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The Problem of Perfection: Reflections on Heaven and Human Nature

In the present paper analyzes the current issue of improvement of human nature and is closely associated with the presence of all sorts of evil in the world. Without going into the history of the subject, the author examines two different points of view, trying to find something in common that unites, links and unites them. However, the point of view — religious, where God is regarded as the most perfect being, but a person only his likeness. Another stresses the need for the infinite perfection of human nature, the development of it as a spiritual and moral being. However, as the author concludes that a person should not rely solely on the heavens, and count on myself, objectively assessing their own strength and to set realistic goals.

A well-known challenge to belief in God’s existence is the problem of evil: the charge that it is irrational to believe that the world was created by a being of infinite wisdom, power and love given the terrible things that happen in this world. I will not, however, be discussing the traditional problem of evil in this essay; rather, I bring it up only as an avenue of approach to a problem that might be seen as the reverse of the problem of evil. My subject in this essay is the charge that belief in an omni-natured God (a creator whose wisdom and power and love are without limit or defect) and the promise of heaven held out by such a being, stand at an uneasy angle with respect to human nature and the values and moral practices that inform and constrain our lives on earth. As a contrast to the problem of evil, the general concern that I have in mind here might be called the problem of God, or perhaps the problem of transcendent goods, or, if alliteration is our aim, the problem of perfection. It is the reverse of the problem of evil in that the concern is not whether belief in God can survive our measured intuitions about human nature, morality and moral responsibility given the abundance of evil in the world; rather, the concern is whether belief in a heaven of perfect and everlasting fulfillment can survive our measured intuitions about human nature, morality and moral responsibility.

Really, the problem of perfection is a group of distinct issues that cluster around this theme. One of the problems that a transcendent realm of perfection poses is what might be called the problem of denigration; i.e., the temptation to think of the goods of this world as of utterly no account by contrast with the infinite good of communion with God in an afterlife. A second problem is the problem of motivational impurity; that is, the danger that a promise of infinite personal reward for doing God’s will might lead one to do what is right only out of self-interest, and not because it is morally correct. Though these are both interesting and complex issues, they are not the problem I will address herein. The problem of perfection I focus in this paper is  what I call the problem of heaven. By the problem of heaven I have in mind worries about whether the traditional conception of heaven — as a realm of perfect and everlasting fulfillment — is actually at odds with some of our deepest convictions about human nature and what actually is able to fulfill human nature.

There appear in C.S.Lewis’s, The Great Divorce, two characterizations of heaven that appear to be at odds with each other. The first depicts heaven as a realm of perfect and everlasting fulfillment. It is expressed by one of the blessed in heaven who asks, «What needs could I have... now that I have all. I am full now, not empty» [1; 113]. The second, which portrays heaven as a realm of unending spiritual development and growth, is evident in a remark made by the narrator’s own spirit guide, George Macdonald, another member of the blessed whose place in heaven is already secure. About himself and the other blessed who have come to meet the busload of the unsaved, the George Macdonald character remarks; «Every one of us lives only to journey further and further into the mountains. Every one of us has interrupted that journey and retraced immeasurable distances to come down today on the mere chance of saving some Ghosts» [1; 72]. Juxtaposing these accounts of heaven may cause one to wonder what further journeying can be expected to accomplish for a being that has «all» and is «full». Assuming that these characterizations are in fact inconsistent, one might be tempted to explain this inconsistency as a product of Lewis, a Christian apologist, wanting to be true to an orthodox Christian account of heaven while b) recognizing at some level that the traditional view is an uneasy match for human beings whose nature seems best-suited for an environment in which goods unfold over Contemporary philosopher Richard Taylor is one who advances this latter criticism, arguing that human beings find fulfillment in challenge and change and thus would find tedious a realm of perfect and everlasting fulfillment. Such a heaven, Taylor observes, is a «picture of infinite boredom» [2; 331]. Moreover, he contends that the meaning we find in this life «far exceeds in both its beauty and permanence any heaven of which men have ever dreamed or yearned for» [2; 334].

Now Richard Taylor does not go to any great lengths to specify why he thinks the picture of heaven would be one of infinite boredom. Indeed, much of the force of his case rests upon the metaphor for heaven. Taylor develops his metaphor for heaven, by modifying the Myth of Sisyphus, Taylor imagines Sisyphus to be rolling boulders to the top of a hill in order to build a temple. He further modifies the myth by imagining that Sisyphus is successful. Instead of having the boulder roll back down the hill and thus having Sisyphus’ efforts remain futile — as happens in the original myth — Taylor supposes that Sisyphus actually succeeds in building a temple that he can then contemplate for eternity. And it is this, the contemplation of a temple for eternity, that serves as the analogue to heaven in Taylor’s modification of Sisyphus’ plight. It is, of course, hard to disagree with Taylor given the picture of heaven he presents. The idea of eternally contemplating a temple — even one born of one’s own laborious effort — is not a particularly enticing prospect. By the same token, a person who took seriously the promise of heaven might rightly fault the extent of Taylor’s imaginative reach. Surely Taylor could conjure a more enticing view of heaven than a temple eternally contemplated. Nonetheless, even though he does not do so, I think it is not hard to reconstruct a more detailed and compelling account of what is behind Taylor’s worry about heaven.

