The problem of the "face-to-face vision" and the patristic tradition of Byzantium

This article by Vladimir Lossky, initially published in *Studia Patristica* in 1957, examines the theological problem of the vision of God "face to face" in the Byzantine patristic tradition. Proceeding through a historical and doctrinal study, Lossky first traces the scholastic controversy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, opened by Gabriel Vasquez, who accused many Greek Fathers of having denied the possibility of a direct vision of the divine essence. The article demonstrates the failure of attempts at reconciliation between patristics and scholasticism in Suarez, Ruiz de Montoya, and Petau. Lossky then identifies five doctrinal axes specific to the Greek tradition — theological epistemology, uncreated divine light, Christology, pneumatology and deification, Transfiguration — which make it possible to understand the beatific vision without resorting to scholastic categories, and thus rehabilitate the coherence of Byzantine theology, including that of Gregory Palamas.