| Topic: |
Religions > Bible |
| User: |
"Mike" |
| Date: |
22 Nov 2004 10:39:23 PM |
| Object: |
Twenty Questions About Heaven |
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Dreamed Of
Asking
Peter J. Kreeft
Twenty Questions About Heaven
1. Will We Know Everything in Heaven?
Of course not. Why would someone think that? There are two reasons,
and the first one is simply a confusion between Heaven and divinity.
We will remain human in Heaven, therefore finite, therefore our
knowledge will remain finite. True, we will share in divine life, but
this is just a share. In fact, we share in divine life now, if we are
reborn in Christ; our souls nurture a fetal Christ. But I have not
observed that fact generating omniscience in myself or any other.
When you come to think of it, knowing everything would be more like
Hell than Heaven for us. For one thing, we need progress and hope: we
need to look forward to knowing something new tomorrow` Mystery is our
mind's food. If we truly said, "I have seen everything,"[1] we would
conclude, as did the author of Ecclesiastes, "all is vanity."[2] For
another thing, the more knowledge, the more responsibility. [3] Only
omnipotence can bear the burden of omniscience; only God's shoulders
are strong enough to carry the burden of infinite knowledge without
losing the joy.
The second reason we may think our heavenly knowledge is infinite is
the theory that on earth we have already an access, a potency, for all
knowledge; that the brain is a "reducing valve," not a generator. [4]
Perhaps the Fall lowered the curtain between us and all truth, which
we now see "through a glass, darkly"; [5] and in Heaven the curtain
will rise again. Thus, the knowledge we now have is both a memory [6]
and a prophecy of Paradise.
But even if this theory is true it does not entail our omniscience
Even if there is no curtain in Heaven, even if our consciousness'
there dashes against no wall or limit, still we remain like the tiny
figures in a Chinese landscape: small objects in an enormously larger
objective world. Even if we then escape from the tiny but in which we
are now imprisoned and through whose smudged windows or chinks in hose
walls we now must look - even if we wander freely in the country of
light - we are in the light, not the light in us. Our first and last
wisdom in Heaven is Socratic, just as it is n earth: to know how
little we know. If there is no end of the need for humility in the
moral order (the saint is the one humble enough not to think he is a
saint), the same is true of the intellectual order (the wise man is
the one humble enough to know he has no wisdom). It all depends on the
standard of judgment: by earthly standards most of us are moderately
saintly and moderately wise; by heavenly standards all of us, even in
Heaven, are children. And by the standard of the infinite,
inexhaustible perfection of God, we main children forever. Happy
children, fulfilled children, but children.
Perhaps this will be one of the supreme tests: would we choose the
childlikeness of Heaven or the promise of "maturity" of "humanity come
of age" in Hell? Will we suffer sadly the blow and shock to our pride
that is Heaven's gift eternal childhood (thus eternal hope and
progress) or will e insist on the "successes" of "self-actualization"
that heaven denies us and Hell offers us? If the latter, we will find
despair instead of hope, ennui instead of creative work, and the
emptying out of all our joy. Jesus' teaching, "Unless unless you turn
and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven,"' is not something to be outgrown. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,
when asked which are the four most important virtues, replied,
"Humility, humility, humility, and humility." It is only the foolish
egotist who thinks that our smallness relative to the infinite riches
of objective reality is a problem to be overcome.
2. Will We All Be Equal in Heaven?
By God's grace, no! How awful that would be-almost as awful as knowing
everything. Having no heroes,' being unable to look up to anyone would
be Hell, not Heaven.
We modern egalitarians are tempted to the primal sin of pride in the
opposite way from the ancients. The old, aristocratic form of pride
was the desire to be better than others. The new, democratic form is
the desire not to have anyone better than yourself." It is just as
spiritually deadly and does not even carry with it the false pleasure
of gloating superiority. Flat, boring, repetitive sameness is simply
not the structure of reality in a theistic universe," either on earth
or in Heaven.
However, in Heaven, as on earth, each of us will be or do something no
one else will be or do as well. No one will be superfluous.
If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should
have created more souls than one .... Your soul has a curious shape
because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the
infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of
the doors in the house with many mansions . . . each of the redeemed
shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty
better than any other creature can."
God's justice is not ours. It surprises ours in a double way. On the
one hand, the one-hour workers receive the same pay as the all-day
workers, in Christ's parable." "He has put the mighty from their
thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry
with good things, and he rich he has sent empty away."1' "Every valley
shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.'",
But on the other hand, to him who already has, more will be given and
"from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away."" Human
justice is outraged by both halves of Christ's paradoxical justice.
Justice does not mean equality. In a poem, in the universe in
mathematics, in architecture-everywhere there is natural justice,
justice means inequality, yin and yang, male and female, higher and
lower, East and West, light and darkness land and water. No flat, dull
repetition but uniqueness In human relationships too, justice does not
mean equality, but treating equals equally and unequals unequal." Is
it just to treat a pig like a man? If so, it is also just to treat a
man like a pig. One of the astonishing blind spots of modernity is its
unquestioning fixation on equality.
Of course there are degrees of perfection in Heaven; it is quite the
divine style. There are degrees of perfection in everything God
created (though not in everything we create).
Equality is a man-made legal fiction designed as a wall defense
against tyranny, a medicine against a disease.
We must all be guarded by equal rights from one another's greed,
because we are fallen. just as we must all wear clothes the same
reason. But the naked body should be there underneath the clothes,
ripening for the day when we shall need m no longer. Equality is not
the deepest thing, you know."
'I always thought that was just what it was. I thought it was heir
souls that people were equal."
"You were mistaken .... That is the last place where they are equal.
Equality before the law, equality of incomes-that is all very well.
Equality guards life; it doesn't make it. It is medicine, not food . .
..
"But surely in marriage . . . ?"
"Worse and worse .... Courtship knows nothing of it; nor does fruition
..... It is not your fault. They never warned you. No one has ever told
you that obedience-humility-is an erotic necessity." [18]
Why is there no jealousy in this hierarchical, aristocratic,
non-egalitarian Heaven of authority and obedience? Because all are
cells in the same body. The kidney does not rebel because it is not
the eye." Jealousy is the principle of Hell. There is no Hell in
Heaven.
3. Do the Blessed in Heaven See Us Now?
The living often say they feel the dead present and watching them. Is
this illusion or fact?
It is fact. The Bible says we are surrounded by "a great cloud of
witnesses." [20] The context is speaking of the dead. They are alive.
For God is "not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live for
him."[21]
Reason confirms revelation here. Does their love for us cease? Does it
not rather increase in purity and power? And does not their vision and
understanding also increase?
"The Communion of Saints" means not only (1) love and understanding
among the blessed in Heaven and (2) love and understanding among the
redeemed on earth but also (3) love and understanding between those
two groups, the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant, temporarily
separated by death. [22]
What difference does this make? Well, what difference does it make to
you if you believe you are being watched by a thousand living human
eyes? Multiply this consequence by millions and by the increase in
love and understanding in Heaven. Throw in literally innumerable
angels, [23] all of them sharing mightily in God's love and knowledge.
Then you have the difference it makes: the exponent of infinity.
The link connecting the Church Militant with the Church Triumphant,
the link, connecting Heaven and earth, the incarnate Christ. We
participate in what Christ does, and Christ links Heaven and earth. He
is still on earth as ,yell as in Heaven (1) by His Spirit and (2) in
His Mystical Body, the Church, His people. Christianity does not
worship, an absent Christ. And just as He can be on earth even when He
has gone to Heaven, so can we - in Him. The cells in lie one Body are
all living cells, but only a very few of them are living on earth.
4. Do Ghosts Come from Heaven?
First of all, Scripture strictly forbids us to call them up [24] as
Saul called up the ghost of the prophet Samuel by means of lie Witch
of Endor's necromancy. Because of this deed, he lost his kingdom and
perhaps his soul. [25]
The reason for the stricture is probably protection against he danger
of deception by evil spirits. We are out of our depth, our knowledge,
and our control once we open the doors to the supernatural. The' only
openings that are safe or us are the ones God has approved:
revelation, prayer, His own miracles, sacraments, and primarily Christ
Himself. He has made a straight and safe road for us from earth to
heaven, through the dark woods of the innumerable, unknowable and
unpredictable spiritual forces that are to us as fire to an infant or
a juggernaut to an ant. The danger is not physical but spiritual, and
spiritual danger always centers on deception. The Devil is "a liar and
the father of lies." [26] He disguises himself "as an angel of light.
[27]
Nevertheless, without our action or invitation, the dead often do
appear to the living. There is enormous evidence of 'hosts" in all
cultures. What are we to make of them? Surely we should not classify
the appearances of the wives of C.S. Lewis and Sheldon Vanauken, just
to take two Christian examples, as demonic?
We can distinguish three kinds of ghosts, I believe.
First, the most familiar kind: the sad ones, the wispy ones. They seem
to be working out some unfinished earthly business, or suffering some
purgatorial purification until released from their earthly business.
[28] These ghosts would seem to be the ones who just barely made it to
Purgatory, who feel little or no joy yet and who need to learn many
painful lessons about their past lives on earth.
Second, there are malicious and deceptive spirits-and since they are
deceptive, they hardly ever appear malicious. These are probably the
ones who respond to conjurings at séances. They probably come from
Hell. Even the chance of that happening should be sufficient to
terrify away all temptation to necromancy.
Third, there are the bright, happy spirits of dead friends and family,
especially spouses, who appear unbidden, at God's will, not ours, with
messages of hope and love. They seem to come from Heaven. Unlike the
purgatorial ghosts who come back primarily for their own sakes, these
bright spirits come back for the sake of us the living, to tell us all
is well. They are aped by evil spirits who say the same, who speak
"peace, peace, when there is no peace." [29] But deception works only
one way: the fake can deceive by appearing genuine, but the genuine
never deceives by appearing fake. Heavenly spirits always convince us
that they are genuinely good.
