Posted on 02/08/2008 7:25:41 PM PST by 49th
"Tom" Wright is one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought. As Bishop of Durham, he is the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England and a major player in the strife-riven global Anglican Communion; as a much-read theologian and Biblical scholar he has taught at Cambridge and is a hero to conservative Christians worldwide for his 2003 book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which argued forcefully for a literal interpretation of that event.
TIME: At one point you call the common view of heaven a "distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope."
Wright: It really is. I've often heard people say, "I'm going to heaven soon, and I won't need this stupid body there, thank goodness.' That's a very damaging distortion, all the more so for being unintentional. [...] At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation. [...] There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection. It has to be an intermediate state. [...] Yes, you might get disappointment in the case where somebody has recently gone through the death of somebody they love and they are wanting simply to be with them. And I'd say that's understandable. But the end of Revelation describes a marvelous human participation in God's plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Good author. I read his books, “The People of God”, “Jesus, the Victory of God”, and “The Resurrection of the Son of God”. Good historical writing and very thought provoking.
The headline is a diversion from the content of the dissertation.
Very refreshing in light of some of the things that the Archbishop of Canterbury has been saying lately. Good to know England still has a few decent Christians left in her Church.
The title was a little misleading....I’d say that is what most people believe, christians true believers know we won’t be floating around on little clouds holding harps....it will be so much better than we can even imagine.
I learned a lot about the melting pot of Judaism, Hellenism, and the Roman Empire that the Lord was born into. It prompted me to want to learn a lot more about life and times at that point in history. These books were an impetus for me to pursue more historical information and writings.
Got your attention. ;-)
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He is right! The earth will be restored and the meek will inherit it.
Are you telling me we’re not getting 72 black eyed virgins?
Very nice read. Might not this fit better in the Religion forum?
All the same, thanks for sharing it.
I know, it’s Time’s headline, not mine. I don’t editorialize articles I post.
he’s entitled to his interpretation and i’m entitled to mine. we’ll see who’s more correct.
Walter, one of Jeff Dunham’s characters, wonders why they wouldn’t rather have 72 slutty whores who at least know what they are doing. B-)
Poor reasoning and logic.
Wright: Yes. If there's going to be an Armageddon, and we'll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn't matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.
Left wing nonsense.
Yes, the resurrection of the body is a traditional Christian teaching with biblical support. There are two ancient doctrines, related but different: the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body. Traditional Christians believe in both.
Jesus said to the Good Thief on the cross next to Him, “Tonight you will be with me in Paradise.” So this and other passages led to the traditional belief that the soul after death goes directly to God for individual judgment, and then will reunite with the resurrected body at the Last Judgment. Those are the teachings of the Fathers, the early Creeds, and the Catholic Church, as well as Protestants who still read their Bibles.
Fascinating piece, thank you for posting.
Wright: Yes. If there's going to be an Armageddon, and we'll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn't matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.
While it is true we are to be good stewards of the earth, the idea this guy is putting out that "acid rain" and "greenhouse gases" will make it harder for God to create the new heavens and the new earth is idiotic.
And why do I suspect that when he refers to bombing "civilians" in Iraq, he is not talking about jihadist terrorists but rather the U.S. military?
2 Peter 3: "the day of the Lord will come as a theif in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the words that are in it will be burned up."
Rev 21: "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away"
You didn’t actually read the article, did you?
http://catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=11731
Peter upon this Rock I build MY church...( not Calvins not Henry 8th not Luthers not the Shopping center retail Church)
The Pope the Vicar of Christ direct descendant of St Peter speaks about heaven and hell and Mentions nobody talks about sin anymore and its Consequences.Good Reading...
http://catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=11731
Do people really understand the BIBLE??
Actually I did. Where am I wrong?
Heavenologists....what a concept..
Thanks, that was an excellent, concise summary. What is your preferred theory of eschatology? I say “preferred” because I don’t necessarily subscribe to any - to many good theologins are all over board on it other than the most broad outlines. Is there a generally accepted eschatology in the Catholic Church or are they as all over the board as we Protestants?
I don't find any particular conflict between what the bible scholar said and my understanding from the bible.
He didn't talk about hell and the second death though. I can't ignore that.
