GYÖRGY GERÉBY, A Supremely Idle Question? Issues of the Beatific Vision Debate Between 1331–1336

SUMMARY

The beatific vision debate (1331–1336) presents two problems. First, what could have been the motivation of Pope John XXII for raising the issue? Second, why was his proposed theology of the delayed vision rejected nearly unanimously? This paper, after a summary of the debate, tries to answer these two questions. It appears that the Pope initiated the controversy in the name of a conservative theology reaching back past High Scholasticism to Patristic authors. It emerges that it was High Scholasticism that introduced a new interpretation of the vision, probably motivated by institutional and pastoral concerns. The universities’ program of “scientific theology” required reassurances of the truth of theological principles, while a delay of the rewards seemed to present difficulties for the theologically less educated believers. This change, however, came at the price of surrendering the concept of the communio sanctorum and the resurrection to an individualist eschatology and crypto-Platonic metaphysics of the soul.