La visión beatífica como realidad trinitaria

Abstract

In considering the Trinitarian content of our elevation to the supernatural order, the beatific vision occupies a privileged place, in so far as, alongside the act of charity, it constitutes the act by which we attain perfect participation in divine Life. For a variety of reasons, however, it has normally been studied outside this context, and, in the practice, the Trinitarian content has been reduced simply to the Trinitarian reality of the object -that is God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit-, without any exact reference to the way it is structured; for this reason, the beatific vision in Verbo has normally been seen as an appropriation, without any need for saying that the divine Word exercises any proper mediation in the act of vision. Tbe consideration of the divine Word as the means in quo, the medium by which inter-trinitarian relations are structured as relations of interpersonal knowledge -in so far as he alone is the Deus-intellectus of the Trinity- allows us to show how the beatific vision has the divine Word itself as its immanent term -in such a way that it is participated per operationem-, and in Him is structured the knowledge relationship of the blessed, the term of which is the three divine Persons. In this way, the beatific vision -just as with the entire supernatural elevation- brings with it a triple donation on God's part, structured on a triple mode of participation: the donation of the lumen gloriae, participation per similitudinem in the divine intelligence as such; the donation of the divine Word itself, which is participated per operationem as the immanent term of the act of vision, because of which it is said that he is sent by who are participated per operationem as the object of interpersonal knowledge.