MODERN REFORMATION VOL.25 | NO.5 | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2016 | $6.95
Heaven PA RT
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F O R MORE I NF O A ND TO R EG I ST ER , VI S I T WWW.R OOTEDMINIST RY.COM
Keynote Speaker:
MICHAEL HORTON
Michael Horton is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary California, host of the White Horse Inn, editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine, and the author of many books, including Christless Christianity.
Rooted exists to transform student ministry by fostering grace-driven and cross-centered leaders through rich theological and contextual engagement.
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FEATURES
20 The Case for Heaven
38 The Need for Heaven
BY SCOT MCKNIGHT
R O U N D TA B L E W I T H M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N , S C O T T S WA I N , A N D M I C H A E L W I T T M E R
30 The Hope for Heaven A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H
50 The Wait for Heaven
A L I S T E R M C G R AT H
B Y B R I A N W. T H O M A S
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EAR CANDY FOR DAYS You can get your fill of theology everywhere from the car to the treadmill. Previous White Horse Inn broadcasts are available for download or streaming 24 hours a day.
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DEPARTMENTS
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
BOOK REVIEWS
“Richard Hooker”
BY ERIC LANDRY
R E V I E W E D B Y B . B . S AU N D E R S
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“Supernatural” and “The Unseen Realm”
C H R I S T & C U LT U R E
The Imagery of Heaven in C. S. Lewis B Y J E R R Y L . WA L L S
R E V I E W E D B Y J O H N J. B O M B A R O
“Puritan Portraits” REVIEWED BY R. SCOTT CLARK
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“May I Sing All the Psalms?” B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N
GEEK SQUAD
Who Will We Know in Heaven? BY ERIC LANDRY
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T H E O LO GY
Nature vs. Nature BY REBEKAH CURTIS
B A C K PA G E
God: No / Afterlife: Yes B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N
COVER ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICK ATKINS
Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Associate Editor Brooke Ventura Marketing Director Michele Tedrick Design Director José Reyes for Metaleap Creative, metaleapcreative.com Review Editor Ryan Glomsrud Designers Ashley Shugart, Harold Velarde Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith Modern Reformation © 2016 All rights reserved. I S S N - 1 07 6 -7 1 6 9 M o d e r n R e f o r m a t i o n ( S u b s c r i p t i o n D e p a r t m e n t ) P.O. B o x 4 6 0 5 6 5 E s c o n d i d o , C A 9 2 0 4 6 ( 8 5 5 ) 4 9 2- 1 6 74 i n fo @ m o d e r n re fo r m a t i o n .o rg w w w. m o d e r n re fo r m a t i o n .o rg S u b s c r i p t i o n I n fo r m a t i o n U S 1 Y R $ 3 2 . 2 Y R $ 5 0. U S 3 Y R $ 6 0. Digital Only 1 YR $25. US Student 1 YR $26. 2YR $40. Canada add $10 per year for postage. Foreign add $9 per year for postage.
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LETTER from the EDITOR
reality. We begin with Scot McKnight who redirects our eyes away from the seductive extrabiblical testimony about the afterlife back to the Old and New Testaments from which he makes a case for the reality of heaven that does not depend on the marketing prowess of book publishers. Alistair McGrath returns to our pages in an interview about the hope for heaven: Why is heaven such a consistent theme of Christian worship and piety; what role does heaven play in our pilgrimage? It has become increasingly fashionable among reformational Christians to speak of great continuity between this world and ne of my favorite preachers once the next, leading some to wonder if we even need illustrated our misunderstanding of heaven. Our editor-in-chief, Michael Horton, heaven by comparing how we usually tackles that question with Michael Wittmer and think of heaven (something akin to a Scott Swain. Our friend Brian Thomas concludes Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercial) to how by drawing our attention to the difficult wait we the Bible talks about heaven (something more must endure for heaven and the new creation. like the exuberant joy of a Jewish wedding). I’ve Heaven is too important a subject to leave to always appreciated that illustration, and it helps the imaginations of children who are manipumake sense of recent polls reporting that a solid lated by their families or religious communities majority of Americans believe they into writing best-sellers about will go to heaven when they die—even its existence. Heaven is too significant percentages of atheists important a subject to the faith and agnostics! Heaven, for many of and pilgrimage of Christians to “ POPULAR us, is thought of as a blissful state of leave to the popular imagination. CULTURE nonexistence rather than the colorOur hope with this issue is that ful, material, and sensory reality that you will be encouraged by what HAS HELPED the Bible presents. Scripture says about heaven, SHAPE OUR Just as Dante’s Inferno has shaped about your participation already CONCEPTIONS the popular imagination of hell, apart in some of the heavenly realities, from the limited information availand by the grace given to you to OF HEAVEN.” able to us in the Bible about eternal persevere in the hope of heaven. suffering, so also popular culture If you have been encouraged by has helped shape our conceptions this year of Modern Reformation, of heaven. Movies, television shows, and espebegin planning now to give a gift subscription to cially books that purport to reveal details from a friend, colleague, or mentor. Our 2017 issues the other side have created a kind of fascinaare already under way! In the meantime, let us tion for information about heaven that the Bible know how we can serve you better at editor@ doesn’t give us. modernreformation.org. In this issue of Modern Reformation, we’ve asked some old and new friends to show us from the witness of Scripture what heaven will be like and how we will participate in that new creation ERIC LANDRY exec utive editor
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The Imagery of Heaven in C. S. Lewıs by Jerry L. Walls
everal years ago, one of my students wrote a paper comparing C. S. Lewis’s account of heaven with that of a noted theologian. He remarked that while their formal beliefs were essentially the same, the writings of the theologian left him cold, while reading Lewis made him actually want to go to heaven. The power of Lewis’s writings about heaven is largely due to his ability not only to make a rational case for it, but also to picture heaven in memorable images that awaken our deepest yearnings. It’s a theme that runs through all of his various writings, but the imagery of heaven is especially powerful in two of his fictional works—namely, his theological fantasy
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The Great Divorce and The Last Battle, the final volume of The Chronicles of Narnia. Even when Lewis is not imaging heaven for us in his stories, he taps into our inescapable longing for eternal joy. His chapter on hope in Mere Christianity diagnoses our restless quest for deep and lasting happiness as nothing less than a desire for heaven. We are hardwired to want heaven, even though many people do not recognize that is what is really driving them and the various activities they pursue. We see this truth brought to life near the very end of The Last Battle when the children are going deeper into Aslan’s country, a place of indescribable beauty and sensuous delight. The fruit was so beautiful that they initially thought it could not possibly be for them, that
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surely they were not permitted to pluck it. To their great delight, however, they learn that here everything is allowed (unlike the forbidden tree in Eden). The fruit, moreover, is so delicious that it makes the freshest grapefruit seem dull and the sweetest strawberries sour. Jewel the unicorn sums up what everybody was feeling and experiencing as they went “further up, and further in”: I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.1 The claim that “this is my real country” represents another important thrust in Lewis’s writings on heaven, one aimed at those inclined to dismiss the doctrine as a matter of mere wishful thinking that has no basis in reality. To appreciate this point, let us turn to The Great Divorce, which narrates a story of a busload of people who take a ride from the grey town (hell)
to heaven, where they are invited to stay. While common sense might suggest that all these fortunate passengers would jump at the chance to leave hell and stay in heaven, most of them do not. Instead, most of them, for one reason or another, choose to return to hell. A big part of what makes this book so powerful is Lewis’s ability to make psychological and moral sense of this choice. Why do most of the characters return? The answer, in short, is that in their current condition, they find heaven unpleasant. They are shadowy, insubstantial creatures who live in a world of illusion that is spun by their sinful desires, and they have grown comfortable in that world. They are so fragile they cannot even walk on the grass without hurting their feet. They are assured, however, that if they are willing to stay, they will become more solid, their feet will thicken up, and in time they will adapt and be delightfully at home. Here is where Lewis offers one of his most telling definitions of our subject: “Heaven is reality itself.”2 This wonderfully concise definition of heaven is offered in the narrative by George
“The bedrock reality is the three-person God, whose delighted love is an unquenchable source of vitality, joy, and pleasure. To be at home in such a reality is heaven indeed.”
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MacDonald, the nineteenth-century writer whose works so profoundly affected Lewis, and whom Lewis honors by giving him the main role in this tale. This suggestive definition implies that reality is far more expansive and remarkable than we could ever guess from our present limited experience. Shortly after arriving in heaven, the narrator relates that he “had the sense of being in a larger space, perhaps even a larger sort of space” than he had ever known before, and that he had “got ‘out’ in some sense which made the Solar System itself seem an indoor affair.”3 Now the claim that “heaven is reality itself” is hardly obviously true for one simple reason: There are lots of ways reality might be such that coming to terms with it would be better described as hell. When people say, “Come on, you have to face reality,” they are typically not thinking of reality in positive terms. And indeed, if ultimate reality was destructive or demoralizing or ugly, or merely blind and impersonal matter, then it would not be heaven to know it fully and truthfully. So what is it about the very essence of reality that makes it heaven? We receive further insight a page or so later in a passage where MacDonald is characterizing the fundamental essence of the choice of those who go to hell. He invokes Milton’s famous line ascribed to Satan, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” and then goes on to elaborate: “There is always something they prefer to joy—that is, to reality.”4 So the equation of heaven with reality is taken a step further in the equation of reality with joy. Heaven is reality and reality is joy, so heaven is joy. But why should ultimate reality be joy? Perhaps the best clue we have in this book is in a later chapter that features one of the most radiant of the saints in heaven—namely, Sarah Smith, a woman of no earthly reputation who has attained immortal splendor by a life of extraordinary love. She is accompanied by a host of Bright Spirits who sing a song in honor of her. The first lines of the song are both striking and revealing: “The Happy Trinity is her home: nothing can trouble her joy.”5
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The phrase “Happy Trinity” calls to mind Lewis’s discussion of this distinctive picture of God in Mere Christianity. There Lewis points out that the popular truth that God is love in his very essence is an implicitly Trinitarian claim; because if God did not contain more than one person, he could not have been love before he created the world. Indeed, Lewis claims that the most important thing to know about the relationship between the persons of the Trinity is that it is a relationship of love: “The Father delights in His Son; the Son looks up to His Father.”6 Lewis elaborates on this delightful relationship of love with colorful and appealing images, describing God as “a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.”7 This explains what it means to say that Sarah Smith is at home in the Happy Trinity and why her happiness is so profound and secure. The bedrock reality is the three-person God, whose delighted love is an unquenchable source of vitality, joy, and pleasure. To be at home in such a reality is heaven indeed. It is important to emphasize another aspect of heaven that has been recovered in recent theological and biblical studies—namely, that heaven is not a matter of the immortality of the soul in some sort of ethereal, otherworldly “spiritual” existence. Rather, it is about the redemption of the entire created order, and ultimately that we will be at home with God in resurrected bodies on a fully renewed earth. This account of heaven is well represented in contemporary evangelical circles by Randy Alcorn’s excellent book Heaven, which strongly defends a robustly physical view of the life to come, complete with the full range of human society and activity. It is notable that Lewis is quoted dozens of times throughout the book, and many of these quotes come from The Chronicles of Narnia. Alcorn quotes at length the passage near the end of The Last Battle that describes the characters from the book delightfully exploring their “real country” that they had been seeking their whole lives. He emphasizes the continuity
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between the real Narnia they are now experiencing and the old Narnia they now realize they loved because it “looked a little like this.” The mountains in Aslan’s country, for instance, remind them of the mountains in old Narnia, but here they are “more like the real thing.”8 Again, Aslan’s country is “reality itself,” but there is continuity with the old Narnia. Alcorn gives us a good gauge of Lewis’s influence on contemporary evangelical thinking on this issue when he writes: Lewis captured the biblical theology of the old and New Earth, and the continuity between them, better than any theologian I have read. Did you catch his message? Our world is a Shadowlands, a copy of something that once was, Eden, and yet will be, the New Earth.9 And once again, Lewis accomplished this through stories that awaken our imagination and stir our desires for the happiness that eludes us in this world. It is worth noting, however, that one aspect of Lewis’s thinking about heaven has not gained much traction among evangelicals, or perhaps the church at large. In his view, for us to get into heaven and to enjoy being there, it is not enough simply to be forgiven of one’s sins and to have them “under the blood.” The deeper issue is not merely one’s sinful acts but the sinful, selfcentered dispositions that motivate those acts. Unless our sinful dispositions and attitudes are transformed, heaven would not be heaven to us, as Lewis depicts in the various characters from the grey town who find heaven painful and unpleasant. What Lewis pictures for us is the theological truth that we can only enjoy the delights of intimate fellowship with a holy God when all sin has been purged from our hearts and minds. The same point is depicted near the end of The Last Battle by the dwarfs who “refused to be taken in.” While they have entered the same stable door, which turned out to be the door to
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Aslan’s country for the children, their experience is altogether different. What the children experience as a country of indescribable beauty and delight is to them a dark, smelly stable. Sweet-smelling flowers, for instance, are thrust under their noses, but all they can smell is filthy stable litter.10 Coming to terms with “reality” can be painful, since it requires thorough repentance and moral transformation. Lewis took this so seriously that he affirmed a version of the doctrine of purgatory to make sense of how God “purges” our sinful tendencies to prepare us to enjoy heaven. It is important to note that Lewis viewed purgatory through Protestant eyes: he thought it was fully compatible with the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. After we have been justified, the work of sanctification remains. So Lewis believed that the point of purgatory is not punishment for sins that have not been properly repented, but rather to finish the sanctification process and perfect the holiness without which no one can see the Lord.11 In his words, that is what thickens us up, hardens our feet, clarifies our sight, unstops our noses, and sharpens our sense of taste so we can relish reality and exult forever in its endless delights. JERRY L. WALLS is scholar in residence in the department of
philosophy at Houston Baptist University. His recent books include Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory (Brazos, 2015) and Tarantino and Theology, coedited with Jonathan L. Walls (Gray Matter Books, 2015). 1 C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 760. 2 C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 70. 3 The Great Divorce, 20. 4 The Great Divorce, 71. 5 The Great Divorce, 134. 6 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 174. 7 Mere Christianity, 175. 8 The Chronicles of Narnia, 759. 9 Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Wheaton: Tyndale, 2004), 239. 10 The Chronicles of Narnia, 742–48. 11 See Jerry L. Walls, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory: Rethinking the Things That Matter Most (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2015), 91–116.