One of the big differences between my understanding of the afterlife and that of Islam is that the Christian one is not sensual which to the carnal mind might seem less appealing; I'll have it however Jesus would have it. Jesus told us that we wouldn't marry or be given in marriage but be as the angels in heaven. Now in the resurrection, I don't have any idea what our bodies will be like.
I do think that may be why the Catholic teaching of displining ourselves might be helpful in overcoming lusts of the flesh and inordinate appetites.
I wonder if men will run everything there? Not much, if anything, is said about what womens' roles will be unless we share in running things, too, not that I would want that personally, don't like ordering anyone around, but then I think of male domination and oppression which does not appeal to me either (maybe because of abuse, strict father, dunno).
I long to be free without sinning!!! And I would love to have work that I enjoy, sometimes wonder if I will be allowed to do what I desire, also crave learning and understanding of the spiritual and the present physical world, some of which has eluded me in life.
Another very good book on this issue is HEAVEN by Randy Alcorn.
I believe that “to be absent from the body is to be with the Lord” (2 Cor.5), so the question would be where is Jesus now? The 9th chapter of Hebrews tells us that “He has entered the Most Holy Place”, and if this is not clear enough, in the 10th chapter the author adds that He has “sat down at the right hand of God”. I may not be as book smart as this bishop, but I firmly believe that Jesus is in heaven now, and when I die I will join Him there. Unless, of course, He comes back before I die. That doesn’t negate the description of the new earth in Revelation but until then, every born-again believer who has accepted God’s gift of salvation by faith in Jesus’ finished work at the Cross, is heaven-bound.
To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
This saying of our Lord as strong proof of the
immateriality of the soul; and it is no wonder that those
who have embraced contrary opinions should endeavor to
explain away it’s true meaning.
In order to do this, a comma is placed after to-day,
and then our Lord is supposed to have meant, “Thou shalt be with me after the resurrection I tell thee this, To-Day.”
I am sorry to find men of great positions in the church
attempting to support this most feeble and worthless
criticism.
Such support of God’s word cannot need; and,
in my opinion, it’s not only a bad interpretation but it
tries to discredit the Scriptures.
If I want to learn how to worship the beast I will read
Time magazine and the New York Times.
According to the Bishop, the Bible is clear that Jesus has been resurrected and is in ‘heaven’, but that our mortal deaths are not the resurrectory step that is required for us to enter that realm with him, but we must wait until Jesus comes back to earth, at which point we shall be resurrected and heaven and earth shall be one.
“eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him,”
1 Corinthians
Chapter 2 verse 9
“I can imagine a lot.”
Han Solo
jwalsh07: Left wing nonsense.
Sounds like pretrib dispensationalism to me.
Most Protestants read that to mean that the church will be built upon the “rock” of Peter’s faith, not on the man himself, nor his figurative descendants.
I wonder if there will be any sexual identity at all? Jesus' comments on no marriage in Heaven and the many verses on the spiritual equality (more a concept of oneness in the original Greek) of the sexes, economic classes, races, etc, and it would seem that physical reproduction would not be necessary; all lead one to think they could make an argument there is no male/female as we know it in Heaven. Or it might still be there.
Probably I shouldn’t have implied, with that word “yes,” that I agreed with everything he said. Only that the resurrection of the body is an important teaching, as well as the immortality of the soul.
It was careless of me, and one shouldn’t be careless about such matters.
Cicero, I fear the fault was mine as I didn't have any problem whatsoever with your post. I think I arbitrarily clicked on reply to because I had last read yours, probably should have gone back and replied to the OP.
I’m heading off for bed, and I think your question raises too many issues to respond to briefly. But the Catholic Church teaches that Christ will come on the clouds of glory at the Second Coming, and at that time there will be a General Judgment or Last Judgment.
It also teaches that when persons die their souls go before God for a particular judgment. Catholics retain the doctrine of Purgatory, which is a place or state where souls go who will eventually go to heaven, but died in a state of imperfection or venial sin, not serious enough to condemn them to Hell.
To me that is comforting, and Dante’s depiction of Purgatory (not official teaching, but certainly important and I believe consonant with orthodox teaching) portrays souls that suffer the pains or fires of purgation yet are happy because they will eventually be released to heaven.
