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Thomas Aquinas and John Owen on the beatific vision: A Reply to Suzanne McDonald

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Simon Francis Gaine OP
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Abstract

It has been shown that the thirteenth-century Dominican friar, St Thomas Aquinas, was an important theological influence on John Owen, the seventeenth-century English puritan theologian, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, especially in the areas of the divine being, grace and Chalcedonian Christology. Suzanne McDonald has argued that, while Aquinas is unmistakably a source for Owen's doctrine of the beatific vision, Owen surpassed Aquinas's doctrine in a manner she judges to be correct, theologically speaking, and which exposes the deficiency of Aquinas's account. Owen achieved this particular ‘Reforming’ or rather ‘re-forming’ of Aquinas's doctrine, she argues, by way of a ‘Christological re-orientation of the doctrine’ in terms of what is seen in the beatific vision and how it is seen, that is, its content and means. This article replies to McDonald from a Catholic and Thomist perspective, in response to her suggestion that Owen's account of the beatific vision opens up possibilities for ecumenical dialogue. The article attempts to achieve this first by reassessing the Christological contrasts McDonald draws between Owen and Aquinas in terms of content and means, and then by offering several suggestions as to why one might want to prefer Aquinas's account over Owen's.

Keywords

John OwenThomas Aquinasbeatific visionChristocentricheaven
Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 97 , Issue 1070 , July 2016 , pp. 432 - 446
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 The Dominican Council. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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References

1 Cleveland, Christopher, Thomism in John Owen (London: Routledge, 2013)Google Scholar. See also Rehnman, Sebastian, Divine Discourse: The Theological Methodology of John Owen (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), pp. 32-9Google Scholar; and Trueman, Carl R., John Owen: Reformed, Catholic, Renaissance Man (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 9-12Google Scholar.

2 ‘Beatific vision’ was not in fact a term used by Aquinas, who preferred ‘blessed vision’ (visio beata). For his part Owen spoke of the ‘beatifical vision’.

3 McDonald, Suzanne, ‘Beholding the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ: John Owen and the “Reforming” of the Beatific Vision’ in Kapic, Kelly M. and Jones, Mark, The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen's Theology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 141-58, esp. 144-45, 157Google Scholar. For another account of Owen on the beatific vision, see Strobel, Kyle C., Jonathan Edwards's Theology: A Reinterpretation (London etc.: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 126-30Google Scholar. Though Strobel does not consider Aquinas directly, he endorses McDonald's conclusions (p. 126, n.96). For Aquinas's eschatology, see Leget, Carlo, Living with God: Thomas Aquinas on the Relation between Life on Earth and ‘Life’ after Death (Leuven: Peeters, 1997)Google Scholar; Kromholtz, Bryan, On the Last Day: The Time of the Resurrection of the Dead according to Thomas Aquinas (Fribourg: Academic, 2010)Google Scholar; Levering, Matthew, Jesus and the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife, and the Fate of the Christian (Waco, Texas: Baylor, 2012)Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 158.

5 Gould, William H. (ed.), The Works of John Owen (24 vols.; London: Johnstone and Hunter), vol. 1, pp. 275-415Google Scholar. See also Owen's Christologia in ibid., pp. 1-272.

6 ‘Beholding’, p. 153.

7 Rahner, Karl, ‘The Eternal Significance of the Humanity of Jesus for our Relationship with God’, in Rahner, , Theological Investigations, vol. 3: The Theology of the Spiritual Life (London: Darton, Longman and Todd; Baltimore: Helicon, 1967), pp. 35-46Google Scholar (37-38).

8 ‘Beholding’, pp. 150-54.

9 ‘Ibid., p. 153.

10 Ibid., p. 154.

11 Ibid.

12 Summa Theologiae, 1.2.proem.

13 See Ibid., 3.59.proem.

14 Ibid., 3.56.

15 Ibid., 3.60.proem.

16 Ibid., 3.9.2; 10. For a contemporary argument in favour of a Thomist position in Catholic theology on Christ's beatific vision, see my Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation and the Vision of God (London etc.: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015).

17 ‘Beholding’, p. 150.