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“May I Sing All the Psalms?” by Michael S. Horton
ne of the treasures of worship in the Christian church is the Psalter: one hundred and fifty inspired songs, many of them written by David. But is it appropriate to sing all of the psalms? The ones I have in mind are the “imprecatory” psalms—the ones calling down God’s judgment on our enemies. Here are a few examples:
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Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the grave. (Ps. 55:15) How blessed will be the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. (Ps. 137:9)
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Oh God, break the teeth in their mouths. (Ps. 58:6) May they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous. (Ps. 69:28) May his children be fatherless and his wife be a widow. (Ps. 109:9) R.C. Sproul observes in Dust to Glory, “Imprecatory psalms are one of the most controversial genres within the Psalter” (144). Indeed, they are. On the one hand, we know that “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God
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may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). On the other hand, Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies, even those who persecute us (Matt. 5:44). Several views have been put forward concerning these imprecatory psalms: 1. The Marcionite View. This interpretation says that the psalms express the vengeful attitude of the Old Testament rather than the loving message of Jesus and the New Testament. It essentially stems from the ancient heresy that pitted the evil Creator God of Israel against Christ who delivers us from a vengeful Yahweh. The holy wars in the book of Joshua, for example, cannot be justified from a Christian perspective—they were wrong, and therefore imprecatory psalms are wrong as well. 2. The Subjective View. They express David’s personal feelings, even if they were inappropriate. They are descriptive, not prescriptive. They express the proper attitude of Christians toward enemies of Christ and his church. They should be sung heartily by us today because we should call down God’s wrath on ungodly rulers and sinners. 3. The Eschatological View. They express an eschatological longing for an ultimate
divine assize that lies beyond this present age. When we sing them, therefore, we are not calling down God’s immediate judgment on particular sinners today; rather, we are anticipating the day when we will witness the final judgment and join our Lord in the last battle. 4. The Old Covenant View. They express the proper attitude of believers under the old covenant, where God’s kingdom was a geopolitical state called by God to execute limited holy wars against the violent and idolatrous peoples who occupied God’s holy land. This was but a preview of the final judgment that Christ will bring when he returns to cleanse the whole earth of evil. The first view is easily set aside by orthodox Christians—the God of the Old Testament is the loving and gracious king as well as the wise, just, and righteous judge of the earth. The Father “so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son” (John 3:16). We dare not judge God’s commands by our standards of morality; the holy wars of Israel were not acts of arbitrary human terror, but divine judgment upon those who were corrupting God’s land and people. The second view seems more plausible at first take. Charles Spurgeon saw the imprecatory
“On the other hand, Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies, even those who persecute us (Matt. 5:44).”
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psalms as expressive of David’s emotion but not necessarily as normative expressions of a godly attitude. The problem with this, though, is that the very curses these songs call down are also promised by God in the law. If these are mere expressions of one person’s understandable but inappropriate feelings, then are the curses that God pronounces on the ungodly nations and the commands he issues to drive them out by the sword inappropriate as well? David was not taking vengeance into his own hands but entrusting his plea to God’s wisdom. The third view has the merit of accepting imprecations as a legitimate stance of believers. It assumes, however, that we are in the same position as Joshua and David, that we can invoke God’s curses on particular people today just as David did. In fact, one pastor recently announced concerning a well-known political figure, “If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture that would cause him death, that’s correct.” He added, “Imprecatory prayer is agreeing with God, and if people don’t like that, they need to talk to God. God said it, I didn’t. I was just agreeing with God.” But this view displays no attempt at reconciling the psalm with Jesus’ admonition to love our enemies: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matt. 5:43–45) When Jesus tells us, “You have heard that it was said,” he is quoting a rabbinical tradition that expresses the attitude God expected his people to have toward those for whom his judgment was ripe. “Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?” (Ps. 139:21). When Jesus tells
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“‘But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also’ (Matt. 5:38–39).”
them, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’” he is quoting Exodus 21:24 and Leviticus 24:20. “But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt. 5:38–39). This is not to set Jesus over against Moses and the law. Rather, it is to reckon with the wonderful truth that Jesus fulfilled the law and is now repealing the terms of the old covenant treaty. The theocracy is over. God’s kingdom is no longer identified with a geopolitical state, but with an international kingdom of priests (Rev. 5:9). In the imprecatory psalms, David is invoking the sanctions of the covenant, not simply expressing his private vengeance. But he is invoking the Mosaic covenant, which we are told is now “obsolete” with the coming of Christ (Heb. 8:13). The Westminster Confession describes Israel under the theocracy as a specific administration of redemptive history: “To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other, now, further than the general equity thereof may require” (Ch. 19.4). We are now in an era of the common curse (sin and death) and common grace (God’s gracious providence in restraining the effects of the curse). We are not in a state of holy war with a holy land. In this time between Christ’s two comings, there is space for repentance and faith,
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when not only Jews but Gentiles are streaming to Zion. Even the enemies of Christ and his church are being converted around the world. It is interesting that when Jesus takes to himself the fulfillment of Isaiah 61 in his first sermon (Luke 4:17–19), he leaves out “the day of vengeance of our God” (Isa. 61:1–2) as part of his mission. When James and John wanted to call down God’s judgment on the Samaritan village that rejected the gospel, Jesus “turned and rebuked them and they went to another village” (Luke 9:55–56). Why wouldn’t Jesus have encouraged his disciples rather than rebuked them? It is not because Jesus is the “good God” over against the wrathful God of the Old Testament. Rather, it is because we are now in the new covenant, in the time of reprieve before final judgment of the Lord, whose vengeance will be global and absolute. Those who have trouble with the holy wars and imprecatory psalms of the Old Testament will fare no better with Jesus’ descriptions of the last judgment and the apocalyptic visions of the book of Revelation. Nevertheless, for now, we proclaim the good news, and we call undeserving sinners like ourselves to repentance and faith. There is still evil, and we plead for Christ’s return to set things right, which will ultimately be realized in the last judgment. But who are we to call fire down on our enemies when we were the Canaanites whom God welcomed to the table of Abraham with Jesus himself being our food and drink? We are not called to holy war for a holy land: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Eph. 6:12) Psalm 69, full of imprecations—calls for covenant curses—is quoted by Jesus at his crucifixion (John 15:25)—but without the imprecatory statement: “They hated me without a cause” (v. 4). There are imprecations in the New Testament. Jesus invoked the covenant curses on the
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Pharisees as a body in his “woes” (Matt. 23). When Simon the Magician sought to buy Peter’s power to perform wonders, the apostle replied, “May your money perish with you!” (Acts 8:20), and encouraged him to “repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you” (v. 22). The Apostle Paul also issued an imprecation upon anyone who preaches another gospel (Gal. 1:8–9). The souls of the martyrs in heaven “cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’” (Rev. 6:10). But it’s crucial to note that none of these imprecations call down God’s judgment on particular individuals without also offering a way out through repentance and faith in Christ. If imprecations were appropriate for anyone, it would be for the cruel Roman emperors and their subordinates. Yet in the spirit of Jesus’ sermon in Matthew 5, Peter and Paul called Christians to pray for the good health and conversion of their rulers (1 Tim. 2:1–3; 1 Pet. 2:19–25): “Do not repay evil with evil. If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head” (Rom. 12:20–21). I’m sympathetic to the fourth and fifth views above, and I’m inclined to say that the
“None of these imprecations call down God’s judgment on particular individuals without also offering a way out through repentance and faith in Christ.”
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“C. S. Lewis was correct when he wrote: ‘The ferocious parts of the Psalms serve as a reminder that there is in the world such a thing as wickedness and that…is hateful to God.’” imprecatory psalms are so tied to the shadows of the old covenant (namely, the geopolitical theocracy with holy war and holy land) that they can be sung only by Christ at his return and by us in his train of victory. Today is the time of prayer for our enemies and bringing the good news to the ends of the earth. I also, however, sympathize with the view of those who maintain that we sing these songs only in anticipation of the last day, while not calling down God’s vengeance here and now before the door of the ark closes. John Calvin received a letter from his loyal friend, René, princess of France and duchess of Ferrara, in which she asked if she could hate her son-in-law who was cruelly persecuting the church in France—she even wanted to know if she could consider him reprobate. No, Calvin replied: Since we cannot distinguish the elect and the reprobate, it is our duty to pray for all who trouble us; to desire the salvation of all men; and even to be careful for the welfare of every individual. At the same time, if our hearts are pure and peaceful, this will not prevent us from appealing to God’s judgment, that he might cut off the finally impenitent. C. S. Lewis was correct when he wrote: “The ferocious parts of the Psalms serve as a reminder
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that there is in the world such a thing as wickedness and that . . . is hateful to God.” There really is evil in the world. It is not simply a subjective judgment but a statement of objective fact—there are evil powers, people, states, and systems that torture their victims and seek to erase their humanity. We are reminded of this with the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. We face ominous threats to humanity in our day as well; it should not surprise us that many pioneers of radical Islamic movements and states have been steeped in Nazi ideology. Regardless of the direct and indirect genealogy, tyrants who threaten the relative peace, order, and justice in the world today can be found in Moscow, Pyongyang, and across Africa. With daily reports of the brutality with which ISIL and Boko Haram spread their terror, there should be no doubt about the existence of “cosmic powers over this present darkness…the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). Yet, as Paul exhorts in that passage, our weapons are spiritual: the Word of God, faith in Christ, the protective armor of his righteousness, and shoes that are ready to spread the gospel. MICHAEL S. HORTON is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido).
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THEOLOGY
Nature vs. Nature by Rebekah Curtis
ature is an idol who has never gone out of fashion. In every generation, she is rediscovered and re-deified. She teaches us to decry fakeness in all things: crackers, detergents, personalities. She pressures us to buy organic, to be true to ourselves and our schools. Nature, in her idolatrous capacity, would rather have her devotees be freeloaders or fornicators than phonies. We understand that appealing to nature is fallacious, but we are less apt to realize when we’ve done that. Nature cannot help appealing to technology’s dependents. Science fiction writer John C. Wright reminds us to “tell the difference between ‘nature’ meaning the essential property of a set of objects, and ‘nature’ meaning the wild
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and woolly outdoors.” This polysemy creates a ticklish confusion. We think of the latter nature as being that which exists on its own, because we cannot claim to have made it. But the “nature” of that nature—the essential quality of the natural world—is that of having been made or created. In On the Incarnation, Athanasius addresses a number of heresies that mischaracterize God’s creative work, including the Gnostic understanding of God as Demiurge, a crafter of matter. Demiurge is translated into English as “Artificer,” one who crafts a material into a new form. Athanasius argues that if God is only the Artificer, working from preexistent material, then he is not the Creator. The Greek father knows as well as Carl Sagan that if one wishes to make an apple pie from
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scratch, one must first invent a universe. But Athanasius does not discard the term “Artificer.” Instead, he appropriates it as a designation for God at several points throughout his treatise. Sometimes he calls God “the Artificer” appositionally with “Giver” or “Maker” (poieo), and other times he allows the name to stand on its own. In doing so, Athanasius assumes that artifice is no less divine or good than the act of making, and that the two are inextricable. Any work of the Artificer, then, is inherently “artificial.” Ragú from a jar is, in this sense, as artificial as the sauce a cook makes on his stove from tomatoes he grew in his backyard. H2O possesses the same essential artificiality as either its components hydrogen and oxygen, or its derivative Kool-Aid. Nature—the wild and woolly outdoors—is entirely artificial; human beings are artificial. Should anyone wish to argue that there are degrees of artificiality, by which measurement Ragú could be ruled more artificial than a pot of garden tomatoes, we ourselves come out more artificial, scripturally speaking. In Genesis, we see that most of creation was made by being spoken into existence. But the Artificer took an extra generative step with humanity— Adam is formed out of the premade dust, and Eve is built out of Adam. People are fashioned out of things God had already made. Athanasius is attached to our understanding of the Artificer as well in the creed that honors his name and theology: “The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, the Holy Spirit uncreated.” Here the church confesses the difference between the Artificer and the artificial. The Maker is nonmade. He is. He is essentially natural; he is that from which all our ideas about what is “natural” proceed. He is able to call things into being because his nature is that of being. Nevertheless, we prefer real things. We’ll take the sauce you made from your tomatoes over that jar version from the Piggly Wiggly supermarket. We understand what chemical compounds are, and we’d still rather wipe our mirrors with vinegar than Windex. We read our children Pinocchio and The Velveteen Rabbit, knowing
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“The Maker is non-made. He is. He is essentially natural; he is that from which all our ideas about what is ‘natural’ proceed. He is able to call things into being because his nature is that of being.”
that eternity is in their hearts as well as ours. We do believe there are degrees of artificiality, and we have seen that artificiality is not a strictly desirable quality. Most of all, we want to be real ourselves; that is, we want to be essential. We do not want to wither and fade like the grass and the flowers. We want to leap with the springy legs and twitching ears of real rabbits, and we are right to want that. The inescapable fact of our having been brought into being by artifice must somehow be reconcilable with the side of ontology that does not end in our annihilation. But no one must fear whose Maker’s name is I am. The comfort of the creature is in the fact that her Creator is himself the one who is uncreated and unmade. While the quality of having been made is in one sense inferior to being the maker, being made by one who is able to make (or not) is its own honor. All contingent things exist because of an essential decision that they should. A potter throws a pot because he has determined that a pot would be a good thing to have. The better the potter, the better the pot.
