In His work of creation, God had a problem with evil Beings*; because Beings cannot be destroyed, therefore evil cannot be destroyed. Nor can evil be confined because spirits cannot be confined.
Therefore, as soon as there existed demons - unincarnated spirits who are committed to evil; and also the post-mortal spirits of evil-serving Men; then these could not be eradicated.
(Some may repent - but what of those who do not?)
Because God could not exclude evil from all of reality; therefore, God needed to make a separate and wholly Good place - a place free from evil: in other words, Heaven.
Heaven is a situation without evil, because it is not a 'place', but more like the eternal alliance of Good hearts.
Heaven is possible when Men can make a transformative and permanent commitment to love God and work in harmony with His divine creation, and to love all other Beings that do the same.
To make Heaven therefore required that transformative and permanent commitment to Good which is resurrection; and resurrection required Jesus Christ: therefore Heaven did not exist until after Jesus had done the necessary work to enable Men to follow him through resurrection to Heaven.
Evil is an ineradicable fact of reality; and Heaven is not the exclusion of evil Beings from a place - but the exclusion of evil motivations from a Being.
4 comments:
I don’t think this fits that well with other things you’ve written about, and I’m confused about what you mean in the first paragraph.
First, a few things I’ve inferred from your writings that may not be correct. It appears to me that you think that all beings were created by God and only at some point in the past, that is that He is not continuing to create new beings but made some and is now focused on getting them into harmony with Him. Is that correct?
On to the disagreement and confusion. I don’t see why you would assume being cannot be destroyed given your description of Sorathic evil as destruction for the purpose of opposing God.
If damnation really is a thing, i.e. some person can make a permanent commitment to evil, and the endpoint of evil is destruction, then self-destruction of that person’s being is surely possible as a consequent of free choice. It is also a Christian belief that Christ alone offers eternal life, and that God is the source of all life. This implies a finite limit to evil, since evil rejects Christ and God, it will eventually cut itself of from life and therefore die.
I do agree with your conclusion, that Heaven is more alike to a state of being rather than a merely a place.
@L - "It appears to me that you think that all beings were created by God and only at some point in the past, "
No - I believe that all Beings are eternal.
"that is that He is not continuing to create new beings but made some and is now focused on getting them into harmony with Him. Is that correct?"
No, because beings are eternal.
"I don’t see why you would assume being cannot be destroyed given your description of Sorathic evil as destruction for the purpose of opposing God."
Check out a word search on entropy creation . Destruction means to return from created to chaos (creation to disorder).
"If damnation really is a thing, i.e. some person can make a permanent commitment to evil, and the endpoint of evil is destruction, then self-destruction of that person’s being is surely possible as a consequent of free choice."
No - but the being could return towards disorder - including unconsciousness.
"It is also a Christian belief that Christ alone offers eternal life, and that God is the source of all life."
There are different meaning of 'life'. I believe that the whole of reality is alive - nothing is not alive.
"This implies a finite limit to evil, since evil rejects Christ and God, it will eventually cut itself of from life and therefore die."
Well, it depends what you mean by finite end. If reality returned to chaos, what this means is that there would still be primordial beings - but without harmony or purpose, each its own 'reality'. That can't happen now, because of Heaven. But even before Christ, it could only have happened if all the beings in the universe wanted to do this to themselves. So long as there were two beings committed to love and creation, then creation would continue to be.
"I do agree with your conclusion, that Heaven is more alike to a state of being rather than a merely a place."
OK!
Thank you for the clarification.
@L - You're welcome. Metaphysics is very difficult to grasp (at least, it is for me) - and that is before we then need to decide whether or not it is true.
Yet, for all the difficulties, I would say that nothing is more important than metaphysics - here and now.
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