douglas.hayworth@perbio.com wrote:
>
> "Therefore it must not be imagined that Christ died and was resurrected
> more
> often, nor must it be thought that in any other world without the knowledge
> of the Son of God, that men would be restored to eternal life."
>
> I take this objection quite seriously, as I do the theological (not the
> scientific) objections to evolution that YECs make. I do think this is up
> to God, whether or not to make other creatures in communion with God, and
> whether or not to redeem them if necessary. This does seem to be a case of
> idolatrous reason erecting a doctrine that goes well past the Bible. But
> I'd like to hear from George Murphy (and anyone else) on this one.
>
> My Reply:
>
> If C.S. Lewis's Narnia and Space Trilogy books are any indication of his
> general views on this point, one would have to admit that he did not have a
> problem with the notion that God might repeat redemptive acts and other
> form of communication with other realms of his creation. I doubt that he
> would have written these stories if he had a major hangup with this
> possibility.
In response to Ted's request I'm including here an article of mine that was
published 7 years ago in _Works_ (6.1,2, 1, 1997), at that time the newsletter of the
ELCA religion-science work group, in the wake of the claimed discovery of fossil
"bacteria" from Mars. That's old news now but I don't think that invalidates any of my
theological reflections. The question of the salvation of ETs is addressed in the last
~1/3 of the paper.
It's true that Lewis didn't have a problem with the idea of ETs & even envisions
new redemptive acts of God to save them. But even in the novels that remains
speculation because the actual "salvation" of Perelandra (i.e., what keeps the
Perelandrans from sinning) is brought about by a terrestrial Christian & thus is
grounded in the work of Christ on earth. & it may be that in fact this is how the work
of Christ would be made effective in general to other species - cf. Eph.3:10 (with some
demythologizing!) In another place (I can't recall where just now) Lewis expresses
reservations about the idea of multiple incarnations & (as he puts it) a line of species
waiting for their turn to be saved.
Shalom,
George
MARS NEEDS THEOLOGIANS
"Mars Needs Women" was the title of an old Grade-B sci-fi movie whose major
premise has now been put to rest. There is no intelligent life on Mars now, whether or
not well-supplied with mates! But the claim made a year ago by McKay et al. of evidence
for microscopic life- forms on Mars in the distant past still raised a tremendous amount
of interest, both in the scientific community and among the general public. This
interest was fired again by the success of the recent Pathfinder mission to Mars. The
existence of life at one time on Mars may have been confirmed - or may have bitten the
dust - before this can appear in print. But even a finding that life never developed on
the Red Planet will certainly not be the last word on extraterrestrial life.
There are some major issues involved here, and theologians ought to give them a
bit more attention than they have in the past. News about Mars of course has prompted
journalists to get comments from representatives of various religious communities about
its implications. Most of the responses have been to the effect that "there's nothing
here contrary to our beliefs." Fine, but there's quite a distance between that and
careful attempts to understand a scientific discovery within the framework of one's
religious beliefs. Whether or not the most recent claim holds up, it should prompt
theologians to some reflection on the implications of a genuine discovery of life beyond
the earth. At least three issues deserve attention.
First, there is the question of what we mean by "life." It is notoriously
difficult for scientists to give a definition which is reasonably specific yet does not
omit any systems that we want to call "living." You can start a debate among some
biologists by asking whether or not viruses are alive. This uncertainty could pose
problems for identification of extraterrestrial life, but in practice we follow the old
rule, "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck." If things that
used to exist on some planet looked like terrestrial bacteria and metabolized like
bacteria, then they were bacteria, and thus alive. That's fairly crude, but it keeps us
from wasting time arguing about words.
The word "life" is also used extensively in theological settings. God is "the
living God," and the Holy Spirit is "the Lord and giver of life." It might help us to
ask more explicitly than we usually do what we mean theologically when we say that God
is "living." Such basic reflection might be helpful if and when we encounter other
systems which are putatively "alive". These could include extraterrestrials, but it is
also conceivable that work on artificial intelligence and robotics could result in
artificial systems for which claims of "intelligent life" could be made. What then
would be the theological and ethical status of such systems? (Some Christians think
that it is necessary to deny the possibility of artificial intelligence on religious
grounds, but I don't think that a very strong case can be made for that position.)
The second point to consider is less abstract. We know, of course, that life
(however we define it) has come into being on earth. How did this happen? Considerable
research has been done in the past decades on the possibilities for chemical evolution,
the development of the first living things from non-living chemicals. We are still far
from a scientific solution to this "origin of life" problem, which involves some
fundamental difficulties. Writers who suggest that only some details remain to be
worked out are simply misleading people. (Such statements remind me of Pauli's comment
on Heisenberg's optimistic claims for his non-linear field equation: Under a blank
square Pauli wrote, "I can paint like Titian. Only the details are missing!")
