Redeemed Earth, immaterial Heaven, or neither/both?
I’m reading again “Surprised by Hope” by N. T. Wright, and reading “A New Heaven and a New Earth” by J. Richard Middleton.
Both authors emphasize that Christian eschatology affirms the resurrection of the body in a redeemed Earth. Many Christians believe that the immaterial, immortal souls of the righteous go to an immaterial Heaven after death, but this is not what Christian eschatology says. The concepts of immortal souls and immaterial Heaven come from other belief systems that “contaminated” early Christianity.
Wright and Middleton ground their arguments in the Bible and the history of early Christianity.
The two pictures of:
- Resurrected bodies in a redeemed Earth; and
- Immortal souls in an immaterial Heaven
seem very different and incompatible. The first picture is this-worldly, and the second picture is other-worldly. But could both pictures be valid?
A circle and a rectangle are two very different things. A circle is not a rectangle, and a rectangle is not a circle. Right?
But think of a 3-dimensional cylinder casting different shadows on different planes. The cylinder can cast a rectangular shadow on one plane, and a circular shadow on another plane.
The cylinder itself is neither a rectangle nor a circle, but a 3-dimensional object that can’t be captured by 2-dimensional descriptions. However, both the circle and the rectangle capture an important aspect of the cylinder, if not the whole. So both pictures are valid, if incomplete.
Moving from a small 2-dimensional world to a big 3-dimensional world makes the two pictures incomplete but compatible.
Similarly, Christianity is all about this world, BUT this world is much bigger than we think. This makes room for other-worldly pictures.
The physical world that we perceive is a small part of the much bigger physical world that contemporary science is beginning to unveil [*].
There could be dark matter and dark energy that we don’t perceive. Inflationary cosmology suggests a multiverse of bubble universes. Quantum mechanics suggests a multiverse of parallel worlds. Quantum field theory suggests that deep physical reality is “wholly other” and non-local in space and time. String theory suggests that the world we perceive could be a “brane” in a physical world with many more dimensions, alongside other braneworlds with exotic physical laws and forms of matter. See my book [*] for more.
Back to the Bible, I think “Earth” is meant to indicate the physical world. Therefore, I think “redeeming the Earth” indicates some sort of cosmic re-engineering of the physical world with all its dimensions, braneworlds, bubbles, dark and exotic matter/energy, parallel branches of reality and other even weirder things that future science will gradually unveil.
I don’t know God’s plans, but let me make up a toy picture:
God builds a 5-dimensional (or maybe 6-dimensional, or whatever) braneworld and transfers the consciousness of sentient creatures, perhaps subject to certain conditions, to exotic matter substrates in the braneworld.
The exotic matter and physical laws in the braneworld are such to permit individual sentient creatures to last forever in incorruptible, imperishable, and immortal bodies.
Is this a redeemed Earth? Sure it is, because the braneworld is part of the physical world.
Is this an immaterial Heaven? Sure it is, because the braneworld is not part of the physical world that we perceive, and its matter is not our matter.
This is entirely consistent with Christian theology, which emphasizes that our resurrected bodies will be physical bodies made of new matter with new properties (see my book [*], Chapter 3). Following Paul, Middleton emphasizes that the future resurrection body “will be incorruptible, imperishable, and immortal.” This requires wholly other matter and physics.
God could “manually” transfer sentient creatures to the braneworld upon death, but it seems plausible that God’s physical laws to do this automatically, perhaps subject to certain conditions. This is close to the idea of immortal souls that go to Heaven after death.
Are the souls of the dead in Heaven “right now” at this moment? If deep physical reality is non-local in time, then our concept of now doesn’t work for this picture, and things can be co-present in ways that our intuition is not equipped to see. So I guess yes, we can think that the souls of the dead are in Heaven now.
In conclusion, I think that the two different and apparently incompatible pictures of:
- Resurrected bodies in a redeemed Earth; and
- Immortal souls in an immaterial Heaven
are partly valid pictures of a neither/both reality that our intuition is not equipped to see.
This is related to the treatment of simulation cosmology in my book [*] (Chapter 22). The world is one, BUT the simulation hypothesis still provides a coherent and useful picture.
So feel free to believe in your favorite picture, and to suspend disbelief in the other.
I’m in total agreement with Wright and Middleton on another important point emphasized in their books: Our task is not to worship God, but to help God and to take good care of God’s creation.
Today, we can (and must) help God by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, protecting the environment of the Earth, and beginning to expand beyond the Earth. Tomorrow, we’ll help God in redeeming the universe and resurrecting the dead.
[*] My book “Tales of the Turing Church: Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology” is available for readers to buy on Amazon (Kindle | paperback).
Please buy my book, and/or donate to support other Turing Church projects.
Cover picture from Wikimedia Commons, picture from Sergey Galyonkin/Flickr.
