How Could We Not Sin in Heaven?

I've often wondered how God will bring it about that we will not sin in heaven. If God can bring it about that we not sin and yet retain our free will, then why did He not make it that way from the beginning? I think I've hit upon a partial solution, or perhaps a complete one. But first it is important to note that there is a distinction to make. In heaven, it will not simply be the case that we will not sin, but that we will be unable to sin. Does this crucial point mean that our choices will be somehow restricted, or even taken away altogether? How can we be free and obey God without the possibility of disobedience?

I would like to begin by making an analogy that will perhaps explain a bit of the situation. Each person, though all totally corrupted by sin (Romans 3), has differing desires for sin. I, for example, have no desire to indulge in drunkenness, though for others it is a serious temptation, and all have their own weaknesses. It could be the case that just as I have no desire to become drunk on my own, and that if anyone offered me the opportunity, I would reject it, in heaven this would be the case for all sins. Our inclinations would be such that if offered the chance to sin, we would freely reject it. But we can go even further. Only the righteous/saved will dwell with God in heaven (Revelation 21). Just as I will not only not choose drunkenness if it is offered to me, but will also not offer the choice to another (because of my own inclinations), no one in heaven will offer temptation to anyone else, because no one will be inclined at all toward any sin. So not only would we freely choose every time not to sin on our own, but the choice or temptation will never even be offered because no one will have sinful inclinations.

Does this capture the inability to sin, or is it simply a very strong form of the ability not to sin, which Christians (and only Christians) possess right now? I think that while the above may be helpful in imagining our state of mind in heaven, it does not quite capture our total inability to sin before God. Lenny Esposito points out (http://www.comereason.org/phil_qstn/phi039.asp) that God is unable to sin, though no one doubts He is totally free. Therefore it is indeed possible to be free and have an inability to sin. It could be that just as I (as a Christian not bound by my sin nature) am totally free (in the Sartrian sense of never being totally unfree), I do not have the ability to fly unaided. This does not essentially restrict my freedom (since we are not claiming a sort of radical freedom).

Granted, though, flying and making moral choices are not quite the same. For a complete understanding we must look to the Bible. 1 John 3:5-6, 9 state :

You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. … No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

It is our partaking in the nature of God that provides us with the inability to sin, because God cannot go against His own nature, namely, absolute holiness. Esposito writes:

Because we have two natures that are at odds with each other, there is an inner struggle that exists in every believer. Romans 7 is dedicated to showing this struggle. However, upon death, the old man will pass away leaving only the new, divine nature. One of the most important passages to understanding this is found in Romans 6:4-7:

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

The last verse is key - "he who has died is free from sin." When we're saved and choose to be baptized, we die to ourselves and receive a new nature. This nature is in conflict with our old fleshly nature. When our bodies die, that old nature perishes completely as well, leaving the divine nature alone.

Now we return to one of the big questions I raised at the beginning: If God can bring it about that we not sin and yet retain our free will, then why did He not make it that way from the beginning? There is no easy answer to this question, and in the end we must trust God's wisdom. But Christian philosopher William Lane Craig writes that perhaps the only way heaven could exist would be as a result of our life on earth (http://www.origins.org/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-bradley0.html). He says:

Heaven may not be a possible world when you take it in isolation by itself. It may be that the only way in which God could actualize a heaven of free creatures all worshiping Him and not falling into sin would be by having, so to speak, this run-up to it, this advance life during which there is a veil of decision-making in which some people choose for God and some people against God. Otherwise you don't know that heaven is an actualizable world. You have no way of knowing that possibility.

There is also the very old concept of the felix culpa, or the happy fault. This idea, briefly stated, is that God allowed the Fall in order to bring about a greater good through the Incarnation of Christ and the salvation of our souls. As Aquinas writes in his Summa Theologica,

But there is no reason why human nature should not have been raised to something greater after sin. For God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom; hence it is written (Romans 5:20): "Where sin abounded, grace did more abound." Hence, too, in the blessing of the Paschal candle, we say: "O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer!" (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4001.htm#3)

We see in the world that God allows some evil to occur in order to bring about a greater good, and so it can be inferred that if our relating to Christ in the way that we do now is the greatest and ultimate good, God might permit the entry of sin into the world in order to accomplish it.

