Recent discourse on the beatific vision has centered around the specific object of the blessed hope. Is it a vision of God’s essence? Or is it a vision of Christ’s glory? The text of 1 John 3:2 is widely discussed in support of the overall doctrine, but salient features of the text’s grammar warrant further attention. Most importantly, commentators are divided on the referent of the personal pronoun in the clause: “for we shall see him as he is.” Is the pronoun referring to God or to Christ? Moreover, does the qualifying clause, “as he is,” refer to God in himself or the glorified Christ? The ambiguity surrounding John’s use of the personal pronoun accounts for one of the greatest interpretive challenges of John’s epistle. There are at least twenty-one disputed cases where the referent can be identified as either God, the Father, or the Son. In fact, 1 John 2:28–3:3 contains the highest concentration of such cases in dispute.
This paper proposes a trinitarian reading of 1 John 3:2 that accounts for John’s theological grammar in his use of αὐτός. Building upon the construction in 2:29 (“born of him”), I will argue that the clause in 3:2 should also be examined as a case of trinitarian exegesis and that the personal pronoun more properly refers to God. The “revealing” of “what we will be” is appropriately understood as an act of God’s unity. The use of αὐτός in this instance is juxtaposed with the use of ἐκεῖνος in the following sentence as a reference to the Son (“just as he is pure”). This reading supports the view that the proper object of the beatific vision is the divine essence without excluding the centrality of the Son’s incarnation and glorification.