Friday, April 11, 2014

Mailbag: What about Heaven?

This question actually comes from a Facebook group called “Ask an Apologist.”

Diana writes: The Bible talks about 3 heavens. Most people believe the first layer is the actual sky, the second is the entryway into the ‘real’ heaven and the third is the actual heaven. From a biblical standpoint how do you defend heaven's existence? How do you distinguish the 3 ‘layers’ or don't you?”

Randy responds:

I'll answer the second one first, and then move from there. We realize, intuitively, that words have what is called a "semantic range." This means that a single word does not have, at least usually, only one possible meaning. Take the sentence pair: "I love my wife" and "I love pizza." I really hope that the one who utters this pair is using "love" in at least a slightly different way! At least most people do use words in different ways, and the same thing goes for other languages, including Hebrew and Greek. "Heavens," in Genesis 1-2, refers at one point to the stars, galaxies, and universe, and at another, to the sky itself (our atmosphere). How can we tell the difference? The same way we tell in ordinary language: context and intention. We know that when someone says, "I love my wife," they typically mean a relationship-like marital love, not a preference that indicates a passing pleasure, like on the level of pizza. Similarly, we know that Genesis 1:1 posits God as the creator of all that there is, and we have other biblical resources to back this up (John 1, the book of Colossians, Hebrews 1, etc.). So if the context in Genesis 1:1 is everything, then "heavens" will refer to the universe. Later on, however, the perspective clearly changes to the earth itself: things are being created on the earth, and the earth is moving from formless (v. 2) to formed (the rest of the chapter), so that when it talks about "heavens" in any translations in chapters 1 and 2, it's going to be with respect to the sky (we can also see this if we recognize that birds are flying in heaven probably won’t refer to space).

Now, as to how to defend the existence of heaven, I think first we ought to have a good theology of our eternal state. Regardless of one's own eschatology, orthodox Christians tend to believe that to be "absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." So, if one dies, he goes to Heaven. However, once Christ returns, the ultimate state of everything is going to be a New Heaven and New Earth, where the entire universe is going to be "re-vamped" as it were, so that heaven (understood as the place you will go if you were to die right now) is not your eternal destiny—the New Earth is. This is all in Revelation and in the broad picture is uncontroversial (though obviously many good Christians differ on the details).


So, we know that when we die, we will be with the Lord from Paul. We know that, from John 14:6, Jesus is returning to his Father to prepare a place for us (metaphorically speaking--it's not like Jesus is the Greatest Conceivable Construction Worker), so that when he returns or if we go to him we may have it. He frames this place as his "Father's House," and we know from Hebrews 1 that Jesus is now with God "at the right hand." We define heaven as the abode of God, based on Psalm 115:3, Job 1, etc. Therefore, we can conclude with some safety, biblically, that God is in Heaven, and when you die, you go to be with God, in the spiritual (not physical) place of Heaven. I hope that helps a little!

6 comments:

  1. Hi Randy,

    This will probably sound like an odd question, but what is the point of heaven in relation to God? What I mean by that is that since heaven is not a physical place (though maybe the 'New Jersualem' is physical since it'll descend to earth for the redeemed to reside in at some point - unless it's a metaphor of course) and God is not a physical being who needs "somewhere" to reside, why does God need (I guess "need" might be the wrong word anyway) a heaven to exist in?. Hope that makes sense.

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    1. Hi James, I definitely understand the question. Now, as you rightly point out, it's not a physical location or place. Certainly God doesn't need to be there. I think it's for our benefit. For instance, it's not incredibly clear there is an abode of Heaven prior to Enoch being "taken up." And of course, at that point, there are conscious creatures made in the image of God. I can leave to one side the issue of whether and where OT saints went when they died, because it would make sense for God to create this kind of "place" at the moment of creation, in anticipation of what was to come. So the answer is that it's how we can relate to God, for lack of a better sentence.

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    2. Hi Randy,

      Sorry to press this :) but I read your answer a few times but couldn't quite grasp what you meant. I can't quite see how we use heaven to "relate to God". In other words, since God is non-physical, heaven is non-physical, angels are non-physical and humans souls are too, in what way do we use heaven to relate to God?

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    3. Non-physically, of course! ;) But beyond this obvious and somewhat unhelpful statement, "heaven" is just the spiritual place where created beings can be in the presence of God (it also helps that Jesus Christ just *is* the image of God, so, in a way, it's going to be with him). We are related in that we are in the presence of God in a non-physical way that we were not before (our souls being located here, in our bodies, not in heaven). It gets somewhat murkier from here as to how that works. :)

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  2. Hi Randy,

    I was wondering how we should picture Jesus in heaven at moment. Obviously, God is an immaterial being but the Bible seems pretty clear (Colossians 2:9 for example) that Jesus currently resides in a resurrected physical body and that he'll return to earth in that body in the future, so "where" should we say Jesus is now given that heaven is a non-physical "place"? How do we picture Him now?

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    1. That's right! Good catch, for sure. The short answer is "I don't know"! The Resurrected body is one's *own* body, but it is not merely the same body. It is not adorned with any afflictions, possibly can do things that would otherwise be miraculous, etc. It *is* a physical body, but it's unclear how or where physical bodies are in relation to spiritual realms. It *is* a real place, but not physical matter itself. I see no contradiction to saying Jesus' physical body could be in a different realm, but I do not know what else to say about it, to be honest! I wish I knew more!

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