Revision as of 14:26, 10 November 2009

Index to Claims made in Chapter 12: Heaven and Hell

by Marc A. Schindler

McKeever and Johnson state that the LDS believe that "a person is destined for one of six places after death," by which they mean Perdition, or Outer Darkness, the Telestial Kingdom, the Terrestrial Kingdom, and the three levels of the Celestial Kingdom. By failing at the outset to make the critical distinction that these destinies are not determined until after the Judgment, not just after death, they sow the first seeds of confusion which permeate this chapter.

On page 172 McKeever and Johnson make the first error of "preaching to the choir" in the chapter, when they write that the key to understanding LDS soteriology is to "examine the biblical proof texts the Latter-day Saints use...to support their views." Anyone who understands the Restored Gospel will know that we do not base our doctrine upon proof texts1 from the Bible (or anywhere else, for that matter), but upon latter-day revelation. Since we do not believe our teachings contradict the Bible, it is quite normal (even normative) that we would preach from the scriptures, but they are the reflection of our doctrine, not its source-a confusion all too easy for a Biblicist to make, for whom the relationship between doctrine and scripture goes exactly the other way around. Heaven, salvation & Exaltation

The first alleged "proof text" examined by McKeever and Johnson is 1 Corinthians 15:40, "There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial...". They say that in light of verse 41, where Paul makes the comparison between the light of the sun, the moon and the stars as a simile for the difference in glories between the three kingdoms, that "many scholars believe that Paul was referring to heavenly bodies such as the moon, sun, and stars." Well, yes-that is the whole point of a simile. If I say my true love's eyes are like almonds, I am not writing an agronomy treatise, but, yes, I am referring to almonds. Paul's analogy works like this: "There are A, B, and C...so too is the resurrection of the dead (verse 42)"-a classic simile. To misunderstand such a fundamental literary feature as a simile does not bode well for McKeever and Johnson's understanding of the even more sophisticated literary forms that Paul often employs.

While McKeever and Johnson don't mention the literature-deprived scholars they refer to by name, it so happens that there is plenty of scholarly support for a resurrection of varying degrees of glory. Orr and Walther even title the section of their commentary on this section "Analogies," and write,

Like Immanuel Kant, Paul transfers his vision from the earth to the sky and points out that the myriad bodies there differ from each other and from the earth. Presumably he has in mind that the heavenly bodies shine with their own light while the earthly ones have only reflected light.2 He gives no further indication of his astronomical thought, and obviously his data are critically limited. Since his express purpose is only to show that many possibilities are open in the realm of reality, his analogy provides a valid illustration.3

Likewise Thiselton, pointing out a switch in language which will resonate with Latter-day Saints' understanding of the difference between "body" in a purely physical sense (Greek sarx) and "soul" in the sense of body and spirit (Greek sóma):

The shift from [sarx; physical body] (v. 39) to [soma; soul] (v. 40) is marked by the introduction of of [doxa; glory or splendour] and the allusion to bodies that are super-earthly. Whereas flesh had emphasized the diversity of the 'stuff' of creation, body now calls attention to diversities of form and character. In Calvin's words, the comparison of v. 39 serve the same purpose as those of vv. 37-38 but add the implication that 'whatever diversity we perceive in any particular kind (in quoqua specie) is a sort of foreshadowing of the resurrection....' Chrysostom, Theodoret, Ambrosiaster, and Augustine construe vv. 39 and 40 as clearly anticipating the distinctions supposedly implied by v. 41b, i.e., differences in 'honor' even between individual believers at the resurrection, but this goes beyond the explicit sense of these verses. Tertullian, too, sees Paul's argument here (vv. 39-40) as a decisive logical repudiation of Marcion's wish to substitute a notion of the soul's immortality for bodily resurrection: 'Does he not guarantee that the resurrection shall be accomplished by that God from whom proceed all the examples,' i.e., of diversity within creation and of transformation. Tertullian rightly places the emphasis upon God and God's's [sic] resourcefulness as Creator as the ground of this faith.4

