The Beatific Vision

Reflections on where all this is leading

Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash

(A five-minute read.)

This past March, I shared some reflections in a piece called “Postcards from Eternity,” in which I described how sometimes when I experience beauty it actually hurts. I talked about this one place I go to in Maine that overwhelms me so much with beauty that it makes me long for something beyond it.

I proposed that that something is the transcendent—that all the good things in life, and all the beauty we encounter, are merely “postcards from eternity,” which beckon us into an experience with the divine.

I wanted to follow up on that piece a short time later and name that something. But other topics caught my attention, and, in the words of Robert Frost, “way leads on to way,” such that I haven’t had a chance to return.

But today I’m returning—and I’m finally naming that something.

What is it?

The Beatific Vision (pronounced “be-ah-TIF-ic,” with emphasis on the “tif”).

Theologians—mostly Roman Catholic—have talked about this idea for hundreds, and perhaps even thousands, of years. Deriving from the Latin word that means “happy” or “blessed,” it’s the unadulterated, unmediated, face-to-face encounter with God that every human being on earth will someday experience.

It will be—to put it mildly—sensory overload, resulting in the most intense feelings and emotions we could ever imagine.

As I said, it’s largely been an idea that Roman Catholic theologians have developed, though some Protestant thinkers have reflected on it as well.

But I think it’s an idea that’s woven throughout Scripture, with many figures and Scriptural writers talking about their desire to see God’s “face.”

For example, Moses very famously asked God repeatedly to show him his “glory.” God responded by saying that no one could see his “face” and live (Exodus 33:18-20).

In the book of Psalms, David declared, “As for me, I will see Your [God’s] face in righteousness; I will be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness” (17:15). Again, in Psalm 27, he proclaimed that the one thing he desired from God was that he could “behold” his beauty, noting a few verses later that God invited him to “seek” his “face,” with David affirming, “Your face, Lord, I will seek” (27:4, 8).

In the New Testament, Paul noted in his letter to the Corinthians that “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Elsewhere, John proposed that “we know that when He [God] is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).

And the New Testament’s last book, Revelation, in painting a beautiful picture of paradise, notes that “there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see his face, and His name shall be on their foreheads” (Revelation 22:3-4).

These are just a few of the many passages in Scripture that talk about the significance of—and the longing for—seeing God’s face.

I think they get at what we were created for. We were created to have this unmediated, full-bodied encounter with God. We were created to be in his presence, to see his face, to experience his unadulterated goodness and love.

And everything else—even the good stuff—is but a faint shadow of that experience, reminding us that until we experience that encounter, we will be left with a yearning, a longing, a hungering.

This is one of the reasons why, going back to last week, I can’t bury the transcendent for the sake of the immanent.

To be clear: I believe we should do everything we can right now to make this world a better place and to alleviate whatever suffering we see. I don’t think there’s a place for “escapist” theology which just shrugs its shoulders at pain and misery because God is coming back and he’ll just fix it all anyway.

I don’t believe a genuine Jesus-follower can ignore the immanent for the sake of the transcendent.

But, again, neither should we completely ignore and bury the transcendent for the sake of the immanent.

We should be about both.

Because, at the end of the day, I think we could remedy every single ill and misfortune the world has. We could completely achieve “world peace” on every level, with every human being sitting in a circle, singing “kumbaya,” without a hint of animosity, bitterness, or hatred in their hearts toward anyone else. We could make sure that no human being lacks for anything materially.

But we’d still have—as I understand it—a giant, transcendent, God-shaped hole in our hearts, longing to encounter the divine.

We’d still want to experience, in other words, the Beatific Vision.

We’d want to look God in the face and be overwhelmed by his beauty. We’d want to know we’re accepted and loved and embraced by our Maker, the one who gave us life (similar to the way that, no matter how mush “success” we experience in this life, we always seem to crave the approval of our biological parents).

As always, C. S. Lewis has been my most trusted companion on this transcendent journey, with his ability to put into language the longings I constantly experience. I’ve quoted him at length in the past, noting how he writes of this thing called “joy” that is really a “particular kind of unhappiness or grief,” which has a “stab,” “pang,” or “inconsolable longing.”

And this “joy” speaks to that desire which only God can satisfy.

Elsewhere, in his book Till We All Have Faces, he put it this way: “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing—. . . to find the place where all the beauty came from.”

I love that! I want to find the place where all the beauty came from as well.

I want to experience the Beatific Vision.

I can only imagine what that will feel like. I can only imagine the intense feelings it will produce in my heart, mind, and psyche.

As I said, it will be sensory overload.

Until then, I yearn for, I long for, I hope for, I crave.

And I press on.

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Shawn is a pastor in Portland, Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.