I Will See You in Heaven Cat Lovers Edition Review

Peter Kreeft answers fourteen commonly asked questions most sky.

1. Will we know everything in heaven?

Of course not. Why would someone recall that? In that location are 2 reasons, and the first i is simply a confusion between Heaven and divinity. We will remain human being in Heaven, therefore finite, therefore our knowledge will remain finite. True, we will share in divine life, just this is just a share. In fact, we share in divine life at present, if we are reborn in Christ; our souls nurture a fetal Christ. But I have not observed that fact generating omniscience in myself or any other.

When you come to think of it, knowing everything would exist more similar Hell than Sky for us. For 1 matter, we demand progress and promise: we need to wait forward to knowing something new tomorrow. Mystery is our listen's nutrient. If we truly said, "I have seen everything",[1] nosotros would conclude, as did the author of Ecclesiastes, "all is vanity".[2] For another thing, the more cognition, the more than responsibility.[iii] Only omnipotence can bear the brunt of omniscience; only God'due south shoulders are strong plenty to acquit the burden of infinite knowledge without losing the joy.

The 2d reason we may think our heavenly knowledge is infinite is the theory that on earth we have already an access, a say-so, for all cognition; that the brain is a "reducing valve", not a generator.[iv] Perhaps the Fall lowered the drape between united states of america and all truth, which we now encounter "through a glass, darkly";[5] and in Heaven the drape will rising again. Thus, the cognition nosotros now have is both a memory[half dozen] and a prophecy of Paradise.

But even if this theory is truthful it does not entail our omniscience. Fifty-fifty if at that place is no curtain in Heaven, fifty-fifty if our consciousness in that location dashes against no wall or limit, withal we remain like the tiny figures in a Chinese landscape: small subjects in an enormously larger objective world. Fifty-fifty if we then escape from the tiny hut in which nosotros are now imprisoned and through whose smudged windows or chinks in whose walls we now must look even if we wander freely in the country of light we are in the light, not the light in us. Our first and terminal wisdom in Sky is Socratic, just as it is on earth: to know how piddling we know. If there is no end of the demand for humility in the moral guild (the saint is the 1 humble enough not to think he is a saint), the aforementioned is truthful of the intellectual guild (the wise man is the one humble enough to know he has no wisdom). It all depends on the standard of judgment: by earthly standards nigh of us are moderately saintly and moderately wise; by Heavenly standards all of us, fifty-fifty in Sky, are children. And by the standard of the infinite, inexhaustible perfection of God, we remain children forever. Happy children, fulfilled children, simply children.

Perhaps this will be one of the supreme tests: would we choose the childlikeness of Heaven or the promise of "maturity", of "humanity come of age" in Hell? Will we suffer gladly the blow and stupor to our pride that is Heaven'due south souvenir of eternal babyhood (thus eternal hope and progress) or will we insist on the "successes" of "cocky-actualization" that Heaven denies u.s. and Hell offers united states? If the latter, we volition find despair instead of hope, ennui instead of creative work, and the emptying out of all our joy. Jesus' pedagogy, "Unless you lot plow and become like children, you volition never enter the kingdom of Heaven",[7] is not something to be outgrown. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, when asked which are the iv near important virtues, replied, "Humility, humility, humility, and humility."[eight] Information technology is only the foolish egotist who thinks that our smallness relative to the infinite riches of objective reality is a trouble to be overcome.

two. Volition we all exist equal in heaven?

By God'due south grace, no! How awful that would be almost as awful as knowing everything. Having no heroes,[9] being unable to look upwards to anyone, would be Hell, not Heaven.

We modern egalitarians are tempted to the primal sin of pride in the opposite mode from the ancients. The quondam, aloof grade of pride was the desire to be better than others. The new, autonomous form is the desire not to have anyone amend than yourself.[10] Information technology is but as spiritually mortiferous and does not even deport with it the false pleasure of gloating superiority. Flat, dull, repetitive sameness is only not the structure of reality in a theistic universe,[eleven] either on earth or in Heaven. However, in Heaven, as on earth, each of us will be or do something no one else will be or do as well. No one will exist superfluous.

If He had no use for all these differences, I do not come across why He should accept created more souls than one . . . . Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock 1 of the doors in the house with many mansions . . . each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some 1 attribute of the divine beauty better than whatsoever other brute tin.[12]

God's justice is not ours. It surprises ours in a double way. On the i hand, the one-hour workers receive the same pay equally the all-24-hour interval workers, in Christ's parable.[13] "He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with expert things and the rich he has sent empty away."[14] "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made depression."[15] Simply on the other mitt, to him who already has, more will be given, and "from him who has non, even what he has volition be taken away".[16] Human justice is outraged by both halves of Christ'south paradoxical justice.

