General Christianity Ping.
We’re coming up on Easter, so Time magazine has found a bishop to say that Christians don’t actually go to Heaven.
I’m going to be extra careful not to die just yet. I want to make sure this stuff is all resolved by the time I’m ready to pass.
/s
Not that I claim to be any Christian theologian, but it’s always been my impression that in Christianity, the dead sleep until they are resurrected on the day of judgement to either go to Heaven or to Hell....
Isn’t that what he is saying?
Next thing they’ll be saying is that we get the 72 virgins.
You would think that he would have read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It seemed to me like all 4 accounts mentioned that Jesus was resurrected. Of course, he's the 4th most senior cleric in the Church of England so what do I know?
“Unbelievable!”
Not at all. In fact it is quite patristic.
“However, to accept his premise as legitimate, this also means that nobody goes to Hell.”
No, again, not at all. That’s Originism and its not at all what Bishop Wright is speaking of. Orthodoxy does not teach of people going to some “place” called heaven, it speaks of theosis. As for Hell, well, maybe its a place or maybe it isn’t, but the damned suffer eternal torment by being scourged by the fire of God’s Love. I don;t think the locale of the torment is particularly important, though maybe the Western mind, attuned to such notions by various artistic works and Augustinian theology need it.
Bishop Wright is hardly my favorite Western theologian, but I might just buy this book.
2. Context is lacking (see #1)
Wright and his followers have caused much mischief among the Reformed churches. Recently, the PCA considered expelling an entire presbytery over error caught from Wright. (The matter may have been resolved when the ringleader resigned from the denomination and took his church to another body where such error is tolerated).
It will be interesting to see how far down the path he leads folks.
Welcome to England, muslims! Feel free to take over; the Christians aren’t what they used to be over there.
In point of fact, the teaching of the ancient and undivided Church, still preserved by the Orthodox, even if forgotten by Western Christians, is that the souls of those who are saved go to Paradise (as Christ told the penitent thief he would), not to Heaven (or properly any one of the Heavens), or, if they have unrepented sins, temporarily to Hades (which is a place of confinment only, not of punishment), either until the General Resurrection and the Last Judgement, or until the prayers of the Church move God’s mercy to send their guardian angel to lead them to Paradise.
The Anglican bishop’s emphasis on the General Resurrection is quite correct. Christ said “I am the Resurrection”, not “I am the transmigration of souls”.
Likewise the Holy Apostle Paul speaks at length of being raised in glorious bodies, not of disembodied souls migrating to the presence of God. Indeed the only Scriptural indication of souls awaiting Our Lord’s Second and Glorious Advent in Heaven itself, is the description of the souls of the martyrs crying out from under the altar in the Revelation to St. John.
When will he proclaim himself to be a God?
To quote the Creed “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead”. This is based on the testimony of the Gospels (remember the “what you did for the least of these...” lesson) and the Epistles (not to mention a certain painting in the Sistine Chapel).
All persons, living and dead, face the final judgement. For saints to go to Heaven when they die would mean that they must come out of heaven with Jesus, meet up with the wicked to face the Last Judgement and then go back into heaven. Does these mean that the wicked, having gone to hell upon their deaths, come out of hell to meet up with the saints to face the Last Judgement and then go back to hell?
What a stretch!
Psalm 2:7
The Lord hath said to me: Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee.
Is the Psalmist implying that the Son was begotten in time? No, of course not. That would lend itself to Arianism - that the Son was created one day by the Father and did not always exist.
This day, if we approach it in the sense of an Augustinian reading of Genesis, is not related to a 24 hour rotation of the earth. The term "day", according to Augustine, represented the immediate instance of knowledge revealed to the angels. In other words, Augustine viewed a "day" as a single mark in eternity where all things were revealed to the angels that God willed them to know. Therefore, Augustine taught that the seven days of creation were not seven days, per se, but a sequential drawing out of that eternal moment for the sake of making sense to a time-constrained audience on earth.
If we add to that St. Peter's comment that "one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," then there's certainly a basis to reason that Christ was not speaking to the thief as if he would get to heaven, glance down at his watch, and realize he made it just before midnight. I submit that the "day" Jesus speaks of is the eternal day of the new Creation, where there is no time to speak of. With reference to eternity, there is no "sequence of events" as we understand the unfolding of time. All things are in the PRESENT. There is no future and no past, but the eternal NOW. So to conclude that "paradise" must be some layover on the way back to the new Earth doesn't make sense. The paradise Jesus speaks of is eternal glory. That day, for the departed, is always "today" or "this day". Thus, the proceeding three days until the Resurrection are irrelevant to what Jesus is saying. Jesus, as the Son, has always been in Heaven, so there is no way the thief could get there "before Him". Jesus, in the flesh, is still God, Who is omniscient.
Heaven is basking in the presence of God.
It doesn’t matter if we go to join God or God comes down to us. Where ever he is, there is heaven.
Actually He is correct. The saved will inhabit a new earth in our new resurrected bodies . And of course we all agree that Christ will come again .
Bishop Homer Simpson... when do the DOHS!...start..
So, bishop. . .just what goes on with a Christian’s spirit between the time the person physically dies and the time Jesus returns to earth? (Hint: Paul said absent from the body, present with the Lord.)