Everything That Breathes: The Place of Material Creation in the Eschatological Church
This fall I am teaching ecclesiology, and as before I began the semester by rooting the Church in creation. Using Book 13 of Augustine’s Confessions and selections from Joseph Ratzinger’s masterful The Divine Project, I try to help my students see that the Church is not an afterthought, a roughly-fitting add-on to a remote part of creation, but is the intended goal of creation all along (that Augustine can spiritually interpret the story of creation in Genesis 1 as the story of the Church really drives this point home).[1] As my students digest this claim, they regularly come to the same question: if the Church is the eschatological fulfillment of all creation, then what is the eschatological and ecclesial role of non-human and non-angelic creation? What place—if any—does unintelligent material creation have in the eschatological Church?
The question is one I have encountered outside the classroom as well—often on the tails of a discussion about whether dogs go to heaven! And over the years I have discovered a wide variety of opinions. While those I have spoken to generally affirm the resurrection of the flesh and therefore hold there will be some sort of materiality in the eschaton, many seem to think we will be the only material beings there. At times it sounds like the eschaton will be just human beings, moving around blank, empty space (or as one friend put it: just us and dirt). Some will argue that this does not mean a denial that all of material creation will be there, but that it will be there in us: because we are both material and spiritual beings, all of creation “meets” in us or is epitomized in us. We are material creation brought to its culmination, capable of union with spirit. Therefore, if we live on as embodied creatures, then material creation lives on in us, in its highest form, the form that draws together all lower forms.
Such accounts, though, seem to fall short. Yes, there are good philosophical arguments in the background—I do not disagree, for instance, that non-intellectual souls do not survive death. And yes, it is not immediately clear what role unintelligent creation could play in heaven, when heaven is so defined by the intellectual/spiritual activities of knowing and loving God. But frankly such visions of heaven just seem terribly flat and boring! And while I readily grant that accusations of dreariness are not much of a theological argument (though when we are talking of heaven, it does seem odd when a vision leaves you uninspired), there are also more robust reasons for shying away from such a view. Surely, for instance, if the rich variety of creation manifests the glory of God, this will not go away in heaven.[2] There are also magisterial pronouncements that point at this broader eschatological—and even ecclesial—image. Lumen gentium, for instance, begins its section on the eschatological Church by associating the culmination of the Church with the restoration of “all things.” And while it does claim that the rest of creation attains its end “through” human beings, it also distinguishes humanity’s reestablishment in Christ from the reestablishment of all creation in Christ—which is remarkably ecclesial language, if we think of the Church as Christ’s body:
The Church, to which we are all called in Christ Jesus, and in which we acquire sanctity through the grace of God, will attain its full perfection only in the glory of heaven, when there will come the time of the restoration of all things. At that time the human race as well as the entire world, which is intimately related to man and attains to its end through him, will be perfectly reestablished in Christ (§48).[3]
Scripture, too, speaks of the eschatological messianic kingdom, of the New Earth, as crowded with a rich variety of creatures, with wolves that are guests of lambs, with homes for cobras and adders (cf. Isaiah 11:6-9), with a river flowing through it and trees laden with leaves and fruit (cf. Revelation 21:1-22:5).[4] And the Pauline vision is even grander! In the Christ hymn of Colossians, Christ is not only creator of “all things in heaven and on earth” (1:16) but all those things—not just intelligent beings—are “in him,” for “in him all things hold together” (1:17). The immediacy with which Paul then speaks of Christ’s being “head of the body, the Church” (1:18) at least invites us to associate “all things” that are in Christ with his body, the Church—akin to the passage above from Lumen gentium. And the salvation Christ has wrought also has these cosmic proportions: the fullness of the Godhead that dwelt in Christ was also pleased “through him to reconcile all things for him” (1:20). Indeed it is in Christ’s resurrected reign over “everything” that God will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:27-28). We find similar echoes in Ephesians 1:22. Yet perhaps the most famous passage comes from Romans: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now” (Romans 8:18-22).
