WHAT MAKES HEAVEN, HEAVEN? Christianity’s resounding answer to that question throughout the centuries has been the beatific vision. This is no exaggeration. In fact, the beatific vision is one of the few doctrines that can truly boast ecumenical status; it is not the exclusive doctrine of Eastern Orthodoxy, nor Roman Catholicism, nor Protestantism—the beatific vision is the blessed hope of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. This is not to suggest that each of these traditions has no unique contribution to make. As we will see in this book, there are variations of how the beatific vision is articulated within the various rooms of mere Christianity’s house (to use C. S. Lewis’s analogy).1 But for all its variegated formulations to the precise nature of the beatific vision, Christian tradition speaks in unison when it declares that the hope of heaven is the blessed vision of God. The overwhelming majority of Christians throughout the ages have said with Paul, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor 13:12).2 What makes heaven, heaven is that there we shall see the face of God. That blessed vision is the culmination of all our godly enjoyments in this life and the satiation of all our desire. That blessed vision is the Promised Land we march on toward, and the consolation that sustains us on our pilgrimage. We shall see God. While Christians have many desires and aspirations, the central point of every single one of them is the same as David’s: “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple” (Ps 27:4).

In this sense, the book you hold in your hand is a (small “c”) catholic book. My prayer is that the majority of what I write here will elicit a hearty “amen” from all Christians. In another sense, however, it has a narrower focus. I write as a Reformed evangelical, and it is other Reformed evangelicals I particularly address.3 This is fitting, in part, because the widespread Christian consensus on the beatific vision I describe here is only true if we use the wide-angled lens of two millennia. If our focus is on the past couple hundred years of evangelicalism, and indeed, the status quo over the past couple of decades, we will find a conspicuous absence of discussion on beatific vision. There are many reasons for this, and we shall address them in due course (particularly in chap. 5), but here we must simply acknowledge that the beatific vision is bound to be a new doctrine for many an evangelical. So, while this book is broad in the sense that I hope to retrieve a catholic doctrine that has enjoyed far-reaching consensus for the majority of the church’s history, it is narrow in the sense that I hope to apply it in the particular context of Protestant and Reformed evangelicalism. This will simultaneously allow for us evangelicals to remember our catholic heritage, while also contributing to that catholic tradition by connecting the beatific vision with our theological distinctives (particularly, our soteriological distinctives).

In this present chapter, I will develop the theological foundations that support the beatific vision, as well as lay out the broad contours of the doctrine itself. As a final word of preface, it is worth mentioning that while evangelicals (particularly of the Reformed variety like myself) may be unfamiliar with the doctrine of the beatific vision consciously speaking, they are probably already primed and ready to embrace it. In fact, they may even believe it without knowing as much. “Christian hedonists” who have learned from John Piper that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him”—those who have come to agree with Piper that the chief delight of the soul is “seeing and savoring Christ”—are ready to embrace the beatific vision.4 If one has learned from C. S. Lewis to ache for “the stab of joy,”5 to reject playing with mud-pies in the slums for the sake of a holiday at sea,6 and to go joyfully “further up and further in” to Aslan’s country forever,7 one is ready to embrace the beatific vision. If one has learned from Jonathan Edwards that heaven is “a world of love,” one is ready to embrace the beatific vision.8 If one has learned to pray with Augustine, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee,”9 one is ready for the beatific vision. All of these lessons that so many Reformed evangelicals have learned traffic in the blessed hope of the beatific vision. They may therefore proceed in confidence.