The Afterlife

Preview

The Stairway to Heaven

Jews and She’ol - People Don't Go To Heaven! (Hill, “Descended”)

“But if you approached a Jew on the streets of Jerusalem in Jesus’ day and asked: ‘If you were to die tonight, why should God let you into his heaven?’ you would probably have heard: ‘God doesn’t let anyone into his heaven. You mean, ‘Why should God let me into the good section of Hades,’ don’t you?’ The only people who dwelt in a part of heaven, Paradise, were those few individuals whom God had taken from earth before death: Enoch and Elijah, or maybe, so legend had it, the prophet Jeremiah, or perhaps Moses.  These had eluded death. But their escape was only temporary.”

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Confessions, Creeds, and Doctrinal Statements (Stackhouse)

• Luther - the faithful would merely visit the new earth,
• Calvin - contemplating the surpassing greatness of God would be far more interesting than tending the new earth.
• Anabaptist Schleitheim Confession of 1527 - focused on earthly trials and ignored the afterlife
• Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 1530 - simply offered “eternal life and everlasting joys” in the midst of more pressing matters such as condemning Pelagians, Donatists, and the aforemen-tioned Anabaptists.
• Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 - promised to Reformed Christians that Jesus Christ, “our Head, will also take us, his members, up to himself” where they will “hereafter reign with him eternally over all creatures.”
• Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566) - gave similar counsels to Roman Catholics: “As for the glory of the blessed, it shall be without measure, and the kinds of their solid joys and pleasures without number.” N
• Anglican 39 Articles of 1571 - none was devoted to the world to come; instead the Articles promised “everlasting felicity” in a clause dedicated to predestination and election.
• Westminster Confession of 1646 - promised to the blessed in the so-called intermediate state between death and the Last Judgment: “The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them: the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies.”

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Heaven in Architecture (Freeman)

"Artistically, much church architecture was origi- nally intended to speak of heaven. Adapted from the design of the Old Testament Jewish Temple, Christian churches were traditionally divided into three distinct spaces. The narthex, or entry, represented the world. The nave, where the congregation stood or sat, represented the whole church or the kingdom of God. And the sanc- tuary containing the altar (akin to the Jewish Holy of Holies) symbolized heaven. Gradual procession into the church building and to the altar for Communion par- alleled the believer’s spiritual journey"

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The Liturgy Actually Takes Place In Heaven (Freeman)

"Liturgy was understood as sacred time when believers worshiped alongside the heavenly host. Images of angels and saints mixed with memorial plaques and physical tombs of deceased church members, adding to the effect."

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Heaven as a Garden

"The Song of Songs, long read in the Christian tradition as an allegory for the believer’s relationship with Christ, uses garden imagery to great effect (“A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed”)."

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Heaven As A City (Anonymous 14th Century Poet)

"Sun or moon never shone so sweet
As the flood that flowed out from that floor.
Swiftly it swirled through every street
Free from filth and scum and slime.
There was no church in the city set,
No chapel or temple there at all.
The Almighty was the cathedral fair,
And the Lamb the life-giving sacrifice.
The gates of that place were never shut,
But at all hours were open to all.
For none with blemish beneath the moon
Could ever take refuge within that wall."

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Heaven As the King's Court

Some images of heaven focus on the heavenly inhabitants themselves and are often referred to as “all saints” images (commemorating All Saints Day, November 1 in the Western church and the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Eastern). Depicting all the inhabit- ants of heaven of course proved impossible, but artists hinted at the divine multitude by tightly packing their compositions with haloed figures:

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Will We Go Up to Heaven Or Will Heaven Come Down to Us? (Stackhouse)

"Many modern biblical scholars and theologians believe that humans are not going “up” there.

Instead, the argument is, Old Testament visions look toward a re-formed Israel enjoying shalom (peace) in the Promised Land and celebrating God in the refurbished, expanded, and glorified city of Jerusalem. Likewise, the New Testament gestures prophetically toward a renewed heaven and earth (parallel with Gen. 1:1) in which the New Jerusalem descends from heaven to earth as the focus of God’s redeemed creation (Rev. 21–22).

So we will not go to heaven, but heaven will come to us. By this account, heaven is the abode of God, and humans cannot live there. Heaven represents God’s unapproachable transcendence. Rather, in a new heaven and a new earth we will enjoy the unspeakable blessing of communion with God who descends to inhabit the city he makes for humanity."

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The Beatific Vision (Stackhouse)

"This view of the ultimate destiny of the blessed stands literally at the center of Dante’s vision of para- dise, where the saints sit in ordered circles around the Trinity. They gaze at God forever in their appropriate ranks—not unlike the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, where no one pays attention to the other fans but only to the activity in the middle; in this case, God himself. Luther and Calvin shared in this medieval outlook, and that focus upon heaven as eternal contemplation of the loveliness of God shows up in later spiritual writ- ers as diverse as Madame Guyon, Richard Baxter, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, and John Henry Newman. Collages of images drawn from the kaleidoscope of John’s Revelation dominate such writings: angelic and saintly choirs in close-packed ranks singing and shout- ing praise to God enthroned on high."

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The Highway to Hell

Purgatory

Purgatory Based On Prooftexts

• ""For other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid; which is Christ Jesus. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay stubble: Every man's work shall be manifest; for the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. If any man's work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work burn, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire."" I Cor 3:11-15
  
  
• "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?" Habbukuk 1:13

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Purgatory Based On Consequences In Spite of God's Pardon

We know that ...

God forgave David's sin	but Bathsheba's baby died
Murderers get saved	but they aren't released from prison based on their profession of faith in Christ.
Alcoholics repent and become teetotalers	but they don't automatically get new livers.

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Deuterocanonical Scriptures Used to Support Purgatory

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The Reformers Reject Purgatory

"The leaders of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther and John Calvin, followed established tradition about heaven with only one essential difference, though an important one. They abolished the idea of purgatory on the grounds that it is not bibli- cal and that God knows who is in heaven so that there is no need to pray for the spiritual welfare of the deceased ." Russell

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Protestant Purgatory?

"We tend to think that in the moment of death we’re going to be perfected in every part of our character. Dallas and I discussed how troubling that idea is: it allows us to think that we don’t have to work on our characters on earth as disciples of Jesus. Instead all we have to do is get into heaven. Passage from earth to heaven becomes something of a “cosmic car wash.” But while we’re here on earth, God does not change us without our choice. Why then would we believe in sudden cleansing en route to heaven? If we’ve chosen not to have reconstructive surgery on our heart during our entire life on earth, why do we think God can or will, at the end, override our will and perfect our heart after death?" Black

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Protestant Purgatory - "A Middle State "

"At the beginning of the Reformation there was some hesitation especially on Luther's part (Leipzig Disputation) as to whether the doctrine should be retained, but as the breach widened, the denial of purgatory by the Reformers became universal, and Calvin termed the Catholic position "exitiale commentum quod crucem Christi evacuat . . . quod fidem nostram labefacit et evertit" (Institutiones, lib. III, cap. v, 6). Modern Protestants, while they avoid the name purgatory, frequently teach the doctrine of "the middle state," and Martensen ("Christian Dogmatics," Edinburgh, 1890, p. 457) writes: "As no soul leaves this present existence in a fully complete and prepared state, we must suppose that there is an intermediate state, a realm of progressive development, (?) in which souls are prepared for the final judgment" (Farrar, "Mercy and Judgment," London, 1881, cap. iii)." Knight

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Limbo of the Children

Sources