Justice does not mean equality. In a poem, in the universe, in mathematics, in architecture everywhere in that location is natural justice, justice ways inequality, yin and yang, male and female, higher and lower, Due east and Due west, light and darkness, state and h2o. No flat, dull repetition but uniqueness. In homo relationships too, justice does not mean equality, but treating equals as and unequals unequally.[17] Is it just to treat a pig like a human? If and then, it is too but to treat a man like a hog. 1 of the astonishing blind spots of modernity is its unquestioning fixation on equality.

Of course there are degrees of perfection in Heaven; information technology is quite the divine style. There are degrees of perfection in everything God created (though not in everything nosotros create). Equality is a man-made legal fiction designed as a wall of defense against tyranny, a medicine against a affliction.

"We must all be guarded by equal rights from i another'due south greed, because we are fallen. just as we must all wearable clothes for the same reason. Only the naked trunk should be at that place underneath the apparel, ripening for the day when nosotros shall need them no longer. Equality is non the deepest matter, you know. "

"I ever thought that was just what it was. I thought it was in their souls that people were equal."

"You were mistaken .... That is the last place where they are equal. Equality before the law, equality of incomes - that is all very well. Equality guards life; it doesn't arrive. It is medicine, not food . . . "

"But surely in spousal relationship . . . ?

"Worse and worse . . . . Courtship knows goose egg of it; nor does fruition . . . . It is not your fault. They never warned yous. No ane has ever told you that obedience - humility - is an erotic necessity."[18]

Why is there no jealousy in this hierarchical, aloof, nonegalitarian Heaven of authority and obedience? Because all are cells in the same body. The kidney does not rebel considering it is not the eye.[19] jealousy is the principle of Hell. At that place is no Hell in Heaven.

3. Do the blessed in heaven see us now?

The living ofttimes say they feel the dead present and watching them. Is this illusion or fact?

It is fact. The Bible says we are surrounded by "a great deject of witnesses".[20] The context is speaking of the dead. They are alive. For God is "not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him".[21]

Reason confirms revelation here. Does their honey for us cease? Does it non rather increase in purity and power? And practice non their vision and understanding too increase?

"The Communion of Saints" means not only (one) love and agreement among the blessed in Sky and (2) love and understanding among the redeemed on earth simply also (3) honey and agreement between those two groups, the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant, temporarily separated by death.[22]

What difference does this make? Well, what deviation does it make to you lot if you believe you are beingness watched by a thousand living human optics? Multiply this event past millions and past the increment in honey and understanding in Sky. Throw in literally innumerable angels,[23] all of them sharing mightily in God's dear and knowledge. Then you accept the difference it makes: the exponent of infinity.

The link connecting the Church Militant with the Church Triumphant, the link connecting Heaven and earth, is the incarnate Christ. We participate in what Christ does, and Christ links Heaven and world. He is still on earth as well every bit in Sky (1) past His Spirit and (2) in His Mystical Body, the Church, His people. Christianity does not worship an absent Christ. And only as He tin be on earth even when He has gone to Sky, so can we in Him. The cells in the i Trunk are all living cells, but only a very few of them are living on world.

iv. Do ghosts come up from heaven?

Starting time of all, Scripture strictly forbids u.s.a. to telephone call them up[24] as Saul called upwards the ghost of the prophet Samuel by ways of the Witch of Endor's necromancy. Considering of this deed, he lost his kingdom and perhaps his soul.[25]

The reason for the stricture is probably protection confronting the danger of deception past evil spirits. We are out of our depth, our knowledge, and our control one time we open up the doors to the supernatural. The only openings that are safe for united states are the ones God has approved: revelation, prayer, His own miracles, sacraments, and primarily Christ Himself. He has fabricated a straight and safe route for us from earth to Heaven, through the dark woods of the innumerable, unknowable, and unpredictable spiritual forces that are to the states as fire to an babe or a juggernaut to an ant. The danger is not physical but spiritual, and spiritual danger e'er centers on deception. The Devil is "a liar and the father of lies".[26] He disguises himself "as an angel of light".[27]

Nevertheless, without our action or invitation, the dead often do appear to the living. There is enormous bear witness of "ghosts" in all cultures. What are we to make of them? Surely we should not classify the appearances of the wives of C. Southward. Lewis and Sheldon Vanauken, simply to take two Christian examples, equally demonic?

Nosotros tin distinguish iii kinds of ghosts, I believe. First, the almost familiar kind: the sad ones, the wispy ones. They seem to be working out some unfinished earthly business, or suffering some purgatorial purification until released from their earthly, business organization.[28] These ghosts would seem to be the ones who just barely made it to Purgatory, who feel little or no joy however and who need to acquire many painful lessons about their past lives on earth.

Second, there are malicious and deceptive spirits and since they are deceptive, they inappreciably e'er appear malicious. These are probably the ones who respond to conjurings at séances. They probably come from Hell. Even the hazard of that happening should be sufficient to terrify away all temptation to necromancy..

