When God says he will create a new heaven and a new earth, what will this new heaven and earth be like? Is it describing an obliteration of the material world, with a new material heaven and earth to follow? Early Church Father Jerome did not see a destruction of the elements; instead, he saw newness , a change into something better. Commenting on this passage, he writes, “The Apostle Paul said, ‘for the form of this world is perishing’ [1Co 7:31]. Notice that he said ‘form,’ not ‘substance.’”[1] Thomas Aquinas sees the new heavens and earth to be “the restoration of goods, for behold I create a new heavens , with new help from heaven, and a new earth , new benefits from the earth; this refers to the day of judgment, when the world will be renewed to the glory of the saints: the former things have passed away (Re 21:4).”[2] Closer to the immediate historical context, another understanding sees this as “a hyperbolic expression of the future restoration of the people of Judah after the ...
Theological Origins of Modernity* Modernity was an attempt to find a new metaphysical solution to the question of the nature and relation of God and man in the natural world. It was a series of attempts to constitute a new coherent metaphysics and theology. The idea of modernity was a move away from the ancient distinction of understanding reality and universals. Via Antiqua was the older realist path, which saw universals as ultimately real. In comparison, the Via Moderna was the newer nominalist path that saw all individual things as real and universals as mere names. And these logical distinctions provided the schema for a new understanding of time and being. This metaphysical shift from how one sees the world was not due to a change in knowledge but rather a change of understanding time, seeing that time is not as circular and finite but as linear and infinite. Understanding what change meant as a continuous natural process that free human bein...