• What is the New Creation?

Recently I reread C. S. Lewis's 1947 book, Miracles. Near the end are two chapters I did not remember reading before:

• 15: Miracles of the Old Creation
• 16: Miracles of the New Creation

What does he mean? What is the New versus Old creation? What do these terms mean in the Bible?

Old Creation

Genesis, the first book of the Bible, declares:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

On the sixth day God created mankind, Adam and Eve. He declared the creation very good, as in perfect. That state of perfection did not last. Adam and Eve wanted to be like God. They were tempted to disbelieve God and then to disobey Him. As a result they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.

The modern scientific creation account aligns with the Biblical account in many ways (see my post at this link.) ^<1> It agrees the material universe was created out of absolutely no thing. It leaves God out of the story, but gives no reason or means for the creation of the universe.

Either way, that is what we call the Old Creation. It will not endure forever. The Bible declares the wonders of God's creation in many places, but it also predicts its end:

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats; but my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended.

Isaiah 51:6 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

Modern science agrees with this prediction in the Bible, written around 700 BC. The Old Creation is running down. Order decays into disorder and cannot be reversed. The Earth and the Heavens are wearing out like an old garment.

Entropy is the scientific measure of disorder. High entropy means high disorder. According to modern physics, the entropy of the universe is increasing ever since the Big Bang. Eventually entropy (disorder) will be so high there will be no stars. The universe will be dark and cold everywhere.

This is also true for each of us personally:

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Genesis 3:19 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

We each die. The whole universe wears out. Science stops there. But Isaiah does not.

New Creation

Isaiah ends the declaration with, my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended. Isaiah is quoting what he heard from God. It is a promise of the New Creation. Jesus repeats the promise to his disciples, and by extension to us. Jesus describes the New Creation as a definite place:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

John 14:1-3 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

I've shown two places where the Bible promises a New Creation. But what is it like? Is it anything like the Old Creation we live in now? What does New versus Old mean?

Taking the last question first, God created time when He created the material universe. ^<2> What happened before I was born? That is a sensible question. I can listen to people older than myself, and read history books, to satisfy my curiosity. What happened before the universe was born? That question is not sensible. "Before" the universe was born there was nothing. Nothing was happening because there were "no things." Our time line begins with the creation of the universe, and ends with the death of the universe. Our time reference words like "before" and "after" do not apply to the universe as a whole.

Does the New Creation also include time? The evidence seems to answer yes. Is it the same time line we currently experience? It cannot be. We are told my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended. In contrast, we know the time line in this material universe does end. The universe runs down. Time, as we know it, ends.

If this is correct, then the New Creation is not after the Old Creation in the sense of time. The two creations have different time lines. Is there a relationship between them? Perhaps. The Bible does reveal some things about the New Creation.

New Creation Evidence

Jesus was tortured to death on a cross. It was Friday, so the Jewish sabbath would start at sundown, when no work was allowed. Before sundown Joseph of Arimathea:

went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid.

Luke 23:52-53 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

Jesus' body was not prepared for proper Jewish burial, a process that required time and expensive spices. At dawn on Sunday, the first moment it was possible to prepare the body under Jewish law:

Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb? When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.

Mark 16:1-4 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

The women were distressed. They came to anoint a body that was not there. Was it stolen? Then Jesus appeared to them. They were the first to see him with his resurrected body. Overjoyed, they rushed to bring the news to the men, who refused to believe it was true, even after they checked the tomb themselves. Instead, the disciples hid in a locked room, afraid of the Roman and Jewish authorities, and bewildered by what the women told them.

What was his resurrected body like?

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you. They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, Have you anything here to eat? They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Luke 24:36-43 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

Jesus' resurrected body was physical. He was not a ghost (that is, pure spirit.) He could be touched; he looked like the Jesus they already knew; he could even eat fish. Presumably he digested the fish just like the disciples did. In these ways his body was related to ordinary physical matter like ours. However, he could do things the rest of us cannot do.

He appeared in that locked room. He did not knock on the door. He did not unlock the door and walk in. Nothing is said except, Jesus himself stood among them.

Jesus appeared to other people over the next six weeks, sometimes to individuals, sometimes to crowds. His last physical appearance was to the disciples:

So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel? He replied, It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

Acts 1:6-9 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

Jesus was lifted up, then hidden from their sight. He did not just disappear. He went somewhere. They watched it happen. Where did he go?

Jesus told them, I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Can we know anything about that place? There are some hints in the Bible, for example, The Transfiguration. During his earthly ministry:

Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.

Matthew 17:1-3 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and to the promised land around 1450 BC. Elijah was the greatest prophet after Moses. He was active during the reign of King Ahab, about 860 BC. Yet here, in about AD 30, they are together with Jesus, all three of them with glorified (glowing) bodies. I believe Jesus showed Peter, James, and John a glimpse of the New Creation.

Saint Paul, in a letter to the church in Corinth, written about AD 55, proclaimed:

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

First Corinthians 15:51-53 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

Mysteries

These are mysteries that we cannot understand while we remain inside the time line of the Old Creation. In fact, Jesus told us, It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set. And yet, he did give us these glimpses of the New Creation, and promised he would take us with him.

C. S. Lewis expresses it this way:

It is not the picture of an escape from any and every kind of Nature into some unconditioned and utterly transcendent life. It is the picture of a new human nature, and a new Nature in general, being brought into existence. We must, indeed, believe the risen body to be extremely different from the mortal body: but the existence, in that new state, of anything that could in any sense be described as 'body' at all, involves some sort of spatial relations and in the long run a whole new universe. That is the picture—not of unmaking but of remaking.

Page 244 of [Miracles1947]Miracles by Clive Staple Lewis, 1947 publisher: Harper Collins

If you believe the Bible is true, as I do, shouldn't we yearn for this change? Perhaps we are so focused on the concerns of this world, that we do not even contemplate what is coming.

What do you think? What are your deepest desires? Perhaps we do not desire the New Creation, heaven, enough.