World Without End: Conceptions of Heaven in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Protestant England

This project recreates the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English Protestant understanding of heaven. It argues that both scholars of Reformation England as well as scholars of the afterlife in general have overlooked the depth and richness of post-Reformation Protestant descriptions of what life would be like in heaven. In doing so, it argues not that heaven was a deeply polemical subject, but that it nevertheless remained an integral part of the experience of lived religion and was spoken of with a diversity of voices that spanned genres, decades, and even personal inclinations. In arguing for the importance of heaven, this project looks at official liturgy, pamphlets, catechisms, treatises, books of psalms, homilies, and commonplace books. It also looks specifically at the works and theologies of William Perkins, Thomas Becon, John Donne, John Bunyan, Jeremy Taylor, and Richard Baxter. Section one focuses on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century descriptions of what a blessed saint would experience once he arrived in heaven. Chapter one focuses on the environmental landscape of heaven and discusses the degree to which writers were both bound by and expanded beyond their Biblical sources. Chapter two focuses on the experience of the soul and emphasizes writer's own imaginative expressions of such experience. Chapter three looks at the separate journeys of the soul and the body to heaven and argues that heaven was a distinctly corporeal experience and was the culminating point of a very large-scale narrative. Chapter four discusses activity in heaven, highlighting especially the nature of social relations in heaven among the blessed and the varying opinions regarding the extent to which earthly affections persisted into the afterlife. Section two (chapter five) focuses on the role that the belief in heaven's existence had for the morality and behavior of living Protestants. It focuses on the role of heaven in providing comfort to the dying and their loved ones. It describes the place of heaven at the heart of justice and humanity's knowledge of God's power and love. It finally looks at the ways in which heaven provided a moral example and shaped Protestants' behavior on earth, even alongside a formal theology of justification by faith alone. Section three examines the nature of the relationship between heaven and earth and argues that heaven had a significant presence even in the temporal world. Chapter six argues that inherent in both nature in general and the nature of man was a fundamental divinity that implied distinct divine presence in this world. Chapter seven explains that this fundamental connection was nurtured and increased through institutions left by God on this earth--the scripture, the sacraments, prayer, the congregation. In this way, individuals were able to gain deeper access to heaven, even during their mortal lives, though the precise details of this process remained a deeply complex and personal position.