I recently received a complaint that preachers talk about heaven but never discuss what one does in heaven. Succinctly put: one does nothing. One “IS” in heaven, one does not “DO” things in heaven. Before I attempt an elucidation of that, I shall note that a great many questions about items such as god, soul, heaven, hell—the ultimate classifications of meaningfulness on a cosmic, personal, and moral level—are confusing and confused because religious imagery gets mixed up with and in philosophical imagery and terminology. We find ourselves akin to a baker trying to produce a delectably delicate cake when the only ingredients provided are steak and turnips. To decoct some essence of understanding from this imbroglio, I shall in the autumn of this year begin a series, approximately twenty-seven articles, following the main currents of Western philosophy regarding these topics.
The question of what one does in heaven is a spurious inquiry for a simple reason. We exist in time and space, and time and space are also the basic-most ways in which we reference everything in, around, and about ourselves. We cannot imagine anything without some sense of extension. Something is here, or there, or over there. Likewise, we cannot imagine anything as not extended in some time sequence. It is now, or it was then, or it will be. But these referencing devices of time and space are, by very definition, the antipodes of the spiritual and eternal. The non-material, the spiritual has no extension. It is not something that can be spoken of as here or there. It is extension-less. So too is eternity. It is not a time, or a sequence of times. It is something outside of time, an absolute singularity of moment. There is no past, present or future in God or in heaven; God IS. Indeed, that is, philosophically and theologically, the essence of God–Pure Being, or better put, Pure “Be”, since the suffix –ing itself carries a sense of endurance, a sense of a sustained temporality, a resonation of “now”. Technically, we may not say heaven is here or there, or now or then, or that God is here or there, because when we use “here”, “there”, “now”, “then” in such referencing, we are speaking either figuratively or confusedly. There is, by definition, no extension—temporal or spacial—in God, in heaven, in anything essentially spiritual or non-material. Realistically, we can say no more than (we believe) God IS, heaven IS.
I am cognizant of the fact that I am seemingly being repetitious, but philosophy often needs to circle the object of its consideration to demark where it is not, what it is not, the object of consideration being in itself an invisibility. We live in space, we live in a time sequence, our consciousness constantly rippling over moments, and organizing things. We, therefore, have no language to express anything otherwise. When we try to speak about things spiritual or non-material we have no recourse to some mode of expression other than one fundamentally encoded in space-time experience. Heaven becomes a “place”, God “does this, then that”, etc. But we must ceaselessly remember that we are using our language analogically, figuratively, imaginatively, and not technically, or scientifically. This is often a difficult mind-set to maintain when one enters the aeolian sphere of religious discussion; we are so very inclined to forget we are in the linguistic realm of “it is as if”.
We speak of heaven and God figuratively because we have no other way of so doing. We think of the event of creation as in the past, and final judgement as in the future. We think of being in heaven as having some very long duration and sequence of events. We think thusly because from the temporal side, our side of the issue, such are the only tangible terms of reference we possess. From the other side, the spiritual side, the God-side, the first fiat of creation to the day of last judgement to the compass of our celestial bliss are but one singular moment; God and heaven but one singular joyous “AH!”, one singular fulgurant embrace Christians name Love. That one would be disposed to speak, as do the scriptures, mystics and saints, of singing, dancing, feasting, adoring, worshipping, etc. about such BE-ing, about such embrace, is not incomprehensible, but such speaking is simply something poetical, a devise used to portray that which is beyond portrayal, Pure IS.
Even traditional talk of the trinity as an endless intermeshing of its aspects transcendent, immanent, dynamic (Father, Son, Spirit), its perichoresis, is a linguistic fiction. God is ONE, space-less, timeless, a pure with-in-ness, a pure and absolute un-extended now or, if you would, I-now. The complex simplicity (or the simple complexity) of that idea causes time-space beings to render the expression of this intense oneness, this concentrated communicity of transcendent, immanent, and dynamic in terms of endurance, movement, and internal relationships. All this terminology of integral divine relationships, movement, and action in this holy and undivided trinity may seem to us most profound, but it is in reality merely a spacio-temporal enunciation by and for our less than subtle conscious comprehension of the ONE. (Churches of East and West could have avoided centuries of antagonism and animadversion had ecclesiastical clerisy been more inclined to embrace each other’s sincerity rather than reject each other’s vocabulary, each claiming to have the more true perspective and both treating as an object that which both claim to be the most supernal and supreme Subject! Had fervidly religious but less then well-educated monks roaming the Middle East been more mindful to simply live charitably and not preach that which they were not adequately prepared to preach, perhaps another cult of monotheism would never have arisen. It is a lesson rarely taken; too often do they of good intention think they ought and can speak for the Truth, when they, and all others–heaven included, would be better served were they to humbly acknowledge their gifts, and simply live out their faith in kind acts, and in silence regarding matters catechetical. Acts do preach more assuredly than words. There is not complete but, nevertheless, much merit in the church’s ancient practice of confining the teaching of the tenets of faith to only certain officers of the church. To which I shall add the caveat that, despite the charm of the idea of vox populi, vox Dei, popular fascinations too often lead leaders where faith has neither grounds nor reason to venture.)
“In” heaven, which is not other than being “in God”, one is in a singular moment of embrace, of ecstasy, of literally being outside of one’s being, of the organism reaching its eruption into its purist, most rarefied form, its wholly-being-with-and-in its source and end as its source and end. One does not read the great mystics’ recounting of the experience of sacred ecstasy without realizing they are describing something which is orgasmic on a scale simultaneously cosmic and personal, although, for most of them, confessedly virgins or celibates, such an explicitness of statement is excluded from their vocabulary.
For us the greatest truths are ever wrapped in the humblest fictions of time, space, faltering words, and inadequate ideas. Our sacred texts begin with an acknowledgment of this, our inability to envision the divine and eternal beyond the confines of our worldly experience, for they tell the tale that one inauspicious yet angelic tinged night the Eternal One became manifest as a child, wrapped in swaddling, and set into a bed of straw wherein cattle were wont to feed. Let no theologian, no philosopher, no preacher—no matter how insightful or profound his words or ideas regarding God and his heaven—ever feel pride before so stark a depiction, so gracious a kenosis, so sublime an abnegation.
Therefore, in adoring worship, where all words fail, humbly and hopefully we offer straw, and with angels, archangels, and all the choirs in heaven we make bold to add our song: Holy, Holy, Wholly ONE, as it was in the beginning, so is it now, and shall be evermore. Amen.