Life in the Age to Come

 What sort of images come into our mind when we think of heaven? By “heaven” here I do not mean that realm where God dwells in all of his transcendent majesty and where angels have always worshiped him ever since they themselves were created. I mean that conception of the place that Jesus promised to prepare for those whom He loves. 

 Before we move too fast into that imagery, let me try to explain to you why there is not much coming into your mind if by “heaven” you have learned to mean merely heaven. First, let me show you from God’s own word. In the very last portion of Scripture, at the end of the book of Revelation, we read this:

 “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man” (Rev. 21:1-3a). 

 Does anything strike you as odd there? It appears not that we are going “up” to heaven, but that heaven is coming “down” to earth. The figurative nature of the book and the limitations of our imagination being what they are, more likely the emphasis is less on a literal “up” and “down” are more a sudden and complete reunion of heaven and earth. Hence the imagery of a marriage between Christ and the church is central to the reconciliation of all things torn apart by the fall of Adam. 

In fact, both heaven and earth are described as “new” in relation to the old version of each. This is a most helpful thing to consider, as it prevents us from two extreme errors that have been held about the end goal of human existence. One we might call “Gnostic Eschatology” and the other “Naturalist Eschatology.” One sees heaven as a great escape from a problem that is viewed as essentially material. The other longs for God to make things right, so much that it ceases to look to God to do that. A kingdom is pursued without its King, a happily ever after that naturally progresses, rather than one that Christ must impose by some kind of finality and force.  

Heaven and Earth Renewed as a Corrective to Gnostic Eschatology

As I said, one error is to think of going to heaven as an escape from bodily existence. After all, when we look at the world around us, we “see” it’s evil. We feel it. It’s “out there” in the world, and of course our bodies are deteriorating, and they hardly did all that we wanted them to do when they were working well anyway. But this looks for resolution to something that isn’t really the root problem. God did not mess up when He made matter and bodies and reason and feelings and decisions and work and all the rest that we take in with the five senses. If the body can be called a prison, it is only so because a more menacing enemy holds the key and drives the whip from within the heart of man. As a matter of fact, Paul prefers to call the body a “tent” instead (2 Cor. 5:1, 2, 4). That tells us that our present bodies are not permanent, but it does not tell us that we will be without bodies. Instead, Paul follows his doctrine of Christ’s bodily resurrection with this great mystery: 

“​​What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:42-44).

Whatever else we can say about a spiritual body, we can at least say that a spiritual body is not a non-body! And no wonder, since Paul tells us “that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). New bodies fit for a new world. 

If we have never read such places in the Bible, then that would explain why we had trouble conjuring up images of heaven. In his book on Heaven, Randy Alcorn wrote, “The writers of Scripture present Heaven in many ways, including as a garden, a city, and a kingdom. Because gardens, cities, and kingdoms are familiar to us, they afford us a bridge to understanding Heaven. However, many people make the mistake of assuming that these are merely analogies with no actual correspondence to the reality of Heaven (which would make them poor analogies).”1

 Alcorn compares the common picture of heaven to eating gravel. Just as we were not designed to eat gravel, and so cannot develop the appetite for it, no matter how hard we try, so we were not designed to be disembodied, disinterested, or disenfranchised, and so we cannot long for a place without enjoyment that is bodily, self-interested, and public or communal. The promise is nothing less than “a resurrected life in a resurrected body, with a resurrected Christ on a resurrected Earth.”2 It is not only that we cannot long for it, but that we cannot even imagine that which is in no sense natural to our being. That we were not meant to be angels is no strike against the angels. It is simply that angels are angels and men are men. 

 At this point I must anticipate an objection: “I see where this is going, but the eternal state is depicted as a place of never-ending worship of God, as that is our chief end. And did not Jesus specifically say that we will be like the angels, rather than like those who are marrying or giving in marriage? (cf. Mark 12:25)” 

 Yes and Amen to both! That is all correct as far as it goes. The problem is that the implied consequences simply do not follow. It does not follow that where there is work (with bodies) there can be no worship, or where there is increased fellowship with saints there is decreased contemplation on God. Similarity, when Jesus responded that way to the Saduccees, he was relativizing marriage and not bodies. That we will be “like” the angels does indeed mean that we will answer a calling higher than the role that earthly marriage played; but it simply does not follow that this calling takes our bodies out of the picture. One thing can be likened to another thing without being so in every-thing. So let us not press our Lord’s analogies past their breaking point, and let us interpret Scripture in light of Scripture. 

