"WHAT CAN WE BELIEVE?"
“Immortality and Life After Death” – Part II
Jesus Seminar scholar Dominic Crossan writes, “Do I personally believe in an afterlife? No, but to be honest, I do not find it a particularly important question one way or the other….My own interest is in how we live our lives here below….My view is that both heaven and hell are present here and now. We make life. We make this world heaven or hell.”
Would a majority of Christians agree or disagree with Crossan? Why? Why not? Is it important to believe in life after death? Why? Why not? Are “heaven” and “hell” just symbols for modes of existence in the present life?
In a Time Magazine article reporter Richard Ostling wrote that for the practicing Christian “heaven is destination and reward, succor and relief from earthly trials. It is reunion with those we love, forever, as we loved them. It is our real home, our permanent address, our own true country. It is the New Jerusalem and Paradise Regained, the community of Saints and the eternal Eucharist, everlasting Easter and a million Christmases. It is an end to death’s sting; it is the eternal, ongoing, ever growing experience of God. It is the ecstatic dream of St. John: “Holy, holy, holy.”
What do you think of Ostling’s description of heaven? Do you think a majority of today’s Christians would agree? Disagree? How would you change or modify his description. Why? Why not?
Professor Jeffrey Burton says in his book, A History of Heaven, that heaven is neither the original Eden nor the Kingdom of God within us nor a paradise at the end of the world, but all three. He suggests heaven is an enveloping eternity in which Christians already participate during the Eucharist. He says, heaven is “not dull; it is not static; it is not monochrome. It is an endless dynamic of joy in which one is even more oneself as one was meant to be ….Heaven is reality itself.”
What do you think of this description? Would most Christians agree? Disagree? How would you modify or change his views? How would you describe the ideal heaven?
