(April 27, 2014 at 5:00 am)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: They used to believe it was a physical place above the earth. Literally.
Now it's a non physical spiritual place, just like God, that no one can find because it's "in the spiritual realm."
If Christians are going to get upset every time they're told their beliefs are imaginary, maybe they should define them in ways that are indistinguishable from imaginary things.
There's truth in this, so let me attempt a closer definition of 'heaven', so I don't get upset.
C1 Judaism had a very varied range of ideas on post-mortem existence, with everything and nothing being in the mix. There was one strong strand that said that when the Kingdom of God arrived on earth, the righteous dead, who had been held with God, would be physically resurrected to a new life on earth.
The Early Xians claimed that, based on their experiences, this strand was broadly correct, with one very strange twist- in one case (Jesus), the resurrection had happened early. Therefore 'heaven' in one sense is a sort of holding room before the resurrection. Little detail is offered in the NT about it, so I would guess it's a decent place, with tea facilities, satellite TV and wifi. However it's not the main event, which is the resurrected life on earth.
I suppose it might be vaguely controversial (blame Cameron) to opine that the best explanation for the very strange twist, followed by the sudden rigidity on resurrection belief, would be that the thing actually happened.
Also, heaven is the 'location' of God, who is transcendent, so 'location' may not be an adequate term here. It's important to understand that within C1 Judaism/Xianity, heaven and earth interlock and overlap in many places and ways. The Temple, in particular, was once the place and the means par excellence for this to occur.
