Christians sometimes talk about heaven as our true 'home'. It may well be true that as the apostle Paul put it "we are in the world but not of it", and we may well find hope and comfort an the anticipation of life in a recreated cosmos which conforms fully to the purpose of God. But it is not true to say that heaven is our true home. Nowhere in the bible are the words heaven and home connected and nowhere are believers encouraged to believe that their eternal destiny lies beyond or outside the world that God so lovingly and carefully created. The creation stories in Genesis remind us that our hope should always be very firmly focused on this amazing and beautiful world, so full of possibilities, beauty and wonder and on the promise that we will once again live life in this world in harmony with one another, with the creation and with God, just as Adam and Eve once did in the garden in Eden. If there is a hope in this story it is that the garden remains somewhere on the earth. The gates are locked and guarded by weapon-wielding angels but paradise has not been "closed down" for good. All those who read this story knew that somewhere on the earth there was a place in which there were no "thorns" or "sweat", and where there grew a tree that gave everlasting life (Genesis 3.22-23). That image was to inspire a hope for better things, a hope for a respite from the struggles and the thorns. But the remarkable thing is that the hope was focused on the earth. Paradise had not moved or been "transferred" to a heavenly location. If the life of thorns and struggle was an earthly one, so too was the imagery of release from those thorns and that struggle. The Eden paradise was not locatable in any known geographical space. But neither was it a spiritual place. It lay at the origin, the reader is told, of the great rivers that watered the known world (Genesis 2.10-14). It is not fantasy or legend, but neither is it fact and geography. It is real but elusive. And, more importantly for every reader of these chapters, it is still there . . . . somewhere
One of the implications of realising that Sheol was the common destination of all is that there was no hope or expectation in the Hebrew Bible of "going to heaven when you die". The Hebrew Bible is very clear about this - people live their lives on earth and when the die they descend to Sheol. God lives in heaven with His heavenly court, the vast assortment of angelic beings who do His will. There is communication between these two realms, but mankind is not destined to live with God in heaven. Why would they? God has created the earth for mankind. In the beginning . . .This is brought out very clearly in the first of the two creation stories in Genesis, narrated in chapter 1. God creates both heaven (or "the heavens") and the earth. On the dry land of the earth God causes vegetation to spring up and animal life to flourish. Over these God sets mankind as wardens and vice-regents. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Genesis 1.28-31 (NRSV) The earth is the right place for mankind. There is no mention here of a special place for mankind (the garden in eden) - the whole earth is regarded as a rich and fruitful place for humanity to live and flourish. This is mankind's home. The heavens are created so that God can live near his creation. The earth is created to be fruitful and to provide a perfect environment for men and women and all the forms of life over whom they are to 'rule'. God planted a gardenIn the second creation story, in chapters 2 and 3, there is a different slant on the idea of creation but one that still leaves the reader with the unmistakable impression that mankind is destined to live in or on the earth. In this account God is pictured as a King who creates the man (Adam) for companionship. He in turn needs companionship and so is given the woman (Eve). We are not told anything about the history of creation of the physical universe (as in chapter 1) but instead we read that God created Adam and then planted a garden for Adam to live in. This is the original paradise. We should think of this paradise-garden as a royal park rather than as a modern, domesticated "garden". It is the kind of place the divine king would come "in the cool of the evening" to walk and spend time with his newly created companion (Genesis 3.8-9). The man has everything he needs to be happy while he waits for the daily encounter with his King God - plants, trees, animals and of course, a woman! But the story tragically reveals that Adam cannot be content with this life. He strives for the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and when he eats of its fruit (the forbidden fruit!) he becomes "as God". He and the woman are banished from the paradise garden and they begin a new and trouble-filled life outside of paradise, in an earth which by now has truly been "created" since it has room for the cultivation of crops and animal husbandry (Genesis 4.1-4). The point of the story is that mankind, as represented by Adam and Eve, lives now 'outside of paradise', in a world which is fruitful and life sustaining but where mankind necessarily struggles with its natural tendency towards opposition, pain and loss (Genesis 3.16-19). The humans cannot live forever, the way to the Tree of Life is barred and they are therefore condemned to live and then to die, to return to the dust from which they (or Adam at least) were fashioned. That is the lot of mankind. There is no suggestion that their fate might lie elsewhere, in a different spiritual place or condition. There is no suggestion that the return to the dust is merely bodily, while their spirits soar to heaven to join with God. Their lives are to be lived out in struggle and pain. At the end of these lives they will return to the dust from whence they came. That is the reality. That is the experience of humankind everywhere. But there is hope in the story. The garden remains somewhere on the earth. The gates are locked and guarded by angels but paradise has not been "closed down" for good. All those who read this story knew that somewhere on the earth there was a place in which there were no "thorns", and where there grew a tree that gave everlasting life (Genesis 3.22-23). That image inspired a hope for better things, a hope for a respite from the struggles and the thorns. But the remarkable thing is that the hope was focused on the earth. Paradise was still somewhere. It wasn't nowhere. It hadn't been abolished. If the life of thorns and struggle was an earthly one, so too in a sense, was the powerful imagery of the hope of freedom from those thorns and that struggle. The Eden paradise was not locatable in any known geographical space. But neither was it a spiritual place. It still lay at the origin, the reader is told, of the great rivers that watered the known world (Genesis 2.10-14). Eden was not fantasy or simply legend, but neither was it fact or geography. It was real but elusive. And, more importantly for every reader of these chapters, it is still there . . . . somewhere. You might also be interested in . . .
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
Categories
All
|