18 Ibid., p. 146.

19 Ibid., pp. 146-7.

20 Ibid., p. 145.

21 Ibid., p. 150.

22 See Summa, 1.12; 1-2.3.8.

23 ‘Beholding’, p. 150, n.27, citing Meditations, pp. 386-87.

24 Compendium Theologiae seu brevis compilatio theologiae ad fratrem Raunaldum, 1.2.

25 Summa, 3.10.2.

26 Ibid., 1-2.4.5.

27 E.g., In Sent., 4.48.2.1, 49.2.2 ad 6.

28 Summa, 1-2.3.3-4; 4.1; 4.6.

29 In Sent., 4.44.2.1.3-4, 49.2.2; Summa contra Gentiles, 4.86.4.

30 Summa, 1.19.2-3. See my Will There Be Free Will in Heaven? Freedom, Impeccability and Beatitude (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2003), pp. 132-6.

31 In Sent., 4.44.2.1.3 ad 4.

32 On the Last Day, p. 463.

33 In Sent., 4.48.2.1.

34 Meditations, p. 292.

35 Summa, 1.12; 14.2; Contra Gentiles, 3.51-4.

36 Ibid., 3.7-8. For a good exposition of Christ's Headship in relation to grace, see Daria Spezzano, The Glory of God's Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Ave Maria FL: Sapientia, 2015), pp. 152-210.

37 Summa, 1.12.5; Contra Gentiles, 3.53-4. For solutions to difficulties in Aquinas's theory, see Michael Waddell, ‘Aquinas on the Light of Glory’, Tópicos 40 (2011), pp. 105-32.

38 Cf. Summa, 3.1.2; 3.9.2.

39 Denzinger, Heinrich, Hünermann, Peter, Fastiggi, Robert and Nash, Anne Englund, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationem de rebus fidei et morum, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals (San Francisco: Ignatius, 43rd edn, 2012), para. 1000Google Scholar.

40 E.g., Meditations, pp. 413-4. See also Christologia, pp. 235-72.

41 Owen denies that there is such a ‘glass’ through which Christ is seen, making the vision of Christ, though not that of the divine essence, immediate. See ibid., pp. 406-7. For the role of a glass in faith, see pp. 376-7.

42 E.g., Turretin, Francis, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (3 vols.; Phillipsburg NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992-7), vol. 3, p. 611Google Scholar, who allows an immediate vision of the divine essence as a possible, though not more probable, opinion.

43 ‘Beholding’, pp. 411-2.

44 On the scholastic controversies, see Trottmann, Christian, La Vision Béatifique: Des disputes scolastiques à sa définition par Benoît XII (Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d'Athenès et de Rome, 289; Rome: École Française, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Institutes, vol. 1, p. 488.

46 Summa, 2-2.52.3.

47 ‘Beholding’, p. 155.

48 Cf. Summa, 1-2.4.5 ad 4.

49 ‘Beholding’, p. 152.

50 Ibid., p. 146, citing Meditations, p. 294.

51 Ibid., pp. 156-7.

52 Meditations, p. 412.

53 DH 1001.

54 E.g., Augustine of Hippo, De Doctrina Christiana, 1.39.43.

55 Meditations, pp.374-415, esp. p. 412.

56 Gaine, Did the Saviour See the Father?, pp. 117-23.

57 The influence here may be more Scotist than Thomist. See Muller, Richard A., Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, vol. 1: Prolegomena to Theology (2nd edn; Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2003), p. 250Google Scholar.

58 Meditations, p. 292.

59 Summa, 1.12.7.

60 ‘Beholding’, p. 156.

61 Summa, 1.12.7 ad 1. For Turretin, Institutes, vol. 3, p. 611, the same principle of disproportion between infinite and finite does not refute immediate vision of the divine essence but merely places weight against it.

62 Augustine, Ep., 147.20-1; Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 3.18.92-3.

63 Summa, 1.12.7.

64 Meditations, p. 413.

65 Ibid., p. 414.

66 ‘Beholding’, p. 156.

67 Cf. Meditations, pp. 378-80, 405-10.

68 ‘Beholding’, pp. 158.

69 Ibid., pp. 142-3, 148-51.

70 Gaine, Did the Saviour See the Father?, pp. 26-32.

71 ‘Beholding’, p. 152, n.33.