Sense & Nonsense

I recently finished reading Sense & Nonsense About Heaven & Hell by Kenneth D. Boa and Robert Bowman Jr (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007). It’s a brief book surveying various beliefs and misconceptions about heaven, hell, the soul, and other subjects from an Evangelical point of view. To one who doesn’t adhere to the authors’ belief system, it is still beneficial to see how they interact with several different arguments and beliefs of groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses (a book involving Bowman is surely to include discussions about Jehovah’s Witnesses), Mormons, Universalists, and others. Below I will briefly survey a couple of the more interesting points that I found.

Chapter 2 entitled, The First Person You Meet in Heaven (pgs. 16-26), proposes (and rightfully so) that the only way to truly know about heaven is by seeing what Jesus said about it. The authors supports this idea with the following claims, namely, (1) “Jesus is the only human being who lived in Heaven before becoming human,” (2) “Jesus knew more about Heaven than anyone else who has ever lived,” (3) and that “Heaven is not a state of our minds, but a real spiritual realm populated by personal beings” (p. 17). The latter point was directed to those who suggest heaven is merely a state of mind or an inner feeling (mysticism, in essence).

Some of the more interesting points in this chapter are found on page 23 where the authors say “[o]ur resurrection bodies will be like Christ’s” and “[i]n the resurrection we will be glorified, immortal people.” With regards to the “resurrection bodies” being “like Christ’s,” it is important to remember that the authors view Christ’s body as a heavenly/divine, glorified human body in heaven. So, the authors mean that the believers in Christ will also attain a glorified, divine human body as well (from a Jehovah’s Witnesses perspective, this appears to combine/fuse the earthly and heavenly hope together).

“Heaven,” according to the authors, is “a place where glorified people will live in immortal bodies with both heavenly and earthly aspects” (p. 26). This description only begs one to ask: Can what Evangelicals call “Heaven” be a place, where the angels and God himself reside, since heaven has not always been “a place where glorified people” with “immortal bodies with both heavenly and earthly aspects” have lived? From their statement on page 26, the implied answer is no, and therefore heaven hasn’t always been heaven, which of course is a problem for anyone’s theology.

Chapter 17, which is the last chapter in the book, is also worth discussing (as are many other chapters in the book, but for brevity’s sake, this will be last chapter discussed for this entry’s purposes). On page 159 the authors write:

“When we die- if we are Christians- we go to be with Christ. Since Christ is in Heaven, evidently believers go to Heaven when they die. However, this is not their ‘final destination.’”

From the above quote we see that in the Evangelicals’ theology, “Heaven” is merely an intermediate state where Christians go for a certain amount of time, since it isn’t their “final destination.” The authors further write:

“When believers are in Heaven following their death, they do not have physical bodies but they await their resurrection at the end of history.” (160)

Since heaven is not the Christian’s “final destination,” they are later given “physical bodies” on the New Earth at the resurrection. It appears, then, that in their theology a Christian dies, goes to heaven for a while, then comes back to earth for the resurrection in a glorified, physical heavenly and earthly body.

The question that needs to be asked is very simple, but ultra vital. If Christians die and go to heaven to be in an intermediate state, why would a resurrection be necessary since Christians are already alive in heaven?

Fortunately, the authors give an answer:

“Some people wonder why anyone who is already living with the Lord in Heaven would want or need to be resurrected from the dead. The answer is that we were not meant to live in a disembodied state in a purely spiritual Heaven. God created humans beings to live as embodied being on Earth. Our Spiritual, intermediate state of rest in Heaven will be better than our trouble mortal life now, but it will not be nearly as wonderful as our resurrected, glorified embodied stat on the future New Earth.” (p. 161)

So there we have it. Christians alive in heaven whom are “with the Lord,” need to be resurrected because they weren’t “meant to live in a disembodied state in a purely spiritual Heaven.” Personally, I don’t buy that explanation for several reasons but even if we grant it, I think there’s still another problem. Indeed, if humans were not mean to live in a “purely spiritual Heaven”, then why does God call people, specifically Christians, to live “in a disembodied state” in the “intermediate state”? What is the point or purpose of the “intermediate state” in heaven if that is not the eternal place of Christians and if they weren’t mean to live (or be) there in the first place?

In Protestant/Evangelical/Trinitarian theology, the so called “intermediate state” has taken up the place, role, and expectation of the heavenly hope. That is how Evangelicals account for the heavenly hope in the Bible. To them, this hope is a mere “intermediate state”, which, according to our authors, Christians “were not meant” to live there in the first place!

In conclusion, this book is good to have as a resource for which we can use to interact with their arguments dealing with issues pertaining to heaven, hell, and related subjects. Aside from that, I personally don't see many uses for it.