This article in the New York Times points out that pantheism is the reigning religion of Hollywood, and makes good points toward the end about its tenability.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21douthat1.html?_r=2

Beauty as a Property: Exploring God’s Role in the Beautiful

I have attempted all semester to lay out a convincing case for the objectivity of the beautiful. It has encouraged me to discover that I am not alone in my opinions, and that great philosophers and aestheticians like Hegel and Schelling also believe in beauty as an objective property of the object. And while I believe that a somewhat cogent argument can be made from a purely philosophical position for the objectivity of beauty, an entirely new and useful set of tools and evidences is opened up when we look at beauty through its place in philosophy of religion, or theology generally. I will therefore attempt to explore the existence of beauty through an assumption that God exists. If this assumption is true, what is the significance for the beautiful? Does God’s existence necessitate beauty’s role as objective or subjective, as property or reaction? Philosophical arguments in the mode of Hegel are generally undertaken from a position which, if not atheistic, is at least not based within a theistic worldview. It is my hope that through an evaluation of the characteristics of God I can demonstrate the objectivity of the beautiful and show that in a theistic universe beauty must be seen as a property.

Before we can attempt to answer questions about the role of the beautiful, we must first discuss what we mean when we speak of God. Generally, within the realm of philosophy of religion and in practical, street-level discussion, God is envisioned as “omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent,” shortened to “3-O.” This of course means that God is absolutely powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good. This fits in well with the conception of God in any of the major monotheistic religions. I would expand on this definition and state that God is, as Kierkegaard defines Him, the absolute. He is the eternal source of all things and the Creator of the universe. He is at the same time personal and not a vague force or principle. This still falls within the generic monotheistic framework, but excludes deist gods and the anthropological gods of many modern theologians and philosophers. We will take this God as our starting point.

If God is the absolute, and the source of all that is good, as well as the creator of the universe, then it stands to reason that any and all good things find not only their source in Him, but their maximization. As Anselm of Canterbury states, God is “that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought.” As a Person, God possesses certain attributes of character and qualities of being. Falling under the heading of absolute goodness, we find that God possesses qualities such as justice, mercy, love, peace, happiness, majesty, wisdom, and (most important for us) beauty, all of which are found in their maximal state. Since God exists forever, and has always been God, we can therefore see that He has always possessed these properties, and that they were never technically created, but existed from eternity in the attributes of God. Beauty, as an attribute of God, has therefore existed forever, independent of humanity’s experience of it. We will revisit this later.

If God is the possessor and absolute exemplar of all good-making properties, then God must be absolutely beautiful. This implies two things: that whoever looks upon God must recognize and feel Him to be beautiful, and that beauty is made up of degrees. Taking the first point first, we must now ask the question, “If there is an object (even if it be the only object) which all agree to be beautiful, then does this prove that the object has what we would call objective beauty?” And in response to the second point, we can ask, “If beauty admits of degrees, possessing an absolute maximum and an absolute minimum (nothing at all), is this the sort of thing we would expect to find were beauty a subjective reaction?”

If every single person experiencing a particular thing considers it to be beautiful, we could reasonably conclude that there must be something that all of these experiences have in common. If beauty were merely subjective, it would be almost statistically impossible for every single person to have ever lived to have the exact same sort of reaction (I do not say the exact same reaction, for reasons I will discuss below). There will always be those like Hegel who see the majesty of the Swiss Alps and are unfazed. But my intuition is that upon seeing God, one would be justified in stating, “He is objectively beautiful.” I would argue that the thing held in common, the thing that unites all beings in the recognition of the object as beautiful, is in fact the recognition of the property of beauty within the object.

Addressing now the second question, I would assert that a thing with a maximum and minimum, and gradations in magnitude between the two, is more readily described as a property than as a reaction. Reactions are subjective, and are quite similar to feelings, in that one cannot assign truth or falsity to its possession. One does not say, “I am incorrect in having such and such a reaction,” as one would say, “I am incorrect in identifying such and such a property.” Reactions (fright, nervousness, disgust) do not have points at which they could not be more than they are. However, properties (brightness, hardness, generosity) have definite maximums. This leads me to believe that beauty is a property and not a reaction.

