Abstract
In Did the Saviour See the Father?, Gaine rigorously defends the theological significance of the doctrinal claim that Christ enjoyed, throughout his earthly life, the eschatological vision of the divine essence promised to the saints, which is otherwise known as the beatific vision. This book reflects Gaine’s deep grasp of Catholic thought and its tradition of theological interpretation. Additionally, the meticulous development of his argument means that students should find Gaine’s work accessible while the layers of original thought should keep even the most senior scholar engaged.
Each chapter of this study is structured around a particular objection to the thesis of Christ’s earthly beatific vision. Gaine spends the first four chapters responding to broader interpretative and theological criticisms of this thesis. Chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate Gaine’s tremendous interpretative prowess as he establishes the hermeneutical validity of Christ’s earthly beatific vision from both Scripture and tradition by skilfully parsing various references from these sources that implicitly support the theological conclusion that Christ possessed an earthly vision of the divine essence. It is notable that in chapter 3, in addition to examining works from many prominent Church fathers, Gaine devotes space to some important, but often overlooked, late patristic era and early medieval thinkers, such as Fulgentius of Ruspe and the English monk nicknamed Candidus. Gaine concludes Part I of his study in the fourth chapter, where he employs the methodological practice known as ‘the analogy of faith’ to clarify the theological validity of Christ’s earthly beatific vision by reflecting on the nature Christ’s earthly life from the perspective of the eschatological or eternal life promised to the saints. In the second part of this study, Gaine turns to various explicitly Christological objections levied against his argument for Christ’s earthly beatific vision. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 address criticisms based on differing notions of intellect and will as they relate to questions about the nature of faith, the limitations of Christ’s knowledge and his freedom. The eighth and final chapter directly addresses the soteriological implications of Christ’s earthly beatific vision by arguing, in the spirit of Thomas Aquinas, that the interpretation of Scripture’s description of Christ’s salvific sacrifice on the cross is profoundly enhanced by a vision of Christ as humanity’s Saviour, who embraces all in charity through his vision of the Father.
While this book is clearly an attempt to recover theologically Aquinas’s theory of Christ’s earthly beatific vision, it is far from a mere repetition of his position, which is not really substantively discussed until chapter 4. Instead, Gaine’s mastery of Aquinas’s thought is seen in the approach he adopts to the question of Christ’s earthly beatific vision. Gaine approaches this question through interpretations of Christ’s life offered by Church fathers, Aquinas and many others in order to strengthen theologically the Church’s understanding of the Saviour and his work of redemption. Consequently, one of the greatest strengths in Gaine’s work is his attention to the standards of discourse determined by each discipline he engages, whether it be biblical, historical or theological. What Gaine has accomplished here is truly a model of theological research.