PicoBlog

WHAT IS HEAVEN LIKE?

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. (Rev 21:23)

An uncle of mine recently passed away (God rest his soul+). It was told to me that in the final days of his life he asked the hospital chaplain the question, “What is heaven like?” Now I have no idea how the chaplain answered that question for him, but it got me thinking, “how would I answer that question?” Over the previous weeks I’ve spent time doing just that and here’s what I have come up with.

In Brief:

Heaven is the vision of God. If any creature with a rational soul dies disposed to be able to see God with their mind, then they get to see God, and God’s being is so profound that seeing Him fills one with an infinite, eternal, and ineffable glory.

Therefore, if anyone wants to know what Heaven is like, they have to know what getting to see God would be like… And while none of us have experienced that, we can use things we do know to try and approach an understanding of what that might be like.

When kids—or anyone—ask whether people from other religions go to heaven, or whether people that die in early childhood / before they’re born go to heaven, it’s appropriate to always first address what we think heaven even is. Not every religion has the same idea of what heaven is; of what happens to the righteous, by whatever standard, when they die. Whatever their conception of heaven is tells you up front what the followers of those religions are spending their lives disposing themselves toward. It also means that what we think heaven is greatly affects what we are disposing ourselves toward. If we have no idea what that answer is—or worse, we imagine heaven to be something contrary to the promise of heaven of the Christian faith—we jeopardize whatever it is we think we’re going after.

            For some religions heaven is a reward for oneself (I’m thinking here of anyone who thinks of heaven as a sort of natural paradise where they get everything they wish they could have here on earth—i.e. forty virgins and material riches). For others it’s a celebration of their people or nation over another (Valhalla?, etc.). For others it’s who-knows-what-else?... In the Christian faith heaven is the opportunity to come into contact with God, face-to-face. We call it the beatific vision—that is, the sight of the blessed one (God). It’s a sight not of the physical eyes but of the immaterial soul. It glorifies us, but only indirectly through beholding the glory of God. The object of heaven is God. It is not those there beholding God. Its purpose is God. Its purpose is not the saved. Heaven is not altered by being filled with people—nor by being filled with more or less people. If it were, it would be contingent not on God but on us—but as it is it’s contingent on God and not on us.

To dive deeper then into what we can understand, in faith, heaven to be like, first we must investigate the nature of pleasure in all its aspects: fundamentally, carnally, sinfully, and intellectually. Then it will be helpful to differentiate between the nature of love in God versus the nature of love in us, so that we can begin to see how transformative the experience of heaven would be. Last, we can touch on what the implications of all this would be on our interactions with others in heaven… After all of this my hope is that we will end up with a much fuller picture of what heaven might be like—and a greater desire to love God that we might one day enter into His glory.

There are two aspects of pleasure: rest and movement. We read Aquinas tell us that, “The soul’s rest is pleasure.” (ST I-II:25:2, II-II:168:2resp) We first desire things that we want—and when we have them our desire rests. We feel pleasure, or delight, in the rest of our desire that comes from having attained an object that corresponds to our desire.

If we’re hungry, a corresponding object of food will give us pleasure.

If we’re tired, or cold, a corresponding object of a bed, or a warm blanket, will give us pleasure.

The longer, or more effectively, we can satisfy that desire, the greater corresponding pleasure we will experience as that desire will be at greater rest.

            The second aspect of pleasure is movement—movement of the object of pleasure in us. When an object of pleasure continues to act in us, we say that it is continuing to “move”, as “act” is always a movement. That is, the longer the effects of the object attained act on us and in us, the greater pleasure we experience. Some foods give us more pleasure than others as they satisfy more dimensions of food-desire than others (or hijack more of our desires for certain things than others—think sugary foods or processed foods), or because the satiety they bring lasts longer. The more a pleasure lasts in us, the greater the pleasure.

            Pleasure is experienced in rest and movement. Rest of the desire in the attaining of the object desired, and increase of pleasure in the movement of the object of desire continuing to act in us once attained.

All of this is good unless the attainment of a pleasure degrades or deteriorates our being. That is why the virtue of moderation is a virtue, or excellence: it makes use of right reason in moderating how much of a pleasure we take in so that we do not take the pleasure in to excess and spoil/deteriorate our being.