Incidentally, Thiselton goes on to consider the argument that McKeever and Johnson apparently refer to, that Paul is referring simply to the fact that the resurrected will dwell with God in the heavenly regions (in a cosmological sense), but dismiss it on the grounds that the word Paul uses to translate "body" when he refers to resurrected bodies-and his distinction is clear and consistent-is "soma," a word not applicable to a mere physical body like a planet or star:

However, some interpreters object that Paul would not use [sóma] of an impersonal entity, and that to apply this to astronomical 'bodies' either imports a modern meaning of [sóma]or presupposes a view of astral bodies as quasi-personal, as reflected in some non-Christian first-century religions. Meyer and Findlay, among others, argue this forcefully, insisting that Paul alludes to bodies of angels in v. 40, appealing to supposed parallels in Matt 22:10 and Luke 20:36.5

Thus does this eminent Protestant scholar consign McKeever and Johnson's defense to the scrap heap of heresy, even within Protestantism's definition of heresy.

This leaves one possible gap, which, mind you, McKeever and Johnson don't even try to exploit, but for the sake of completeness, and also because the reference deals with their weak parenthetical attempt to link "terrestrial bodies" to the "flesh of men, beasts, fishes, and birds," we'll consider it here. This whole passage in 1 Corinthians 15 talks about the resurrection, specifically, not necessarily about Heaven, per se. However, Paul is talking about the future in a general, soteriological sense (the process of salvation as a whole), and is using the resurrection as the première, or epitome for the whole post-earthly experience. Thiselton explains that Paul's sermon is not to be taken in a strictly time-related locative way (located at a specific point in time):

On the other hand, the three pairs of contrasts-decay and its absence or reversal, humiliation and splendor, and an ordinary human body and a body constituted by the Spirit-give solid ground for conceiving of the postresurrection made of life as a purposive and dynamic crescendo of life, since the living God who acts purposively decrees this fitting mode, rather than envisaging some static ending in which the raised body is forever trapped, as if in the last 'frozen' frame of a film or movie. In the biblical writings the Spirit is closely associated with ongoing vitality, which Paul takes up in v. 45b...

The one necessary exegetical caveat is to note that realm of the Spirit (i.e., [pneumatikon; "spirit-directed"] does not mean primarily the nonphysical realm (although it certainly includes this), but what befits the transformation of character or pattern of existence effected by the Holy Spirit. Here the biological analogies of transforming a bare seed or grain into fruit, flower, or harvest may take on an aesthetic dimension for illustrative purposes to underline (a) contrast; (b) continuity of identity; and (c) full and radical transformation of form and character.6

McKeever and Johnson then say, "One thing for sure, there is no mention of 'bodies telestial.'" No, not in so many words, but Paul's simile is quite clearly tripartite, using the symbolism of the sun, the earth and the stars, so "telestial" (meaning "stellar," or "of stars") is hardly out of harmony with the verse. Because of their Biblicist background, they accuse Joseph Smith of a rather barefaced attempt to "bolster his erroneous doctrine" by inserting the word into the Joseph Smith Translation. However, it's well known that people in the nineteenth century often made what are technically called paraphrases (Thomas Jefferson made one of the New Testament which reflected his proto-Unitarian beliefs, for instance). A paraphrase is not a translation in the secular sense of looking at texts in other languages and then redacting (editing and recombing) the various texts and rendering the resultant consensus in the target language, and this latter, modern sense of translation has never been claimed by Latter-day Saints on behalf of the Joseph Smith Translation-it is, in fact, not canonical for precisely that reason (that is, his paraphrase as a study project was interrupted by his martyrdom so is incomplete at best). In any case, the term fits doctrinally and in the sense of the language Paul uses here, and its insertion would be problematic only for Biblicists (in other words, this is yet another error of "preaching to the choir"). The LDS Concept of Heaven is Biblical

The next "proof text" McKeever and Johnson consider is 2 Corinthians 12:2-4: "I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such a one caught up to the third heaven..."

