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Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church?
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You bet - maybe you'd enjoy this book by NT Wright:.
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Hope-Rethinking-Resurrection-Mission/dp/0061551821
It talks about the resurrection and bringing new kingdom life to this earth today.
I feel the same way, friend!
And I do! I actually believe that when we're resurrected we will live on the new earth, but ne in perfect harmony with God and our fellow humans. I think we'll likely still have jobs of some sort and maybe even some challenges, but that these things will come with pain, hate, or death. It will be life as it is meant to be. I'm very excited for it :)
I would recommend N.T. Wright's book Surprised by Hope. I'm only about halfway throughout, but it really helps to reorient.
If you want to read a fantastic book about this I’d suggest “Surprised by Hope” by NT Wright.
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061551821/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_UQuqFb1MEFYFR
Do you know what the Bible actually says about the end?
If not I’d suggest reading this.
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061551821/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_xDlmFbS37EZXM
So, what makes theology awkward for explaining Heaven is that there are technically two. There's the place where God and the Saints are now, and the Heaven that will eventually come.
Right now, Heaven is where God is. It's a non-physical place, sometimes referred to as Paradise, and overall it's pretty nice. We really don't know anything about this, other than the fact that God, his people and the angels are there. It's great, because you're in the presence of God, but it's not the end.
The hope is for the Heaven to come, as described in Revelation 21. This is following an event called The Resurrection, where the dead are risen to life, and a moment called The Final/Last Judgement, where all souls are judged. This Heaven is physical, and it's merged with our universe. The saints of God will live on Earth, but Earth is being remade as part of this process with Heaven effectively merged into this new universe.
Wings/Halos are elements of popular/religious art, but there's no real theology to justify this. The Saints will have crowns, but the exact nature of them is purely speculative. We know that our bodies will be human (similar to Christ's resurrection body), but any modifications to that form beyond that are also speculative.
You might want to check out Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright to understand what's going on here.
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, N.T. Wright does a great job unpacking this specific conversation. I recommend you seek him out if you have not done so already.
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I haven't read it yet, but I've heard that <em>Surprised by Hope</em> is the best place to start.
If you want to argue that talking point, I'm afraid that you have to justify if theologically. Otherwise, while you may believe you are correct, the rest of the world can only see it as a baseless attack. There needs to be an corresponding argument and theological claims in order to back up your statement.
If all you do is say, "you're not a true Christian," you shut down reasonable attempts at discourse, which is why this chain devolved into bickering. You could say, "I strongly disagree with this view of divine command and here's why I believe it is unChristian," and you'd be fine. There's a strong difference between attacking an idea and a person.
N.T. Wright touches on OP's line of thinking in his book Surprised by Hope in an attempt to answer the same question. The idea that the Saints will be fine (even comforted) with God's justification in the expression of his justice is not a new idea or even a rare one, it's just a very unpopular one in laymen's public discourse outside of say, Baptist circles.
If you attack the ideas (within the rule set) and not the person, you'll never hear a 2.3 citation ever again. If you don't attack the ideas, opinions will never be changed and it really does just comes across as baseless, no matter how much sympathy you garner from those who agree with you.
I'd love to see more people come to Christ, I spend more than a chunk of my spare time doing exactly that in real life. I know that the enthusiasm can be a very real thing but we need to be wary with how our words will be perceived by those on the other side of the conversation.
I think that's a very secularly influenced and otherwise misguided view of what both heaven and the hope of the afterlife are for Christians.
If you're interested in the topic, I'd recommend N.T. Wright's <u>Surprised by Hope</u>. It's all of $2 for an electronic version (That's a steal! I was expecting around $10).
To address some of your points:
There are people who are reasonably excited about dying and going to heaven. Many particularly religious people die peacefully and eagerly. Hearing their stories is often very touching.
One reason we're not all fatalistic is that we have the unique opportunity to be God's hands in the world today; to participate in the bringing about his Kingdom, his perfect dream for the world, today. Here on earth.
I don't mean to say that the heaven/hell question isn't important, but it can be a bit distracting from the bigger picture. Have you read Surprised by Hope? It really helped me break down which of my beliefs about the afterlife came from the popular culture and which actually came from Christianity. And even among Christians like myself, a lot of the commonly held beliefs about the afterlife come more from Plato and Dante than the New Testament. I'd be happy to send it to you if you want.
No problem.
That's a really common definition of the main goal of the Christian life (to get to heaven when you die). But your definition is actually a really important part of it as well. I hope you'll find that there is more to Christianity than either a.) doing a ton of good works, or b.) accepting a "get out of jail free card" for the sole purpose of ending up in heaven when you die.
I find Christian eschatology (heaven/hell stuff) to be more satisfying than its caricatures: eternal Paradise, feasting on grapes, playing harps, etc.. Those are common images of what heaven looks like, but they're not really accurate. A lot of people here have probably read Surprised by Hope. I recommend you give it a read as well. It might help you reframe things a bit as you're reading the Bible (for example, helping you understand what "kingdom of heaven" is when it comes up in the gospels - a correct understanding of the term lends a much different meaning to statements like that).
NT Wright (former Anglican Bishop of Durham) has addressed this quite a bit. Here is a shorter treatment. His book Surprised by Hope is fairly accessible yet scholarly.
In summary, the rapture comes from a series of Scriptures strung together from Daniel, 2 Thessalonians, Matthew, and Revelation. None of them are overtly about a bunch of people suddenly going missing while the Earth goes bonkers. Rapture is primarily a Western concept that had a few pockets of belief until it was popularized in the 19th century. It has never been embraced by Catholics, Orthodox, Methodists, Anglicans, and other major denominations.