It is therefore understood in what way beauty must be objective. But how are we to account for the widely varying tastes and aesthetic judgments which we see in the world? We can again look to God in order to provide an answer. God, as has already been established, is infinite and absolute. It is impossible for any single human being, with their limited capacity for reflection and understanding, to comprehend the totality of God’s existence. We can only begin to grasp the tiny portion of His character which He has demonstrated in our own lives, and (for any of the major monotheistic religions) trust in the communication of His attributes through direct revelation.

We can understand that God has many characteristics, each one of which is maximally present. We can have propositional knowledge of this, but experiential knowledge is problematic at best. God’s beauty can therefore be thought of as a great multi-faceted jewel, each side of which reflects light in a different and unique way. Humans are positioned all around this jewel so that there is a facet most easily visible to each person, and through which the light interacts and reflects to give an experience of the jewel. The experiences of each person looking at the jewel will be different, because each one sees a different facet of the great and cohesive whole.
In the same way, viewing some facets from a certain position may not be optimal, so that while the person positioned for one facet cannot fully enjoy or even appreciate another facet, viewed from the right perspective it becomes properly beautiful. Beauty remains objective, but the experience of it can differ wildly depending on the aspect of ultimate and perfect beauty which one is oriented toward. The aesthetic experience is then an intensely subjective reaction, manifested in a feeling, but triggered by an objective property. The experience of the beautiful is indeed subjective, but that subjectivity is a response to something that is really there.
Much of the arguments towards beauty as subjective lie in the equation of the experience of the beautiful with the beautiful itself. Many of our reactions to things such as properties which objectively exist can vary widely. For example, I dislike the taste of cheese, but I know many people love it. The taste is objective, even to the point of being scientifically reproducible, but my reaction to it is completely different than my brother’s. However, by equating the taste of the cheese with my reaction to that taste, I would be making a mistake. The taste remains the same and exists independently of my reaction to it. The same is true of beauty. Subjective reactions are engendered by objective impressions.

Some may object that beauty cannot be defined or rearticulated as other objective properties can. I would argue, though, that there are numerous objective properties which cannot be independently articulated or defined, but the insufficiency of language to account for an object does not in any way affect whether that object continues to exist outside of our perception of it. One would be hard-pressed to define being, for instance, at least not without devolving into a Heideggerian jumble of deliberate syntactical gymnastics. This does not make being subjective. There are simply some things which one is directly aware of, and are so obvious and pervasive that attempting to attach words to them becomes a challenge.

A final argument against the subjectivity of beauty is one I have made before, but believe to have some merit, if solely as a method of testing our intuitions about what we call beautiful. As stated above, if beauty is an attribute of God it has always existed. If beauty is a subjective reaction within the mind of a human being, then without human beings there would be no such thing as beauty. And since we have already established that beauty has always existed, and so existed before humans, beauty cannot simply be humanly subjective. God could, it may be argued, experience His own beauty, but I am hesitant to assign such a close parallel between human subjectivity and the Absolute of all that exists. In any case, beauty as reaction occurs not in the world but inside a mind. Without a mind, there is no reaction, and therefore no so-called beauty. If a flower blooms in the forest and no one sees it, is it beautiful? The answer would have to be no. It would of course have the potential to trigger a reaction within a mind, but until a mind experiences it the flower remains passive, aesthetically neutral.

My intuition revolts against this concept. The flower should be beautiful whether anyone sees it or not. And that is just the sort of occurrence that would arise if beauty were a property of things and not simply a mental reaction. The flower, or the mountains of a distant planet, or the face of God, all of these things are beautiful independent of human experience of them. This rings true to me, and I find it fits well within the preexisting theory of the objectivity of beauty.
In conclusion, there are points which, taken together, make what I believe to be a reasonable case for the objectivity of beauty: (1) Beauty is an attribute of God and is therefore an implied property; (2) beauty has existed eternally in God and therefore cannot simply be a human reaction; (3) there is something which everyone would admit to be beautiful once seen, namely, God (implying objectivity); (4) beauty admits of an absolute maximum and minimum, in the way reactions do not; (5) beauty and the experience of beauty are not identical, but the experience of beauty is the subjective reaction to an objective property; and (6) the inability to clearly articulate beauty does not rule out its objectivity. If one then see beauty as an attribute of God, one can argue for the objectivity of beauty in ways which pure philosophical discourse is unable to utilize.