Even the bright spirits appear ghostlike to us because a ghost of any
type is one whose substance does not belong in or come from this
world. In Heaven these spirits are not ghosts but real, solid, and
substantial because they are at home there. "One can't be a ghost in
one's own country. [30]
That there are all three kinds of ghosts is enormously likely. Even
taking into account our penchant to deceive and to be deceived, our
credulity and our fakery, there remain so many trustworthy accounts of
all three types of ghosts; trustworthy by every ordinary empirical and
psychological standards-that only a dogmatic a priori prejudice
against em could prevent us from believing they exist. [31] As
Chesterton says, "We believe an old apple-woman when she says she ate
an apple; but when she says she saw a ghost we say, pity she's only an
old apple-woman." [32] A most undemocratic and unscientific prejudice.
5. Will We Have Emotions in Heaven?
Emotions move us; we do not move them. They are a m of passivity. We
will be far more active in Heaven . :. in we ever were before, since
our spirits (which are activity) will rule rather than being ruled by
our bodies (which are passivity). Nevertheless, we will have bodies,
therefore passivity, therefore emotions, though they will not be at
the unfree whim of heredity, environment, animal instinct, propaganda,
others' demands, and the many other forces that presently condition
us.
Even when our spirits are perfectly free, they can feel. Even now, it
is the spirit that feels, not just the body. It is a prejudice
imported from Greek philosophy, not a notion found in Scripture, that
feelings should be dominated by rational thought. The center of the
self, which the Greeks located in reason, [33] Scripture locates in
the "heart," that which loves. This center is no more a feeling than
it is thinking; it is the pre-functional root of both, [34] or it is a
deeper feeling and a deeper thinking: "the heart has its reasons which
the reason does not know." [35]
But since our thinking and our feeling are equal functions of the
heart, we will retain our feeling in Heaven just as we will retain our
thinking. All our humanity is perfected, not diminished, in Heaven.
6. Will We Feel Sorrow in Heaven for Those in Hell?
We seem to face a dilemma here. On the one hand, Scripture assures us
that "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall
be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be
any more pain: for the former things are passed away."36
On the other hand, the blessed dead seem sometimes to manifest sorrow,
like Mary at LaSallette, weeping for the sins of the world." And C. S.
Lewis says, "as there may be pleasures in Hell (God shield us from
them), there may be something not all unlike pains in Heaven (God
grant us soon to taste them)."38 What could this mean?
Might it be that the sorrow appears only during our first, purgatorial
stage? At this point the pains of separation may affect not only the
earthly bereaved lover but also the heavenly beloved. As Lewis says,
"I can't help suspecting the dead also feel the pains of separation
(and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings)."39 But this
would not explain the tears of Mary, who is certainly beyond
Purgatory.
Might it be that the sorrow is only an appearance, like angels'
bodies, put on for our sake? But the purpose of appearance should be
to teach, not to deceive, if the appearance comes from Heaven.
To solve this problem let us look at the greatest suffering, that
which is made possible by love. The more you love, the more you can
suffer. That fact creates the following problem: Does God the Father
suffer? The affirmative answer to that question has been declared a
heresy (Patripassianism); [40] yet how can God love us, and remain
aloof and invulnerable? As Kierkegaard says, the unhappiness that
comes from the inability of lovers to understand each other "is
infinitely more profound than that [unhappiness] of which men commonly
speak, since it strikes at the very heart of love .... This infinitely
deeper grief is essentially the prerogative of the superior . . . in
reality, it belongs to God alone .... Men sometimes think that this
might be a matter of indifference to God, since he does not stand in
need of the learner [us]. But in this we forget-or rather, alas! we
prove how far we are from understanding him; we forget that God loves
the learner." [41]
The dilemma, then, is this: If God cannot suffer, how can He really
love us? But if He can suffer, how is He God? To answer this question
would also be to answer the question of nether and how we can suffer
in Heaven, for heavenly children resemble their heavenly Father.
The answer requires us to distinguish between two ingredients of
earthly love and caring, an active and a passive ingredient, that are
together in fact but distinguishable in ought. Say a parent loves a
child who has done something harmful to himself. The parent's love
speaks two words to e child. The first word, the word of active caring
for the her, says, "How could you do this to yourself?" The second
word, the word of passivity and vulnerability, says, "How could you do
this to me?" God loves us with the first love only, and the blessed in
Heaven will love as God loves. We cannot blackmail God. We cannot make
Him wring is hands by holding our breath until we turn blue in the
face [42] He truly loves and cares, yet He is invulnerable-not being
aloof but by being supremely active. [43]
If our spirits are similar enough to God, we too can love without
sorrow or vulnerability because we love only with active feeling of
caring, not the passive feeling of being hurt. For our spirits then
are not controlled by our bodies, by heredity and environment. C. S.
Lewis's experience of his wife's presence and love was like that:
was quite incredibly unemotional .... Yet there was an extreme and
cheerful intimacy. An intimacy that had not passed rough the senses or
the emotions at all .... Can that intimacy love itself-always in this
life attended with emotion, not cause it is itself an emotion, or
needs an attendant emotion, but because our animal souls, our nervous
systems, our imaginations, have to respond to it in that way? If so,
how many preconceptions I must scrap! A society, a communion, of pure
intelligences would not be cold, drab and comfortless .... It would,
if I have had a glimpse, be-well, I'm almost scared at the adjectives
I'd have to use. Brisk? cheerful? keen? alert? intense? wide-awake?
Above all, solid. Utterly reliable. Firm. There is no nonsense about
the dead.
When I say "intellect" I include will. Attention is an act of will.
Intelligence in action is will par excellence. What met me was full of
resolution. [44]
Yet on the other side of the dilemma, will Heaven lack the greatest of
all beauties of earthly art, the beauty of sorrow, of great tragedy?
Nothing of value is simply lost in Heaven; all is preserved and
transformed. Earthly indicators are to be read (though with caution)
as pointers to heavenly realities. And on earth, pain and pleasure are
strangely akin at their peak, like death and life. When a thing is
enormously beautiful, it hurts. What heavenly fact is imaged in this
earthly mystery?
Perhaps the ultimate fact of all, the nature of God, the inner life of
the Trinity as a system of self-dying, self-giving. [45] Perhaps this
is the deepest reason of all for pain on earth, and the solution to
the "problem of evil": Why does a good and loving God allow so much
earthly suffering? To train us for Heaven's joyful suffering and to
enact, to incarnate, to manifest the ultimate law of reality on our
human level: the law of death and life, blessed self-death (no longer
blessed for fallen creatures) leading to eternal life. "All pains and
pleasures we have known on earth are early initiations in the
movements of that dance. [46] This is the supreme joy in all
existence, the joy of God's inner life of self-giving, the secret
forever incomprehensible to the rebel, angelic or human, who says
"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."[47]
7. Will We Be Free to Sin in Heaven?
Here is another dilemma. If we answer no, we seem to lack something:
free will. If we answer yes, we lack something else: moral perfection.
The heavenly question thus lands us squarely into an earthly and
present issue concerning the nature of freedom and of morality and may
help us to puncture one of modernity's most pervasive and destructive
illusions: the association of freedom with rebellion and obedience
with un-freedom.
Suppose we change the question so as to avoid the ambiguity of the
word freedom. Are we able to sin in Heaven? If not, it seems we are
programmed and determined rather than free. If so, if temptation is
possible in Heaven, heavenly security against sin is gone. One of the
best things to look forward to at death, say the saints," is that "he
who has died is freed from sin."'9 If there is even a possibility of
sin in Heaven, that possibility may be actualized, for if the
actualization of a possibility is impossible, then it is not a
possibility but an impossibility.
How can we preserve both free will ,and sinlessness in Heaven? Once
again, God is our model and solution: we solve this pseudo-problem in
the same way God does. He is both free and sinless. How? Let us judge
our freedom by His, rather than vice versa.
What do we mean by "freedom"? Sometimes (1) political freedom, freedom
from tyranny, oppression, or the denial of our rights; sometimes (2)
physical power, ability to act, freedom from hindrance; and sometimes
(3) spiritual power to choose ("free will"). Of course we will have
all three in Heaven, but why won't we be able to sin, since we will
have free will?
Because we will also have a fourth freedom, the most important one of
all: freedom from sin, from what makes us not ourselves. We will be
free to be the true selves God designed us to be, free to be
determined by God. This determination does not remove our freedom but
is our freedom, for even now freedom is not simply in determination;
it is freedom to be determined by final causes (purposes) rather than
efficient causes (things and events that already exist and act upon
us). Our free will means that our present is determined by our future
rather than by our past. Final causes are at present only mental
pictures and desires.
To say we are determined by final causes means that we, like God,
create by knowing; that as creative artists our knowledge antecedes
and determines the truth of its object, the work of art, rather than
conforming to its object, as scientific and empirical knowledge does.
But we are objects to God (though subjects to the world); we too,
therefore, are true only when we conform to God's knowledge of us,
God's artistic plan for our identity. Since our highest freedom means
freedom to be ourselves, we are most free when we are most obedient to
God's will, which expresses His idea of us. Thus freedom and obedience
coincide. To obey God is to be free in the most radical sense: free to
be me, free from inauthenticity, free from false being, free from the
alien within, not just free from the alien without, the oppressor.
This explains a paradox frequently met in earthly experience: that at
the moment of freest choice it feels most like destiny, and at the
moment of most destined choice it feels freest. Caesar's crossing the
Rubicon, Luther's "Here I stand,"[50] a conversion decision-these all
feel both more free and more destined than ordinary choices. C. S.
Lewis's explanation of this principle is that it is all of us that
chooses nothing is left over. [51] Therefore there is nothing in us
that opposes the choice; it is certain; it is wholly determined. B it
is also wholly free because it is wholly self-determine The whole self
chooses, the divided will [52] is healed.