The idea of the tribulation is a late development in Protestant theology, not found before the nineteenth century, although it appears to be increasingly common among the various Evangelical persuasions. I’m pretty familiar with some of the wild doctrines that appeared in England in the 1650s, among such sects as the Ranters, Anabaptists, and Quakers, yet that was not one of them. Samuel Butler’s parents were among the early adherants of this doctrine, as found among the Plymouth Brethren; he revolted against his parents and portrayed this experience in his autobiographical novel, “The Way of All Flesh.”
Any discussion about Heaven needs one very critical question, that cannot be overlooked: Why Heaven?
What about people is worth keeping? Most arguments along these lines lead to the one small and indefinable part of people, the soul, as being the one, non-expendable part.
Everything else about people can be seen as superfluous. Our bodies, our memories and knowledge, our personalities, all the good and evil parts. There is some debate as to whether our souls grow and change, and thus retain lessons of some variety, perhaps even in more than one lifetime.
But the concept of a soul is a tricky thing. It must be bound together with a perhaps a different, but also indefinable part of us, our awareness. That is, a soul, aware that it is a soul, and also aware of other souls, and of God.
So there are two things, bound together. The part that Heaven wants, and the part that is aware of things Heavenly.
But a big question is, are souls perfect, or do they need growth before they can achieve Heaven or oneness with God?
Shed of our human garb, some consider that all souls are already perfected fragments of God, that returns to God when freed from their mortal shell. Others propose that souls must combine with each other, to evolve into ever more complex states of being, until they are perfected enough for this rejoining.
From this perspective, Heaven is greater than Earth, but is itself a training ground for souls in their growth. It is a form of life beyond the physical, where souls merge into ever more complex and perfected beings until worthy to rejoin with God.
But this is a very different idea from a return by, and resurrection by, Jesus. As taking place on Earth, this is far more like the Jewish concept of Messiah, establishing a hegemony of God on Earth.
In this purpose, the vast armies of resurrected believers would serve perhaps one of two purposes. Either to create a New Jerusalem, a kingdom of God on Earth; or perhaps to return the world to the pristine state of Eden. All those human hands, no longer consuming, but restoring.
Any number of such possibilities is certainly food for thought.
Well mentioned. I’m a little surprised the off-the-cuff analysis wasn’t more rigorous, considering it’s rather simple.
For all the Hebrew/Jewish scholarship at the time of the New Testament writing, and including the Aramaic at the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the underworld, as expressed in the Greek was composed of four chambers.
HADES (Greek) also referenced as SHEOL(Hebrew) as being ‘down there’, an underworld, composed of “Abraham’s Bosom” also referenced as Paradise for believers, and as the TORMENTS for unbelievers. Other discernible compartments were TARTARUS, a place where fallen angels are chained/imprisoned till later and the ABYSS where the demon Apollyon is recorded as being kept until the Tribulation.
Whether physical or not, below the earth we touch or perhaps that is how we perceive it, whether it be empirically, rationally, or spiritually, nonetheless the locations are mentioned in Scripture and are therefore very real and truly exist.
We also know that at bodily death, Jesus Christ’s body was taken to the tomb, placed in the grave. His spirit had been relinquished to the Father while Christ was on the Cross by Jesus Christ. His soul departed His body after it ceased bodily functioning.
A gap ensued between when the body went in the tomb and 3 days later, was found to be resurrected by the multiple eyewitness testimonies of physically touching and seeing Jesus Christ alive in the flesh, but a discernibly different body, not to be confused as a ghost, but one that also ate meat, but could walk through walls, travel immense distances in time and space in moments.
We see in Acts and the Gospels and some epistles, that when He resurrected, others also accompanied Him out of the grave, though He was the First Fruits.
He ministered to the spirits in HADES during that interval. This implies really those in Paradise as He told the thief on the Cross He would see him in Paradise that same day. Yet not much is spoken to whether He may have also went into other portions of HADES.
He is God, so nothing could prevail against Him. Nothing would be able to prevent Him going elsewhere, except something which might have been immutable to His nature. So whether he went into the Abyss or the Torments might be arguable, but since Scripture doesn’t say much (that I’ve found) this may be a moot point.
He didn’t have a resurrection body at that time, but from the soulish or spiritual viewpoint, He still resided in that place, so a body of some sort is identified with the person in those places.
