Download an outline of the Creed.
Go to the beginning of this study of the Creed.
Download the handout.
Table Talk: One critique from non-believers is that faith is “just pie in the sky when you die.” Even Christians sometimes wonder if the afterlife will be boring or what we will be doing there. How might you respond to those descriptions of Christianity?
[“Table Talk” is an opening question or topic for discussion at the beginning of our time together. The intent is to help group members (around tables, with four to six at each table) build connections with each other, as well as to guide thinking in a direction related to the passage.]
We began our final discussion about the Creed with our thoughts or expectations about heaven. Those ideas ranged from meeting and talking with other saints (Moses, Paul, David, etc.) to the ability to travel in space. One person commented that we will be quite busy relationally with all those who have gone before us. Another expectation was that we will find the perfection of all that is beautiful here – majestic mountains and the rest of nature and everything else that is good and wonderful here. Job describes all we see as only the “edges” or “fringes” of God’s ways (Job 26:14), and C. S. Lewis called all earthly blessings “a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage” of what is to come.[1] Those suggestions should excite anyone who believes in and desires heaven.
Yet another person shared the concern reflected in the Table Talk question. Some people consider all that expectation as escapism, avoiding present reality by “kidding ourselves” about the future. One way to withstand that kind of criticism is to understand as much as we can about our future life and to deepen our confidence and anticipation in its delightfulness. A vague or superficial idea of what “life everlasting” means will not provide much hope. Unfortunately, most of us are so consumed with living now, just making it through the week or the day (or the hour) that we pay little attention to what is coming. Our fuzzy “hearsay impressions” are not all that appealing:
Much of what people think of our future life with Christ owes more to caricatured images of heaven in cartoons, movies, medieval art, and greeting cards than to the biblical portrait of the afterlife.[2]
Recollections from our group about “cartoons, movies, medieval art, and greeting cards” brought to mind harps and clouds and baby angels. No one seemed particularly excited about those images.
The criticism about “pie in the sky when you die” brings to mind one of my all-time favorite C. S. Lewis comments:
There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of ‘Heaven’ ridiculous by saying they do not want ‘to spend eternity playing harps’. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible.[3]
Development of the Creeds
The Creed included “life everlasting” as the climax of our beliefs. The early Fathers thought it was a vital topic, essential to understanding and living the Christian life. We need to recognize that same importance to experience the kind of hope they had.
Comparing the Apostles’ Creed (ca. AD200) with the Nicene Creed (ca. 325-381) reveals that the Nicene Creed uses different language to communicate very similar ideas.
| Apostles’ Creed (ca. AD 200) | Nicene Creed (ca. AD 325 – 381) |
| the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. | and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. |
Life Everlasting – The World to Come
We talked about the difference between “life everlasting” and “the life of the world to come.” The consensus was that “the world to come” added clarity. “Life everlasting” affirms the duration of that life but is ambiguous about the quality or setting of that life. One person noted that just the use of the word “world” communicates a sense of some kind of geography, something beyond an ethereal existence, “a real place.” A “world” has space and time and matter, a physical reality. There must be more than baby angels on clouds. [Later, after our discussion, I found that the original in the Nicene Creed was αἰῶνος (aionos), usually translated “age” but also translated as “life” (e.g., Matthew 13:22) or “world” (Romans 12:2, 1 Timothy 6:17, 2 Timothy 4:10) or even “universe” (Hebrews 1:2; 11:3). The creed does not use the more common word κόσμος (cosmos) for the created world. The verses cited here, especially the two in the letter to the Hebrews, show that αἰῶνος includes the sense of space, time, and matter created by God.]
One of the intended purposes of the creeds in correcting misunderstanding was the clarification of “the resurrection of the body.” Greek philosophy and Gnostic heretics taught that the soul, the immaterial part of a person was all that was important. (Some Christians seem to continue that misapprehension even today. A good reason for promoting and studying the Creed!) One writer suggests that:
‘The life everlasting’ seems to have been added not as a separate clause or a statement about a different belief, but simply as a clarification of what was meant by ‘the resurrection of the body.’[4]
The concern might have been that resurrection of the body, while certainly astonishing, was not unprecedented. Already there had been resurrections of the body. Lazarus was raised (John 11:1-46), as was the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus (Luke 8:40-56). They both were raised bodily. And they both (presumably) lived a few more years, then died again. The phrase “life everlasting” clarified the concern that the resurrection of the body might be only a temporary condition.
Resurrection of the Body
The Apostles’ Creed affirms the resurrection of the “body,” while the Nicene creed describes the resurrection of the “dead.”
