As it's you,
@RJM.
As my tutor asked at one residential. "Were there only two Persons in heaven when Jesus walked and talked with His disciples?"
Short answer: No.
The Trinity is One, the Three are, in that sense, indivisible – where One is, all Three are, etc., etc.
The person walking the earth is the human person Jesus, born of Mary. The Divine Person is, by virtue of His divine 'nature' – not bound by time, space, or any other dimension. It's as the Church declares, a hypostatic union.
So if the phone should ring in heaven, and (say) an archangel answers, and the voice on the other end of the line says, "Is Jesus there?" The answer is always and eternally 'yes' – it cannot be otherwise. In the same way when God spoke to Abraham or Moses or whoever, God was not absent from heaven whilst on an errand.
So when Jesus said, "today, you shall be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43) He says so because He is already there, even while He is also present in the person hanging from the cross, although not suffering, nor dying.
In my rather silly example, please note that Luke uses two distinct terms for 'heaven' and 'paradise' and the difference between the two sits in line with Jewish and Christian eschatalogical speculation.
Generally, paradise (from the Persian) is a garden – it's used three times in the Hebrew Scriptures to refer to such, but in post-exilic writings became associated with the state of those who sleep in the bosom of Abraham/Moses – it's a nicer part of Sheol where the just exist until the final resurrection.
Paradise is where 'God walks with us' – whereas heaven is where He dwells. So really, if you're in the presence of God, the eschatalogical postcode (ZIP code) is hardly important ... we could live in paradise now ... and perhaps some do, althougb its generally believed that no true sould can be at rest while others suffer ...
www.bereanbiblesociety.org
