Visio beatifica or the union of divine essence with the created intellect in Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

The vision of divine essence constitutes for intellectual creature the culmination of his deification initiated in baptism. According to Aquinas, the blessed contemplates God without any intermediary insomuch as the divine essence acts as a impressed and expressed species. No created intellect is naturally enabled to see God, but it can be obediently elevated to this vision owing to the immateriality of its intellect. The intellectual faculty created must be comforted by the habit of lumen gloriae to adapt to the supernaturality of the beatific act. The beatific vision eminently implies a speculative and affective knowledge, fulfilling and overflowing all the faculties of the blessed.