One of the impactful theological conversations I bear in mind being part of occurred once I was in my early twenties as a Bible-college scholar in Southern California. Some mates and I had stayed up means too late speaking, and at one level our dialog turned towards the subject of heaven. I can’t bear in mind what exact phrases we stated, however I can recall the sensation. As we contemplated the glories of the eschaton collectively, we whipped ourselves up right into a flurry of pleasure, marvel, and longing.
Happier Visions of Heaven
On the time, I recall being captivated by the profound earthiness of the brand new creation. Like many, whereas rising up I had someway absorbed the concept that the ultimate promise of the afterlife was to depart from the actual, bodily world — the world of meals and video games and laughter and journey — to ascend to an ethereal, floaty cloud-place, populated by chubby cherubs with harps. (And sure, I secretly dreaded going to heaven due to how boring such a spot promised to be.)
By the point of that late-night dialog, I had fortunately been disabused of that conception. The promise of the afterlife, I had come to study, was not the obliteration of all issues God had beforehand declared good, however quite their restoration. Their transfiguration. Their glorification. It was not that the fabric could be swallowed up by the immaterial — as if we had been ridding our souls of our flesh and bones — however quite that the mortal could be swallowed by immortal life (2 Corinthians 5:4).
“What makes heaven heaven just isn’t merely that we’ll expertise Earth 2.0, however quite that we’ll see God.”
I had come to see that the whole lot good on this life would see its heightened and imperishable achievement within the subsequent. The promise of the eschaton just isn’t the intermediate state, however quite the resurrection — and never simply our resurrection as people, however the resurrection of the cosmos (Romans 8:18–25; Revelation 21:1–22:5). So, my mates and I let our imaginations unfastened as we puzzled about how the sensations of the bodily world we so get pleasure from now may be magnified and enriched within the age to return. And our blur of excited phrases was worship.
What I’ve since come to find, nevertheless, is that even these facets of the brand new creation are usually not last. These heavenly joys my mates and I fantasized about had been, like their current earthly corollaries, the joyous means to the best finish: the imaginative and prescient of God himself. Theologians name this the beatific imaginative and prescient (or the blessed or blissful imaginative and prescient). What makes heaven heaven, in different phrases, just isn’t merely that we’ll expertise Earth 2.0, however quite that we’ll see God. Now, if it looks as if I’m backtracking what I simply affirmed and am as soon as once more buying and selling an earthy imaginative and prescient of the eschaton for an ethereal one, let me guarantee you I’m not.
Beckoned By way of Magnificence
The childhood conception of heaven I gladly shed in my early twenties was one in every of actuality diminished. However the beatific imaginative and prescient guarantees one thing infinitely extra enriched than something we expertise right here. It’s the final finish of our each joyous encounter with goodness, reality, and wonder.
The need that earthly magnificence awakens, for instance, just isn’t meant to terminate within the object that woke up the need. This is the reason each delight that comes with the expertise of magnificence is accompanied by a stab of eager for extra. When I’m struck by the wonder and magnitude of the Grand Canyon at sundown, the longing that such a sight elicits just isn’t happy by the visible encounter itself. The higher the enjoyment, the higher the longing. All that is by design: the earthly magnificence that arouses our need beckons us by way of and past to one thing higher. Earthly magnificence consistently calls us to not itself, however by way of itself to its last supply: the God of all Magnificence.
This reality is usually missed because the context for C.S. Lewis’s memorable line: “If I discover in myself a need which no expertise on this world can fulfill, probably the most possible clarification is that I used to be made for an additional world” (Mere Christianity, 136–37). In saying this, Lewis doesn’t merely affirm that each human has a eager for God that may solely lastly be happy within the age to return. He is saying a minimum of that a lot, however the rapid context reveals that he goes a step additional to say that all our longings on this life serve to arouse a deeper eager for enjoyment of God. He writes,
If none of my earthly pleasures fulfill it, that doesn’t show that the universe is a fraud. In all probability earthly pleasures had been by no means meant to fulfill it, however solely to arouse it, to counsel the actual factor. If this is so, I have to take care, on the one hand, by no means to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the opposite, by no means to mistake them for one thing else of which they’re solely a sort of copy, or echo, or mirage. (137)
The beatific imaginative and prescient — or the blissful imaginative and prescient — is beatific as a result of it’s the imaginative and prescient of the all-blessed God. The one who’s infinitely blissful in himself begraces us with a participation in his personal blessedness. For the reason that triune God is the plentitude of life and light-weight and love — he ever burns within the white-hot fireplace of infinite pleasure as Father, Son, and Spirit — the blessing of everlasting life is our coming to expertise by grace what God is by nature: blessed. And this infinite blessedness is signaled to and previewed by way of all our earthly joys. God is, by way of all of them, beckoning us to return “additional up and additional in.”
