7.05. Heaven
Heaven That the blessedness of the redeemed is endless has been the uniform faith of the church. Representations concerning the nature of this happiness vary with the education and intellectual spirit of the age or individual. Justin Martyr regarded the blessedness of heaven as consisting mainly in the continuation and increase of the happiness of the millennial reign. Origen held that the blessed dwell in the aerial regions and pass from one heaven to another as they advance in holiness. At the same time, he condemns those who expect any sensuous enjoyment. Greek theologians Gregory Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa follow Origen. Augustine believed that the heavenly happiness consists in the enjoyment of peace which passes knowledge and the beatific vision of God. One important element in it consists in indefectibility: the deliverance from all hazard of apostasy-the non posse peccare et mori.1[Note: 1. not to be able to sin and to die (see posse peccare et non posse peccare in glossary 1)] The Schoolmen held the patristic views, but with an endeavor to systematize. They divided heaven into three parts: the visible heavens or the firmament, the spiritual heaven where saints and angels dwell, and the intellectual heaven where the beatific vision of the Trinity is enjoyed (see Dante, Paradise 30-33). The modern church maintains the doctrine of the everlasting blessedness but in a more spiritual form than prevailed in either the ancient or the medieval church. The more common opinion is that this world is not to be either annihilated or destroyed, but renovated for the abode of the redeemed. Turretin defends this view (20.5). Anselm (Why the God-?Man 1:18) says: “We believe that the material substance of the world must be renewed and that this will not take place until the number of the elect is completed and that happy kingdom be made perfect and that after its completion there will be no more change.” The scriptural representation of the heavenly state is as follows:
1. It is marked by sinless perfection: “A glorious church without spot or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:27); the “armies” of heaven are “clothed in fine linen, white and clean” (Revelation 19:14); “the Lamb’s wife is arrayed in fine linen, which is the righteousness of saints” (19:8); “the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21); “the spirits of just men made perfect” are in the “heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:23).
2. It is marked by impeccability or indefectibility (Romans 8:35-39): “We shall ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17); “a rest remains to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9); “we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). Indefectibility, or the absence of that possibility of apostasy which was connected with man as created, renders his state as redeemed more blessed because of the sense of security. Eden was uncertain; heaven is certain. This is the absolute rest into which he enters. There is to be no probation or temptation, internal or external: “Every man who not merely supposes but certainly knows that he shall eternally enjoy the most high God, in the company of angels and beyond the reach of ill-this man, no matter what bodily torments afflict him, is more blessed than was he who, even in that great felicity of paradise, was uncertain of his fate” (Augustine, City of God 11.12; cf. Concerning the Gift of Perseverance).
3. It is chiefly mental happiness-the vision of the divine perfections and delight in them: “Then shall we see face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12); “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2); “whom I shall see for myself” (Job 19:27; Revelation 4:10-11; Revelation 4:5; Revelation 7:9-10; Revelation 21:3-4; Revelation 22:4): “I shall behold your face in righteousness” (Psalms 17:15); “in your presence is fullness of joy” (16:11).
4. It is the personal presence of the mediator with his redeemed people: “They follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes” (Revelation 14:4); “Father, I will that they whom you have given me be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory” (John 17:24). This is an element in the heaven of redeemed man that does not enter into that of the angels (see Owen, Person of Christ, 19).