of all things, the human mind benefiting from the divine knowledge of the Creator.” (p. 63.)

Ultimately, the Fathers do not deny the Beatific Vision of Jesus, but some do accept it. Thus, Gaine concludes: “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.” (p. 70.)

In Chapter four – “It's not good theology” – Gaine discusses the conundrum that pertains to the problem of divine knowledge and human knowledge. Divine knowledge is infinite, which is to say incomprehensible and incommunicable to the finite. “Were Christ's mind to have been elevated by the light of glory on earth, he would have possessed not only the vision of the inexpressible God and of things in God, which would have provided a divine source for his teaching, but also the ability to form from this vision, by an historical succession of temporal acts, a communicable knowledge of creatures and of creaturely concepts appropriate to apply to God. In that way he would have been a true teacher of divine things, his divine knowledge being received in an appropriate way into his human mind by way of the beatific vision, which would then have been a source from which he could draw knowledge of a sort that could be humanly taught and communicated to his disciples. He would thus be endowed with a unique ability from his most perfect and intimate knowledge of the Father to proclaim the Father's kingdom with authority.” (p. 101-102.)

In Chapter five – “But Jesus had faith” – Gaine addresses one of the objections to the Beatific Vision, namely, that Jesus's knowledge was based on faith. The problem is that the Bible never speaks about Jesus having faith, which is a significant oversight in a text that affirms faith on the part of God and everyone else. That leaves a space for the Beatific Vision, a space that might be filled by knowledge through faith.

In Chapter six – “But Jesus didn't know” – the principle that Jesus possessed the Beatific Vision runs into the problem that Jesus said there were things he didn't know, such as the date of the end of the world. Aquinas affirms that Jesus knew this information, which leaves Him chargeable with not telling the truth, which is impossible. Gaine explains that Jesus's knowledge in his finite human nature depended on him accessing the information provided to him through the infinite mind of God. Like a person who can solve a complicated mathematical equation, Jesus could be said to have knowledge in potential but not in actuality, and therefore to both know and not know.(The consensus of the Fathers accepted that Christ knew as did Aquinas.)

In Chapter seven –“But Jesus was free” – challenges the Beatific Vision on the grounds that it confined human will. This seems like an odd objection in that Christ's human will was directed to God at all times. The Beatific Vision provides an explanation for how this is possible. It also heightens Christ's freedom in that He knew what He was giving His life for. Gaine points out that the decline of the Beatific Vision principle has seen a rise in theorizing that Christ was peccable, that he could sin, which seems to verge on heresy. Gaine also explains something that is subtle and confusing in the ST that Christ's human will had a lower component – an instinctive desire to avoid pain and death – which motivated Christ's lamentation in the Garden of Gethsamine.

In Chapter eight – “But Jesus suffered” – Gaine addresses the apparent incompatibility that Jesus suffered pain but experienced the joy of the Beatific Vision. Here Gaine follows Aquinas and distinguishes between the intellect and the physical. Christ experienced joy in His intellect; He experienced pain in his physical body. Christ chose to accept the infirmities of a corporeal existence by which He was exempted from the normal effect of the Beatific Vision flowing through the soul through the mind and placing the body in a glorious condition. Christ in His humanity was not impassible. Given this special exemption, there is nothing incompatible with human physical suffering and intellectual joy in the vision of God.

This can be high level material. It helps to have a background in Thomistic theology. For those who do, it provides a nice “state of the argument” overview of the issue. I appreciated Gaine's answer to the conundrum of Jesus saying he didn't know when the end of the world would happen. Gaine's answer was more nuanced than my own, which posited that this knowledge was unknowable to a finite mind. My answer was negatived by the ST, which clearly says that Jesus knew. If we understand that Jesus knew means he had actual knowledge at the time, His answer to His disciples would have been disingenuous. Gaine's answer provides a way of resolving this conundrum.