This final passage from St. Paul brings us back to the question with which we began: what does it mean for the rest of creation to “share in the glorious freedom of the children of God,” to partake of the eschatological goal for which we are hoping? Is there some way in which we as human beings “take up” the rest of material creation into our eschatological destiny? And why, after all, is the rest of creation awaiting our full salvation, our full realization? How are they related?
This whole host of questions had been bouncing around my mind when I found myself pronouncing the following psalm response at Mass: “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!” (Psalm 150:6). Note that this is the very last verse of the entire psalter—which at least suggests that it has some eschatological significance. If the psalter is a prayer guide for this life, then as it ends it may well point us to the culmination not only of the collection of psalms, but of the collection of our life’s prayers: our lives culminate in a hymn of praise to the Lord.[5] And in that hymn of praise, “everything that breathes” can and should praise God.
A first pass suggests that those singing this hymn—those that breathe—should be expanded beyond human beings to include animals, and perhaps also plants (which breathe in some sense): these, too, are commanded to praise the Lord. Of course their form of praise is different from ours, but it is still praise, as Tertullian captures so memorably at the end of his treatise On Prayer:
Every creature prays. Cattle and wild beasts pray and bend the knee. As they come from their barns and caves they look up to heaven and call out, lifting up their spirit in their own fashion. The birds too rise and lift themselves up to heaven: they open out their wings, instead of hands, in the form of a cross and give voice to what seems to be a prayer.[6]
But the striking thing about Psalm 150 is that, unlike some of the previous psalms (say, Psalm 148), it makes no reference to animals or other living creatures. Instead, the verses leading up to this final exhortation are a long list of instruments that we are to take up to praise God:
Praise the LORD in his sanctuary,
praise him in the firmament of his strength.
Praise him for his mighty deeds,
praise him for his sovereign majesty.
Praise him with the blast of the trumpet,
praise him with lyre and harp,
Praise him with timbrel and dance,
praise him with strings and pipe.Praise him with sounding cymbals,
praise him with clanging cymbals.
Let everything that has breath
praise the LORD! Alleluia.[7]
We can certainly interpret the instruments metaphorically, as referring, e.g., to the different parts of a human being that are drawn into praise of God.[8] But what if we take the expression quite literally, as referring to the actual physical instruments used for praising God? Consider especially the “pipe” and the “trumpet,” instruments made of inanimate, material creation—wood, metal, and the like. Have we not, by crafting wood and metal into pipes and trumpets and playing them, made them into things that “breathe”? Are not wood and metal now included in “everything that breathes” that is convoked to “praise the Lord”?[9]
Granted they breathe only in some analogous way to how we breathe; in fact, they breathe only because we give them our breath—echoing, in an infinitely lesser way, how God breathed his life into us (cf. Genesis 2:7).[10] We breathe through them, and so allow them to have a voice. Yet truth be told, just as these instruments cannot have breath without us, neither can our breath make such sounds of praise on its own. The voice that emerges from them is neither solely ours nor solely theirs; it is born of a union of musician and instrument. We are able to praise God with these instruments in ways we cannot do on our own. The human being has elevated wood and metal to make it a part of its own hymn of praise to the Lord. And the wood and metal have elevated the human hymn of praise, adding their own elements of beauty, a metallic or wooden character to that hymn. There is a kind of communion here, a communion in praise: it is praise that holds these elements together, that draws these parts together. Yet each retains its individuality—wood praises as wood, humans as human—while being united in something greater than themselves alone.
