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.

C. S. Lewis, Exoplanets, and the Gospel

I'm continuing to write on the upcoming book, tentatively entitled, Negotiating Science and Religion in America: Past, Present, and Future. Here's another excerpt.

The discovery of exoplanets (that is, planets beyond our own solar system) has substantially expanded in our time. Some assert that this means the sudden death of the Christian scheme of salvation since, according to the biblical texts, Jesus came to save this world or kosmos (such as in John 3:16) and since the cosmos, in the biblical view, was vanishingly small compared to our current understanding. 

In some ways, the logic is disastrously circular—the known world of the biblical times was small, and so why should we assume that the texts would address a gigantic universe of the 21^stcentury? 

Before this recent explosion of information about life outside our solar system, even as early as the 1950s, C. S. Lewis took on these claims in his 1958 essay, “Religion and Rocketry.” (Lewis himself was an avid amateur astronomer, who mounted a telescope on the balcony of his bedroom at his home near Oxford, The Kilns.) Lewis addressed Fred Hoyle’s claims in an essay, “The Seeing Eye,” from February 1963. 

Hoyle, along with several other thinkers, asserted that life must have originated in many times and places, given the vast size of the universe. Referring to a series of broadcast talks that Hoyle had given in 1950 (later published as The Nature of the Universe), Hoyle argued against a Christian view of origins and the uniqueness of the Christian faith, based on the size of the universe. I hear similar arguments almost seventy years later from my students.

      

Lewis recalled that, as a child, he heard an almost antiphonal view of the cosmos.

When we were boys all astronomers, so far as I know, impressed upon us the antecedent improbabilities of life in any part of the universe whatever. It was not thought unlikely that this earth was the solitary exception to a universal reign of the inorganic. Now Professor Hoyle, and many with him, say that in so vast a universe life must have occurred in times and places without number. The interesting thing is that have heard both these estimates used against Christianity. 

Lewis then addresses what the Christian message might mean to these “hypothetical rational species," who might be good and not need redemption (as the fallen human race does). They might also be “strictly diabolical." To Lewis, it seems most likely that this species would contain both good and bad. He concludes that, like any missionary work, the Christian duty is to preach the Gospel, and then ends with this question, 

Would this spreading of the Gospel from earth, through man, imply a pre-eminence for earth and man? Not in any real sense. If a thing is to begin at all, it must begin in some particular time and place; and any time and pace raises the question: “Why then and just then?" One can conceive an extraterrestrial development of Christianity so brilliant that earth’s place in the story might sink to that of a prologue.

How do we evaluate this proposal?

I find it stunning that Lewis, this still visionary thinker, was already looking at perceiving the threat to the veracity of the Gospel and responding. And the question of exoplanets, and his response, are still relevant. I'll have more to say, I hope, as my book progresses... But on the way, why not listen to one of the greats?