Heaven and Earth Renewed as a Corrective to Naturalist Eschatology

Last time we explored the biblical doctrine as a corrective to Gnostic Eschatology. Now we can do the same with its opposite: Naturalist Eschatology. First of all, what do we mean by this label? Although I have frequently used “Gnostic” and “Naturalist” as contraries in other areas of doctrine, I was confirmed here by finding that Micheal Allen did the same in his book Grounded in Heaven (2018), which, among other things, criticizes what he calls “eschatological naturalism.” What does he have in mind?

This is really an over-reaction to the Gnostic escape. Thinkers like N. T. Wright and Richard Middleton have criticized the tendency in the modern Evangelical tradition to view the end of salvation as escape from the world. For Wright this was part of a larger attack on the Reformation and its emphasis on “individual salvation.” As in any other area of thought, one can blame the wrong things for an over-emphasis. So if one extreme was ethereal heaven at the expense of a renewed creation, to where does the pendulum now swing? 

Allen calls this extreme “eschatological naturalism,” and while he focuses on Wright and Middleton as representatives of this imbalance, as a Reformed theologian, we might be more interested in making corrections to our own team. Within the modern Reformed world that is so influenced by the Neo-Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper, there is a tendency to transform the world around us after the pattern of Christian worldview thinking. That’s a good thing in its place, but the potential danger is that “God has been instrumentalized and ends have been immanentized.”3 In other words, God is reduced to a means to an end less than God, and the end is brought into the “now or never” domain of the utopian ideologue. Allen points to Anthony Hoeksma as a positive example of someone in the Kuyperian strand who joins transformation to the catholic backdrop of that hope being grounded in a future and spiritual renewal.4

The Beatific Vision and Spiritual Renewal of All Things

The greatest of Christian hopes is that we shall see the Lord. In his first letter, John tells us that,

“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2).

Theologians have long called this the “Beatific Vision,” that perfected experience, or sight, of God that the saints will have in glory. The other main texts that relate to the Beatific Vision are Matthew 5:8, John 17:24, 1 Corinthians 13:12, and Revelation 21:23. What on earth could be wrong that such a sight of glory will not make right in an instant! And such would be irreversible, we have God’s own promise that, “we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17). It would be ever-increasing joy, as God’s essence is finite: “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11).

Two main unresolved questions for many are the Object and the extent of the saints’ beholding of God. As to the Object, will this be of the Father or of the Son only? If the latter, is this because our sight can only ever be mediated, according to the human nature? Owen argues that it can only be “in the face of Jesus Christ,” from 2 Corinthians 4:6. As to the extent, Turretin acknowledges “debate about whether the blessed will see God’s essence immediately or see some effulgence of God.”5

Now there is an objection that heavenly-mindedness is an ethical cop-out for the comfortable. But this is far from the truth. The finest points that the Bible puts on longing for our heavenly rest is precisely as a hope for those who are persecuted or destitute in this world. It was the portion of Lazarus and not for the rich man (Lk. 16:25). It was the “joy inexpressible” expressed by Peter to “exiles” (1 Pet. 1:1, 8), or the city that cannot be shaken that moves oppressed pilgrims through this world unworthy of them (Heb. 11-13).

What sort of a world this was meant to be is exactly that sort of a world the Christian expects in the end. For many this all amounts to a “happily ever after” that requires no character involvement in the unfolding of the drama; but for others the natural desire to right what is wrong not only thinks God’s thoughts after him, but attempts to act God’s scenes on the physical stage ever nearer to the arc of his script.  

Allen writes that, “Future blessing prompts present behavior.”6 Beyond this there is what the secularist will regard as an audacious claim in need of demonstration: “Heavenly-mindedness, then, turns up the volume on our moral register so that we are more alert to the pains of our precious sisters and brothers.”7 The thesis relates two words — hope and life. 

 If I may borrow from Allen’s language to construct my own analogy. Hope is related to life as the perfect architectural design is related to imperfect builders. Christ’s perfect act of building (“I am making all things new” — Rev. 21:5) out of God’s perfect blueprints (“whose builder and maker is God” — Heb. 11:10) forms the idea of our hope. But the hope is not in the glory of the present structure as an end in itself, but in the glory of the One to whom it points, commending new souls and new worlds to His ultimate care. In light of such a glory, we need not choose between pilgrimage and productivity. 

Wright was incorrect to blame escapism on individual salvation. He should have heeded the words of his elder fellow Brit, removed by a good sixty years though his own soul may be. But it was C. S. Lewis who famously said that,

“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth thrown in : aim at earth and you will get neither.”8

_____________________

1. Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 2004), 15.

2. Alcorn, Heaven, 7.

3. Michael Allen, Grounded in Heaven (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2018), 17.

4. Allen, Grounded in Heaven, 42-43, cf. Anthony Hoeksma, The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979).

5. Steven J. Duby, God in Himself (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), 42.

5. Allen, Grounded in Heaven, 10.

6. Allen, Grounded in Heaven, 17.

7. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity,