If I were to over-simplify popular eschatology I would suggest that the movement is from earth to heaven, expressed as ‘going to heaven when I die’ and the final element being that of the burning up of creation, with eternal life being ‘in heaven with the Lord’. In contrast I read the movement in Scripture as being from heaven to earth, with temporary movement prior to the ‘end’ in the other direction.
Within the Greek philosophical world there was a phrase ‘soma sema’ (the body is a tomb). That phrase popularised the notion that the ‘real’ world was not this world but what we might term ‘heaven’. Death was an escape from the body (the tomb) and an entrance into real existence; the material world held no intrinsic value – hence it could either be ignored through denial or exploited for enjoyment. In the area of sexuality, abstinence could be advocated or conversely total freedom; the physical element was not of value. So unlike Scripture where we read,
present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Rom. 12:1).
The body has value, indeed in bodily form humanity was created in the image of God, and that body was formed from the ‘dust of the earth’. God, humanity and creation are all connected.
In the post-New Testament period there was an engagement with the Graeco-Roman world and in order to communicate concepts that were familiar within that world were engaged with, and in certain places and over a period of time rather than the concepts being transformed with regard to how they were understood the concepts changed the message to some extent. There became a move from a Hebraic world-view to one that was shaped by Graeco-Roman philosophy, and we can see that influence very strongly with such language as ‘going to heaven when we die’ or ‘saving souls’; and the embrace of the concept, that many assume (wrongly) is biblical, that of the immortality of the soul.
In reading Scripture we have to learn to ‘unread’ how we have been conditioned to read the text. A text we will examine later (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) where Paul is responding to a question about ‘what about those who have died’, we should immediately note that he does not resort to a typical response that we might give along the lines of ‘they are in a better place’, or ‘they are at home with the Lord’. Even if there were truth in those responses they are not the central biblical response that Paul gives, indeed those responses are not even hinted at in the passage. We note that he speaks of their future when the Lord comes (parousia) and that they will come with him (movement from heaven to earth). He does not focus at all on their current state, but on their future resurrection. There might be a phrase in there that could mislead us (‘caught up to meet the Lord in the air’: a phrase that in its historical context did not indicate a final destination of ‘heaven’ but quite the opposite) but even if we were to misunderstand that one phrase we would have to ignore the overall context and that Paul’s response is to answer the question as to the fate of the righteous dead when the Lord returns to the earth. The answer is consistent to a Hebraic world-view but certainly not to a Graeco-Roman, and sadly nor to many current world-views.
Movement from heaven to earth is something we will expand on as we proceed and we can note how ‘heaven’ is presented as a temporary place, a holding place until the restoration of all things.
- Jesus must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets (Acts 3:21). There is no indication that Jesus is waiting for us to join him, indeed we are the ones who are awaiting a Saviour from heaven (Phil. 3:20). This latter text, of course, raises the question as to what happens to those who die before that time, for they are not ‘here’ to wait for the Lord to come.
- The prayer that Jesus taught has those central requests for the kingdom to come and for the will of God to be done on earth as in heaven.
- Jesus, while with the disciples, prayed that God would not take them out of the world (John 17:14).
We can say that the hope expressed is not a hope that death is a door to a better life, but that death will not be the final word; death will not bring about a better existence but death itself will be swallowed up. The hope of Scripture is of embodied existence in the context of a renewed creation.
There is a consistent universal impact claimed for the work of the cross. We might wish to (as do many theories of the atonement do) focus on the ‘forgiveness of sins’ but the cross of Jesus was in order to ‘reconcile all things’, those ‘all things’ being ‘all things, whether in heaven or on earth’ (Col. 1:19,20). The cross is a roadblock to destruction and a gateway to fulfilment. Eschatology then will be the completion of the ‘creation project’, one that includes a destiny for humanity and all of creation.