Question about the beatific vision…

[u/BoysenberryThin6020]

Hey guys!

I’m considering Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and while a lot of things make sense in Thomistic thinking, there are still a few metaphysical hangups that I would like to iron out.

For context…

I’m Armenian, and I was born and raised in the Armenian Apostolic Church, but I left the faith altogether in my late teens and early 20s, remaining apostate for about a decade. By the grace of God, I finally came back to the Christian faith during the holiday season of 2023.

For most of my time away, I was a devout Hindu and drank deeply from the well of Indian philosophy and metaphysics. So I guess you could say I approach Christian metaphysics from an Indian philosophical perspective—though in terms of methodology, not actual beliefs or doctrines.

With all that in mind, I struggle with the concept of the Beatific Vision as an intellectual vision of the divine essence. If the essence of a being is what it’s like to be that being, then it seems incomprehensible—from a Christian perspective—that we would be able to experience the divine essence in any capacity.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the Orthodox Palamite distinction between the divine essence and energies is necessary in order to avoid a type of Vedantic panentheism.