Most of what Scripture suggests about the future is centered around the Resurrection, which is overtly discussed in multiple places. Wright suggests Resurrection is the great hope of Christianity.
While not bishops anymore I would still strongly recommend looking into N. T. Wright and John Shelby Spong. Specifically, I would check out Surprised by Hope (Wright) and Liberating the Gospels (Spong).
Again, both are no longer bishops but once were and today remain influential contemporary figures in the Church.
I’d offer this book.
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061551821/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_62NJVV1RXAK4DM49CP2Q
John Darby, a preacher in the early 1800's, basically made it up (probably with good intentions). His teachings influenced Cyrus Scofield, author of the Scofield Reference Bible (the first study Bible). Scofield's study Bible influence a lot of people for a long time in America. More recently, authors Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye wrote fictional books dramatizing the rapture and related ideas (The Late Great Planet Earth and The Left Behind series, respectively), which gained enormous popularity in America and nowadays form the primary source of people's belief in the rapture.
Some people have attempted to use a handful of Bible verses to "prove" the rapture, (mainly 1 Thess 4:17) but a brief glance at scholarly studies of those verses dispels that interpretation pretty quickly. There is no verse in the Bible that unambiguously refers to the rapture. It is an incorrect interpretation created and perpetuated by (well-meaning) amateurs. No serious Biblical scholar accepts it.
American Fundamentalists are really the only branch of Christianity that believe in the rapture. Most Christians across the world do not, and it's only about 200 years old.
I came from a fundamentalist church, so I understand how difficult it can be to hear and process stuff like this. Do your own research and give yourself time to figure it out. I highly recommend Surprised by Hope, by N.T. Wright, if you're interested in what the Bible actually says about eschatology (the end times). I also recommend The Bible Project in general; they've been unimaginably helpful to me in all areas Bible-related.
NT Wright: “am I a joke to you?”
https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Hope-Rethinking-Resurrection-Mission/dp/0061551821
Sure. The idea that we go to another space called "Heaven" as spirits for all eternity is a very modern one. It's not what is taught in the Bible, and it has never been an orthodox Christian belief.
Heaven is the space where God resides, like another dimension. God created the earth in such a way that it kind of "overlapped" with God's space. Because of human rebellion (i.e. "sin"), we've lost the ability to be in full communion with God in that space. While heaven is still there and can interact with us, we cannot interact with it (at least not in the way we were meant to).
God's goal is to fully restore the relationship between our world and heaven. Revelation describes heaven coming down to earth, not us going up to heaven. God intends to make creation like new, restoring the heaven/earth relationship and wiping away the effects of human sin.
There's still a belief that the human soul is in some way protected by God after death, and that we exist in some kind of unembodied state, but that's not the end goal. If that's "life after death", then the real hope of the Christian faith is "life after life after death".
That's a super simplified version. If you want to know more, check out this video from the Bible Project, or read "Surprised by Hope" by N.T. Wright.
> I am saying that God might have a good moral reason that he wishes to fulfill (like freedom and love in your example), the whole question is why he cannot (or does not) fulfill his GMR without evil.
In the case of free will, you cannot both have the freedom to choose evil, and not have a world which would allow that freedom. Claiming you do is a logical contradiction.
In the case of love, the objects of his love are sinners - even you and I. But a world containing sinners, must by definition include evil, otherwise there is a similar logical contradiction. I'd go further: IMHO it's logically inconsistent to say a person with entirely different thoughts, actions, experiences, desires, memories and existing in an entirely different world is me. So saying that we could have our only existence in a world very different from this one - entirely without without evil - is again a logical contradiction.
> My response to this is the "problem of Heaven". If we grant that Heaven exists, and that there is no evil in Heaven but free will exists, then we can see that God is capable of creating a world with freedom and love but no evil.
Isn't this exactly what I was just talking about? How can people like you and I exist if only such a world existed? God even loves those who sin against him. God created us, and Jesus laid down his life for us, even though we are sinners. We wouldn't exist if only your style of heaven did. That we do is the act of a amazing goodness, for which I am eternally grateful!
So yeah, there's any number of moral reasons why God might create differently from how you assume he has to, love being an obvious one.
> So evil ceases to be a "side effect" of allowing freedom and love.
Sin is not a "side effect" of freedom and love. It is because we have chosen wrongly, doing evil and rebelling against God. We are misusing the freedom which God (for morally good reason) gave us, and bear the moral responsibility for what we do.
IMHO, NT Wright style, "We do not “go to” heaven; we are resurrected and heaven comes down to earth..." which kind of makes it hard to see your picture of world of perfect people who have never sinned. I kind of think the opposite is true. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, then this book is a fascinating read.
> I am aware of these seeming inconsistencies, but what I don't understand is why logical inconsistency is a problem when considering Islam, but can be handwaved away with discussing the PoE.
Just because your argument fails, doesn't mean I accept just anything. It just means your argument is invalid.
check out this book by NT Wright. It puts a great perspective on what eternity means to us both in death and life now.
The saints are in heaven?
Wright, one of the greatest, and certainly most prolific, Bible scholars in the world, will touch a nerve with this book. What happens when we die? How should we think about heaven, hell, purgatory and eternal life? Wright critiques the views of heaven that have become regnant in Western culture, especially the assumption of the continuance of the soul after death in a sort of blissful non-bodily existence. This is simply not Christian teaching, Wright insists. The New Testament's clear witness is to the resurrection of the body, not the migration of the soul. And not right away, but only when Jesus returns in judgment and glory.
http://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Hope-Rethinking-Resurrection-Mission/dp/0061551821
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