“A new heaven and a new earth”: man is not saved from his body but in it; not saved from the material world but with it. Because man is microcosm and mediator of the creation, his own salvation involves also the reconciliation and transfiguration of the whole animate and inanimate creation around him—its deliverance “from the bondage of corruption” and entry “into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). In the “new earth” of the Age to come there is surely a place not only for man but for the animals: in and through man, they too will share in immortality, and so will rocks,
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I do hope for something like this.
