What is the 'third heaven' in 2 Cor 12:2

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Someone today asked me about the third heaven. What is Paul talking about here?

2 Corinthians 12:2
I know someone in Christ who, fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows), was caught up to the third heaven.

Thanks!
 
Does anyone really know?

some say caught up in the "Spirit’

some say its purgatory.

I say…we won’t know till we get there, but I am sure someone may know the correct theological answer…and I too will look forward to seeing it.
 
The first heaven is the sky where birds live and weather and clouds form; the 2nd heaven is the astronomical sky, the realm of the sun and moon and stars.

The third heaven is the abode of life everlasting, and we normally cannot go there as living human bodies. Therefore, although SP had his physical senses, he was not at all sure whether or not he was “in his body” during this experience.

ICXC NIKA
 
The “first heaven” is the atmosphere, the heaven that birds fly in. The “second heaven” is that beyond the atmosphere, which stars float in. The “third heaven” is that beyond time and space, the abode of God.
 
2 Cor.12:4 identifies the third heaven as “Paradise”. The Greek word for paradise is the word that is translated for the **‘garden’ **of Eden in the Septuagint (Greek version of the Hebrew OT).

Ireneaus writes in his Against Heresies that Enoch and Elijah were abiding in paradise. He further writes that most departed souls abide in Sheol, or Hades (possible referring to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man) awaiting the resurrection.
 
From my reading of Jewish sources, the rabbis believed there were seven heavens, or more descriptively, layers of heaven. The basis for this is that there are seven different words for heaven in the OT. God resides in the seventh heaven They made up the rest of the story.

God demonstrates two conflicting images in the OT. The first view is that God is so close that he can hear a prayer said in the slightest whisper. The second view is that God is so holy as to be all but inaccessibly remote. each of those “layers” of heaven was described as being the distance that a person would travel in 500 years, which is just a way of saying a long, long distance. Nobody knows how far you can travel in 500 years.

Not long ago I used Strong’s Exhaustive concordance to look up those seven words for heaven. As others stated in previous posts, some of the words relate to the atmosphere of Earth. Other words had multiple meanings, one of which was rendered “heaven” in the King James Version of the Bible.

When you use Strong’s concordance, you first look up the word heaven. There is a short entry for EACH use of the word “heaven” and then there is an associated number. The number corresponds to a word in the Hebrew dictionary, in a separate section of Strong’s. Yes, there are seven words.

the rabbis have EXTENSIVELY studied the language of their Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and came to the conclusion that there must be a significant reason that there are so many different words for the same thing – even if they can’t figure out what that reason is.
 
Those legends of the Jews were created after the time of Christ, and included in the Talmud, from what I know - the Jews at the time of Christ would have had no conception like that. Part of the legendarium of Rabbinical Judaism (a religion founded after the fall of Jerusalem) which has for Scripture the Talmud. Many of those statements, such as the “500 years”, strike me as something very similar to the Islamic hadith, the Scripture of modern Sunnis; Muhammad probably got the style and much of the substance from the Jews he lived with for ten years, in a time (600-632 AD) shortly after the writing of the Talmud had just been completed (450-600AD).
 
1st heaven: The earth’s atmosphere (the sky where the clouds are, where the birds and airplanes fly).

2nd heaven: The outer space (the entire universe, where the stars, planets, and other celestial bodies are).

3rd heaven: Where God is. The Kingdom of Heaven.
 
“No-one knows how far one could travel in five hundred years”.

Actually, we could estimate pretty well. Presumably the Rabbis were thinking about human walking speed. The rest is just multiplication.

When human beings have walked great distances, such as cross-continentally, they have taken longer because of the need to work to support themselves. Around the year 1960, Norman Vincent Peale wrote about a young man who worked his way across Africa, 3,000 miles in 2 years. That would have been 750,000 miles in 500 years.

It doesn’t matter, because our feet don’t work in the thin air, and our bodies will not endure 500 years of time without going nonbreathing. To natural human life, Heaven is inaccessible.

Fortunately, if we know our LORD, we will just roll back our eyes, fall asleep, and HE will breathe our eyes open for us in Heaven 🙂

ICXC NIKA
 
I think:

1st heaven is the sky
2nd heaven is the universe
3rd heaven is presence with God and having the Beatific Vision
 
fermat said:
Someone today asked me about the third heaven. What is Paul talking about here?

2 Corinthians 12:2
I know someone in Christ who, fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows), was caught up to the third heaven.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Paul was speaking in terms using the cosmology of his time. He does this in other passages as well. For instance when he talks about evil spirits in the heavenly places. Their system of cosmology is very different then ours today. They did not have a conception of stars orbited by planets like we do. Paul is writing to his readers assuming that they share a similar cosmology. When we read it we have a difficult time because our cosmology is different.

To understand these differences in cosmology watch this video from a Jesuit priest and scientist giving a lecture at the University of Arizona.

youtube.com/watch?v=-3GcdqKab9Y&sns=em
 
Whether Paul was speaking of the cosmology of his understanding and of his time is conjecture.

When Paul speaks about wrestling against principalities and powers in heavenly places we are reminded of Daniel’s three week fast. Daniel later finds out that the angel over Persia was wrestling with the angel over Israel. Eventually, the angel of Israel succeeds, and thus Emperor Cyrus of the Persia-Median empire allows the Jews of Babylon to return to Israel after seventy years of captivity in Babylon.

It is recorded in the writings of scripture, Jewish. and early church father’s that there are ‘angelic’ powers over each nation. Apparently, seventy nations according the number of the children of Jacob, and of the descendents of Noah.

