The Christian hope in the ultimate realization of the reign of God and of God’s complete victory over all the forces that oppose God is based on God’s decisive victory over sin and evil, and God’s inauguration of a new existence for the fallen creation through the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. To put the matter in terms of the doctrine of creation, the Christian faith in the ultimate actualization of what God intended for humanity and for the whole creation is rooted in the faithfulness and power of God in accomplishing the end for which God originally created the world. The biblical witness uses a number of symbols (including “heaven,” “a new heaven and a new earth”) to refer to the state of creation in which God is “all in all” (Rev. 4:10; 21:1; 1 Cor. 15:28). In articulating a brief eschatology in Asian American context, I make use of two basic ideas (the progressive nature of heaven and Christ’s continuing mediating role in heaven) in the eschatology of colonial American theologian Jonathan Edwards.
In terms of what we know as human beings, one wonders if there is any hope for the future of humanity and of the universe. As a marginalized racial minority, many Asian Americans wonder whether racism will ever be eradicated from human societies. Some scientists speak about the gradual entropy of the universe. But the Christian hope in the future of the created world is not based on any scientific knowledge, nor is the realization of this hope thought to be based on human abilities and efforts. The Christian hope is grounded in the Hebrew people’s and Christians’ experience of the faithfulness of God who is the creator of life itself. Only God’s creative action, not human striving, can bring about the realization of God’s own purpose for the creation. This, however, does not mean that human beings have no role to play in the realization of God’s will on earth. God, rather, works in and through human efforts. Human striving, therefore, by God’s grace can participate in what God is doing to bring about God’s reign.
What is the nature of heaven or “the new heaven and the new earth”? As Jonathan Edwards would say, heaven is a dynamic and “progressive” state.1 As noted earlier, the end for which God created the world is to repeat God’s inner-trinitarian beauty and communion ad extra, that is, in time and space. Since the beauty of God’s loving communion ad intra is infinite, and temporality and space and the human beings who live in time and space finite (i.e., of a limited capacity), it will take an everlasting time for God’s end in creation to be accomplished fully. As Edwards notes, the point in time will never come when God’s project of repeating God’s internal glory in finite time is ever completed.
Therefore, the history of fallen humanity will come to an end at the eschaton, the last day of this history. But history as such will continue in a new heaven and a new earth. The history of God’s redemption of fallen humanity will come to an end. But the history of God’s repetition of God’s internal beauty in time and space will continue. The degree of the actualization of God’s project to repeat God’s internal glory in time and space will become closer and closer to the infinite degree but will never come to an identity with God’s internal glory itself.2
It is not that one event of the repetition of God’s internal loving communion in time and space through the sanctified Christians’ loving communion with God through Christ is not a true and real repetition of God’s internal glory. It is, rather, that God’s internal glory is infinite, and human capacity only finite, that it will take a never-ending and ever-increasing repetition of God’s glory in time to realize God’s end in creation. Therefore, new repetitions of God’s glory in time and space must be “added” to the earlier ones, so that there will be an ever-increasing repetition of God’s glory in time and space. God’s essential nature is God’s eternal disposition to actualize God’s inner loving communion both ad intra and ad extra.3 God’s repeated exercises of God’s disposition is what underlies the everlasting repetition of God’s glory in heaven.
The sanctified persons in heaven are happy in their participation in God’s loving communion in time and space. But this happiness is not a state of a satiated and dull happiness. The believers’ happiness in heaven is, rather, a true and satisfied happiness that at the same time has a joyous hope for future additions of more happiness as they look toward the future repetitions of God’s loving communion. Their hope is not an anxious and apprehensive hope but a joyous hope because there is a certainty that those future additions to happiness will occur.
As the biblical symbol “a new heaven and a new earth” indicates, the physical dimension of the creation, including the bodies of human beings, is included in heaven. Human beings see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, except that their capacities are drastically improved.4
The incarnation of the second person of the Trinity continues. Jesus Christ with his human body continues in heaven the work of mediating human beings’ experience of the redeeming communitas with the gracious God in Jesus Christ. In heaven liminality continues to exist, although marginalization no longer occurs. The liminality of Jesus Christ in heaven consists of emptying himself of his status as the second person of the Trinity and assuming a humble human form. In this sense, Jesus Christ stands outside of his structure in meeting human beings. Those who would follow Jesus also meet him in his liminal space through their own liminality. Whatever structure human beings may have in heaven, they leave that structure behind in meeting with Jesus. Out of their meeting with Jesus in this liminal space, a loving communitas experience occurs. In and through this communitas experience with Jesus Christ the believers experience the gracious and loving God, the Father of Jesus Christ. This experience of a loving communion with God in Jesus Christ happens again and again. Each time, communion with God becomes more and more intimate.
