A New Earth (or Why Some Dogs Go To Heaven)
“Behold, I make all things new”
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” ~ Revelations 21:1
We believe by faith that at the end of time there will be a new heaven and a new earth in which the blessed live forever in their resurrected bodies. But what does it mean for there to be a “new” earth, and of what will it consist? St. Thomas asserts that the world will be renewed but it will not be populated by those created natures, such as plants and animals, which are unnecessary for man’s ultimate happiness. And yet, Christ makes “all things new.” The entire created order must be caught up in the renewal of the world. Because the teleology of physical creatures is bound up with the teleology of man, those creatures must exist in the new earth because the fulfilment of their respective ends rest in the fulfilment of man’s own.
According to Aquinas, the new earth will consist of a renewed material world of some kind. His argument flows from man’s essentially composite nature. In the beatific vision, man will see the essence of God directly. Our physical senses, however, are unable to participate in this vision of the Divine Essence. Thus, the material world must be made new such that man “will see the Godhead in Its corporeal effects, wherein manifest proofs of the Divine majesty will appear.”1 Moreover, because “man loves the whole world naturally and consequently desires its good…the universe must also be made better” so that man’s desire will be satisfied.2
This new earth, Aquinas continues, will not include plants and animals. He argues that all corporeal things have been made for man’s sake. They provide him with sustenance and help “him to know God, inasmuch as man sees the invisible things of God by the things that are made.”3 Man, however, will have no need for material sustenance in his resurrected body and will see the Divine Essence directly. Thus, those material creatures which are not fitting to man’s renewal will not be needed for man’s happiness. Moreover, only those material natures which are not susceptible to corruption are fitting to man’s renewal. Our resurrected bodies and the stars and planets are not susceptible to corruption; plants and animals are. They are born and they die. Thus, the renewed material world for Aquinas will consist of our resurrected bodies and the stars and planets but not the oak tree and the hound.
Aquinas’ position on plants and animals seems contrary to his reason for the renewal of the world. As Aquinas notes, just as the material world was made for man, so “the renewal of the world will be for man’s sake.”4 Therefore, I will first look at why man needs a renewed physical world for his complete happiness and then turn to why that renewed world must consist of all material natures.
For Aquinas our ultimate happiness must rest in the intellect for that is the most noble part of our nature.5 Thus, the beatific vision consists of our intellect seeing directly the Divine Essence. The intellect, however, is a purely immaterial aspect of our nature. Our bodies are completely irrelevant to our intellect’s vision of the Divine Essence. If, however, this is our true end, that which fulfills our being and provides us with complete happiness, why then the resurrection of the body?
Aquinas argues that there will be a resurrection of the body because the being which is saved by Christ is the human person.6 The man who participates in the beatific vision is not a separate intellect but a subsisting human person. Man is not a form controlling or steering a physical body but is precisely the composite of matter and form: “The soul cannot have the final perfection of the human species, so long as it is separated from the body.”7 Because heaven is our final happiness, and since we cannot attain that happiness if left separated from our bodies, there must be a resurrection of the body. The state of blessedness must encompass our compositeness for it is only in the composite that the subsistent individual exists and has its existence.
Because our physical eyes will not be able to see the Divine Essence along with our intellect, they must do so through His created likenesses. Thus, the whole cosmos must be renewed in such a way that “proofs” of God are immediately apparent in His creatures such that the entirety of the human being can participate in seeing the Divine Essence. In fact, by seeing proofs of God immediately in the physicality of the created order, God’s glory is manifested all the more precisely because man is the only creature able to do so. No other created intellect can see how a creature is a likeness to God in that creature’s very physicality. “At that time, together with the human race, the universe itself, which is so closely related to man and which attains its destiny through man, will be perfectly re-established in Christ.”8
Why cannot man’s need to see God through His creatures be satisfied, as Aquinas holds, by our resurrected bodies and the planets alone? There are two reasons. First, each material creature manifests the Godhead in a unique way. All material creatures form a hierarchy ordered by Providence. That of the Divine Intellect which we can see in the willow tree is different from that which we see in the ant. Likewise, this ordered hierarchy as a whole speaks of its Creator. So, if man is to see every possible participation in Being through his physical eyes, all material natures which Being deemed proper to create must be renewed with man.
Second, each material nature cannot achieve its end until man reaches his state of blessedness where he can see clearly in them their Creator. God created the material order that His glory might be made manifest therein. All created natures are an analog of that from which they receive their being and thereby proclaim His goodness in their existence. This can only be fully realized in man because man is the only physical creature who possesses the means of seeing the Creator in His creatures.
Material natures can only attain their end at the end of time because the human intellect is hindered from seeing God clearly in His creation until man himself is perfected in Christ. Thus, each particular material nature, both the oak tree and the hound, can only fulfill that for which it was made when man attains the beatific vision. “We know that the whole creation has been groaning with labor pains together until now.”9 For “creation was subjected to futility” while man labored under sin, but in the new earth “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.”10 Only in the new earth can the material world fulfill that for which it was made, for only there will material creatures be renewed so that they may immediately manifest the glory of God and man, by seeing God directly, clearly see Him in His creatures.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II II, q. 91, a. 1.
Id.
Id.
Id. at II II, q. 91, a. 5.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II II, q. 91, a. 1.
Id. at II II, q. 75, a. 1.
Id. at II II, q. 75, a. 2.
Lumen Gentium 48.
Romans 8:22.
Romans 8:20-21.
You have guts to combat Aquinas, Dario! Thanks for sharing. Would it be proper to conceive the new earth as a restoration of the garden of Eden or will it be even more glorious?