Our Unnamed Ache
You’re starting to see now, I belief, that even whereas the doctrine of “the beatific imaginative and prescient” might sound unique and alien to your ears, you could have already been primed to obtain it. It’s true that the doctrine has fallen into obscurity in evangelical circles (although it loved near-universal centrality for almost all of Christian historical past). Even nonetheless, the need for the beatific imaginative and prescient is woke up by all method of well-known evangelical convictions.
“Earthly magnificence consistently calls us to not itself, however by way of itself to its last supply: the God of all Magnificence.”
The need to expertise the beatific imaginative and prescient is the deepest longing of the Christian Hedonist, who has been taught by John Piper that “God is most glorified in us once we are most happy in him.” It’s the longing provoked by each immersed reader of the Narnia books who yearns — together with the Pevensies and their comrades in The Final Battle — to go “additional up and additional in” to Aslan’s nation. It’s the longing Jonathan Edwards awakens when he opines about heaven as “a world of affection.” It’s the deep longing of those that have come to hope with Augustine, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are stressed till they discover their relaxation in Thee” (Confessions, 1.1.5).
All of us have been aching for the beatific imaginative and prescient, whether or not we had language to articulate this need as such or not.
The place Each Want Leads
The promise of the beatific imaginative and prescient is that none of our wishes aroused on this life is in the end for naught. None of them is wasted! Even our sinful wishes are perversions of God’s good creation. He made us with sure schools in our souls for longing, and this soulish thirst — even the place it has been desecrated by the muddy cisterns of sin (Jeremiah 2:12–13) — isn’t meant to be totally extinguished; it’s designed to be satiated by God himself. This is the reason we will by no means be lastly happy by something on this life.
The soul’s cravings are infinitely insatiable as a result of their object is itself infinite. God won’t ever stop to be infinite, and we are going to by no means stop to be finite. Subsequently, our enjoyment of God will, within the beatific imaginative and prescient, increase perpetually. We’ll by no means develop bored with delighting in God, any greater than we are going to develop bored with delighting in something, for earthly delights are summed up, purified, and perfected in our delight of God.
Each creaturely need finds its last satiation on this blissful imaginative and prescient of God. All the thrill we expertise on this life, that are ever tinged with the sting of disappointment, are designed to awaken a starvation that shall be in the end happy in God. However this state of relaxation within the blissful imaginative and prescient of God — this state of eschatological Sabbath repose — is not going to be static because of God’s infinity and our finitude.
Let me clarify. Typically we’re tempted to lament our finitude, as if our creaturely limitations had been themselves a deficiency. However God made us finite on goal, and within the beatific imaginative and prescient, our finitude turns into a method of pleasure. As a result of God is infinitely pleasant, and since our delight of him is finite, we may be assured that the beatific imaginative and prescient is a state of perpetual enlargement. As we behold God, our pleasure in him full, our capability for sight and pleasure will increase, and our satisfaction of beholding and having fun with him will even increase. We’ll by no means develop drained or turn out to be disenchanted or bored. Our longing will enhance in excellent proportion to our satisfaction, so that each “happiest” second shall be topped by the following “happier” one eternally.
All roads of need lead right here, to the blessed hope of seeing God. After we turn out to be actually satisfied of this truth, we pray sincerely with David, “One factor have I requested of the Lord, that can I search after: that I could dwell in the home of the Lord all the times of my life, to gaze upon the great thing about the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4). There are, after all, many questions left unanswered in regards to the beatific imaginative and prescient. However worshipful longing rushes in the place mental certainty fears to tread. Amen, might or not it’s.
