Issue 28 - Ohh, Heaven is a Place On Earth
Randy Alcorn wrote a massive volume summarizing what the Bible says about Heaven, and also hypothesizing about what Heaven may be like - the aptly titled “Heaven.” His stated purpose was to help Christians be more excited about the life to come. He noted that he encountered many Christians who were ambivalent about the idea of Heaven, because they believed that it would be a disembodied, static boredom consisting of a never-ending worship service. He believes that this robs us of one of the key joys of the Christian walk - one that should help to sustain us in times of suffering, and encourage us in our day-to-day lives. By explicitly thinking about and longing for Heaven, we help to set our minds on God’s eternal kingdom, rather than our own, temporary ones that so frequently distract us.
While there are some things I would critique about the book, they really boil down to how much confidence he places in his conjectures about things the Bible doesn’t explicitly preclude. Overall, I thought he provided a lot of great information. There is too much detail to succinctly summarize in a single issue, but I did want to highlight several key takeaways that I hope help to clarify common misconceptions about Heaven. I also wanted to highlight a few of his insights about God’s nature - which I honestly thought were the most interesting and encouraging part of the book.
The idea of a dual human nature split between the soul and the body, with the soul as the “real” you, entered the Church through the influence of Plato, centuries after Christ’s death and resurrection. Likewise, most of the West adopted Plato’s viewpoint that the material world was lesser than the immaterial world. This has led to the popular conception that Heaven is purely immaterial and populated by immaterial beings.
However, the Bible makes clear that our physical body is an essential part of our humanity. As Randy notes, God created Adam’s body first and then breathed spirit into it - he did not create a soul and then give it a body. Moreover, he continues that “The point at which Adam became nephesh [a living being - Genesis 2:7] is when God joined his body (dust) and spirit (breath) together. Adam was not a living human being until he had both material (physical) and immaterial (spiritual) components. Thus the essence of humanity is not just spirit but spirit joined with body.”
The Bible also makes clear that the final state of God’s everlasting kingdom will be here on earth (Revelation 21) and that we will be in physical resurrection bodies when we live there (1 Corinthians 15).
The Bible implies that this “New Earth” will entail redemption of all of creation - not just our planet. Acts 3:21 and Mathew 19:28 refer to the renewal/restoration of all/every thing.
The Book of Revelation makes clear that the new creation is implemented when Christ returns - at which point all believers will live in this new creation - what Randy calls the “Final Heaven.” Believers who die before Christ’s return will reside in an “Intermediate Heaven” until the Final Heaven is in place. While it is unknown whether this intermediate Heaven is embodied, he points out that Enoch and Elijah were both brought to the intermediate Heaven without dying, and that the resurrected Jesus is currently there now, which suggests we may have some type of embodied state there as well.
A couple of random but interesting tidbits I picked up about Heaven:
Jesus uses the word “paradise” to describe Heaven to the thief on the cross, and it is a word we often associate with Heaven. Paradise does not refer to “untouched nature” but actually means “walled park/enclosed garden.” It originally referred to the Persian king’s royal garden. Thus, Randy summarizes, “[Paradise] does not refer to wild nature but nature under mankind’s dominion.”
I tend to think of Heaven as ‘the realm where God resides’ but that’s only partially correct. God resides there, but it’s not ‘the immaterial plane on which an immaterial God exists.’ Randy notes: “Only God is eternal and self-existent. All else is created. Heaven is not synonymous with God nor is it part of his essential being. Therefore God must have created Heaven. It is not a place where he must dwell but it is where he chooses to dwell. Because Heaven is a place where angels live, where finite beings come and go, it appears to be a finite environment, a specific location…Because God created Heaven, it had a beginning and is therefore neither timeless nor changeless.”
Randy pushes back against the idea that we shouldn’t look forward to pleasures in Heaven because God is the only pleasure that matters.
He points out that thinking about Heaven is a means to knowing God. By way of illustration he writes “Any bride in love with her husband wants to be with him more than anything. But if he goes away to build a beautiful place for her won’t she get excited about it? Won’t she think and talk about that place? Of course. Moreover he wants her to.”
Randy also reminds us that, while we are not to make pleasures our idols, the idea that Christians are called to be ascetics who shun all worldly pleasures is inconsistent with the blessings that God provides us. As he puts it: “God isn’t displeased when we enjoy a good meal, marital sex, a football game, a cozy fire, or a good book…this would be as foreign to God’s nature as Heavenly Father as it would be to mine as an earthly father if I gave my daughters a Christmas gift and started pouting because they enjoyed it too much. No, I gave the gift to bring joy to them and to me - if they didn’t take pleasure in it I’d be disappointed. Their pleasure in my gift to them draws them closer to me. I am delighted that they enjoy the gift.”
Arguably the most profound thing Randy highlights is the nature of the signposts that God gave us to demonstrate his relationship to us. He notes that God does not refer to himself as “Father” because that happened to be the closest analog to his relation to us. Rather, God created fatherhood specifically to serve as the representation of his relation to us. Similarly, God doesn’t point to marriage as signifying Jesus’ relation to the Church because it happened to be the nearest analog. God created marriage to be that signpost. This adds a layer of beauty to our human relationships that I did not appreciate before.