Since the origin of life problem is far from scientific solution, and since at
present we know of only one planet on which life exists, there is some plausibility to
arguments that God must have intervened in a miraculous way which the laws of physics
cannot describe in order to bring life into being. There is no theological compulsion
to make such an argument. It is quite consistent with classical doctrines of providence
to believe that God brought life into being in the past as God brings new living things
into the world today, by working through natural processes, and I certainly think that
this is the preferable view. But in our present state of ignorance we should not be
dogmatic about it.
Things would be changed significantly if we were to find that life exists or has
existed on other planets. We still might not know how chemical evolution took place,
but the argument that it did take place would be greatly strengthened: Two is a much
larger statistical sample than one! (In fact, such a discovery would give new impetus
to work on chemical evolution.) A person could still argue that God miraculously
created life separately on two, or three, or a hundred, planets, but this kind of
multiplication of miracles is clumsy. C.S. Lewis' dictum of literary criticism, "One
magician is better than two magicians", should be kept in mind.
So the discovery of extraterrestrial life would have theological value even if
such life never got past the stage of single celled organisms. But if intelligent life
has evolved beyond the earth, we are faced with new types of questions. It is this
third area to which most of the religious response to the claims about life on Mars have
been directed. The basic theological questions that must to be asked have to do with
the relationship between other intelligent species and Christ, who is spoken of in the
New Testament as the one in whom God's whole purpose for the universe is focussed.
These questions have been addressed in the past (e.g., by Ted Peters in an essay in the
Summer 1994 CTNS Bulletin), but the issues are fundamental enough to deserve ongoing
discussion.
Extraterrestrial life need pose no problems for the doctrine of creation.
(James Blish did, however, make interesting use of the Manichean heresy in his 1958
sci-fi novel A Case of Conscience.) God could have created other intelligent species.
The major theological issues that have to be confronted arise from Christian claims
about the Incarnation. In the Christ hymn of Colossians 1, it is the incarnate Christ
for whom all things were created. This implies that in some sense the entire universe
finds its fulfillment in God embodied in the terrestrial species homo sapiens.
I did not refer to salvation in the previous paragraph. Questions about the
role of Christ for extraterrestrials have sometimes been avoided by saying that
inhabitants of other planets may not have fallen, and therefore don't need a savior.
(That is, e.g., the tack taken by Lewis in his "space trilogy.") Maybe not, though our
evolutionary picture of human evolution makes it seem likely that sin, while not
"necessary", is "inevitable" (R. Niebuhr). Films like Independence Day remind us that
other species might be at least as sinful as ours. But if we take Ephesians and
Colossians seriously, if divine embodiment was God's purpose even apart from sin, then
the questions raised by the Incarnation remain.
The possibility of multiple incarnations has been discussed. This would be a
bit like the Hindu avatar concept, but in different parts of the universe. We might be
able to formulate such an idea adequately, but there is a danger of losing the permanent
commitment of God to each species which is implied by the classical doctrine of the
Incarnation. How is God's personal identification with terrestrial life maintained when
the Logos "moves on" to Tau Ceti 4?
Some Christians would be content in this context to emphasize the divine Word
apart from incarnation, an "unfleshed Logos" (logos asarkos). This is sometimes
suggested in discussions of the relationship between Christianity and other terrestrial
religions, and in fact goes back to Justin Martyr in the second century. It seems much
easier to think of organic beings throughout the universe being related to the unfleshed
Logos than to Jesus of Nazareth. But such an emphasis is especially problematic for
Lutheran theology, which has traditionally insisted that there is no divine Word
"outside" Jesus. In particular, there is no cross without the flesh of Christ.
But it should also be remembered that the Lutheran tradition has taught that the
humanity of Christ is so united with the divine nature as to share in its omnipresence.
This idea, which in the past has seemed so strange to other Christians (and undoubtedly
to some Lutherans), may look less bizarre today in the light of quantum theory. This is
due to the non-locality - Einstein's "spooky action at a distance" - which the theory
seems to require. The fact that systems which have once interacted may remain
"entangled" even when separated by great intervals of space and time provides one way of
thinking about the communication to a physical system of the divine omnipresence.
Clearly many questions and answers remain to be discussed. My purpose here has
been to highlight a few important issues raised by the possibility of extraterrestrial
life and to encourage further wrestling with them. As I said, Mars needs theologians.
George L. Murphy
St. Mark Lutheran Church
Tallmadge OH 44278
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Thu Mar 4 15:57:23 2004
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Mar 04 2004 - 15:57:24 EST