This loving communion, of course, includes the believers’ perception of the beauty of God as a God of loving communion. The emphasis here is on the believers’ being accepted into God’s loving communion rather than the medieval notion of “seeing God” (beatific vision), although, as noted above, entering into a loving communion with God includes the “seeing” of God’s beauty as the God of loving communion.
In this way, Jesus Christ continues in heaven his role of mediating the communion with the transcendent God for finite humanity.5 The continued incarnation of the second person of the Trinity and his mediating work is necessary because God’s end for creation is the ever-increasing repetition of God’s inner-trinitarian communion in and through the human believers’ loving communion with God and their neighbors.
The believing human beings’ communion with God in Jesus Christ is the primary reality in heaven, but they also have other relationships that are not directly a relationship with God. Theologian Daniel L. Migliore points out that heaven must be a place where society and institutions also exist in their perfected form.6 Human society and institutions will continually be engaged in a dialectic between communitas and structure. Those persons who belong to them must meet each other in liminal spaces and experience communitas. And when they return to the structure of the groups, those who return continually help imbue those groups with a loving communal spirit. So the inhabitants of heaven will have communitas experiences that are not directly a communitas experience of God. But the loving communal spirit of believers’ communitas with God would pervade the ethos of all groups and communities in heaven, so that God is indeed “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). In the fallen world, the spirit of communitas is never completely taken into the structure. But in heaven, structure is completely imbued with the communal and egalitarian spirit of communitas.
The particularity of human and social existence would not be abolished in heaven. The unity that prevails there will not be a static uniformity but a communal unity that embraces particularity. The author of the book of Revelation writes that in heaven “there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands” (Rev. 7:9). Particular “peoples” and “languages” will exist in heaven. But there is no hierarchy whereby certain peoples are nobler than others and certain languages more universal than others. All stand before “the Lamb” as equal beneficiaries of God’s forgiving grace.
In the fallen world, some groups of people believe that they are superior to others and that what they think and believe should be the standard for all people. They believe they are “universal” and forget their “particularity.” Theologian Benjamin Reist expresses his hope that the white population in the United States will realize their particularity, as follows:
And the road to inexhaustible freedom for whites involves becoming neither black nor red, but white, for the first time. It involves becoming white as liberated into particularity, the particularity of being one component in the full mosaic that is humanity; becoming white in such a way that white cannot be white unless red and black are equally present in the historical space that is human liberation.7
Particularity, of course, should not be absolutized. Some unity that preserves particularity must be achieved if all particulars are going to flourish. The point is that no particular be allowed to establish itself as the hegemonic, the universal.
The element of continuity in what God accomplishes through sanctified persons in heaven and this world makes what happens in human history here on earth a matter of ultimate importance. In some theological perspectives, heaven and this world are dualistically conceived in such a way that what happens in this world is ultimately not important in contrast to what happens in the “really real” world of heaven. In such a dualistic perspective, human suffering in this world is not taken with an ultimate seriousness and is sometimes regarded as worthwhile trials that will be compensated by great blessings in heaven. Today, many thinkers, theological and otherwise, reject this kind of belittling of this-worldly existence. One of the main characters in Albert Camus’s novel The Plague, after watching all night the torturous suffering to which a plague-stricken child is subjected, is moved to ask, “For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate a single moment’s human suffering?”8
The vision of the everlasting life outlined in this chapter does not belittle this-worldly life here on earth in time and space. This is so because God’s repetitions of God’s internal communion in and through the human communion with God in Jesus Christ here on earth are in the same series with such repetitions in heaven. God’s repetitions of God’s internal communion in this history count toward the totality of such repetitions that will finally accomplish the end for which God created the world. Every formation of loving communion with God in Jesus and with other human beings and also the physical universe in this history, just as much as such formations in heaven, counts toward the accomplishment of God’s project of enlarging God’s beauty ad extra.
The Christian hope for “the new heaven and the new earth,” therefore, can never be an excuse for being indifferent to suffering and injustice in this life here and now. On the contrary, the hope for future fulfillment should function as the basis for a greater incentive to struggle against injustice and to alleviate suffering. As theologian Jürgen Moltmann puts it, “Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is …, for the goal of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.”9