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THEOLOGY
“The Artificer makes, the Lover gives; that is the nature of each. The Creator makes the created real by breathing into them his own uncreated Spirit.”
To have been made by the God who is himself the highest good is to receive and bear his own essential goodness. We do not allow our reasoning on degrees of artificiality to be facile or specious. Alloys are “artificial” in a way that raises suspicions among scrupulous champions of the wild and woolly, and compounding may pervert creation rather than enhance it. But an alloy (strictly speaking) is not necessarily an adulterant. Refinement and synthesis are also works of artifice. They are the proof that artifice shares, complements, and completes the divine dignity of making. The woodworker must hew logs into boards before he can build a grandfather clock. The necessity of making is occasioned by the desire to craft something more intricate and ingenious. A categorical aversion to construction and compounds would leave us waterless, airless, and lifeless. If artifice is categorically bad or perverse, so are symphonies, gardens, and crazy quilts. Realness is a good thing to want as long as we’re clear about what it is. The stories we read our children start us in the right direction. Pinocchio is truly repentant, and the velveteen rabbit is truly loved. Each of these qualities is part of the realness we are promised. There is repentance and
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love, but the Father is no demiurgic Geppetto and the Son is no sentimental boy. They do not depend on some external enlivening power to effect their desires. The Artificer makes, the Lover gives; that is the nature of each. The Creator makes the created real by breathing into them his own uncreated Spirit. Sweeter than created fruit is Calvary’s harvest, the eternal Root. No wonder he invites us—in a room, at a table, holding a piece of food—to take and eat. “Keep yourselves from idols, children” (1 John 5:21). “Every founder is confounded by the graven image: for his image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them” (Jer. 10:14). Artifice though we are, we are the children and not the idols. We breathe the preternatural breath. And if we are children, we are also heirs of the divine property: being. Having received it proleptically, we long for it naturally. In the beginning, the storyteller slyly tempts us to believe that the velveteen rabbit was “really splendid.” But this is no truer for the rabbit than it is for us. True splendor is in being real. For the repentant, and for the beloved, being real comes at the end. REBEKAH CURTIS is a freelance writer and indexer. Her day job is homemaker.
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GETTING TO THE CORE The Campaign for Core Christianity is a media-based initiative to challenge the growing message of Christless Christianity. This media campaign focuses on a biblical response to the most fundamental questions about the Christian faith.
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V O L .2 5 | N O. 5
FEATURES
38 The Need for Heaven
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THE CASE FOR HEAVEN
THE HOPE FOR HEAVEN
THE WAIT FOR HEAVEN
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by SCOT MCKNIGHT
Case
H E AV E N illustrations by PATRICK ATKINS
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T H E S TO R I E S CA N B E M OV I N F O R M AT I O N T I T I L L AT I I M P L I C AT I O N S S I G N I F I C A T H E F O U N D AT I O N G R O U N D
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neither to be discounted as total fabrication nor recalibrated as a f in al ap o lo ge t ic for the Christian case for heaven. The little-known se cret—to t hose who have studied the matter and the numerous who have not—is that near-death experience stories have been around as long as humans have been telling stories. Once while reading The Odyssey, I happened upon expressions about death that made me wonder if the themes of darkness and entanglements were not the residue of near-death experiences. A careful
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ING, THE NG, THE N T, A N D Y E T LESS.
reading of Virgil’s brilliant Roman counterstory, The Aeneid, in which we once again see Aeneas’s encounter with shades in Hades, convinced me that these classical descriptions of the underworld emerged into the stories and consciousness of the Greeks and Romans from near-death experiences. One good reading of the best book on this subject, Otherworld Journeys by Carol Zaleski, ought to convince everyone of two solid ideas: near-death experiences have been with us from the very beginning; and, far more importantly, they vary in profound correlation with that particular culture’s understanding of life, death, and the afterlife. Maybe Raymond Moody’s blockbuster Life After Life, first published in 1975, suddenly got Americans to take notice of the reality of an afterlife because it was founded upon “science” (or something that sounded
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scientific), or because it had such believable stories, or because people were looking for a reason to hang onto what they had learned from their parents or pastor, or because—and this is not unimportant—it offered hope to far more than the church envisioned. Moody’s stories were nothing new (though the media sensation made them sound new). Not only were his stories unoriginal, but the historian could trace their beginnings to late twentieth-century American universalism. Near-death experiences are no reason to believe in heaven; they’re little more than profound confirmations of what we already think. Instead of being revelations of an afterlife or the nature of heaven, they are chemical reactions in the brain activating what humans already think. What you enter into in “near death” within your brain is what shapes the kind of near-death experience you have. One glance at Zaleski’s book reveals another story altogether: ancient Greeks and Romans encountered a “Hades” or a death that looked like their belief systems; Roman Catholics in the medieval era encountered purgatory and screams from hell and bright lights above with heavenly choirs, while modern Americans encounter… well, the heaven they want. In her very useful The Case for Heaven: Near-Death Experiences as Evidence of the Afterlife, professional journalist Mally Cox-Chapman concludes on the basis of stories about near-death experiences that “we will be provided with the Heaven that is right for each of us.”1 The “heaven” of modern Americans (the heaven that shows up in near-death experiences) deserves to be lampooned for the narcissistic affirmation it has become. The exquisite writer Julian Barnes, an English atheist, has done it for us. In his book A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, Barnes imagines in satire what heaven will be like. His guide, Margaret, has to answer the question that ought to haunt those addicted to near-death experiences that confirm our selfconstructed belief system: “I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” I said cautiously, “but where’s God?”
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“God. Do you want God? Is that what you want?” “…I didn’t think it depended on me in any way.” “Of course it does.” The question to be pressed into modern American theories of heaven is, “Is that what you want?” Barnes continues with Margaret: “Heaven is democratic these days,” she said. Then added, “Or at least, it is if you want it to be.” “What do you mean, democratic?” “We don’t impose Heaven on people anymore,” she said. “We listen to their needs. If they want it, they can have it; if not, not. And then of course they get the sort of Heaven they want.” “And what sort do they want on the whole?” “Well, they want a continuation of life, that’s what we find. But…better, needless to say.” “Sex, golf, shopping, dinner, meeting famous people and not feeling bad?” I asked a bit defensively.2 I am not arguing that near-death experiences are nothing but dreamy wishes (though they can be), nor am I denying that humans have such experiences. Rather, I’m merely contending what the history of near-death experiences teaches with unimpeachable clarity: that the near-death experience is not a revelation about heaven itself, but instead a manifestation of the concept of heaven a person carries with him or her into the opening portals of death itself.
“IT’S ALL SPECULATION!” Alongside my suspicions about near-death experiences and, even more, my lack of confidence in them as revelation of anything about heaven, I want to mention another theme I hear in modern discussions about heaven. A few years back, Rob
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Bell and Shane Hipps made the rather flippant remark that heaven was “all speculation.” I know that both of them grew up in an era when some rapture excitement had gone well beyond biblical parameters, but they were not old enough to have heard it in the form I heard from Salem Kirban and Hal Lindsay. So I will raise my hands with both Bell and Hipps and question, question, question rapture theology. But rapture theology is not the same as the hope of heaven. I question their use of the words all and speculation. No, heaven is not all speculation, at least not if the Bible, Jesus, or the apostles John and Paul have any say in the matter. Heaven is not all speculation; neither is any revelation about heaven rightly considered speculation if it is grounded in the vision of God through the prophets of Israel, the explicit teachings of Jesus, and the clear contours of thought from the apostles about the new heavens and the new earth. It may be speculative to ask about the presence of dogs in heaven, but it is not speculative to ask if there is hope beyond the grave. Neither is it speculation to ask what Jesus thought about the “age to come,” his term for what most of us today call “heaven.” A theology of heaven, to be sure, has at times led some Christians away from this world into a dualism/Platonism/Neoplatonism/spiritualism where all that matters are soul and spirit, and what must be shucked are body and earth. N. T. Wright’s major contribution in his eschatology books, not the least of which is the accessible Surprised by Heaven, has been to assault this dualist framework that shunts any biblical vision of a new heaven and a new earth into little more than a metaphor for a far more ethereal and spiritual heaven. Those who long for that kind of heaven, no doubt, have at times been of little earthly use to God’s good creation or our world, but distortion of the very-earthly kind of hopes about heaven in the Bible does not require or lead to the idea that it is “all speculation.” To call heaven “speculation” is, in fact, to spit in the face of the Lord of the new heavens and the new earth and to silence the voice of his apostles. (By the way,
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it has been observed by more than C. S. Lewis that those most enthralled by a hope of heaven have been the most active to make the world a better place.)
WHY BELIEVE IN HEAVEN? Perhaps we should ask what “heaven” is before we investigate the case for heaven. Heaven is— note that a biblical theology for answering such a question (rather than a modern sociological one) must be admitted—the place where God makes all things right in relation to himself, all of creation, and all humans. Heaven is where God is truly God, where the Lamb’s work on the cross will be celebrated on the throne, where our life will be intoxicated with divinely intended pleasures and joys, where death and evil will no longer be a threat, where humans from all of history and all of creation will enter into a global fellowship, and where we shall all live in the joys
of love, justice, and peace. There is much to be said about each of these points, but this space was reserved for me to park but one car: the case for heaven. If this is heaven, then why should we believe in it? If we are honest, many of us will admit that we believe in heaven because we were nurtured into a worldview and faith where heaven was either central or at least part of that faith. As a Protestant, I want to know how that nurtured faith is connected to and supported by what the Bible teaches. So to the Bible we must go, which challenges over and over what the near-death experience “theologies” teach. I think there are four elements to the case for heaven in the Bible. 1. Because Jesus was raised from the dead. No resurrection means no hope, and therefore no heaven—it’s that simple. If Jesus was contained by death, then we will be too; if he cracked the death barriers, then we will too. Some might say it’s nothing but foggy speculation, and they
“ THE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE IS NOT A REVELATION ABOUT HEAVEN ITSELF, BUT INSTEAD A MANIFESTATION OF THE CONCEPT OF HEAVEN A PERSON CARRIES WITH HIM OR HER INTO THE OPENING PORTALS OF DEATH ITSELF.” M ODERNRE FOR M ATION .OR G
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“‘FOR IF THE DEAD ARE NOT RAISED, THEN CHRIST HAS NOT BEEN RAISED EITHER. AND IF CHRIST HAS NOT BEEN RAISED, YOUR FAITH IS FUTILE; YOU ARE STILL IN YOUR SINS. THEN THOSE ALSO WHO HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP IN CHRIST ARE LOST. IF ONLY FOR THIS LIFE WE HAVE HOPE IN CHRIST, WE ARE OF ALL PEOPLE MOST TO BE PITIED.’ (1 COR. 15:16–19)”
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might have the steely courage to suggest we will just have to abide in that depressed fog with the little hope we can muster. After all, in the inimitable words of N. T. Wright, “All language about the future, as any economist or politician will tell you, is simply a set of signposts pointing into a fog.” But is it just a fog? Will the fog lift? Can we find our way through it? Because Jesus was raised, Wright declares that the “fog” will not have the last word: “Supposing someone came forward out of the fog to meet us?”3 That “someone” is Jesus, who burns off the mists in the blazing heat of his resurrection. It’s in the fog that we discover the one who can dissolve the fog. There is much more that could (and should) be said, but I want to narrow our focus to this singular point: The entire heaven hope of Christians stands or falls with the resurrection of Jesus. The Apostle Paul knew this from the outset, and he knew it in part because he encountered the crucified one as the resurrected one on the road to Damascus: For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15:16–19) That is my point: If Christ is not raised, then our hope is false. The biggest if in the world now follows: If Christ was raised, then the barriers beyond death have been broken. I may have believed in heaven as a child because my Christians parents taught me about heaven or because my Sunday school teacher’s flannel graph had heaven on it or because my pastor preached about it, but I believe in heaven now because Jesus was raised from the dead. 2. Because God is a God of promise who is faithful to his promises. If you read very far into your Bible, say thirteen or more chapters, you will discover the Promise of all promises. God made a promise to Abraham that included making him a great nation (which means lots and lots of descendants), a nation so big it
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FUNERAL/MEMORIAL SERVICE
A funeral is a ritual in which family and friends remember and mourn one who has died. In a funeral, the body of the deceased person is present. In a memorial service, the body of the deceased person is not present. Funeral practices include speeches, prayers, and songs, all of which differ according to religious belief and culture. Mourning, Scripture reading, psalm or hymn singing, and the sermon are historically important aspects of a Christian funeral. When Christians gather to mourn one who died, they reflect upon the resurrection of the dead and everlasting life with God as they remember Christ’s work to save sinners from death and hell.