The Nicene Creed (as we have seen in earlier discussions) was concerned with clarifying the nature of Christ and the nature of the Holy Spirit (the second and third Persons of the Holy Trinity). Perhaps the Nicene focus on Christ and His bodily resurrection and our identification with Him was the focus of the Nicene Fathers:
The resurrection of Christ in body demonstrated that the saving work of Christ on our behalf was fulfilled within the concrete reality of our actual human existence. Behind that, of course, lay the great emphasis on the early Church, not least in its opposition to the docetic and dualist ideas put forward by Gnostic thinkers, upon the fact that in Jesus Christ the Word had become flesh, and that he rose again in flesh or in body from the dead.[5]
The Nicene Creed was definitely not diminishing the idea of the physical resurrection of believers’ bodies. Instead, the Nicene Fathers were making Christ’s bodily resurrection the reference point on which our bodily resurrection depends.
Even the wording of the Apostles’ Creed in English is not quite as strong as the original. “I believe in the resurrection of the body” is the almost universal translation, even though the original would be more accurately rendered, “I believe in the resurrection of the flesh” (Greek σαρκὸς, sarkos; Latin carnis). Perhaps, as a German writer suggested, “Purists have removed the word “body” from the creed as not sufficiently proper.”[6] Note the irony. A phrase that was used in the ancient church to affirm the value and importance of the body is edited out because the later centuries still have residue of the Gnostic distortion that somehow our human flesh is not “nice” and must be avoided. More on this later.
Looking Forward
The most noticeable difference between the two creeds is the verb. “I believe” is implied in the Apostles’ Creed, but the Nicene Creed intensifies our belief into “I look forward to…” (προσδεχόμαι, prosdechomai), the same word used in the New Testament of Simeon’s anticipation of the Messiah (Luke 2:25) and Joseph of Arimathea waiting for the kingdom (Luke 23:51). The sense is not just waiting but an expectant and enthusiastic welcome (Romans 16:2, Philippians 2:29). Even when we affirm the Apostles’ Creed, we can have the same anticipation that the Nicene Fathers emphasized.
Revelation 21:1 – 22:5
So what are we anticipating? What do the cartoons and greeting cards typically miss? While the Bible contains hints and suggestions about the future life in many passages, an extended picture is provided at the end of the vision revealed to John. While we did not have sufficient time in our group to exhaust this lengthy and rich passage, our group was able to draw some conclusions (as well as several continuing questions) from the text.
Questions that often stimulate discussion are, “What surprised you in the passage? What in the passage raised questions for you?” Several people commented on the end of the first verse: “There is no longer any sea” (Revelation 21:1). We considered why this might be important – perhaps to eliminate the instability and uncertainty and danger of the sea. The best speculation we had regarding the creatures in the disappearing sea was that they could adapt to survive in fresh water lakes and rivers in the new heaven and the new earth. (This is certainly not the most important part of the passage, but that kind of discussion helps us have the freedom to explore any other seemingly odd things in Scripture.) Another suggestion was that the absence of any sea and the absence of night (22:5) both highlight the absolute newness and transformation. The new heavens and the new earth will be recognizable but conspicuously different from what we are used to.
The repeated emphasis on God’s glory (21:11, 23), as well as God’s intimate presence (21:22) provides the thread through the passage that knowing Him and seeing His face (22:4) are the focal points of that existence. Because we will be where He is, the side effects of the fall into sin that corrupted His very good creation will be eliminated (tears, death, mourning, crying, pain – 21:4). The direct actions that express the rebellion of that corruption will also be absent (cowardice, unbelief, abominations, murder, immorality, idolatry, sorcery, idolatry, lying – 21:8, 27). The idea of “looking forward” begins to make more and more sense.
The glory of the kings (21:24) and the glory and honor of the nations (21:26) puzzled us at first. As we discussed what that glory might be, it seemed that John might have been describing the rulers and political divisions of the old creation now entering the new creation. The status and prestige that were theirs become part of their restoration of the new creation, transferring their honor and glory to God. One member of our group suggested a similarity to the worshipping elders throwing their crowns (Revelation 4:10). A practice described in heavenly worship becomes a part of the worship in the new Jerusalem.
