316. A new universe
316. A NEW UNIVERSE
Where will we live forever after death? Won’t we miss the earth?
It is written (Rev 21:1): I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . .
Since the world was in a way made for man’s sake, it follows that when man shall be glorified in the body, the other bodies of the world shall also be changed to a better state, so that it is rendered a more fitting place for him. . .
Now although properly speaking a corporeal thing cannot be the subject of the stain of sin, nevertheless on account of sin corporeal things contract a certain unfittingness for being appointed to spiritual purposes, and for this reason we find that places where crimes have been committed are reckoned unfit for the performance of sacred actions therein unless they be cleansed beforehand. Accordingly that part of the world which is given to our use contracts from men’s sins a certain unfitness for being glorified, wherefore in this respect it needs to be cleansed (S73,1).
This (cleansing) fire of the final conflagration . . . will act as the instrument of divine justice. . . . [I]t will act differently on different people. For the wicked will be tortured by the action of the fire, whereas the good, in whom there will be nothing to cleanse, will feel no pain at all from the fire, as neither did the children in the fiery furnace (Dan 3), although their bodies will not be kept whole, as were the bodies of the children. It is said (Lk 3:17): Whose fan is in His hand, and He will purge His floor and will gather the wheat, i.e., the elect, into His barn, but the chaff, i.e., the wicked, He will burn with unquenchable fire. Hence it will be thus with the cleansing of the world, so that all that is ugly and vile will be cast with the wicked into hell, and all that is beautiful and noble will be taken up above for the glory of the elect (S74,8).
We think a lot about this earth, i.e., this universe, which Scripture calls “the heavens (outer space) and the earth”; and we think a little about Heaven; but we hardly ever think about the new earth, the new universe, the “new heavens and new earth” that Scripture promises.
Our natural expectations for life after death are either nothingness, or Heaven, or Purgatory, or Hell, but hardly ever a new earth. But God did not make a mistake in creating a material world and a material body for us. (Yes, “for us”: He made the whole universe for us. Its point is not gases and galaxies but saints. That is its product. It is a large womb, and we are its children. God is our Father but it is our mother.) He will perfect His design for us humans. For “grace perfects nature” rather than destroying it or suppressing it. As C. S. Lewis says, “the old field of space, time, matter, and the senses, is to be weeded and dug up for a new crop. We may be tired of that old field; God is not” (Miracles).
The main “improvement” will be the eradication of sin and its effects on the world. Genesis 3 mentions some of these effects: death, pain in childbirth, pain in work, conflict between men and women, and spiritual war between good and evil, between “the seed of the woman” (Christ) and the seed of the serpent (Antichrist). The material world God created is declared, by God Himself, to be good, not evil; matter is not the cause of sin, but it does carry the effects of sin. It is a battlefield, and it needs to be cleansed, like the Canaanite Satan—worshippers’ valley of Gehenna (2 Kings 23:10, Jer 7:31, Mt 10:28).
St. Thomas opines that the very same purifying fire that cleanses the good will torture the wicked. The fire is divine justice, divine righteousness and truth, which the good love and the evil hate, and which therefore simultaneously blisses the blessed and curses the cursed.
If there is a resurrection body, there must be a resurrected world for that body to inhabit. And just as the new body will be better (more “fitting”), so will the new world. And both will be better in ways we cannot now know or even imagine, just as an unborn baby cannot know or imagine either the better, bigger body or the better, bigger world that awaits him outside the womb. (See 1 Cor 2:9.)