What If Et Phones Our Home, Implications For Christian Thought

What If ET Phones Our Home? Implications for Christian Thought By Ken Yeh Ó

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The search for meaning and significance drives seekers to look far beyond themselves for answers. Theists look up to heaven and praise God for His magnificent Creation, while those who hold a worldview that rejects a divine Creator also probe the heavens in hopes that the answers to the questions about our past origins and future prospects may come from contact with an advanced, extraterrestrial intelligent civilization. The influx of new private funding into more powerful tools for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)—such as the new Allen Telescope Array—expands the range and scope of the search. And though several decades worth of searching have been fruitless up till now, the possibility still exists that one day we will receive an undeniable signal that we are not the sole intelligent civilization in this universe, and if that day comes, the effects will doubtless be monumental. Astronomer Robert Jastrow imagines that contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence will be a “transforming” event. He states, “I do not know how the Judeo-Christian tradition will react to this development, because the concept that there exist beings superior to us in this universe, not only technically, but perhaps spiritually and morally, will take some rethinking, I think, of the classic doctrines of Western religion.”1 What affect will this contact, if it ever occurs, have on the Christian faith as we know it? Will it shatter the core Christian belief in the significance of human beings within the universe and the importance of the Incarnation of the Son of God? Or is there room within the Christian view of Creation and God’s salvific plan for a plurality of intelligent beings within the universe? It is very likely that SETI will continue to find nothing, in which case we may never need the answers to these questions, but as Catholic theologian and professor Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti states, “I believe that the theme for the possibility of an intelligent life of extraterrestrial origin, that is outside that experience of unity of the human family which is common to all the biblical message, represents one of the major speculative efforts that Christian theology might be faced with.”2 Though Scripture offers little to guide us in our speculations, my position in this paper is thus: I affirm the validity of the “classical” position—that Earth is the unique lifebearing planet in the universe—in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, but I believe that it is worthwhile to survey historic Christian thought in this area and speculate on possible Christian responses in the hypothetical situation that intelligent life on other planets is discovered. Extraterrestrial Life in Historic Christian Thought The concept of extraterrestrial life has flourished and floundered at various times in historical Christian thought. We begin our survey in the Medieval Ages, during which Thomas Aquinas provided a synthesis of Christian doctrine with Aristotelian cosmology. Aquinas maintained the Aristotelian idea of placing Earth at the center of the universe, establishing a positional significance of human beings within the universe. However, challenges to Aristotelian ideas which potentially limited the powers of God soon arose. In 1277, the Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, issued a condemnation of 219 propositions that he considered restrictive of God’s omnipotence, including the proposition that God could not make more than one world. Though the purpose of this 1

Quoted in Fred Heeren, “Home Alone in the Universe?” First Things 121 (March 2002); available from http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0203/articles/heeren.html. 2 Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, “Extraterrestrial Life,” trans. by Ruan Harding, Interdisciplinary Encyclopaedia of Religion and Science; available from http://www.disf.org/en/Voci/65.asp

