In Christian theology, the beatific vision (Latin: visio beatifica) refers to the ultimate state of happiness that believers will experience when they see God face to face in heaven. It is the ultimate direct self-communication of God to the angel and person. A person or angel possessing the beatific vision reaches, as a member of the communion of saints, perfect salvation in its entirety, i.e., heaven. The notion of vision stresses the intellectual component of salvation, i.e., the immediate contemplation of God, though it encompasses the whole of the experience of joy, with happiness coming from seeing God finally face to face and not imperfectly through faith. (1 Cor 13:11–12).
It is related to the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox belief in theosis, the Wesleyan notion of Christian perfection, and is seen in most church denominations as the reward for Christians in the afterlife.
In Islamic theology, those who die as believers and enter Jannah will be given the vision of Allah.
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Etymology
"Beatific" is derived from the Latin past participle beatificum, made happy. "Vision" comes from the Latin noun visio, sight; so beatifica visio is 'a sight that makes one happy'.
Judaism
According to Rashi, the face of God is twofold: God's care for Israel, and God's essence.
According to rabbinic literature, all the prophets of the Tanakh (Old Testament) saw God dimly, as if through nine glass windows - save for Moses, who saw God clearly, as if through one glass window ((Yeb. 49b; Lev. R. i. 14)).
Christianity
New Testament
According to the New Testament, Jesus teaches in the Beatitudes that the pure of heart will see God (Matthew 5:8) and that children's angels see the face of God the Father (Matthew 18:10). The Apostles teach that "[f]or now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12), that without holiness "no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14), and that God's people "will see his face" (Revelation 22:4).
History
In Christianity, the Bible states that God "dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has even seen or can see" (1 Timothy 6:16), but when God reveals himself to us in heaven we will then see him face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). This concept has been termed "the beatific vision of God" by theologians of the Catholic Church and later on by various Protestant denominations, including the Lutheran Church and the Methodist Church.
Cyprian wrote of the saved's seeing God in the Kingdom of Heaven.
How great will your glory and happiness be, to be allowed to see God, to be honored with sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ your Lord and God... to delight in the joy of immortality in the Kingdom of Heaven with the righteous and God's friends!
Edward A. Pace in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) defined the beatific vision:
The immediate knowledge of God which the angelic spirits and the souls of the just enjoy in Heaven. It is called "vision" to distinguish it from the mediate knowledge of God which the human mind may attain in the present life. And since in beholding God face to face the created intelligence finds perfect happiness, the vision is termed "beatific."
Methodist co-founder Charles Wesley, in his 1747 hymn "Maker, in Whom We Live", described union with God through the Holy Spirit as "beatific sight":
In the Catholic Church
The Church believes in the beatific vision because Jesus experienced it from His conception to ascension, taught about it and promised it, and makes Catholics foretaste it by faith.
Pope Benedict XII taught ex cathedra in his papal encyclical Benedictus Deus that the beatific vision happens immediately after death:
[I]mmediately after death ... all the saints ... have been, are and will be with Christ in heaven, in the heavenly kingdom and paradise, joined to the company of the holy angels ... these souls have seen and see the divine essense with an intuitive vision and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature by way of object of vision; rather the divine essence immediately manifests itself to them, plainly, clearly and openly, and in this vision they enjoy the divine essence. Moreover, by this vision and enjoyment the souls ... are truly blessed and have eternal life and rest ... Such a vision and enjoyment of the divine essence do away with the acts of faith and hope in these souls, inasmuch as faith and hope are properly theological virtues. And after such intuitive and face-to-face vision and enjoyment has or will have begun for these souls, the same vision and enjoyment has continued and will continue without any interruption and without end until the last Judgment and from then on forever.
According to the Roman Catechism, the saints in heaven see God, whereby they share in God's nature, wherewith they are truly and always happy. The catechism elaborates that the saints' happiness includes not just joy, but also glory (knowledge of one another's dignity), honor (reverence for one another as adopted sons of God), and peace (fulfillment of all the heart's desires). Moreover, the catechism adds, the beatific vision will, on Judgment Day, make the saints' resurrected bodies impassible (free from inconvenience, suffering, and death), bright as the angels, agile (free from the limitations of space-time), and subtle (as subject to the soul as the soul is subject to God).
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the beatific vision is God opening himself in an inexhaustible way to the saints, so that they can see him face to face, and thereby share in his nature, and therefore enjoy eternal, definitive, supreme, perfect, and ever new happiness. The catechism teaches that this happiness includes not just communion and perfect life with the Trinity and the saints, but also the fulfillment of all the heart's desires – including, on Judgment Day, the body being glorified, even endowed with impassibility, brightness, agility, and subtlety – and continual cooperation with God's will – including praying for all other people, even proffering one's merits to God for others' sake. The catechism elaborates that the beatific vision is a grace and a privilege intended for everyone to attain, and that the beatific vision is attained immediately after death – or after purgatory – yet it is already foretasted in baptism and in the eucharist. The catechism also teaches that the beatific vision is expressed in different ways in the New Testament: the kingdom of God, the vision of God, eternal life, divine adoption, a share in the divine nature, the joy of the Lord, and rest in God.
Islam
According to the Quran, on Judgment Day "some faces will be bright, looking towards their Lord" (75:22-23). Ala-Maududi comments that some commentators have understood this to mean that people will see their Lord in a way that does not resemble seeing physical and corporeal entities, and that as for himself, he believes "in the Hereafter the dwellers of Paradise will not see Allah in the specific form in which man sees something in the world, but their nature of seeing will be different."