They start off in their usual way, with the circular assumption that we are basing our doctrines upon passages like this, rather than teaching doctrine from the scriptures, which is not quite the same thing.. They then skim lightly over the scholarly tradition of Jews in a rather evasive way with the claim:

Using these passages to validate the idea of three kingdoms making up heaven ignores the Jewish tradition Paul would have known. According to that tradition, paradise was the abode of God, the place of eternal joy for God's people. However, Jewish custom never viewed a first or second heaven as alternative eternal destinations. Rather, these referred to the atmospheric heaven (the sky) and the galactic heaven (the universe).7

If this sounds remarkably, even anachronistically modern, it's because it is. It turns out not to be Jewish at all: their reference is to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment-era Protestant commentator Matthew Henry, who writes:

It was certainly a very extraordinary honour done him: in some sense he was caught up into the third heaven, the heaven of the blessed, above the aerial heaven, in which the fowls fly, above the starry heaven, which is adorned with those glorious orbs: it was into the third heaven, where God most eminently manifests His glory.8

Such a glaring error leads me to believe that perhaps they don't think people will check their footnotes-another sign of the "down-market" audience for which their book seems to be intended.

Even before we examine the Jewish custom that Paul actually would have been exposed to (we can, I trust, excuse Paul for not being exposed to Matthew Henry's commentary), let me point out that even Protestant views about what the "third heaven" is are all over the theological map. (McKeever and Johnson here commit yet another act of co-opting, but this time at the expense of other Protestants.) According to Ronald R. Day, of "Restoration Light,"9 the first world and heaven were the pre-Flood universe, the second world and heaven are the ones we live in now, and the third world and heaven are yet to come after Christ's second coming.10

While it is true that many conservative Protestant groups accept this modern, anachronistic view of Matthew Henry's of an atmospheric heaven, a stellar heaven, and a divine Heaven, not all Protestants believe this is the only possible interpretation. A question-and-answer session on the Website of a relatively liberal non-denominational church known as The Rock shows that many Protestants are acquainted with the genuinely ancient traditions, as given in pseudepigraphal works such as the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Testament of Levi, to the effect that there was a kind of hierarchy of spiritual heavens.11 The New Testament pseudepigraphal work The Apocalypse of Paul also has this tradition. (See below for specific quotations.)

Glass admits that whereas "Some of the noncanonical writings give detailed descriptions of multiple heavens, up to seven more more [,] Paul was not necessarily thinking of these when he wrote of his mystical transport into the third Heaven (2 Cor. 12.2); an alternate explanation is that the expression indicates a high degree of spiritual exaltation."12 So we can take our pick: either ancient Jews believed in a hierarchical series of heavens, and a visionary trip through them was a common theme of Jewish (and even Christian) apocalyptic writings, or Paul was using the "third heaven" as the epitome of the highest degree of exaltation-exactly as Latter-day Saints would put it.

In any case, regarding the atmospheric model espoused by Matthew Henry, while some Greeks believed in a variant of this (such as Pythagoras and others), ancient Jews believed no such thing. Did the modern, anachronistic Biblicist view come from a neo-Hellenistic (early post-Christian era Greek philosophies) source, as so much of modern creedal Christian doctrines have, or is this just a coincidence? That's a subject for further study, and outside the scope of this review. History of the Belief in a Three-part Heaven

Let's take a look at what Jews and early Christians really believed. Before we start, let's point out that simply mining the Church Fathers and pseudepigrapha for references that defend one's point of view is akin to proof-texting and in and of itself, doesn't prove anything. However, even finding one reference in the patristic and pseudepigraphal writings is sufficient to destroy an "argument from absence". That is, if McKeever and Johnson say, in effect, "Jews and early Christians never believed x" and we succeed in finding even one solitary reference to x then we have proven their assertion wrong. Proving that it was a common or even normative (authoritative or orthodox) belief is something else altogether, but fortunately McKeever and Johnson's style of criticism tends to lean towards the absolute: things are either all or nothing. And this kind of position is easy to demolish.

