Heaven and Hell, Old and New, Part 1

An e-mail conversation between a student and myself from a couple weeks back:

Alex,
I was reading an entry on your blog (March 1) and came across a topic that I have been considering heavily lately. Here is the section that brought it up:

"There's some bad thinking that gets passed around about what Christians think happen after it's all said and done. We do not end up in heaven. We are not sitting around on wispy clouds strumming harps. When all is said and done, God is so deeply committed to what he has created that he does not abandon it but he heals it completely and dwells here, along with us."

Am I right in assuming this is what you believe heaven will be for all of us (those under Jesus)? I have been studying Biblical Hebrew for the past year and it has become clear to me, that what the Israelites and the many Jews of the OT believed about the afterlife was not the 'heaven in the clouds' that you mention.

This has made me re-examine what the NT authors say about heaven and I don't know what to make of it. The verses you mention in Revelation 21 really got me thinking. Do you think that all the heaven doctrines of the biblical authors can be reconciled, or do you think that this "revelation" of a new heaven and new earth is radically different from what they were imagining? Or neither?

thanks,
Colin

Colin,

I think that basically the OT idea of "salvation" was pretty earthy and pretty specific: it was all about Israel here on earth. This was Jewish salvation: to have the land, the temple, and the Torah all to themselves as a distinct and separate people. Some of this was a mis-construing of the promises of Abraham (in other words, God's people were always to be "a light to the Gentiles" not just a hoarding of God's blessings) but I think that this wasn't all off. God really had promised the Jews the land, so it makes sense that this was their concept of salvation.

So what I think we get in the NT in terms of John/Revelation is actually just that concept, blown up to it's fullness. In other words, the OT idea of Israel/"land" being salvation was just a foreshadowing or a pre-figuring of the true fulfillment of God's promises: all of this earth is to be made new and given to God's people who are in Christ--in the end, we really do get land. Not just Israel, but all of it! I think that these aren't at odds, it's simply that the NT concept of salvation and what all this is pointing to is a fulfillment of the OT story and promises and ideas.

I think that the bad thinking in Christian circles is largely drawn from Dante and from other writers throughout the centuries who have taken bits and pieces of the Scriptures and have developed writings around them. Most of these folks were solid believers, they just picked up on bits and pieces of the Story and developed it somewhat imaginatively.

The Left Behind series is (what I consider a bad) example of taking a couple of rather obscure passages about end times and the rapture and building a whole bunch of bad theology (that happens to sell a lot of books and that God happens to use/redeem in some remarkable ways to bring people to himself) that further misses the true end towards which all of us in Christ are headed, God's final fulfillment of all the promises and all the hopes of his people.

But I think that the key ideas of the NT being the final fulfillment of the OT story is really what's crucial to your question. This isn't in conflict, like I said, it's rather the ultimate goal towards which the OT promises of land were just a pre-figuring.

Alex