What is Heaven? Heaven and heavens. Heaven in Christianity. God. Transcendent supernatural place

What is Heaven? Heaven or the heavens. Heaven in Christianity.

Place of God. Divine transcendent supernatural place.

Descriptions of Heaven in the New Testament are more fully developed than those in the Old Testament, but are still generally vague. As in the Old Testament, in the New Testament God is described as the ruler of Heaven and Earth, but his power over the Earth is challenged by Satan. Sayings of Jesus recorded in the Gospels of Mark and Luke speak of the “Kingdom of God” (Greek: βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ; basileía tou theou), while the Gospel of Matthew more commonly uses the term “Kingdom of Heaven” (Greek: βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν; basileía tōn ouranōn). Both phrases have exactly the same meaning,[39] but the author of the Gospel of Matthew changed the name “Kingdom of God” to “Kingdom of Heaven” in most instances because it was the more acceptable phrase in his own cultural and religious context in the late first century.

Modern scholars agree that the Kingdom of God was an essential part of the teachings of the historical Jesus. In spite of this, none of the gospels ever record Jesus as having explained exactly what the phrase “Kingdom of God” means. The most likely explanation for this apparent omission is that the Kingdom of God was a commonly understood concept that required no explanation. Jews in Judea during the early first century believed that God reigns eternally in Heaven, but many also believed that God would eventually establish his kingdom on earth as well. This belief is referenced in the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, taught by Jesus to his disciples and recorded in both Matthew 6:10 and Luke 11:2: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Because God’s Kingdom was believed to be superior to any human kingdom, this meant that God would necessarily drive out the Romans, who ruled Judea, and establish his own direct rule over the Jewish people. In the teachings of the historical Jesus, people are expected to prepare for the coming of the Kingdom of God by living moral lives. Jesus’s commands for his followers to adopt lifestyles of moral perfectionism are found in many passages throughout the Synoptic Gospels, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7. Jesus also taught that, in the Kingdom of Heaven, there would be a reversal of roles in which “the last will be first and the first will be last” (Mark 10:31, Matthew 19:30, Matthew 20:16, and Luke 13:30). This teaching recurs throughout the recorded teachings of Jesus, including in the admonition to be like a child in Mark 10:13–16, Matthew 19:30, and Luke 18:15–17, the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in Matthew 20:1–16, the Parable of the Great Banquet in Matthew 22:1–10, and the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11–32.

Traditionally, Christianity has taught that Heaven is the location of the throne of God as well as the holy angels, although this is in varying degrees considered metaphorical. In traditional Christianity, it is considered a state or condition of existence (rather than a particular place somewhere in the cosmos) of the supreme fulfillment of theosis in the beatific vision of the Godhead. In most forms of Christianity, Heaven is also understood as the abode for the redeemed dead in the afterlife, usually a temporary stage before the resurrection of the dead and the saints’ return to the New Earth.

The resurrected Jesus is said to have ascended to Heaven where he now sits at the Right Hand of God and will return to Earth in the Second Coming. Various people have been said to have entered Heaven while still alive, including Enoch, Elijah and Jesus himself, after his resurrection. According to Roman Catholic teaching, Mary, mother of Jesus, is also said to have been assumed into Heaven and is titled the Queen of Heaven.

In the 2nd century AD, Irenaeus of Lyons recorded a belief that, in accordance with John 14:2, those who in the afterlife see the Saviour are in different mansions, some dwelling in the heavens, others in paradise and others in “the city”.

While the word used in all these writings, in particular the New Testament Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos), applies primarily to the sky, it is also used metaphorically of the dwelling place of God and the blessed. Similarly, though the English word “heaven” still keeps its original physical meaning when used, for instance, in allusions to the stars as “lights shining through from heaven”, and in phrases such as heavenly body to mean an astronomical object, the heaven or happiness that Christianity looks forward to is, according to Pope John Paul II, “neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit.”