would bless the entire world; and to this man God also promised a place to live in safety: the Promised Land. It is not hard to follow the land promise (which is tied closely to the temple promise) from Abraham to Moses (tabernacle, temple), to David (land, temple), to the prophets (land, exile, temple glory vacated), to Jesus (Jesus as temple, Jesus as God’s glory, Jesus and the Spirit), to the apostles (where land is expanded to the whole world, where the church is indwelt by the Spirit to make all Christians God’s temple), and then on to the new heavens and the new earth. The Promise of all promises is key to an accurate reading of the Bible. The heaven promise of the Bible is a promise that begins with Abraham and ends with the new heavens and the new earth. The case of heaven is established in faith in the God of promise: If God is good on his promissory word, then heaven is sure. 3. Because the Bible’s view of justice is incomplete without heaven. A third element in the case
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“ THE BIBLE’S SENSE OF JUSTICE WITHOUT THE REALITY OF THE HEAVEN HOPE LEAVES AN INCOMPLETE WORLD, AN UNFULFILLED PROMISE, AND A DISOBEYED DIRECTIVE FROM GOD.”
for heaven is what the Bible means by justice, and here I want to briefly criticize the accommodation tendency of too many Christians today to embrace “justice” as defined by the U.S. Constitution. The Bible’s sense of justice is inextricably tied to the term “righteousness.” “Justice” and “righteousness” are variant translations of the tsdq and dikaios word groups, which mean conformity to God’s will as revealed in the Torah, in the teachings of Jesus, and in life in the Spirit. This definition of righteousness/justice dictates the directions of the Bible from its very opening to its closing, and thus informs us of what God wants for this world: a world shaped by his will in Christ. The Bible’s sense of justice without the reality of the hope of heaven leaves an incomplete
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world, an unfulfilled promise, and a disobeyed directive from God. From Moses to the prophets and then into the New Testament authors, the Bible both criticizes the injustices of God’s people and this world and anticipates the coming day when those injustices will be rolled up and destroyed so room can be made for a world marked by justice. The case for heaven, I contend, entails a conviction that the victims of the injustices of this world (many of which are never undone in this life) cannot experience the Lordship of God and the victory of the Lamb until those injustices are made right in the justice of the new heavens and the new earth. 4. Because the Bible says so. We’ve beaten this drum a few times now, but a few more bangs won’t do us any harm. The case for heaven is
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made not by trusting in near-death experiences or visions, but by trusting the Bible’s words as trustworthy and true. Jesus taught about “eternal life” over and over, and nearly every Bible scholar knows that Jesus used Jewish ideas about the Age to Come. Now the Bible’s view of the Age to Come is very much like that Jewish vision: it’s not an escape to an ethereal, spiritual, soul-only reality; rather, it is the restoration, remaking, and recreation of this world in the new heavens and the new earth. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul also excited his readers by tying “gospel” to eschatology, reaching the heights of biblical, eschatological glory with these words: But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Cor. 15:23–28) Paul’s vision is expanded and exceeded in Revelation 21, and I close by illustrating our fourth case for heaven. If you believe the Bible, then you believe in heaven, you believe in the new heavens and the new earth: Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell
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CELEBRATION OF LIFE
Celebrations of life have become popular reinterpretations of the memorial service that intend to be celebratory, positive, and inspiring. Celebrations of life may have some combination of slide-show picture presentations, video clips, heartwarming stories, songs, poems, or inspiring speeches. Celebrations of life try to accept death as a normal part of life, often treating mourning as an abnormal and unhealthy practice to be avoided. A celebration of life as an alternative to a funeral or memorial service can fail to express the truth of the gospel and provide genuine hope.
with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” My favorite line in the whole Bible on the heaven promise is that last line: “These words are trustworthy and true.” SCOT MCKNIGHT is the Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Tes-
tament at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois. He is the author of The Jesus Creed, A Community Called Atonement, and Jesus and His Death, and has written commentaries on James, the Sermon on the Mount, Galatians, and 1 Peter.
1 Mally Cox-Chapman, The Case for Heaven: Near-Death Experiences as Evidence of the Afterlife (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), 58. 2 Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (New York: Vintage, 1990), 298–99. 3 N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), xiii–xiv.
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HOPE Heaven a conversation with ALISTER MCGRATH
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W H AT D O A C I T Y, A G A R D E N , A N D A FA M I LY R E U N I O N H AV E ( T H I S C O U L D B E A CAT E G O RY
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F Y O U answered “heaven,” you’re right (if you didn’t, don’t worry; neither did we— hence this interview). While Scripture isn’t lacking in analogies and descriptions of heaven, it doesn’t portray it the way our literal, detail-oriented twentyfirst-century minds would like it to. The result has been an amazing array of interpretations and illustrations of what heaven will be like, from Jan Brueghel’s The Garden of Eden and Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, to C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and The Last Battle. To learn a bit more about the influence that artistic interpretations of the scriptural portrayals of heaven have made on philosophy, theology, and Western culture, Modern Reformation spoke with
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ROMANTICISM, IN COMMON? O N J E O PA R DY ! )
Alister McGrath, the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford and author of A Brief History of Heaven (WileyBlackwell, 2003).
MR: In chapters 1 and 2 of A Brief History of Heaven,
you discuss the ways in which heaven is portrayed in painting, literature, and even science. It seems that earlier (medieval and Renaissance) articulations of heaven were strongly associated with earthly themes—the idea of a beautiful city or a lush, verdant garden. Do you see similar tendencies in popular articulations of heaven today, or is there a more theological/spiritual focus? MCGRATH: Many theologians emphasize the need
for an imaginative framework within which we can think meaningfully of heaven. Many
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of the traditional images of heaven use evocative imagery—such as that of a walled city or an enclosed garden—to stimulate our imaginations and create space for us to think about heaven. There is a real danger of reducing our thinking about heaven to rational or logical categories, which radically impoverishes it! Reading Dante’s Divine Comedy helps us realize the importance of images in helping us to think about heaven, without reducing heaven to what our minds can cope with.
In chapter 3 of your book, you talk about the shift in focus from heaven itself to Christ as the one who guarantees our access to heaven. Instead of the “Suffering Servant” portrayed by Isaiah, we see the victorious Christ—the “harrower of hell” who literally undoes Satan’s dominion—and the concept of the church as the gatekeeper of heaven. How does an emphasis on a victorious Christ develop the believer’s appreciation of and desire for heaven? The themes of the reality of earthly suffering and the ultimate triumph of Christ over suffering play a leading role in Christian thinking about heaven. The hope of heaven is set in the context of the world of pain and suffering within which we live. However, Christ’s victory over suffering and pain—which is achieved through his own suffering—points to a transfigured and transformed future, in which we are able to leave behind the pain, sorrow, and trials of this world, and enter into a world the risen Christ rules and loves. Seeing Christ as both “Suffering Servant” and “victor over suffering” allows us to understand him as the gateway from our own world to another, and sustains the hope that we can one day leave pain and suffering behind us.
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In chapter 4, you discuss how the Romanticism of William Blake and William Wordsworth articulated the connection between the beauty and profundity of nature and the human longing for “the transcendent,” which could be identified with heaven. Romans 1:20 says, “His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” This isn’t precisely the longing for the “transcendent” that Blake and Wordsworth articulated in their work, but are there other verses in Scripture that may speak to their point? Blake, Wordsworth, and others point to a deep intuition within us that there is a greater reality beyond our own. It’s a theme we find in a number of biblical verses. The one most often cited is Ecclesiastes 3:11, which speaks of God having “set eternity in the human heart.” The point seems to be that human beings have some kind of homing instinct for God, often manifested in a fascination with the transcendent. We might also think of Psalm 19:1, which affirms that “the heavens declare the glory of the Lord.” The idea here is not that the beauty of the starry heavens prove there is a God, but that looking at the night sky enriches and deepens our grasp of God, thus helping us to connect with the notion of the transcendent.
You say that C. S. Lewis’s most suggestive reflections on the nature of heaven appear in his science fiction trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet. What are some other examples of how he views heaven? Lewis talks about heaven a lot. For me, one of his finest discussions is found in the chapter on hope in Mere Christianity. For Lewis, we
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EDEN Jan Brueghel the Elder (1617)
THE NEW JERUSALEM Nicolas Bataille (1373)
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are studded with clues that this is not our real home, that there is a still better world beyond its frontiers, and that one may dare to hope to enter and inhabit this better place. Lewis affirms the delight, joy, and purposefulness of this present life. Yet he asks us to realize that when this finally comes to an end, something even better awaits us. Lewis believed that the secular world offers people only a hopeless end, and he wanted them to see and grasp the endless hope of the Christian faith and live in its light. We could also think of Narnia, in which the theme of heaven—which Lewis links with the “new Narnia”—is prominent. Some lines from The Last Battle, the concluding novel of The
Chronicles of Narnia series, capture this point particularly well. On seeing the “new Narnia,” the Unicorn declares, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.” For Lewis, the Christian hope is about returning home to where we really belong.
You speak of the attractiveness of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s 1863 book The Gates Ajar, in which she describes heaven as being an “extended nineteenth-century family” and emphasizes the “continuity of individuals, relationships, and environments between this life and the next.” Would
“ YOU CAN’T ARGUE PEOPLE INTO BELIEVING THAT THERE IS A HEAVEN. BUT YOU CAN POINT OUT HOW OUR DEEPEST INTUITIONS AND INSTINCTS TELL US THAT THERE IS SOME PLACE WHERE OUR DEEPEST LONGINGS AND DESIRES WILL BE MET.”
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PRAYERS TO THE DEAD
Prayers to the dead draw upon the idea that the dead are “still with us.” People sometimes imagine that the dead, being closer to God than the rest of us, can hear and pass along our prayers to God. Unlike Roman Catholics and Anglicans who pray to saints, Protestants believe differently: Scripture teaches Christians to pray to God. In Scripture, God hears and answers prayer. Jesus taught his disciples to pray directly to the Father, to ask anything in his name (Matt. 6:9– 13; Luke 11:2–4; John 14:13; 1 John 5:14). Mourning is a painful experience, and often people pray to the dead as a way to mourn. Instead, Christians must learn to mourn in prayer to God, who has promised to hear and answer prayer. Christians have hope that in death they will be together with all the saints and one day will be raised from the dead and become part of a new creation (Rom. 8:22–25). Scripture warns against trying to contact the dead (Lev. 19:31; 2 Kings 23:24; 2 Chron. 33:6; Isa. 8:19).
you say that it was “dead orthodoxy” that made her book (and others like it) so attractive? Is historic, confessional Protestantism simply unable to capture the imagination in the way that made the Romantics and their heirs so popular? The problem here is that Protestantism too easily becomes a rational belief system, having lost the capacity to use the imagination to grasp and glimpse deep spiritual truths. Max Weber argued that Protestantism tends to reduce things to rational categories—a process he called “disenchantment.” Romanticism was one major reaction against this trend. Poets such as Wordsworth and Keats appealed to the imagination and emotion as a way of expanding our vision of reality, rather than limiting it to what reason could cope with.
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In chapter 6, you write briefly about how the Greek Orthodox liturgy “celebrates the notion of being caught up in the worship of heaven, and the awesome sense of mystery that is evoked by the sense of peering beyond the bounds of human vision.” What are some ways in which the Protestant church might learn from the Greek Orthodox in this aspect? Does our historical iconoclasm possibly hinder us from enjoying worship as fully as our Orthodox brothers and sisters? Orthodoxy stresses that our worship on earth connects us with the worship of heaven. This is a thoroughly biblical insight, and I can’t see any good reason why Protestants shouldn’t make more of this. It helps us realize that our future destiny lies in heaven, and helps us to see worship as a way of anticipating our future presence in heaven through sharing in its worship.
You also speak about the hope of seeing God face to face as being one of the most important theological foundations for the Christian hope of heaven. How can Christians help communicate the ultimate union with Christ in heaven as truly surpassing all other human joys? Perhaps we need to help people realize that heaven is like the best that this world can offer— only better. The hope of heaven is about the consummation of joy and delight, hinted at by the greatest joys this world can offer. That’s the form that Lewis’s argument for heaven (which is not really an “argument” at all) takes, especially in Mere Christianity. And that involves using our imaginations, not just our reason! You can’t argue people into believing that there is a heaven. But you can point out how our deepest intuitions and instincts tell us that there is some place where our deepest longings and desires will be met—and then show how this fits in within a Christian “big picture.”
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Need Heaven roundtable with MICHAEL S. HORTON, SCOTT SWAIN, and MICHAEL WITTMER
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W H E N YO U H E A R T H E W O R D P O P S I N T O YO U R M I N D ? G O L D A S H I N I N G C I T Y ? N E W YO R K G R A F F I T I ? PA S T O R A L V I S TA S BREEZES? SOMETHING LIKE
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ESUS COMPARED the kingdom of heaven to a vineyard, a mustard seed, virgins, a king who held a wedding feast, and a master who left his home. Revelation 21 talks about walls of jasper and cities of pure gold, w ith the foundations of the walls adorned with every kind of jewel and each of the gates of the city a single pearl, with streets of gold clear as glass. We know that heaven will be wonderful—beyond any conception of “wonderful” that we can imagine—but what exactly it will look and feel like is a bit harder to articulate.
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HORTON: Many of us were raised with the hope
HEAVEN , W H AT STRE ET S A N D WI T H O U T T H E AN D WA R M NARN I A?