was to affirm God’s omnipotence and not the existence of multiple worlds, this statement had the effect of opening the Christian community to conjecture on the possibility of a plurality of life-bearing worlds. The 14th century Franciscan friar and philosopher William of Ockham declared that God could certainly make an infinite number of worlds like ours, and could possibly create a world that was better than ours. The 15th century cardinal Nicholas of Cusa argued that “life, as it exists here on earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose, in a higher form in the solar and stellar region.”3 Nicholas speculated on the existence of solar beings who were more spiritual than the material creatures on earth, and also beings who inhabited the moon, whom he called—pun possibly not intended—“lunatics.” However, soon after this time the Protestant Reformation, with its emphasis on the authority of Scripture, caused a swing against belief in the plurality of worlds. Lambertus Danaeus argued that life on other planets should not be accepted because it was not taught in Scripture; however, since other planets themselves are not mentioned in Scripture this argument did not hold up well. Lutheran theologian Philip Melanchthon noted that Genesis described God resting on the seventh day after creating the world, and argued that this meant that He did not create any other worlds. Reformation theologians also pointed out that a plurality of worlds might have dire consequences for the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ and the efficacy of Jesus’ death and resurrection. But then the Scientific Revolution brought back more speculation about other worlds, at the expense of a decreasing emphasis on the doctrine of the Incarnation and redemption. In the 16th century, the acceptance of Copernicus’ heliocentric model of the solar system displaced the Earth from its central position within the universe and caused people to consider that there were possibly many other stars like our sun in the universe. When Johannes Kepler observed the four moons orbiting Jupiter, he concluded that there must be life on Jupiter. He reasoned that as God had made the Moon for our benefit here on Earth, therefore the moons of Jupiter were made for the benefit of the inhabitants of Jupiter. Other Christian astronomers such as Richard Bentley of England and Christian Huygens of Holland believed that since there were many stars that could not be observed from Earth, they must have been created for the inhabitants of other solar systems to see. These early Christian scientists believed in God’s ability to create life anywhere He pleased, and that the universe did not exist for the sole benefit of humans but for God to reveal His glory. Later astronomers almost unanimously held to a belief in life on other planets, including Sir William Herschel, discoverer of Uranus, who claimed to have seen near-certain evidence of lunarians, and Johann Bode, who reasoned, “The most wise author of the world assigns an insect lodging on a grain of sand and will certainly not permit… the great ball of the sun to be empty of creatures and still less of rational inhabitants who are ready gratefully to praise the author of life.”4 At the same time, theologians could be seen trying to reconcile Christian doctrines with the speculative visions of the astronomers of the day. In the face of such belief in solarians, lunarians, martians, Venusians, mercurians, and jupiterians, what was a Christian thinker to do? For the most part, theologians accepted the pluralism of the astronomers. The Anglican theologian John Wilkins argued in his book Discovery of a World in the Moone that the existence of life on other worlds did not clash with Christianity, but rather was an expression of God’s creative power, which had been up 3

Quoted in Benjamin D. Wiker, “Alien Ideas: Christianity and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life,” Crisis Magazine (November 2002); available from http://www.crisismagazine.com/november2002/feature7.htm. 4 Quoted in Wiker.

till now restricted by believers only to the Earth. He proposed that extraterrestrial beings might not be fallen from grace like humans, but even if they were, Christ’s atonement could be effective for them also. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle’s 1686 book Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds argued that beings on other planets were not descended from Adam and hence were not subject to the Incarnation. John Ray believed that extraterrestrial life revealed the wisdom and power of God’s creative work in the same way as the multitude of species on Earth. The concept of extraterrestrial life also made its way into the beliefs of the Mormons, who held that the universe was populated by many gods, angels, and inhabitants on multiple planets, while the founder of the Seventh-Day Adventists, Ellen Harmon, claimed to have seen visions of the tall, sinless inhabitants of Jupiter. Thus, it can be seen that in 18th century Christian thought, the acceptance of a plurality of worlds allowed the doctrine of God’s creative freedom to dominate over concerns of redemption and the Incarnation of Christ. At the same time, a growing number of deists began to use the concept of extraterrestrial life as an argument against the beliefs of classical Christianity. The deist poet Alexander Pope composed “The Universal Prayer” to replace the cosmologically provincial Lord’s Prayer. Thomas Paine made the clearest statement about the incompatibility of Christianity and the plurality of worlds: “[T]o believe that God created a plurality of worlds at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.”5 To those who tried to hold to both Christianity and pluralism, Paine commented, “He who thinks he believes both has thought but little of either.” Thus, science and theology professor Benjamin Wiker observes two overlapping but opposing trends that occurred during this time over the issue of extraterrestrials: one led by Christians, the other by deists. He writes, “Both sung endless paeans to a might God, creator of heaven and many earths, and both chiseled away at the doctrine of the Incarnation to make it fit such pluralism.”6 Christians striving to stay relevant to the scientific opinion of the day chipped away at the “embarrassing particularity” of the Incarnation, while the deists simply deemed this doctrine unfit for their new universal theology and eliminated it altogether. In the 19th and 20th centuries, deism quickly gave way to atheism, and while the belief in extraterrestrial life maintained its important status in the new naturalistic worldview, the belief in a divine Creator was left behind as an obsolete relic from the past. An Open Christian Consideration of ET After surveying the theme of extraterrestrial life in historic Christian thought, we have observed a broad range of views, from outright rejection to overt acceptance. Especially towards the end of the millennium, it has been noted that some Christian thinkers may have overly compromised the critical doctrines of Christian belief in an effort to stay relevant to popular scientific opinion, but even this did nothing to curb the secularization of the worldviews of many scientists. From this the lesson should be learned that Christian theology should not strive to keep up with the latest popular trend at the expense of ignoring what the Bible reveals. So, in light of this warning from recent history, we ask the question, Is there room for extraterrestrial intelligences in Christian thought? Can core Christian beliefs be consistent with the concept of life on other planets in the universe? Again, in the absence of any evidence that we are not

