Monday, March 8, 2010

Heaven and Truth

Peter Kreeft has been my philosophy guru the last several weeks or so. The only logical reason to ever believe anything is because it's true! Truth really does trump all! His words, not mine. Actually God's words, not his, because God is the source of all truth and natural law. Ignorance is always in the darkness as truth is always in the light! I've experienced this in infantile ways, but they are no less real...I really love learning true things, especially when I SEE and FEEL them clearly down in my bones! Truth begets joy. I am not a philosopher by any degree, but I love philosophy... I love quoting people who utter profound things that are full of truth! Here was a question that was posed to Peter Kreeft:


"Will we be free in Heaven? If so, will we be free to sin? If so, won't anyone ever exercise that freedom?"


Here was his answer which made me realize that heaven will be the revealing of all truth... the kind that we FEEL, SEE, and GRASP with our ENTIRE soul instead of just reading or hearing excerpts of it from time to time like we do here on earth:


"Freedom to sin is a contradiction in terms, like 'freedom to be enslaved.' Free choice is only the means to true freedom, 'the freedom of the sons of God,' liberty.

"In heaven we will not sin because we will not want to. We will freely choose never to sin, just as now great mathematicians do not make elementary mistakes, though they have the power to do so. In Heaven we will see the attractiveness of goodness and of God so clearly, and the ugliness and stupidity of sin so clearly, that there will be no possible motive to sin.

"Now, we are enslaved by ignorance. Every sin comes from ignorance, for we sin only because we see sin as somehow attractive, which it is not, and goodness as somehow lacking in attraction. This is an ignorance that we are responsible for, but it is ignorance, and without that ignorance we would not sin. In Heaven, in the 'beatific vision' of God, overwhelmed and filled with the total joy of goodness, baptized with goodness as a sunken ship is filled with water, no one could possibly ever want to turn from this perceived glory. Now, 'we walk by faith, not by sight'(2 Cor. 5:7). Heavenly sight will not remove our freedom. Ask the blind whether sight would remove their freedom."

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