The answer to our question, then, is that "freedom to sin" is a
self-contradictory concept. Sin is inauthenticity and freedom is
authenticity; sin is our false self and freedom is our true self. Sin
is part of Hell and freedom is part of Heaven. The question cannot be
resolved, only dissolved, because it confuses Hell with Heaven.
8. What Will We Possess in Heaven?
Nothing and everything. Saint Francis of Assisi and others devoted to
poverty understand this paradox. Saint Paul speaks of "having nothing,
and yet possessing all things' [53] because possessed by God: "all
[things] are yours; and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's." [54]
Heaven is pure communism. There is no private property in Heaven.
(Earthly communism, even when not atheistic, is another "too-soon"
mistake of Utopianism.) "In Heaven there is no ownership. If any there
took upon him to call anything his own, he would straightway be thrust
out into hell and become an evil spirit."55 For the ultimate
possession is the self, and if even that is given away, nothing else
can be held (because there is no holder); and that is given away: The
golden apple of selfhood, thrown among the false gods,
became an apple of discord because they scrambled for it. They did not
know the first rule of the holy game, which is that every player must
by all means touch the ball and then immediately pass it on. To be
found with it in your hands is a fault; to cling to it, death. But
when it flies to and fro among the players too
swift for eye to follow, and the great master Himself leads the
revelry, giving Himself eternally to His creatures in the generation,
and back to Himself in the sacrifice, of the Word, then indeed the
eternal dance "makes heaven drowsy with the harmony." [56]
As MacDonald says, "the heart cannot hoard,"[57] only the hand. As
Marcel says, the true self cannot possess or have anything because I
do not have my own body as my body has things: I am my body."
No one can possess goodness, truth, beauty, love, life, light, God.
But Heaven is these things. Therefore no one can possess Heaven.
Whenever, even now, we think of truth or goodness as something we
have, we become self-righteous, narrow, and defensive. To have truth
is to be dogmatic; to have goodness is to be proud; to have beauty is
to be vain; to have joy is to be miserable with fear of losing it.
God, I AM, pure subject, is the only Haven. He cannot be had, nor can
His attributes or His Kingdom of Heaven.
Thus, we must learn detachment to enter Heaven. Willy-nilly, death
detaches us from everything, even ourselves. We must learn to "die
before you die. There is no chance after." [59] Learning detachment
from the world, which can be possessed, is our training for learning
detachment from the desire to possess Heaven, which cannot be
possessed. Asked whether he thought he would possess any of his
beloved library books in Heaven, C. S. Lewis replied, "Only those I
gave away on earth." [60]
9. Will We Wear Clothes in Heaven?
Those who claim to have caught glimpses of Heaven report a strange and
surprising answer to this question; and the fact that so many have
said the same surprising thing without previous acquaintance with each
other lends weight to the testimony. They say that it is hard to
classify the blessed as either clothed or naked." If clothed, it is as
if the clothing were a part of the body, an organic growth, rather
than an accidental, foreign covering: it reveals rather than conceals,
and it is natural and necessary rather than artificial and
accidental." If naked, it is shameless and not arousing erotic
desires. It is not the result of "naking," [63] the process of taking
off the clothes that in our present state are natural, thus attaining
a state of nudity that is (in our present state) unnatural. (Nudist
camps are not "natural.")
The principle behind the naturalness of heavenly clothing is the
overcoming of the distinction between appearance and reality. In
Heaven, light reigns; we know and are known . [64] On earth, shadows
reign, reality hides behind appearances as a mercy to fallen and
weakened eyes. [65] We need the double ended sunglasses of reason and
faith to know truth now; in Heaven we shall see the truth naked and
direct. When reality appears and no longer hides, so will we.
The clothing of Heaven is described in Scripture as "white garments."
[66] White is the color of light. Light reveals. On earth, clothes
partly conceal and partly reveal, just as language does. [67] In
Heaven all is revealed. "Nothing is'. hid that shall not be made
manifest. [68]
Here, truth is aletheia, overcoming of Lethe: forgetfulness,
appearance, concealment. So clothing hides the body, and the truth
about the body is reached by unveiling, naking. In Heaven, the truth
will be in the appearances (fully revealed, fully apparent), so the
truth of the resurrection body will be revealed in its clothes. As the
Son perfectly expresses the Father, clothes will express the body.
Our heavenly clothes may express our earthly story and success.
Socrates will have his philosopher's robe. Heroes will wear the
clothes associated with their heroism. [69] Jesus will wear His crown
of thorns. Each thorn will be a diamond.
10. Are There Animals in Heaven?
The simplest answer is: Why not? How irrational is the prejudice that
would allow plants (green fields and flowers) but not animals into
Heaven!" Much more reasonable is C. S. Lewis's speculation that we
will be "between the angels who are our elder brothers and the beasts
who are our jesters, servants, and playfellows."" Scripture seems to
confirm this: "thy judgments are like the great deep; man and beast
thou savest, O Lord."'2 Animals belong in the "new earth"''3 as much
as trees.
C. S. Lewis supposes that animals are saved "in" their masters, as
part of their extended family." Only tamed animals would be saved in
this way. It would seem more likely that wild animals are in Heaven
too, since wildness, otherness, not-mine-ness, is a proper pleasure
for us. '5 The very fact that the seagull takes no notice of me when
it utters its remote, lonely call is part of its glory.
Would the same animals be in Heaven as on earth? "Is my dead cat in
Heaven?" Again, why not? God can raise up the very grass;" why not
cats? Though the blessed have better things to do than play with pets,
the better does not exclude the lesser. We were meant from the
beginning to have stewardship over the animals;" we have not fulfilled
that divine plan yet on earth; therefore it seems likely that the
right relationship with animals will be part of Heaven: proper "pet
ship." And what better place to begin than with already petted pets?
11 Is There Music in Heaven?
First of all, the Bible says so. [78]
Secondly, great earthly music is particularly heavenly, a sign or
pointer beyond itself to Heaven. What was dimly, suggested in all
earthly music that moved us so much that the ancients necessarily
ascribed it not to men but to gods [79] - goddesses, the nine Muses -
is precisely heavenly music. That is why we were moved here; it
reminded us o There, which is our home.
Third, it may well be in music that the world was created [80] and
that music is the original language. Spoken poetry is to music what
prose is to poetry. [81] Poetry' is not ornamented prose, and music is
not accompanied poetry. Prose is ossified poetry, [82] and poetry is
half of music.
It is not that music in Heaven; Heaven is in music. Heaven is "the
region where there is only life, and therefore all that is not music
is silence." [83] Heaven is both silent, like the contemplative
mystic, and full of sound, like a dance or a symphony.
12. How Big Is Heaven?
The very nature of space, and therefore of size, changes in Heaven.
Meaning determines size, rather than size, meaning. The New
Jerusalem's measures are symbolic, not physical. [84] Heaven is big
enough so that billions of races of billions of saved people are never
crowded, yet small enough so that no one gets lost or feels lonely.
And we can travel anywhere in heaven simply by will. [85]
13. Is Heaven Serious or Funny?
The very distinction is too funny to take seriously. The distinction
between humor and seriousness is strictly earthly. Here on earth, much
humor is "comic relief" from the grim business of "real" life. But in
Heaven, humor is high seriousness. It is the inner secret of God and
the blessed. [86]
Even on earth, saints play with their lives in the most outrageous
way. Saint Thomas More ended his life with a bad joke, telling the
axeman "Please do not chop my beard in two; it has not committed
treason." [87]
Jesus has the most perfect sense of humor of all. [88] We do not often
see it, because we think of humor as jokes. But the most perfect humor
is in the very situation itself, especially irony, [89] the contrast
between appearance and reality. "Let him who is without sin among you
be the first to throw a stone at her" [90] is irony. It could be more
clumsily and directly rendered, "You judgmental fools are worse than
that adulteress-taking out splinters with logs in your eyes."[91]
There is great irony in the Sermon on the Mount: "Consider the lilies
of the field .... they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say
unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one
of these." [92] In other words, "You're sillier than the lilies. Who
do you think you are, anyway? God? [93] He'll take as good care of you
as the lilies, won't he?" There is irony in "You search the
scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and
it is they that bear witness to me." [94] That is, "You're trying to
read the sign as if it pointed to itself." It is the same irony as
Pilate's "What is truth?" [95] as Truth stands in front of him.
Finally, there is Jesus' ironic remark to Nicodemus, who cannot
understand being "born again" and asks whether he must return to his
mother's womb: "Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not
understand this?"[96] You experts know everything except what it's all
about.
Jesus is our best indicator of Heaven, and if there is humor in Jesus,
there is humor in Heaven. Jesus is the manifestation of the Father,
and if there is humor in the personality of the Son, there is humor in
the personality of the Father. For some reason, people think of the
Persons of the Trinity as lacking personality, as nebbishes. In fact,
the three fullest personalities in all reality are the Father, the
Son, and the Spirit. They are characters! They designed ostriches, for
goodness' sake (literally). And-supreme joke-us.
Many of the resuscitated perceive and share heavenly humor, even God's
laughter at repented and forgiven sins. [99] We can laugh only when we
are free, detached. The saint can laugh at life in his martyrdom, and
once freed from sin (but not till then): we can laugh even at sin-in
Heaven. Detachment is necessary for humor. And in Heaven there is
perfect detachment, even from self (ek-stasis,
"standing-outside-oneself"). Therefore in Heaven there is perfect
humor.
The saint and the clown share the secret of levity, the union between
the two meanings of "light": truth (opposite of falsehood and
darkness) and levity (opposite of gravity and heaviness). Saints
levitate! Body follows spirit.
