What’s so Great about Heaven?

It was a favorite saying of a literary critic I once knew that Shelley and Milton, despite the vast differences between them as writers, shared equally an imaginative inability to think of anything interesting to do in heaven. The same deficiency has been pointed out about utopian novels, and is summed up in the sophisticated colloquialism that all the interesting people will be in hell.

Actually, with regard to Milton the critic’s assertion is a canard (or half of one), for no other writer has so overwhelmingly depicted the undesirability of hell as a place of residence. And he shows this not in Dante’s rather easy way of imagining endless physical torments but—more horrifyingly—by showing its unspeakable boredom. Whether he communicates equally well the joys of heaven is a question each reader must answer for himself, basing his judgment not mainly on Paradise Lost but on Paradise Regained, which few people read. As for Shelley, he made many things beautiful, but he had a hard time making anything interesting.

The opinion that the Christian heaven will be a pretty dull place is so widely diffused that one may pick almost at random for evidence. Item: “If an eternity of unrelieved cultural refinement [as envisioned in the Greek view of the Elysian fields] looks like a rather dreary prospect, it is probably less dreary than enjoying an eternal sabbath or singing endless hosannas” (Renaissance and Revolution, by Joseph A. Mazzeo). Clearly the New Yorker-ish picture of harp-strumming, bald-headed ex-businessmen with wings, sitting on clouds, has deeply permeated the folk-consciousness.

My chief purpose here, however, is not to deplore the imaginative anemia of famous writers who have tried futilely to animate paradise, nor to review the popular secular belief (whether sincere or wishful) that heaven would not be much fun anyway. Rather, it is twofold: to suggest a certain irrationality in the prevailing popular view; and to see whether Scripture, while silent on details, does not in fact provide at least a basis for determining what kind of activities will give dynamic joy in heaven. As to the details, we are, of course, told that they are both incommunicable and forbidden (1 Cor. 2:9 and 2 Cor. 12:4), so there is no use exercising our minds over them. We were not consulted when the delights of this earth, or when we, were created, and we were not called in to give advice on the “things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” (Past tense, note—he has already prepared them.)

As to the irrationality of the popular view of the dullness of heaven, it is instructive to ask what fruits of evil, as we see them displayed before us rather vividly every day, will be so missed in heaven as to generate there unassuageable nostalgia and unhappiness. Tending the sick, fighting wars, enduring mental confusion and physical pain, poverty and starvation, the ultimate hopelessness of death—are these and hundreds of other conditions produced by sin so dear to us that we cannot bear to think of living without them?

On the other hand, what kinds of activities that give true joy are incompatible with the Christian view of paradise? Surely not fellowship, unstinted intellectual activity, aesthetic creativity, sensuous beauty, exploration, literature, music, art, love—or anything else we truly cherish and enjoy. Someone has defined art as anything we would like to do if we did not have to do something else, like invent pesticides and dig graves. All man’s natural impulses, as they were implanted by God in our great progenitor, Adam, were good. Depravity has thwarted them, and mingled with them, as tares with the wheat, inclinations that promise good but, being tasted, bring ennui and death. “In the very temple of delight/Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine.” Even the deepest pleasures of this life are inescapably mingled with sadness, for we cannot, without sorrow, “love that well which we must leave ere long.” But even this sad pleasure will be impossible in a region where true love cannot enter, and where self-love, which fallen man in this life has perversely substituted for the only true object of love, God, will corrupt into self-loathing and produce unmitigated corporate and mutual hatred. Rationally considered, and on the basis of this one consideration alone (discounting, if one chooses, all other possibilities of discomfort and misery), the company of hell seems unlikely to be particularly scintillating, joyous, or endearing.

But let us leave Dante’s “natural dungeon where ill-footing was, and scant supply of light,” and fix our gaze, as blind Milton did in imagination, where “Now at last the sacred influence/Of light appears, and from the walls of Heav’n/Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night/A glimmering dawn.” A glimmer of dawn is all we can discern, for we have yet no daylight revelation of details. But we have knowledge, through promise, of certain basic conditions, principles, and qualities of that which God has prepared for those who love him. Among them: a purity of light; a restored and perfected environment; release, intensification, and refinement of intellectual activity and sensuous experience; restored balance between the body, soul, and spirit that make up our triune being; incalculably varied companionship; limitlessness of the horizons of personal fulfillment; a pervading knowledge of the perpetuity of bliss; the presence of God himself (beyond imagining)—the list tumbles out, and each reader of Scripture will conceive that the most important feature of all has been omitted from any list, save his own.

But is it possible to be any more specific, at least with regard to the kinds of activities that will animate heaven? I think it clearly is, even if, for present purposes, we limit ourselves to only one line of thought; namely, the fact that the best way to determine action (function) is to determine identity. It is a commonplace these days to point out that man does not know “what to do with himself” unless he knows who he is. To the existentialist, we must create our own identity. To most others, we must discover it. In either case, it is agreed that man, by nature, is dynamic. Being and doing are inseparable. If I know what and who I am, I know how to use me. And I must be used, I must act, in order fully to be. Even at the level of superficial sensuous (bodily) existence, experiments show that a person deprived for an extended period of time of the input of his senses (by being embedded in a state of senselessness, without motion, sight, sound, taste, or touch) quickly suffers serious psychological difficulties. Every capacity implanted in us contains its own imperative to be used. (Among its other undesirable features, hell may well be a condition of being without doing, of existence without function, of consciousness without meaning—and a pervading awareness of its perpetuity.)