3rd, there are the vivid, happy spirits of dead friends and family unit, especially spouses, who appear unbidden, at God's will, not ours, with messages of hope and love. They seem to come up from Heaven. Dissimilar the purgatorial ghosts who come back primarily for their own sakes, these bright spirits come up back for the sake of the states the living, to tell us all is well. They are aped by evil spirits who say the same, who speak "peace, peace, when at that place is no peace".[29] Merely deception works simply i mode: the imitation can deceive past appearing 18-carat, but the 18-carat never deceives by appearing fake. Heavenly spirits always convince united states that they are genuinely adept. Fifty-fifty the brilliant spirits appear ghostlike to united states of america because a ghost of any type is one whose substance does not belong in or come from this world. In Sky these spirits are non ghosts but existent, solid, and substantial because they are at dwelling house there. "One can't be a ghost in 1's own country."[thirty]

That there are all three kinds of ghosts is enormously likely. Fifty-fifty taking into account our penchant to deceive and to exist deceived, our credulity and our fakery, there remain so many trustworthy accounts of all iii types of ghosts trustworthy by every ordinary empirical and psychological standard that only a dogmatic a priori prejudice against them could foreclose us from assertive they exist.[31] As Chesterton says, "We believe an old apple-woman when she says she ate an apple; but when she says she saw a ghost we say, 'But she's but an old apple-woman.'"[32] A most undemocratic and unscientific prejudice.

5. Will we accept emotions in heaven?

Emotions move u.s.; we do non motion them. They are a form of passivity. We will be far more active in Sky than we ever were earlier, since our spirits (which are activity) will rule rather than being ruled past our bodies (which are passivity). Nevertheless, nosotros will have bodies, therefore passivity, therefore emotions, though they volition non be at the unfree whim of heredity, environment, fauna instinct, propaganda, others' demands, and the many other forces that presently condition united states of america.

Even when our spirits are perfectly free, they can feel. Even now, it is the spirit that feels, non just the body. It is a prejudice imported from Greek philosophy, non a notion found in Scripture, that feelings should be dominated by rational thought. The center of the self which the Greeks located in reason,[33] Scripture locates in the "heart", that which loves. This center is no more than a feeling than it is thinking; it is the prefunctional root of both,[34] or it is a deeper feeling and a deeper thinking: the heart has its reasons which the reason does not know".[35]

But since our thinking and our feeling are equal functions of the center, we volition retain our feeling in Sky simply as nosotros will retain our thinking. All our humanity is perfected, not macerated, in Heaven.

half dozen. Volition we feel sorrow in sky for those in hell?

We seem to face a dilemma hither. On the one hand, Scripture assures us that "God shall wipe away all tears from their optics; and there shall be no more decease, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there exist whatsoever more pain: for the former things are passed abroad".[36]

On the other paw, the blessed dead seem sometimes to manifest sorrow, like Mary at LaSallette, weeping for the sins of the world.[37] And C. Due south. Lewis says, "as in that location may be pleasures in Hell (God shield us from them), in that location may be something not all unlike pains in Heaven (God grant the states shortly to gustation them)".[38] What could this hateful?

Might it exist that the sorrow appears only during our kickoff, purgatorial phase? At this point the pains of separation may bear on non only the earthly bereaved lover but also the heavenly beloved. As Lewis says, "I can't assist suspecting the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings)."[39] But this would non explain the tears of Mary, who is certainly beyond Purgatory.

Might it be that the sorrow is only an appearance, like angels' bodies, put on for our sake? But the purpose of advent should exist to teach, non to deceive, if the appearance comes from Heaven.

To solve this trouble let us look at the greatest suffering, that which is fabricated possible by honey. The more y'all love, the more than y'all tin suffer. That fact creates the post-obit trouble: Does God the Male parent suffer? The affirmative reply to that question has been declared a heresy (Patripassianism);[40] however how can God love the states, and remain aloof and invulnerable? As Kierkegaard says, the unhappiness that comes from the disability of lovers to empathize each other is

infinitely more profound than that [unhappiness] of which men commonly speak, since it strikes at the very eye of dearest . ... This infinitely deeper grief is substantially the prerogative of the superior . . . in reality, it belongs to God alone . . . . Men sometimes think that this might be a matter of indifference to God, since he does non stand in need of the learner [united states]. But in this we forget or rather, alas! we prove how far nosotros are from understanding him; we forget that God loves the learner.[41]

The dilemma, and so, is this: If God cannot endure, how can He really love usa? But if He can suffer, how is He God? To respond this question would also be to answer the question of whether and how we can suffer in Sky, for Heavenly children resemble their Heavenly Male parent.