In this roundtable, Michael Horton talks with Scott Swain and Michael Wittmer. Scott Swain is professor of systematic theology and academic dean at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. With Michael Allen, he serves as general editor of New Studies in Dogmatics (Zondervan Academic) and International Theological Commentary (T&T Clark). He is also co-chair of the Reformed Theology Consultation in the Evangelical Theological Society. He blogs regularly at Reformation 21 and Common Places. Michael Wittmer is professor of systematic theology and director of the Center for Christian Worldview at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. He is author most recently of Becoming Worldly Saints: Can You Serve Jesus and Still Enjoy Your Life? (Zondervan, 2015).
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of “I’ll fly away” more than “the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” In reaction, some evangelicals now define salvation in antithesis to “going to heaven when we die.” What do you make of the current message we hear in Christian circles about our ultimate hope? WITTMER: Your question alludes to the pendulum swings I’m seeing in the evangelical world. Some Christians have reacted to the otherworldly Platonism they grew up with (and still find in our books, songs, and churches) by emphasizing that the kingdom of Christ has already come to earth. While this is true, some focus so much on the “already” of the kingdom that they forget its consummation is “not yet.” They talk a lot about the here and now but say little about our ultimate hope in the age to come. This extreme sets off a counterreaction, as more traditional Christians attempt to pull our focus back to heaven. It’s time to stop the pendulum and declare the nuanced, biblical view. Praise God that our souls go to heaven when we die. What an immense comfort to rest in the presence of our Lord! But Scripture says little about this intermediate state, probably because heaven is neither the focus of Scripture nor our final destination. Christians believe in the return of Christ, the resurrection of the body, and the restoration of all things. We believe that our flight to heaven is the first leg of a journey that is round-trip. When Jesus returns he will bring our souls with him, raise our bodies, and put us together once more. Then we will live forever with him here, on this restored earth. It’s not heaven or earth, but heaven and earth. First heaven, then our return with Jesus to the place we humans were always meant to live. Jesus is our spiritual home, and earth is our ontological home. More simply, Jesus is the one with whom we are meant to live, and earth is where we are meant to live with him. We’re Earthlings, for heaven’s sake! SWAIN: Many Christians have been taught a subbiblical hope that consists in “going to heaven when we die.” Whatever the source of this
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error, I am grateful for the renewed emphasis on both the bodily nature and the earthly location of our everlasting home. As Mike said, we need a balanced view that rightly conveys the place of heaven and earth within our eternal destiny. However, I would want to go beyond Mike’s identification of heaven as the “first leg” of our journey to God’s eternal kingdom. While earth is the place of our eternal home, heaven defines the character of that home. We look for a “better country.” And what makes that country “better” is its “heavenly” character (Heb. 11:16). The same may be said regarding the character of our resurrected bodies. As we have borne the image of the “earthly” man, so we look forward to bearing the image of the “heavenly” man (1 Cor. 15:49). Classical catholic and Reformed teaching instructs us that “grace restores and perfects nature.” I worry that by overemphasizing the earthly nature of our eternal destiny, we fail to give grace its full due. Grace doesn’t bring us back to the Garden of Eden. It brings us to “the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22), which will
ultimately rest on the earth. But the character of that Jerusalem will transcend the glory of the present creation and the present age, for it will shine with the brightness of God himself (Rev. 21:1–22:5).
Scott, you pointed out the importance of seeing our final destiny as something more than picking up where we left off or even of returning to Eden— “Paradise Regained.” It’s something “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined” (1 Cor. 2:9). Yes, it is in this body—raised and glorified, and in this world renewed—that we will behold God. But how do we find that right balance between continuity with our earthly existence and discontinuity (the newness of the new creation)? Do the post-resurrection narratives and 1 Corinthians 15 give us some clues by considering Christ’s exaltation? SWAIN: That’s a difficult question to answer, partly because the nature of our final destiny “has not yet appeared” (1 John 3:2), and partly
“ THE CHARACTER OF THAT JERUSALEM WILL TRANSCEND THE GLORY OF THE PRESENT CREATION AND THE PRESENT AGE, FOR IT WILL SHINE WITH THE BRIGHTNESS OF GOD HIMSELF (REV. 21:1–22:5).”
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because of the radical disproportion between the glory of the future age and the fragility of the present one (2 Cor. 4:16–18). If we are to find any guidance, then it must be in Jesus, the “firstfruits” of the new creation (1 Cor. 15:23). If we look at the post-resurrection narratives, we see that Jesus was raised in the same body that he assumed in the incarnation and that his body still bears the marks of his suffering on our behalf. We also see that Jesus’ body was raised in a glorified state, capable of doing things our bodies can’t do in their present form. This is in keeping with Pauline teaching in 1 Corinthians 15 that different kinds of bodies are characterized by different kinds of glory. It also fits with Paul’s claim that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50). Here we may be better served by metaphor than literal description. Perhaps the best metaphor for the continuity and discontinuity between the present and future creation is provided by Jesus in John 12: the grain of wheat sown in death is raised and fructified in the resurrection. There is continuity between grain and stalk—but there’s also progress, growth, and transformation. Of course, the transformation here is not natural but supernatural, a product of the crucified and risen Lord’s power to transform the present age into the eternal kingdom where God is all in all. WITTMER: As Scott says, we cannot say for sure what is new about the new creation and what stays the same. But we do have some strong hints. Second Peter 3:13 says the new world will be “the home of righteousness.” What stands out to Peter as new is not any new thing but a dramatic ethical change. Unlike this world, which is ravaged by sin and its effects, the new earth will overflow with righteousness. This fits with God’s declaration, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5). Notice God does not say he is making new things to replace what is already here. Rather he is taking what is already here and making them new, or redeeming them. This also fits with Isaiah’s vision of ordinary life on the new earth: the redeemed “will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and
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PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD
In the Roman Catholic Church, a person may pray for the dead to decrease the deceased’s time in purgatory (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., sec. 1030–1032). We should not pray for the dead. Instead, Scripture teaches that those who die with faith in Christ enter into God’s presence, enjoy God, and wait for the resurrection of the body and the day of their public vindication (2 Cor. 5:6–8; Matt. 25:31–40; Rom. 8:1–2, 18, 23–25; 1 Cor. 15:51–57). Those who die without faith in Christ have no hope. They await the Day of Judgment (Matt. 25:31–33, 41; 2 Pet. 3:7; 2 Thess. 1:5–10). Scripture teaches us to pray for the living so they might believe the gospel (1 Tim. 2:1–6).
eat their fruit” (Isa. 65:21). We have more questions than answers; but if redemption restores creation, then a biblical rule of thumb is that if something belongs to creation, then expect it to reappear on the new earth. If something belongs to the fall, then expect it to be gone. The only exceptions I know to this rule are marriage (Matt. 22:30), the scars of Christ (John 20:27), and the serpent forever cursed to slither on the ground (Isa. 65:25). If the new earth and our resurrection bodies are too different from our present bodies and earth, then we will not have been redeemed. We will have been replaced. This is not the Christian hope. But the good news gets even better. God does not merely redeem his creation; he also consummates it. He takes it to that higher level it was always intended to go. This is what Scott is getting at when he mentions the “heavenly character” of the new creation. Our new world will be better in at least five ways:
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“WE WILL UNDERSTA ADAM EVER COULD. SINNERS CAN BEG THE UNFATHOMABLE KNOW SOMETHING AB YEARN TO UN
1. Unlike Eden, when God came and left, in the new creation he will live here permanently, filling the earth with his glory. He will be Immanuel, God with us (Rev. 21:3, 23). 2. He will transform our present bodies into spiritual bodies (1 Cor. 15:42–49). These bodies will not be nonphysical, because Jesus’ resurrection body remained fully physical (Luke 24:37–43). Scott reminds us that Jesus’ resurrection body could do things that ours cannot, but I would caution not to read too much into that. Jesus’ body could do those same things before he rose from the dead (Luke 4:30; Mark 6:48). Jesus can do things we’ll never be able to do, because he is God.
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ND GOD BETTER THAN ONLY FORGIVEN IN TO APPRECIATE GRACE OF GOD. WE OUT GOD THAT ANGELS DERSTAND.”
Our resurrection bodies will not be less than physical, but they will be more. Gordon Fee says Paul calls them “spiritual” because they will be animated by the “life-giving spirit” of “the last Adam.” These bodies will be indestructible, which is why I’m saving hang gliding for the new earth! 3. The new earth will enjoy a higher development of culture. As Scott says, we don’t start over in a garden. We start off in a city that God will provide. We won’t bring our cultural artifacts into the new earth—this tree or that painting will not survive God’s purifying fire (2 Pet. 3:10)— but we will bring our cultural know-how. Bach will have forever to write music,
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and without the handicap of sin. If you enjoy being human, you’re going to love the new earth. 4. Herman Bavinck notes that our new world will be better because, unlike Adam, we will have the “absolute certainty” that we will never fall. What peace of mind! 5. We will understand God better than Adam ever could. Only forgiven sinners can begin to appreciate the unfathomable grace of God. We know something about God that angels yearn to understand (1 Pet. 1:12). In all these ways, and perhaps more, grace doesn’t merely restore nature, but perfects it too.
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“NO LONGER WILL THE CULTIVATION OF CREATION AND HUMAN CULTURE BE THE IMMEDIATE OBJECT OF OUR LABOR. THE IMMEDIATE OBJECT OF OUR ACTIVITY WILL BE GOD HIMSELF: WE WILL SEE HIS FACE, AND WE WILL SERVE HIM IN A STATE OF EVERLASTING WORSHIP AND EVERLASTING BLISS.”
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What are the top two or three ways in which the biblical promise of heaven is different—not only from other religions but especially from the general ideas you hear on the street (and in best-sellers from people who claim to have been there and back)? Why does it matter for us here and now? SWAIN: We see a rather stark contrast, for exam-
ple, between what Islam promises regarding heaven and what the Bible promises regarding heaven (on earth). The promise of seventy virgins to faithful martyrs takes a good that belongs to the present life (sex) and simply multiplies it. What heaven promises, in the Islamic scenario, is the quantitative expansion of sensual pleasure. The Bible, however, promises a form of pleasure and happiness that qualitatively transcends the joys of this life even as it brings those joys to their full realization (Ps. 16:11). The joys of marriage will be transcended in the fellowship of the Lamb and his Bride, the church (Rev. 19:6–9; 21:2, 9–21). The beauty we behold in the sun and the moon will be transcended as we behold the radiant glory of the Triune God (Rev. 21:23–24; 22:4–5). For this reason, I would be reticent about literally applying to the eternal kingdom the statement in Isaiah 65:21 about building houses and planting vineyards. Not only do the immediately surrounding verses mention the presence of infants (which presupposes procreation) and death—neither of which will be found in the eternal kingdom (Matt. 22:30; Rev. 21:4)—this application also fails to distinguish our work in the present creation from our work in the eternal Sabbath. As in the rhythm of six days and the Sabbath, so it will be in the rhythm of this age and the age to come. The distinction is not between human activity and cessation of human activity (the Bible does not permit the denigration of human action). The distinction is between the kind of activity that characterizes our work in history and the kind that characterizes our work in the eternal Sabbath of God. No longer will the cultivation of creation and human culture be the immediate object of our labor. The immediate object of our activity will be God himself: We will see his face, and we will serve him
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KARMA
Karma is a Buddhist and Hindu belief in moral cause and effect that seeks to explain suffering. All life experiences are the result of either good or bad karma. Good works and intentions produce good karma; bad works and intentions produce bad karma. Suffering, hardship, or death results from bad karma. Happiness, well-being, or prosperity results from good karma. When people die too young, or the death was unexpected, people often look for answers. They want to know why God brought death. Sometimes Christians accept a view resembling karma. People blame the deceased or the living to account for the tragedy. This desire to explain life through a principle of spiritual cause and effect may leave a family devastated at a funeral. Instead, Genesis 3 teaches that, due to the fall, we all suffer and die. The Psalms, Proverbs, and the book of Job teach that sometimes God’s people suffer to a greater degree than the unbelieving people around them. God’s purposes in history bring blessing and suffering to us all. Our life is a mix of blessing and suffering, and it is only because of God’s grace that we experience any goodness at all (Matt. 5:45). Christians hope in the God who justifies us by faith alone in Christ alone apart from works (Rom. 3:23–26).
in a state of everlasting worship and everlasting bliss (Rev. 14:13; 22:3–5; cf. Gen. 2:1–3). If I am right about this, then much of what I hear in popular Christian teaching and preaching is wrong. We shouldn’t promise folks an opportunity for a second career in the eternal kingdom (e.g., “You’ve been a teacher in this age, and in the age to come you can be an artist”). We should rather tell them that all the goods of this life, whether social (e.g., marriage) or nutritional (bacon!), are but finite tutors, preparing us for our infinite good in
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God. He will be the great and satisfying lover of our souls. He will be the food that forever satisfies our hunger and the drink that forever quenches our thirst. Satisfied in God, we will exercise the fullness of our capacities as human beings—intellectual, volitional, emotional, physical, social—together in worshiping the “High King of Heaven” as a kingdom of priests. Now that’s a second career! Why does this matter for us here and now? The promises of heaven’s bliss not only determine the character of Christian worship (Heb. 12:28–29); they also help us endure earth’s sorrows, reminding us that the sufferings of the present time cannot be compared with the glory that is to be revealed, and moving us to set our hopes fully upon the grace that is to be revealed when Jesus returns to lavish the glories of his heavenly kingdom on the sons and daughters of earth (Matt. 5:8; 2 Cor. 4:16–18; 1 Pet. 1:13; 1 John 3:2–3). By enabling us to
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REINCARNATION
Reincarnation is taught in Hinduism, Buddhism, other Eastern religions, and in some ancient Greek and Roman religions. Reincarnation is the belief that a person’s soul survives the death of the physical body and is reborn into a new body. Reincarnation is a process of life, death, and rebirth by which a person may live many lives. Many believe reincarnation to be governed by a principle such as karma. Those who live a good life are reborn into a better condition. Those who practice evil are reborn into a worse condition. Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Eastern religions teach that when a person lives an exemplary life or reaches enlightenment through meditative practices, this person ends the process of reincarnation and becomes one with God.
