Silviu Ghegoiu MA Medieval Studies, CEU, Budapest Reading Class Approaching Religion, Winter 2008

Heaven, Heavens, and the Social Order

In this essay I would like to address the concept of the divine realm as seen in three of the world religions: ancient Chinese religion, Judaism, and Christianity. There are different perspectives of looking at the concept of Heaven as the divine realm, but I will focus mainly on one of these, namely, the diachronic perspective. The challenge is to compare this concept and its evolution within each of the named religions, and to see at what extent it follows the same changing pattern. This development is related to the conception of the heavenly and earthly order, the last one concerning the social order. The question to be asked is: Did the heavenly order influence the social one, or the other way around? In ancient Chinese religion, in the time of Shang dynasty (c.1200-c.1050 BCE), the supreme divinity, called Shang Ti (Above Emperor or The Lord on High), or Ti (The Lord), was seen as the god of heaven, the one who administers the weather, and looks after the harvests. Peoples sacrifices were directed mainly to him, in the attempt to appease him and send rain on time. Yet, the heaven of which he is the lord of is not seen as an outer place beyond this world. Instead, it is the sky above, where the clouds are moving and the stars are spotted. With the coming of the Zhou dynasty (c.1050-771 BCE), a slight change occurred. The abstract principle of the heaven, Tien, appeared to replace the god Shang Ti as the supreme governing principle in the world. But also, Tien signified the heaven, the firmament of the sky and the celestial bodies, as well. Tien was perceived as a deity who deserved worship and sacrifices and, also, was associated with time; his power affected the passing of time, the changing of dynasties and of the seasons. From this derived the idea of the heavenly mandate Tien ming, which is the divine mandate given to the earthly ruler. The Zhou dynasty rulers claimed that their arrival at power was just because the heavenly mandate was given to them. But Tien expressed the celestial bodies, as well, and what is happening in the heavens, not in the sky (the atmosphere). It comprised the idea of the order of the cosmos, for example the pattern of temporal changes, and eventually, Tien ming meant also the order of nature, and the connection

with the spirits and the stellar objects created a system in which what happened to them affected the people on earth. The basic concept: man can see what happens in the sky, and relates to those events. Confucianism took over the idea of the heavenly mandate and gave it a practical meaning for the current rulers duties in the kingdom, the wars he fought and the administrative actions he embraced. Tao-te Ching, on the other hand, looked at the Heaven Tien, as part of the dualist idea of yin and yang, together with the Earth. But also it acknowledged the relations between heavenly order and terrestrial and social order: Man models himself after Earth. / Earth models itself after Heaven. / Heaven models itself after Tao. / And Tao itself after Nature. (Tao-te Ching, chap. 25) Here we have a cyclic pattern of influence, or of modeling. Man, or the human society, has as its indirect model the Heaven, which, at its turn, is a reflection of the Nature of which the man is part. Apparently, the Order itself Tao, is inspired by reality, namely the Nature. But the main idea was that the good deeds of the ruler, or of the man, matched the Heaven, which was the highest principle. (Tao-te Ching, chap. 68) Looking now at the mosaic perception of the divine realm, the Hebrew Bible gives only some references to the Gods dwelling place. The main characteristic is the height of the heaven, as seen as the vaulted sky above the earth. Sometimes it refers to the clouds of heaven as a background for Gods activities (Dan. 7:13). What appears in some of the references is an important piece of furniture which belongs to the divine heaven: the throne (Ex. 17:16, 1Kin. 22:19, Ps. 2:4, 9:4.7, 103:19, 123:1, Is. 63:15 etc.). And one verse gives even a somehow different definition The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool (Is. 66:1). What is particularly interesting is the fact that an earthly object, the throne, is imagined in the heavenly realm of God, and its significance the judging power, is the same with the earthly, human one (Ps. 9:4.7, 76:8; and 1 Kin. 7:7, Pr. 20:8). Of a particular interest in Judaism is the Holy Temple, or the Sanctuary, which organized the religious and social life of the ancient Jews. There are some references to the presence of a sanctuary in heaven (Ps. 11:4, 102:19), which may explain the modeling of the earthly sanctuary after its heavenly counterpart, or vice-versa. So, religious and social orders are inspired by the heavenly one. In some instances, there are mentioned hosts in heaven, heavenly beings, or spirits (1 Kin. 22:19, Ps. 8:5, 89:6, Dan. 8:10, Zech. 6:5), who are serving or praising God, thus giving a social environment to Gods realm. On this level the divine realm evolved in later Judaism, beginning with the apocalyptic writings from the Maccabean period till the Kabalistic mysticism in the Middle Ages. At first, different apocalyptic authors gave names to different archangels and angels, on the model of Gabriel (Dan. 8:16, 9:21), resulting, eventually, in a hierarchy of the heavenly beings. Also, due to the ancient Greek astronomical concepts of the
2