Furthermore, this psalm commands that human and instrument come together, that we make a sound together that is a praise of the Lord which neither could make on its own. God has taken up this human invention of instrument-making and confirmed it by commanding us to take up these instruments in praise of him. Might this not, in fact, be another version of God’s command to steward the earth (cf. Genesis 1:26-30)? For what could be truer stewardship than to take up material creation into praise of the Lord, especially if we regard the stewardship of Adam and Eve as a priestly one.[11]
And if, as I have claimed, there is an eschatological character to this psalm, then perhaps our earthly use of instruments to praise God gives us a glimpse of how unintelligent material creation will be part of the hymn of praise sung in the heavenly city forever—an ecclesial act of cosmic proportions.[12] God will delight in wood praising him as wood can, in its own totally distinct mode of praise; and in metal praising him in its mode; and in animals and plants and dirt; and in human beings and angels praising him as we can. But these will not be merely distinct acts of praise, but a communion of praise. And so part of how we as intellectual creatures will praise God is precisely by using our intelligence to aid material creation in praising God, and it will aid us to use our intelligence in praise of him—that is, our intelligence’s praise of God will be magnified by its interaction with material creation, our intelligence will praise him precisely by its actualization of its ability to draw up unintelligent creation into that hymn in a new way.
In saying this, I do not mean that material creation will not have direct contact with God, or that God relates to it only through us, or that only we can shape material creation into something that can praise God—that it can praise God only thanks to us. I am, however, claiming that we can aid it in praising, and in the process it can aid us; and that the praise that is produced from the two of us is greater than simply the sum of each of us praising alone. In the end, I am basically claiming that we as human beings have a mediatorial role in material creation’s coming to its ultimate and most glorious end, that we play a genuine causal role in the praise of the rest of the cosmos. It is a classic Thomistic view that God operates through secondary causes, incorporating us and our genuine causation into his causing the perfection of the universe, not because of any deficiency in God, but so as to give us a share in the dignity of being causes. This secondary causality, this mediation, is not in competition with God’s causation, and thus does not bring about a distance between God and creatures; God is still im-mediately present to all that is, and to every cause, which only are insofar as they are in him. This sort of mediation is not a threat or obstacle to union between God and creatures, but in some sense enhances that union because it makes creatures more like God—insofar as they now have a share in his causality—and at the same time connects them more intimately with each other.[13] And if mediation is part of the glory and beauty of creation here and now, if it is currently part of our dignity to mediate, should we not expect it to continue and even to be elevated and expanded in heaven?
Indeed the human act of mediating between God and others is fundamentally what a priest does. I noted earlier that God’s command to us in Genesis to “steward” creation had a priestly character; the book of Revelation, at the other end of the Bible, also speaks of us as priests (see Revelation 1:6, 5:10), but now in an eschatological key, as a fulfillment of our original priesthood. Perhaps our eternal priestly role will mean not only our perfect self-offering, but will include convoking material creation to praise God in its own way, leading it in worship, bringing the offerings of wood and metal and offering them up in our human hands as a pleasing sacrifice to God, so that both they and we might praise him.
The precise mode of this offering is admittedly a mystery; my claim here is only that Psalm 150 might give us a glimpse, however dim, of what the eschatological place of material creation, and our interaction with it, could look like. But allow me to offer one final thought: even if our priestly eschatological role remains enshrouded in mystery, its beginnings are here and now. This was the role taken up by St. Francis of Assisi in his “Canticle of Creatures,” in which by his poetry he revealed and in some sense even enabled the material mode of existence of sun, moon, stars, wind, and fire to praise God. Such was the role taken up by the three young men in the fiery furnace, when they exhorted not only angels, priests, and servants of the Lord, nor even merely birds of the sky and fish of the sea, but even the dew and the rain, the mountains and hills, and the seas and the rivers to “bless God” (see Daniel 3:52-90). And such is the role taken up by the Church when she prays this Canticle of Daniel in the Liturgy of the Hours across the globe, convoking all creation to bless God as she celebrates her great feasts, and when she places on the lips of believers the psalms that convoke creation to glorify God. Indeed, perhaps simply by praying “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord,” we are already exercising our eschatological priestly role of drawing all creation into a hymn of God’s praise.[14]
[1] See also Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) §760. I like to emphasize that creation itself is therefore ecclesially structured, awaiting its full realization when God builds it into the Church. Thus I describe the relationship between Church and creation as the same as that between grace and nature.