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Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part First (1794); available from http://www.ushistory.org/paine/ reason/reason12.htm. 6 Wiker.

alone in the universe, any possible answers to these questions remain open and hypothetical. The first issue of consideration is whether the discovery of life outside of Earth will diminish the Christian belief in humanity’s special status within the universe. Paul Davies states his belief that, “Still, the discovery of just a single bacterium somewhere beyond Earth would force us to revise our understanding of who we are and where we fit into the cosmic scheme of things, throwing us into a deep spiritual identity crisis that would be every bit as dramatic as the one Copernicus brought about in the early 1500s, when he asserted that Earth was not at the center of the universe.”7 He lists a series of scientific discoveries in the past 500 years that have “incrementally diminished” the status of humankind from “the pinnacle of creation.” However, there is a different way of looking at these scientific discoveries. Rather than incrementally diminishing our status, each new discovery establishes just how special Earth is in relation to the universe. This has been called the “Goldilocks principle,” and is recognized in books such as Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, and Rare Earth by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. Also, even if life is found somewhere other than Earth, this would not explain the apparent “fine-tuning” of universal cosmological constants, without which there would be no life of any sort in the universe. The anthropic principle does not offer conclusions about the singularity or plurality of life within the universe, but states that the very existence of life itself requires an explanation. Also, the Copernican revolution was not an assault against the significance of humanity, but rather it was an attack on the Aristotelian universe, in which position and status were integrally linked and Earth had its established position at the center of the universe. By placing Earth in orbit around the sun, Copernicus actually raised the status of Earth from its Aristotelian position as the cesspool of the universe. Also, the biblical concept of the value of humanity is not associated with position, but in the gift of relationship that God extends to humanity. Mankind is not special in God’s eyes because he is intelligent, but because he has been given the capacity for relationship with God. And this relationship can be special without being exclusive, as can be seen in the example given by David Wilkinson, “I have a special relationship with my daughter, but that is not devalued by the fact that she has a brother with whom I also have a special relationship. Extraterrestrial intelligence does not pose a problem to Christian belief that men and women are special in the eyes of God. It may even increase the sense of awe at how great this God is who creates with such diversity and extravagance.”8 Even if we are not alone in the universe, this would not mean that we are not special and significant before God. Catholic priest Kenneth Delano offers a reminder that God’s creation is much richer than we can imagine, and that we need to have “a genuine humility with respect to the transcendence of divine plans, that must be brought to avoid geocentric or anthropocentric attitudes, so respecting the silence of the Scripture on the theme of the plurality of intelligent creatures in the universe.”9 Passages offered by Mormon apologists to the contrary, the Bible is silent on the possibility of additional nonterrestrial creatures created by God. States evangelical astronomer Owen Gingerich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “In Genesis there's a sacred story being told that focuses on us. But there is nothing that precludes intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. It would be extremely arrogant to limit God's creativity to 7

