In a continuation of my Outline for a Personal Catechism (6 July 2021), this is an attempt to understand theological cosmology in Christian terms, continuing the concepts and phenomena of the Ascension. Given the current knowledge of the physical universe, with its thousands of trillions of stars and planets, a cosmological conception of Heaven is not really viable. It seems more reasonable to postulate the existence of another dimension to which we may apply the Biblical term “heaven” and which is the dwelling of the Deity. In this dimension neither time as we know it nor space as we know it exist. Its equivalent of “time” is what we know as “eternity”. It may well have an equivalent of “space”-- which is very faintly suggested by expressions such as “sitteth on the right hand of God” and “in my Father’s house are many mansions”--, but we do not know it. This dimension, “Heaven”, is not accessible to our five senses: it cannot be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. It is accessible through prayer (and perhaps through meditation). Its cartographers are the systematic theologians; its explorers are the mystics. Apart from the Trinity (and perhaps the Blessed Virgin Mary), its inhabitants are of several kinds: angels, saints, and the faithful departed.
The shape of the inhabitants is not readily imaginable. The likelihood of angels’ resembling adult humans with wings is small. And we know little of the “glorious body” that is promised to the faithful for their future: even the perfectly tangible body Jesus assumed between His Resurrection and His Ascension was a temporary affair. (And note that He was not physically recognisable even to his intimate followers.) The heavenly body of the saints and faithful departed may or may not resemble what they inhabited on earth: we have no way of knowing. Given the diversity of fates that their earthly bodies met, a formal reconstruction of decayed matter seems improbable. On the other hand, we are told that they are very much their individual selves, and recognisable by loved ones. Again, this suggests a different dimension with completely different forms of life, yet with a fundamental connection to humanity.
All Biblical scholarship and theology tells us that “eternal life” is not simply life prolonged to temporal infinity. Some explanations lead me to think that the authors are trying to prepare us for a future without life after death; yet Jesus leads us to believe otherwise -- see his words ot the Good Thief. We may perhaps imagine that “eternal life” is life in that dimension called Heaven, where there is no time.
When the resurrected Jesus, after forty days on earth with his friends, is “taken up into heaven” in front of their eyes, what may we imagine actually happened? I suspect that, as their conception of Heaven was spatial, His sudden disppearance was seen by their eyes as having an aspect of “up-ness”, of a rising diagonal or even a vertical. In fact, we may assume, it was a move outward, or inward, (back) to that other dimension we call Heaven, where he came “home” to his Father; a dimension not accessible to our, or the disciples’, eyesight.
There are other words that give us earthlings trouble when we try to understand or visualise them. “Glory” is one. If we translate it as the honour or fame that heroes or great athletes reap, its theological meanings are odd and unlikely. It is perhaps better approached by way of John Keats’s vision of Madeline in “The Eve of St Agnes”: “Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,/ And on her silver cross soft amethyst,/ And on her hair a glory, like a saint”. The glory here is a sort of halo, a glow that surrounds her head. If we can understand such a glow as not outwardly surrounding but emanating from an inwardness, then at least the terrestrial part of “heaven and earth are full of thy glory” becomes clearer. And it is thus perhaps that we can detect one of the connecting spaces or routes between our earth and that other dimension, “Heaven”.
Another such word is”peace”. To us it is usually either the absence of war or a condition of inner quiet and comfort. But that makes its use in the Gospels distinctly peculiar. When Jesus says “Peace I leave unto you, my peace I give unto you”; and when he tells the apostles upon entering a house to say “peace be upon this house” but if they are not received then that peace will come back to them; we are left wondering. Part of the answer lies in the Hebrew word shalom, which has a much wider meaning than our “peace”: it describes a kind of universal, even cosmic, harmony, where everyone and everything is in their proper place and fulfilling their proper function, in a joyful co-operation. And Jesus seems to use it in an almost local way, as if it is a something that can be bestowed -- or taken back.
Both “glory” and “peace”, then, are words that belong to our languages here on Earth, but which have a dusting of Heaven still upon and within them. And as such they help us to add to our very partial understanding of that dimension, I should almost say, that parallel universe. In that dimension – we’re tempted to call it a place or a space, because it’s hard to imagine a dimension without space as we know it – in that dimension glory and peace are part of the atmosphere the inhabitants breathe.
It may be the same with all the Biblical expressions of “joy” and “exultation” which look so odd in our fallen and embattled world. In the dimension we may call Heaven it is possible that they are part of the atmosphere, part of the weather.
The more we go into this territory of thought, the more we learn about our world, our life, and their relation to the “land”, the dimension, of which we are supposedly also the autochthonous citizens. And when we complain morosely that “heaven and earth are full of thy glory” seems like a cruel joke in the presence of the Russian army and drowning migrants, what we should understand is perhaps that the glory is there -- but too often ignored and trampled underfoot by the human race in all its brutish and brutal sinfulness, in its uncaring search for diversion and distraction, and in its passion for domination, prohibition and the bitter ashes of false victory.
Image: "Heaven and earth are full of thy glory"
