Thoughts on Cosmic Soteriology

The caption under the Rublev icon of the crucifixion, the permanent image to the right of my blog posts, expresses the cosmic import of the sacrificial death of Jesus.  According to St. Paul, "all things" (Col. 1:20) were reconciled through the blood of Jesus.  What does this mean?  One way of responding to this question would be to argue that this passage alludes to Gen. 3:16-19, which indicates that there was a rupture of the prelapsarian harmony that existed between human beings and the rest of creation.  This interpretation, however, fails to explain some of the problems that arise when considering some of the discoveries of modern science.

According to modern cosmology, the Big Bang occurred approximately 13.7 billion years ago.  It preexisted human beings by billions of years.  Since the universe was presumably as imperfect before human beings came onto the scene as it was after, how can the primary meaning of cosmic soteriology be that the relationship between human beings and the created order is healed?

Crab Nebula, CC Image courtesy of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on Flickr¹

Cosmic soteriology may be approached in at least two ways.  The first is to consider how the universe itself is saved and the second is to consider cosmic soteriology in light of the role of human beings.  In the first approach, the Christian faith says that the universe will be saved (whatever this entails) through the action of God as St. Paul writes in Colossians.  In the following passage from his letter to the Romans, Paul develops his cosmic soteriology further and explains what the universe will be saved from:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Rom. 8:20-25, RSV).

According to Paul, the universe is "subjected to futility" (8:20) and "will be set free from its bondage to decay" (8:21).  The scientific term that corresponds to what Paul is describing in this passage is entropy, i.e. the principle that left to itself, a system will tend towards a maximum state of disorder.  Paul links entropy with human existence in the present universe and insists that the eschatologies of human beings and of the universe are intertwined.  Both the universe and human beings were "subjected to futility" and both will obtain redemption, a redemption that occurs through the blood of Christ (Col. 1:20).

This passage resonates with the following prophecy from the book of Revelation: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away" (Rev. 21:1, RSV).  One can only speculate as to what this really means since it is beyond the understanding of human beings to know in any great detail what is to come (one has only to look to weathermen to see that this is true).  This is merely speculative, but I believe that it is a possibility that through God's action there will be a new stage of of the evolution of the universe that would allow for a quasi-physical human existence (i.e. in a glorified body) in a universe that shares a certain continuity with the old, just as our glorified bodies will share a certain continuity with our material bodies today.

Throughout the history of Christianity, human beings have been the primary focus of soteriology. Human beings are on the cutting edge of the evolution of the universe and are the crown of creation. Yet, human beings exist within the context of the universe - we cannot exist apart from the universe, regardless of our capabilities of abstraction.  Commenting on Romans 8, Adrienne von Speyr, the close friend of Hans Urs von Balthasar, expounds on the interconnectedness of human beings and the universe:

Even in the deepest solitude [man] cannot think of himself as being so exclusive as to have the promise of salvation for himself while perdition is threatening the created world.  Plants and animals belong to the sphere of his life, the wide earth, the intimacy of a home, the familiarity of a landscape.  He cannot separate himself from it even when he is a captive.  The world shares his destiny.  If he is imprisoned, so is the world.  When he, a captive, calls for liberation, he paints it in the images of the created world that has become inaccessible to him and is thus more than ever companion of his captivity and loneliness, thus accentuating his aloneness even more.  And as the whole of creation shares in the vanity, it also shares in the hope.  And hope means for creation in all its beauty and wildness, in its captivity, its dream of freedom, access to the Creator, to his presence and his love.  God showed the same love on the first day of creation that he showed on the Sabbath-day; he said: ‘It is very good’ to everything: the fishes and birds, the animals and man.²

A human being that is not in the universe is not a human being.  Similarly, the universe cannot be the universe as it is today without human beings.  The quote above suggests that human beings and the universe are saved together in one sweeping salvific motion of cosmic magnitude originating in the grace of Jesus Christ.  The salvation of human beings occurs in the context of the salvation of the cosmos, and human beings will be glorified together with the universe.

Von Balthasar has a similar view as von Speyr.  Celia Deane-Drummond comments on von Balthasar's vision of eschatology for creation: “While [von Balthasar] is somewhat hesitant in spelling out the eschatological future in any detail, he is clear that creation as a whole is the object of future glory while also sharing in a ‘radical dying and rising’.”³  In other words, according to von Balthasar, the universe will follow in the footsteps of Jesus' suffering, death and and resurrection.  This seems logically congruent with the Scriptures since it is through the cross that the world (cosmos in Greek) is saved:

[A]s Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him (John 3:14-17, RSV).

Although the details of what is to come are shrouded in mystery, the subject of the salvation and glorification of the universe and the participation of human beings in cosmic redemption provides ample material to contemplate and think about. 

---

       1. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (ASU).^↩

       2. Adrienne von Speyr, The Victory of Love: A Meditation on Romans 8, trans. Sister Lucia Wiedenhöver, O.C.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990), 66.^↩
 

       3. Celia Deane-Drummond, “The Breadth of Glory: A Trinitarian Eschatology for the Earth through Critical Engagement with Hans Urs von Balthasar,”  International Journal of Systematic Theology 12 no. 1 (January 2010): 54-55.^↩