The Heaven as a Kingdom of God

The “Kingdom of God” and its equivalent form “Kingdom of Heaven” in the Gospel of Matthew is one of the key elements of the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. The Gospel of Mark indicates that the gospel is the good news about the Kingdom of God. The term pertains to the kingship of Christ over all creation. Kingdom of “heaven” appears in Matthew’s gospel due primarily to Jewish sensibilities about uttering the “name” (God). Jesus did not teach the kingdom of God per se so much as the return of that kingdom. The notion of God’s kingdom (as it had been under Moses) returning became an agitation in “knaan” (also known today by Palestine and Israel) 60 years before Jesus was born, and continued to be a force for nearly a hundred years after his death. Drawing on Old Testament teachings, the Christian characterization of the relationship between God and humanity inherently involves the notion of the “Kingship of God”.

What is Perfectionism in philosophy of Christianity and its relation with Heaven – The Throne of God

Not to be confused with Perfectionism (psychology).

In ethics and value theory, perfectionism is the persistence of will in obtaining the optimal quality of spiritual, mental, physical, and material being. The neo-Aristotelean Thomas Hurka describes perfectionism as follows:

This moral theory starts from an account of the good life, or the intrinsically desirable life. And it characterizes this life in a distinctive way. Certain properties, it says, constitute human nature or are definitive of humanity—they make humans human. The good life, it then says, develops these properties to a high degree or realizes what is central to human nature. Different versions of the theory may disagree about what the relevant properties are and so disagree about the content of the good life. But they share the foundational idea that what is good, ultimately, is the development of human nature.

The perfectionist does not necessarily believe that one can attain a perfect life or state of living. Rather, a perfectionist practices steadfast perseverance in obtaining the best possible life or state of living.

Throne of God in Christianity and its relation with heaven and Seventh Heaven.

In the New Testament, the Throne of God is talked about in several forms. Including Heaven as the Throne of God, The Throne of David, The Throne of Glory, The Throne of Grace and many more. The New Testament continues Jewish identification of heaven itself as the “throne of God”, but also locates the throne of God as “in heaven” and having a secondary seat at the Right Hand of God for the Session of Christ.

Book of Revelation in the Bible and the Throne of God with Heaven and Seventh Heaven.

The Book of Revelation describes the Seven Spirits of God which surround the throne, and John wishes his readers in the Seven Asian churches to be blessed with grace from God, from the seven who are before God’s throne, and from Jesus Christ in Heaven. John states that in front of the throne there appears to be “a sea of glass, clear as crystal”, and that the throne is surrounded by a lion, an ox, a man, and a flying eagle; each with six wings and covered with eyes, who constantly cry “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come” repeatedly. It is also said that “out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices”.

Isaiah In Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train (robe) filled the temple. Above the throne stood the Seraphims (angelic beings), and each one had 6 wings. With two wings they covered their face, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And the Seraphims were calling out to one another, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts” (Some translations title Him, ‘Lord of heavens armies’, or ‘Lord Almighty’). Their voices shook the temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.

Godhead appearance in Bible. What is Godhead?

John Wycliffe introduced the term godhede into English Bible versions in two places, and, though somewhat archaic, the term survives in modern English because of its use in three places of the Tyndale New Testament (1525), the Geneva Bible (1560/1599), and King James Version (1611). In that translation, the word was used to translate three different Koine Greek words:

God in Christianity and relation to Angels and Heavens as the Creator of all and everything.

In Christianity, God is the eternal being who created and preserves all things. Christians believe God to be both transcendent (wholly independent of, and removed from, the material universe) and immanent (involved in the world). Christian teachings of the immanence and involvement of God and his love for humanity exclude the belief that God is of the same substance as the created universe but accept that God’s divine nature was hypostatically united to human nature in the person of Jesus Christ, in an event known as the Incarnation.