Pietism and Early American Theology

The practice of Evangelicalism in the United States has become a touchstone of American culture and religious practice. But Evangelicalism did not emerge from a vacuum. As with any religious movement, it arose in response to many factors, including but not limited to previous religious systems of thought, cultural needs, and political positioning. While this essay cannot chart the complete course of Evangelical development in the United States, it can attempt to outline the possible influence of continental Pietism in shaping the theology of America’s early colonial evangelical leaders, such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Similarities between the two movements cannot be denied, and will be briefly pointed out: particularly an emphasis on a changed life; the need for qualified, confessing ministers; contributions to mission work; and a revitalization of religious concern among ordinary men and women. Though it seems that many colonial Evangelicals (particularly Lutherans) were originally strongly opposed to Pietism, the passage of time and the situation in the Colonies softened this resistance and resulted in a significant mingling between the two groups (Tappert, passim). An examination of the thought of Jonathan Edwards, the most significant early American theologian, will perhaps yield insight into growing similarities in emphasis between Evangelicals and Pietists.

F. Ernest Stoeffler writes about Pietism, “Wherever it is found its ethos is manifested in a religious self-understanding which the author has characterized elsewhere as experiential, biblical, perfectionistic, and oppositive” (Stoeffler 9). Pietism can generally be described as a movement which stressed the importance of ethical, upright behavior by the Christian, in order to distinguish the saved person from the unsaved world. Philipp Jakob Spener is widely considered to be the one of the most important figures in early Pietism (Mullin168). He outlined in his most famous work, the Pia Desideria, his “proposals to correct conditions in the Church.” A short glance at the table of contents gives us the following suggestions: more extensive use of the Scriptures, exercise of the spiritual priesthood of all believers, emphasis on practice versus mere knowledge of Christianity, a change in the conduct of religious controversies, the reform of schools and universities, and preaching for the purposes of edification (Spener vii). He writes:

We do not understand the perfection which we demand of the church in such a way that not a single hypocrite is any longer to be found in it, for we know that there is no field of grain in which there are no weeds. What we mean is that the church should be free of manifest offenses, that nobody who is afflicted with such failings should be allowed to remain in the church without fitting reproof and ultimately exclusion, and that the true members of the church should be richly filled with many fruits of their faith. Thus the weeds will no longer cover the grain and make it unsightly, as is unfortunately often the case now, but the weeds will be covered by the grain and made inconspicuous (Spener 81).

A concern for proper Christian conduct was therefore motivated by a desire to present the Church as both appealing and effective in the presentation of the Gospel to the secular world. We can see in this a similarity to the emphasis placed upon godly living in modern Evangelical churches. Evangelical alternatives to worldly activities and entertainment such as music or movies, as well as the growing movement among conservative Evangelicals to home-school their children, all point to a desire to be distinct from the world in the same way that early Pietists advocated, and often for the same motivation.

In regard to the selection of ministers, Spener and the Pietists believed that only those who are called to ministry should be allowed to fill positions in the church. Spener wrote:
Since ministers must bear the greatest burden in all these things which pertain to a reform of the church, and since their shortcomings do correspondingly great harm, it is of the utmost importance that the office of the ministry be occupied by men who, above all, are themselves true Christians and, then, have the divine wisdom to guide others carefully on the way of the Lord. It is therefore important, indeed necessary, for the reform of the church that only such persons be called who may be suited, and that nothing at all except the glory of God be kept in view during the whole procedure of calling. This would mean that all carnal schemes involving favor, friendship, gifts, and similarly unseemly things would be set aside (Spener 103).
In a letter to Moses Lyman responding to the news that Lyman had taken it upon himself to preach to a congregation as a layman, Jonathan Edwards revealed his position, much like that of the Pietists, that the ministry is a calling and not a simple profession. Edwards reproved Lyman, writing:

And if there be no certain limits or bounds, but everyone that inclines may have liberty, alas! what should we soon come to? If God had not seen it necessary that such things [the ministry] should have certain limits and bounds, he never would have appointed a certain particular order of men to that work and office, to be set apart to it, in so solemn a manner, in the name of God (Edwards 302).

Most significant about this letter is Edwards’ approving mention of Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian Pietist then ministering in New Jersey (Edwards 303, footnote 9). Edwards notes that Tennent and he were of the same position in this matter. But more than this, the mention shows that Edwards was familiar with Pietist thought.

