Modern history classes don’t ordinarily require students to memorize historical dates. Nonetheless, there are two dates every American learns: 1776 and 1492. Christopher Columbus’s first voyage in autumn of 1492 is, in many ways, the beginning of our origin story as an American people. Even though we are not all tied to the maritime republic of Genoa by ancestry, the link between the Eastern and Western hemispheres, known as the Columbian exchange, made our Nation possible. It brought about a truly global world for the first time. During this age of discovery, the Florentine for whom this continent is named, Amerigo Vespucci, coined the term Mundus Novus—The New World—as a way to communicate how important this new discovery was. The name stuck among many Europeans leading to an age of excitement, adventure, and eventually colonization of the western continents.
The history of the Columbian exchange has also become a witness to the evils of humanity. We have all heard about the horrific practices of human sacrifice practiced by the Aztec empire, as well as the brutal conquest of Mexico by Cortez. Wars were fought between the American Indians and Western Europeans throughout much of the history of the New World. Unlike the peaceful prelapsarian world beyond the sea envisioned by Saint Thomas Moore in his humanistic story Utopia, the real gritty history of the Americas was not dissimilar to the Old World. The three continents of the Old World have stories and tales of war going back to time before history. Likewise, this New World had these same issues of vicious dictators, war, disease, idolatry, and slavery. Thus, unlike the name suggests the lands of the New World are plagued with the same problem as the Old World: sin.
In the last scene of Sacred Scripture, Saint John is shown a vision of, “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1). John is told that this actual New World is “God’s dwelling with the human race” and “there shall be no death or morning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away.” (Rev 21:4) This New World is not the Americas, nor is it some planet somewhere out in the cosmos yet to be discovered. Rather this world is not a part of this created world but will be part of the New Creation as Christ affirms us, “I make all things new”(Rev 21:5).
Therefore, this New World for which we Christians hope is not something we are going to discover “out there.” We don’t need to set sail to find the fountain of youth, nor rove alien solar systems to find evidence of life. Rather than needing an intrepid explorer to discover this New World, Christians can rest in the knowledge that the New World has been won by the love of God.
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Image: Sebastian Münster, Map of the New World