A major feature of the new Jerusalem is the river flowing from the presence of God and of the Lamb (the Father and the Son) in the city. The river irrigated the tree of life with its healing leaves (22:1-2). While this image would be stimulating under any circumstances, the sermon that immediately preceded our group time included a mention of Ezekiel 47:12 and a river flowing from God’s temple: “By the river on its bank, on one side and on the other, will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither and their fruit will not fail. They will bear every month because their water flows from the sanctuary, and their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.” Since in the new Jerusalem there is no need for a temple (21:22), the river flows from the immediate presence of the Triune God Himself. The sermon mentioned the river as indicative of the temple (or God’s presence) as a source of life and freedom and relationship. As mentioned repeatedly, with no (human) planning, the sermon provided an image that enhanced our discussion of a completely different passage of Scripture.
Some features of the passage we noted but did not explore: the repeated number twelve, the details of the precious stones used, the dimensions of the huge, cubical city. The equality of human and angelic measurements was a complete puzzle. Those several enigmas will have to wait for a future study.
One part of the architecture did attract our attention and discussion: “a great and high wall…measured seventy-two yards” (21:12, 17). The apparent confusion with the other dimensions of the city (“fifteen-hundred miles on a side”) was apparently resolved by assuming the seventy-two yards was the height of the wall, or possibly its thickness. However, that raised the follow-up question, “Why is a wall needed?” This is the new heaven and the new earth, and God is within the city. The wall would not be needed for protection. Someone pointed out that the city, the new Jerusalem (21:2, 10), was not the whole of the new earth. Part of the new earth is outside of the city, outside of the wall. Perhaps the wall is to provide definition of who is within the city and who is outside. Yet, as another commented, the gates are always open (21:25). We rejected the idea that the open gates provide a future “second chance” to enter the new Jerusalem. Such a conclusion diverges from other clear Biblical testimony. The substantial wall with eternally open gates was one more topic for continued thought and a future study.
After our brief look at the passage in Revelation, we returned to our discussion of the Creed: the resurrection of the body (or the flesh), heaven, the new heaven and new earth, and the impact of that future on our present life.
Resurrection
The resurrection of the body/flesh eliminates two other major philosophical or religious ideas about the afterlife. The Platonists and Gnostics taught about the soul’s escape from the body. Hinduism teaches the repeated re-entrance of a soul into a series of bodies. “A bodiless soul is not a human being, and reincarnation would never be able to redeem us from entrapment in death.”[7]
The staggering idea of bodily resurrection and an eternal fleshly existence is entirely consistent with what God has been doing all along:
Specifically, we know that the body has a future in the new creation. Just as God has honored the human body through creation in the image of God and then through the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, so God will honor the body through its glorification. This means that Christians must regard the body as a significant instrument for God’s work.[8]
In addition to that theological truth, the resurrection of the body has implications for us and for all of creation:
This final proposition of the creed serves as a rule of faith for the way we conduct our lives as Christians. We live as those aware that God’s work in the world is not yet finished, that the transformation of humanity itself and of creation is not yet complete, and that each of us and all of us still face judgment and resurrection…. We will be judged on the way in which we have lived as embodied creatures…. How we act determines our future, but it does not altogether determine the world’s future. Indeed, precisely the fact that we can dispose of the body in only one way at each moment reminds us both of the seriousness of our choices and our ultimate inability to predict or control the consequences.[9]
One question that seems to intrigue anyone discussing the resurrection of the body is, “What will that new body (or more specifically, my new body) be like?” From previous studies and discussions (the Gospel of John, the letter of John, and this study on the Apostles’ Creed), we considered the fact that our bodies, like the body of the Forerunner, the resurrected Jesus, would be different: touchable, able to eat solid food, but also able to appear and disappear in an instant. The bodies will be without pain (one of our group suffers migraines) and with perfect function (one of our group is blind).
Scripture gives only these kinds of hints about the nature of paradise and our bodies. While we can speculate, we can also benefit from those who have speculated before us. Dante Alighieri, in his Divine Comedy, provides a stirring speculation as the pilgrim in the story begins his travel through the heavens and meets someone he almost recognizes, a woman named Piccarda. He says of her and the other glorified saints with her,
Then I to her: “The features I recall
Are changed by something of a wondrous kind –
Some divine likeness mirrored in you all;”[10]
III, 58-61
“Some divine likeness” may be the perfection and the completion of that sliver of the image of God that is unique to each of us. The faults and weaknesses that obscure that part of God’s character that we were created to display are gone, and we finally appear like Him (1 John 3:2) when we see His face (Revelation 22:4).
Heaven
Most conversations among Christians seem to focus on heaven as the goal of our salvation. But the climactic scenes in Revelation 21-22 do not take place in heaven but in the new heaven and the new earth with the new Jerusalem coming down to the new earth. Heaven is not the end game.
