scholarly journals Editorial: Beatific Vision

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-2 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Efird ◽  
David Worsley
Keyword(s):  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Sermon On The Mount ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Beatific Vision

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God’ (Matthew 5.8; NRSV), so says Christ at the beginning of his greatest sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. But just what it is to be pure in heart and what it is to see God, he never explains. Following this beatitude, Christian writers in Scripture, and in the subsequent Christian tradition, have developed the doctrine of the beatific vision, according to which a person who is completely sanctified (is pure in heart) has immediate knowledge of God (sees him). While this doctrine has exerted considerable influence on the Christian tradition, it has received scant philosophical attention. In this issue, we begin to sketch what a philosophy of the beatific vision would look like.

Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition by Hans Boersma

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 987-991
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Huddleston
Keyword(s):  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Beatific Vision

Does Kant Need Grace?

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-300
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Insole
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Highest Good ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Beatific Vision

This chapter examines the claim made by John Hare, amongst others, that Kant requires God to act in order to achieve our salvation/transformation to virtue, but that, for various Kantian reasons, God is unable to act. At the heart of this interpretation is a sense that Kant has a notion of original sin, or natural depravity, such that his system requires grace, in a doctrinally narrow and significant sense, but that, at the same time, Kant is unable to make use of this concept. So, the claim is that Kant is committed to, or requires, aspects of Christianity, but that tensions arise in his philosophy, owing to his account of freedom, in relation to morality and the highest good. Kant’s account of human freedom is such that he cannot make the use that he needs to of Christian theology. It is argued in this chapter that this is a mistaken interpretation, and that Kant has no need for a concept of ‘grace’, in the narrower doctrinal sense of that concept, where grace is required to restore us from original sin, and to bring us to the love and knowledge of God in the beatific vision.

Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition

Mayéutica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (98) ◽  
pp. 492-493
Author(s):  
Alvaro Silva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Beatific Vision

Perfect Happiness and the Resurrection of the Body

1980 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Morreall
Keyword(s):  
Direct Relationship ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Beatific Vision ◽  
Traditional Notion ◽  
The Face ◽  
Relationship Of

Although not a great deal has been said about heaven in the Christian tradition, it is part of the traditional notion of heaven that the blessed are in a condition of perfect happiness. In this life we can be happy to a certain degree, but mixed with earthly happiness is disappointment, frustration, and even sorrow. In heaven, by contrast, there is no sadness, nothing is lacking, happiness is complete. The usual way of explaining this perfect happiness is in terms of the ‘beatific vision’ – the face to face relationship of knowing and loving God which the blessed enjoy. On earth we experience only finite objects; nothing that we come to know ever completely satisfies our desire to know, and nothing that we love ever completely satisfies our will. But in the beatific vision we shall be in a direct relationship with the infinite God, who in his boundless perfection will completely ‘fill up’ our capacities to know and love. As the completely adequate object of these capacities, God will make us perfectly happy. As Aquinas puts it, ‘…But if God alone were seen, who is the fount and source of all being and of all truth, he would so fill the natural desire for knowledge that nothing else would be desired, and the seer would be completely happy.’

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