Seeing God's Essence: A Teleological Coordination of the Beatific Vision and Christ's Work of Atonement

Abstract

Both Hans Boersma and Michael Allen have recently written important books on the beatific vision. This article engages these works in two main movements. In the first, the efforts of Boersma and Allen will be commended as much needed exhortations for the contemporary church. For the beatific vision combats the modern tendencies of demoting teleology and immanentizing the ultimate criteria of human flourishing. However, the second movement will critique a point that these two theologians share in their respective formulations of this eschatological act. Both posit the incarnate Son as the direct object of the vision. In contrast, this article contends that it is more theologically fitting to give this place to the divine essence. It does so by coordinating the beatific vision with the overarching telos of Christ's atoning work and its implications for theological anthropology.