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endure affliction with joy, we gain opportunities to share the reason for the hope that is within us (1 Pet. 3:14–15); by enabling us to hold lightly to earthly goods, we gain opportunities to share those goods with those in need (Ps. 37:21–22). As my friend Michael Allen says, being heavenly minded prepares us for much earthly good. WITTMER: It seems that Scott and I represent the church’s division over what to expect in our final state. He suspects that attention given to normal earthly life distracts from the glory of God, while I fear that spiritualizing our final state into an eternal worship service sounds more like the Roman Catholic beatific vision than the Protestant belief in the restoration of earthly existence. I’m not sure what role the earth plays in Scott’s understanding of the end (why must it occur here, on this planet?), or how his view appreciably differs from the otherworldly, Platonic view that we both oppose. What does his final state offer that is not already enjoyed by the departed saints in heaven? Is our final state merely the intermediate state extended forever? This matters because if we lose the earthiness of the Christian faith, then we will eventually lose the faith itself. Some evangelicals, for pious reasons, so emphasize the Creator that they minimize his creation. Some have even declared themselves to be panentheists, believing that this world is nothing more than an idea in the mind of God. But if this is so, then we are not actually separate from God, which means we can never know or love him. We cannot love the other if there is no other. Without a good and separate creation, we have no place where we can stand and love God. The climax of the new earth will be the worship of Jesus—much like Scott described (though as creatures we will always exist in time). But our glorious worship of Jesus will not exclude ordinary human existence. Adam and Eve walked with God in Eden, but they also named the animals, tilled the ground, and did other human activities. I don’t see a biblical reason why our end would be so drastically different from our beginning. If grace restores
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“ WE LONG TO HEAR JOHN’S ‘HALLELUJAH CHORUS’: ‘THE KINGDOM OF THE WORLD HAS BECOME THE KINGDOM OF OUR LORD AND OF HIS MESSIAH, AND HE WILL REIGN FOR EVER AND EVER’ (REV. 11:15).”
nature, then redemption restores rather than obliterates whatever humans do—worship, work, play, and befriend others. The earthiness of our faith is a Christian distinctive. Every other religion says the good stuff happens someplace else, high up and far away. Muslims want to go to paradise. Buddhists want nirvana. But Christians pray for the kingdom to come (Luke 11:2). We long to hear John’s “Hallelujah Chorus”: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever”
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(Rev. 11:15). And so we say the closing prayer of Scripture, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20). This exhilarating, cosmic vision of redemption puts an exclamation point on any Gospel presentation. We are not offering a choice between heaven and hell, but ultimately between hell and life with Jesus on the new earth. Do you like being human and living here? Then repent of your sin and put your faith in Jesus, and you will live forever with him and your friends who did the same, enjoying the fullness of life on this redeemed earth. You don’t need a bucket list, because you will have forever to do whatever you didn’t get to this time around. To be clear, I affirm Scott’s inspiring emphasis on the worship of Jesus. This will be the rightful center of our activity on the new earth. But there is also a circumference. Jesus will “make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.” Joy to the world!
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“ PA S T O R , I J U S T WA N T T O B E L O R D I N H E AV E N A N D F O R A L L B E F I N A L LY OV E R ,” E L L A E XC A N E A R N E S T N E S S T H AT L E T E K N OW S H E M E A N T I T.
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HIS WAS HER third round of chemotherapy, and the will to fight the good fight had diminished with each drop of poison introduced into her bloodstream. Ella joins the chorus of countless saints across the ages in expressing their desire for heaven, where Jesus has promised he will “wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist anymore—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist” (Rev. 21:4). As much as we may long for heaven, we must still wait for the final judgment and the new
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WITH THE OF THIS TO LAIMED WITH V E R YO N E
creation. Even death itself does not usher us into the final state of the new creation. In life and death, we must wait, and as philosopher Tom Petty sings, “Waiting is the hardest part.”
WAITING AS BLESSED HOPE Whether it’s waiting in line at the DMV, waiting in traffic, or waiting for the results of a biopsy, one thing is certain—no one enjoys it. This is especially acute in a consumeristic culture continually bombarded with advertisements promising immediacy and instant gratification. Our impatience with God’s timing, however, is not unique to our time and place. The Old Testament is replete with the refrain “How long, O Lord?” The tension in such a question is palpable, but it is alleviated in part by the
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knowledge that God is not bound by the linear constraints of time. God is infinite and therefore lives in radical simultaneity in which past, present, and future co-inhere without being constrained, as we finite creatures are, in the succession of moments from past to present to future. Thus Peter can say that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day (2 Pet. 3:8). It is easy to view waiting with a negative attitude, particularly during difficult seasons of life; however, the Bible provides a more positive approach by stressing it is as “hopeful expectation.” The Hebrew words for “wait” most often employed in the Old Testament are closely tied to the concepts of trust and hope (qavah, yachal, chakah). We are to wait upon the Lord with hopeful expectancy, like children going to sleep on Christmas Eve in eager anticipation of the gifts that will be received come morning, because we are confident that our Heavenly Father will deliver on all his promises (cf. Ps. 130:5–6). Thus the prophet Isaiah can say that those “who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isa. 40:31). The Old Testament tells a story with a futureoriented focus pointing toward the promised Prophet (Deut. 18:15), Priest (Ps. 110:4), and messianic King (Isa. 9:6–7), who will usher in a kingdom where God’s reign is fully realized by Israel and the nations. Thus the writer to the Hebrews can speak of the Old Testament saints as dying in faith, not receiving the promises, but only welcoming them from afar (Heb. 11:13). When we open the New Testament, the writers quickly demonstrate how the great promises of the Old Testament have been inaugurated and fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ (Mark 1:15). Through the means of grace, Christ grants us a share in all the blessings of this ancient hope. The promised kingdom can be experienced and enjoyed now by faith in the king’s death and resurrection. The gift of the Holy Spirit poured out in holy baptism is a guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of Christ’s glory
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(Eph. 1:14). And yet we followers of Jesus must await the full manifestation of these promises to fully bloom. The tension of waiting for heaven is tied to the fact that we live between what theologians often refer to as the “already and the not yet.” Paul Raabe notes how this already/ not yet tension underlies everything the Scriptures teach about eschatology:
“ THE TENSION OF WAITING FOR HEAVEN IS TIED TO THE FACT THAT WE LIVE BETWEEN WHAT THEOLOGIANS OFTEN REFER TO AS THE ‘ALREADY AND THE NOT YET.’”
On the one hand, the end has arrived in Christ. You have received the promised end-times blessings through the Gospel and Sacraments. You are already a participant in the messianic age. On the other hand, the end-times blessings you have are yours by faith, not sight (Rom 8:24). The life you have is a life under the cross (Matt 16:24–27). The fulfillment is still future. Only on the Last Day will you move from a life under the cross to a life of glory.1
Waiting on this side of the cross is thus centered on Christ’s second advent, as Paul writes to Titus: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem
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us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (Titus 2:11–14) Notice how Paul connects the dots here between the already (“grace…has appeared”) and the not yet (“appearing of the glory…of our Savior”). This waiting he describes as our blessed hope; but the present is not a time for spiritual apathy, as if we are to passively abide the time twiddling our thumbs. It is a time for training in godliness, because those redeemed by Christ’s finished work are “zealous for good works.”
A KINGDOM UNDER ATTACK Life under the cross can be likened to a battlefield as we wage war with sin, death, and the
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devil. Swiss theologian Oscar Cullmann compared life between the already/not yet to life between D-Day of the Normandy invasion and V-Day at the end of the Second World War. The death and resurrection of Jesus are like D-Day; Christ’s return will be like V-day.2 C. S. Lewis similarly spoke of this present world as enemyoccupied territory: Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends; that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.3 Life under the cross presses us not only into a war within, but also a war without. As Steven Hein warns, “Spiritual warfare also entails a battle against the forces of evil outside the Christian which can bring experiences of temptation, trial, and tribulation.”4 While we are assured of final victory, we live in the present fighting the good fight of faith. As such, we are called to arms with the weapons of faith (Eph. 6:10–20). There will be times when we grow weary and want to give up in the face of what seems like insurmountable odds, repeated failure, and trials of varying degree and kind. Like Ella in our introduction, we just want it to be over. Our Lord’s timing often feels like it is moving at a snail’s pace. But Peter reminds us that the Lord’s delay serves a patient purpose: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). Before Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father, he gathered his disciples together to give them their marching orders: “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21). Thus, until the king returns, he has left his church with the vocation of expanding his kingdom through the ministry of his word and sacraments (Matt. 28:19–20). The church is the
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NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES
People who claim to have had near-death experiences report the following: the presence of light, detachment from their physical bodies, levitation, feelings of peace or warmth, and the presence of deceased family, voices, or mysterious figures. Movies such as Heaven Is for Real and 90 Minutes in Heaven attempt to capture on film what some claim to have experienced in heaven. Christians, seeking to defend their faith, often accept popular testimony of near-death experiences and popular testimony to heaven as evidence of spirituality, the afterlife, God’s existence, or the Christian faith. Some Christians even disapprove of those who question these experiences or search for a scientific explanation. The apostles warn us to test all prophecy: although false prophets often appear righteous, they teach contrary to Scripture, deceiving the hearts of the naive (1 John 4:1; 1 Cor. 11:13–15; Rom. 16:17–18). Though not all reports are contrary to Scripture, Christians must not go beyond what Scripture teaches about heaven, hell, or life after death.
visible manifestation of Christ’s kingdom on earth, like a city set on a hill, shining the light of Christ so that all would know where to find safe passage and refuge (cf. Matt. 5:14–16). My grandfather used to regale me with sea stories in my childhood. He served as an engineer on a U.S. Navy ship sunk by a Japanese torpedo in the South Pacific. As he and his fellow survivors floated in the shark-infested waters amid the wreckage awaiting rescue, my grandfather said he hoped for three things: (1) that he would be saved, (2) that his fellow sailors would be saved, and (3) that the rescue ship would reach safe harbor so they could finally go home. This hope of survival in the midst of
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8
THE CHARACTER OF THE CHRISTIAN FUNERAL
The Christian funeral is different. As Christians we mourn and hope, lament and praise, weep and laugh, and feel sorrow and happiness because we know what God has said about life and death. We hope in the resurrection of the dead, in Christ’s return, and in our salvation. This hope doesn’t deny our mourning. Christ tells us, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). Our comfort is the gospel: that Jesus saves us by faith alone. This gospel both affirms our mourning and justifies our confidence. We have every reason to mourn: death is an enemy of God’s people. Yet we also have every reason to praise: Jesus will conquer death for us. The gospel shapes the character of a Christian funeral. In a Christian funeral, we should expect to hear Scripture read. A good text will address life and death, our mourning, and our confidence in God. A minister should pray for the family. Others can pray, but one who knows both the pain of this world and the mercy of God should pray for the family. A good prayer will bring the family’s pain before God, trusting that God will comfort those who mourn. A minister should preach a sermon. A good sermon will address life and death with the gospel of Jesus Christ. A good funeral will have singing, although is hard to sing God’s praise in the face of death. To one degree or another, Christians sing God’s praise in the face of death every day. During a funeral, the songs we sing—whether hymns or psalms, classic or contemporary— express our pain, our sorrow, and our hope in God. Death is a challenge to our faith, and a good Christian funeral seeks to meet that challenge by reminding us that death will not have the last word. We do not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13). We know that Christ will have victory over death.
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danger motivated them to band together to stay alive. Similarly, when we pray the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “thy kingdom come,” we are not asking for the kingdom of power to come, for that is already present; we are asking that the kingdom of God’s grace would come into our hearts and into our neighbor’s hearts, so that all would enjoy the blessings of the kingdom of glory to come. In light of this petition, Luther encouraged his barber and friend, Peter Beskendorf, to pray the following: Dear Lord God, Father, convert and protect! Convert those who have not yet become like little children and members of Your kingdom, so that together we may serve You in Your kingdom with a right faith and genuine love, and then, come out of this assaulted kingdom into the eternal Kingdom. Hinder those who refuse to turn away from using their power and strength to destroy Your kingdom. Hurl them down from their thrones and humiliate them so they are forced to cease and desist. Amen.5 The task of evangelizing this present world is not an easy endeavor. The enemies are great, certainly, but the mission of the church militant is not achieved by the power of the flesh, which is, quite frankly, good news. Paul continues the military metaphor in encouraging the church of Corinth for mobilization: For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. (2 Cor. 10:3–5) To pray “thy kingdom come” is searching and demanding. First, it means we are not the king and must lay down our own kingdom-building projects, taking every thought captive unto the king’s command. Second, it is an acknowledgment that our citizenship is not gained through
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“ AS WE CARRY OUT HIS GOSPEL MISSION, WE HAVE THE COMFORT OF KNOWING THAT HE IS WITH US ALWAYS, EVEN TO THE END OF THE AGE (MATT. 28:20).”
merit but by grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of the king alone; for we serve a benevolent king whose rule is not tyrannical, but compassionate, merciful, and loving. He rules this kingdom not with the sword but with grace through the sword of the Spirit, which is to say, his holy word. As we lift this prayer to God, we begin with ourselves: “Use me, O Lord, to faithfully serve in your kingdom through my earthly vocations, in my relationships, and through the resources you have graciously provided.” However, this prayer is not given just for us personally but corporately, for it begins with the plural possessive pronoun, “Our Father who art in heaven.” Here we must recognize that this is a battle we do not, and should not, fight alone, for there is strength in numbers. Our king has promised, moreover, that all authority
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in heaven and earth are his; and as we carry out his gospel mission, we have the comfort of knowing that he is with us always, even to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20). Until then, we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus!” BRIAN W. THOMAS serves as associate pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in San Diego, California. He is a teaching fellow of 1517. The Legacy Project and author of Wittenberg vs. Geneva: A Biblical Bout in Seven Rounds on Doctrines that Divide (New Reformation Publications, 2015).