Heaven is a glorious interlude before the end but is not our final destination. That is because heaven is a temporary abode until the resurrection of the dead and the arrival of the new creation. Heaven is a waiting place for people who belong in the new heaven and the new earth.[11]
Of course, the question almost always comes up, “What will we be doing there?” Even with all the possibilities mentioned during our Table Talk time, with countless glorified saints to meet and talk with, will we be bored?
If we listen to the biblical witness, we learn that heaven is a place of both longing for the future state (Rev 6: 10– 11) and a place of worship (Rev 7: 13– 17). Heaven is not our final home and from all accounts looks like a rather busy place. The heavenly state can be likened to being wrapped in a blanket of joy, but still anticipating through worship the full blessings yet to come in the new creation.[12]
Waiting
The Bible makes it clear that at least for some who have died for the faith, heaven will be a place not just of waiting but of eagerly longing for what is to come:
and they [the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God] cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” And there was given to each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also (Revelation 6:10-11).
Worshipping
The book of the Revelation to John is packed with scenes of heavenly worship (e.g., Revelation 4:8-11; 5:8-10; 5:11-147:9-12; 11:15-17; 14:2-3; 15:1-4; 19:1-6). The specific example cited by Michael Bird is one more picture of unrestrained worship in heaven:
These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 For this reason, they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will spread His tabernacle over them. 16 They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; 17 for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes (Revelation 7:14b-17).
This active but temporary condition of the saints in heaven was more familiar to the ancient church than it seems to be today among most Christians:
Many of the leading theologians in the patristic and medieval periods were quite clear about the two-stage postmortem future. Gregory the Great (540-604), for instance, taught that the soul of the dead Christian enjoys the beatific vision while still awaiting the resurrection of the body.[13]
This misconception about the Biblical description of the “two-stage” afterlife may be linked to our individualistic idea of salvation and sanctification:
In the last two hundred years Western thought has overemphasized the individual at the expense of the larger picture of God’s creation. What is more, in much Western piety, at least since the Middle Ages, the influence of Greek philosophy has been very marked, resulting in a future expectation that bears far more resemblance to Plato’s vision of souls entering into disembodied bliss than to the biblical picture of new heavens and new earth. If we start with the future hope of the individual, there is always the risk that we will, at least by implication, understand that as the real center of everything and treat the hope of creation as mere embroidery around the edges.[14]
If “going to heaven when I die” is the full extent of our expectation, that error can distort our experience of the Christian life. A view toward heaven without the Biblical new heaven and new earth truncates God’s original vision for His good creation. Individualism can replace community, saving souls replaces care for the whole person, and nature becomes a tool to be exploited instead of a blessing to be stewarded.
New Heaven and New Earth
God has never had a “Plan B” in case “Plan A” failed. Somehow the providence and counsel of the Three-Personal God included the glorious restoration: “the ‘very good’ that God spoke over creation at the beginning will be enhanced, not abolished.”[15]
We cannot imagine a new heaven and new earth where we live forever in resurrection bodies. That fact should not prevent us from looking forward to what we cannot imagine:
The picture is not what we expected – though whether it is less or more probable and philosophical on that account is another question. It is not the picture of an escape from any and every kind of Nature into some unconditioned and utterly transcendent life. It is the picture of a new human nature, and a new Nature in general, being brought into existence. We must, indeed, believe the risen body to be extremely different from the mortal body: but the existence, in that new state, of anything that could in any sense be described as “body” at all, involves some sort of spatial relations and, in the long run, a whole new universe. That is the picture-not of unmaking but of remaking. The old field of space, time, matter, and the senses is to be weeded, dug, and sown for a new crop. We may be tired of that old field: God is not.[16]
The question of what we will be doing there still remains. Heaven may be a temporary state, but the new heaven and the new earth is everlasting. Once again, the glorious details may be beyond our imagination, but there are hints and suggestions. In the novel that many think was his “finest imaginative work”[17] C. S. Lewis described the longing of one of the characters: “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing – to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from.”[18] The place where all the beauty came from, David’s one desire was to gaze on the beauty of the Lord (Psalm 27:4), Dante’s beatific vision of seeing the Triune God are all suggestions of the inexpressible joy of the sight of God in His glory. We will see His face (Revelation 22:4), and that vision is joy itself.