But heavenly humor is not the opposite of seriousness, only of joyless
seriousness. Saints, mystics, and the resuscitated take life more
seriously than others do. Everything gains an infinite importance, an
"eternal weight of glory."9a Joy is a serious matter-too good to be
wasted on jokes. The saint does not usually tell jokes," because he
does not need to, to relieve the joylessness, to relieve sadness, to
distract from the heavy, practical world. "Joy is the serious business
of Heaven. [100]
14. Why Must We Have Bodies in Heaven?
Philosophical reasoning confirms Scripture's promise of a resurrected
body in Heaven in four ways:
First, it is irrational to suppose we change our species. God does not
rip up His handiwork as a mistake. We are created to fill one of the
possible levels of reality, one of the unique rungs on the cosmic
ladder, between animals and angels. That is our essence, our destiny,
and our glory. We would lose that by becoming angels just as much as
by becoming apes. We are better than angels at many things, and those
things would be missing from us and those perfections missing from the
universe if our souls were simply disembodied. Angels are much better
than us at intelligence, will, and power; but they cannot smell
flowers or weep over a Chopin nocturne. [101]
A second reason for a body in Heaven is for the fulfillment of our
soul's primary need, the need for love, for I-Thou relationship, for
meeting. "All real living is meeting." [102] Spirits are the meeters,
but matter is the street corner where they meet. It is difficult to
conceive-perhaps it is impossible to create-a common field in which
souls can meet without something that is matter to them; and if they
are to inhabit this common world they must have material vehicles, or
bodies."'
Third, our spirit needs a body for freedom, for free expression. A
soul without a body is exactly the opposite of what Plato thought it
is. It is not free but bound. It is in an extreme form of paralysis,
like a person paralyzed in all five senses at once. God gave us senses
to help us, not to hinder us. Insofar as they hinder or bind us, that
is a result of the Fall, not of Creation, and the binding will be
removed in Heaven.
Fourth, and finally, it is fitting that just as bodily death was the
effect of spiritual death at the Fall,"' so bodily immortality will be
the effect of spiritual immortality in the redeemed. The divine life,
the Zoë that is in us even now as a seed, will in its mature form
"flow over" into the glorified body in a "voluptuous torrent,"
according to Saint Augustine. [105] When the soul fell from God, its
life-source, its body as a consequence fell from the soul, its
life-source; and when the soul is reunited with God, it follows that
its body is reunited with it forever.
15. How Will We Recognize Each Other in Heaven?
How did Jesus' disciples recognize Him in His resurrection body? There
is a fascinating puzzle here in the New Testament records; for on
three occasions Jesus' disciples, who knew Him intimately for three
years, did not at first recognize Him. This happened with Mary
Magdalene" ,(John 20:11-18), the Emmaeus disciples (Luke 24:13-35),
and the twelve (John 21:1-7). Something was different about Him. What?
On the other hand, it was He. They eventually did recognize Him
without doubt. How?
The answer to the last question that is suggested by the texts is that
they recognized Him by what He did and said for example, His opening
the meaning of the Scriptures and breaking bread at Emmaeus. This
seems to indicate a reverence of our present way of knowing persons:
we now recognize character through body. But Jesus' disciples
recognized His body through His acts-in-character.
The Fall turned things upside down between soul and body. Before the
Fall, the body was a transparent window, a totally malleable
instrument, a perfectly obedient servant of he soul. The Resurrection
restores this relationship. Once he perfected soul is perfectly
subject to God, the perfected body can be perfectly subject to the
soul, for the soul's authority over the body is a delegated and
dependent authority.
This principle of a new soul-body relationship in the Resurrection has
important consequences for both soul and body. Soul will no longer be
frustrated by a semi-independent, recalcitrant body ("Brother *****,"
Saint Francis of Assisi called it); and body will be a bright ray of
light from soul, got an opaque object; it will be more subject, less
object, pore truly mine, truly me. No more will I crave ecstatic
-out-of-the-body experiences, for the highest flights of mystic
ecstasy will be in this new body. My present drive to self forgetful,
ecstatic joy is like a balloon held under water longing to rise into
its native air. But its native air is a body. We long to be
re-clothed, not unclothed. [106]
Our present bodies are neither evil things, like demons, to be hated,
nor perfect things, like gods, to be worshiped, but useful and humble
things, like donkeys, to be used. [107] There is one part of the body
that even now retains something of its pre-Fall transparency to
spirit; and this foreshadows its resurrection perfection. It is the
face.
The face is me. [108] It is where the body comes to a point, comes to
its expression. Perhaps you have noticed the amazing change in the
face of a friend who has suddenly fallen in love (with a human being
or with God), or who has fallen out of love, or into depression or
despair or dishonesty. The change did not consist in anything
physically catastrophic. The eyes did not grow farther apart. No
Pinocchio nose appeared on the liar. Yet a far more catastrophic
change took place, and our eyes can see it if they are wise. See Plain
Jane suddenly become radiant; see the dissipated playboy suddenly
become self-aware and self-possessed; see the self-satisfied
millionaire suddenly realize his life is spiritually bankrupt. The
face is a window.
We are responsible for our face, as we are not responsible for our
legs, or our height. [109] The physical contours of Miss America's
body and even of her face are merely a gift of nature and God; but the
personality shining through your loved one's face is him or her; it is
character. It is loved not impersonally, like Miss America's "perfect"
features, but personally. As the soul is the image of God in the
world, the face is the image of the soul in the body.
Contrast the face of a saint with that of a gross sinner. Notice
especially the eyes. Contrast eyes tempered with love and suffering
with eyes that have refused these lessons. Environmental tools
providentially wielded by the divine sculptor have chiselled fine
lines on His masterpieces, the saints. Yet it is impossible to put it
into a verbal formula. You just see it.
Medieval art is wonderfully sensitive to the magical power of faces.
The Middle Ages is the great age of the Incarnation, of the
spiritualization of matter, of the sacraments, and of the body. Its
bodies are more like resurrection bodies especially the faces, and
most especially the eyes. The presence of God gives them depth, light,
energy, harmony, and inexhaustible significance.
The rest of the body shares this significance to a lesser degree,
especially its posture, its carriage, its "body language." Sanctity
brings not only a quiet glow to the face but purposive movement,
confidence, and health to the whole body. The hand of God is made
visible in the hands of men.
Zen masters are often called "holy to their fingertips," like Buddha.
[110] They do not "wobble." Jesus was "full of grace and truth." [111]
Not the soul of Jesus, but Jesus. Extend these visible beginnings to
totality and you have the spiritual body; all face! In fact, all eyes,
like Ezekiel's unearthly, arresting vision. [112] All subject, not
object, not thing.
This is why Jesus' friends recognized Him spiritually after I le
Resurrection. Spirit is act, activity. It is not material activity,
but it manifests itself in material activity. In the music, in the
poem, in the architecture, it makes matter live, and move, and have
spiritual being.
Spirit is also free; free choice is essential to spirit. It seems
reasonable, therefore, to think that we will get to freely choose our
bodies in Heaven, rather than having them imposed on us."' But such
choice, like such freedom, would not be arbitrary, not subject to the
caprice of a hereditary quirk or the whim of environmental
conditioning. It would be a fitting, predictable, and even necessary
choice, like a saint's choice to love. For at their apex, freedom and
necessity converge;"' for God is the apex of -both freedom and
necessity. The closer we are to God, the more a choice is fully free
because fully ours, not alien to but expressive of our true nature and
destiny, which are hidden in God."' He has the white stone with our
new name in its in Him is the secret of our identity, which is both
our freedom and our destiny. Our bodies would express both the freedom
and the necessary destiny of the soul.
16. Will There Be Wounds in the Resurrected Body?
One of the most intriguing features of Christ's post Resurrection
appearances is the fact that His new, glorified body still had its
crucifixion wounds, its stigmata. He showed them to "doubting Thomas,"
remember, as proof that it was really Hell' And He gave them to Saint
Francis of Assisi as a badge of glory, not scars of ugliness."' The
dead who appear to the living also sometimes manifest their marks of
suffering. Sheldon Vanauken's wife had dark shadows under her eyes
when she appeared to her husband after her death. She had acquired
them through suffering in the hospital.
Then I couldn't resist asking her how she, in heaven, could have dark
shadows under her eyes. She grinned, knowing me, and then said
seriously, "I can't tell you that. I can't tell you very much at
all.""'
On the other hand, many of the resuscitated patients Moody interviewed
reported their wounds were healed and broken limbs mended."'
The explanation of the apparent contradiction seems to be this: many
cosmetic features of the body that are imperfections when judged by
human standards, especially the wounds of Christ and of the Christian,
freely accepted and offered to God, are in fact badges of beauty. The
eyes of love see truly; where they see beauty, beauty is, even if the
world sees ugliness."' Love sees such wounds as augmenting the body's
beauty by expressing the beauty of soul or character. Who has not
marvelled at the deep inner beauty of a careworn face full of
wrinkles, tempered by suffering? How beautiful are the wise and gentle
eyes of a very old woman at peace with God!
Like a white candle in a holy place Such is the beauty of an aged
face. [122]
How fatuous and empty by comparison are the eyes of some childish,
spoiled movie star. The heavenly body is made beautiful by its soul,
not its shape, its inscape, not its landscape. So are our earthly
bodies, if only we had eyes to see, if only we applied our heavenly
wisdom.
On the other hand, a wound or deformity is of its own nature a work of
Satan, not of God. God is the author of healing, not of disease. Few
things are more certain in Scripture than that the popular attitude
"God wants me to suffer" is profoundly false. Christ is our surest
word about the Father, the complete revelation of the Father,"' and
Christ healed all who came to Him, though sometimes after a time of
testing, short ("Go, wash in the pool of Siloam""') or long (Saint
Paul's lifelong "thorn in the flesh""'). Healing is a sign (semeion,
"miracle") of the Kingdom of Heaven. Heaven is complete healing.
All prayers for healing are answered. The puzzle of how to understand
Christ's oft-repeated promises in the New Testament, such as,
"Whatever you ask Me, I will do it for you,""' is easily solved. He
means exactly what He says no watering down, no evasion, no
"interpretation." But He has not yet fulfilled all His promises. Many
prayers for good things like healings have not been answered-yet. The
only understanding of these passages that does not make nonsense of
the two facts of promises and non-fulfilments is that it is only a
matter of time, and the timing is God's, not ours. Not even the Son
knows when the ultimate prophecy, His own Second Coming, will come
true."'