1 Paul Raabe, “The End Times,” in God’s Words: Intro to Classic Christian Theology (St. Louis: CPH, 1988), 165. 2 Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time, trans. F. V. Filson (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1950), 84. 3 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 51. 4 Steven A. Hein, The Christian Life: Cross or Glory? (Irvine, CA: New Reformation Publications, 2015), 107. 5 Martin Luther, A Simple Way to Pray: For Peter, the Master Barber, trans. Matthew C. Harrison (St. Louis: CPH, 2012), 9.
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BOOK REVIEWS
Book Reviews 62
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Richard Hooker:
Supernatural:
Puritan Portraits
A Companion to His Life and Work
by W. Bradford Littlejohn
What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World— and Why It Matters
by J. I. Packer
The Unseen Realm:
Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible
by Michael S. Heiser REVIEWED BY
REVIEWED BY
REVIEWED BY
B. B. Saunders
John J. Bombaro
R. Scott Clark
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Battling the “Quest for an Illusory Certainty” Richard Hooker: A Companion to His Life and Work by W. Bradford Littlejohn Cascade Books, 2015 222 pages (paperback), $25.00 ichard Hooker (1553–1600) is known today primarily as the author of the work unpromisingly titled Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and is often thought of as the father of Anglicanism, forging a middle way between the Reformers and Rome. Convinced that the church today has much to learn from the judicious Hooker, Brad Littlejohn aims to introduce the man and his work to modern audiences, an important part of which includes situating him accurately in his historical context and dispelling the myths that have accumulated around him. Deeply indebted to the work of Torrance Kirby, Littlejohn argues that Hooker, rather than an Anglican aberration, was representative of the best of Protestant theology and fell squarely within the Reformed tradition. Littlejohn’s book adds to the growing body of work that argues that the Reformed tradition is broader than often thought. The book thus is part of a movement that consciously seeks to recover the diversity of the Reformed movement from a perceived narrowing of that tradition over time. The book, although poorly edited in parts, is well written and contains lucid expositions of many aspects of Hooker’s views, including those on law, the sacraments, and the church. It is not, however, merely an exposition of Hooker’s
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views; Hooker is commended to us in almost every chapter. As this review cannot do justice to every aspect of the book, I will confine myself to some of the major themes. Hooker wrote the Laws during the late 1500s to defend the worship and structure of the English church against its challengers. His chief protagonists were the “precisianist” Puritans, who argued that Christians should derive precise positive guidance from Scripture for every area of their lives, particularly in ecclesiastical matters. The second challenge was Presbyterianism, with its belief in lay elders and the equality of ordained ministers as the necessary biblical form of church government. The Presbyterian insistence on a spiritual government, distinct from the civil magistrate and rightly exercisable only by church officers, also posed a challenge to the unity of the civil and ecclesiastical orders and the authority of the queen. According to Littlejohn, the primary fault common to both the precisianist Puritans and the Presbyterianism espoused b y t h e l i k e s o f Th o m a s Cartwright was “biblicism,” a term employed to mean something like “the desire to resolve every issue on a particular subject (e.g., morals, polity, worship) by recourse to a scriptural principle.” This was the quest for an illusory certainty. Scripture nowhere promises or delivers such comprehensiveness, and so it was illegitimate to simply interrogate Scripture until it yielded an answer to every question. Littlejohn argues that the Thomistic dictum “Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it” was operative throughout Hooker’s work. The Christian religion is not a set of arbitrary beliefs and commands, radically discontinuous
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“The book is therefore a plea to reclaim large fields of legitimate disagreement and uncertainty from the insistence that every issue must be resolved by appeal to Scripture.” with human reason and natural impulses, but it purifies and rightly directs them to their proper ends. Rather than sharply separated and hermetically sealed spheres of “spiritual” (governed by Scripture) and “secular” (governed by reason), Hooker’s approach would perhaps lead to a more unified view of human knowledge, recognizing that in all areas divine certainty is rarely to be had. This brings us to the key argument of the book—namely, that there is much more uncertainty and contextual variation inherent in human knowledge than we are ordinarily disposed to accept, even in matters of theology, morals, polity, and worship. Prudential wisdom, reason, and natural law ought to be our main guides, with an acceptance of the fallibility of our knowledge. The book is therefore a plea to reclaim large fields of legitimate disagreement and uncertainty from the insistence that every issue must be resolved by appeal to Scripture. This aspect of the book offers some intriguing parallels. The argument is remarkably similar to the critique of the “quest for illegitimate religious certainty” contained in R. S. Clark’s Recovering the Reformed Confession (P&R Publishing, 2008), which Clark defines as “the pursuit to know God in ways he has not revealed himself and to achieve epistemic and
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moral certainty on questions where such certainty is neither possible nor desirable” (39). It also recalls Tim Keller’s argument in Center Church that decisions about ministry practices—such as how to worship, disciple, and evangelize, which he argues depend (implicitly or explicitly) on a “theological vision” for restating the gospel in the cultural context in which a church is ministering—are more contextual than typically recognized. The book is likely to surprise at a number of points. Not least is Hooker’s self-presentation as a more faithful exponent of the Reformed tradition than the Puritans and Presbyterians, who were “wayward sons of that tradition” (8, 69). Of course, the best of recent historical scholarship emphasizes the continuity of later Calvinism with its earlier exponents; and if the streams of the Reformed tradition were broad enough to allow even Hooker to sail upon its waters, it would seem strange to insist that the Puritans and Presbyterians were significantly off course. There are a few exceptions to the careful scholarship otherwise evident throughout the book. Although the author concedes that “it is too easy to draw a careless contrast between the heartless, legalistic Puritan and Hooker as the salver of the tender conscience” (97), the burden of chapter 7 appears to be precisely to
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draw such a contrast. Littlejohn considers that the heart of the Presbyterian reform agenda was “an aggressive policy of church discipline” consisting entirely, it would seem, of casting out hypocrites from the church (103). At one point, an unnamed Puritan is even made to appear standing, magnifying glass in hand, between heaven and the church, actively searching out imperfections in the parishioner’s life so as to deny assurance—a balm, needless to say, that Hooker is on hand to provide (107). It is not clear whether such a Puritan actually existed, or whether this is a figment of Hooker’s overactive imagination, seeking out the elusive pimpernel of biblicism and its soul-destroying consequences in unlikely places. Confusion can also arise due to the fact that it is not always clear in the book whether Littlejohn is speaking of the precisianists or the Puritans more generally, the biblicist Presbyterians or other variants of Presbyterianism. It is well to bear in mind that Hooker’s targets were the extreme precisianist wing of the Puritans, and many Reformed thinkers would join in his critique of those views. The emphasis on biblicism at times obscures the genuinely interesting points of disagreement between Hooker and more typical Reformed views. For example, Littlejohn attributes to Hooker the view—striking to modern
“The book succeeds admirably in providing a reliable and accessible introduction to Hooker.”
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Christian ears—that the church as a visible institution partakes of the same earthly character as other human societies. However, rather than drawing out the implications of this, Littlejohn leaps (in my mind at least) to the mundane conclusion that we cannot expect Scripture to set out the details of church polity comprehensively and unchangeably (44–45), reducing the issue to one of biblicism. The reader may wonder whether Littlejohn has done enough to convince us of Hooker’s importance for today. If Hooker’s singular distinction is to have convincingly demolished a set of rather absurd views, which have been long abandoned by sensible Reformed thinkers, then why is he worthy of such attention? While biblicism is an error that needs constant refutation, it is not so apparent from the book what those of us who are not biblicists ought to learn from Hooker. The mature formulations of Presbyterianism and Reformed ecclesiology were crafted long after Hooker wrote, and are much more nuanced than the views criticized by Hooker, and yet still sharply at odds with Hooker’s views. Being directed to Hooker is thus akin to being directed to the midpoint of the conversation. Bavinck was later to summarize the standard Reformed view: “Scripture itself is not a book of church order, but it does contain the principles of church government that cannot be disregarded without injury to the spiritual life” (Reformed Dogmatics, 4.370). What would Hooker have said about this? It is beyond the scope of the book to address these issues in detail; perhaps, therefore, we can look forward to fuller elaboration in Littlejohn’s forthcoming book. Contemporary Reformed readers will also likely have concerns about the broader direction of the book. Arguably, Littlejohn is too ready to attribute uncertainty to Scripture. One wonders whether any attempt to claim sanction for an ecclesiological principle from the Bible, or any resistance to the existence of extrascriptural moral principles, would be criticized as biblicism. After all, while it may be readily
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admitted that Scripture does not deliver a moral code, or the details of church polity comprehensively and unchangeably, it is hardly bereft of principles. And the fact that Scripture does not deliver comprehensive certainty does not mean it does not deliver any certainty at all. Thus, to my mind, uncertainty threatens to substitute one problematic starting point with another. Should we not let Scripture determine the scope of its own perfection? The book succeeds admirably in providing a reliable and accessible introduction to Hooker. Littlejohn demonstrates an excellent knowledge of Hooker scholarship and the historical context; the book is learned but also accessible to the nonspecialist. It is sure to stimulate thought and challenge contemporary readers. B. B. SAUNDERS is a lawyer, a PhD candidate in constitutional law, and a Presbyterian. He lives with his wife and five children near Geelong, Australia.
