Blog - The Story And The Shape

Did The Thief On The Cross Go To Heaven? (Pt 4) What About “Today”?

Paul Smith The Story Bible, Christianity, Heaven, paradise, The Story 1

Alright, let’s look at what Jesus meant by “today” when he said to the thief on the cross next to him, “today you will be with me in Paradise”.If you’ve been following along, I’ve been saying that to interpret this story well we need to be able to make sense of 3 key pieces of the puzzle – paradise, today, and kingdom. The interpretation that I think makes the most sense, all things considered, is the one I presented in the last post, that Jesus was saying to the thief that he would be with him in the garden city of the New Jerusalem in in the age to come.That interpretation makes the best sense of paradise and kingdom, but what about “today”?When Jesus said, “today you will be with me in Paradise,” that suggests that wherever paradise is, they would both be there that same day after they died.That’s the plainest reading of “today”. But if that’s the case, then interpretation #2 – that paradise is a compartment of Hades – would be the only legitimate interpretation. Because according to the Bible, the only place Jesus went in the 24 hours after he died was to the realm of the […]

Did The Thief On The Cross Go To Heaven? (Pt 3) Paradise In The New Creation

Paul Smith The Story Bible, Christianity, Creation, Heaven, paradise, The Story 0

Did the thief on the cross next to Jesus go to heaven? No, I don’t think he did, as I explained in part one of this series, read that first if you haven’t yet. In this post I’m going to present a third interpretation of Jesus’ words to the thief, one that I believe makes much better sense than interpretations #1 and #2, and lines up much better with the larger storyline of the whole Bible. And it’s actually in looking at how it fits into the larger storyline of the whole Bible that makes how we interpret this story so important.My wife asked me the other day why I was even doing this series. If you’ve seen my video introducing my YouTube channel, I talk about being interested in the Big Story of the Bible and Christianity, hence the name “The STORY And The Shape”. And so she was wondering why I would go from talking about the Big Story to suddenly focussing in on this little story of just a few verses, which only appears in one out of the 4 gospels.And she has a point. I mean sure it’s an interesting topic, but this is a bit of […]

Did The Thief On The Cross Go To Heaven? (Pt 2) Paradise In Hades

Paul Smith The Story Bible, Christianity, Heaven, paradise, The Story 1

Alright, part 2 of looking at the story of the thief on the cross.If you haven’t read part 1, I recommend you read that post first, there’s a lot of key information in there that you need for understanding this story.Here’s a quick recap: There are 3 keys to interpreting the story of the thief on the cross – paradise, today, and kingdom. The most common interpretation of this story – that Jesus was telling the thief that he would join him in heaven that very day – doesn’t do a very good job with any of those 3 key concepts, and in my view is the least credible interpretation.In this post we’re going to look at a second interpretation: that “Paradise” refers to a place of waiting for the righteous dead in the underworld.This interpretation, in my opinion, is much better than the first one. But as we’ll see it still doesn’t quite get us there with lining up all 3 of paradise, today and kingdom.So we’ve looked at the meaning of paradise, that the word itself means a “royal, enclosed garden”, and that in the Bible and other Jewish literature this frequently refers specifically to the Garden Of […]

Did The Thief On The Cross Go To Heaven? (Part 1) Paradise In Heaven

Paul Smith The Story Bible, Christianity, Heaven, paradise, The Story 3

Did the thief on the cross next to Jesus go to heaven when he died? No, I don’t think he did. There’s a short answer to this, and a long answer. The short answer is that: 1) Jesus said “You will be with me in Paradise,” and Paradise is not heaven, and 2) Jesus himself didn’t go to heaven the day he died… he went down to the realm of the dead. So it makes no sense for him to have meant “today you will be me in heaven” if on that day he wasn’t even going to be in heaven. So what did Jesus really mean when he said to the thief “Today you will be with me in Paradise?” That’s the long answer. Unfortunately, this short conversation between Jesus and thief is not quite as easy to interpret as it seems, mostly because we’ve loaded it with wrong assumptions. There’s a bit to unpack, so I’m going to do it over 4 posts. But stick with me, because I think you’ll find it will be worth it. I’m going to look at 3 key pieces of the puzzle, and also 3 different ways to interpret this story, finishing […]

Heaven Is Not Our Eternal Destiny

Paul Smith The Story Bible, Heaven, The Story 3

Many Christians believe our final destiny is all about ‘going to heaven’ to enjoy eternal life with God – finally freed from our lowly mortal bodies and this decaying earth to become spirit beings in a heavenly paradise.I know I held that belief for a long time, it’s one of those things that just seems to be assumed and we don’t really question it. But as it turns out, the Bible doesn’t teach that heaven is the eternal destiny for believers. In fact, I would argue, the Bible doesn’t teach that any humans (apart from Jesus) go to heaven EVER. Surprised? So then, what does the Bible really teach us about eternal life? I want to suggest that the Bible gives us a very different vision for the life to come that has nothing to do with us leaving our bodies and going to heaven, but rather one that sees us having renewed, glorious bodies, and living on a renewed glorious Earth. Notions of eternal souls, sitting on clouds, playing harps and all the other cartoonish images we have of life-after-death come straight out of Greek mythology and religion and have nothing at all to do with a truly biblical […]

Anti-Heroes: The Day I Lost Faith In My Theological Heroes

Paul Smith Uncategorized The Shape, Theology 0

**WARNING: Sexual Content** *This is a bit of a long one, but I think it needs to be. There are several moving parts and I want to make sure I make them all clear* I love theology and biblical studies, and I love reading the works of great thinkers. And as an INTP according to the Myers-Briggs system of personality profiling, my personality is highly driven towards seeking truth and accuracy. Unlike many others, I’m not very swayed by emotional arguments (not to put down emotions) – I want to see your working out. How did you come to your conclusion? What data are you using and how valid is that data? One of the great things for someone like me in reading books on theology and biblical studies is that often scholars go to great pains to show their working out. They don’t just make assertions without evidence, they take the time to explain and often use copious footnotes so you can check their sources for yourself. This week, however, there was a major incident (which I’ll get to in a moment) that prompted a flood of responses online, including several official analyses by some high profile biblical scholars/professors […]

Spiritual Rebellion – A Trilogy

Paul Smith The Story 1

A More Complex Problem So far on the blog we’ve looked at the corruption of humanity and how “The Fall” is not a helpful concept. According to the Common Story, the whole Problem is sin. And as I’ve argued, it is presented more as a problem that we have sin than that we do sin. But the real Story is actually way more dynamic than the Common Story presents, and the “Problem” part of the Story is much more involved. To understand the Problem effectively we need to understand God’s original plan. The Common Story says that God’s plan was all about having “relationship” with humanity. But as I’ve touched on previously, although “relationship” is an implicit part of the equation, it’s far from the full picture. I would briefly summarise God’s original plan as being his World Project: a good world created by God and developed, cultivated and stewarded with him, and on his behalf, by his “image bearers” – his human family. The real Problem is not just a breakdown in relationship, but a corruption of God’s good world. And sin, which leads humanity into more and more corruption, is only part of the Problem. As I’ve said before, the Problem part […]