The Redemption of the Animal Kingdom

Rudolf Steiner: "The laws of nature are not eternal. The Earth will come to an end, and what will then exist can do so because a creative working will carry it on when the Earth passes away. Stones and plants will pass away, but what is in us may not pass away; it must be carried beyond the end of the Earth. This can happen only if Christ is in us. Only the animals will come with us--whom we must then redeem. The animals are on Earth because, at the moment when the possibility of sinfulness pierced the world, the animals were at a stage of development when it was inevitable they would be seized by what was good only for humanity. There could be no suffering in the world before the possibility of sin entered the world. Minerals and plants as such do not need to suffer, but they pass away, they cease to exist. The animals were in a stage of development in which they were swept along, through  human beings, into suffering. They must be released and redeemed from this when this stage of evolution is over--when the Earth is no longer. Just as today our laws of nature hold sway, so then laws will hold sway that we experience today only within ourselves. But we cannot understand this if we do not know that the human being was there before the Earth was."








Source : First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal, p. 135