Early Views of Heaven
By Michael Wittmer
To help readers understand why there are four major views on heaven, here is a thumbnail sketch of the church’s beliefs about our final state. I will keep this summary as neutral as possible in order to avoid influencing readers in one direction or another.
Like the Old Testament, which said the righteous will live on a new earth (Isa 65:17–25) yet dropped hints of them going to heaven (besides the translations of Enoch and of Elijah, see Pss 16:11; 49:15; 73:24–25; Eccl 3:21), the New Testament contains passages that could be used to support a final destiny both on earth (2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1–5) and in heaven (1 Cor 15:42–49; 2 Cor 5:1–8; Heb 11:13–16). The early church tried to say both, with an emphasis on heaven Some scholars say the early church’s heavenly focus was influenced by its surrounding Greek culture, which, following Plato, emphasized that the goal of every soul was to return to heaven where it might contemplate forever the eternal, unchanging, rational ideals (what Plato called the Forms). Others say the church was merely following Scripture’s lead, which promised they would leave this corrupted world behind. Either way, the Christian’s highest goal was to enter heaven and worship God forever.
Consider Irenaeus (ca. 120/140–ca. 202), the church’s first theologian and gnostic hunter. Against Gnosticism, which held a heretically low view of earth and the physical world, Irenaeus taught that our final destiny is a new heaven and earth that are substantially the same as our present creation. God will not destroy this earth. He will save it. But only for lesser Christians. Borrowing from Jesus’s parable of the sower (Matt 13:3–9), Irenaeus said that disciples who bear a hundredfold fruit will be privileged to live forever in heaven, while those who produce sixtyfold will enjoy a middling paradise, and those who yield only thirtyfold will be stuck on earth. Each gets the reward he deserves.
Irenaeus’s preference for heaven was supported by the most influential theologians of both the Eastern and Western church. In the East, Origen’s (185–254) writings were posthumously scrubbed of their controversial parts by an admiring Rufinus, so there is some dispute about his beliefs. Nevertheless, Origen apparently taught that the earth was created to supply an opportunity for souls whose love for God had cooled in a previous life to make their way back to him. God will create a succession of worlds—as many as necessary—until every soul returns to his loving, heavenly communion. He will upgrade their physical bodies so that they are fit to live in the “purer, ethereal, and heavenly regions.” There believers will forever enjoy the beatific vision, gaining ever more knowledge of God as they gaze into his glory.
In the West, Augustine (354-430) longed for our corruptible existence in time to be taken up into union with God and his eternity. Augustine’s mature work The City of God affirms the earth and our physical bodies while longing for their transformation into a higher, heavenly key. When Jesus returns, our present earthly bodies will be “exalted to abodes which are material, albeit heavenly,” and our present earth will be stripped to its foundations and rebuilt into an incorruptible environment that can accommodate them. No one escapes death. Those who are alive when Jesus returns must swiftly pass through death as they rise to meet him in the air (1 Thess 4:17). They will instantly be brought back to life, now with glorified, immortal bodies. God will hide his incorruptible saints in his unscathed, highest heavens while the world burns, then return us to the new creation where we will forever enjoy our beatific vision of God. Given the incomprehensible privilege of seeing God “without interruption” and “in utter clarity and distinctness,” Augustine could not imagine doing anything else. He wrote, “How great will be that felicity, where there will be no evil, where no good will be withheld, where there will be leisure for the praises of God, who will be all in all! What other occupation could there be, in a state where there will be no inactivity of idleness, and yet no toil constrained by want? I can think of none.”
The medieval church intensified the early church’s focus on the beatific vision. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) wrote eighty-six sermons over eighteen years on the Song of Songs, using its erotic poetry to convey the Christian’s ultimate, passionate union with Christ. This will happen after the resurrection, when, freed from the distractions of our currently “fragile, sickly bodies,” we will finally not love God for our sake but love ourselves for his.
Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1224–1274) argued that God’s eschatological fire will not entirely consume our world; rather, it will cleanse the earth of its sin and corruption. However, it will burn the bodies of both the righteous and the sinners to ashes, though the former will feel no pain. God will then renew this world and the bodies of his saints, graciously elevating our finite natures so that we might know what is naturally unknowable and see what finitude cannot see. We will enjoy forever the end for which we were made, finding eternal happiness in our “immediate vision of God,” becoming more like God as we participate in his blessedness and are increasingly able to “see God as he sees himself.”
— Excerpted from Four Views on Heaven, ed. Michael Wittmer (Zondervan Academic, 2022), 11-13.
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