The Apokatastasis or Restoration.

My Scandinavian ancestors have a much more subtle version of the message of salvation than we Americans.  We think in personal terms, while the Swedes think in terms of a restoration of the world to God (apokatastasis).  Some Americans think they are too close to nature worshippers than they ought to be, but I tend to differ.  If Nature is God's creation, and for the religious it surely is, then salvation belongs to her (Nature) also.  Consider this hymn made popular by the Billy Graham Crusade:

O store Gud, när jag den värld beskådar,                

Som du har skapat med ditt allmaktsord,

Hur där din visdom leder livets trådar,

Och alla väsen mättas vid ditt bord.

Då brister själen ut i lovsångsljud:

O store Gud! O store Gud!

Då brister själen ut i lovsångsljud:

O store Gud! O store Gud!

We Americans  have translated this wonderful Swedish hymn of Carl Boberg with words both too personal and too emotional to capture the wonder and awe we ought to have of a mighty God, who from nothing but a word, has given us the gift of creation.  Aristotle says that Philosophy begins with wonder, and so ought our religion.  We ought to wonder at the mighty acts of God, and even wonder at the creation God has wrought by thought (λόγος) alone.  That's right God's word is reason and thought. By God's very reason God has created.  God said "let there be..." and it was.   God is the great architect, but that is not to diminish the personal.  God has given by grace a salvation.  However, ought we not to think also of the salvation of the whole.  Perhaps through our disobedience we have separated ourselves from God and have been expelled from Eden, but is not Eden always there?  Is not salvation, in one sense at least, a restoration of each and every one of us to the veritable Eden that is God's creation?  We cannot under our own devices restore ourselves, but ought we to continue in our state of disobedience to destroy God's creation the veritable Garden which God foresaw?  And ought we not to praise God for it--burst forth in songs of praise for a mighty God?

For those who cannot understand Swedish,here is a slightly better translation:

O mighty God, when I survey in wonder

the World that formed when once the word you said,

The strands of life all woven close together,

The whole creation at your table fed,

Then souls break forth in songs of praise to you,

O mighty God! O mighty God!

Then souls break forth in songs of praise to you,

O mighty God! O mighty God!

The emphasis ought to be on God.  There is too much emphasis on "MY" in American thinking, not enough on God.  The song is about the wonder and beauty of God's creation a sort of Pantheism in the fundamentalist's way of thinking.  Too bad, they as all Protestants today want to put the emphasis on "ME" and not on God even though they do lip service to the latter.  That's the trouble with American Religion. Americans want 'me' and 'my' not 'thee' and 'thine'.  They want the personal and not the cosmic-the particular and not the universal.  Their God is awful small.  Like the elementary concept of the calculus, an infinitesimal--so small it vanishes into nothing!  In terms of the vastness of space we are nearly nothing, not even a speck on a planet hidden in a backwater of a insignificant galaxy amongst a vast number of galaxies.

Consider also the great Swedish hymn Härlig är jorden:

Americans have made it "Fairest Lord Jesus" and should jump to the second verse "Fair are the Meadows, fairer still the Woodlands". The emphasis is on a creator God who has brought salvation to us and all his creation and we ought to reverence that creation by praising the creator God.  Glorious is the Earth, and we ought not forget that fact by treating her (Earth, Nature) badly.  The environmentalist has much to say here, and we ought to listen.  We are merely Pilgrims on a journey through this world, we ought to make our pilgrimage with song and delight and reverence what the earth gives not only in sustenance, but also her beauty.  Salvation has come, not just our personal salvation, but the salvation of all God's creatures an apokatastasis, or return to the creator what was and for all time is His and not ours to do with what we wish.  If one returns what one has borrowed, ought one not return it in a  good condition worthy of the owner, if we are only pilgrims, we are borrowers of Nature and we ought to allow her to return to God in good condition.

Härlig är jorden, härlig är Guds himmel
Skön är själarnas pilgrimsgång
Genom de fagra riken på jorden
Gå vi till paradis med sång

Tidevarv komma, tidevarv försvinna
Släkten följa släktens gång
Aldrig förstummas tonen från himlen
I själens glada pilgrimssång

Änglar den sjöngo först för markens herdar
Skönt från själ till själ det ljöd
Människa gläd dig, Frälsarn är kommen
Frid över jorden Herren bjöd

Glorious is the earth, glorious is God's heaven.

Beautiful is the souls' pilgrim-journey,

through those fair countries on earth,

go we to paradise with song 

Ages come, ages go

families follow, families' go,

never stem the mute tone from heaven

in the soul's glad pilgrim-song 

Angels sang it first for the earth’s shepherds,

Beautiful from soul to soul it sounded.

People, become joyous, Salvation has come,

peace over the earth the Lord has invited. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWCAi3fRGZI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIpU2bhgKnw&feature=related