8. What Do We Know About Heaven?
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What will the “new heaven and new earth” contain? How much can we know about Heaven? Is there a place for animals in eternity? In Heaven we will want for nothing. To be completely fulfilled and satisfied in God is to know we will need nothing else. Does this mean that what we loved and appreciated on earth will not be present in paradise?
The men discuss how, made in God’s image, human beings have an immortal soul. Therefore Heaven and Hell are clear realities for the human person. What does this mean for animals? Is it theologically sound to say that our pets could occupy Heaven with us?
What does is mean to “ignoble the beats”? Does man’s relationship to specific animals affect their personality and spirit?
“If, nevertheless, the strong conviction which we have of a real, though doubtless rudimentary, selfhood in the higher animals, and specially in those we tame, is not an illusion, their destiny demands a somewhat deeper consideration … Man was appointed by God to have dominion over the beasts, and everything a man does to an animal is either a lawful exercise, or a sacrilegious abuse, of an authority by Divine right. The tame animal is therefore, in the deepest sense, the only 'natural' animal - the only one we see occupying the place it was made to occupy, and it is on the tame animal that we must base all our doctrine of beasts. Now it will be seen that, in so far as the tame animal has a real self or personality, it owes this almost entirely to its master.” - C.S. Lewis
What is the distinction between spirit and soul?
“Spirit is the being which has a permanent hold on what it is so that it can never become anything else.” -Frank Sheed
