So much of the soteriological discussion these days is focused on individual salvation; that is as that takes shape in the combine between the elect and reprobate within substance causal theories of God and His relation to the world through the decretrum absolutum. While ‘individual salvation’ is a central, if not centraldogma of the soteriological reality, its reach is rather more extensive and cosmic than purely focused on various individual people—and their angst of whether or not they are one of the elect (by whatever means that is actualized). The Apostle Paul understands the cosmic aspect of salvation in the following way:

18 For I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared to the coming glory that will be revealed to us. 19 For the creation eagerly waits for the revelation of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly but because of God who subjected it—in hope 21 that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now. 23 Not only this, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with endurance. -Romans 8.18-25

This throws much of the soteriological discussion into relief precisely at the point that it isn’t obsessively focused on me, but instead it focuses on the ‘revealing of the sons of God.’ As is clear from the Genesis narrative God’s economy elevates humanity to a level distinct from general creation in the sense that humanity is the height of His created order; in the sense that humanity is supposed to steward and cultivate the created order with the aim of magnifying its Creator in Jesus Christ. If we allow the creation-pressure to frame a soteriological discussion we end up with a different focus in our own spirituality, among other things. Salvation’s frame becomes an ontological rather than purely forensic focus precisely because we are now focused on the One who created, rather than the ones created. In this frame we can come to see the depth dimension of sin’s rupturing power vis-a-vis its relationship to God’s relation to the world. We can come to realize that what is required for genuine salvation to obtain goes deeper than the creatio ex nihilo; it goes as deep as the mystery of the incarnation, of the Creator become human so that humanity might become one with the Creator through the grace of adoption.

TF Torrance, as he is reflecting on God’s sovereignty with particular reference to Divine providence, writes the following. You will see that he is very much so in line with the Pauline motif, and the notes we have been previously discussing:

First, human existence and history are not separable from the material universe, for man precisely as man is body of his soul as well as soul of his body and it is in the wholeness of that soul-body, body-soul relation that he has been created for fellowship with God. This means that the human being is not exempt from the material forces imminent in the spatio-temporal universe, or therefore exempt from the control of its physical laws impressed upon it by the Creator. Somehow it is not just man who has fallen but the whole created order along with him, so that we may not isolate our understanding of human evil from natural evil, or moral evil from material evil, the pain and suffering of human being from the suffering and misery, the pain and travail of the whole creation. There is what may be called a principle of evil in nature, but of course a perverted principle. It is not surprising, therefore, as the Holy Scriptures tell us, that real redemption from the power of human sin and guilt involves a radical change in the material world and calls for the complete redemption of the created order. That is why both the Old and the New Testaments speak prophetically of a new heaven and a new earth. Our understanding of what this means is governed by the physical or bodily nature of the death and resurrection of Christ, an event with space-time coordinates. Redemption is somatic as well as spiritual, for moral and physical evil infecting the creation may not finally be separated from one another. This cannot but apply to the providential activity of God which involves material as well as spiritual power and therefore an on-going interaction of God ad Creator and Redeemer with the physical universe. The power by which he redeems the world and exercises his providential care over its history is the very same power as that by which he created the world in matter and form out of nothing. Just as his creative power brought the world into physical existence and endowed it with a rational order, so it is in virtue of the same creative power that his redemptive and providential activity operate with the space-time structures of the ongoing world. But just as we cannot comprehend how God created the world out of nothing, or how he brought Jesus Christ forth from the grave, so we are unable to grasp how his redemptive and providential activity makes all things, material as well as spiritual, to serve his eternal purpose of love.1

Rather than thinking God’s relation to the world, and thus thinking the world’s relation to God through a dualistic frame, as Torrance underscores, it is better to think the God-world relation through the analogy of the incarnation. There is a mystery, indeed, to all of this, but God has so made himself vulnerable for us in Christ, that this mystery has concrete extension for us flatlanders to abide with. In other words, while all of the created reality is vouched in the mystery of God’s aseity, at the same time, He has freely elected that we might not remain orphans in a blind universe, but instead participants in the seen reality of God’s life for the world.

One other thing of note: the created order is such that God has mysteriously baked His very life into it, as He is for it, while at the same time remaining distinct from it as its Creator. This might help explain why God did not simply scrap this world, and start over. He had already personally invested Himself in and for this world in Christ, just as the very telos of the world is for the magnification of the Son, Jesus Christ. If this is creation’s frame, that is its recreation in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then God’s investment goes simply beyond some sort of brute power an actus purus (pure being) god might be known for. The Christian God, who is Father of the Son by the Spirit’s bond of lovely fellowship, cannot abandon His first creation, simply because He had always already planned to elevate this creation to the Right Hand of His fellowship in the Son in the second recreation of the second Adam; the greater Adam.

1 Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 226.