This will be my final issue of the Global Journal as its founding editor—after more than twenty years of hard (but very pleasant) labor. The baton passes to Adam Francisco, who possesses an Oxford D.Phil., reminding me of a former colleague who used to twit me by saying, “Sure, you have a dozen degrees, including three earned doctorates, but mine is from Oxford.” The Global Journal’s orientation will not change; it will remain a non-confessional but evangelical paper, with Reformation/Lutheran bias, open to scholarly contributors of all persuasions.
I am now in the final decade of my life. On 18 October, I became 92 years of age. The only consolation was that I managed to exceed my father’s longevity (he died at 91). Father, unlike me, was a sportsman and outdoor fellow who always seemed to regard me as a bit of a wimp, addicted as I have consistently been to scholarly pursuits. Thus, my exceeding his lifespan gave me perverse satisfaction.
Now that heaven approaches, I am giving some thought to how it works. A recent—and apparently final—number (20, titled Supermalt[1]) of the Belgian-French cartoon series “Du côté de chez Poje” faced the matter in stark terms. (We shall here provide a short, summary translation.)
(Poje, the owner of a popular neighborhood bistro, is in conversation with one of his colorful clients.)
Client: “I am troubled by the thought of dying. It’s not death that bothers me; it’s what may come afterwards.”
Poje: “You’re not the only one troubled by this.”
Client: “Suppose that during your whole life you have served a God, but not the true one. Imagine a Christian finding himself suddenly face-to-face with Allah. Imagine a Jew, on dying, being confronted by the Buddha. In these cases, the poor dead person would be condemned to wander eternity without hope. THIS is what gives me the goosebumps! The lesson is clear: we had better make the right choice—not a wrong one.”
Poje: “But suppose—I am just saying ‘suppose’—there is nothing after death: absolutely nothing, zero, the void.”
Client: “Yup, that would certainly simplify things … But suppose—I am just saying ‘suppose’—there really is something after death …”
(Later; Poje and his wife are in bed.)
Wife: “What’s the matter?”
Poje: “I’ve got a real case of the jitters. My customer was right: we don’t reflect enough on these eternal matters. Suppose there really is life after death?”
To be sure, Poje should have pointed out that:
- If there is no life after death, there would also be no Last Judgment, so the Hitlers and the Stalins of this world would never come to punishment in an essentially immoral universe, and
- Only Christianity among the world’s religions offers solid evidence for life after death—by way of Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead. But Poje is entirely correct that our theology should be far more important to us than it generally is, and that our choices in this world will determine our destiny in the next.
What issues trouble us where heaven is concerned? Here’s a short list (just as examples):
- Will heaven be closed to those who, in this world, never heard of Christ and His Gospel?
- Will we meet loved ones as they were when they died, or at some earlier stage of their earthly existence? Will we recognize them?
- With the vast numbers of the dead, how will we locate anyone?
- Considering the gigantic cultural differences through history, will we be able meaningfully to communicate with or understand those who preceded us and those who much later follow us through the Pearly Gates?
One neat overall approach to such questions is the analogy of the multiverse. Heaven may well have its own characteristics, which we could not possibly understand in the context of our own world. (In using a multiverse analogy, one must never forget that the existence of physical multiverses is purely speculative, whereas heaven’s existence is established by Our Lord, Who spoke of its “many mansions” (John 14:2–6).)
And why would it not be possible for those in bliss to appear to other heavenly persons at whatever age and with whatever features that would be most meaningful to the particular observer? Finally, as for the eternal condition of those who never could have heard the Christian message, see, in my book, Theology: Good, Bad and Mysterious, the chapter “Those Who Have Not Heard the Gospel: A Construct.”[2]
If we are longing for more detail, we shall just have to await our own demise. In the meantime, one cannot do worse than to peruse the late Wilbur M. Smith’s book, The Biblical Doctrine of Heaven.[3] Smith and I were colleagues at the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and he is one of the first persons I intend to look up on entering the New Jerusalem by God’s unmerited grace.
Coda 1—Semi-facetious coda: Following the message of the classic Christmas film, Miracle on 34th Street, we shall confront Santa’s critics with a better-than-average theology. It is claimed that Père Noël could not possibly visit the dwellings of all earth’s children in a single night. However, the notion of comprehensive visitation appears to rest on a presumption analogous to Calvinist double predestination and limited atonement, that Santa visits all pre-saved children of pre-puberty age. Why not better employ the Lutheran doctrine of universal atonement beneficial only to believers? Here, Santa would visit only believing children. If one views the parable of the Sower (Matthew 13) as a statistical guide, only ¼ of potential benefactors of God’s free grace in fact benefit from it. This would radically reduce the number of Santa’s visits—though it would still require additional mathematical physics to account for successful Christmas Eve flights[4].
Coda 2—Dead-serious coda: Shortly after my final term as guest professor at the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod’s Concordia University Wisconsin, a full professor of philosophy was summarily put on indefinite leave for criticizing the advocacy of “Woke” ideology by certain faculty members and student organizations, and for chastising the university administration for doing nothing to remedy this clear violation of academic freedom. I found it very troubling that such a problem should arise at a confessional Lutheran institution (where the sidelined professor has still not been restored to his position, even though the school’s presidency has changed and the vice-president who had most to do with allowing the mess to occur no longer controls the sad state of affairs). (See Jean-François Braunstein, La religion “woke” [Paris: Grasset, 2022].)
And, incredibly, within the ensuing months “Woke” has caused dissension and conflict in my London club, the Athenaeum—the most prestigious intellectual West End club, home to many Nobel Prize winners, as well as Charles Dickens, Michael Faraday, J. S. Mill, W. E. Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, T. S. Eliot, and Winston Churchill. (See Richard Davenport-Hines, “The Unmaking of the Athenaeum: The Venerable Club is being spoiled by Ideology,” The Critic, Dec. 15, 2023).
John Warwick Montgomery
[1] Marcinelle, Belgium: Dupuis, 2009.
[2] Bonn, Germany: Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, 2020. pp. 227-30. In the western hemisphere, available from Wipf & Stock.
[3] Chicago: Moody Publishers reprint, 1982
[4] cf. Dr. Hannah Fry, The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus: The Mathematics of Christmas (London: Black Swan/TransWorld, 2017).