Paul speaks about Satan being the 'Prince of the power of the air"(first heaven).

Origen implies that our Lord Jesus Christ will displace Satan, when the saints who are resurrected will be caught up together with the Lord in the clouds to meet the Lord in the** air** and so shall we ever be with the Lord. He surmises that this might be the location of Paradise at this time.

There were various oral traditions of strange appearances in the sky over Jerusalem before it fell to the Romans in 70 AD. The prophet Ezekiel tells us that the ‘glory of the Lord’ left the temple, then was over the city of Jerusalem and then departed before the invasion of King Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC.

Atmospheric wrestlings of fallen angelic beings are what the Apostle Paul was familiar with from his own training under Gamaliel and of the Spirit of our Lord.
 
mercytruth said:
Whether Paul was speaking of the cosmology of his understanding and of his time is conjecture.
Click to expand...
Its more an established fact.

“The Third Heaven is a spiritual division of the universe within Judeo-Christian cosmology. In some traditions it is considered the abode of God,[1] and in others a lower level of Paradise, commonly one of seven.[2]”
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Heaven

“the third heaven: Reflects a common Jewish tradition that the Lord stacked the “heavens” three levels high: (1)the first heaven is the atmosphere of birds and clouds;(2) above that stands the realm of the sun and stars; (3) and beyond that lies the dwelling of God. Paul’s journey took him to the highest heaven, “Paradise” (12:3), where he caught a glimpse of eternal glory.”
  • Ignatius Catholic Study Bible
You have to remember that people in those days did not separate their cosmology from their religion. People’s cosmology is so engrained in them because it is what they grew up in and is part of their culture. It is part of their assumption about the world around them. Religions that survive changes in cosmology grow and learn and keep what is necessary. No longer do we believe the earth is flat and covered with a dome like the Ancient Jews. Even in the 4th century St. Augustine writes to Christians saying that they should not look ignorant in matters of science. He tells them that Genesis should not be taken literally. Even in his day the cosmology had changed and the science of his time had overturned the idea of a flat earth with a dome that genesis portrays.
 
fisherman carl,

I will not argue with you, I am sure you have some very valid understanding.
I understand what you are saying with the ‘stacking’ concept.

According to the scripture in question, the third heaven is ‘Paradise’. (2 Cor.12:4)

According to the holy scriptures, Satan is the prince of the power of the air. This is the same region where our Lord Jesus Christ will gather his saints when he returns in the clouds, in the air.

For myself, scripture and the teachings of the early church fathers take precedence over the scholarly explanations of a very well educated Jesuit, who no doubt has much learning.
The kingdom of heaven coming to this earth is what I hope and pray for. If this contradicts the cosmology of science, I have to choose holy scripture and holy tradition over science.
 
mercytruth said:
fisherman carl,

I will not argue with you, I am sure you have some very valid understanding.
I understand what you are saying with the ‘stacking’ concept.

According to the scripture in question, the third heaven is ‘Paradise’. (2 Cor.12:4)

According to the holy scriptures, Satan is the prince of the power of the air. This is the same region where our Lord Jesus Christ will gather his saints when he returns in the clouds, in the air.

For myself, scripture and the teachings of the early church fathers take precedence over the scholarly explanations of a very well educated Jesuit, who no doubt has much learning.
The kingdom of heaven coming to this earth is what I hope and pray for. If this contradicts the cosmology of science, I have to choose holy scripture and holy tradition over science.
Click to expand...
Keep in mind the early Church Fathers have a different cosmology from even those in the middle ages. And middle age cosmology is different from our modern understanding involving physical laws. I don’t see a contradiction with scriptures rather a deepening of understanding is possible knowing what it is they meant when they said the “Third Heaven”. Like you said it is Paradise.

Our cosmologies always fall short of reality. Paul speaks in the understanding of his Jewish Tradition. Just like if you had an ‘out of body experience’ and went to a heavenly place and then came back, you probably wouldn’t say you went to the third heaven. You would assume modern language by saying you went to heaven. I think it is imporant to understand Jewish idioms and ways of speaking so we can relate better.
 
Well, I do not think the cosmology of scriptures and the early church fathers is that much different. The ‘air’ is the atmospheric region of the earth and could be named the first heaven. Our solar system and beyond could be called the second heaven. The unseen location of our Creator and his angels could be called the third heaven.

The scriptures and early church fathers do not talk about seven heavens.
 
I don’t think Paul is using a Jewish idiom at all, I think he is using a Platonic Greek idiom. Remember he is writing to Greeks (Corinth) in the Greco/Roman culture in response to a letter that has been sent to him accusing him of lacking credentials because he is not a forceful speaker.

Thus Paul is using language, which does happen to coincide in certain ways with the Jewish idiom, but that is never the less Greek as the Jewish understanding of Heaven would have been, most likely, unknown to the gentiles at the Church in Corinth. And given how Paul was treated by the Jews in the Greek Synagogues I think its a pretty safe bet that the majority, if not the vast majority, of member of that Church would have been gentiles and thus ignorant of the Jewish understanding of Heaven.

However Plato did write about the third heaven and Augustine speaks about that in the City of God when he is writing on these very verses as well as the wrestling with the powers of the air.

God Bless
 
Bogeydogg,

Can you cite where in Plato that he speaks about the third heaven, and where in St. Augustine that he speaks on these verses and also with wrestling with powers of the air?

Thanks for any response.
 
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