Today, after His Resurrection, we now have a different situation. Whereas OT saints still could not ascend to the immediate presence of God in the third heaven, because the real sacrifice had not yet been given, today we know Jesus Christ has ascended even to the third heaven, and seated at the right side of the Father.
We also know that nothing separates the believer from the love of God and that separate from the body we are face to face with the Lord. There does seem to be a body associated with the believer today, after death, but still prior to the Rapture or 2nd Coming which the believer in heaven is associated and recognizable by other saints and even sinners from the stories of Lazarus and the rich man.
Paul reports a person he knew who had visited the third heaven but unable to discern if in body or not.
I report from dreams, that one might indeed be in a place, spoken of in language as being a real physical place, whether a physical or not physical place, not verifiable, but insofar as our soul and spirit is able to discern and discuss it appears quite a real place. But Scripture tells us more in our Lord Christ Jesus as He is the First Fruits.
In addition, there is a good Biblical argument to be made there are different “levels” of Heaven and Hell. To the extent there are different levels of Hell one made not need to be saved to store treasure in Heaven.
You make some good points.
I’ve found one can understand Bible doctrinally, certain aspects of heaven and the future in His Plan, which are trustworthy, but placing them into context with our place today is somewhat extant and discernible.
For example.
I can say I have body and soul and through faith in Christ recognize the Holy Spirit has regenerated my human spirit today, as a I live right now. I can discern that existence and perceptions from what I was when I was also here as a man only with a body and a soul.
Next, I study about my Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, how He had a body, soul, and spirit. I also understand how He expressed Himself indicating a separation of His spirit from His soul and from His body. I understand from Scripture, from multiple eyewitness testimony how He returned in a Resurrection Body, the First Fruits, where He ate meat(fish), could pass through walls, other men prior to their first death could touch His resurrection body, and discerned it from a ghost.
I know academically, three heavens exist, ... The first being the heavens on earth, where birds fly and clouds float by; the third where God resides.
I know from vivid dreams of being in a place in a body, yet my physical body remains on earth, but discernible from mere sleep in that other persons exist with input to my soul and spirit of things I have not had nor will have access to know or perceive otherwise. Yet I know I do not yet have a resurrection body, so perhaps this is a 2nd heaven. This 2nd heaven though also has a earth with similar topology, geography as many places here, which I had never before see, but later visited physically and knew features only from past spiritual perception.
I also know of an OBE, wherein I could perceive physical features in a hospital clinic room, which I had not seen otherwise in bodily person, but as I arose I still had body though not physical.
But whatever these ‘vivid dreams’ or OBE, they are not identical to the ressurrection body.
I also understand that we will face a future judgment by fire, similar to how the Earth underwent a judgment by water in the days of Noah.
I tend to think, that believers will face a testing, communicated as similar to a metal being refined by fire, so the dross is taken away. I suspect this might imply our thinking which is scarred, or not sanctified, which influences and is retained by our souls and or spirits, will be tested and burned up. That process might be identifiable with the issues of Purgatory, although I also agree with arguments indicating Purgatory as a parallel heaven is not Scriptural.
There are also doppelgangers, or our doubles. Perhaps spiritual deception, or perhaps resurrection body, I do not know.
Absolutely correct. God created the earth and said it was “good”. M\an created to replenish the earth. Nowhere does scripture, whether infallible or not, whether Hebrew or Greek mention we are to leave.
Yeah, but after the fall in the Garden, all of Creation groaned and continues to look forward to the New Heaven and New Earth. Just a good number of millenia in between and where we fit at any one time varies with His plan for us.
Jesus Said MY CHURCH.... whenever did he give a counter Command to found a New Church!Never!
The Catholic Church is Jesus Church the Bishops are his present day Apostles..
The "Fall" is an interpretation that fits you brand of theology. Which is fine for you but I don't happen to believe because of one sin entropy exists in the universe. Creation was termed by God "good". I believe it was "good" back then and its still "good" now.
+++++++++++++++=
If you will read the whole article, I think you will find the teachings have been “told before”.
What do you think?
If you’d like to read intertestimental descriptions of 8 levels of heaven and chasms of the underworld (hell)as one of them was described by Jesus being “Abrahams Bosom”, the 1st and 2nd books of Enoch describe all that stuff. I really don’t buy into it but it seems you’re interested. I’m sure its where Dante got most of his ideas.
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