Assembled in heaven?

A critique of the notion of “heavenly assembly”
In the twentieth century, the notion that the basic reality of the church is “assembly” was articulated by Sydney Anglican evangelicals Donald Robinson and D. Broughton Knox in response to the world ecumenical movement. They, and others who have since followed, argued that church fundamentally involves actual gathering, such that the church finally exists in two basic ways in the present—as the one heavenly gathering around the ascended Lord Jesus, which is in “continuous assembly”, and in local assemblies of believers, which “come and go” (Robinson 1965, 14). The notion of the present heavenly gathering is, however, highly problematic, and I would like here to offer a critique.

It is problematic first at the level of Scriptural support. The main texts appealed to are Hebrews 12:18–24; Revelation 7; and the passages in the Pauline epistles that speak of believers being “raised with Christ” (e.g. Eph 2:6; Col 3:1, 3; Phil 3:20). Although these do not speak directly of the church being in heaven, they are seen as providing an analogy for the church’s heavenly existence. In none of these texts, however, is the idea of a present heavenly assembly straightforwardly presented. To take them in reverse order. In each of the Pauline texts two things are immediately obvious: (1) the in Christ language; and (2) the eschatological context. In each of these texts the believer is “in heaven” only through her connection with Jesus, who has ascended into heaven. There is no indication that this should be understood substantively (on which, see below). Furthermore, each of these texts immediately looks to a future which is different from the present: the believer is a citizen of heaven, so expects a Saviour from there (Phil 3:20–21); the believer has been raised with Christ and her life is hidden in Christ, and so when He appears, the believer will appear with Him (Col 3:1–4); God has raised the believer with Christ so that in the coming ages he might show his grace (Eph 2:6–7). In these texts, the present heavenly reality exists only insofar as it is true of Christ, and it is different from the reality that is to come. The appeal to Revelation 7 is likewise problematic. Revelation 7 represents the climax of the first series of seven disclosures, thus depicting the final outcome of God’s purposes. It is therefore a picture (one of several in Revelation), of the eschatological future, and cannot be straightforwardly turned into a picture of the heavenly present. This leaves the central text of Hebrews 12:18–24. Although the perfect tense proselêluthate in verse 18 suggests that what is depicted here is a present reality, it is much better to take it as an eschatological picture. Indeed, both David Peterson and P. T. O’Brien insist that the scene depicts “the final encounter between God and his people” (Peterson, quoted in O’Brien 1987, 95). The context clearly supports such an interpretation: the warnings to not fail to obtain the grace of God (12:15), or to reject him who warns from heaven (12:25), and the general encouragement to press on (12:1–2). This passage depicts the eschatological future for God’s people not as present reality, but as a hope worth pressing towards. There is, therefore, nowhere in Scripture that straightforwardly speaks of a present heavenly assembly.

Second, the notion of a heavenly gathering is problematic at the level of the philosophical claims implied. On the part of proponents of this view, there is a remarkable absence of consideration of what “heaven” actually means, and what it might mean to say that the church, or the believer for that matter, is presently in heaven. For example, O’Brien speaks of believers “presently existing in a heavenly realm” or “heavenly dimension” (1987, 94), and of the church as a “supernatural and heavenly phenomenon” (O’Brien 1982, 60), without explaining what this involves. Just what is being claimed here? The believer clearly cannot be in heaven in the same sense in which Jesus is there, for Jesus is there bodily, but the believer, surely, is not. So what kind of a connection is involved? O’Brien hints that the connection between the earthly and heavenly could be “through the Spirit” (1987, 104), but there is not much more; and language of the earthly church as a “manifestation” or “visible expression” of the heavenly does not help. The fact of the matter is that these questions have rarely been attended to. Indeed, Robinson claims that there is “no need to explain the relation” between the heavenly and earthly church (1996, 205). But this will simply not do, and the result has been that advocates of the “ecclesiology of assembly” have had to defend themselves against the accusation of incipient platonism.

