Concept

Heaven

Overview

Heaven, or the Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or, in exceptional cases, enter Heaven without dying.

Heaven is often described as a "highest place", the holiest place, a paradise, in contrast to Hell or the Underworld or the "low places" and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply divine will. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come.

Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svargaloka, and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (Heaven, Hell, or other) is referred to as the otherworld.

In the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Islam, and some schools of Judaism, as well as Zoroastrianism, heaven is the realm of afterlife where good actions in the previous life are rewarded for eternity, Hell being the place where bad behavior is punished.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Heaven is discussed.

Sometimes it uses the word in its proper and natural meaning, when it denotes that body on high which is luminous actually or potentially, and incorruptible by nature. In this body there are three heavens; the first is the empyrean, which is wholly luminous; the second is the aqueous or crystalline, wholly transparent; and the third is called the starry heaven, in part transparent, and in part actually luminous, and…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
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Aristotle, that it is formed by the fifth body, and by the mixture of extreme heat and cold. CHAPTER XII. INTO HOW MANY CIRCLES IS THE HEAVEN DISTINGUISHED; OR, OF THE DIVISION OF HEAVEN. Thales, Pythagoras, and the followers of Pythagoras do distribute the universal globe of heaven into five circles, which they denominate zones; one of which is called the arctic circle, which is always conspicuous to us, another is…
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
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Now it remains to see why it is called the third Heaven. Here it is requisite to reflect somewhat with regard to a comparison which exists between the order of the Heavens and that of the Sciences Wherefore, as has been previously described, the Seven Heavens next to us are those of the Planets; then there are two Heavens above these, the Mobile, and one above all, Quiet. To the Seven first correspond the Seven…
Dante Alighieri, The Banquet
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2. But once more: the Saints are perfectly conformed to the Will of God, and consequently will nothing but what He wills. But what God wills is always fulfilled. Hence it is idle for the Saints to pray for us. But the Saints obtain that which God wills should come about through the medium of their prayers; and they ask for what they think is, by God's Will, to be fulfilled through their prayers. 3. And yet again…
Aquinas Thomas, On prayer and the contemplative life
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But I add, for the sake of those who do not understand this, that in the Scriptures the word heaven often signifies what we call the horizon. Hence the whole firmament is called the heaven of heavens, in which are gathered the heaven of all human beings; that is, the horizon. In this respect we have a different heaven here in Germany than the people in France or Italy. But this name helps nothing at all in the…
Martin Luther, Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1
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Heaven

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Heaven

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition