I can say regarding the larger question, there is a theological belief that God is outside of time. If we read the supremacy of Christ passage in Colossians 1:16 - 17 -
“**16 **For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. **17 **He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
- you could even argue the universe itself (or multiverse, branes, etc.) is actively held together / continually granted existence by God himself. Time does not constrain him, so billions of years isnt perceived the same way we do. In fact, it would be quite impossible to say how God perceives it at all, as he is a being far above our existence and understanding.
What I can say, is for whatever reason, it appears God has fashioned the universe in such a way that all good things (worlds, gardens, relationships, and more) take time to be made.
What we might perceive to be a waste of time may have been to God simply “planting seeds”
I am open to correction, but I dont think scripture explicitly states this. I think this is what some people have extrapolated because of a largely absent discussion of it in scripture.
Will animals have a conscious existence after death with God until the resurrection? Personally I think so, but there is no scripture to say yes or no on that. Thats an opinion. However, there are hints that at least the ultimate resurrection and renewal of all things applies to animals as well, in the sense that scripture refers to “all things” in Revelation 21:5.
Jesus references the resurrection or regeneration a few times, and there is no reason to expect it means only humans. I believe that is something people today put on the concept, and probably relates a little more to Platonic thought of Spiritual existence being superior than what the text means which actually relates to a true physical and material renewal and the unification of “heaven” and “earth” (spiritual and material) together. But I am open to correction.
In that sense, we can see that ultimately all things (humans, animals, plants, worlds, galaxies, and more) will be given new life and renewed in the new age Jesus will bring into existence in the fullness of time.
The question is not why there is suffering, or if there is suffering, and there is no need for you to take such a patronizing tone. Why when the sixth day of creation did God call his creation very good following billions of years of suffering and death. (Evolution is a death based ideology.) And if death is as a result of human sin and rebellion as the Bible teaches, why was there death before Adam’s rebellion?
It really does highlight what a rats-nest of unanswered questions springs into being the moment modern people start trying to impose modern concerns and questions on an ancient text, doesn’t it! When we try to be attentive instead to the things the original writers and audience would have found relevant, a lot of the questions you have just evaporate - sorta like somebody agonizing over which city it was that the prodigal son fled to, and then being relieved to discover that such a question was never relevant to the important point of the whole narrative and has no bearing on it.
Ah,… you are right. I was reading those words to mean Why would God create the universe to look like it was billions of years old?
Sorry about that. Let’s try again…
Why would God create the universe to be billions of years old?
It is because God was creating the universe according to natural law, necessary for the kind of life which would be independent of His will – life which is the essence of free will. That kind of life, which is what all the evidence shows, is a process of self-organization. Why? It is all in the difference between mankind and the angels – children who grow and learn rather than servants simply made as they are. The angels were just too much like tools made for an end and thus little more than an extension of God Himself. But children are different, an end in themselves because they have a life all their own from their own choices.
An incredible braided rainbow delta of personal, subjective, theodical rhetoric. Where everyone knows the mind of God differently.
The ultimate beholders’ shares of the unbeholdable: the collective, competing, individual projection of emperor’s clothes on humble, naked, stark, unadorned, unadulterated, beautiful, awful, mysterious, ineffable, meaningless, unpurposed nature.
The word there, kosmos, can refer to all of creation but it can also refer to the human world, specifically the “civilized” (used loosely) portion. In context, it almost certainly means the second.
I like to point out that this is just an exposition of the philosophical meaning of “firstborn”. It’s a tight and deep piece of theology.
I like C.S. Lewis’ view on this: those animals which were important to and valued by humans will be there because they are entangled with our lives and thus in a sense are part of us.
Maybe because He has a different definition of “good” than the modern subjective emotional enlightenment one.
The atheists and agnostics who became Christians due to studying evolution when I was a university student would disagree vehemently – one reason they ended up Christians was not just that they saw a Designer behind evolution but also that it was “life-based”, ever churning out new and interesting forms with life determinedly surviving rather astounding events.
To me, this would result in all too many dogs and cats and a lack of ‘non-charismatic” animals (and sounds very human-centered as opposed to all creation centered). Maybe when I go for a hike I should stop to intentionally love the slugs and slime molds so they make it into heaven too
I love your allusion. I also like the image, especially in “The Last Battle.” I think he diverged from George Macdonald in that way, though–he mentioned fruit trees in Aslan’s country, with no wasps. I think Macdonald’s imagination was more non-specific –that anything that was good in itself, would last and be consecrated for eternity. It does make us wonder what God’s point of view is, rather than ours, doesn’t it.
I like the joke that a Hell for cats and a Heaven for dogs can easily be imagined in the same place.
And, another point of view from my own son (who seems to attract mosquitoes more than almost anyone else I know),
I *believe* to the best of my memory N.T. Wright holds a similar view to Macdonald - I think he talks about it in his book Surprised by Scripture, specifically the essay “Jesus is Coming, Plant a Tree!”
Although there probably are also other reasons, such as the universe needing to be a certain size to support life, I have taken the vast age and size of the universe to indicate that the universe wasn’t just created for us and also that we were meant to fill the universe somehow. Who knows, perhaps part of the new creation will involve us filling the rest of the universe with life and our own creations in partnership with God.
The Sun, Earth & Moon system is all that’s needed to support life on Earth as it. Created by magic. Otherwise you need a galaxy, made by magic, to form stars naturally. Our universe will be average, as most things are. Within a standard deviation.
How are you going to get the Sun, Earth & Moon system? My view is the God works through nature not against nature. Nature is God’s Technology. In essence, to get planets, you need stars and to get stars you need hydrogen and helium. Galaxies and a large and ancient universe are a byproduct of the process needed to get stars and planets. Also, why only have what you need? What if God just likes making galaxies? Galaxies are pretty after all.
Not very accurate, though typical of many claims about geology. Hutton favored the idea of “no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end” because of his deistic views. Contrary to Hutton and popular “Enlightenment” deism, most earth processes are not cyclical. Nor is the statement accurate with regard to earth’s immense age; although Hutton did not yet have the data to disprove his deistic speculations, within a few decades it was clear that there was a beginning and thus rather plausibly an end. The layers at Siccar point are tilted and horizontal, not vertical and horizontal - that particular detail is likely to be an AI lie rather than the widely published historical lies about Hutton’s beliefs and significance. Hutton was merely up to date in holding to an ancient earth and the importance of gradual processes. Catastrophism in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s did NOT hold to a single catastrophic event accounting for most of geology, but rather held that the generally ordinary rate of change was occasionally punctuated by major catastrophic events.
More modern geological work has shown that the catastrophists and the uniformitarians of the late 1700’s to early 1800’s both were overly resistant to the potential of the other view.