Paul Davies, “E.T. and God: Could earthly religions survive the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe?” The Atlantic Monthly, September 2003. 8 David Wilkinson, “Missionaries to Mars? The religious implications of the search for life in the Universe,” The Plain Truth, Apr-May 2004; available from http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1711.htm. 9 Quoted in Tanzella-Nitti.

human beings as the only contemplative creatures in the universe.”10 God’s creative freedom is linked with our understanding of God’s omnipotence. This can be stated in the form of a truism: God is omnipotent, therefore God can create anything. Therefore, because of God’s omnipotent will and unfathomable freedom, we must not preclude outright the possibility that there can exist a plurality of life-bearing worlds. However, an important caveat: the fact that God is omnipotent and can create anything does not mean that God must create extraterrestrial life, any more than He is required to create unicorns, dragons, and fairies. Non-intelligent, non-“image bearing” extraterrestrial life seems to pose no problem to Christian theology, no more than the discovery of previously unknown life around deep sea vents or bacteria buried miles within the Earth’s crust. The clear fact that God has created our planet with an abundance of non-human life exemplifies His creative extravagance, and the discovery of life on other planets “would simply be yet more of the tapestry of creation,” in the words of Wilkinson. Evidence of life on other planets would not detract from the possibility that God created the universe and designed it for life, just as the billions of species living on Earth do not rule out the conclusion that God created the world and everything in it. The discovery of nonterrestrial life forms would still testify to the extravagant creative ability of God, who delighted in creating billions of unique species on Earth, even creatures that have not yet been discovered, and even some that perhaps will never be seen by man. We can understand from this that the universe and all the creatures in it was not created for the sole benefit of man, but for God’s pleasure and to reveal His glory. Thus, if NASA announced the conclusive discovery of non-intelligent alien life on Mars, this should not result in much of a theological stir within the Christian community. On a scientific and philosophical level, the discovery of non-terrestrial life does not automatically mean that naturalistic evolution is true. The existence of many varied species of life on earth may be a necessary condition for belief that Darwinian evolution is true, but it is not necessary and sufficient evidence that naturalistic evolution is the only valid explanation. The existence of life on other planets is not sufficient to disprove the conclusion that God created the universe, for there is nothing in Scripture or Christian doctrine that precludes the further creative work of God outside the bounds of Earth. On the other hand, extraterrestrial life could be considered to be almost a necessary condition for belief in a non-theistic explanation of the origin of life. It would be hard for a naturalistic evolutionist to explain why conditions on Earth—out of all the possible stars and worlds in the universe—happened to be just right for life to emerge and develop. It seems to me almost necessary that evolutionists would have to believe that life is not uncommon and that natural laws caused life to emerge in many other places in the universe, else they would have to somehow come up with an explanation for the questions, “Why Earth? Why us?” Thus, the continuing lack of evidence of extraterrestrial life weighs in favor of a design explanation for why life exists on Earth. However, what of the possibility of intelligent alien life existing somewhere else in the universe? The addition of the factor of consciousness and self-awareness does lead to more difficult questions on issues such as redemption and salvation, the imago Dei, and our place in the universe. But there is a wide variety of Christian thinkers who do affirm the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrials in the universe. According to Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, Roman Catholic theologian and former president of the University of Notre Dame,

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Quoted in Joseph L. Spradley, “Religion and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 50 (September 1988); available from http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1998/PSCF9-98Spradley.html.