The reply requires usa to distinguish between 2 ingredients of earthly beloved and caring, an active and a passive ingredient, that are together in fact just distinguishable in thought. Say a parent loves a kid who has done something harmful to himself. The parent's beloved speaks 2 words to the kid. The first word, the word of agile caring for the other, says, "How could yous do this to yourself ? " The second word, the word of passivity and vulnerability, says, "How could you lot do this to me?" God loves us with the first love only, and the blessed in Heaven will love as God loves. We cannot blackmail God. Nosotros cannot make Him wring His hands by property our jiff until nosotros plough blue in the face up.[42] He truly loves and cares, yet He is invulnerable not by existence aloof but by being supremely active, not passive.[43]

If our spirits are similar plenty to God, we too can love without sorrow or vulnerability because we dear only with the active feeling of caring, non the passive feeling of being hurt. For our spirits so are not controlled by our bodies, by heredity and surroundings. C. S. Lewis' experience of his dead wife'due south presence and love was like that:

It was quite incredibly unemotional . . . . Yet at that place was an extreme and cheerful intimacy. An intimacy that had not passed through the senses or the emotions at all . . . . Tin that intimacy be love itself - always in this life attended with emotion, not because information technology is itself an emotion, or needs an attendant emotion, but considering our animal souls, our nervous systems, our imaginations, take to reply to it in that way? If so, how many preconceptions I must flake! A gild, a communion, of pure intelligences would not be cold, drab and inconsolable .... It would, if I have had a glimpse, be well, I'grand almost scared at the adjectives I'd take to use. Brisk? cheerful? keen? alarm? intense? broad-awake? Higher up all, solid. Utterly reliable. Firm. There is no nonsense about the expressionless.

When I say "intellect" I include will. Attention is an deed of volition. Intelligence in activity is will par excellence. What met me was full of resolution.[44]

Yet on the other side of the dilemma, will Heaven lack the greatest of all beauties of earthly art, the beauty of sorrow, of great tragedy? Nothing of value is simply lost in Sky; all is preserved and transformed. Earthly indicators are to be read (though with caution) equally pointers to Heavenly realities.

And on world, pain and pleasure are strangely akin at their peak, similar expiry and life. When a thing is enormously beautiful, it hurts. What Heavenly fact is imaged in this earthly mystery?

Possibly the ultimate fact of all, the nature of God, the inner life of the Trinity as a system of self-dying, self-giving.[45] Perhaps this is the deepest reason of all for hurting on earth, and the solution to the "problem of evil": Why does a expert and loving God allow so much earthly suffering? To railroad train united states of america for Heaven's joyful suffering and to enact, to incarnate, to manifest the ultimate law of reality on our human being level: the police force of expiry and life, blest cocky-death (no longer blessed for fallen creatures) leading to eternal life. "All pains and pleasures we have known on earth are early initiations in the movements of that dance."[46] This is the supreme joy in all existence, the joy of God's inner life of cocky-giving, the secret forever incomprehensible to the insubordinate, angelic or human, who says "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven".[47]

7. Will we be free to sin in heaven?

Hither is some other dilemma. If we respond no, nosotros seem to lack something: free will. If we reply yeah, we lack something else: moral perfection. The Heavenly question thus lands us squarely into an earthly and present result apropos the nature of freedom and of morality and may help the states to puncture one of modernity'southward well-nigh pervasive and destructive illusions: the association of freedom with rebellion and of obedience with unfreedom.

Suppose we alter the question and then as to avert the ambiguity of the discussion freedom. Are nosotros able to sin in Heaven? If not, it seems we are programmed and determined rather than free. If so, if temptation is possible in Sky, Heavenly security against sin is gone. Ane of the best things to await forrard to at expiry, say the saints,[48] is that "he who has died is freed from sin".[49] If there is even a possibility of sin in Heaven, that possibility may be actualized, for if the appearing of a possibility is impossible, then it is not a possibility but an impossibility.

How tin can we preserve both free will and sinlessness in Heaven? Over again, God is our model and solution: nosotros solve this pseudoproblem in the same way God does. He is both free and sinless. How? Let us judge our freedom by His, rather than vice versa.

What do we mean by "freedom"? Sometimes (i) political liberty, freedom from tyranny, oppression, or the denial of our rights; sometimes (2) physical ability, ability to deed, freedom from hindrance; and sometimes (3) spiritual power to choose ("free will"). Of course nosotros will have all three in Heaven, but why won't we be able to sin, since we will take complimentary volition?

