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Author | Topic: There is no Heaven | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
CNN/Time has interviewed the Bishop of Durham on what he believes to be the erroneous ideas of heaven and end times as portrayed in the Left Behind series of books. He claims that the idea that we go to an eternal heaven isn't Biblical.
Time Interview writes: N.T. "Tom" Wright is one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought. As Bishop of Durham, he is the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England and a major player in the strife-riven global Anglican Communion; as a much-read theologian and Biblical scholar he has taught at Cambridge and is a hero to conservative Christians worldwide for his 2003 book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which argued forcefully for a literal interpretation of that event. It therefore comes as a something of a shock that Wright doesn't believe in heaven ” at least, not in the way that millions of Christians understand the term. In his new book, Surprised by Hope (HarperOne), Wright quotes a children's book by California first lady Maria Shriver called What's Heaven, which describes it as "a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk... If you're good throughout your life, then you get to go [there]... When your life is finished here on earth, God sends angels down to take you heaven to be with him." That, says Wright is a good example of "what not to say." The Biblical truth, he continues, "is very, very different." Wright, 58, talked by phone with TIME's David Van Biema.TIME: At one point you call the common view of heaven a "distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope." Wright: It really is. I've often heard people say, "I'm going to heaven soon, and I won't need this stupid body there, thank goodness.' That's a very damaging distortion, all the more so for being unintentional. TIME: How so? It seems like a typical sentiment. Wright: There are several important respects in which it's unsupported by the New Testament. First, the timing. In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state. St. Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet. Secondly, our physical state. The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a whole new life: not just our soul, but our bodies. And finally, the location. At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation. TIME: Is there anything more in the Bible about the period between death and the resurrection of the dead? Wright: We know that we will be with God and with Christ, resting and being refreshed. Paul writes that it will be conscious, but compared with being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep. The Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish text from about the same time as Jesus, says "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God," and that seems like a poetic way to put the Christian understanding, as well. TIME: But it's not where the real action is, so to speak? Wright: No. Our culture is very interested in life after death, but the New Testament is much more interested in what I've called the life after life after death ” in the ultimate resurrection into the new heavens and the new Earth. Jesus' resurrection marks the beginning of a restoration that he will complete upon his return. Part of this will be the resurrection of all the dead, who will "awake," be embodied and participate in the renewal. John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way: "God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves." That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death is a period when we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ's kingdom. TIME: That is rather different from the common understanding. Did some Biblical verse contribute to our confusion? Wright: There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection. It has to be an intermediate state. And chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, where there is a vision of worship in heaven that people imagine describes our worship at the end of time. In fact it's describing the worship that's going on right now. If you read the book through, you see that at the end we don't have a description of heaven, but, as I said, of the new heavens and the new earth joined together. TIME: Why, then, have we misread those verses? Wright: It has, originally, to do with the translation of Jewish ideas into Greek. The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally. But Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies. The church at its best has always come back toward the Hebrew view, but there have been times when the Greek view was very influential. TIME: Can you give some historical examples? Wright: Two obvious ones are Dante's great poetry, which sets up a Heaven, Purgatory and Hell immediately after death, and Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine chapel, which portrays heaven and hell as equal and opposite last destinations. Both had enormous influence on Western culture, so much so that many Christians think that is Christianity. TIME: But it's not. Wright: Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven. They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we have a job to do. TIME: That sounds a lot like... work. Wright: It's more exciting than hanging around listening to nice music. In Revelation and Paul's letters we are told that God's people will actually be running the new world on God's behalf. The idea of our participation in the new creation goes back to Genesis, when humans are supposed to be running the Garden and looking after the animals. If you transpose that all the way through, it's a picture like the one that you get at the end of Revelation. TIME: And it ties in to what you've written about this all having a moral dimension. Wright: Both that, and the idea of bodily resurrection that people deny when they talk about their "souls going to Heaven." If people think "my physical body doesn't matter very much," then who cares what I do with it? And if people think that our world, our cosmos, doesn't matter much, who cares what we do with that? Much of "traditional" Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won't be going up there to him, he'll be coming down here. TIME: That's very different from, say, the vision put out in the Left Behind books. Wright: Yes. If there's going to be an Armageddon, and we'll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn't matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven. TIME: Has anyone you've talked to expressed disappointment at the loss of the old view? Wright: Yes, you might get disappointment in the case where somebody has recently gone through the death of somebody they love and they are wanting simply to be with them. And I'd say that's understandable. But the end of Revelation describes a marvelous human participation in God's plan. And in almost all cases, when I've explained this to people, there's a sense of excitement and a sense of, "Why haven't we been told this before?" See CNN/Time Interview Edited by Admin, : Hide very long cut-n-paste, change title. Everybody is entitled to my opinion.
