Immanent Transcendence and the Christian Understanding of the Emergence of the New Heaven and Earth

Bernard Goršak

Immanent Transcendence and the Christian Understanding of the Emergence of the New Heaven and Earth

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62983/rn2865.24a.1

Key words: immanent transcendence, emergence, ontological eschatology, glorified matter

Abstract:
With this article I propose an answer to the question of the inherent nature of physical reality from a Christian perspective. In the Bible it is written that there will be a new heaven and earth, and that all those saved will eternally exist with their own glorified bodies. The question is what kind of matter the new heaven and earth and former earthly bodies will constitute. Subsequently more questions can be raised: Are the old matter and the new matter ontologically related or not? Is the new matter new in all its components, accidents and even the essence, or should it be recognized as an emergence originating from the old matter? I argue that the latter is true and that the potential to transcend its own timely and physical limitations is already immanently seeded into the pre-eschaton matter.

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