Thinking about Heaven

Or: A quote from Augustine worth writing a book about

I was introduced to the work of E. L. Mascall by my professor not long ago. It was one of those experiences where you wonder, ‘How have I not heard of this author before?!’ Mascall’s writing is clear, compelling, and well-reasoned. It is not dry but lively and engaging.

So when I was visiting my favorite bookstore in the world and found a copy of Mascall’s book Grace and Glory of course I bought it. It’s a short little book, just 70 pages, and not difficult at all to read.

But its chief selling-point is found in the first lines of the book:

This is a book for Christians who are still upon earth, but I have based it upon a sentence in which S. Augustine describes our future life in heaven: ‘There we shall rest and we shall see; we shall see and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise. Behold what shall be in the end shall not end.’ (pg 1)

Heaven, according to Augustine, is a place of rest, of seeing, of loving, and of praising with no end. Mascall takes a chapter each to reflect on these and to help us do the same.

If you’ve been following my work for awhile, then it is no surprise to you that I was particularly interested in what Mascall had to say about what it will be like when “we shall see.” Like any great writer, he was able to put something I already knew into a succinct and memorable pair of statements:

For the world before Christ, to see God was to die…For man restored in Christ, to see God is to live. (pg 23)

But perhaps even more helpful was his answer to this question he raises:

Why is our desire for the beatific vision so weak? (pg 23)

Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash

If we were created to see God and to enter heaven will be to see his face, then why is our longing to see God not stronger? Why when we read Paul saying ‘my desire is to depart and be with Christ for that is far better’ (Phil 1:21-23) are we not all saying, ‘Yes! Let’s go see him now!’? Mascall explains with an excellent illustration that is worth quoting at length:

Most of us have at some time had the experience of being persuaded by a friend to make a troublesome journey in order to see some scene of natural beauty or some great work of art. Very probably we have resisted the invitation, because we found it hard to believe that the object was really as entrancing as people made out and that the journey was worth while. And perhaps the matter ended there and we never saw it at all. But on other occasions we yielded to our friend’s importunity and went with him. And then we found that the object exceeded in its beauty anything that we could possibly have imagined, and our attitude to our friend changed from a somewhat resentful feeling of grievance to one of delighted gratitude for the insistence with which he had induced us to accompany him. It is, I suggest, very much like this as regards the beatific vision. (pg 23-24)

The reason for the weakness of our desire to see God’s face comes down to not having seen his face before and not really believing that seeing his face can be better than the pleasures of this life.

But if we believe the scriptures then we should believe that seeing God’s face will far surpass all the pleasures of this life and satisfy the longings of our soul in ways nothing else has or will.

And if we have come to know Christ in part, we should long to know him in full. We should long to see his face, to be made like him, and to know him as deeply as it is possible for a creature to know his Creator.

I’m grateful for writers like Mascall who stir my heart and turn my gaze toward that promised vision of God.