Taylor’s worry about heaven is something like the following: to be fulfilled, human beings need at least some variation in their experience and some opportunities to strive for specific goals, where the latter involves overcoming difficulties and obstacles, and includes the chance for failure as well as other risks. At the very least, the thrill of achieving fulfillment requires a prior lack or deficiency or want in a person that is then overcome or fulfilled. We derive, that is to say, a great deal of fulfillment and satisfaction from change and challenge. This is not, of course, to say that we don’t also appreciate consistency and security. It is not to deny that we can find fulfillment in the familiar; however, a life that was all of a piece and included no goals for which to strive is one that seems a poor fit for the kinds of beings we experience ourselves to be. If we think, Taylor might say, of times in our lives when we have experienced the greatest degree of satisfaction, we see that many of them are occasions on which we have been engaged in activities or circumstances that presented us with a rich variety of experiences. Many others are occasions on which we have achieved some end of great value, at great personal risk, with an investment of significant effort and energy, and with significant chance of failure. And even if one would not count the risk or potential failure as requisite to the future fulfillment, at the very least a prior lack or want would seem to be required. Moreover, the fulfillment we experience when we have achieved some goal in the face of difficulty and/or danger has three further components. First, one’s sense of fulfillment is intimately tied to factors that involve change, temporality and evil or imperfection. Second, its ability to satisfy one is inversely proportional to the length of time elapsed since it was achieved. Third, future instances of achieving the same goal against the same odds tend to diminish the sense of satisfaction one experiences.

So it is, for Taylor, in conceiving of heaven as a realm of perfect and unending fulfillment, we have fallen prey to an illusion, a natural and understandable illusion, but an illusion all the same. We find and encounter much that is good and valuable and fulfilling in life, but also much that is wretched and disturbing and dismaying. It is natural, then, to think that we would find much more fulfillment, if only we could have the good and the valuable without limit or qualification, and have it without the bad, including the bad that is found in the good’s coming to an end. Hence we construct the ideal of heaven, a realm of perfect and — unendingfulfillment. But it is in this, if Richard Taylor is right, that we fall prey to an illusion. To convey the nature of the illusion, one might draw upon a beautiful metaphor used by Immanuel Kant to describe metaphysicians who attempt to use reason to go beyond the bounds of experience. To convey the illusion to which such metaphysicians are subject, Kant imagines a.

«... light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space» [3; 8, 9].

Kant’s point, of course, is that the dove needs the resistance of the air in order to fly at all, just as human reason needs information from the senses to achieve any knowledge at all. Using the metaphor of the dove to express Taylor’s criticism of heaven, we might note that want and lack and change and challenge are an essential part of the atmosphere of human endeavor and human fulfillment. To imagine a realm in which these are absent — a realm of perfect fulfillment — is to imagine a realm void of that gives lift to human life. This, then, is the problem of heaven. Taylor himself is not troubled by the problem since he does not be-  lieve in a personal afterlife or heaven. But what should a theist who does believe in heaven make of it?

Though the challenge it poses is significant, I believe that the traditional view of heaven can survive this challenge. Below I sketch two avenues by which it could do so.

The first response explains the human thirst for challenge and change in this life as largely a function of the fact that we encounter only finite goods that are incapable of supporting complete or lasting fulfillment. The good of heaven, by contrast, is the infinite good of loving union with an infinitely perfect being. The second response is to argue that one can consistently hold both of the following propositions: a) the blessed enjoy complete fulfillment; i.e., they no longer have needs waiting to be filled, and b) the blessed are capable of experiencing further enrichment. The suggestion here is that one can have no unfulfilled needs in one period and then, in a subsequent period, acquire additional needs that are immediately fulfilled, and in a later period still, acquire yet more needs that are immediately fulfilled and so on. In this way, one might be constantly experiencing new sources of fulfillment without ever experiencing one’s current fulfillment as in any way lacking or imperfect. Quite the contrary, at that moment, one’s current nature is perfectly fulfilled. As an analogy to convey what I have in mind, I suggest that we could conceive of a seven-year-old child being perfectly fulfilled even though he or she has not enjoyed the fulfillment of romantic love. Such love is not a need found in a young child’s nature; nonetheless, in adulthood, such love might well constitute an important part of her or his fulfillment.

I will close this essay by noting that in responding to Richard Taylor thus, I am put in mind of a remark by Norman Maclean from his novella, A River Runs Through It. On an afternoon on which he was landing all the fish and his much more talented brother was having no luck, the narrator muses: «When I was young, a teacher had forbidden me to say «more perfect» because she said if a thing is perfect it can’t be more so. But by now I had seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it. Twenty minutes ago I had felt perfect, but by now my brother was taking off his hat and changing flies every few casts» [4; 88].

 

References

  1. Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce, New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1946, 290
  2. Taylor, Richard. Good and Evil, New York, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000, 373
  3. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith, New York, NY: MacMillan, 2007, 768 p.
  4. Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1976, 217

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