Early Christian views of God were expressed in the Pauline epistles and the early creeds, which proclaimed one God and the divinity of Jesus, almost in the same breath as in 1 Corinthians (8:5-6): “For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. Although the Judeo-Christian sect of the Ebionites protested against this apotheosis of Jesus, the great mass of Gentile Christians accepted it.” This began to differentiate the Gentile Christian views of God from traditional Jewish teachings of the time.

The theology of the attributes and nature of God has been discussed since the earliest days of Christianity, with Irenaeus writing in the 2nd century: “His greatness lacks nothing, but contains all things”. In the 8th century, John of Damascus listed eighteen attributes which remain widely accepted. As time passed, theologians developed systematic lists of these attributes, some based on statements in the Bible (e.g., the Lord’s Prayer, stating that the Father is in Heaven), others based on theological reasoning. The Kingdom of God is a prominent phrase in the Synoptic Gospels and while there is near unanimous agreement among scholars that it represents a key element of the teachings of Jesus, there is little scholarly agreement on its exact interpretation.

Although the New Testament does not have a formal doctrine of the Trinity as such, “it does repeatedly speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit… in such a way as to compel a Trinitarian understanding of God.” This never becomes a tritheism, i.e. this does not imply three Gods. Around the year 200, Tertullian formulated a version of the doctrine of the Trinity which clearly affirmed the divinity of Jesus and came close to the later definitive form produced by the Ecumenical Council of 381. The doctrine of the Trinity can be summed up as: “The One God exists in Three Persons and One Substance, as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Trinitarians, who form the large majority of Christians, hold it as a core tenet of their faith. Nontrinitarian denominations define the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in a number of different ways.

Resurrection of Jesus. What is Resurrection? Jesus. Eternal Father. King of Peace

The resurrection of Jesus, or anastasis, is the Christian belief that God raised Jesus on the third day  after his crucifixion at Calvary as first of the dead, starting his exalted life as Christ and Lord. In Christian theology, the death and resurrection of Jesus are the most important events, a foundation of the Christian faith, and commemorated by Easter. For Christians, his resurrection is the guarantee that all the Christian dead will be resurrected at Christ’s second coming. For the Christian tradition, the bodily resurrection was the restoration to life of a transformed body powered by spirit, as described by Paul and the Gospels, that led to the establishment of Christianity.

In the theological movement of Liberal Christianity, the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are explained as visionary experiences[14][15][16] that gave the impetus to the belief in the exaltation of Jesus and a resumption of the missionary activity of Jesus’ followers.

In Christian theology, the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus are the most important events, and a foundation of the Christian faith.[6][64][note 10] The Nicene Creed states: “On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures”.[65] According to Terry Miethe, a Christian philosopher at Oxford University, the question “ ’Did Jesus rise from the dead?’ is the most important question regarding the claims of the Christian faith.” According to John R. Rice, a Baptist evangelist, the resurrection of Jesus was part of the plan of salvation and redemption by atonement for man’s sin. Summarizing its traditional analysis, the Catholic Church states in its Catechism:

Although the Resurrection was an historical event that could be verified by the sign of the empty tomb and by the reality of the apostles’ encounters with the risen Christ, still it remains at the very heart of the mystery of faith as something that transcends and surpasses history.

The resurrection of Jesus in Christianity. Foundation of Christian faith. Significance in Christianity.

For many Christians, including some scholars, it is particularly important to hold that Paul, too, believed in a concrete, material resurrection, although Paul insisted on a spiritual or pneumatic body, denying any future for the flesh, thus reflecting his Pharisaic background, where the present physical body was looked upon negatively. According to N. T. Wright in his book The Resurrection of the Son of God, “There can be no question: Paul is a firm believer in bodily resurrection. He stands with his fellow Jews against the massed ranks of pagans; with his fellow Pharisees against other Jews.”According to New Testament scholar Gary Habermas, “Many other scholars have spoken in support of a bodily notion of Jesus’ resurrection.” According to Craig L. Blomberg, there are sufficient arguments for the historicity of the resurrection.