Anglican Bishop Sets the Record Straight on “Heaven”
Filed Under Commentary | Posted on February 8, 2008
Many Buddhist writers, most notably His Holiness the Dalai Lama, often stress that Buddhadharma can be practeced by members of any religion; conversion to Buddhism is not necessary — in fact, it is often discouraged. That makes sense to me up to a point; but it also seems that, at some point, a Christian practicing the dharma would experience a conflict between the Judeo-Christian view of life after death and the Buddhist view of life after death. Occasionally, I have found myself considering if/how the Christian’s heaven and the Buddhist’s rebirth might be reconciled. Usually those considerations come to an end when I realize that I don’t really know that much about the Christian view of heaven (I’m hardly an expert on Buddhist rebirth, either; but I’m stronger on that point than on the Christian view.)
Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s confused. In an article titled, Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop, Time Magazine online presents an interview with Church of England Bishop of Durham, N.T. “Tom” Wright. In the interview, Wright suggests that the commonly-held Christian view of heaven is a “distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope.” In fact, like Buddhism, the “correct” Christian interpretation also includes a “bardo” state:
First, the timing. In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state. St. Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet. Secondly, our physical state. The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a whole new life: not just our soul, but our bodies. And finally, the location. At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, “Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven.” It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation.
It seems to me that, through Bishop Wright’s interpretation, Christians and Buddhists are getting much closer to common ground on the question. Wright even seems to suggest a type of human rebirth in the Christian view:
Much of “traditional” Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being [emphasis added] helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell.
Did the good Bishop just say that the New Testament indicates that, after death, humans enter an intermediate state, in preparation for rebirth as a “renewed human being”? That sounds awfully familiar.
Of course, there are some technical conflicts left unresolved: The Buddhist bardo lasts no longer than 49 days; while the Christian intermediate state presumably lasts a long, long time. The Buddhist is reborn many thousands and thousands of times, while the Christian may be reborn only once. The Buddha rejects the notion of an eternal, unchanging “soul”; while this notion is important to the Christian. However, in both views, ethics and morality play a role in the final result; and that seems, at least to me, the more important lesson to be learned from both traditions.
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