What faith denies on earth it affirms in heaven; what it renounces
here it recovers a hundred-fold there. In this world, faith occupies
itself with nullifying the body; in the other world, with establishing
it. Here the main point is the separation of the soul from the body,
there the main point is the reunion of the body with the soul. "I
would live not only according to the soul, but according to the body
also. I would have the corpus with me; I would that the body should
return to the soul and be united with it."--Luther (Th. vii. p. 90). In
that which is sensuous, Christ is supersensuous; but for that reason,
in the supersensuous he is sensuous. Heavenly bliss is therefore by
no means merely spiritual, it is equally corporeal, sensuous--a state
in which all wishes are fulfilled. "Whatever thy heart seeks joy and
pleasure in, that shall be there in abundance. For it is said, God
shall be all in all. And where God is, there must be all good things
that can ever be desired." "Dost thou desire to see acutely, and to
hear through walls, and to be so light that thou mayst be wherever
thou wilt in a moment, whether here below on the earth, or above in
the clouds, that shall all be, and what more thou canst conceive, which
thou couldst have in body and soul, thou shalt have abundantly if thou
hast him."--Luther (Th. x. pp. 380, 381). Certainly eating, drinking,
and marriage find no place in the Christian heaven, as they do in the
Mohammedan; but only because with these enjoyments want is associated,
and with want matter, i.e., passion, dependence, unhappiness. "Illic
ipsa indigentia morietur. Tunc vere dives eris, quando nullius indigens
eris."--Augustin. (Serm. ad Pop. p. 77, c. 9). The pleasures of this
earth are only medicines, says the same writer; true health exists only
in immortal life--"vera sanitas, nisi quando vera immortalitas." The
heavenly life, the heavenly body, is as free and unlimited as
wishes, as omnipotent as imagination. "Futurae ergo resurrectionis
corpus imperfectae felicitatis erit, si cibos sumere non potuerit,
imperfectae felicitatis, si cibus eguerit."--Augustin. (Epist. 102,
§ 6, edit. cit). Nevertheless, existence in a body without fatigue,
without heaviness, without disagreeables, without disease, without
mortality, is associated with the highest corporeal well-being. Even
the knowledge of God in heaven is free from any effort of thought or
faith, is sensational, immediate knowledge--intuition. The Christians
are indeed not agreed whether God, as God, the essentia Dei, will
be visible to bodily eyes. (See, for example, Augustin. Serm. ad
Pop. p. 277, and Buddeus, Comp. Inst. Th. l. ii. c. 3, § 4.) But
in this difference we again have only the contradiction between the
abstract and the real God; the former is certainly not an object of
vision, but the latter is so. "Flesh and blood is the wall between
me and Christ, which will be torn away.... There everything will
be certain.
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