There has been, it seems to me, a failure to attend to the significance of Paul’s language of “in Christ” for this issue. When Paul says that the believer’s life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3), or that she has been “raised with Christ and seated in the heavenly places”, it seems much better to argue that Paul is at these points stressing the significance of the believer’s identification with Jesus as his or her representative: the believer is “in heaven” because Jesus has ascended and the believer is united to Him by faith. Correspondingly, the church is in heaven because it is represented there by the ascended Christ. Doyle in fact rightly counters the accusation of platonism by speaking of the Christocentricity of the being of the church through faith (1987, 24). Yet it is not at all clear that the idea of a present heavenly assembly can stand once this (more biblical) approach is adopted. The parallel with the believer is again instructive. For Paul, the recognition that the believer’s life is “hidden with Christ in God” does not evacuate the believer’s present, earthly life of significance; rather it reinvigorates it: “put to death therefore…” (Col 3:5). Yet in discussions of the heavenly church a corresponding re-focusing on the significance of church here and now has rarely emerged. Rather than the Spiritual reality of the church investing the present church with significance and laying a burden of care upon the believer, language of “manifestation” can lead one to not worry about the present existence of the church. For the real church is somewhere else.

This leads to the third problematic aspect of this concept, which is that it tends to elide the distinction between “heaven” in the present and the eschatological future. Possibly because of the functions of the word “heaven” in English, there is a frequent blurring of distinctions between the proposed present heavenly gathering and the future eschatological gathering. For example, despite the title of his article, O’Brien makes no real distinction between “heavenly” and “eschatological” (1987, 104–5). He speaks of a now/not yet tension, yet at some points, this seems to be equivalent to the earth/heaven distinction (111–13). Martin Foord recognizes this difficulty, and has tried to bring clarity by rejecting the idea of manifestation in favour of anticipation. He writes helpfully, “the local church cannot be an actual appearance of the heavenly eschatological church because it is not the heavenly eschatological gathering in entirety or perfection” (2001, 331). Yet if this modification is embraced, the fundamental structure of the “ecclesiology of assembly” is altered. Indeed, Knox was emphatic that the heavenly assembly had to be “a present, not merely future reality” (1964, 45). Peterson and O’Brien seem to be aware of this problem at least to some extent, as they both make reference briefly to the “Jewish apocalyptic idea” that “what lies in the future already exists above” (Peterson 1998, 210; O’Brien 1987, 88). If this was genuinely being put forward as a key to Christian eschatology, this would be a highly significant claim. (Indeed, Robert Jenson suggests something quite similar in discussing “heaven”: “what is in heaven besides God is the present reality with God of the future that his history with creatures intends”, 2009, 33). Yet this idea is never explored or fleshed out by those advocating the “heavenly gathering” view, and we should hesitate before adopting it without pause. As we saw above, the biblical texts do not straightforwardly support this notion of a present heavenly assembly, and they seem to imply a difference between the present reality and the future.

This eschatological conception needs to be examined, because at some points it seems to lead to what might be seen as an over-realized ecclesiology. Knox: “The local gathering is the complete church of Christ, even if it only consists of two persons gathered in Christ’s name, for he is there with them” (2003, 25, my emphasis). It may well be right to say this in some sense; but it must also be balanced with a sense of the imperfection and incompleteness of the church in the present. Such a sense was fundamental to the ecclesiology of, for example, Augustine and Calvin. The church is “on pilgrimage” in this world, “growing among tares and longing for a rest some day from the weariness of scandals” (Augustine, On Baptism, I.15.24; 4.5; cf. Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.8, 17). The church proclaims Christ’s death “until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26), and this should warn us against eliding the distinction between the church as it is now and the church as it will be.

References
Doyle, Robert. 1987. “A Response to Graham Cole’s Paper”. Pages 19–25 in Church, Worship and the Local Congregation. Edited by B. G. Webb. Explorations 2. Homebush West: Lancer.
Foord, Martin. 2001. “Recent Directions in Anglican Ecclesiology”. Churchman 115/4: 316–49.
Jenson, Robert. 2009. Ezekiel. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press.
Knox, D. B. 1964. “The Church and the Denominations”. Reformed Theological Review 23.2: 44–53.
————. 2003. “Demythologising the Church”, in Selected Works Volume II: Church and Ministry. Edited by Kirsten Birkett. Kingsford: Matthias Media.
O’Brien, P. T. 1982. Colossians, Philemon. Word Biblical Commentary 44. Waco: Word.
————. 1987. “The Church as a Heavenly and Eschatological Entity”. Pages 88–119 in The Church in the Bible and the World: An International Study. Edited by D. A. Carson. Exeter: Paternoster.
Peterson, D. 1998. “The ‘Locus’ of the Church – Heaven or Earth?”. Churchman 112: 199–213.
Robinson, D. W. B. 1965. The Church of God, its Form and its Unity. Punchbowl, NSW: Jordan Books.
————. 1996. “Church”. Pages 205–7 in New Bible Dictionary. Edited by I. Howard Marshall, A. R. Millard, J. I. Packer, and D. J. Wiseman. Leicester: IVP.

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