Monday, 21 July 2025

Even Heaven isn't ideal... Total and perfect completion is not even conceivable - let alone achievable

One of the reasons that some people do not want salvation and post-mortal eternal life in Heaven; is that Heaven is imperfect and incomplete. 

For example, not everybody gets to Heaven, so that some people we want to be-with in Heaven, will not be there. 

A related imperfection is that some of those who won't be in Heaven will be suffering - and this can be seen as an imperfection - in that we can imagine a reality without suffering, and yet some kind of hell will continue to be forever. 

So, for these and other reasons Heaven is incomplete and imperfect, and may be rejected on these grounds. 


Yet if Heaven is rejected as a goal for such reasons, then (presumably) this is because something better is imagined and desired?  

However; all conceivable situations are incomplete and imperfect. We cannot coherently conceptualize a state of perfection and completion, and therefore cannot really desire it. 


For instance; the idea of oneness spirituality is an attempt at conceptualizing a state of perfect completion - the idea that in reality all is one and there is nothing lacking.

Yet this is incoherent because there is, at least, the fact that we recognize a lack of oneness in our yearning for it - and if all is really one there could be no such lack, or yearning, or even self awareness. If our dissatisfaction is put down to delusion, then how could there be delusion in a state of oneness? 

If reality really was one, there would be nothing else. 


If the incompleteness of Heaven, the fact that it leaves-out some (or much) of reality, is to be solved by conceptualizing a future state of the perfection and harmonization of every being, including every being and thing left-out of heaven; then the necessary (divine) power to perfect and complete reality is being assumed to be constrained by delay... for some reason. 

And that reason is itself a breaking of oneness/ perfection/ completeness.

If all is one, why has perfection and completion not already been achieved? 

(Why must we and others continue to suffer its lack?)


For that matter - if perfection and completion really are attainable by God, then why create anything else that perfect completeness? What is the point? 

Why should deity create this imperfect and intermediate world with its entropy and evil, and where all gratifications are incomplete and temporary?

That itself, whatever the answer proposed, is a break of perfection and completeness.  


My point is that, although we may imagine and desire perfection and completion of all reality; this wish is incoherent and cannot - even theoretically - be attained. 

The insistence on total, perfect completion is indeed, a disguised form of double-negative ideology

I mean that "perfection" is actually the negation of our divine impulse towards creative love; which is a dynamic and developing thing, future orientated. 

Instead of regarding this fundamental quality of being as an attribute of reality - the lack of a permanent state of perfect completion is re-interpreted as a problem. A problem that is insoluble, because it negates creation, life, consciousness, love... 

The same for completion. Completion is a negation of the potential for eternal growth, development, increase of love. There is no end to creation... But this possibility is being re-interpreted negatively, as a current state of incompletion. 

The insistence upon completion is, again, a denial of the most profound nature of reality - which is why it leads nowhere but paradox. 


In sum: when people reject Heaven because it is incomplete and imperfect; they have fallen into a trap - a spiritual prison that has no escape... 

Incoherence is a reductio ad absurdum - a conclusion revelatory of false premises. 

No escape except by becoming aware-of, examining, and rejecting their most fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions regarding the nature of reality. 

 

2 comments:

Michael Coulin said...

"However; all conceivable situations are incomplete and imperfect. We cannot coherently conceptualize a state of perfection and completion, and therefore cannot really desire it."

I don't mean to be dense, but then how are we supposed to desire eternal heavenly life? Or if I'm understanding your position correctly - you'd say that heaven isn't 'complete' or 'perfect'?.. In which case we should think of heaven as a 'higher form' of this life, without entropy and where love is the primary motivation?

I'll admit I tend to think of heaven in a platonic/metaphysical sense, and haven't really given it much thought beyond that. But as you repeatedly write, we have to desire heaven, which is tricky when we have an abstract conception of it.

Bruce Charlton said...

https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/search?q=heaven+love+creation

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/john-kjv.html