From Ursinus to Bavinck
Man is meant to find his happiness in God. Man, as a finite creature, has a desire that can only be fulfilled by the infinite God of all creation. The very essence of sin and idolatry is finding happiness in creation rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25). Yet man, as a natural creature, was created with a natural end of delighting in God in a natural mode. This natural communion with God consists in knowing God through His general revelation by reason, by which man knows that God ought to be worshipped as his Creator. Thus, the natural end of man is a natural knowledge and love of God that yields a natural happiness in God.
To this natural end and happiness that man had through natural means, God, by His grace, granted to man a supernatural end through supernatural means. The supernatural end that God offered to man was immediate union and communion with Himself in the beatific vision. The supernatural means that God gave to man to reach this supernatural end was His gracious act of covenantal condescension, revealed through supernatural revelation, that set the terms of how man would merit his supernatural end by a meritum ex pacto (merit by virtue of the covenant). It is under the category of man’s supernatural end that the beatific vision belongs.
Though foreign to many Evangelicals today, the Dutch Reformed tradition articulated a doctrine of the beatific vision. Recovery of this doctrine can redirect us who live in an age of idolatry to the blessed hope of seeing God. Said recovery may act as a theological buttress to any doctrine of eschatology that does not emphasize the visio Dei as a central component of Reformed theology and hope.
Dutch exposition of this doctrine can be seen through three successive stages. First, the confessional tradition. Important here is the Heidelberg Catechism and the Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism by Zacharias Ursinus (1534-1583). The second stage is the Early Modern Period (1500-1800) in the development of Reformed orthodoxy and the work of Antonius Walaeus (1573-1639) in the Synopsis of A Purer Theology. The final stage, the Modern Period (1800-present), features a particular expression in the Neo-Calvinist movement. This will include Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) and his Reformed Dogmatics.
The Heidelberg Catechism
The Dutch Reformed tradition can be defined by its confessional commitments. The theological standards that the Dutch Reformed have traditionally affirmed have been the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort (Three Forms of Unity).
The Heidelberg Catechism is traditionally thought to have been written by Zacharias Ursinus and first published in 1563. The catechism was commissioned by Frederick III for the Reformed church to have its own identity apart from Lutheranism. The catechism itself follows the pattern of man’s guilt before God, God’s grace in redemption in Christ, and how man ought to be grateful for such redemption. Under these headings are the divisions of the Apostles Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments.
In the catechism’s exegesis of the Apostles Creed, is the topic of “Life Everlasting.” It is under Q&A 58 that the catechism deals with the nature of man’s life in eternity or his ultimate end and happiness. The catechism asks the question, “How does the article concerning ‘life everlasting’ comfort you?” The answer: “Even as I already now experience in my heart the beginning of eternal joy, so after this life I will have perfect blessedness such as no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human heart has ever imagined: a blessedness in which to praise God forever.”
The catechism does not use the language of the “beatific vision” but rather uses the concepts of “eternal joy” and a “perfect blessedness” that no man can even begin to comprehend. Notice as well that the blessedness consists in praise and God as the object of that praise forever. God is the object of happiness. Examination of Zacharias Ursinus’ Commentary will further illuminate what is intended by the catechism.
Zacharias Ursinus
Ursinus makes a distinction in his commentary between the way that man has natural life and spiritual and eternal life. He defines natural life as “the existence or dwelling of the soul in a body which is animated, and the acting of a living being.” This natural life exists by “virtue of the union that exists between the body and the soul.” He then moves on to define eternal life as the “eternal being of man, regenerated and glorified, which will consist in having the image of God perfectly restored in him, as it was when he was first created, having perfect wisdom, righteousness, and happiness, or being endowed with the true knowledge and love of God, in connection with eternal joy.” For Ursinus, eternal life consists in knowing and loving God. He says that knowing and loving God belong properly to spiritual life and not to natural life, stating that “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.” Thus, for Ursinus, natural life consists in the union of soul and body and eternal life consists in the union of body and soul with God.