Because nosotros will also have a 4th liberty, the most important one of all: freedom from sin, from what makes u.s. not ourselves. We will be complimentary to exist the true selves God designed u.s.a. to be, complimentary to be determined by God. This determination does not remove our freedom simply is our liberty, for even at present freedom is not simply indetermination; it is freedom to be adamant by last causes (purposes) rather than efficient causes (things and events that already be and act upon us). Our free will means that our present is determined by our time to come rather than past our by. Final causes are now only mental pictures and desires. To say nosotros are determined by final causes means that nosotros, like God, create by knowing; that as creative artists our cognition antecedes and determines the truth of its object, the work of fine art, rather than befitting to its object, equally scientific and empirical noesis does. Only we are objects to God (though subjects to the world); we too, therefore, are truthful only when we adapt to God's knowledge of us, God'southward artistic plan for our identity. Since our highest freedom means freedom to be ourselves, we are well-nigh free when we are most obedient to God's will, which expresses His idea of us. Thus freedom and obedience coincide. To obey God is to exist free in the most radical sense: complimentary to be me, free from inauthenticity, free from false existence, free from the alien within, not just free from the alien without, the oppressor.

This explains a paradox frequently met in earthly feel: that at the moment of freest choice it feels most like destiny, and at the moment of most destined pick it feels freest. Caesar's crossing the Rubicon, choosing someone to marry, a conversion decision - these all feel both more than gratuitous and more destined than ordinary choices. C. Due south. Lewis' explanation of this principle is that it is all of us that chooses; nil is left over.[50] Therefore there is nothing in us that opposes the choice; it is certain; it is wholly determined. But it is as well wholly free because information technology is wholly cocky-adamant. The whole self chooses, the divided will[51] is healed.

The answer to our question, then, is that "freedom to sin" is a self-contradictory concept. Sin is inauthenticity and freedom is actuality; sin is our false cocky and freedom is our true self Sin is part of Hell and freedom is role of Heaven. The question cannot be resolved, only dissolved, because it confuses Hell with Heaven.

8. What will we possess in heaven?

Nothing and everything. Saint Francis of Assisi and others devoted to poverty empathize this paradox. Saint Paul speaks of "having nothing, and yet possessing all things"[52] considering possessed by God: "all [things] are yours; and you are Christ'southward; and Christ is God'south."[53]

Heaven is pure communism. There is no private property in Heaven. (Earthly communism, even when not atheistic, is another "too-soon" mistake of Utopianism.) "In Heaven at that place is no ownership. If whatever at that place took upon him to call annihilation his own, he would straightway be thrust out into hell and get an evil spirit."[54] For the ultimate possession is the self, and if fifty-fifty that is given abroad, cipher else can be held (considering there is no holder); and that is given abroad:

The gilded apple of selfhood, thrown among the imitation gods, became an apple tree of discord because they scrambled for it. They did not know the beginning rule of the holy game, which is that every player must by all ways touch on the ball and then immediately pass it on. To exist plant with it in your easily is a fault; to cling to information technology, decease. Just when it flies to and fro among the players too swift for middle to follow, and the swell master Himself leads the revelry, giving Himself eternally to His creatures in the generation, and back to Himself in the sacrifice, of the Word, then indeed the eternal dance "makes heaven drowsy with the harmony."[55]

As MacDonald says, "the heart cannot hoard",[56] only the hand. As Marcel says, the true cocky cannot possess or have anything because I practice not have my own body as my body has things: I am my torso.[57]

No one tin can possess goodness, truth, beauty, love, life, light, God. Just Heaven is these things. Therefore no one can possess Heaven. Whenever, fifty-fifty at present, we think of truth or goodness equally something we accept we become self-righteous, narrow, and defensive. To have truth is to be dogmatic; to have goodness is to exist proud; to accept beauty is to be vain; to have joy is to be miserable with fear of losing it. God, I AM, pure field of study, is the simply Haver. He cannot be had, nor can His attributes or His Kingdom of Heaven.

Thus, we must learn detachment to enter Sky. Willy-nilly, death detaches us from everything, fifty-fifty ourselves. We must learn to "die before y'all dice. At that place is no chance after."[58] Learning disengagement from the world, which can exist possessed, is our training for learning detachment from the desire to possess Heaven, which cannot be possessed. Asked whether he idea he would possess any of his beloved library books in Heaven, C. Due south. Lewis replied, "Only those I gave away on earth.[59]

nine. Will nosotros wearable wearing apparel in heaven?

Those who claim to have caught glimpses of Heaven written report a strange and surprising respond to this question; and the fact that and so many have said the aforementioned surprising thing without previous acquaintance with each other lends weight to the testimony. They say that it is hard to classify the blessed as either clothed or naked.[60] If clothed, it is as if the clothing were a role of the trunk, an organic growth, rather than an adventitious, foreign roofing: it reveals rather than conceals, and it is natural and necessary rather than artificial and[61] accidental. If naked, information technology is shameless and not arousing erotic desires. It is non the upshot of "naking",[62] the procedure of taking off the apparel that in our nowadays state are natural, thus attaining a state of nudity that is (in our present country) unnatural. (Nudist camps are not "natural".)

