Is heaven real?

So the concept of heaven works in theology not only as the abode of God which is incomprehensible to men but as a promise of the healing of all things towards which world history is destined to run. The central prayer of Christians is that “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven”.

Thus heaven is not just a cipher or a literary figure, it has content. Its content is found in the original creation in the Garden of Eden in which God could walk at the time of the evening breeze and talk to His creature directly. It is no accident that Jewish thought around 200BC identified the garden as paradise and the abode of the righteous dead. A trickle of this tradition is found in Luke 23:43 when Jesus says to the repentant thief on the cross beside him “today you will be with me in paradise”, one of only three uses of the word in the New Testament.

Contrary to popular theology, the significance of heaven is not that it is the abode of the righteous dead but that it is the creaturely and thus historical sphere towards which the earth must eventually tend. We are given a sense of this state by the prophets:

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. (Isa 11:6-8 NRSV)

To the reformation of nature is added the reformation of the individual and of human society. These are poetic expressions of the dominion of God and heaven. Thus while we lack descriptions of the furniture of heaven and of the creatures that find their home there, the significance of heaven is filled out in terms of the restoration of the earth to become the peaceable kingdom in which the enmity between man and God is healed. The rebellion of man against God could only be a rebellion against his own nature and could only cause him misery, while restoration can only restore man to his original state of grace first experienced in the Garden of Eden.

While we know that the lion will not lie down with the lamb such poetic expressions prick our longing and raise the spectre of the healing of all things. Without this longing, which is a longing for heaven, there is the danger that we will settle down and accept the terms of the present. When heaven is the place where the individual goes after death longing for the healing of the earth is diverted, but more, this is a stance that is exactly conditioned by death, that is ruled by death and it is this conditioning and rule that God’s action in raising Jesus from the dead has put to flight.

Can we then ask the question about whether heaven is real? The reality of heaven resides in the truth of God’s reconciling action in Christ. If this is a lie, then heaven does not exist. If it is the truth, and the work of Christ in the world has the power to transform that world, then heaven is more real than the world we see passing away before us.

When will we begin to hear sermons on heaven? Well, we already do when we hear sermons that take the yearning core of biblical texts seriously. When preachers listen to the promise of the text that a new earth and a new heaven realised in our own lives exists on the horizon and is even now breaking into our existence then we have a sermon with heaven at its heart. When the celebrant knows that the feast he presides over is from above then we have a sacrament governed by heaven. So perhaps heaven is not so far from the church’s mind and practice as we might think. It is just that it has assumed its true form as a summons to reconciliation.