He has not told us how soon He will keep His promises, but He has
promised us an astounding basket of goodies, and it is certain that He
will keep His promises. Heaven will be the answer to every prayer,
every desire for healing, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
All healings on earth are previews of coming attractions."'
17. What Age Will We Be in Heaven?
As heavenly bodies do not die, they do not age. So what age will we be
in Heaven?
Resuscitated patients report their out-of-the-body body as not having
any particular age."' Naturally; it is measured not by chronos but
only by kairos, not by physical time but by soul time. The measure of
matter moving through space does not measure heavenly bodies; "the
heavenly bodies" do not measure our heavenly bodies.
We see traces of heavenly agelessness on earth occasionally: in the
timeless wisdom of the infant or in the womblike stillness of the wise
who approach death in perfect peace. This agelessness is like the
perfect age that includes all ages, as all ages of one's life pass in
instant review before the dying."' The heavenly age is no age and all
ages.
Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that the perfect age was thirty-three,
since it was the age Christ had attained when He died; therefore, he
thought everyone would have a body like a thirty-three-year-old body
in Heaven."' Like the numbering of days in Purgatory, this is to be
taken only symbolically, not literally, because in Heaven there is
neither birth nor death, the measuring sticks of age.
18. Will We Have a Oneness with Nature in Heaven?
When our bodies and nature are both resurrected, as Scripture
promises,"' we will no longer be under the dominion of nature. We will
not need to breathe, or eat; yet we will be able to, like Christ after
His Resurrection .133 We will not be dependent on "incessant
subsidies" of food, air, and water from nature, but we will still be
with "our old enemy, friend, playfellow and foster-mother." 139
It is a tempting thought to which many philosophers, beginning with
Plato, have succumbed, to think that the more spiritual we are, the
less material, the less concerned with matter, the more indifferent
and absentminded we are. It is not so. Even now, when we are most
mindful, we are most mindful of matter; when we are the most spiritual
and conspicuous, the most alive and awake and alert and aware, we are
lost present to the world-just as God is.
To quote Moody's resuscitated patients again, some said 'out their
bodies' presence to the world: "It was like I was just there." [135]
Usually we are not "just there"; we are half present and half absent.
The spiritual body is more, therefore present to its world, than the
physical body is to its world. One patient said, "It seemed to me at
the time that if something happened any place in the world that I
could just be there." [136] Space will exist but it will not separate.
We will have what Saint Thomas calls "agility." [137]
There is still more. More than presence to the world, the resurrection
body will give us union with the world. The mystics and the romantic
poets foresee this, perhaps foretaste it, this overcoming of
alienation between ourselves and nature, subject and object. It is a
half-truth that the body (soma) is a prison (sema): as a hyphen both
joins and separates two parts of a word, the body both joins us to
nature and separates us from it. It identifies us with this part of
nature but separates us from the rest. We long to "put on" the rest,
the whole of nature, as our greater body:
We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is
bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into
words-to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive
it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why
we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and
nymphs and elves that, though we cannot, yet these projections can,
enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace and power of which Nature is
the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They
talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it
can't. They tell us that "beauty born of murmuring sound" will pass
into a human face; but it won't. Or not yet.
For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that
God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the
splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths
and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth
as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong
side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but
they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the
splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are
rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God
willing, we shall get in. [138]
Our foretaste of this union is our present bodies. For the body is me
and is nature, subject and object at once without diminution. It is a
thing "out there" and a thing "in here," object of consciousness, yet
conscious of objects. It transcends the subject-object dualism but not
by dissolving it or by seeing through it as an illusion or by some
strange third kind of reality that is neither the one nor the other
but a kind of infinite indefiniteness. Rather, it is wholly subject
and wholly object, as Christ is wholly God and wholly Man at the same
time: a hypostatic union rather than a mystical transcendence. [139]
If this hypostatic union with nature is one of our natural desires,
and if "no natural desire is in vain,"[140] then this desire is not in
vain but destined for fulfillment. The pagan dream is fulfilled in the
Christian reality. For pagans dimly saw in their gods what we foresee
in our selves: persons who could put on and take off the powers of
nature as clothing. [141] We will put on nature as our body when God
puts us on as His body.
How much of nature will rise with us? How great will our resurrection
body be? As big as the soul wills. All that we "identify with" is part
of our identity. We are not even now just an ego in a bag of skin. We
are outside our epidermis; we are everything we love. Materially, the
world and the epidermis enclose us; spiritually, we enclose the world.
"By space the universe swallows me; by thought, I contain the
universe." [142] Spirit is a rubber band. Love stretches it. It is our
rehearsal for Heaven's infinite stretching.
19. Will We Do Magic and Miracles in Heaven?
Our heavenly power over nature will be as great as our resent power
over our own bodies, because nature will then ;e our greater body.
Since our present body magic is our empirical clue to our future
heavenly powers, let us explore its clue.
We do not usually realize that we have great magical powers right now.
For instance, we can levitate. By sheer force of spiritual will-power
we can force our bodies to defy the physical law of gravity and rise
into the air. It is called Omping. The only reason we think of it as
non-miraculous is its frequency, not its nature. It is as miraculous
as walking on water. More miraculous, in fact; since the difference
between a bunch of molecules and a soul-enlivened body is far eater
than the difference between walking on land and walking on water.
We can also perform magic on nature as well when we use our body as
our magic wand to touch her parts of nature. Gravity says to the
stone, "Down!" our will says to the stone, "Up!" And the will's magic
wand, the arm, enforces the magic.
Even technology participates in magic, for it is the extension of our
magic wands. But direct soul-body magic is more powerful than
technology, because it needs no instrument. The soul does not move the
body in the same way as the body moves a stone; it needs no crowbar.
The greatest power comes from union. The closer you are to a thing or
to a person, the more power you have over it or him. You have more
influence with your close friends than with strangers, and most of all
with yourself.
True magic is not the popular, Faustian kind. [143] It is not the
power of the magician but of the Tao, the cosmic root from which both
we and nature flow. The true magician works from the Tao, as its
instrument; he unites will and nature at their common Source.
The Tao, like the Logos, is no other than God, of course. "In the
beginning was the Tao," as John may well have written had he written
Chinese instead of Greek. The equation of Tao with Logos reminds us
that the Source of Life (the Tao) is the Word (Logos), that there is
living magic in the Word. When Adam named the animals, he shared God's
word-magic. For this was not labeling, this was making: "whatever the
man called every living creature, that was its name."[144] God had
created the universe simply by naming it: Let there be X. . . and
there was X. [145] As Heidegger says, "It is in words and language
that things first come into being and are."[146]
Human creative artists dimly reflect this divine power, and our love
of artistic creation is both a shadow of the Creator in whose image we
are created and a foreshadowing of our creative task to come in
Heaven. For our power over nature in Heaven may well extend to
co-creating, in union with God, new natures, new worlds in fact as we
now make them in fantasy, as Tolkien supposes:
The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them,
especially the "happy ending." The Christian . . . may now, perhaps,
fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the
effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come
true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as
unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be
like and unlike the fallen that we know."[147]
This may also explain our fear of getting too deeply into fantasizing,
our fear that we cannot get back into reality, our fear that our
dreams will come true.
Our present powers over nature have been severely limited. We are
spoiled children whose Father has taken away their dangerous toys.
Imagine the chaos the world would be if it were inhabited by a billion
evil magicians, each trying to be its own God. God could not allow
nature to be our greater body once we had fallen, because billions of
warring spirits would fight for control over the same body-which is
exactly what human history has in fact been, except that the spirits
are mercifully exiled from that body of nature and can control it only
indirectly and in part. If nature had not been emptied of the human
spirit, it would have had a horribly schizoid, multiple personality,
like the Gadarene demoniac: "My name is Legion; for we are many."[148]
Before the power of union with nature can be restored, union with God
must be restored; we become truly a "we" by obeying one "I AM." The
Greek philosopher Plotinus says:
We are like a chorus grouped around a conductor who allow their
attention to be distracted by the audience. If, however, they were to
turn toward their conductor, they would sing as they should and would
really be one with him. We are always around The One. If we were not,
we would dissolve and cease to exist. Yet our gaze does not remain
fixed upon The One. When we look at it, we then attain the end of our
desires and find rest. Then it is that, all discord past, we dance an
inspired dance around it. [149]
Christianity adds that the "it" is a "Him," and the song is a hymn.
20. Why Won't We Be Bored in Heaven?
Because we are with God, and God is infinite. We never come to the end
of exploring Him. He is new every day.
Because we are with God, and God is eternal. Time does not pass (a
condition for boredom); it just is. All time is present in eternity,
as all the events of the plot are present in an author's mind. There
is no waiting.
Because we are with God, and God is love. Even on earth, the only
people who are never bored are lovers.
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| User: "John Popelish" |
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| Title: Re: Twenty Questions About Heaven |
22 Nov 2004 11:45:55 PM |
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Mike wrote:
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Dreamed Of
Asking
Peter J. Kreeft
Twenty Questions About Heaven
(snip)
Peter is jumping the gun, a bit.
The first question to be addressed about any hypothetical heaven is to
define what you mean by the word. The second one would be, "Is there
any reason to suspect that something that fits this description
actually exists (besides you wanting it to)?" After it has been
reasonably established that something called heaven is clearly defined
and also has some non zero probability of existing, does it make any
sense to explore the finer properties of the thing.
We haven't crossed these first two hurtles, yet.
--
John Popelish
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| User: "Bible Studies with Satan" |
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| Title: Re: Twenty Questions About Heaven |
24 Nov 2004 11:46:23 AM |
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Mike wrote:
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Dreamed Of
Asking
Peter J. Kreeft
Twenty Questions About Heaven
You die and you're still an ***** but now you always get your own way.