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Admin Director Posts: 13032 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Thread moved here from the Coffee House forum.
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Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
GDR originally posted this to [forum=-14]. I moved it to [forum=-6] as a discussion topic where it has somehow failed to pick up a single response. So I've changed the title to be more attention grabbing, hidden the long cut-n-paste in the opening post, and here's my version of an opening post:
John Lennon was right, at least according to Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham and the fourth ranking cleric in the Anglican Church in England. According to Wright, when we die and go to heaven we are with God, but we are as asleep, being made rested and refreshed. The period after death is one where "we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies." The second coming is actually about the building of a new kingdom on earth. All the sleeping souls in heaven will be restored to their bodies to participate in the great effort. When Jesus returns to fulfill the plan, those alive on earth won't be going up to heaven, he'll be coming down here. Most controversial, Wright states that it's untrue that at death we shed our earthly bodies and go up to heaven fully restored. Heaven is definitely not "a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk." The Biblical truth "is very, very different." AbE: Here's the link to the interview again: CNN/Time Interview --Percy Edited by Percy, : Add link.
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Here is another quote from Bishop Wright on the subject.
quote: And here is the link to the whole talk that quote is from.
The Road to New Creation Everybody is entitled to my opinion.
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Taz Member (Idle past 3317 days) Posts: 5069 From: Zerus Joined: |
Percy writes:
Back in 2004, we made fun of christians after the second coming of Bush with this redrawn map of North America.
The second coming is actually about the building of a new kingdom on earth. All the sleeping souls in heaven will be restored to their bodies to participate in the great effort. When Jesus returns to fulfill the plan, those alive on earth won't be going up to heaven, he'll be coming down here. It's a frightening thought that we'd be faced with an actually Jesusland, especially when it's as big as the world.
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Clever Taz.
From your point of view there is good news and bad news. Your bad news would be that New Creation includes all creation so in your terms the whole world becomes Jesusland. The good news is that scripture does not tell us that New Creation is only for Christians. I think that Wright sees it something like this. At the present time God is in His dimension that we call Heaven and we live in our dimension here on Earth. At the end of this age God's dimension and our dimension are united to be recreated to from "New Creation". Everybody is entitled to my opinion.
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Granny Magda Member Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 3.8 |
It's a frightening thought that we'd be faced with an actually Jesusland, especially when it's as big as the world. I don't know, if Jesus came back and started performing miracles left, right and centre, I might feel a sudden urge to covert. Jesus would have to be democratically elected of course...It's putting Jesus in charge in absentia that I object to. Back to the topic... It comes as no real surprise to me that an Anglican bishop should not believe in the traditional idea of heaven. There are plenty of things that high ranking CofE types don't believe in. Lack of belief in Hell is quite common, I believe. Not believing in Heaven seems like the logical next step to me; after al, why doubt the nasty bits of dogma, whilst believing in the nice bits? My problem comes when people start to pick and choose between dogmatic beliefs, based upon what they like or don't like. Surely once you have accepted that the Bible is partly allegorical and that it contains errors of dogma, it is logical to doubt all elements of dogma, not just the ones you don't like the sound of. Is this not a slippery slope? It seems all very well to cherry-pick the Bible for doctrine, as morality has progressed since it was written, but a piece of dogma is either correct or it is false. On what basis do people pick and choose? How far should this process go? What is left of a religion when all of its dogmas are up for debate; doesn't that make it more philosophy than religion? Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Added a couple of blank lines between paragraphs. Mutate and Survive
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Taz Member (Idle past 3317 days) Posts: 5069 From: Zerus Joined: |
GDR writes:
OMG, that's actually a worse news than the world converting to Jesusland. It means that I'd have to start kissing his holy heinie in order to live in peace.
