Heaven in the context of "Church (building)"

⭐ In the context of church buildings, architectural features like towers and domes are often designed to emphasize what theological concept?

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⭐ Core Definition: Heaven

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.

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👉 Heaven in the context of Church (building)

A church, church building, or chapel is a building used for Christian worship services and Christian activities. The earliest identified Christian church is a house church founded between 233 AD and 256 AD. The word church also describes a body or assembly of Christian believers, while "the Church" refers to the worldwide Christian religious community.

In traditional Christian architecture, the plan view of a church often forms a Christian cross. The center aisle and seating create the vertical beam, while the bema and altar form the horizontal arms. Towers or domes rise above the heaven-facing roof line to encourage contemplation of the divine. Modern churches employ varied architectural styles, and many buildings originally designed for other purposes have been converted to churches. From the 11th to the 14th centuries, Western Europe experienced a wave of church construction.

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Heaven in the context of Neptune (mythology)

Neptune (Latin: Neptūnus [nɛpˈtuːnʊs]) is the god of freshwater and the sea in the Roman religion. He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. In the Greek-inspired tradition, he is a brother of Jupiter and Pluto, with whom he presides over the realms of heaven, the earthly world (including the underworld), and the seas. Salacia is his wife.

Depictions of Neptune in Roman mosaics, especially those in North Africa, were influenced by Hellenistic conventions. He was likely associated with freshwater springs before the sea; his festival, Neptunalia, took place on July 23, during the peak of summer when water was scarcest. Like Poseidon, he was also worshipped by the Romans as a god of horses, Neptunus equestris, who was also a patron of horse-racing.

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Heaven in the context of Cosmography

The term cosmography has two distinct meanings: traditionally it has been the protoscience of mapping the general features of the cosmos, heaven and Earth; more recently, it has been used to describe the ongoing effort to determine the large-scale features of the observable universe.

Premodern views of cosmography can be traditionally divided into those following the tradition of ancient near eastern cosmology, dominant in the Ancient Near East and in early Greece.

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Heaven in the context of Last Judgment

The Last Judgment is a concept originating in Zoroastrianism and found across the Abrahamic religions.

Christianity considers the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to entail the final judgment by God of all people who have ever lived, resulting in the salvation of a few and the damnation of many. Some Christian denominations believe most people will be saved, some believe most people will be damned, and some believe the number of the saved and of the damned is unknown. The concept of the Last Judgment is found in all the canonical gospels, particularly in the Gospel of Matthew. The Christian tradition is also followed by Islam, where it is mentioned in many chapters of the Quran, according to some interpretations.

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Heaven in the context of Entering heaven alive

Entering heaven alive (called by various religions "ascension", "assumption", or "translation") is a belief held in various religions. Since death is the normal end to an individual's life on Earth and the beginning of the afterlife, entering heaven without dying first is considered exceptional and usually a sign of a deity's special recognition of the individual's piety.

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Heaven in the context of Heaven in Christianity

In Christianity, heaven is traditionally the location of the throne of God and the angels of God, and in most forms of Christianity it is the abode of the righteous dead in the afterlife. In some Christian denominations it is understood as a temporary stage before the resurrection of the dead and the saints' return to the New Earth.

In the Book of Acts, the resurrected Jesus ascends to heaven where, as the Nicene Creed states, he now sits at the right hand of God and will return to earth in the Second Coming. According to Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox teaching, Mary, mother of Jesus, is said to have been assumed into heaven without the corruption of her earthly body; she is venerated as Queen of Heaven.

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Heaven in the context of Tian

Tian () is one of the oldest Chinese terms for heaven and is a central concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and cosmology. During the Shang dynasty (17th–11th century BCE), the highest deity was referred to as Shangdi or Di (, "Lord"). In the subsequent Zhou dynasty, Tian became synonymous with this figure. Prior to the 20th century, the worship of Tian was considered an orthodox cosmic principle in China.

In Taoism and Confucianism, Tian (the celestial aspect of the cosmos, often translated as "Heaven") is described in relation to its complementary aspect, (, often translated as "Earth"). Together, they were understood to represent the two poles of the Three Realms of reality, with Humanity (, rén) occupying the middle realm, and the lower world inhabited by demons (, ) and spirits or "ghosts" (, guǐ).

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Heaven in the context of Xian (Taoism)

A xian (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: xiān; Wade–Giles: hsien) is any manner of immortal or mythical being within the Taoist pantheon or Chinese folklore. Xian has often been translated into English as "immortal" or "wizard".

Traditionally, xian refers to entities who have attained immortality and supernatural or magical abilities later in life, with a connection to the heavenly realms inaccessible to mortals. This is often achieved through spiritual self-cultivation, alchemy, or worship by others. This is different from the gods (deities) in Chinese mythology and Taoism.

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Heaven in the context of Hell

In religion and folklore, hell is a location or state in the afterlife in which souls are subjected to punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history sometimes depict hells as eternal, such as in some versions of Christianity and Islam, whereas religions with reincarnation usually depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations, as is the case in the Indian religions. Religions typically locate hell in another dimension or under Earth's surface. Other afterlife destinations include heaven, paradise, purgatory, limbo, and the underworld.

Other religions, which do not conceive of the afterlife as a place of punishment or reward, merely describe an abode of the dead, the grave, a neutral place that is located under the surface of Earth (for example, see Kur, Hades, and Sheol). Such places are sometimes equated with the English word hell, though a more correct translation would be "underworld" or "world of the dead". The ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, and Finnic religions include entrances to the underworld from the land of the living.

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