I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. (2 Cor 12:2 NRSV)
This passage is often cited in favour of the Latter-day Saint belief in multiple heavens, something commensurate with D&C 76 and 131. However, a rather lame response has been repeated by Evangelical critics of Latter-day Saint theology to the effect that the "Mormon" reading of this passage is eisegesis, as the sky was the "first heaven," the stars/universe to be the "second heaven," and where God dwells is the "third heaven," so there is only one "proper" heaven.
There is no evidence, however, that Paul was referring to the first and second heaven as the sky and stars. Not one place in the Bible does it designate the sky as the "first heaven" and the stars as the "second heaven." If the Lord and the apostles did not designate these as such, why should the interpretation offered by Ron Rhodes and other Evangelicals be accepted?
Further, why did Paul not just say "caught up into heaven"? Why put the word "third" (τριτος) there? It would have been easier and would not result in any confusion? (So much for the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture!) There is no evidence that they would have.
Evangelical Protestant scholar, Paul Seely, wrote the following which refutes the “response” as offered by the likes of Ron Rhodes, arguing that the ancients (and Paul) did not differentiate between the stars/space and sky, as such was treated as being part of the same heaven:
The question, however, naturally arises in the modern mind, schooled as it is in the almost infinite nature of sky and space: Did scientifically naive peoples really believe in a solid sky, or were they just employing a mythological or poetic concept?.... The answer to these questions ... is that scientifically naive peoples thought of the solid sky as an integral part of their physical universe. And it is precisely because ancient peoples were scientifically naive that they did not distinguish between the appearance of the sky and their scientific concept of the sky. They had no reason to doubt what their eyes told them was true, namely that the stars above were fixed in a solid dome and the sky literally touched the earth at the horizon. So they equated appearance with reality and concluded that the sky must be a solid part of the universe just as much as the earth itself. (Paul H. Seely, “The Firmament and the Water Above Part I: The Meaning of raqia’ in Gen 1:6-8,” Westminster Theological Journal 53 (Fall 1991), p. 227 [available online here])
In reality, ancient Jews and Christians did hold to a belief in multiple heavens. As scholars such as Jean Daniélou have noted (The Theology of Jewish Christianity [1964], 174), Jewish Christians elaborated the three-heaven system into one of seven or more heavens, but in all cases, beings of various degrees of glory were thought to inhabit them, something we also find in the revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith.
New Testament scholar, Frank J. Matera, wrote:
The mention of the “third heaven” indicates that Paul like many of his contemporaries, thought of heaven as comprising multiple levels. But how many? Expressions such as “heaven and the heaven of heavens” (Deut 10:14) and “heaven and the highest heaven” (1 Kings 8:27; 2 Chr 2:6; 6:18) imply that there are at least two levels of heaven, a notion also found in 1 En. 71:5. Certain intertestamental writings, however, reckon with even more levels. The Testament of Levi (chap. 3), for example, refers to three heavens: the first contains the spirits that will carry out God’s judgement; the second holds the armies of God that are prepared for the day of judgment; and in the third the great glory of God dwells in the Holy of Holies. In Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah (7-11), however, Isaiah journeys through seven heavens, and when he arrives at the seventh, he sees a wonderful light, innumerable angels, and all the righteous. Finally, the J Recension of 2 Enoch speaks of ten heavens, identifying the tenth as the place where Enoch views the face of the Lord that is not to be talked about since it was so marvelous (chap. 22). Since Paul is intent upon showing the surpassing character of his own ecstatic experience, and since he appears to identify the third heaven with paradise, he likely thinks of the third heaven as the highest heaven, the place where God dwells. Unlike the writers of the intertestamental books, however, he steadfastly refuses to describe the different levels of heaven or his journeys through them. (Frank J. Matera, II Corinthians [New Testament Library; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002], 280)
This is another instance where Latter-day Saints are on the side of sound biblical exegesis; Latter-day Saint theology and the revelations given to the Prophet Joseph are to be taken seriously, and should not be dismissed so naively as they are by many misinformed critics.
For a scholarly treatment of 2 Cor 12:1-10, see Paula R. Gooder, Only the Third Heaven? 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 and Heavenly Ascent (Library of New Testament Studies vol. 313: London, T&T Clarke, 2006).