The principle behind the naturalness of Heavenly article of clothing is the overcoming of the distinction between appearance and reality. In Sky, calorie-free reigns; nosotros know and are known.[63] On earth, shadows reign, reality hides behind appearances as a mercy to fallen and weakened eyes.[64] We need the double-lensed sunglasses of reason and faith to know truth now; in Heaven we shall come across the truth naked and directly. When reality appears and no longer hides, and then will we.

The clothing of Heaven is described in Scripture every bit "white garments".[65] White is the color of light. Light reveals. On earth, clothes partly muffle and partly reveal, simply as linguistic communication does.[66] In Heaven all is revealed. "Zilch is hid that shall non exist fabricated manifest."[67]

Here, truth is aletheia, overcoming of Lethe: forgetfulness, appearance, darkening. So clothing hides the trunk, and the truth about the body is reached by unveiling, naking. In Heaven, the truth will be in the appearances (fully revealed, fully apparent), and then the truth of the resurrection torso will be revealed in its clothes. As the Son perfectly expresses the Father, dress will limited the body.

Our heavenly clothes may express our earthly story and success. Socrates will have his philosopher's robe. Heroes will wear the clothes associated with their heroism.[68] Jesus will wear His crown of thorns. Each thorn will be a diamond.

x. Are there animals in sky?

The simplest respond is: Why not? How irrational is the prejudice that would allow plants (green fields and flowers) but not animals into Heaven![69] Much more reasonable is C. Due south. Lewis' speculation that nosotros volition be "betwixt the angels who are our elder brothers and the beasts who are our jesters, servants, and playfellows".[70] Scripture seems to confirm this: "thy judgments are similar the groovy deep; human being and beast chiliad savest, O Lord".[71] Animals belong in the "new earth ,[72] as much as trees.

C. S. Lewis supposes that animals are saved "in" their masters, as role of their extended family.[73] Merely tamed animals would be saved in this way. It would seem more than likely that wild fauna are in Heaven besides, since wildness, otherness, non-mine-ness, is a proper pleasure for us.[74] The very fact that the seagull takes no notice of me when it utters its remote, lonely call is part of its glory.

Would the same animals be in Sky as on earth? "Is my dead true cat in Heaven?" Once more, why not? God can raise up the very grass;[75] why not cats? Though the blest have better things to do than play with pets, the better does not exclude the bottom. Nosotros were meant from the beginning to have stewardship over the animals;[76] we have not fulfilled that divine plan yet on earth; therefore it seems likely that the right relationship with animals volition be role of Heaven: proper "petship". And what better place to begin than with already petted pets?

xi. Is in that location music in heaven?

First of all, the Bible says then.[77]

Secondly, bully earthly music is especially Heavenly, a sign or pointer across itself to Sky. What was dimly suggested in all earthly music that moved usa and so much that the ancients necessarily ascribed it not to men but to gods[78] goddesses, the ix Muses is precisely Heavenly music. That is why we were moved here; it reminded usa of In that location, which is our home.

Tertiary, it may well be in music that the world was created,[79] and that music is the original language. Spoken poesy is to music what prose is to poetry.[lxxx] Verse is not ornamented prose, and music is non accompanied poetry. Prose is ossified poesy,[81] and verse is half of music.

It is non that music is in Heaven; Heaven is in music. Sky is "the region where in that location is but life, and therefore all that is not music is silence".[82] Heaven is both silent, like the contemplative mystic, and full of audio, like a dance or a symphony.

12. How big is heaven?

The very nature of infinite, and therefore of size, changes in Sky. Meaning determines size, rather than size, pregnant.

The New Jerusalem's measures are symbolic, not physical.[83]

Heaven is big plenty so that billions of races of billions of saved people are never crowded, yet pocket-size plenty and then that no one gets lost or feels alone. And we can travel anywhere in Heaven just by will.[84]

13. Is sky serious or funny?

The very stardom is too funny to take seriously. The stardom between humor and seriousness is strictly earthly. Here on world, much humor is "comic relief " from the grim business of "real" life. Merely in Heaven, sense of humour is high seriousness. It is the inner secret of God and the blessed.[85]

Even on world, saints play with their lives in the about outrageous way. Saint Thomas More ended his life with a bad joke, telling the axman "please do not chop my beard in two; it has not committed treason."[86] Jesus has the most perfect sense of humor of all.[87] Nosotros practise not often see it, because we think of humor as jokes. Just the about perfect humor is in the very state of affairs itself, especially irony,[88] the contrast betwixt appearance and reality. "Permit him who is without sin among you be the starting time to throw a stone at her"[89] is irony. It could be more awfully and directly rendered, "Yous judgmental fools are worse than that adulteress - taking out splinters with logs in your eyes."[xc] There is peachy irony in the Sermon on the Mount: "Consider the lilies of the field .... they toil not, neither practice they spin: And yet I say unto yous, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 1 of these."[91] In other words, "You're sillier than the lilies. Who do you remember you are anyway? God?[92] He'll take equally expert care of you lot as the lilies, won't he?" There is irony in "You lot search the scriptures, because you think that in them you lot accept eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me."[93] That is, "You lot're trying to read the sign as if it pointed to itself" It is the same irony as Pilate'south "What is truth?"[94] as Truth stands in front of him. Finally, there is Jesus' ironic remark to Nicodemus, who cannot understand being "built-in over again" and asks whether he must return to his mother'southward womb: "Are y'all a instructor of Israel and notwithstanding you do non sympathise this?"[95] You experts know everything except what information technology'south all about.