Turning to Scripture for light, we find it permeated by the revelation that man has a threefold identity-function: as king, as priest, and as prophet. We see it first and dramatically revealed as Adam assumed sovereignty over his assigned realm, this earth; as he knew the words of God and the things pertaining to him (which is, of course, the central nature of “prophecy,” not chiefly to foretell the future); and as he directed for Eve and himself homage and worship toward their Creator, his priestly function. By treason he lost his great warrants, for himself and for his race; but they will be restored, marvelously transfigured and enlarged, under the Lordship of the Second Adam, who won them back both as Son of God and Son of Man, and who will invest his own with them. In its presentation of human history between the Fall and the Incarnation, how replete is Scripture with examples, plain teachings, pictures, symbols, and exhortations concerning man in his true identity—king, priest, and prophet. As embodied in even the greatest exemplars, however—in Moses, in David, in Elijah, in Aaron, and all the others—how marred is the original intention.

It is aslant to my chief purpose to say so, but I think that Scripture tells us that the truth underlying the triple role of man runs deeper in the universe than man and his nature. Consider what we are told about that terrible, ancient, and once-glorious being whose name we do not know but whom we call Satan, the Adversary. He was created to great glory, to the sound of music, perfect in his ways, and made king of a great empire, title to which (though perhaps in reduced dimensions) he still holds, for Jesus himself refers to him as Prince of This World. And an even greater realm is indicated in another title he still holds, Prince of the Powers of the Air, ruler of that wickedness in high places, those principalities and powers, against which, Paul tells us, is our spiritual warfare. That he was also prophet is indicated by the assertion that he was full of wisdom (Ezek. 28:12); and that he was priest, leading his empire in the worship and adoration of God, is implicit (if the term be well studied) in his mysterious identification as the “covering cherub.” Displaced, because of his rebellion, as prophet (for the father of lies will no longer speak truth about God) and as priest (for his worship, through pride, is of himself, not of God), he yet retains his fearful regal sway over the world system and over the “powers that are on high,” still enjoying access to the presence of God, where day and night he brings railing accusations against those who have dared cast off his rule and acknowledge another, even Jesus, as Lord and King. Already is this One, a greater than Moses, our prophet, for he alone perfectly revealed the will and the nature of his Father; and already our priest, ever our mediator and advocate before the Throne; and already our King, though his visible kingdom awaits his return in power and glory.

But back to my topic, which is the relevance of the revealed threefold identity-function of man as that revelation hints at certain kinds of activity in the kingdom of heaven. I pass over the kingship that is promised the redeemed, though there is much that could be said; and over the role of prophet, a function embracing the full dimension of intellectual activity (for to study anything is to study God); and comment briefly on only the priestly role, for that perhaps reveals less readily than the other two the joy implied in its exercise.

I suggest no less than that man’s total aesthetic, creative, artistic dimension may be intended to find its joyous release and practice within man’s role as priest, as he offers to God, in gratitude and love and worship, every shape and form of beauty he is capable of conceiving. No imaginable activity could be more wonderful, for even in this life the creation of beauty—whether it be of gardens, or music, or art, or literature, or whatever else gratifies and fulfills that mysterious sense called the aesthetic—gives man his deepest fulfillment and satisfaction. Beauty never sates. Its horizons are limitless. A fit inhabitant of eternity. During the history of man since the fall, on this sin-shrouded planet, consider how much of the world’s beauty has been called forth by man’s yearning to worship God by directing his creative genius to God in praise and thanksgiving. Among pagans, the religious instinct has been the chief instigator of aesthetic creativity, and some have even suggested (Robert Graves is one, in his quirky but brilliant book The White Goddess) that all poetry is, knowingly or unknowingly, a form of worship of the deity. Even at the purely human level, no impulse of artistic creativity has been more powerful or more pervasive than the artist’s desire to please, celebrate, and (if profanely) worship the object of his love with the works of his hands, shaped by beauty.

Multiply the worth of the person adored by infinity, as God is infinitely to be adored; release the aesthetic impulse from confusion, the clogs of dull senses, and the erosion of age and disease; place both in an environment of eternity—and one may perhaps capture some sense of what the priestly role will forever mean in the kingdom of heaven. (And in hell? No thing and no one to be loved, and hence no impulse or desire for aesthetic creativity; no knowledge of the meaning of the word beauty, or even if there be such a thing. And as for the singing of “endless hosannas” so feared by some, let there be no concern. The glorious priestly music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Verdi, and others in their thousands will never once disrupt the gloomy silence, or the noisy din, of the dolorous regions, nor any melody of man or bird mar an eternity of self-loathing.)

In this life the priestly role necessarily and crucially worships God through tears, telling us of the alienation of sin, of repentance, and of sacrifice. But those shadows will vanish, leaving only the light of praise and adoration. “Ye are … a royal priesthood,” writes Peter. And to what end? “… that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). God has provided that our highest duty and service should also be our greatest joy. “And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: and they shall see his face … and they shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22:3–5).

Calvin D. Linton is professor of English literature and dean of Columbian College, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. He holds the A.B. from George Washington and the A.M. and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins.

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