Having said that, it so happens that there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to sources contemporary with or within a few centuries of Paul, sources that showed consistently what ancient Christians and Jews believed in-enough, as it happens, to establish not just an objection to an argument from absence, but an actual consensus. And that consensus is exactly the opposite of what McKeever and Johnson claim. The following sections examine only a sample of quotes both from modern commentaries and ancient sources to show that the normative belief of early post-Apostolic Christianity and contemporary Judaism was in a multi-tiered Heaven in the LDS sense of different mansions corresponding with the achievement of different levels of earthly valour. Modern Christian Scholarly Commentary: The Anchor Bible

Orr and Walther have this commentary on the term "third heaven":

The third heaven. The original text (=a) of T Levi [Testament of Levi] 2:7-10; 3:1-4 seems to have conceived of the heavenly spheres as three in number, in the third of which Levi found himself standing in the presence of the Lord and his glory. Later, however, this material was re-worked to refer to a set of four additional heavens, conforming the narrative to the common Jewish and Christian tradition about seven heavens, as in Apoc Mos [Apocalypse of Moses] 35:2; 2 Enoch 3-20; b. Hag [Babylonian Talmud tractate of Hagiga]; Ascension of Isaiah; Apoc Paul [Apocalypse of Paul] 29, etc...The otherworldly journey is a common feature in ancient apocalyptic literature.13 Modern Christian Commentary: Daniélou (Roman Catholic)

The LDS commentator Seiach14 quotes,

Jean Daniélou [a Roman Catholic theologian and cardinal] has recently shown that contemporary Jews had further developed this three-step attainment of God's glory into a system of three heavens: the heaven of God, the heaven of stars, and the heaven of meteors.15 ....

That this three-tiered heavenly world was also recognized by the original Christians is evidenced by the Savior's mysterious saying that the 'seed of the Kingdom' (i.e. the saved) would bring forth fruit 'some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold' (Mt. 13:8, 23). That this was also an esoteric doctrine, is suggested by the fact that it was introduced by the usual covert signal: 'Who hath ears, let him hear' (Mt. 13:9). As might be expected, 'orthodoxy' soon forgot it, either expanding the three heavens to seven (see below), or reducing them to a single place reserved for 'all' who are 'saved by grace,' without further effort on their part.

Nevertheless, for several centuries, the original Church continued to speak of a graduated system of heavens and rewards, just as the Saviour had taught (Mt. 16:27). The very early Church Father, Papias, for example, understood that the Saviour's three degrees of 'fruitfulness' (Mt. 13:8, 23) corresponded to the Pauline three 'heavens' or 'glories' (1 Cor. 15:41). According to him (as recorded in the first century account of Polycarp),16 the 'Elders' agreed that 'Those who are deemed worthy of an abode in Heaven shall go there, others shall enjoy the delights of Paradise, and others shall possess the splendor of the City.17 For everywhere the Saviour will be seen, according as they shall be worthy who see him. But that there is this distinction between the habitation of those who produce an hundredfold, and that of those who produce sixtyfold, and that of those who produce thirtyfold; for the first will be taken up into Heaven; the second class will dwell in Paradise, and the last will inhabit the City; and that on this account the Lord said, 'In my house are many mansions,' for all things belong to God, who supplies all with a suitable dwelling place, even as his word says, that a share is given to all by the Father, according as each is or shall be worthy (Relics of the Elders, 5).

By the 'Elders' Papias meant the Primitive Community, including the Apostles, whose oral traditions he had diligently preserved as he himself heard them. 'If anyone chanced to be a fellow of the Elders,' he wrote, 'I would enquire as to their discourse, what Andrew, or what Peter said, or what Philip, or what Thomas or James or what John or what Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples...For I did not think that things out of books could profit me so much as the utterances of a voice which liveth and abideth.'18

Modern Christian Commentary: Disley (Mainstream Protestant)