It is precisely because I believe theologically that there is a being called God, and that He is infinite in intelligence, freedom and power, that I cannot take it upon myself to limit what He might have done. Once He created the Big Bang... He could have envisioned it going in billions of directions as it evolved, including billions of life-forms and billions of kinds of intelligent beings.11 Nancey Murphy, in an article entitled “Jesus and Life on Mars,” states that it is “theologically conceivable that God's creative intentions should include the evolution of other life forms, wherever possible, with comparable intellectual and emotional capacities.”12 However, what does this possibility do to the biblical account of the Incarnation of God in the form of a human being on Earth? Three possibilities have been offered within Christian thought. First is the possibility that other civilizations have not fallen in sin and thus do not need atonement. Christian writer and apologist C.S. Lewis believes that our experience of the Incarnation on Earth need not necessarily be a universal experience. He argues that mankind’s need for atonement is real due to our fallen state, but that this might not be the case for other beings in the universe. We know that God has visited and redeemed His people, and that tells us just as much about the general character of the creation as a dose given to one sick hen on a big farm tells us about the general character of farming in England…. The doctrine of the Incarnation would conflict with what we know of this vast universe only if we knew also there were other rational species in it who had, like us, fallen, and who needed redemption in the same mode, and they had not been vouchsafed it. But we know of none of these things.13 But if these alien civilizations have fallen and do need atonement, the two possibilities are that either God has been incarnated in alien flesh in each place where this has been necessary, or that Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on Earth was a unique event that is somehow efficacious throughout the universe. The view that God may have been incarnated multiple times is tentatively suggested by Oxford philosopher and Anglican priest E.L. Mascall, who properly points out that this is a matter that we are almost completely ignorant about: “There are no conclusive theological reasons for rejecting the notion that, if there are, in some other part or parts of the universe than our own, rational corporeal beings who have sinned and are in need of redemption, for those beings and for their salvation the Son of God has united (or one day will unite) to his divine Person their nature, as he has united to it ours.”14 This view is also held by theologian Paul Tillich, who states that, “Man cannot claim to occupy the only possible place for Incarnation.”15 Mascall argues that the significance of the Incarnation is the hypostatic union of God and the people that He has come to redeem, and thus when the Son of God was made man, he became the Savior of man, but not of other non-human beings. Thus, he sees “no fundamental reason why,

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Ibid. Nancey Murphy, "Jesus and Life on Mars," Christian Century 113 (October 30, 1996), 1028. 13 C. S. Lewis, “Dogma and the Universe,” in The Grand Miracle and Other Essays on Theology and Ethics from God in the Dock, ed. by W. Hooper (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990), p. 14. 14 E. L. Mascall, Christian Theology and Natural Science (New York: Ronald Press, 1956), 39; quoted in Spradley. 15 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 96; quoted in Spradley. 12

in addition to human nature being hypostatically united to the Person of the divine Word, other finite rational natures should not be united to that Person too.”16 But this view seems abhorrent to some Christians, including Oxford Cosmologist E.A. Milne, who asks, “Was [the Incarnation] a unique event, or has it been re-enacted on each of a countless number of planets? The Christian would recoil in horror from such a conclusion. We cannot imagine the Son of God suffering vicariously on each of a myriad of planets.”17 Milne holds that the Incarnation was a unique cosmic event, and suggests the possibility of interstellar radio evangelism to share the gospel message to intelligent beings beyond Earth. Instead of the Far East Broadcasting Company, we would have the Far Outer Spiral Arm Broadcasting Company. Though the idea of a galactic gospel broadcast station sounds a bit preposterous, the thought of a multiplicity of Incarnations throughout the universe and the repeated sacrificial atonement of the Son of God seems to slide away from biblical revelation. The Bible does seem to establish that Christ’s atonement was a one-time event, not just here on Earth, but for all time. As it says in Hebrews 5:25-28: Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. Though the question remains of how Christ’s death here on Earth can be efficacious to fallen creatures on other worlds, I believe that suggestions of multiple atonements would damage too greatly the centrality of Christ within Christian belief. In the words of Catholic theologian Tanzella-Nitti, “A universe where… many possible incarnations of the Word were possible, would no longer be a Christocentric universe.”18 To be faithful to what has been revealed through Scripture, Tanzella-Nitti maintains that Christians must “continue to believe that the incarnation of the Word constitutes the greatest selfcommunication of God to creation, it means to consider the greatness of such communication also against the background of all other possible creatures, and finally it means, for us humans, to assume the corresponding responsibility.”19 The importance of the Incarnation is cosmic and universal in reach, and not restricted to geocentric or anthropological terms. The most analogous situation to this position, in my opinion, is the issue of how the Christian gospel applies to unreached people groups in this world. The Incarnation was a very specific historical event in human history. Jesus was born as a Jew and not another race. He was crucified in Jerusalem at a certain moment in history and not in any other location or period in history. The spreading of the gospel message about Christ has been through the medium of missionaries who are limited in their means of reaching all peoples living on Earth. How the limited scope of human evangelism fits with the implied global efficacy of Christ’s atonement and God’s justice is a mystery, and the inclusion of the possibility of extraterrestrial beings simply expands the scope of this mystery. Again referring to Tanzella-Nitti, “As it happens in the Earth’s salvific economy, the Spirit would again lead to the Son and would render him in some way 16

