ETs and the Incarnation (with Insights from C. S. Lewis)

I wrote this week's eSTEAM, online newsletter, on whether the existence of extraterrestrials would invalidate our teaching of the Incarnation, that is, that God became human.

(If you want to subscribe to eSTEAM, by the way, you can do that here.)

This post complements  C. S. Lewis and ETs from three weeks ago. Here's a lightly edited excerpt from this week's eSTEAM...

Does the possible existence of ETs invalidate the Incarnation? 

Some assert that the discovery of other planets and the possibility of extraterrestrial life (ETs) mean the sudden death of the Christian scheme of salvation since, according to the biblical texts, God came in the unique person of Jesus to save this world or kosmos (John 3:16).

In his 1958 essay, “Religion and Rocketry” (originally titled, by the way, “Will We Lose God in Outer Space?”), C. S. Lewis took on the great Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle’s claim that the vastness of the universe makes the Christian teaching of Earth's special place in God's work of salvation essentially silly. 

As a scholar of history, Lewis steps back and cools down the argument’s heat:

"When the popular hubbub has subsided and the novelty has been chewed over by real theologians, real scientists and real philosophers, both sides find themselves pretty much where they were before. So it was with Copernican astronomy, with Darwinism, with Biblical Criticism…." C. S. Lewis (or Clive Staples Lewis, aka "St. Clive")

St. Clive then focuses, addressing Hoyle's assertion: this is about the Incarnation:

“If we find ourselves to be one among a million races, scattered through a million spheres, how can we, without absurd arrogance, believe ourselves to be uniquely favored?” C. S. Lewis

What might the existence of an extraterrestrial “hypothetical rational species” mean for Christian message? Lewis, an avid amateur astronomer, who mounted a telescope on the balcony of his bedroom at his home near Oxford, The Kilns, worked out answers more thoroughly in his three-part Space Trilogy. 

There and in this essay, he concluded that a good God could have created life on other planets—no problem with that—but we have no reason to assume that they are fallen. Human beings need redemption because we’ve sinned. This also implies that the great distances of the universe might be an act of grace. 

“I have wondered before now whether the vast astronomical distances may not be God’s quarantine precautions. They prevent the spiritual infection of a fallen species from spreading.” C. S. Lewis

Moving to a close, he refers to Augustine, who pondered the theological implications of the creatures whose existence was bandied about in the fourth and fifth centuries: “satyrs, monopods, and other semi-human creators. He decided it could wait till we knew there were any. So can this” (meaning the existence of ETs).

Lewis then takes this in an unexpected direction. Ultimately, the lesson is not the particulars of any discovery, scientific or otherwise, that would irrevocably validate or invalidate our faith. 

“Christians and their opponents again and again expect that some new discovery will either turn matters of faith into matters of knowledge or else reduce them to patent absurdities. But that has never happened.” C. S. Lewis

And so St. Clive directs us back to trusting in the goodness of our Creator, perhaps looking up at the stars and planets God has made and wondering whether there are other creatures looking at us, and who might be also looking to the gracious God and Creator in faith.