
Your complimentary articles
You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please
If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.
To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.
If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.
Heresy
Heavenly Eviction
John Donnelly reminds us that people are only tenants in Heaven by the grace of God.
The notion of heavenly eviction would seem strange, even heterodoxical, to Christians [and others] who believe in Heaven. Yet those same Christians would likely have no difficulty or hesitancy affirming the fall or expulsion from Heaven of Lucifer and his like-minded angelic cohorts.
Therefore I think there is a fundamental inconsistency in the beliefs of ordinary Christians, which I will attempt to rectify by defending the notion of Heavenly eviction. In short: if there has been angelic expulsion, then so too can there be human eviction from Heaven. (A practical implication of this theory would suggest that the Christian practice of praying to saints who act as mediators could be misdirected.
…