The good news is that scripture does not tell us that New Creation is only for Christians. I think that Wright sees it something like this. At the present time God is in His dimension that we call Heaven and we live in our dimension here on Earth. At the end of this age God's dimension and our dimension are united to be recreated to from "New Creation".
Somehow, I can't stop thinking of this as another Puritanic attempt at creating a theocracy. Anyone feel like burning some witches tonight?
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Granny Magda writes: It comes as no real surprise to me that an Anglican bishop should not believe in the traditional idea of heaven. There are plenty of things that high ranking CofE types don't believe in. Lack of belief in Hell is quite common, I believe. Not believing in Heaven seems like the logical next step to me; after al, why doubt the nasty bits of dogma, whilst believing in the nice bits? Actually Wright is considered orthodox but most churches. It isn't that he doesn't believe in heaven but that he maintains that there are those, (such as those who agree with the theology of the "Left Behind" series of books), show a lack of understanding of scripture. His views on "New Creation" are very scriptural. ie. Here is an interview of Wright in Christianity Today.
Bishop Wright Interview Edited by GDR, : To add interview Edited by GDR, : No reason given. Everybody is entitled to my opinion.
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ICANT Member Posts: 6769 From: SSC Joined: Member Rating: 1.6 |
Hi GDR,
GDR writes: The good news is that scripture does not tell us that New Creation is only for Christians. More bad news.
Reve 20:15 (KJV) And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. 5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. Seems like there is a Great White Throne judgment prior to the New Jerusalem coming down and God wiping all tears away, and everybody whose name was not in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. God Bless. "John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."
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Granny Magda Member Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 3.8 |
Hi ICANT,
Where exactly does it say that one must be a Christian to appear in the book of life? I don't see any evidence for your implications in the passage you cite.My Bible (KJV) says; quote:I don't see anything saying they have to be Christians here. It seems to be saying that people will be judged upon their deeds, not their beliefs or affiliations. Mutate and Survive
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
ICANT writes: Seems like there is a Great White Throne judgment prior to the New Jerusalem coming down and God wiping all tears away, and everybody whose name was not in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. Now just where in there does it say that New Creation is only for those who got their theology just right. Read Matthew 25 vs 32 to the end. Jesus isn't talking about theology, He's talking about feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless, visiting the prisoners etc. God is concerned about the condition of our heart not our theology when it comes to New Creation. Edited by GDR, : No reason given. Everybody is entitled to my opinion.
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ICANT Member Posts: 6769 From: SSC Joined: Member Rating: 1.6 |
Hi Granny,
Granny Magda writes: I don't see anything saying they have to be Christians here. It seems to be saying that people will be judged upon their deeds, not their beliefs or affiliations. Reve 20:6 (KJV) Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. 7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, 8 And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. 9 And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. 10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. 11 And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. This tells us there is going to be a resurrection of saints that will rule and reign with Christ for 1k years. The second death, eternal separation from God has no power over them. Everyone that is judged at the Great White Throne judgment is cast into the lake of fire. You say then why does it say they are judged according to their works. Well it seems God is a God of justice and there will be greater punishment for some than others. God Bless, "John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."
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ICANT Member Posts: 6769 From: SSC Joined: Member Rating: 1.6 |
Hi GDR,
GDR writes: Now just where in there does it say that New Creation is only for those who got their theology just right. Read Matthew 25 vs 32 to the end. Jesus isn't talking about theology, He's talking about feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless, visiting the prisoners etc. I don't know where you studied theology at but if I was you I would ask for my money back. If they did not teach you how to read something in context they should not be teaching. This is a judgment of nations after the battle of Armageddon. Those nations that have helped Israel will be the sheep nations and allowed to go into the 1k year reign of Christ in His kingdom on earth.
Matt 25:31 (KJV) When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. He gathered nations. He separated them nations. There are no individuals judged at this judgment, only nations. God Bless, "John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."
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Granny Magda Member Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 3.8 |
Sigh...
OK, I'll ask again. Where does it say, in the Bible, that one must be a Christian to appear in the book of life? Mutate and Survive
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