Heaven: A History

by Colleen McDannell

Looks at images of heaven developed in poetry, art, literature, and popular culture and describes the concept of heaven in modern Christianity

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Angels

410 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

No, this is not another bowlful of treacle from Mitch Albom. Rather, it is the history of how we got to Albom (who in this instance stands in for all those who market the eternal life approach to grappling with death), of how an idea that sprouted in the Israelite kingdom more than two-and-a-half millennia ago grew large enough to seize the imagination of a large portion of the world. The discussion in the book is limited to the Judeo-Christian heritage, with sidebars on Roman antecedents. (So no excursions to the Buddhist Pure Land, or even to the Islamic gardens of perpetual bliss). As it turns out, once someone is committed to writing up or even painting the Heaven, there is a surfeit of conceptual and even logistical details to sort out. “Heaven: A History” is a recounting of the ways people have attempted to resolve these problems over time, standing on the shoulders of selected giants and blithely ignoring the others. Some of these conceptual issues are: Even if the soul is immortal, what happens to the body? If there are bodies, do deceased babies grow up, do old people return to their youth? Are clothes needed or does the body return to the initial state of Adam and Eve? One key incentive to devising a Heaven is that it is a means of seeing deceased family members and friends once more. Even Erasmus envisioned St. Jerome welcoming a recently-dead friend with colored robes and a discussion comparing notes on Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Do social relationships make the transition to the afterlife? (Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang quote Jesus’ answer to a question posed by the Sadducees—which of several brother-husbands a much-widowed woman would be with in Heaven; Jesus replied that there is no marriage in Heaven, giving his explicators centuries of trouble trying to explain what he really meant.) The troubadours, with their cult of romantic love, had to work out how it balanced with religious devotion. Then there is Christianity’s ecclesiastic class system (divided into angels, saints, martyrs and the merely pious and obedient) and how they would be arranged in the heavenly audience hall (itself a chore for the imagination). Early Christian writers also grappled with issues like the growing class of saints and how to those who did not quite make the grade (the answer: Purgatory, which the Protestants characteristically chose to eliminate). Emmanuel Swedenborg, of all people, seems to have set off a post-Lutheran and Calvinist trend of repopulation. And what of the souls, do they continue to improve and learn in spiritual terms? What does the place look like? The ascetics of Late Antiquity favored a bucolic but work-free setting, but during the 12th century, when the cities started to grow again, Heaven started to look urban. The Romantics, with their dislike of industrial cities, made Heaven rustic again. The consensus is that Heaven is located above, which raises the question of how to arrive—levitation, of course, for the dead, but what of those who relay the message? Savonarola favored a ladder, Dante placed it at the top of Mount Purgatory. And what does one do after arriving and throughout the rest of eternity (including the vexing question of how to describe the actual relationship with God)? The harps and clouds image turns out to be fairly recent. Thomas Aquinas, naturally, favored contemplation of the divine. Fra Angelico painted the residents dancing. One intrepid fundamentalist preacher felt it necessary to issue a pamphlet rebutting the idea that eternal life would be boring. In early Hebrew versions, life was not eternal. In this recounting, the early Hebrew conceptions did not differ all that much from most tribes: there were a multitude of gods and the dead were consigned to the underworld. King Hezekiah, at least partially in response to the external threat of the Assyrians, elevated Yahweh as the supreme and only God who would arrive to save his people. The existence of a singular god meant no more worship of ancestors, who were banished to darkness (hence the pessimistic view of Job and Ecclesiastes). This view was deflated by the removal to Babylonia, which helped create the idea of a reward in the afterlife; McDannell and Lang argue that the Hebrews were influenced by Zoroastrians the exiles met during the captivity. Later contacts with the Greeks and Romans resulted in the adoption of the notion of the eternal soul. By the time Jesus came on the scene, there was no consensus at all: Pharisees (Epicureans, according to McDannell and Lang), Sadducees (again, according to McDannell and Lang, upper-class Hebrews interested in a good life sanctioned by ritual and tradition—hence the legalistic question on heavenly marriage posed to the upstart Jesus). And the ascetic Essenes. It was a time of unusually great religious ferment (or at least it appears so; the New Testament mention of sects—however negative--and the discovery of the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea texts may give us a more complete view of competing religious ideas than we have for earlier eras). These were the ideas that a succession of Christian leaders—Paul and the Gospel writers, followed by a host of interpreters through the millenia—shaped for the new religion. Strictly for purposes of this book, the advent of printing is not an advantage—the democratization of theorizing about the afterlife opened up the debate to an unmanageably large host of commentators, most of them less imaginative and interesting, if frequently louder, voices. (The discussions of William Blake and Emily Dickinson are unexpected and welcome interruptions in the procession of unexciting reverends.) Left undiscussed is the impact of modern physics on cosmologists, perhaps because the notion of a physical heaven may have no place in it. Still, it would be interesting to see what kind of thought experiment Stephen Hawking might devise to evaluate the possibility of Heaven. It seems likely that he may not think it an interesting question.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Under the surface of this book is a historical materialist argument that is never fully articulated and because of which it suffers to bring a real understanding of why the concept of heaven changes. Feudal lords want heaven to be feudal. Capitalists want heaven to have work and private property.

