I attended a funeral at a catholic church earlier. I made many observations, but the one that resonated the most wasn’t particular to Catholicism.
The priest spoke about how the deceased will spend eternity in heaven, but twice he also mentioned the resurrection of the dead at the end of days. Protestants as well as Catholics generally go without critically examining the incompatibility of these two views. If the dead spend forever in heaven, how can they be resurrected on the last day?
This is part of popular Christianity’s general neglect for trying to understand the end times (eschatology).
Christians embrace heaven with a lot more fervor than the resurrection on the last day, so my impression is that they would interpret away the resurrection of the dead here on earth in order to embrace spending eternity in heaven. The only problem is that scripture refers to resurrection of the saved on the last day often.
he who is eating my flesh, and is drinking my blood, hath life age-during, and I will raise him up in the last day;
John 6:54
John 6:39-40, John 6:44, John 5:28-29, Acts 24:15, Revelation 20:4-6, and others all refer to the resurrection of the dead (of both the saved and unsaved). The resurrected dead appear on earth in Revelation 20, and by the next chapter new Jerusalem, a place where there are no sorrow or pain or death, where God resides with men, appears. This is the kind of place Christians typically describe heaven, but a new earth has just been made, and this new Jerusalem comes down (onto earth) from God out of heaven.
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth did pass away, and the sea is not any more;
and I, John, saw the holy city -- new Jerusalem -- coming down from God out of the heaven, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband;
and I heard a great voice out of the heaven, saying, `Lo, the tabernacle of God [is] with men, and He will tabernacle with them, and they shall be His peoples, and God Himself shall be with them -- their God,
and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and the death shall not be any more, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor shall there be any more pain, because the first things did go away.'
Revelation 21:1-4
It is not so obvious that the writers of the New Testament expected to live out eternity in heaven, rather than an unearthly paradise.
Christians today would say that it is complicated and confusing, and they’d be right. It is difficult to understand what these people 2000 years ago believed, to enter into their worldview, to understand the language they used. But something being complicated and confusing should not result in falling into the default position that heaven, not earth, is the eternal paradise for the saved. Christians, whether protestant or catholic, ought to pursue a clearer understanding of what their leaders believed, or else confess ignorance and not have strong beliefs about where they’re going when they die.
