By focusing upon a rehearing of the Gospel news of heaven today, the author invites readers to exercise a 'post-modern permission' to listen to this testimony without either the usual modernist earplugs or an uncritical post-modern 'make believe'. Without attempting to retrace the history of images and interpretations of heaven, Morse seeks rather to draw upon this background to get to the heart of the issue of modern eschatological and apocalyptic discussion by proposing in the foreground a 'thought experiment'. If we hear of heaven as that which is now at hand and coming to pass, in contrast to what Paul calls 'the form of this world that is passing away', how significant would the consequences be? Morse proceeds to conduct such a retrial of the news of heaven as presence, citizenship, kingdom, creation, and proximity by testing its present day credibility with respect to such topics as the theology of heaven, the reality of heaven, the ethics of heaven, and the hope of heaven.

Author Biography

Christopher Morse holds the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair in Theology and Ethics at Union Seminary, New York, and is the author of The Logic of Promise in Moltmann's Theology.