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Aquinas at 800 – Papers from the 2024 Notre Dame Conference: Integrating the Various Human Dimensions into the Vision of God in Heaven Cover

Aquinas at 800 – Papers from the 2024 Notre Dame Conference: Integrating the Various Human Dimensions into the Vision of God in Heaven

By: Catalina Vial  
Open Access
|Dec 2025

Abstract

The beatific vision of God in heaven is at the heart of the Christian faith. Thomas Aquinas affirms that the principal faculty of the human person is the intellect, and that the vision of God will consist primarily in an intellectual operation. The emphasis that Aquinas places on the operation of the intellect could lead one to think that it is an overly intellectualistic conception of what our happiness in heaven will be. On the other hand, contemporary authors such as Hans Boersma point out that in the Thomistic doctrine of the beatific vision the corporeal dimension of the human person is of little relevance. The purpose of this article is to explain how the different dimensions of the human person -intellect, will and corporeality- are integrated in the vision of God in heaven according to Thomistic doctrine.

Language: English
Page range: 38 - 49
Submitted on: Nov 18, 2024
Accepted on: Mar 25, 2025
Published on: Dec 8, 2025
Published by: Thomas Institute of Utrecht
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2025 Catalina Vial, published by Thomas Institute of Utrecht
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.