Paradise Mislaid: How We Lost Heaven--And How We Can Regain It by Jeffrey Burton Russell
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

An Abuse of Literature

Heaven is apparently ‘in’ at the moment. Theologians and apologists of all stripes have decided that it is a concept with many more miles than it has already run. Jeffrey Burton Russell would like to “let Heaven out of the closet.” Like any good evangelical, he wants us to know that his ideas are sound, that they really, really are necessary for living a meaningful and productive life.

The first clue that Russell’s book might be less than compelling is the overtly cheesy title. Paradise Mislaid is not only a faux reference to Milton, presumably to provide some historical credibility, the title has also been shared by a second-rate set of murder mysteries, a somewhat tedious memoir of 50’s National Service, at least one novel of the conflict between science and religion, another with some rather forced classical allusions, a fascinating history of a failed social utopia in the Paraguayan jungle, and a psychotic thesis about life after death. Originality is not Russell’s forte.

But he isn’t any better on logic either. According to Jeffrey Russell, heaven is a metaphor, a figure of speech. It does not exist in space-time, he says. It’s a word without a referent. In short, it is a fantasy. Nevertheless, he feels, we desperately need for this fantasy to be restored as a respectable element in our thinking about reality. Russell apparently knows this because the idea of heaven makes him happy; and he wasn’t happy when he was an atheist and didn’t believe in heaven. But the man doth protest excessively - one suspects in order to comfort himself. Why can’t he be simply content with his happiness?

Russell’s explanation for the necessity of an other-worldly state of peace, love and spiritual fulfillment in a this-worldly state of human conflict, hatred and material want is not merely trivial, it is also ideological and dangerous for human beings and other living things. He may succeed in distracting himself from the real issues of living with others; but one can only hope that most people will catch his sleight of hand. Like most evangelical Christians, he doesn’t only want to get across a thought, he also wants to change the way the rest of us think. He just knows things that others don’t about reality.

So Russell very quickly goes into didactic mode, teaching us how to think properly. “Heaven is best understood,” says Russell, “in terms of representation of reality by depth metaphors, metaphors that intend to point toward ultimate truth.” Not ‘can be understood’; not even ‘might be understood’; but are ’best’ understood. A real pedagogue then. ‘Best is the superlative for what?’ one asks.

‘Depth metaphors’ are apparently those really good tropes that are used in theology and philosophy to describe things like fundamental human nature and God. So Russell has a clear literary view of his subject. And if he could keep himself to literature and the poetics of metaphorical usage, he might make a little sense. But he embeds that literary idea in a philosophical theory which gives him a privileged position to know which metaphors are not only ‘deep’ but also correctly formed, that is, point to truth. This is chutzpah not knowledge.

Russell should know that a metaphor doesn’t point to anything except the terms used in the metaphor itself. ‘God is love’ may be an acceptable attempt at a definition, but it is meaningless as a metaphor because the first term is vacuous without the second. Even Jesus stuck to similes in his descriptions of the Kingdom of Heaven. And Russell should know that metaphors connote different things to different people in different contexts. But apparently he doesn’t. This is ignorance.

Significantly, what he does know is that these depth metaphors are not static; they evolve continuously to accommodate various meanings in the the societies in which they appear, reflecting everything from the level of scientific knowledge to the characteristics of the prevailing social structure. They are, in a word, political. Yet despite Russell’s extensive discussion of the changing history of the idea of heaven that points to its variable political meaning, he fails to make the connection to the concrete human interests which are the object of politics. For him the evolving idea of heaven is simply keeping up with the times. This is duplicity.

In fact, throughout the history of Christianity and Islam, and before them of Judaism, heaven has been part of what is called apocalyptic literature. Apocalyptic consists of the tales of eventual justification and revenge for distraught believers with regard to the rest of the unbelieving world. Christianity in particular, despite its official protestations of love, is a highly resentful, grudge-bearing and generally vengeful religion and therefore has a great deal to say about heaven (cf. the Book of Revelation for the gory detail).

Apocalyptic is a sort of scriptural pep talk meant to provide solace and renewed cultic strength during tough times by dangling a carrot of eventual relief. And heaven of course implies hell. One’s religious enemies will pay the price of their intransigence and inability to appreciate reality for what it is. Thus there will be an ultimate vindication and eternal justice in the ‘other’ world - either the world to come after one’s death or at the end of creation.

It seems obvious, but not to Russell, that there is a consistent political intention in the notion of heaven throughout its otherwise complex linguistic history. The purpose of the idea is to either promote solidarity and the courage to persist; and/or to provide a positive theodicy, that is, a favorable verdict on the apparent actions of a God who claims to care but refuses to demonstrate his benevolence. These are its sole functions. Its meaning is the offer of deferred reward beyond the mere approval of the community. A child knows this intuitively. But Russell does not.

Put another way, in starkly political terms, the purpose of heaven is to serve power not those who are subject to power. The religious doctrines of heaven don’t flow naturally, as it were, from the springs of the collective unconscious. They are formulated, promulgated and enforced as doctrines from religious establishments, the primary aim of which is their own continued existence. Heaven is a justification for the earthly power of religious leaders.

To the degree that the faithful consider heaven to be a possible personal future, the clerisy of priests, bishops, imams, and mullahs is secure. The scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church over the last half-century, for example, are all traceable to this sort of doctrinal politics which is self-protective and rational only in terms of institutional survival. In fact no doctrine is without its political motivation and its political intent, and therefore its service to power rather than truth.

Heaven provides a sort of soft apocalypse (similar, perhaps, to a soft Brexit in its incremental transition period) for those believers who can’t work themselves up to accept the imminence of a Second Coming. Fundamentalism isn’t often ‘respectable’ but ‘just desserts’ is a part of religious as well as liberal ideology. Heaven is therefore palatable to that bulk of middle of the road believers.

If they are among the oppressed, heaven provides hope and therefore inhibits action which might be socially revolutionary. For the oppressors, Heaven provides a rational for a certain type of smug conservative politics, a ‘Let God sort things out’ attitude which fits comfortably with neo-liberal economics and strict enforcement of the existing social order.

What is most objectionable in Russell’s analysis, however, is not the obvious attempt to deflect attention from real human problems and injustices through spiritual hogs wallop. This is just typically self-serving evangelical rhetoric. Rather, it is his attempt to usurp the very foundation of literature by claiming to know something divinely inspired about language, about what language is and how it works. His allusion to Milton’s great poem in the title is literary sacrilege. Russell is a threat to literature, that is to thought itself. This is not just devious ignorance, it is pure evil. Russell should not merely be mislaid but buried, preferably very deeply.

View all my reviews