Part Nine:   Why Is Divine Justice a powerful argument for animal resurrection?

Last week’s blog post pointed out three possible origins for the animals that will inhabit the New Earth (Heaven) and explained why resurrection is the best option. However, there is one other compelling reason why resurrected animals will live on in God’s eternal Kingdom. It has to do with divine recompense for the suffering and abuse many animals endured in this life.

Perhaps no well-known theologian expresses this better than eighteenth-century Anglican clergyman and evangelist John Wesley. He hoped for a “general deliverance” where animals will be compensated for the suffering and abuse they endured from the human race:  

[W]hen God has “renewed the face of the earth,” and their [animals’] corruptible body has put on incorruption, they shall enjoy happiness suited to their state, without alloy, without interruption, and without end. . . . They [animals] could not sin, for they were not moral agents. Yet how severely do they suffer!—yea, many of them, beasts of burden in particular, almost the whole time of their abode on earth; So [sic] that they can have no retribution here below. But the objection vanishes, if we consider that something better remains after death for these poor creatures also; that these, likewise, shall one day be delivered from this bondage of corruption, and shall then receive an ample amends for all their present sufferings. (“General Deliverance Sermon 60.”)

In other words, as Randy Alcorn explains, since animals experience pain and suffering due to human sin, it “seems to require that some animals who lived, suffered, and died on the old Earth must be made whole on the New Earth” (Heaven, 386). Other theologians agree. “Many Christian thinkers,” writes philosopher Michael Murray, “have argued that animal immortality plays an important role in explaining the reality of animal pain and suffering in the earthy life. Perhaps there is a connection between the earthly life of animals, filled as it is with pain and suffering, and a blissful, eternal existence [‘as resurrected beings’] for those animals in the divine presence. (” Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, 122.)

The argument that God’s love and justice will embrace animal resurrection is a legitimate biblical position. Christian theologian Andrew Linzey, who has written books and articles on animals and Christianity, sums it like this: “The issue of suffering and evil endured by animals makes the question central to theodicy [justifying divine goodness in light of evil]. However we may construe the origins of evil in the world, a just and loving God must in the last analysis be able to offer recompense and redemption commensurate with the evil that has been endured.” (Animals on the Agenda, 118) I see no better way for this to happen than resurrection into eternal life in the Peaceable Kingdom.

In next week’s blog, we’ll see how the redemption of creation—including humans—initiates Animal Resurrection