Randall Balmer writes that, “The most profound influence of Pietism is, once again, incalculable—its effect upon ordinary believers. For anyone reared within the evangelical subculture in America, with its parietal rules, its emphasis on personal piety, its proscriptions against alcohol, tobacco, and dancing, and its sabbatarian scruples, the continued influence of Pietism is self-evident” (Balmer 27). Pietism began as a movement to revitalize Protestant faith, and succeeded to a large extent. Spener’s emphasis on personal Bible study and devotionals (McGrath 146) as a method for growing in faith and applying Christianity to daily life would not make waves in any Evangelical church today. Edwards, of course, as a leader of the first Great Awakening, also greatly emphasized a personal, intimate relationship with God rather than an abstract intellectual knowledge.

It is a well-known fact that Evangelicals exert a great deal of effort and expense in their support of and participation in worldwide and localized missionary activities. While Evangelical Protestants did not begin to focus on missions in earnest until the Nineteenth Century, Moravian Pietists from Germany had established small missionary communities in Greenland, America, and Africa by 1750 (McGrath 178). As McGrath writes, “Pietistic and Evangelical forms of Protestantism, which emphasized personal conversion, were naturally oriented toward the idea of reaching out to those who were not converted. . . [they] saw this work as the natural extension of their calling as Christians” (McGrath 178). Jonathan Edwards also participated in missionary activity, working with communities of American Indians, especially Mohican and Mohawk groups (Smith xxiii).

Scholars such as Randall Balmer and F. Ernest Stoeffler have argued for the significance of Pietist influence on American Evangelicalism, and the views of both groups on four large issues have been shown to have been, if not identical, at least quite similar. Philipp Jakob Spener, the “father of Pietism,” and Jonathan Edwards, figurehead of the Evangelical Great Awakening, wrote and worked approximately fifty years apart—Spener in Germany and Edwards in the upper American Colonies. We know from correspondences that Edwards was familiar with Pietist thought to a certain extent, and that he approved of the work being done by Pietist ministers such as Gilbert Tennent and Theodore Frelinghuysen (Edwards). Whether Edwards ever read Pia Desideria is not known, much less how much explicit influence Pietism had on the development of Edwards’ theology. It could well be that Evangelicals and Pietists are similar because of an underlying commitment to Biblical values and principles, which worked themselves out in similar ways independently of one another. However, Tappert demonstrates that as time progressed and ministry positions became vacant, colonial Americans grew more and more accepting of small doctrinal differences. George Whitefield was even warmly welcomed to preach in Lutheran Pietist churches (Tappert 27). It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that Edwards and contemporary Pietists would hold substantial common ground.
Balmer argues that Evangelicalism in the United States emerged from a blending of two streams of Protestant thought: Puritanism and Pietism (Balmer 14). While it seems as if every American knows of their Puritan religious heritage, one seldom hears much about the debt American religious thought owes to Pietism. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find a non-specialist that has even heard of the Pietist movement. But it would seem as if, as much as the famous Jonathan Edwards, Philipp Jakob Spener had a hand in forming modern American Evangelical doctrine—a doctrine that seeks to uphold orthodoxy while boldly calling Christians to live out their faith in a real and effective way.


Works Cited

Balmer, Randall. Blessed Assurance: A History of Evangelicalism in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999. 13-30. Print.

Edwards, Jonathan. The Great Awakening. The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 4. Ed. C. C. Goen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.

Edwards, Jonathan. "Letter to Moses Lyman, May 10, 1742." A Jonathan Edwards Reader. Ed. John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. Print.

McGrath, Alister. Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution--A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First. New York: HarperOne, 2007. Print.

Mullin, Robert Bruce. A Short World History of Christianity. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. Print.

Smith, Stout, and Minkelma, "Editor's Introduction." A Jonathan Edwards Reader. Ed. John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. Print.

Spener, Philipp Jakob. Pia Desideria. Fifth Printing. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980. Print.

Stoeffler, F. Ernest. "Introduction." Continental Pietism and Early American Christianity. Ed. F. Ernest Stoeffler. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1976. Print.

Tappert, Theodore. "The Influence of Pietism in Colonial American Lutheranism." Continental Pietism and Early American Christianity. Ed. F. Ernest Stoeffler. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1976. Print.

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