The Empyrean Heaven

Abstract

To the five principle skies discussed in the preceding Chapter 31 of this Book, the theologians we have named usually add, and as it were, superimpose, a Sixth and outermost Heaven, the Empyrean, which they say is the home of the Blessed, the dwelling place of the angels, and the majestic throne of God. It is suffused with great light which they believe resembles the light of fire, but without its heat, and for this reason, they call it Empyrean, or fiery. They declare that it shines with no star, is not mobile, square, round, corporeal, nor has it been created, but is a certain celestial something. Furthermore Jacques du Bois, a Leyden theologian, in his Dialogus Theologicus Astronomicus, proposition 39, adds that “He who denies the existence of an Empyrean Heaven above the heavens that we see, does not put credence in the Holy Scriptures nor has he learned the fundamentals of Christianity.”