celestial spheres, spheres which carry each of the surrounding planets, evolved a celestial hierarchy of the seven heavens, governed by seven angels. Notably, the seventh heaven was considered to be the place of Gods throne, the realm where he dwells. From the beginning, Christianity was tributary to the contemporary mosaic ideas of heaven and angelic hierarchy in heaven. Since all of Jesus disciples were Jews, there is nothing to be wondered about this. Along with the main characteristics of the heaven, as seen previously in Judean writings (the realm of God, the place of his judging throne), early Christians took also the concept of distinct heavens, though, initially, not seven. Papias, a second century church leader, wrote about three levels of the heaven: the heaven proper, the Paradise, and the City, in which the righteous will go according to their merits. He gave this example as an explanation to Jesus saying: In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2) One can see that celestial organization of the heaven is here indebted to the distinction through worthiness of the righteous. Thus, the heavens reflect the community of believers, the Christian society, and not the world as a whole, or the human society in its entirety. In this perspective, the Christian heaven is an exclusivist one. In the 5th century CE, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite elaborated a celestial hierarchy of angels, taking his information mainly from such biblical passages as Ephesians 1:21 and Colossians 1:16, naming nine types of heavenly beings. Later, Thomas Aquinas, in Summa Theologica, developed Pseudo-Dionysius model and divided these categories in three orders, based on their proximity to God: 1. Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; 2. Dominations, Virtues, and Powers; 3. Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Though these are the basic types of heavenly beings, their disposition and functions vary from author to author in the Middle Ages. This angelic hierarchy combined with Papias heavens, but more so, with the Kabalistic celestial system of seven heavens, lead to one of the most interesting descriptions of the Christian heaven in Dantes The Divine Comedy, written at the beginning of the 14th century. In this evolution of the divine realm one can easily discover the growing importance of the differentiation between the saints who are received in different heavens, according to their merits. For instance, bishops and cardinals go in one of the seven heavens, martyrs go in other. Apostles are to be found in a higher heaven, common believers in a lower one, and so on. This separation reflects also the medieval social system of the three orders: oratores, bellatores, and laboratores. But then, all of them are to be going in the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God, who receives in his realm all the faithful.

Concluding, the evolutions seen in each of the there religions presented here go from the basic idea of a god of the heaven, who lives somewhere on the vaulted sky, above the clouds, to a complex system of heavenly hierarchy. But not all of them go all the way: Chinese religion stops at a heaven which reflects the earth and the social order in their principle, while Christianity starts where Judaism stopped, at a heaven divided in seven, according to the Greek conception of the cosmos, and goes in describing the details of the celestial order, not only of the heavenly beings, as in Judaism, but also of the righteous who enters the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus, the concept of heaven reflects, on different levels, the order within the society of mortals.

Bibliography:
Allan, Sarah. Shang Di (High Lord) and Tian (Sky): Their Identity and Relationship. Harvard University East Asian Seminar Series, Fall 2005. At http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~anthro/pdf/eaas_seminar_4.pdf. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Transl. and ed. Wing-Tsit Chan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963. Papias. Fragments of the Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, chap. 5. At http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/papias.html. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Works (1899) vol. 2. The Celestial Hierarchy. p.1-66. At http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/areopagite_13_heavenly_hierarchy.htm#c6. The Holy Bible, King James Version. Nashville: World Publishing. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. I. 108. At http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.toc.html.