A “Lord of the Rings” Biblical Theology Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World—and Why It Matters by Michael S. Heiser Lexham Press, 2015 224 pages (paperback), $16.95 The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible by Michael S. Heiser Lexham Press, 2015 368 pages (hardback), $27.95 eemingly from nowhere, Supernatural and The Unseen Realm have found themselves atop Amazon’s best-selling Kindle books list. They are what your neighbors are reading (evangelical neighbors especially). The author, Michael S. Heiser, is a
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credentialed and peer-reviewed scholar in Hebrew Bible and Semitic languages, as well as scholar-in-residence at Faithlife Corporation, the makers of Logos Bible Software; he also has a notable website presence and following. Supernatural and The Unseen Realm are, for all intents and purposes, the same book with the same major theses, aimed for two distinct audiences: the former for biblical enthusiasts without technical abilities in biblical studies; the latter for learned laypersons, pastors, and scholars—one low octane, the other high octane. Put differently, Supernatural is the “pop” version of the much more substantive, interesting, and closely argued The Unseen Realm. Together they disseminate the fruit of Heiser’s academic pursuits, particularly his doctoral work and professional interests in the spiritual realm as presented in both the Old and New Testaments. At first glance, Heiser’s surprising proposal reminds one of the curious yet sensationalistic work of Immanuel Velikovsky—The Unseen Realm’s opening chapters reading like Worlds in Collision. Heiser purports that the dynamic and pervasive workings and structures of the unseen realm are sorely neglected and badly truncated due to Christianity’s “selective supernaturalism,” warranting a thorough reconsideration for a truly biblical theology and recounting of redemptive history. Beginning with the creation account, Heiser presents his major thesis through an explanation that the plural elohim refers to a heavenly assembly of beings, a divine council of subordinate “gods” who assist Yahweh, the Creator God. After all, ancient Hebrews were monotheists, not polytheists, so there should be no fear of venturing into the heretical here. Notwithstanding, the patriarchs and later Israelites had a far more expansive understanding and engagement with the heavenly hosts than subsequent millennia have come to appreciate. Significantly, human beings are not only fashioned in Yahweh’s likeness but especially in the image of the elohim: hence, the plural injunction of Genesis 1:26 and
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“The more aware we are of the reality of the supernatural realm, the more closely aligned we will find ourselves to the worldview formed and informed by Holy Scripture and the church’s gospel mandate.” other plural referents to the “divine.” “Human beings are imagers,” like the elohim, but whereas they image-forth the divine likeness in heaven, human beings do so within his earthly kingdom. The Lord God, then, has two divine councils: the elohim in heaven and humanity on earth; and it is in this sense that the many biblical references to various human beings or groups of humans as “gods” are to be understood. For Heiser, the ramifications of this identification and association reverberate throughout the biblical narrative. The divine council abides in the divine presence, whether in heaven or upon the earth. Human beings were to globally expand the Edenic domain of Yahweh through their reign in proxy. All of this changes, of course, with Adam’s rebellion, but also with the fall of certain among the elohim. And there begins Heiser’s chronological consideration of the opposing forces of God and the gods from Genesis through the advent
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of the Messiah Jesus and into the age of the church. There are fallen elohim that pervert the reign of Yahweh, and there are blessed elohim that do the bidding of Yahweh. The adversary in Job 1–2, for instance, is not the serpent of Genesis 3, but one filling a role in Yahweh’s good council to test or exercise judgment. But there are evil adversaries, too. With his divine council thesis, reinforced by his understanding of Psalm 82, Heiser boldly interprets a host of historically thorny passages in a remarkably coherent fashion, including the troublesome Nephilim text of Genesis 6:1–4, the imprisoned angels of 2 Peter 2:1–10, and the fettered spirits of Jude 5–7. It all makes for fascinating reading, especially when Heiser’s soteriology terminates the various, interrelated threads of spiritual warfare, cosmic geography, and heavenly orders in christological fulfillment. Indeed, more than that, The Unseen Realm has a compelling way of reawakening for its readers the
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reality of the spiritual dimension of the created order. On not a few occasions, I found myself guilty of harboring a disposition ready to disenchant controverted passages discussed by Heiser, in addition to exposing a disposition of ratiocination incommensurate with those supercharged spirit-world texts of the Bible. In this way, Heiser’s work holds the promise to re-enchant reified postEnlightenment worldviews, bringing to modern minds a fresh perspective on the fact that we are not alone and that our warfare “is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). Yet for all of the insights and preferred renderings and isogogical aid, there’s no shortage of material about which to quibble within The Unseen Realm. First, Heiser’s exegesis can be and has been disputed over a number of passages. Genesis 3:22 is an example. Heiser has the Lord God saying that the man has become like “one of us”—that is, like the heavenly elohim—following the deception and fall. However, the Hebrew may be constructed to read “like a lonely one” rather than more elohim-like after high treason. There are good reasons for preferring this latter rendering or, indeed, a more traditional exegesis than Heiser’s—renderings and exegesis also very much in keeping with sound biblical theology. Then there is Heiser’s ponderous Edwardsian spiritualization of virtually all of reality, while at the same time emptying the sacraments of any real divine presence or efficacy when treating 1 Peter 3:18–22 and the Lord’s Supper. Heiser’s proposal, therefore, cannot
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be said to be a nonpartisan offering, devoid of a presupposed theological paradigm. There are Pentecostal sympathies, sacramentarian parameters, Arminian perspectives, and evangelical nomenclature throughout both books, with Supernatural being the more egregious of the two and, consequently, less useful or recommended. Lastly, Lexham Press’s hardcopy edition of The Unseen Realm is poorly constructed and so receives low marks for that, along with virtually no margins for annotation. Nevertheless, there are two useful indices, unlike the paperback Supernatural, which contains none. A n d s o g o e s H e i s e r ’s intriguing reading of the Scriptures—territorial e lo h i m b a tt l i n g o p p o s ing heavenly elohim, with humanity vying to and fro until, climatically, the Image-bearer becomes incarnate to engage in the ultimate cosmic conflict upon Calvary, that through the church continues to this day. The more aware we are of the reality of the supernatural realm, the more closely aligned we will find ourselves to the worldview formed and informed by Holy Scripture and the church’s gospel mandate. Heiser’s preferred work in The Unseen Realm, although overreaching and underreaching at the same time (making it a sort of “Lord of the Rings” biblical theology), still provides valuable insights that should be considered, on the part of the confessional Reformation traditions, as offering important correctives to a dimension of Scripture infrequently discussed within our respective enclaves. JOHN J. BOMBARO is parish minister at Grace Lutheran Church in San Diego, California, and a lecturer in theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego.
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The “Puritan Mind-set” Puritan Portraits by J. I. Packer Christian Focus, 2012 192 pages (paperback), $14.99 significant figure in a variety of circles, J. I. Packer is one of the last voices representing the generation of British evangelicals with roots in the Reformation. Packer is articulate, warm, and evangelical in the best sense of the word. His latest invitation to the evangelical community to join him in appreciating and learning from the older English Reformed piety and theology comes as a series of introductions to British Reformed writers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and an epilogue on the value of the Puritans as models for pastoral ministry. Inasmuch as it is intended, however, to introduce the uninitiated to “the Puritans,” some cautions are in order. First, the very designation “the Puritans” is a better marketing catchphrase than historical denominator. This is illustrated by Packer’s own conflicting account of the term. For example, he notes that it was originally intended as an epithet and thus “the Puritans” did not use it of themselves (12)— although Richard Baxter (1615–91), one of Packer’s favorites, thought of himself as a “Puritan” (158). This is the problem with writing about “the Puritans.” Like modern “evangelicals,” the more closely one looks at them the more they seem to disappear. Under one cover, Packer presents Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Congregationalists as
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Puritans. So they were not united by church polity. They were not united in their view of the sacraments, hermeneutics, or reading of redemptive history. As they say on Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the others.” Richard Baxter does not belong in a collection of otherwise orthodox Reformed writers. He was decidedly heterodox on the doctrine of justification and was regarded so by John Owen (1616–83), whom Packer describes as one of the three greatest Reformed theologians (81). Thus apparently “the Puritans” were not united on the article upon which depends the “standing or falling of the church” (J. H. Alsted, 1618). If to be a “Puritan” meant it was not necessary to be orthodox on justification, to agree on the nature of the church and her sacraments, and any number of other related issues, then one is hard-pressed to see how Packer could nevertheless claim that “the Puritans” were “theologically homogenous” (23) and that they had a “connected view of God, of the Bible, of the world, of ourselves, of salvation, of the church, of history and of the future” (72). “The Puritans” as Packer himself describes them in this volume do not quite display that sort of unity. What is it, then, according to Packer that really unifies them? It was their “close communion” with God (12) and their “deep sense of the reality of the holy God who impacts every life” (13). There was, he argues, a “Puritan mind-set” (26) that consisted in a commitment to doctrinal and ethical precision and thoroughness in their exposition of Scripture (23–26). A volume titled A Variety of English Pastors with Varying Sympathies with the Reformation and United by Similar Method and Passion for Holiness would not be nearly as marketable as a volume on “The Puritans,” but it would be more
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“The present volume is typical Packer: warm, well written, and engaging. It does its job of enticing readers to read ‘the Puritans’ for themselves, to pray while they study, and to study while they pray.”
accurate. That it may be method as much as theology, piety, and practice that united these authors may explain why American evangelicals of diverse theological persuasions identify with “the Puritans” in one way or another. We should be thankful that Packer reminds us that R. T. Kendall fundamentally misunderstood William Perkins (153), but the reader will lament that Packer perpetuates the stereotype about “rationalistic” supralapsarianism (154–55). Finally, the author’s more than half a century of enthusiasm for Baxter manifests itself in another way: his strange account of the English Reformed assessment of Rome. He rightly says that the Reformed considered Rome as a “false religion” (18–19); but when he says, “Roman Catholicism as they knew it, or thought they knew it” (19), he implies that Perkins et al. were mistaken in their assessment. “Rightly or wrongly, Puritans generally saw the Roman Catholic Church as embodying the principle of justification by meritorious works.” Perhaps
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they thought such because Rome declared this doctrine as dogma at the Council of Trent in 1547? Readers should do their own reading and start with William Perkins’s 1597 treatise, “A Reformed Catholic,” in which he carefully lays out the areas of agreement between Rome and the Reformed, and then just as carefully explains how the Reformed are the genuine heirs of a truly catholic (universal) Christian faith and how Rome degenerated into sectarianism. J. I. Packer has served us all well for a very long time. Fundamentalism and the Word of God (1958), Knowing God (1973), and other titles have offered us paths back to Reformed theology and piety. The present volume is typical Packer: warm, well written, and engaging. It does its job of enticing readers to read “the Puritans” for themselves, to pray while they study, and to study while they pray. R. SCOTT CLARK is professor of church history and historical
theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido).
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GEEK SQUAD
Who Will We Know in Heaven? by Eric Landry
he great hope of Christians is not that they will go to heaven when they die, but that Jesus will raise them from the dead in an incorruptible body to live with him and the rest of God’s people in the new creation. The physicality of the new creation city that John reveals in Revelation 21 has led Christians through the ages to envision the new creation as a material place much like our own world, but without sin and the suffering that sin has caused. If the new creation will be a physical place populated by the people of God in physical bodies, then an obvious question follows: “Who will we know in heaven?” Although the Bible doesn’t directly answer the question, there are many clues in Scripture that give us the sense
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that we will know and be known by others in the new creation. When Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob died, these patriarchs of the Old Testament were said to be “gathered to [their] people” (Gen. 25:8; 35:29; 49:33). Some scholars see this as merely a euphemism for death, but it is more likely that these old covenant believers understood that death was not the end of their existence, that they would see and be with their family who had died before them. When King Saul consults the medium of Endor and asks her to summon the prophet Samuel from the grave, he recognizes the old man wrapped in a robe as the dead prophet (1 Sam. 28:14), and Samuel also recognizes Saul as the one who has “disturbed” him from the grave.
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When King David mourns the death of the son he had with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 12:23), David tells his servants that even though the child cannot return to him, David will go to him when he dies. David expects to see that particular child again after he dies. In Matthew 22:23–33, the Sadducees (who did not believe in the resurrection) try to trick Jesus by asking a ridiculous question about a woman who through Levirate marriage was married to seven brothers: “In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?” Jesus answers that in the resurrection people will neither marry nor will they be given in marriage, suggesting that the people we knew and had relationships with in this life will be with us in the new creation but related to us in a different way. Jesus goes on to rebuke the Sadducees by reminding them that God is not the “God of the dead, but of the living.” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob kept their names in heaven, and it is also likely that they kept some key part of their identity intact—knowable by their family and others. In Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:23), the rich man—though in torment in Hades—recognizes both Lazarus (someone he knew on earth) and Abraham (someone he did not know). Paul comforts the Corinthian church by reminding them that Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:23), and just as his resurrection body was recognizable by his disciples, the implication is that ours will be as well. Sometimes, family members of those who died after extreme illness, pain, or suffering will say things such as “She’s dancing with Jesus now!” While we can appreciate the sentiment of safety, renewal, and hope those words express, they are not yet true. When believers die, we wait in heaven for the resurrection of our bodies. Like the saints who are gathered under the throne of God in Revelation 6:9–11, we will wait as disembodied spirits for the victory of God to be made complete. But as we wait, and especially when our bodies and souls are reunited in the new creation, we will remain the particular people
M ODERNRE FOR M ATION .OR G
“Our reunion at that Marriage Supper of the Lamb...will be like the best party where old friends reunite and where new friends feel like old friends after the first toast.”
we are today, knowing not just those whom we loved in this life but also those such as the Old Testament patriarchs and the New Testament apostles who were loved by God. Our reunion at that Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6–10) will be like the best party where old friends reunite and where new friends feel like old friends after the first toast. Gathered together by the God of the living, we will with one voice praise our Savior. We do not know today exactly what we will look like, or if children who died will be raised as adults, or if…the questions are almost endless! So, with the Apostle John in 1 John 3:3, we simply say, “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.” ERIC LANDRY is executive editor of Modern Reformation and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.
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B AC K PAG E
God: No / Afterlife: Yes by Michael S. Horton
n 1998, 49 percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old Americans considered themselves moderate or very religious. By 2014, that number dropped 10 percent. “Yet 80 percent of Americans said they believe in an afterlife in 2014, up from 73 percent in 1972–74,” according to a new study led by Dr. Jean Twenge, which indicates an apparent contradiction between declining belief in God alongside rising belief in an afterlife. It’s not a contradiction, however, in the minds of its most likely advocates: the Millennials. Apparently, the great majority of young Americans would like to extend their personal existence beyond death, even though they’re not entirely sure that God will be involved. The Bible does not give us many details about heaven, but it makes one thing clear: the goal of human existence is communion with the Triune God. We’ll be with God, the wellspring of peace, love, righteousness, and goodness. It is not surprising that heaven is compared frequently to a rich feast, with well-aged meats and wines. It is not exactly the image one is likely to conjure after centuries of pop culture, from cherubs on cottony clouds to reports from briefly-dead youths about having seen a mesmerizing bright light. There can be little doubt that heaven has suffered pagan distortions. If the whole point is to be freed from the body, time, and matter in general, it is difficult to get excited about living forever in a world much like this one (minus evil, sin, disease, war, and suffering). But that’s not the point at all, at least from a biblical perspective.
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Since no one has seen heaven (1 Cor. 2:9), we do not know how different it will be from the world we know. The best evidence we have is the risen Christ, who ate fish with his disciples and surrendered his body to inspection. As goes the head, so go the members—all Christians affirm that heaven is an affirmation of creation, not a flight from it. We should not think of heaven as the opposite of this world, where time and space surrender to immaterial eternity. Scripture describes heaven in stunning metaphors that direct us to the glory of God; it is the throne from which the omnipresent and infinite king exercises his creating, sustaining, ruling, and redeeming power. But our Savior went somewhere (Luke 21:50; Acts 1:11), and it is in that “somewhere” that he is preparing a place for us. We too will be raised and glorified, with the whole creation sharing in the festivities (Rom. 8:18–25). And yet, the point is not simply that we will be raised bodily to enjoy a renewed creation with an endless buffet and bottles of 1928 Bordeaux. Rather, it is that we will be feasting with God—the white-hot source of goodness and love, whose presence even now stirs our hearts and minds with anticipation. It is not simply that it makes no logical sense to affirm an afterlife without a deity, but that anything short of a direct and immediate communion with the Triune God we meet in Scripture would be a kind of hell. MICHAEL S. HORTON is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.
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