I already mentioned earlier how I was pleasantly surprised to find George MacDonald’s eschatology to be in the same vein as N.T. Wright’s. That is, focusing on the redemption of creation as a whole and rejecting a Platonic, ethereal notion of heaven and resurrection.
Here, he invokes astronomy, as well as the animal kingdom:
The new heaven and the new earth will at least be a heaven and an earth! What would the newest earth be to the old children without its animals? Barer than the heavens emptied of the constellations that are called b their names. Then, if the earth must have its aimals, why not the old ones, already dear? The sons of God are not a new race of sons of God, but the old race glorified – why a new race of animals, and not the old ones glorified?
-George MacDonald, from Sermon: The Hope of the Universe