Being interested in the topic of 'heaven' does not necessarily require you to join a particular religious community.
Depending on whether you belong to a secular group or a religious community, your impression of heaven can vary greatly.
When people hear the word “heaven,” they often think of a certain image.
It is sometimes thought of as the physical sky, sometimes as life after death, and sometimes as a state of bliss.
And in this extension, some say they believe in heaven, while others say they don't.
The purpose of this book is not to impose one idea on the terms heaven and heaven.
What the word heaven sounds like cannot be regulated by law.
Moreover, the purpose of this book is not to examine various traditions and find an exquisite intersection.
Even if various logics of belief or disbelief are widespread, it doesn't really matter.
Any community, any individual belonging to a particular community, is free to ask questions about heaven.
Rather, the interest of this book is to consider what would happen if anyone heard about heaven, about heaven, in a certain way.
Here we will take a closer look at how the Christian church refers to heaven and heaven in relation to the good news, the gospel.
Additionally, this book will examine what happens when we read Bible passages related to heaven or heaven within the context of the gospel.
When this special context is taken into account, the Christian story of heaven and heaven becomes different.
Participating in the Christian faith community is participating in the story of heaven.

---p.17~18

Modern studies on the evolution of the imagery of heaven primarily focus on the concepts and language associated with heaven.
Representative examples include “upperworld,” “what happens after death,” “state of being,” and “fulfillment of human longing.”
These research papers contain a wide range of knowledge and information, providing detailed explanations of narratives and myths that reflect the spirit and mindset of the times.
But we do not examine our thoughts about heaven according to the gospel message and evaluate what enables us to be faithful to the voice from heaven.
Verifying this is the task of dogmatics.

---p.24~25

A century ago, the question of how to accept the gospel testimony that the kingdom of God from heaven had come near to this earth heated up Protestant theological circles.
Most scholars agree that the Kingdom of God is central to Jesus' teachings.
However, the concept of the kingdom or reign of God, the idea that the kingdom of God comes from heaven now and overturns the “real world” on this earth, was not considered by biblical scholars to be a reliable message, but rather a characteristic of the early Christian proclamation of the gospel.
Because the world did not end as the Christians at the time had expected.
Theologians who accepted this diagnosis felt that the testimony that the kingdom of God comes from heaven was meaningless and that they had to find a suitable way out.
First, biblical scholars believed that the outer shell of the worldview that clung tightly to this testimony had to be stripped away.
I believed that only in this way could the kernel contained within this shell, the truth concerning the inner self and spiritual aspects of humanity, be brought to life in a way that is relevant to today.
The message about heaven, or heaven, was interpreted to mean God coming into the soul of an individual, and thus God ruling over the minds and wills of believers.
Now, heaven, the kingdom of God, was understood in terms of the “purely internal” moral autonomy advocated by the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the news of heaven being realized on earth was understood to mean that a society was being realized as an “ethical community.”
In this way, the category of interpretation of the ‘nearness’ of the kingdom of heaven shifted from cosmology to anthropology.

---p.77~78

The gospel's description of heaven and heaven is diverse and, as I said at the beginning of this book, does not allow for just one perspective.
Certainly, the Bible also contains passages referring to heaven as a heavenly, afterlife, or state of bliss, and these passages bear similarities to ancient traditions and are deeply rooted in our consciousness.
Perhaps that is why, throughout history, mankind has generally imagined heaven in that way.
However, in the testimony of the Gospels, this award does not have any special status.
Instead, the Gospel proclaims that the situation has completely changed because the message of life has come down from heaven and is near us.
The heaven depicted here does not begin or end with death.
The gospel proclaims that heaven, the kingdom of heaven, has already come near.
The Gospel expresses this as God's path from heaven to earth, and also as heaven being God's creation under his rule and being adjusted as a new creation.
In addition, heaven appears in the form of an existing community or political body and is presented as a kingdom where God's rule is carried out.
In other words, the kingdom of heaven that the Gospel speaks of is Basileia, that is, His kingdom, and it is the context and framework that tells us how to listen to all the stories about kingdom of heaven described in various places in the Bible.
According to this message, the 'nearness' of heaven is presented metaphorically and realized apocalyptically.
In other words, heaven, which has come to us and has already nested near us, reveals itself hidden in the form of a metaphor.
Therefore, heaven is a completely different reality that cannot be captured by anything in the existing order that is already in place or about to disappear, but is 'revealed' only through what is already happening and what is yet to come.

---p.262

Vice considered the attitude of modern people, who do not at all expect the coming of heaven, to be a crucial difference from that of the original audience who first heard Jesus' words, the "primitive Christians" (to borrow his term).
However, characters in the Gospel who question Jesus' qualifications (John 6:42) challenge this assumption of Weiss.
Even if we adjust the earplugs of modernity, as Vice said, “our lives...
If we build on the teaching of 'live as if we were to die soon,' we cannot be certain that we will come even a little closer to Jesus' attitude.26 Things that are disappearing from the earth cannot approach what is coming down from heaven to the earth, and this is what both those who oppose Jesus and those who sympathize with Vice miss.
Their commonality is summarized in the words Jesus spoke during his final entry into Jerusalem.
This is because you did not know the time when God came to you.
(Luke 19:44)

---p.294