Paradise: what about it?
What about "Paradise"? a reader asked. Scholars tell us that it’s a Persian/Iranian word and means something like "a park". Greek writers used it of Persian public parks and in mythology there are stories from various nations about places where the heroes and righteous dead lived with the gods in idyllic conditions. The word is used nearly fifty times in the OT Greek—usually translating the Hebrew word for garden. It’s no surprise that it is used in Genesis 2 & 3 of the Garden of God (Eden). And prophets like Ezekiel and Isaiah spoke of a restoring of Israel’s land so that a paradise state would return (Isaiah 35 develops that kind of picture). Those promises are of an earthly state of affairs (though, in light of the fuller biblical witness not merely a return to "how things have been"—compare Romans 8:18-23).
But it’s clear that the word Paradise came to mean more than any earthly location since the dying thief went there with Christ the day he died and Paul was caught up into it—he was unsure if it was a bodily ascent. See Luke 23:43 and 2 Corinthians 12:2-3.
Because there are some tricky little questions generated by equating Paradise with heaven itself there are those who think that Paradise is some kind of waiting-room where the forgiven wait until after the judgement and then they get into heaven itself. The tricky little questions—maybe another time. In light of 2 Corinthians 12:2-3 I see no reason to differentiate them. Paradise is heaven viewed as a garden. One of the ways the Jews expressed their cosmologies was in various heavens. "Three heavens" was one way. Where the birds fly, outer space and where God himself dwells (third). That’s where Paul went and he calls it Paradise.
Some scholars think that Paradise was closed until Jesus opened it by his redeeming work and his resurrection and exaltation. There is something to be said for that view. Maybe it’s correct. Maybe.
It’s difficult to speak of life beyond the usual three dimensions. Certainly I don’t think we can talk about heaven without using spatial terms, as if it were a particular geographical address. As if you might be able to take a rocket ship, travel at a jillion times the speed of light and reach "heaven". That won’t work. It isn’t a "place" "out" there or "up" there somewhere. It’s more a "mode of existence". A way of existing that doesn't depend on three dimensional realities and present earthly necessities. Paradise (speaking of it as an equivalent to heaven) is more about how we relate to God in a non-embodied existence. It makes no difference "where" we are—we live with him in a blessed relationship independent of bodies and their functions until the resurrection and then a new phase of life with God begins.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.