The destination of the Christian life is commonly seen as endless life in “Heaven”, although this is never actually stated in the Bible. The closest we get is Jesus saying to the thief of the cross that “today you will be with me in paradise”, and since by the end of “today” Jesus was dead, it is tempting to equate the two. If we do, and say that Heaven is the destination, then the Good News is not very distinctive. Valhalla was a paradise for a Norse culture that valued honor, fighting, and feasting. Babylon’s Gilgamesh sought eternal life and paradise. The Egyptian Book of the Dead instructs Pharaoh how to navigate the dangers of the underworld in order to arrive safely in a paradise. Admittedly, such a Christian paradise is open for everyone, not just the demigods or the elite and powerful.

Interestingly, Evangelical-type Christians do not describe Heaven as a traditional paradise. There is no garden with water and lush plants in the desert, like paradise as its Mesopotamian namers saw it. Nor is there feasting and pleasure. Instead, it is more like a 24/7 worship service. That always sounded like a chore to me, especially since I find “worship” music miserable in comparison to the beauty of classical music (most of which, ironically, was written for use in Christian worship).

Heaven, biblically, is where God is, and obviously God has no body, being spirit. One might note that the New Testament talks about “the Resurrection” a lot, meaning our resurrection, not Jesus’. The whole point of a resurrection is getting a body back. Now, to be sure, Jesus “came down” from heaven and got a body and then “ascended” back with his body. But Revelation describes a more physical end state: the New Jerusalem, located on a new earth. God himself says that God’s dwelling will now be with people; he does not say that people’s dwelling will be with God.

However, the destination of the Christian life is not “Heaven”, nor even the resurrected physical state, but rather becoming one with God. We see glimpses of this in the New Testament. Jesus asks that believers be one just as he and the Father are one, and that they be in us. (John 17:20-22) Jesus illustrates this state by comparing himself to the vine and us as its branches. Peter opens his second letter by saying that we may “share in the divine nature” and outlines a progression of Christian character building into love that aids in that process. (2 Peter 1:4-8) Paul compares the Church’s relationship with God to that of a husband and wife who are “one flesh”.

The Church Fathers expand on this, beginning with Iranaeus, although the most well-known phrasing is from Athanasius: “God became Man that Man might become God.” As Maximus the Confessor describes in philosophical detail a few centuries later, this does not mean that the Trinity is expanding. He is describing what the Fathers called the “hypostatic union”, that is, the union of the divine nature and human nature, as seen in Christ. But, if the essence of God (in Christ) has become united with humanity, then the reverse is also true: the essence of humanity has been united with God (in Christ). Christ took on humanity in order to unite the divine with humanity. The process works in reverse with us: Christ brings us into divinity (“sharing the divine nature”) to unite the divine with humanity.

Thus, the attempts of the New Testament to describe this union, which is not something we have any direct experience with, since we are not divine. Jesus uses the metaphor of the vine and branches to illustrate this union. Paul uses the example of husband and wife, who, though they are two distinct beings and nature, not only join physically (briefly) but can interact as a single unit in society. (Our individualistic society is puts roadblocks in every step of two becoming one, but it can be done.) I tend to think of being woven into God, like a cloth with a thread of God and a thread of me, or more broadly, a cloth with God threads and threads for each person.

This destination fits well with the beginning. In Genesis 1, God makes humanity “in our image”. N.T. Wright and others demonstrate that the Creation account is in the context of Creation being God’s temple. But instead of a statue representing the deity like in pagan temples, humanity is the image in the temple. This is further reinforced by the fact the temples were seen as a place where heaven intersects with earth. Genesis 2 demonstrates this: the paradise Garden has rivers flowing out of it in each direction, which would only work if the Garden is the high point (otherwise it would be a lake, not a river). Like temples, mountains were also a place where heaven touches earth, for obvious reasons. So even in the Old Testament there is the expectation that the divine and the human somehow intersect. Paul even makes the connection explicit when he says the we are God’s temple (1 Cor 3:17, 6:19, 2 Cor 6:16, Eph 2:21).

So, actually, the destination of the Christian life is none other than the original destination of humanity: the union of God and humanity. A mystical marriage.