Peter Kreeft. “Heaven.” excerpted from Fundamentals of the Faith.
Entire excerpt here, bits below.
If heaven is not the answer to the question, our whole faith is false, and Jesus was a fool.
Why do we hear so little about this today, even from the pulpit? Why are we told by our “leading theologians” that we must take our eyes off the clouds and keep them on the ground? Why is it so outrageously irresponsible to think more about heaven than politics? Because these leading theologians are really following theologians, with their noses to the tail of the modern world. They are in fact upside down: not only are their eyes stuck in the mud, but their feet are kicking up in rebellion at the sky. They want to turn Christianity — which in the clear teaching of its founder was an otherworldly religion of faith, hope, and charity — into a this-worldly religion of prosperity and success (the Right with its electronic Church) or of political revolution (the left with its liberation theology).
But these shams don’t satisfy for long. Prosperity is boring. The suicide rate in Sweden is something like a thousand times that of Haiti.
The big, blazing, terrible truth about man is that he has a heaven-sized hole in his heart, and nothing else can fill it. We pass our lives trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles. As Augustine said: “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”
No one longs for fluffy clouds and sexless cherubs, but everyone longs for heaven. No one longs for any of the heavens that we have ever imagined, but everyone longs for “something no eye has seen, no ear has heard, something that has not entered into the imagination of man, something God has prepared for those who love him.”
We are still children, however hard we try to cover that up. There are no “grown-ups”. When we get old, we only exchange our toys: business for bats, sex for sleds, power for popguns. At death our Father calls: “Come, little one. Time to put away your toys and come home.”
People think heaven is escapist because they fear that thinking about heaven will distract us from living well here and now. It is exactly the opposite, and the lives of the saints and our Lord himself prove it. Those who truly love heaven will do the most for earth.
The existence of heaven, the desire for heaven, the nature of heaven, and the relevance of heaven are all important questions. But there is only one question that’s absolutely essential, one question compared with which how we might save the world from a nuclear holocaust is trivial: “What must I do to be saved?” When I’m honest enough to look through the door of death, infinite joy or infinite joylessness loom up as my only two possible destinies. What decides for joy? What is heaven’s entrance ticket? What is the Way, the Truth and the Life?
I am horrified to report that I’ve asked this question of hundreds of Catholic college students, and far fewer than half have known the answer. This means that the Church’s religious education has been not a failure but an inexcusable disaster. Most reply either “God is good to everybody” or “I’m basically a good person.”
If anyone out there is unsure of the correct answer, then for the love of God get out your Bible and study for your finals! To save you time — since you may die while reaching for your Bible — I will quote God’s scandalously simple answer to the most important question in the world, how to get to heaven: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).
This post is missing a major aspect of Catholic teaching. It seems to focus solely on belief in Christ alone as the means to heaven. But the Catholic Church, seen in the writings of Sts. Peter and Paul, teaches that it is faith coupled with good works that saves us. Faith alone is never enough. If belief in Christ were all that was necessary, then the devil would surely be in heaven, as there is no doubt that the wicked one truly believes that Christ is the Son of God. Such one-sided views reflect a Protestant view of the means to salvation.
I agree, and yet Peter Kreeft is a Catholic and is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and at the King’s College (Empire State Building), in New York City.
We are happy to see the above two comments. We had wondered how “Catholic” he and Memoria Press were since MP uses a non-Catholic bible. Their use of Mortimer Adler’s skim reading method has its dangers, but they sure do have other apparently very good resources. (Has anyone done a comparison?) We wonder if Mr. Kreeft has had this thought pointed out to him. In charity we might ought to contact him. The confusion is so great as to confuse even the best of us.
With confidence in St. Anne,
Mary