Mascall. E. A. Milne, Modern Cosmology and the Chrisian Idea of God (Oxford University Press, 1952), 153; quoted in Spradley. 18 Tanzella-Nitti. 19 Ibid. 17

present. And all that having the logical conviction that the Creator has in each place his own inimitable ways to make himself recognizable, and perhaps also to make himself present within his creatures.”20 His conclusion: We must be open to the fact that the Holy Spirit can bring about the universal efficacy of Jesus’ earthly Incarnation and atonement. It is my hope that this essay shows that Christian thought can be open to the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe. The implications that alien civilizations can have regarding the core Christian doctrines of our significance in the universe and the Incarnation of Christ can be resolved in a way that is consistent with what has been revealed through Scripture. Based on what we know about the universe and the lack of any evidence otherwise from SETI, it is perfectly rational to continue to hold that human beings are God’s unique created intelligent creatures in the universe. However, if one day we do establish contact with another of God’s creations, we can be ready to accept a fellow cosmological sibling in the awesome universe that God has placed us in. References Conner, Sam, Guillermo Gonzalez, and Hugh Ross. “A Spectrum of Views on ETI.” Reasons to Believe: Facts and Faith (2nd Quarter, 1998). Available from http://www.reasons.org/resources/faf/ 98q2faf/98q2awsi.shtml. Davies, Paul. “E.T. and God: Could earthly religions survive the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe?” The Atlantic Monthly (September 2003). Available from http://www.ufoevidence.org/ documents/doc1689.htm. Heeren, Fred. “Home Alone in the Universe?” First Things 121 (March 2002). Available from http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0203/articles/heeren.html. Lewis, C. S. “Dogma and the Universe.” in The Grand Miracle and Other Essays on Theology and Ethics from God in the Dock, ed. by W. Hooper (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990). Murphy, Nancey. “Jesus and Life on Mars.” Christian Century 113 (October 30, 1996). Spradley, Joseph L. “Religion and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 50 (September 1988). Available from http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/ 1998/PSCF9-98Spradley.html. Tanzella-Nitti, Giuseppe. “Extraterrestrial Life.” Interdisciplinary Encyclopaedia of Religion and Science. Trans. by Ruan Harding. Available from http://www.disf.org/en/Voci/65.asp. Wiker, Benjamin D. “Alien Ideas: Christianity and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life.” Crisis Magazine (November 2002). Available from http://www.crisismagazine.com/november2002/feature7.htm. Wilkinson, David. “Missionaries to Mars? The religious implications of the search for life in the Universe.” The Plain Truth, Apr-May 2004. Available from http://www.ufoevidence.org/ documents/doc1711.htm.

20

Ibid.