I'm in need of a day away from the blog world, so I'll just offer a short quote today. This one is from John Piper's Twitter feed, in which he quotes Doug Wilson, who is speaking at DG's upcoming conference on John Calvin. I believe Wilson must be commenting on the old hymn, 'This world is not my home, I'm just passing through':
Heaven is the place that we are just "passing through" from this earth to the new earth.
That's an interesting way of thinking about our final state; thoughts?
Wilson's thought here flows almost entirely from CS Lewis and NT Wright, primarily the former. He neglects the fact that the Heaven spoken of IS the New Heavens and New Earth. Biblically speaking the eschatological Heaven is one and the same as the NH&NE. W's comments here tend to diminish and derogate a Scripturally pious heavenly-mindedness in favor of Lewisian paganish carnal conceptions of the afterlife.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the comment Jason. I'm glad I checked your profile, as I thought for a minute that you were a co-worker of mine!
ReplyDeleteThe tough thing about snippets from Twitter is that it's hard to tell the context of Wilson's quote. I'd love to see the flow of thought that led to this statement.
If I understand you correctly, I think you're right on in saying that Heaven really is synonymous with the New Heavens and New Earth.
But I wouldn't say that Wilson is diminishing or derogating heavenly-mindedness. If I understand him, I think he's trying to correct a misunderstanding that has been common from the Church's earliest history up through today: the belief that the final state of the believer is for the soul to be rescued from this material world. That picture doesn't square with the biblical idea of the bodily resurrection and the redemption of the material world, as Paul writes of in Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15, etc.
I haven't read Lewis enough to know his view of our final state, but I don't believe that talking about a physical, material salvation is 'carnal.' It's what God has promised His people, and what all of creation is longing for.
Again, thanks for visiting the blog! Let me know if you have any thoughts about what I've written.
The away from the body, home with the Lord thought comes to mind. No matter where we are after death - we're with Christ and that's a great thing!
ReplyDeleteMatt,
ReplyDeleteFor many years I would have said just the same as you. And I certainly agree that being with Christ is THE great treasure of our salvation, for sure!
But in the last year or so I've been pressed to think through the doctrine of the bodily resurrection, and I think it is something evangelicals often minimize.
Yes, Paul said that to die is gain, because the soul immediately is with Christ after death. But in the 2 Corinthians 5 passage ('Away from the body, at home with the Lord'), Paul is specifically talking about how he longs for his resurrection body.
He's saying, if I might paraphrase: 'For my soul to depart and be with Christ is far better than being left in this earthly body that is wasting away, but what I REALLY want is for my resurrection body with which I might perfectly glorify Jesus.' Being with Christ in a disembodied form was a second option for Paul; his deepest desire was to be with Christ in his new body. This also seen in 1 Corinthians 15 and Philippians 3:20-21.
So yes, being with Christ is most important. We must emphasize that for sure. But I think it's important to remember that God made the physical world, and physical bodies, to display His glory, and His Son was slaughtered and rose to purchase for us a renewed physical existence that would perfectly glorify Him in a way that disembodied souls cannot do. There is much we don't know about that final state. But we do know it will be physical.
I posted a link to this sermon series by Piper a couple of weeks ago, but if you want to read/listen to how he explains all this, I'd recommend this series:
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/BySeries/74/
In the first message he talks about the passage you mentioned from 2 Corinthians 5.
Thanks for sharpening my thoughts, brother!
Umm, Larry, I think you know me well enough to know that I couldn't come up with a sentence like the last one that other Jason wrote! I'm pretty sure I don't even know what it means. I barely graduated high school.
ReplyDeleteHaha, good point!
ReplyDelete