Where is heaven and hell

If so, would Heaven and Hell be located both in the same Universe or separate Universe? I suppose the last possibility is that Heaven and Hell are located completely in the imagination of an omnipotent being, much like a computer running a vast simulation.

I know many Evangelical Christians believe that heaven and hell is not a physical place and doesn't have a specific location. However, I believe something different, I believe hell is literally beneath us and heaven above us, because as I understand, the bible says so:. Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? Acts KJV. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Matthew KJV. Some Christians say the Great Rift milky way is a crack in the barrier between heaven and our universe, caused by either the flood or a war between satan and God. This would mean heaven is outside our universe. And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.

Isaiah KJV. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

When a reporter asked the mother of Ted Bundy, a serial murderer of young women, whether she could still support a son who had become a monster, her answer provided a poignant illustration of the problem. I love him. I have to support him. But still, one wonders how this suffering woman—a committed Christian, by the way—could ever achieve supreme happiness knowing that the son she continued to love was destined to be lost forever without any future hope of redemption.

Such considerations have led some, including the 19 th Century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, to argue that the misery of those in hell would undermine altogether the blessedness of the redeemed in heaven see Schleiermacher , —; Kronen and Reitan , 80—89; and Talbott b, — But others have argued that God could always shield forever the redeemed in heaven from painful memories of the lost in hell.

Another concerns how God, as an infinitely loving being, might expunge the infinitely more painful memories from his own mind. But the main issue to be resolved here is whether blissful ignorance qualifies as a worthwhile form of happiness at all.

As a matter of historical fact, in any case, some of the most influential theologians in the Western tradition, including some who are widely admired as heroes of faith, have not only made an eternal torture chamber an important part of their teaching about hell; they seem also to have gloried in the idea that the torments of those writhing in hell forever will increase the joy of those in heaven. II [ available online ].

Remarkably, Edwards was also a theological determinist who held that God determined from the beginning to bring a huge number of people to a horrific end and did so for the precise purpose of increasing the joy of the elect in heaven. If justice were to require that one suffer eternally for sins that God himself causally determined, then such suffering would have to be a source of satisfaction, if not outright bliss, on the part of any fair-minded person witnessing it.

Schleiermacher and many others therefore find it hard to understand how those who receive special favor in this regard could be so deliriously happy in the knowledge that some of their own loved ones do not receive a similar special favor.

A third issue concerning heaven that sometimes arises is whether everlasting bliss is even a possible state of affairs. Such a statement is reminiscent of a quotation often attributed to Charles H.

Duell, who became commissioner of the U. According to legend, Duell declared that everything that can be invented has already been invented; and even though this wonderful story is probably apocryphal, it nonetheless illustrates in a humorous way the possible consequences of an impoverished imagination. It would hardly take even 30 years, depending upon the circumstances, for a given life to become dull and insipid. But the idea that a healthy person could exhaust all the possibilities for adventure and meaningful experience in a mere years will strike many as simply preposterous.

A mere years is virtually nothing, it is true, when compared to a life without end. Might not an unending life even increase the possibilities for such a desirable mix? A favorite symphony not heard for a hundred years or so might be experienced as utterly fresh and exciting. And even if we set aside anything that might raise a controversy about personal identity, the mere discovery of an unexpected means of traversing our extravagant universe, with its billions of galaxies and billions of star systems within each of them, might open up—for adventurous spirits anyway—incredible possibilities for new and exciting experiences.

Nor should we ignore the further possibility of experiencing infinitely many other realms and universes that are not spatially contiguous with our own. In caring for her baby, for example, a mother typically performs many mundane tasks that might seem utterly tedious were it not for the joy of interacting with her baby and of watching it grow and flourish. Similarly, St. Paul found even the tedium of prison to be tolerable, so he claimed, because he saw it as part of a larger story that he believed to be both true and glorious.

So why allow, many religious people would ask, an impoverished imagination to exclude the very possibility of an over-arching story arc perpetually giving fresh meaning to our individual lives? And if that be true, then the task of rendering someone fit for eternal joy may be far more complicated, even for an omnipotent being, than one might have imagined.

As many religions including Christianity teach, we must first learn to love properly before we can experience enduring happiness, and this requires that we also be purged of all selfish tendencies, all lust for power over others, every temptation to benefit ourselves at the expense of others, and anything else that might separate one person from another.

Right here, of course, is where Williams would question whether a suitably transformed person would be the same individual as the unperfected person that existed previously. But none of our moral imperfections, a religious person might retort, can coherently be numbered among our essential properties—as if we could never progress morally and never learn to become more loving persons.