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| User: "Dan Clore" |
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| Title: Re: Twenty Questions About Heaven |
23 Nov 2004 07:59:20 AM |
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Mike wrote:
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Dreamed Of
Asking
21. If heaven's so great, would you like me to help you on
your way there?
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587154838/thedanclorenecro
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"It's a political statement -- or, rather, an
*anti*-political statement. The symbol for *anarchy*!"
-- Batman, explaining the circle-A graffiti, in
_Detective Comics_ #608
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| User: "Tukla Ratte" |
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| Title: Re: Twenty Questions About Heaven |
23 Nov 2004 09:10:43 AM |
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Mike wrote:
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Dreamed Of
Asking
Peter J. Kreeft
< snip >
Of course there are degrees of perfection in Heaven;
WTF?
Equality is a man-made legal fiction designed as a wall defense
against tyranny, a medicine against a disease.
Um, okay.
We must all be guarded by equal rights from one another's greed,
because we are fallen. just as we must all wear clothes the same
reason.
Again, WTF?
Why is there no jealousy in this hierarchical, aristocratic,
non-egalitarian Heaven of authority and obedience? Because all are
cells in the same body. The kidney does not rebel because it is not
the eye."
Well, sure, because cells, eyes, and kidneys AREN'T SENTIENT!
Jealousy is the principle of Hell. There is no Hell in
Heaven.
No fundamentalists in Heaven? Boy, won't they be surprised!
3. Do the Blessed in Heaven See Us Now?
Yes, they are all perverts with nothing better to do. Next question!
Reason confirms revelation here.
ROTFL!
"The Communion of Saints" means not only
....orgies...
What difference does this make? Well, what difference does it make to
you if you believe you are being watched by a thousand living human
eyes?
I'll have to remember that next time I need an alibi. "Just ask the
thousands of dead living humans who were watching me!"
Multiply this consequence by millions
Jeez, can I at least have a paper and pencil?
and by the increase in
love and understanding in Heaven.
And the continuous loop of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On".
Throw in literally innumerable
angels,
How can they be literally innumerable? Are they one big glob of angel gunk?
4. Do Ghosts Come from Heaven?
First of all, Scripture strictly forbids us to call them up
The toll charges are outrageous.
The reason for the stricture is probably protection against he danger
of deception by evil spirits.
What a small, sad world Peter lives in.
First, the most familiar kind: the sad ones, the wispy ones.
The supermodel ghosts.
Second, there are malicious and deceptive spirits
Like those three who live with Casper.
-and since they are
deceptive, they hardly ever appear malicious.
They look like kittens.
These are probably the
ones who respond to conjurings at séances.
"Because I think seances actually summon up spirits. I'm so gullible!"
They probably come from
Hell.
Or the White House.
Even the chance of that happening should be sufficient to
terrify away all temptation to necromancy.
But necrophilia is okay, right?
Third, there are the bright, happy spirits of dead friends and family,
especially spouses, who appear unbidden, at God's will, not ours, with
messages of hope and love.
"I see Grandma, and she's *naked*!"
They seem to come from Heaven.
Because they've only been dead a few years, and they're already
tremendously bored. Happy eternity!
Even the bright spirits appear ghostlike to us because a ghost of any
type is one whose substance does not belong in or come from this
world.
Much like this essay.
In Heaven these spirits are not ghosts but real, solid, and
substantial
Let's be blunt. They're fat.
because they are at home there. "One can't be a ghost in
one's own country. [30]
?!
That there are all three kinds of ghosts is enormously likely.
LOL!
6. Will We Feel Sorrow in Heaven for Those in Hell?
No, we'll laugh and laugh and laugh at them.
We seem to face a dilemma here. On the one hand, Scripture assures us
that "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall
be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be
any more pain: for the former things are passed away."36
On the other hand, the blessed dead seem sometimes to manifest sorrow,
In direct contradiction to God's Word.
like Mary at LaSallette,
And Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
weeping for the sins of the world."
Here's a Valium, Mary.
And C. S.
Lewis
....the profound religious thinker... <snicker>
says, "as there may be pleasures in Hell (God shield us from
them),
<sigh> Figures.
there may be something not all unlike pains in Heaven (God
grant us soon to taste them)."38
So Jesus will give me spankies when I'm naughty? Yay!
What could this mean?
I don't know. Lewis wasn't a very good writer, was he?
Might it be that the sorrow appears only during our first, purgatorial
stage?
So Peter is Catholic, I assume?
At this point the pains of separation may affect not only the
earthly bereaved lover but also the heavenly beloved.
Actually, they're just pissed because they paid the ferryman before he
got them to the other side. How many times does Chris DeBurgh have to
warn us before we'll listen?!
As Lewis says,
"I can't help suspecting the dead also feel the pains of separation
I can't help suspecting that Lewis was full of *****.
7. Will We Be Free to Sin in Heaven?
Finally. Something important!
If there is even a possibility of
sin in Heaven, that possibility may be actualized, for if the
actualization of a possibility is impossible, then it is not a
possibility but an impossibility.
<groan> Tukla's head hurt.
How can we preserve both free will ,and sinlessness in Heaven?
By redefining our terms?
Once
again, God is our model
He's Mister August 2005.
and solution:
He's dissolved in water?
Because we will also have a fourth freedom, the most important one of
all: freedom from sin, from what makes us not ourselves. We will be
free to be the true selves God designed us to be, free to be
determined by God.
Ah. We'll no longer be human. Gotcha.
This determination does not remove our freedom but
is our freedom, for even now freedom is not simply in determination;
it is freedom to be determined by final causes (purposes) rather than
efficient causes (things and events that already exist and act upon
us). Our free will means that our present is determined by our future
rather than by our past. Final causes are at present only mental
pictures and desires.
<as the Wiggles> o/ Word salad, yummy yummy. /o
To say we are determined by final causes means
Nothing, really. It just sounds good.
Hmm. Peter sounds good, too. <chomp!>
--
Tukla, Eater of Theists, Squeaker of Chew Toys
Official Mascot of Alt.Atheism, aa 1347
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| User: "geopelia" |
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| Title: Re: Twenty Questions About Heaven |
23 Nov 2004 03:44:35 PM |
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Why worry about any remote possibility of survival once the body and brain
cease to function?
We should be more concerned that, as we are busily destroying our planet's
ecosystem, Adam is about to be chucked out of Eden for the second time!
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, anyway, not somewhere to go after
death.
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| User: "EKurtz" |
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| Title: Re: Twenty Questions About Heaven |
23 Nov 2004 03:59:30 PM |
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"geopelia" <phildoran@xtra.co.nz> wrote
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, anyway, not somewhere to go after
death.
I'm glad we've settled that.
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| User: "Gordon" |
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| Title: Re: Twenty Questions About Heaven |
23 Nov 2004 07:10:43 PM |
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On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 10:44:35 +1300, "geopelia"
<phildoran@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
Why worry about any remote possibility of survival once the body and brain
cease to function?
If a computer's information on the hard drive is adequately
backed up, the computer may be completely destroyed, and the data
is still salvable.
If a human mind is properly linked with the cosmic consciousness
that mind will continue to exist, beyond the death and complete
decomposition of the body that it once was associated with.
We should be more concerned that, as we are busily destroying our planet's
ecosystem, Adam is about to be chucked out of Eden for the second time!
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, anyway, not somewhere to go after
death.
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| User: "odDone" |
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| Title: Re: Twenty Questions About Heaven |
24 Nov 2004 12:53:09 AM |
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Gordon wrote:
On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 10:44:35 +1300, "geopelia"
<phildoran@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
Why worry about any remote possibility of survival once the body and brain
cease to function?
If a computer's information on the hard drive is adequately
backed up, the computer may be completely destroyed, and the data
is still salvable.
If a human mind is properly linked with the cosmic consciousness
that mind will continue to exist, beyond the death and complete
decomposition of the body that it once was associated with.
We should be more concerned that, as we are busily destroying our planet's
ecosystem, Adam is about to be chucked out of Eden for the second time!
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, anyway, not somewhere to go after
death.
I quote:
"If a computer's information on the hard drive is adequately
backed up, the computer may be completely destroyed, and the data
is still salvable.
If a human mind is properly linked with the cosmic consciousness
that mind will continue to exist, beyond the death and complete
decomposition of the body that it once was associated with."
I reply:
I do not think that [the human mind : a hard drive] is an accurate
simile. I would be inclined to relate a hard drive only to the memory
centres of the brain which would be responsible for the sub conscious
and all learned knowledge whilst including the cpu (cerebral cortex)
and ram (short term memory) as part of a the whole which can be related
to the human mind. The only way our mind can possibly continue to exist
(*not to be mistaken for LIVE) after death,would be as released energy
which will rejoin the pool along with the rest of our decomposed corpse.
True, you may backup a hard drive and have a perfect 1:1 copy but
would you not classify this as a clone? Even if that was not your
point, would that not just be data, ie "learned information" and
specifically NOT the essence of sentience or life or whatever you want
to call it?
Who we are, what makes us unique, sentient and in essence "alive", I
believe is our instinctive nature, turgidly seeded at the moment of our
conception, working in unison with the brain (the hardware), dynamically
responding to our experiences. So lets walkthrough what would happen to
the mind, if the brain should die... Memories would die, experiences
would be lost, with the failure of the cerebral cortex all higher brain
funtions would cease including sensation, thought, reasoning, and again
memory. So whatever it is we are left with ( instinctive nature -
although thats a stupid term for what i really mean, i guess i mean the
spirit or something ) that could possibly remain unaltered in a
functional sense after death, would be nothing more than a fragment of
the whole that i could not comfortably call it "me".
Life after death ? not a chance. Existence after death ? indeed.
well thats my theory anyway and i dont even know if it makes much
sense... in fact, im pretty sure it makes no sense at all.. if that
makes sense to you then your fucked ...