            Drugs give much pleasure as they cause desire to rest in us, and the pleasure lasts longer than most carnal goods (food, sex, etc.), making it more pleasurable to experience. Unfortunately, they also deteriorate our being in using them and are thereby fundamentally opposed to moderation. That’s why the sub-virtue of moderation as it pertains to drugs is “sobriety.”

            The heroin user who nods off after having taken heroin has a temporary rest of their desire, but their whole person is nullified. The high continues to move in them for I-don’t-know-how-long—minutes?, an hour?—I-don’t-know... The enduring movement of it in them increases that pleasure for them. Unfortunately, when they come-to their craving for a total rest is the greater, and tragically, they equate that achievability of rest with the total negation of their person precisely because that is the way in which they’ve experienced it with greatest force in their life in using heroin. Their person actually ends up becoming the enemy of their rest, and thus they are an enemy to themselves. Their soul withers and deforms from there, in many cases all the way unto death.

            So too with any pleasure that compromises who we are in their pursuit.

Pleasures of the intellect are different than carnal pleasures. The intellect understands things by abstracting a things essence out of it and incorporating the understanding of that abstraction into ourselves. Our mind abstracts an image of the thing we are trying to understand, and that image is now in us. Our mind is said to have a true understanding when the abstracted image concurs with the real thing outside it—and it is said to have a false understanding when the abstracted image does not concur with the real thing outside it. In both cases the fundamental reality is present: our intellect experiences images of the things grasped.

            In intellectual pleasures, the image grasped in our mind maps onto reality and illumines more reality for us. The increased illumination of reality in us brings a pleasure. We now know something we didn’t know before. A dissonance is resolved. A dissonance becomes a consonance and the stress of dissonance rests. As intellectual understandings have a more final character, the pleasure of them lasts longer—although much more subtly, and not assuaging the constant onslaught of desires that arise in our bodies.

Whereas intellectual pleasures don’t assuage the desires of the body for long—if at all—, a bodily pleasure does have the effect of assuaging even the intellectual desires so long as the movement of the bodily pleasure remains.

The reason this goes one way and not the other is because our bodies are more integral to our being than our intellects are. As a matter of fact, our possessing rational-intellects means that our intellect is fundamentally mediated by our bodies. If our bodies were secondary, then our intellect would not be rational, but intellectual, and one of the consequences of that would be that an idea like re-incarnation would be totally plausible. But as it is, it isn’t.

The primacy of the body—and carnal pleasures—in us is precisely why more people opt for bodily pleasures than those that seek for intellectual pleasures (and all of us desire bodily pleasures—and experience rest in them: a rest that translates to a rest for our souls—to some degree so long as we live).

What the Christian faith tells us is that in beholding God, directly, with our soul, we experience a rest that is so great that no other desire ever needs emerge, and yet the whole of who we are is preserved and even perfected. Our deepest, most perfect desire is most perfectly met, and the object of attainment is eternal and perfect in duration and completion.

When we come into contact with God, face-to-face, it is the reality of God that is given to us. Unlike any intellectual pleasure we experience in this life, where we receive an image of the thing grasped, we are not receiving an image which accords-or-not with an essence: we are receiving the actual essence and being of God. The satiation we experience in our souls is analogous to that of a carnal good consumed that almost viscerally compels us, but the nature of how we are experiencing it is more analogous to the nature of an intellectual desire in that once we have it, we have it, and that when we attain it we keep it with us thereafter.

Eternal rest is something like analogous to the experience of carnal pleasure while simultaneously analogous in mechanism to the mode of intellectual pleasure.

The beholding of God causes an illumination of the being that sees Him, never waxing or waning, because eternal; and infinitely good and perfect, because God.

            In God, somehow, our beholding Him both gives us a perfect rest and the pleasure never ceases to move. Joy in God is an ever-moving delight that not only doesn’t compromise who we are, but perfects every faculty in us.

God is the cause of good in all things.

Love is a desire to be united to a thing.

Aquinas says in ST I.20.1.ad3:

“[I]nasmuch as we love ourselves, we wish ourselves good; and, so far as possible, union with that good. So love is called the unitive force, even in God[.]”