For Ursinus, the union between God and man comes about by “the eternal habitation of God in the faithful through the Holy Spirit; in a true and perfect knowledge of God, and of his works and will, kindled in the heart immediately by the same Spirit.” The Spirit is the bond of union between God and man, which leads to a true and perfect knowledge of God. This knowledge of God, for Ursinus, does not consist in knowing God through means, but rather consists in the beatific vision, stating that, “we shall attain in the resurrection of our bodies, when we shall ascend into heaven perfectly redeemed and glorified, and see God as he is, face to face.” For Ursinus and the Heidelberg Catechism, the beatific vision is essential to what it means to experience eternal life.
Synopsis of a Purer Theology
The disputations on theology known compiled as the Synopsis of Purer Theology and held at the University of Leiden following the Synod of Dort (1619), shed further light on the Dutch teaching of the beatific vision. Disputation 52 is where the discussion on the nature of eternal life is found. The presentation of this disputation was given by Antonius Walaeus.
Walaeus begins his discussion on the doctrine of eternal life by distinguishing between two modes of fellowship with God, faith in this life and sight in the next. He states that it is by sight that ultimate fulfillment and blessedness are obtained. This sight can be regarded solely as in the soul (in the intermediate state) or in the resurrection and union of both body and soul (in glory). For Walaeus, then, the perfect blessedness of man consists in the beholding of God in full. What does this beholding God in full consist of for Walaeus? First, Walaeus affirms that man will indeed see God, in a sense with his physical eyes, as God illuminates them to see certain signs of his majesty, similar to the way God revealed himself to Moses, but chiefly in the glorified human nature of Jesus Christ.
Will this vision be limited to physical eyes? Walaeus answers in the negative. For Walaeus, the very essence of the highest good and enjoyment of man consists in the soul and not in the body because the spiritual essence of God is not visible to bodily eyes. Thus, Walaeus affirms that man will indeed see the essence of God with his intellect. In his treatment of how this is the case, Walaeus gives a caution to guard against ‘vain speculation’ and desires only to say what Scripture and sound reasoning conclude on this topic.
Walaeus is convinced that man will indeed see God because 1) Scripture clearly teaches it and 2) sound reasoning says that no created thing can be our highest good. This means that, for Walaeus, we do not see God through some abstract or express image of Himself but rather through His essence. The essence of God is then the object of the beatific vision as an object with nothing else to intervene. Walaeus says that this vision is only possible by a supernatural capacity added to man known as the “light of glory,” which is similar to the way that man needs a supernatural light to have faith in this life.
Walaeus then deals with an objection that to apprehend the mind of the infinite, one must be infinite. He says that the incarnation of Christ proves the fact that the infinite can be united to the finite and that it is not against nature to say that man can apprehend the essence of God by a beatific vision in the mode of a finite creature. The ultimate end and happiness of man consists in an immediate vision of God with the intellect and a vision of the glorified human nature of Christ with the bodily eyes.
Herman Bavinck
The eschatology of Herman Bavinck has received no little attention in recent scholarship. There are two common beliefs that pervade the conversation on his eschatology. The first narrative, promoted by Hans Boersma, accuses Bavinck of what is known as “eschatological naturalism.” He says that “Bavinck was simply too much interested in the hustle and bustle of human activity in the hereafter to give any real thought to a positive articulation of the beatific vision.” The other narrative on Bavinck is promoted by Gray Sutanto, in which he limits the extent of the beatific vision for Bavinck to beholding God in the face of Jesus Christ.
There is another option. The position that Herman Bavinck held was not one marked by “eschatological naturalism” nor was it limited by a vision of God in the human nature of Christ. Rather, it was a traditional affirmation of the beatific vision as the highest and greatest good of man by which man beholds God with the soul in an immediate and direct vision under a finite mode.