If that idea of joy does not excite us, it may be because our concept of God is inadequate. John Piper’s comments about the Puritan Jonathan Edwards can expand our thinking about God and the eternal effect of His beauty on us:
Heaven [paradise? mw] will be a never-ending, ever-increasing discovery of more and more of God’s glory with greater and ever-greater joy in Him. If God’s glory and our joy in Him are one, and yet we are not infinite as He is, then our union with Him in the all-satisfying experience of His glory can never be complete, but must be increasing with intimacy and intensity for ever and ever. The perfection of heaven is not static. Nor do we see at once all there is to see – for that would be a limit on God’s glorious self-revelation, and therefore, His love. Yet we do not become God. Therefore, there will always be more, and the end of increased pleasure in God will never come.[19]
In other words, we are finite and God is infinite. We will never know all there is to know of Him, and the continuous increase of seeing more of Him will fuel our joy, our constantly increasing joy, forever. That seeing will make us want to see more, and we will.
Thus all my mind, absorbed,
Was gazing, fixed, unmoving and intent,
becoming more enraptured in its gazing.[20]
XXXIII, 97-99
Here and Now
The anticipation of the new heaven and the new earth provides opportunity in the present for both responsibility and opportunity.
Easter has a very this-worldly, present-age meaning: Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world’s true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God’s new creation has begun-and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven![21]
Responsibility
The church now has the duty of living in the power of the Holy Spirit to declare the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of all things. We do this until the glorious day when Jesus returns from heaven to put the world to rights, to judge the living and the dead, to rescue his people, and to bring them into the new heaven and new earth. The goal of our hope is not a disembodied bliss in heaven but rather the resurrection of the body and life everlasting in God’s new world.[22]
the (surprising) future hope held out to us in Jesus Christ leads directly and, to many people, equally surprisingly, to a vision of the present hope that is the basis of all Christian mission. To hope for a better future in this world – for the poor, the sick, the lonely and depressed, for the slaves, the refugees, the hungry and homeless, for the abused the paranoid, the downtrodden and despairing, and in fact for the whole wide, wonderful, and wounded world – is not something else, something extra, something tacked on to the gospel as an afterthought.[23]
Opportunity
If C. S. Lewis and King David and Dante Alighieri are on the right track about the beatific vision in eternity, we have the ability here and now to increase our anticipation of that joy. Seeing more of God’s character and His beauty through Scripture, through fellowship, through theological study, through nature, through Christian fantasy – all these are ways for us to increase our joy in God right now. As we see more of Him now, our anticipation for our eternally increasing joy will enable our present endurance through difficult circumstances. If our joy depends on a better job or improved health or a happier marriage, those things may fail. Joy growing out of our increasing intimacy with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will endure.
Amen
“Hopefully, by reading the Apostles’ Creed, reciting it, and learning it, we will be among those ‘who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus’ (Rev 12: 17).”[24]
One final image communicates the destiny of those who hold fast their testimony. Speaking to those who have arrived in his country, Aslan reveals the culmination of all anticipation:
…all of you are, as you used to call it in the shadow lands, dead. The term is over, the holidays have begun. The dream is ended, this is the morning. And as he spoke, he no longer looked to them like a lion. But the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us, this is the end of all the stories. And we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page. Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.[25]
Further up and further in…
[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 137; Kindle edition, location 1763.
[2] Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 212; Kindle Edition location 3443.
[3] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 137; Kindle edition, location 1763, emphasis added.
[4] Justo L. Gonzalez, The Apostles’ Creed for Today (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 87.
[5] Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (London: T&T Clark Cornerstones, 2016), Kindle Edition, location 6853.
[6] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Credo: Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed, trans. David Kipp, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), Kindle Edition, location 752.
[7] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Credo: Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed, trans. David Kipp, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), Kindle Edition, location 662-663.
[8] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 293; Kindle edition location 4217.
[9] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 293-294; Kindle edition location 4217-4242.
[10] Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy III: Paradise, Canto 3, lines 58-61, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 75.
[11] Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 214; Kindle Edition location 3464.
[12] Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 214; Kindle Edition location 3464.
[13] N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008), 158.
[14] N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008), 80.
[15] N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008), 259.
[16] C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1968), 154-155.
[17] Peter J. Schakel, Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1984), x.
[18] C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (New York: First Mariner Books, 2012), 75, Kindle edition location 766.
[19] John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1998), 37; italics in the original.
[20] Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander, canto 33, lines 97-99 (New York: Anchor Books, 2008), 915.
[21] N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008), 56.
[22] Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 220; Kindle Edition location 3563.
[23] N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008), 191-192; emphasis in the original.
[24] Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 55; Kindle Edition location 841.
[25] C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Collier Books, 1976), 183-184.