When we love something our love is a response to the goodness we perceive in a thing. That is: the goodness is in the other thing, we see it in them, and we love them as a response to their goodness, wherein we desire to be united to them and their goodness. In God, He does not love in reaction to things; He first loves things and this is the cause of the good in them. Aquinas puts this very succinctly in ST I:20:2resp:

[Speaking of the difference between how God loves and how we love, whereby God’s love is the cause of the goodness in all things...] “Yet not as we love. Because since our will is not the cause of the goodness of things, but is moved by it as its object, our love, whereby we will good to anything, is not the cause of its goodness; but conversely its goodness, whether real or imaginary, calls forth our love, by which we will that it should preserve in the good it has, and receive besides the good it has not, and to this end we direct our actions: whereas the love of God infuses and creates goodness.”

So it is that we respond to good with love, but when God loves, His love is the cause of good in the things loved.

This is so crucial because it gives us the insight we need to understand that in heaven, beholding the glory of God is not something we are just onlookers to. In God and God alone, when you behold His glory and majesty, you are infused with that glory and majesty in yourself. To see it is to receive it and possess it. God’s glory fills you with glory—that is the mechanism of one being glorified in heaven. It’s not that they are glorified and then enter into heaven; it’s that they enter into heaven (the sight of God) and are immediately glorified as a result.

Not so when we look on someone beautiful who is not God. If I see a beautiful woman, or a great man with profound moral beauty, their beauty does not become mine. I may feel inspired to try and strive for a similar beauty in myself, or to unite myself to their beauty, but it does not become me… When we look on God, face-to-face, however, His nature is such that just perceiving His glory and beauty and majesty fills us with that ourselves.

So it is that the joy of the blessed in heaven is perfectly beautiful and perfectly full.

Heaven is not you in an isolated room with God. In heaven we have the company of all the saints—all the other people that are there in heaven with you. Accordingly, we get to interact with them. Is it possible then that we sin in our interactions with others in heaven, should we be blessed to be there?

            The answer is no—and there’s a way we can begin to understand why. Any sin requires that an act is out of line with the eternal law. Or, put another way: in order to sin we have to do something that is discordant with God.

            Here on earth we do not perceive God—to do so would make us a comprehensor here on earth, and no one but Christ has ever been that (Christ had the beatific vision in every moment of his human life). If we were, we’d have the beatific vision already. But because we don’t have it there are many things we do that fall out of concordance with the reality of God.

            In Heaven you have the object of God directly before your soul’s eye in every moment. It is not possible for you to not see the connection of God to all things—and you experience the perfect joy of seeing God as He is at all times. So it is that the will never does anything that loses God. There’s no way to lose God, for He is not remote, or hidden from us, He is there—and He is eternal and full and eternally acting on you and in you.

            It’s hard to grasp here on earth because it’s so foreign to anything we can- or ever will- experience here. But to have God before the soul’s eye directly is the fulfillment of all things, and every act voluntarily aligns with that reality as there is no portion of the good in God that can ever be diminished or lost. It’s as if every interaction we have with others is infused with the glory of God, acting and fulfilling our relation to others perfectly because God is directly there in all things in heaven, and we’re more than vaguely aware of it—we’re experiencing it.

The question of what heaven is like is one that is relevant to each and every one of us. It’s relevant to the life of the individual Christian and the community of Christians. It’s relevant to what we desire and it’s relevant to what we aspire to. It frames how we understand many deep theological ideas—from grace to mercy to justice to salvation. It frames how we interpret the purpose of all creation and of the relation of God to His creation.

            To try and begin to understand what heaven is like, then, we must really begin to grasp how pleasure works in us—and what the claim of heavenly pleasure is. We must understand the difference between our nature’s relation to love as reactive and God’s nature’s relation to love as causative. From there we can begin to carve out a clearer image of what heaven might be like.

            All things are ordained toward God. The good of all things IS God. It’s not merely that all things have their source in God—He is also the end of all things. Faith in Christ, sharing in a life of grace with him, is the beginning of our formation toward God. This world is not a testing ground—it is an opportunity, made available by God, through Christ, to form our minds and wills toward God, that when we meet our final rest we might behold God for ourselves and experience, as St. Augustine says, that rest of our heart & soul that is restless until it rests in God. +

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