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| User: "Glenn Arnold" |
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| Title: Re: Twenty Questions About Heaven |
24 Nov 2004 09:52:51 PM |
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Question 1: Is it animal vegetable or mineral?
Glenn Arnold
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| User: "MDFranklin" |
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| Title: Re: Twenty Questions About Heaven |
23 Nov 2004 09:03:13 AM |
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Mike,
If I may say so, you are definitely on the path and it is gratifying to read
you amid all the other tripe you run across on the Internet. However, it is
obvious you have so far only studied Christianity and are therefore a
little, shall we say, lopsided and off-base in your comprehension of things;
I see you have many questions that remain unanswered for yourself. As my
unasked-for suggestion, in your seeking if you were to take it upon yourself
(as I did a third of a century ago) to expand your knowledge, and
necessarily your understanding, by studying Buddhism in particular and other
Eastern philosophies in general you will be assured of reaching your goal.
An excellent starting point is: http://rs.org/theosophy2.htm .
There is no religion higher than Truth.
"Scribe"
"Mike" <brothermike277@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:f6abd7f3.0411222039.14e9f588@posting.google.com...
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Dreamed Of
Asking
Peter J. Kreeft
Twenty Questions About Heaven
1. Will We Know Everything in Heaven?
Of course not. Why would someone think that? There are two reasons,
and the first one is simply a confusion between Heaven and divinity.
We will remain human in Heaven, therefore finite, therefore our
knowledge will remain finite. True, we will share in divine life, but
this is just a share. In fact, we share in divine life now, if we are
reborn in Christ; our souls nurture a fetal Christ. But I have not
observed that fact generating omniscience in myself or any other.
When you come to think of it, knowing everything would be more like
Hell than Heaven for us. For one thing, we need progress and hope: we
need to look forward to knowing something new tomorrow` Mystery is our
mind's food. If we truly said, "I have seen everything,"[1] we would
conclude, as did the author of Ecclesiastes, "all is vanity."[2] For
another thing, the more knowledge, the more responsibility. [3] Only
omnipotence can bear the burden of omniscience; only God's shoulders
are strong enough to carry the burden of infinite knowledge without
losing the joy.
The second reason we may think our heavenly knowledge is infinite is
the theory that on earth we have already an access, a potency, for all
knowledge; that the brain is a "reducing valve," not a generator. [4]
Perhaps the Fall lowered the curtain between us and all truth, which
we now see "through a glass, darkly"; [5] and in Heaven the curtain
will rise again. Thus, the knowledge we now have is both a memory [6]
and a prophecy of Paradise.
But even if this theory is true it does not entail our omniscience
Even if there is no curtain in Heaven, even if our consciousness'
there dashes against no wall or limit, still we remain like the tiny
figures in a Chinese landscape: small objects in an enormously larger
objective world. Even if we then escape from the tiny but in which we
are now imprisoned and through whose smudged windows or chinks in hose
walls we now must look - even if we wander freely in the country of
light - we are in the light, not the light in us. Our first and last
wisdom in Heaven is Socratic, just as it is n earth: to know how
little we know. If there is no end of the need for humility in the
moral order (the saint is the one humble enough not to think he is a
saint), the same is true of the intellectual order (the wise man is
the one humble enough to know he has no wisdom). It all depends on the
standard of judgment: by earthly standards most of us are moderately
saintly and moderately wise; by heavenly standards all of us, even in
Heaven, are children. And by the standard of the infinite,
inexhaustible perfection of God, we main children forever. Happy
children, fulfilled children, but children.
Perhaps this will be one of the supreme tests: would we choose the
childlikeness of Heaven or the promise of "maturity" of "humanity come
of age" in Hell? Will we suffer sadly the blow and shock to our pride
that is Heaven's gift eternal childhood (thus eternal hope and
progress) or will e insist on the "successes" of "self-actualization"
that heaven denies us and Hell offers us? If the latter, we will find
despair instead of hope, ennui instead of creative work, and the
emptying out of all our joy. Jesus' teaching, "Unless unless you turn
and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven,"' is not something to be outgrown. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,
when asked which are the four most important virtues, replied,
"Humility, humility, humility, and humility." It is only the foolish
egotist who thinks that our smallness relative to the infinite riches
of objective reality is a problem to be overcome.
2. Will We All Be Equal in Heaven?
By God's grace, no! How awful that would be-almost as awful as knowing
everything. Having no heroes,' being unable to look up to anyone would
be Hell, not Heaven.
We modern egalitarians are tempted to the primal sin of pride in the
opposite way from the ancients. The old, aristocratic form of pride
was the desire to be better than others. The new, democratic form is
the desire not to have anyone better than yourself." It is just as
spiritually deadly and does not even carry with it the false pleasure
of gloating superiority. Flat, boring, repetitive sameness is simply
not the structure of reality in a theistic universe," either on earth
or in Heaven.
However, in Heaven, as on earth, each of us will be or do something no
one else will be or do as well. No one will be superfluous.
If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should
have created more souls than one .... Your soul has a curious shape
because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the
infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of
the doors in the house with many mansions . . . each of the redeemed
shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty
better than any other creature can."
God's justice is not ours. It surprises ours in a double way. On the
one hand, the one-hour workers receive the same pay as the all-day
workers, in Christ's parable." "He has put the mighty from their
thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry
with good things, and he rich he has sent empty away."1' "Every valley
shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.'",
But on the other hand, to him who already has, more will be given and
"from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away."" Human
justice is outraged by both halves of Christ's paradoxical justice.
Justice does not mean equality. In a poem, in the universe in
mathematics, in architecture-everywhere there is natural justice,
justice means inequality, yin and yang, male and female, higher and
lower, East and West, light and darkness land and water. No flat, dull
repetition but uniqueness In human relationships too, justice does not
mean equality, but treating equals equally and unequals unequal." Is
it just to treat a pig like a man? If so, it is also just to treat a
man like a pig. One of the astonishing blind spots of modernity is its
unquestioning fixation on equality.
Of course there are degrees of perfection in Heaven; it is quite the
divine style. There are degrees of perfection in everything God
created (though not in everything we create).
Equality is a man-made legal fiction designed as a wall defense
against tyranny, a medicine against a disease.
We must all be guarded by equal rights from one another's greed,
because we are fallen. just as we must all wear clothes the same
reason. But the naked body should be there underneath the clothes,
ripening for the day when we shall need m no longer. Equality is not
the deepest thing, you know."
'I always thought that was just what it was. I thought it was heir
souls that people were equal."
"You were mistaken .... That is the last place where they are equal.
Equality before the law, equality of incomes-that is all very well.
Equality guards life; it doesn't make it. It is medicine, not food . .
.
"But surely in marriage . . . ?"
"Worse and worse .... Courtship knows nothing of it; nor does fruition
.... It is not your fault. They never warned you. No one has ever told
you that obedience-humility-is an erotic necessity." [18]
Why is there no jealousy in this hierarchical, aristocratic,
non-egalitarian Heaven of authority and obedience? Because all are
cells in the same body. The kidney does not rebel because it is not
the eye." Jealousy is the principle of Hell. There is no Hell in
Heaven.
3. Do the Blessed in Heaven See Us Now?
The living often say they feel the dead present and watching them. Is
this illusion or fact?
It is fact. The Bible says we are surrounded by "a great cloud of
witnesses." [20] The context is speaking of the dead. They are alive.
For God is "not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live for
him."[21]
Reason confirms revelation here. Does their love for us cease? Does it
not rather increase in purity and power? And does not their vision and
understanding also increase?
"The Communion of Saints" means not only (1) love and understanding
among the blessed in Heaven and (2) love and understanding among the
redeemed on earth but also (3) love and understanding between those
two groups, the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant, temporarily
separated by death. [22]
What difference does this make? Well, what difference does it make to
you if you believe you are being watched by a thousand living human
eyes? Multiply this consequence by millions and by the increase in
love and understanding in Heaven. Throw in literally innumerable
angels, [23] all of them sharing mightily in God's love and knowledge.
Then you have the difference it makes: the exponent of infinity.
The link connecting the Church Militant with the Church Triumphant,
the link, connecting Heaven and earth, the incarnate Christ. We
participate in what Christ does, and Christ links Heaven and earth. He
is still on earth as ,yell as in Heaven (1) by His Spirit and (2) in
His Mystical Body, the Church, His people. Christianity does not
worship, an absent Christ. And just as He can be on earth even when He
has gone to Heaven, so can we - in Him. The cells in lie one Body are
all living cells, but only a very few of them are living on earth.
4. Do Ghosts Come from Heaven?
First of all, Scripture strictly forbids us to call them up [24] as
Saul called up the ghost of the prophet Samuel by means of lie Witch
of Endor's necromancy. Because of this deed, he lost his kingdom and
perhaps his soul. [25]
The reason for the stricture is probably protection against he danger
of deception by evil spirits. We are out of our depth, our knowledge,
and our control once we open the doors to the supernatural. The' only
openings that are safe or us are the ones God has approved:
revelation, prayer, His own miracles, sacraments, and primarily Christ
Himself. He has made a straight and safe road for us from earth to
heaven, through the dark woods of the innumerable, unknowable and
unpredictable spiritual forces that are to us as fire to an infant or
a juggernaut to an ant. The danger is not physical but spiritual, and
spiritual danger always centers on deception. The Devil is "a liar and
the father of lies." [26] He disguises himself "as an angel of light.
[27]
Nevertheless, without our action or invitation, the dead often do
appear to the living. There is enormous evidence of 'hosts" in all
cultures. What are we to make of them? Surely we should not classify
the appearances of the wives of C.S. Lewis and Sheldon Vanauken, just
to take two Christian examples, as demonic?
We can distinguish three kinds of ghosts, I believe.
First, the most familiar kind: the sad ones, the wispy ones. They seem
to be working out some unfinished earthly business, or suffering some
purgatorial purification until released from their earthly business.