Bavinck discusses the beatific vision in two distinct places in his Reformed Dogmatics. The first conversation is found in his section on a critique of supernaturalism. In this section, Bavinck takes aim at what he sees as the Roman Catholic view of the donum superadditum. It is in conversation with this perceived Roman Catholic view that he begins to discuss the idea of the beatific vision. He begins by qualifying that if we are to see God at all, it is not with the physical eye but with the eye of the soul. This is important to note because here we have an affirmation from Bavinck that there is in some sense a vision of God that man has with his soul. He claims that some Reformed thinkers considered an essential vision of God not impossible, but that most of them dodged the question. Bavinck himself seems to deny a vision “as to the essence” when he says that “the vision of God cannot be ‘with respect to essence’ either.”
In order to properly understand Bavinck on the beatific vision, it is fundamental to understand what he means by a vision of God “with respect to essence.” This is important because this is what he is attempting to deny. Bavinck expands on what he means by this phrase by saying that a vision of God “with respect to essence” is the same thing as espousing a comprehensive vision of God. Thus, for Bavinck, by saying he denies that man can have a vision of God “with respect to essence,” he is denying that man can have a comprehensive understanding of God.
In other words, Bavinck is not denying that man will see God with the soul via the intellect, but rather he is denying that this vision of God will be a comprehensive vision. He makes this explicit by stating that man can indeed have a vision in which the object of the vision is the infinite God in a finite mode. “Humanity’s blessedness indeed lies in the ‘beatific vision of God,’ but this vision will always be such that a finite and limited human nature is capable of it.” Man cannot see God in an infinite mode but does indeed see God with the intellect in his soul.
Later in the Dogmatics, Bavinck deals with the relationship between material blessings and spiritual blessings in the new creation. He critiques the “pagans” who make the physical the chief component of future blessedness and the Stoics who regard the physical as indifferent in their view of future blessedness. Yet, contra Boarsma, Bavinck affirms that spiritual blessings are more important and numerically abundant. One of the spiritual blessings that Bavinck mentions is the “vision of God and Christ.” This prompts him to discuss the doctrine of the beatific vision more properly. Bavinck again denies the contemplation of God in a “Catholic sense.” For Bavinck, the state of glory consists in the natural man unfolded by grace to its highest degree and not in a divinization of man as commonly understood.
Bavinck goes on in his articulation of the beatific vision to say that the blessedness of man in the state of glory will be far greater than his blessedness in the state of grace because man will be free from sin and fellowship with God will not be interrupted by any distance not mediated by Scripture or nature. There will be nothing mediating the presence of God to man; he will see God in an immediate sense. This vision of God, for Bavinck, consists in contemplation (visio), understanding (comprehensio), and enjoyment of God (fruitio Dei). This vision, according to Bavinck, will not be with the physical eyes but with the eyes of the soul in which man will see God directly, immediately, unambiguously, and purely, yet not comprehensively. That is, to the extent that a finite creature is able yet in all fullness according to the capacity of finitude.
Bavinck’s understanding of the beatific vision then is neither naturalistic, as Boersma claimed, nor mediated, as Sutanto suggests. Bavinck explicitly affirms that man will see God in an immediate and direct sense. Bavinck denies that man will see God in a comprehensive and infinite mode, but he affirms that man will indeed see God via the powers of his soul immediately.
The Dutch Reformed, from Ursinus to Bavinck, viewed the beatific vision as the highest and greatest good of man. They saw the chief part of this delight of man as consisting in the intellectual vision of the soul in an immediate and direct grasping of the essence of God. While the vision of God with the soul was the chief and highest good of man for the Dutch Reformed, it was also accompanied by a vision of the glorified human nature of Christ with enlightened physical eyes. This meant that man’s blessedness was a complete blessedness. In other words, man would be blessed in both body and soul, in both intellect and eyes. It was in this end that they sought their ultimate and true happiness.
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