§ 16.
The Christian heaven is Christian truth. That which its excluded from heaven is excluded from true Christianity. In heaven the Christian is free from that which he wishes to be free from here—free from the sexual impulse, free from matter, free from Nature in general. “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.”—[Matt. xxii. 30]. “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy (καταργήσει, make useless) both it and them.”—[1 Cor. vi. 13]. “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.”—Ib. [xv. 50]. “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.”—[Rev. vii. 16]. “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun.”—Ib. [xxii. 5]. “Comedere, bibere, vigilare, dormire, quiescere, laborare et caeteris necessitatibus naturae subjacere, vere magna miseria est et afflictio homini devoto, qui libenter esset absolutus et liber ab omni peccato. Utinam non essent istae necessitates, sed solum spirituales animae refectiones, quas heu! satis raro degustamus.”—Thomas à K. (de Imit. 1. i. cc. 22, 25). See also on this subject S. Gregorii Nyss. de Anima et Resurr., Lipsiae, 1837, pp. 98, 144, 153). It is true that the Christian immortality, in distinction from the heathen, is not the immortality of the soul, but that of the flesh, that is, of the whole man. “Scientia immortalis visa est res illis (the heathen philosophers) atque incorruptibilis. Nos autem, quibus divina revelatio illuxit ... novimus, non solum mentem, sed affectus perpurgatos, neque animam tantum, sed etiam corpus ad immortalitatem assumptum iri suo tempore.”—Baco de Verul. (de Augm. Scien. 1. i.). On this account Celsus reproached the Christians with a desiderium corporis. But this immortal body is, as has been already remarked, an immaterial, i.e., a thoroughly fanciful, subjective body—a body which is the direct negation of the real, natural body. The ideal on which this faith hinges is not the recognition or glorification of nature, of matter as such, but rather the reality of the emotive imagination, the satisfaction of the unlimited, supranaturalistic desire of happiness, to which the actual, objective body is a limitation.
As to what the angels strictly are, whom heavenly souls will be like, the Bible is as far from giving us any definite information as on other weighty subjects; it only calls them πνεύματα, spirits, and declares them to be higher than men. The later Christians expressed themselves more definitely on this subject; more definitely, but variously. Some assigned bodies to the angels, others not; a difference which, however, is only apparent, since the angelic body is only a phantasmal one. But concerning the human body of the resurrection, they had not only different, but even opposite, conceptions; indeed, these contradictions lay in the nature of the case, necessarily resulted from the fundamental contradiction of the religious consciousness which, as we have shown, exhibits itself in the incompatible propositions that the body which is raised is the same individual body which we had before the resurrection, and that nevertheless it is another. It is the same body even to the hair, “cum nec periturus sit capillus, ut ait Dominus: Capillus de capite vestro non peribit.”—Augustinus und Petrus, L. l. iv. dist. 44, c. 1. Nevertheless it is the same in such a way that everything burdensome, everything contradictory to transcendental feeling, is removed. “Immo sicut dicit Augustinus: Detrahentur vitia et remanebit natura. Superexcrescentia autem capillorum et unguium est de superfluitate et vitio naturae. Si enim non peccasset homo, crescerent ungues et capilli ejus usque ad determinatam quantitatem, sicut in leonibus et avibus.”—(Addit. Henrici ab Vurimaria, ibid. edit. Basiliae, 1513.) What a specific, naïve, ingenuous, confident, harmonious faith! The risen body, as the same and yet another, a new body, has hair and nails, otherwise it would be a maimed body, deprived of an essential ornament, and consequently the resurrection would not be a restitutio in integrum; moreover they are the same hair and nails as before, but yet so modified that they are in accordance with the body. Why do not the believing theologians of modern times enter into such specialities as occupied the older theologians? Because their faith is itself only general, indefinite, i.e., a faith which they only suppose themselves to possess; because, from fear of their understanding, which has long been at issue with their faith, from fear of risking their feeble faith by bringing it to the light, that is, considering it in detail, they suppress the consequences, the necessary determinations of their faith, and conceal them from their understanding.