As a kid,
heaven always sounded boring to me. Won't we get sick of worshipping God all
day? That sounds so repetitive. The only solution I ever came up was that at
the eschaton we will be changed into the kind of
people that won't get bored of God. Unfortunately, this just means we'll become
boring too. Furthermore, this transformation hypothesis doesn't really affect
the premise that God is boring. No wonder Christians, who proleptically
participate in the eschaton (aka
'foretaste of glory divine'), are so bored and boring!
This week I have been reading J. Warren Smith's Passion
and Paradise: Human and Divine Emotion in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa,
who deals with this problem as it was framed in the Patristic period.
Apparently, Origen's teachings on human satiation implied that God
was boring (or at least that humans can become bored in their contemplation of
God). He believed that human beings had pre-existent souls who used to
contemplate God yet as they became too full of God's goodness (aka, satiated) they "fell" into fleshy bodies.
Only the soul of Jesus never fell, so he took on a body for our sakes to bring
us back into contemplation of God. Despite the wacky primitive Christology, Origen's theory leaves open the problem that we may once
again become satiated with God and re-fall. Although he answers such an
objection, the idea that we could be satiated with God in the first place
raised questions about divine infinity. Though Origen
himself may have assumed that God was infinite, he did not think through the
implications of this assumption.
Enter Gregory of Nyssa.
First of all, Nyssen discarded Origen's
idea of a pre-existent soul and the deficient Christology attached to this
theory. But more importantly, Nyssen argued that
because God is infinite, the human can never become satiated with his goodness.
Rather, God is so unbounded that he will by nature remain interesting
for eternity. Not only that, but we in our human finitude (which will never
pass away even in the eschaton) will remain eternal interested
in God. Eternal Life with God will mean dynamically exploring by our finite
means of knowledge the infinite dynamic being of God. In other words, we will
never get bored of God, because of the radical difference between his infinity
and our finitude. Nyssen's term for this is epectasy: continual reaching. C. S. Lewis expresses
this idea beautifully when he speaks of the children in New Narnia
going "further up and further in" (Harper
ed., 203f).
So the bottom line is that the end will not be boring. Actually, it
will be eminently more interesting than life is now, for God fully revealed
will give us an eternity's worth to think, feel and do.
At 8:33 PM, September 01, 2005, said...
Nyssa's remarks would seem to go well with our
Wesleyan heritage. If I am not mistaken, Wesley taught also that even after
glorification Christians could still "grow in grace" as much as a
glorified body could do so. Once again, the infinitude of God matched up
against our finitude becomes the deciding factor. However, the idea of further
growth in grace post glorification seems to be an idea not so much trumpeted
around the
At 11:47 AM, September 02, 2005, millinerd
said...
A colloquial way to express the "growth in
grace" (and praise)concept came from a professor
(Dennis Okholm) who said in heaven he plans to master
all the instruments of the Orchestra.
Similarly I was excited to master surfing - until I read this.
At 4:59 PM, September 02, 2005, Marcia said...
Maybe there will be surfing on the
At 4:54 PM, September 04, 2005, millinerd
said...
Or the lake of fire?
At 9:56 PM, September 11, 2005, Tony Myles said...
Imagine the strongest feeling from love you've ever
experienced...
if you're married, think of your wedding day...
if you're single, think of that girl from 3rd grade you thought was all that
and a bag of low-carb chips...
If God is love, and heaven is being the presence of God...
imagine that "feeling" from earlier... to the infinite degree.
And imagine experiencing that forever.
At 11:37 PM, September 12, 2005, Todd Hiestand
said...
dude. i just found your blog. welcome. hope you guys are well and
we must meet again up in doylestown...