Jesus is our all-time indicator of Sky, and if there is humor in Jesus, there is humor in Heaven. Jesus is the manifestation of the Father, and if there is humor in the personality of the Son, at that place is humor in the personality of the Father. For some reason, people think of the Persons of the Trinity as defective personality, as nebbishes. In fact, the 3 fullest personalities in all reality are the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. They are characters! They designed ostriches, for goodness' sake (literally). And supreme joke united states of america.

Many of the resuscitated perceive and share Heavenly humor, fifty-fifty God's laughter at repented and forgiven sins.[96] We can laugh only when we are free, detached. The saint can laugh at life in his martyrdom, and once freed from sin (only not till then) we can laugh even at sin in Heaven. Detachment is necessary for humor. And in Heaven there is perfect disengagement, even from self (ek-stasis, "standing-exterior-oneself") Therefore in Heaven there is perfect sense of humor.

The saint and the clown share the hugger-mugger of levity, the spousal relationship between the two meanings of "calorie-free": truth (opposite of falsehood and darkness) and levity (opposite of gravity and heaviness). Saints levitate! Body follows spirit.

But Heavenly humor is non the opposite of seriousness, merely of joyless seriousness. Saints, mystics, and the resuscitated take life more seriously than others do. Everything gains an infinite importance, an "eternal weight of glory".[97] Joy is a serious matter too adept to be wasted on jokes. The saint does not usually tell jokes,[98] considering he does not need to, to relieve the joylessness, to salvage sadness, to distract from the heavy, practical earth. "Joy is the serious business of Heaven."[99]

14. Why won't nosotros exist bored in sky?

Considering we are with God, and God is space. Nosotros never come to the terminate of exploring Him. He is new every day.

Because we are with God, and God is eternal. Time does not pass (a condition for boredom); it only is. All time is present in eternity, equally all the events of the plot are present in an author's mind. In that location is no waiting.

Because we are with God, and God is dear. Fifty-fifty on globe, the only people who are never bored are lovers.

Endnotes:

