Now what about this notion of ‘heaven’? Ouranos
is the Greek word for heaven, most commonly used in the plural form
‘heavens’. The heavens (plural) are said
to have been created by God in Genesis 1:1.
In Jewish thought throughout ancient times as well as the time of Jesus,
the heavens (according to Dr Edward Robinson in 1837) are believed to be “the
expanse of the sky, the apparent concave hemisphere above us, which was
regarded by the Hebrews as solid.” (Robinson’s 1837 Lexicon, p. 599)
Robinson goes on to say, “In common usage, it
included the regions above the sky, where God is said to dwell (Psalm 2:4) and
likewise the region underneath and next to the firmament, where the clouds are
gathered and birds fly (Genesis 1:20, 26).”
Consistent with the belief that Matthew’s
gospel was written within and into a Jewish context, Matthew uses this plural
term often, Mark less often, Luke hardly at all and John not at all. It also occurs a few times in the apostles’
letters.
On the website www.crivoice.org (as at September 07, 2012),
Douglas Ward writes well on the subject.
He says this:
Jews of that time did not have the
scientific knowledge that we take for granted, so they did not think of the
world in scientific terms or descriptions. Instead they attempted to
conceptualize the world in terms of what they knew, and usually described it
visually. So, when they conceived of the universe, they constructed a
multi-layered world, sort of like a large onion composed of various layers with
the physical world in which human beings lived at the center. These layers were
called "firmament" or shamayim (heavens or sky) in the Old
Testament or "heavens" in the New Testament era. There are many other
non-Biblical books and writings that also describe these layers. This model was
still in use in the Middle Ages (1400s AD) when Dante wrote of the various
levels of heaven...
Most often this model contained seven
heavens but in a few writings there were only three layers. Even though the
number of layers was different these models of the universe shared some common
traits. The lowest heaven, the core of the "onion," is the visible
physical world that all people can see. In most of these models the second
heaven is composed of water, a great sea, a firmament dividing the earth from
the heavenly beings. This water that surrounded the earth became a common
symbol for chaos and disorder that threatened to engulf the world (cf. Gen 6;
see Speaking the Language
of Canaan for a discussion of the symbolism of the cosmic waters).
So often, these waters were understood to be gathered to await the coming day
of judgment when they would once again be loosed to destroy the unrighteous.
However, the third heaven was beyond the sight of human beings. It was the
dwelling place of God and his attendant heavenly beings whom he would send to
protect Israel and the righteous. So when Paul claims to have seen the risen
Christ [see 2 Corinthians 12:2] he is describing his experience in terms that
he, and others, would readily understand. In that cultural context, he would
have assumed that God had taken him to the region where it was possible to see
spiritual beings, and the risen Christ.
Given that explanation, God’s dwelling place is up
through the heavens and out beyond the capacity of our sight and our
thought. If God comes to earth, it was
understood that He would have to come ‘through the heavens’. When Jesus ascended to the Father, it was
said that he ‘passed through the heavens’.
The New Jerusalem spoken of in John’s Revelation is said to come “down
out of heaven from God.” All of these
only make sense if one understands that the language used is not meant to
reflect scientific discovery but to communicate to and within the culture and philosophy
of the Jews of the day.
Historically, the Greeks had a view of these matters
quite distinctly different from that of the Jews. Modern Western thinking, culture and
philosophy drinks in large measure from a Greek spring and little if at all
from a Hebrew one. So using language and
thoughts that come from a Hebrew milieu in our communication in the otherwise
very Greek West of today only serves to create impossible fantasies and to open
believers to ridicule and confusion.
That’s a fairly accurate description of the stasis of what we call the
church today: fantasy, ridicule, confusion.
To me, it makes most sense to use the word heaven
and heavens to describe the world as we know it and the yet-uncharted realms
radiating out and away from the earth’s surface. Generally, we do not refer to the realm of
inner earth, beneath the earth’s surface, as heaven or heavens!
The eternal realm – the place scripture says God
inhabits – is best referred to as either eternity or the kingdom of God. But always bear in mind that it is not a
time-based thing and it is not something that begins when time as we know it
ends. The time-space-matter continuum is
the temporary state; eternity, by definition, has no beginning and no end –
hence the two infinity symbols at the ends of the centre line in the diagram
above. Eternity has always existed and
will always exist. The heavens are a
creation of God for a time and a purpose that has a beginning and an end.
Perhaps you can see now what I mean if I ask the
question, what kind of a blessing and future is heaven when it is understood as
typically preached by church? It’s
hardly a blessing and it doesn’t represent any significant future because it
ceases to exist when earth ceases to exist.
What continues without end – consistent with the God
who invented it who has no beginning and no end – is God’s dwelling place. And it is this place – His home, His
household, His dominion, His kingdom – that Jesus introduced in touchable
attainable form; and it is this kingdom that is the inheritance of the family
and household of God. And it is entered
only by a second birth.
Those who know me well have heard me say repeatedly
that the good news of the kingdom of God – indeed the New Testament itself –
nowhere offers humans the promise of heaven-when-you-die. The whole idea is a pathetic excuse for the
reality of inheriting the kingdom of God.
And that is a significant part of the good news that Jesus came to bring
and that the first apostles were at pains to proclaim. Most died serving it with their whole
lives. God’s offer is not
heaven-when-you-die but inheriting the kingdom of God – both its ‘assets’ and
its DNA.
The world of man most often thinks in terms of
reward and punishment for doing good or doing bad in the course of one’s life
on earth – or several lives if you believe in reincarnation. The ‘judgement’ is understood as putting all
our life on some celestial weighing machine and seeing which outweighs which. Is it any wonder intelligent people scoff at
such simplistic nonsense and fantastic myth.
That is nothing like what Jesus said and it is nothing like what his
apostles heralded as the good news of the kingdom of God. It is the stuff of religion – that which
“binds up again” otherwise free people.
Unfortunately, however, it has become a central
plank of the church’s gospel. Remember,
‘church’ is a creation of man and ‘gospel’ is church’s story of God, neither of
which has anything to do with ecclesia
or the good news of Jesus. And church
has travelled (and will continue to travel) to the farthest ends of the earth
to make a handful of disciples to this pretender. Rather reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew
23:15 - "Woe
to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and
land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much
a son of hell as yourselves.”
Let me make one thing very clear. The popular idea that “the kingdom of God” is
the same thing as the church’s “heaven” is patent nonsense. It is so wrong on so many levels it defies
imagination. “Heaven” is a popular
religious concept constructed by humans; it varies from person to person and
from church to church; it is a childish over-simplification of what God is about
and what Jesus achieved while here on earth; it inoculates its believers to the
real truth of the kingdom of God; and (if only we understood this bit) both
heaven and earth are destroyed as part of the final judgement – hardly a good
thing to look forward to.
And like a pièce de résistance of stupidity, we mistakenly assume and teach
that God’s ‘future’ only begins when either Jesus returns for final judgement
or we die. The kingdom of God arrived on
earth in Jesus and has been taking root and growing ever since. It is a spiritual kingdom and we enter it by
a spiritual (second) birth as Jesus taught.
The return of Jesus ushers in the consummation of the kingdom, but in
the meantime, we live and move and have our being in a zone of mixture where
the old is passing away and the new is taking root and expanding.
And corresponding to that, the books
of the bible roughly fit that model. The
documents of the old are Genesis to Malachi; the documents of the new are Acts
to Revelation; the four gospels are the documents of the zone of mixture where
elements of old and new are present, clearly visible and experienced by the
people who lived in that (roughly) thirty year period.
Next post: Kingdom Reigning
No comments:
Post a Comment