[2] This is an eschatological extension of Aquinas’s understanding of the diversity in creation: “[God] brought things into being in order that His goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because His goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, He produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided and hence the whole universe together participates the divine goodness more perfectly, and represents it better than any single creature whatever.” Summa Theologiae I.47.1 co. (Shapcote translation, edited by The Aquinas Institute).
[3] The Catechism also indicates that “In the glory of heaven the blessed continue joyfully to fulfill God’s will in relation to other men and to all creation” (CCC §1029), and notes “the profound common destiny of the material world and man” (CCC §1046). Citing St. Irenaeus (Adversus haereses 5.32), it claims that “‘the world itself, restored to its original state, facing no further obstacles, should be at the service of the just,’ sharing the glorification in the risen Jesus Christ” (CCC §1047). Emphasis added in citations from both LG and CCC.
[4] Granted these images can be interpreted spiritually (a retort I have heard before), I see no reason why they cannot also literally indicate the rich sort of materiality that awaits us—albeit they need not be literalist descriptions, they can describe a type of existence that will be there.
[5] Hilary of Poitiers, for instance, regards Psalm 150 as having a specifically eschatological outlook due to its place in the structure of the psalter. See Hilary of Poitiers, Tractatus super Psalmos 150.1 (CCSL 61B, ed. Jean Doignon). For more on Hilary’s interpretation of the psalms as structured in accord with the progress/development of the Christian life, see Paul Burns’s A Model for the Christian Life: Hilary of Poitiers’ Commentary on the Psalms.
[6] Tertullian, On Prayer 29 (translation from the Liturgy of the Hours; Office of Readings for Thursday of the Third Week of Lent). Note that Tertullian suggests a very broad understanding of who prays: “every creature (omnis creatura)” (Latin from CCSL 1).
[7] This is the translation used in the lectionary.
[8] Hilary of Poitiers, for instance, likes to interpret references to instruments in the psalter as a reference to our human bodies that we are called to use in our praise of God. See, e.g., Tr. Ps. 56.8.
[9] This recalls the rite of “awakening” an organ, which takes the form of a dialogue between the celebrant and the organ (which is treated as a subject). This dialogue begins with words like the following: “Wake up, organ, sacred instrument: Sing praise to God, our Creator and our Father.” Such was the rite used at the recent blessing and re-awakening of the organ of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
[10] Interestingly, in discussing this article one of my Dominican brothers noted that human beings design instruments that mimic our human body’s ways of producing sound. Such a likeness between instruments and us as their makers would be a dim glimmer of being made in our image.
[11] For a good description and argument of this claim, see T. Desmond Alexander’s From Paradise to the Promised Land (especially chapter 2).
[12] For more on this eschatological liturgy, and understanding the Church as a communion of praise caught up into Trinitarian praise, see Sacrosanctum Concilium, especially §8, 83-84, and Lumen gentium, §51.
[13] On this topic, see Summa Theologiae I qq. 19, 22 and 23; in particular I.22.3 co.: “Two things belong to providence—namely, the type of the order of things foreordained towards an end; and the execution of this order, which is called government. As regards the first of these, God has immediate providence over everything, because He has in His intellect the types of everything, even the smallest; and whatsoever causes He assigns to certain effects, He gives them the power to produce those effects. Whence it must be that He has beforehand the type of those effects in His mind. As to the second, there are certain intermediaries of God’s providence; for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures” (emphasis added).
[14] I am grateful to a number of people who discussed the content of this article with me and helped improve it thereby, including a couple who reviewed an earlier draft. I want to thank especially Don Goergen, OP; Ed Ruane, OP; Eleonore Stump; and Dominick Jean, OP. I hope it goes without saying that the views I have expressed here, and especially any shortcomings, are not theirs but my own.