So here, perhaps, is the sum of the matter from a religious perspective: the more self-absorbed we become, the more tedious and dreary our lives inevitably become over time. But the more outwardly focused we become in loving relationships, the more joyful and meaningful our lives also become over time. For the same considerations that lead some to wonder whether immortality would eventually become dreadfully boring may also lead some of the religious to consider favorably the following hypothesis.

Although the problem of evil is the subject of another entry see the entry on The Problem of Evil , the relevant point for the topic of heaven is just this: one need not think of heaven or the coming age, as the Gospel writers sometimes refer to it as a static ethereal realm in which there is nothing to do.

One might instead suppose that God will never stop creating additional persons to love and additional realms for us to experience and that we will always have important roles to play, as Paul hinted in Ephesians , in this ongoing process of creation and revelation. Three Primary Eschatological Views 1. The Augustinian Understanding of Hell 2. Free—will Theodicies of Hell 3. The Universalist Rejection of Everlasting Separation 4.

Heaven: Three Critical Issues 5. Three Primary Eschatological Views Let theism in general be the belief that a supremely powerful, supremely wise, and supremely good loving, just, merciful personal being exists as the Creator of the universe.

Some human sinners will never be reconciled to God and will therefore remain separated from the divine nature forever. The Augustinian Understanding of Hell Behind the Augustinian understanding of hell lies a commitment to a retributive theory of punishment, according to which the primary purpose of punishment is to satisfy the demands of justice or, as some might say, to balance the scales of justice.

In the relevant literature over the past several decades, advocates of a free-will theodicy of hell have offered at least three quite different answers to this question: Perhaps the most commonly expressed answer concerns the possibility of an irrevocable decision to reject God forever.

Jerry Walls thus describes the damned as those who have made a decisive choice of evil see Walls , Ch. Another proposed answer rejects altogether the traditional idea that those in hell are lost without any further hope of restoration.

It also includes a perfect knowledge uf what a person would have done freely in circumstances that will never even obtain. So with respect to the decision whether or not to create a given person and to place that person in a given set of circumstances, God can base this decision in part on a knowledge of what the person would do freely if created and placed in these precise circumstances—or if, for that matter, the person were placed in any other possible set of circumstances as well.

From this Molinist perspective, William Lane Craig has defended the possibility that some free persons are utterly irredeemable in this sense: short of overriding their libertarian freedom, nothing God might do for them—whether it be to impart a special revelation.

Craig himself calls this dreadful property of being irredeemable transworld damnation Craig himself has put it this way: It is possible that the terrible price of filling heaven is also filling hell and that in any other possible world which was feasible for God the balance between saved and lost was worse. It is possible that had God actualized a world in which there are less persons in hell, there would also have been less persons in heaven.

It is possible that in order to achieve this much blessedness, God was forced to accept this much loss , Heaven: Three Critical Issues Rarely, if ever, are Christian theologians very specific about what heaven will supposedly be like, and there are no doubt good reasons for this.

Stump ed. Almeida, M. Hopkins and H. Richardson eds. Augustine, City of God against the Pagans , in R. Dyson ed. Outler ed. Bawulski, S. Buckareff, A. Buenting, J. McNeill ed. Battles trans. Craig, W. London: Epworth. Dougherty, T. Ramsey ed. Hickman ed. Fischer, J. Hart, M. Alexander and D, Johnson eds. Helm, P. Himma K. Jordan, J. Crisp, J. Arcadi, and J. Wessling eds. Kierkegaard, S. Hong and E. Hong eds. Knight, G. Kronen, J. Quinn trans. Kvanvig, J. She had a point.

Mark Twain might have agreed with her assessment. Most of us have some concept of heaven, even if it is one formed by movies like What Dreams May Come, The Lovely Bones, or think it involves meeting Morgan Freeman in a white room. And while not as complicated as biblical ideas about hell , the biblical concept of heaven is not particularly simple either.

As New Testament scholar Paula Gooder writes :. Yet heaven and paradise were originally more about where God lived, not about us or our ultimate destination. The words for heaven or heavens in both Hebrew shamayim and Greek ouranos can also be translated as sky.

It is not something that exists eternally but rather part of creation. The first line of the Bible states that heaven is created along with the creation of the earth Genesis 1. Jesus speaks about life and death, about dark and light, about heaven and hell. Why should we have faith in God or Jesus? What good has Christianity done in our world? What about suffering?

What about heaven and hell?