Also unexplored are African American, African, and Asian traditions of heaven which I assume must radically be different from the middle class and theological intelligentsia. Also no where was the Slavic or Eastern Orthodox interpretation of heaven or for that matter Tolstoy's The kingdom of heaven is within you.

It is a history of European/American Protestant and Catholic theology so it doesn't really paint a complete picture of Christian heaven when 75% of the world's Christians aren't included.

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read. I have used it for research in my own writing and it never fails to spark off ideas. It is a book I come back to again and again.

[Fabiano Parmesan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Duemila anni di confronto scontro sul tema della vita dopo la morte. Teocentrismo vs antropocentrismo.
Acquistata la versione italiana "storia del Paradiso".
Davvero una lettura straordinaria.

[Smarti · Rating 4 out of 5]

sehr nuetzlich!

[Jessie B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at how the idea of Heaven has evolved from early Christian thought to the present day and how that has reflected both society and philosophy of the time.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good, very exhaustive survey of evolving Judeo-Christian ideas on life after death. Instead of discussing the many beliefs on how people qualify for eternal life, this book just considers the numerous visions of what heaven is like. The range of art and literature explored is quite massive, and the diversity of dreams grows greater over time.

After briefly exploring the evolution of afterlife beliefs from Mesopotamia to Israel, the authors present a long parade of Christian otherworldly visions. We have a heaven of earth-like pleasures, which compensates Christian martyrs for their sufferings on earth. Or it’s an abode where holy choirs sing unending praise for the Lord. We have heaven as a royal court where “God is the king, the archangels are the pages, the Virgin Mary is the queen … the cherub angels are the dukes … the saints the nobility ….”

Increasingly, heaven is a place of communion between souls. Arriving souls are tenderly embraced by welcoming female angels. The saved share boundless affection, but with “no sinful concupiscence, no lascivious lust, no Epicurean pig’s desire.” Later, Victorian idealization of the family produces a heaven of lovers re-united in domestic bliss forever. But a sarcastic, rather bigoted dean at St. Paul’s cathedral pours scorn on the very idea: “So these pious ladies desired to go to heaven, not as St. Paul did, ‘who desired to depart and be with Christ,’ but to be with their ‘John’ … amid all the amusements of earth and senses. Such degrading views of eternity are worthy rather of a Red Indian’s expectation, than of a Christian’s.”

In the progressive age we get a heaven of devoted labor, not a static “celestial retirement village.” “A true idea of heaven is that it is a place of uninterrupted service. It is a land where they serve God day and night … and never know weariness, and never require to slumber.” Souls continue to grow in spiritual potential, rather than having permanent positions in the divine hierarchy. Some theologians argue that during the time before the final judgement, those who have died in sin can still be saved, and the citizens of heaven must work to that end. As the Mormon (LDS) writer Theodore Burton explains, “It takes as much work to save a dead person as it does to save a living person.”

The book surveys increasingly critical debates over the whole idea of heaven as a goal for Christians. Alfred North Whitehead asks, “Can you imagine anything more idiotic than the Christian idea of heaven? … What kind of deity is it that would be capable of creating angels and men to sing his praises day and night to all eternity?” Progressive Christians claim that to make Christianity a means of getting to heaven misses the whole point of the religion. Christ taught how to live in this world with love and justice, not how to escape it for a better place. The images of God’s kingdom are not about another world after death, but the possibilities for what can be accomplished on earth. Friedrich Schleirmacher argues that “eternal life” is not about existing for an endless period of time, but experiencing the fullness of life in a present moment.

I was interested to see the discussion of modern “process theology,” where all things are part of an endless process, as everything is constantly changing into something else. It’s a version of eternality akin to Buddhist understanding, where every particular aspect of “the self” changes, while merging with the whole cosmic stream.

[Willium · Rating 4 out of 5]

This piece provides an incredible insight into medieval conceptions of heaven and hell and how those beliefs and ideas have come to shape modern christian thought on the afterlife. a wonderful and perceptive read!

[Michael P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has been a long time since I learned so much from a single book. The authors present the silly things people have believed about heaven since Old Testament times and while two basic strands are found, a God-centered heaven and a friend/family-centered heaven, the truth is that heaven tends to represent the ideas, theology, science, and values of each culture that imagines heaven. I have several take-aways from each chapter, so here are just a few.

You know all those medieval paintings of god, the angels, and the saints arranged so precisely? Those are essentially picturizations of the theology of the time, not merely a way of crowding-in a lot of worthy people.

The arrangements of life within heaven sometimes represents the politics of the time. Thus the French court at the Louvre is a model for one conception about heaven.

Some modern theologians, I'm looking at you Paul Tillich and some others, did not believe there is life after death.

While there are antecedents, the idea so popular today that we will spend eternity hanging with family and friends did not really catch on until relatively late. This makes me muse about how those who believe this would feel if they knew the idea is fashionable.

I entered this book a heaven skeptic. I exit this book with sounder reasons to be a heaven skeptic, for beliefs about heaven are subjective and quite irrational.

[verbava · Rating 4 out of 5]

автори роблять мою улюблену штуку – розповідають захопливу історію, систематичну й послідовну, як хороший роман (я не про те, що хороші романи мусять бути лінійні, а про те, що добре зроблена історія не губить сюжетних ліній, не висмоктує ситуацій з пальця і якщо вже вводить якусь деталь, то не просто так). цікаве й приємно написане дослідження.

[Jonathan]

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