[28] These ghosts would seem to be the ones who just barely made it to
Purgatory, who feel little or no joy yet and who need to learn many
painful lessons about their past lives on earth.
Second, there are malicious and deceptive spirits-and since they are
deceptive, they hardly ever appear malicious. These are probably the
ones who respond to conjurings at séances. They probably come from
Hell. Even the chance of that happening should be sufficient to
terrify away all temptation to necromancy.
Third, there are the bright, happy spirits of dead friends and family,
especially spouses, who appear unbidden, at God's will, not ours, with
messages of hope and love. They seem to come from Heaven. Unlike the
purgatorial ghosts who come back primarily for their own sakes, these
bright spirits come back for the sake of us the living, to tell us all
is well. They are aped by evil spirits who say the same, who speak
"peace, peace, when there is no peace." [29] But deception works only
one way: the fake can deceive by appearing genuine, but the genuine
never deceives by appearing fake. Heavenly spirits always convince us
that they are genuinely good.
Even the bright spirits appear ghostlike to us because a ghost of any
type is one whose substance does not belong in or come from this
world. In Heaven these spirits are not ghosts but real, solid, and
substantial because they are at home there. "One can't be a ghost in
one's own country. [30]
That there are all three kinds of ghosts is enormously likely. Even
taking into account our penchant to deceive and to be deceived, our
credulity and our fakery, there remain so many trustworthy accounts of
all three types of ghosts; trustworthy by every ordinary empirical and
psychological standards-that only a dogmatic a priori prejudice
against em could prevent us from believing they exist. [31] As
Chesterton says, "We believe an old apple-woman when she says she ate
an apple; but when she says she saw a ghost we say, pity she's only an
old apple-woman." [32] A most undemocratic and unscientific prejudice.
5. Will We Have Emotions in Heaven?
Emotions move us; we do not move them. They are a m of passivity. We
will be far more active in Heaven . :. in we ever were before, since
our spirits (which are activity) will rule rather than being ruled by
our bodies (which are passivity). Nevertheless, we will have bodies,
therefore passivity, therefore emotions, though they will not be at
the unfree whim of heredity, environment, animal instinct, propaganda,
others' demands, and the many other forces that presently condition
us.
Even when our spirits are perfectly free, they can feel. Even now, it
is the spirit that feels, not just the body. It is a prejudice
imported from Greek philosophy, not a notion found in Scripture, that
feelings should be dominated by rational thought. The center of the
self, which the Greeks located in reason, [33] Scripture locates in
the "heart," that which loves. This center is no more a feeling than
it is thinking; it is the pre-functional root of both, [34] or it is a
deeper feeling and a deeper thinking: "the heart has its reasons which
the reason does not know." [35]
But since our thinking and our feeling are equal functions of the
heart, we will retain our feeling in Heaven just as we will retain our
thinking. All our humanity is perfected, not diminished, in Heaven.
6. Will We Feel Sorrow in Heaven for Those in Hell?
We seem to face a dilemma here. On the one hand, Scripture assures us
that "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall
be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be
any more pain: for the former things are passed away."36
On the other hand, the blessed dead seem sometimes to manifest sorrow,
like Mary at LaSallette, weeping for the sins of the world." And C. S.
Lewis says, "as there may be pleasures in Hell (God shield us from
them), there may be something not all unlike pains in Heaven (God
grant us soon to taste them)."38 What could this mean?
Might it be that the sorrow appears only during our first, purgatorial
stage? At this point the pains of separation may affect not only the
earthly bereaved lover but also the heavenly beloved. As Lewis says,
"I can't help suspecting the dead also feel the pains of separation
(and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings)."39 But this
would not explain the tears of Mary, who is certainly beyond
Purgatory.
Might it be that the sorrow is only an appearance, like angels'
bodies, put on for our sake? But the purpose of appearance should be
to teach, not to deceive, if the appearance comes from Heaven.
To solve this problem let us look at the greatest suffering, that
which is made possible by love. The more you love, the more you can
suffer. That fact creates the following problem: Does God the Father
suffer? The affirmative answer to that question has been declared a
heresy (Patripassianism); [40] yet how can God love us, and remain
aloof and invulnerable? As Kierkegaard says, the unhappiness that
comes from the inability of lovers to understand each other "is
infinitely more profound than that [unhappiness] of which men commonly
speak, since it strikes at the very heart of love .... This infinitely
deeper grief is essentially the prerogative of the superior . . . in
reality, it belongs to God alone .... Men sometimes think that this
might be a matter of indifference to God, since he does not stand in
need of the learner [us]. But in this we forget-or rather, alas! we
prove how far we are from understanding him; we forget that God loves
the learner." [41]
The dilemma, then, is this: If God cannot suffer, how can He really
love us? But if He can suffer, how is He God? To answer this question
would also be to answer the question of nether and how we can suffer
in Heaven, for heavenly children resemble their heavenly Father.
The answer requires us to distinguish between two ingredients of
earthly love and caring, an active and a passive ingredient, that are
together in fact but distinguishable in ought. Say a parent loves a
child who has done something harmful to himself. The parent's love
speaks two words to e child. The first word, the word of active caring
for the her, says, "How could you do this to yourself?" The second
word, the word of passivity and vulnerability, says, "How could you do
this to me?" God loves us with the first love only, and the blessed in
Heaven will love as God loves. We cannot blackmail God. We cannot make
Him wring is hands by holding our breath until we turn blue in the
face [42] He truly loves and cares, yet He is invulnerable-not being
aloof but by being supremely active. [43]
If our spirits are similar enough to God, we too can love without
sorrow or vulnerability because we love only with active feeling of
caring, not the passive feeling of being hurt. For our spirits then
are not controlled by our bodies, by heredity and environment. C. S.
Lewis's experience of his wife's presence and love was like that:
was quite incredibly unemotional .... Yet there was an extreme and
cheerful intimacy. An intimacy that had not passed rough the senses or
the emotions at all .... Can that intimacy love itself-always in this
life attended with emotion, not cause it is itself an emotion, or
needs an attendant emotion, but because our animal souls, our nervous
systems, our imaginations, have to respond to it in that way? If so,
how many preconceptions I must scrap! A society, a communion, of pure
intelligences would not be cold, drab and comfortless .... It would,
if I have had a glimpse, be-well, I'm almost scared at the adjectives
I'd have to use. Brisk? cheerful? keen? alert? intense? wide-awake?
Above all, solid. Utterly reliable. Firm. There is no nonsense about
the dead.
When I say "intellect" I include will. Attention is an act of will.
Intelligence in action is will par excellence. What met me was full of
resolution. [44]
Yet on the other side of the dilemma, will Heaven lack the greatest of
all beauties of earthly art, the beauty of sorrow, of great tragedy?
Nothing of value is simply lost in Heaven; all is preserved and
transformed. Earthly indicators are to be read (though with caution)
as pointers to heavenly realities. And on earth, pain and pleasure are
strangely akin at their peak, like death and life. When a thing is
enormously beautiful, it hurts. What heavenly fact is imaged in this
earthly mystery?
Perhaps the ultimate fact of all, the nature of God, the inner life of
the Trinity as a system of self-dying, self-giving. [45] Perhaps this
is the deepest reason of all for pain on earth, and the solution to
the "problem of evil": Why does a good and loving God allow so much
earthly suffering? To train us for Heaven's joyful suffering and to
enact, to incarnate, to manifest the ultimate law of reality on our
human level: the law of death and life, blessed self-death (no longer
blessed for fallen creatures) leading to eternal life. "All pains and
pleasures we have known on earth are early initiations in the
movements of that dance. [46] This is the supreme joy in all
existence, the joy of God's inner life of self-giving, the secret
forever incomprehensible to the rebel, angelic or human, who says
"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."[47]
7. Will We Be Free to Sin in Heaven?
Here is another dilemma. If we answer no, we seem to lack something:
free will. If we answer yes, we lack something else: moral perfection.
The heavenly question thus lands us squarely into an earthly and
present issue concerning the nature of freedom and of morality and may
help us to puncture one of modernity's most pervasive and destructive
illusions: the association of freedom with rebellion and obedience
with un-freedom.
Suppose we change the question so as to avoid the ambiguity of the
word freedom. Are we able to sin in Heaven? If not, it seems we are
programmed and determined rather than free. If so, if temptation is
possible in Heaven, heavenly security against sin is gone. One of the
best things to look forward to at death, say the saints," is that "he
who has died is freed from sin."'9 If there is even a possibility of
sin in Heaven, that possibility may be actualized, for if the
actualization of a possibility is impossible, then it is not a
possibility but an impossibility.
How can we preserve both free will ,and sinlessness in Heaven? Once
again, God is our model and solution: we solve this pseudo-problem in
the same way God does. He is both free and sinless. How? Let us judge
our freedom by His, rather than vice versa.
What do we mean by "freedom"? Sometimes (1) political freedom, freedom
from tyranny, oppression, or the denial of our rights; sometimes (2)
physical power, ability to act, freedom from hindrance; and sometimes
(3) spiritual power to choose ("free will"). Of course we will have
all three in Heaven, but why won't we be able to sin, since we will
have free will?
Because we will also have a fourth freedom, the most important one of
all: freedom from sin, from what makes us not ourselves. We will be
free to be the true selves God designed us to be, free to be
determined by God. This determination does not remove our freedom but
is our freedom, for even now freedom is not simply in determination;
it is freedom to be determined by final causes (purposes) rather than
efficient causes (things and events that already exist and act upon
us). Our free will means that our present is determined by our future
rather than by our past. Final causes are at present only mental
pictures and desires.
To say we are determined by final causes means that we, like God,
create by knowing; that as creative artists our knowledge antecedes
and determines the truth of its object, the work of art, rather than
conforming to its object, as scientific and empirical knowledge does.
But we are objects to God (though subjects to the world); we too,
therefore, are true only when we | |