[1] Ecclesiastes 1:fourteen.
[2] Ecclesiastes 12:8.
[3] James 3:1; Luke 12:48.
[4] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: New American Library, 1959), p. 324; Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 22-24.
[5] one Corinthians xiii:12 (KJV).
[half dozen] Pascal, Pensees, trans. Krailsheimer (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 117, 131.
[7] Matthew xviii:iii
[8] De gradibus humilitatis, I, 1.
[9] Ernest Becker, The Denial of Decease (New York: Macmillan, Complimentary Press, 1973).
[x] C. S. Lewis, "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" in The Screwtape Messages and Screwtape Proposes a Toast (New York: Macmillan, 1961).
[11] C. Southward. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1955), pp. 18, 140-42.
[12] C. South. Lewis, The Trouble of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 147.
[xiii] Matthew 20:1-16.
[14] Luke i:52-53.
[15] Isaiah 40:4 (KJV).
[16] Matthew thirteen:12.
[17] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, III, 142, 2.
[eighteen] C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (New York: Macmillan, 1965), p. 148.
[19] 1 Corinthians 12:fourteen-26.
[twenty] Hebrews 12:ane.
[21] Luke twenty:38.
[22] The Cosmic Encyclopedia, vol. Iv, p. 171.
[23] Hebrews 12:22; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, 50, 3.
[24] Deuteronomy eighteen:10-11; Isaiah 8:19.
[25] 1 Samuel 28.
[26] John 8:44.
[27] 2 Corinthians 11:14.
[28] Shakespeare, Hamlet, human activity 1, scene 5, lines 9-22.
[29] Jeremiah 6:14; 8:xi.
[thirty] C. S. Lewis, The Silvery Chair (New York: Macmillan, 1953), p. 205.
[31] C. Southward. Lewis, Miracles, chap. 1.
[32] K. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1946), p. 279.
[33] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 10, 7.
[34] Hermann Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, trans. David Freeman (Phillipsburg, NJ.: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co., 1953). Cf Proverbs 23:vii; 4:23.
[35] Pascal, Pensees (trans. Krailsheimer), 423.
[36] Revelation 21:4 (KJV).
[37] A Woman Clothed with the Sunday, ed. John J. Delaney (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961).
[38] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p. 152.
[39] C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: Bantam, 1976), p. 64.
[40] The Cosmic Encyclopedia (1921), vol. 10, p. 449. Cf. Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard (New York: Viking, 1959), p. 265.
[41] Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, chap. 2 in A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall (New York: Modernistic Library, 1946), pp. 164, 166.
[42] C. Due south. Lewis, The Bully Divorce (New York: Macmillan, 1975), p. 120.
[43] Ibid., p. 121: "The action of Pity volition alive forever; but the passion of Compassion will non." Run into St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, iii, 1; Summa contra Gentiles, I, 16, 5, on God as purely agile.
[44] C. Southward. Lewis, A Grief Observed, pp. 85-88.
[45] C. South. Lewis, The Trouble of Pain, p. 152.
[46] Ibid., p. 153.
[47] Milton, Paradise Lost, volume I, line 262.
[48] "St. Alfonso Liguori, Preparations for Death, ed. Rev. Eugene Grimm (Baltimore, Medico.: John White potato & Co., 1926).
[49] Romans six:7.
[50] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Globe, 1955), pp. 229, 237.
[51] St. Augustine, Confessions, Viii, 8-9.
[52] 2 Corinthians half dozen:10 (KJV).
[53] 1 Corinthians three:21, 23.
[54] Theologia Germanica, LI
[55] C. South. Lewis, The Trouble of Pain, p. 153.
[56] George MacDonald in C. Due south. Lewis, ed., George MacDonald: An Album (New York: Macmillan, 1978), p. 119 (no. 287).
[57] Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having, trans. Katherine Farrer (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), pp. 137, 237.
[58] C. S. Lewis, Till We Take Faces (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1957), p. 279.
[59] C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (G Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 216.
[sixty] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 107. Cf Martin Ebon, The Show for Life afterwards Death (New York: New American Library, 1971), p. 112.
[61] C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, pp. 360-64; The Great Divorce, p. 107.
[62] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1957), p. 147.
[63] one Corinthians xiii:12.
[64] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, 1, v ad ane.
[65] Matthew 17:2; Revelation 3:five, 18; seven:9; 19:8.
[66] Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. Hertz (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 81.
[67] Luke eight:17.
[68] Bruce Palmer, Of Orc-Rags, Phials, and a Far Shore: Visions of Paradise in The Lord of the Rings (Kansas City, Mo.: T-K Graphics, 1976), p. 25.
[69] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 3 (Supplement), 91, 5
[70] C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, p. 378.
[71] Psalm 36:half-dozen.
[72] Revelation 21:1.
[73] C. Southward. Lewis, The Trouble of Pain, pp. 138-39.
[74] C. S. Lewis, Miracles, p. 78.
[75] Psalm xc:5-6. If we are "like grass", and we are raised, grass can be raised too.
[76] Genesis 1:28.
[77] Revelation 14:3.
[78] Plato, Ion, 533c-35c; Isadore of Seville, Etymologiae, bk. III, chap. 15.
[79] J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), p. 25; C. Due south. Lewis, The Wizard'southward Nephew (New York: Macmillan, 1955), chap. ix.
[80] Martm Heidegger, "Holderlin and the Essence of Poesy" in Existence and Being, trans. Ralph Manheim (Chicago: Regnery, 1967), pp. 281, 283-84; "The Nature of Linguistic communication", On the Way to Language.
[81] George MacDonald in C. South. Lewis, ed., George MacDonald: An Anthology (New York: Macmillan, 1978), p. 113.
[82] Ibid., p. xix.
[83] Revelation xi:one
[84] Plotinus, Enneads, I, half-dozen, viii; Raymond Moody, Life after Life (New York: Runted, 1976), p. 52.
[85] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1957), pp.298-99.
[86] E. E. Reynolds, The Field Is Won: The Life and Death of St. Thomas More (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Bruce, 1968), pp. 265-66.
[87] Henri Cormier, The Humor of Jesus, trans. David Heiman (New York: Alba, 1977).
[88] Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, trans. M. C. Lee (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).
[89] John 8:vii.
[xc] Matthew 7:iii.
[91] Matthew 6:29 (KJV).
[92] Matthew 6:27.
[93] John 5:39.
[94] John eighteen:38.
[95] John 3:10.
[96] Raymond Moody, Life subsequently Life (New York: Bantam, 1976), pp. 64-73, 156; Reflections on Life later on Life (New York: Bantam, 1977), pp. 29-40; Philip Swihart, At the Edge of Death (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Printing, 1978), pp. 60-63.
[97] 2 Corinthians 4:17.
[98] Similar Alyosha in Dostoyevski's The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), part I, bk. i, chap. iv, p. xviii.
[99] C. South. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Globe, 1964), p. 93.

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