How Can We Understand Heaven?

There are any number of ways to describe what heaven is like, but they all fall quite short of reality. St Paul makes this point in his letter to the Corinthians: “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him, this God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1Cor 2:9-10). Here, Paul is paraphrasing Isaiah 64:3. Isaiah provides another insight on what heaven will be like: “Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. The cow and the bear shall graze, together their young shall lie down; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the viper’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair” (Isa 11:6-8). Isaiah teaches that this radical peace, even between prey and predator, will be achieved by the Messiah, the “shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse” (Isa 11:1). The reference to the stump of Jesse, the father of David, foretold the end of the kingly reign of David’s sons and the sprout foretold the future restoration of the reign of David’s Son. The implication being that a new King of David’s line will come to bring unearthly, supernatural peace not possible in the world as we know it. In any case, the Bible has numerous other attempts to describe the indescribable.

The testimony of the Bible regarding heavenly realities necessarily invokes imagery that is unearthly. Descriptions of angels, for example, are more metaphor than literal portrayals. In Ezekiel, cherubim are described as follows: “When they moved, they went in any of the four directions without veering as they moved; in whatever direction the first cherub faced, the others followed without veering as they went. Their entire bodies – backs, hands, and wings – and wheels were covered with eyes all around like the four wheels” (Eze 10:11-12). Do cherubim have literal wheels? If so, they are not wheels in an earthly sense of the word. More likely, the wheels convey the property of mobility as do their wings. Likewise, the multitude of eyes is not literal but tells us that a cherub sees all. Earthly analogies are necessary to describe purely spiritual things like angels. We cannot conceive of a purely spiritual being apart from worldly categories. The same applies to heaven itself.

Many people imagine that heaven will be like life here and now but only much better. Such a place would be a utopia, not heaven. Mankind has been trying to create utopias since the Tower of Babel, and we have failed each and every time. The Shakers tried to create a utopia. Brook Farm in Massachusetts and Fordlandia in Brazil were attempted yet failed utopias. The Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, and every other marxist endeavor were attempts to obtain paradise on earth. Because we are limited, selfish, fallen, broken people living in a fallen and reliably hostile world, attempts to form utopias are much better at creating something more akin to hell than to heaven.

Yes, we are the problem. It is not the form of government, our leaders, or our economic system. Adam and Eve doomed mankind and the physical world while our sins perpetuate this catastrophe. Mankind as we know it cannot be fixed nor can the natural world. We can only be fixed through dying in Christ so as to enter a perfected state of being. We can call this perfected state of being sainthood. Nature can only be fixed by dying and being created anew. We can call this heaven.

In the mean time, we have a participation, albeit incomplete, in sainthood and in heaven through the graces that God bestows upon us through Jesus and His Church. In baptism, we have become citizens of heaven (Phil 3:20) while remaining residents here and we also have become adopted sons and daughters of God. This is a reality that we are challenged to live out in our present lives, acting as residents of heaven and as children of God. This will come to fruition in heaven but more thoroughly than we can know. As St John testifies, we will remain God’s children but become much more in heaven than we are now: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure” (1Jn 3:2-3). We will be like God, the fulfillment of the very desire of Adam and Eve (Gen 3:5).

—Fr Booth