In "Locating Heaven, Part 2" I reflected on what might come of Western man's attempt to blend his frame of reference into the biblical description. Of course, given the message in "The World through Hebrew Eyes" and "The World through Christian Eyes" I showed how this attempt falls short. It indicates where my mind was back when I first began to give serious attention to grasping the nature of Ultimate Truth 30 years ago. More recently I have come to see things differently. An excellent summary that describes how the Hebrew-biblical mind would view Heaven: "The Greek Versus the Hebrew View of Man," by George Eldon Ladd, for Present Truth magazine.
He also does a great job of showing how we are so infected by Platonic dualism that we scarcely realize how deeply modern theology is often compromised. The fundamental orientation of our thoughts on this matter causes us to start from Platonic assumptions even when we try to discern Platonism in order to escape it.
Scripture is very clear: we do not go to Heaven; it comes to us. When we recall that the term "Heaven" refers to what amounts in our culture to a "parallel universe" existing right beside this one, we began to envision how the final end of all things will bring "a new heaven and a new earth" (2 Peter 3:10-13) into existence, displacing this one. All Creation is God's good handiwork, longing for redemption to come in its final manifestation. Believers dying today will pass into what Jesus called "Paradise" (Luke 23:43), and from other passages, this seems to be a temporary lodging of the soul. It is called the "Bosom of Abraham" (Luke 16:19-31), the place where souls "sleep" (1 Corinthians 11:30), to be awakened at the Last Day.
The Rabbis of Jesus' day had slid off into materialism. It was the result of focusing on God's promised temporal blessings from obeying ritual Law. What they had left behind was redemption: the transforamtion of things to what they should be, to what God intended. Thus, Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven as coming right here on earth, and clearly following on the heels of His death (Matthew 4:17). He showed how it was possible to operate in this world by the principles of the next world, and to see the temporal focus as missing the best God had to offer. Rather than a Platonic focus on the afterlife as the chance to escape this dreary world, Jesus taught us to bring that Other Realm into existence here and now by our committment to Him.
Ed Hurst
04 June 2003
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