Dabbling in Exotheology

Can the "image of God" survive in extraterrestrial life?

Scientists today generally assume, and the mathematical probabilities favor, the existence of intelligent life among the myriad planets wheeling through the cosmos. If that is so, what happens to the Creator-God who made man "in his own image," or to the Christian doctrine that this God took the extraordinary step of becoming man in order to redeem one species of bipedal beings on earth?

Major religious thinkers have yet to give serious attention to the issues posed by what some call "exotheology" (the theology of outer space). Perhaps they are waiting for the first UFOs to land, but more likely they suppose that ultimately the discovery of other beings makes no difference. Even if the visitors turned out to look like bug-eyed monsters or gelatinous blobs, such species might serve to enlarge the vision of the Creator's creativity. To theologians the "image of God," after all, does not refer to the type of body that characterizes Homo sapiens but to the intellect and spirit that reside therein.

No less orthodox an author than the late Cambridge Don C.S. Lewis was untroubled by the prospect of life elsewhere. Writing in the Christian Herald two decades ago, he saw no reason why the eternal Son of God could not also have been incarnate in other worlds, or why God could not devise a totally different form of redemption. Lewis also predicted that if life ever were found elsewhere, every one would find new arguments for beliefs they already held. Something like that seems to be happening among the few religious writers who are addressing the implications of life Out There. Among the current theories--some of them, appropriately enough, far out:

God as Astronaut. With cosmic enthusiasm, the Rev. Jack A. Jennings, Presbyterian chaplain at Montana State University, argues that contact with other forms of intelligent life "could turn out to be the most exciting story of the ages." Writing in the liberal Christian Century, Jennings says that if extraterrestrial life forms prove able to reach us, we might need to differentiate between the "great God of the Universe" and the God of Abraham and Moses, who might have been "simply a spaceman-become-a-tribal-deity." Wildly, he also proposes that some sort of primordial "genetics experiment" could have created Jesus Christ with his unique religious insight.

Benign Reminders. The Rev. Ted Peters, a Lutheran who teaches religion at Loyola University, New Orleans, has assiduously collected many supposed messages from space visitors reported by earthlings. In his recent book UFOs: God's Chariots? (John Knox; $7.95), Peters notes that most of these agree with the love-thy-neighbor teachings of the Bible (e.g., "Thou shalt not kill"). Whether UFOs exist or not, Peters argues, God may be using UFO "experiences" to communicate benign reminders to earthlings. Peters makes a more credible case when he suggests that people's UFO accounts reflect their sublimated religious longings. Many writers point out that Western man had no sooner freed himself from the holy mysteries than he became enraptured by accounts of space visitations. Ads for the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind intone WE ARE NOT ALONE.

Dangerous Illusions. All of which concerns the Rev. Harold O.J. Brown, a sci-fi buff and conservative theologian at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois. The film, he says in a Christianity Today review, offers the dangerous illusion "that somewhere out there are unknown but benevolent powers that will ultimately cause everything to turn out all right." That, complains Brown, entirely bypasses God's judgment upon sin and Christ's incarnation to save man. To him, the film is bad science fiction, used to convey "the contentless mysticism that is so popular in a skeptical but still deeply credulous and spiritualistic age."

Cosmic Quarantine. C.S. Lewis theorized that perhaps other intelligent races never have known evil and that the vast distances in the universe might be "God's quarantine precautions" to "prevent the spiritual infection" of fallen mankind from spreading. David Fetcho of the cult-fighting Spiritual Counterfeits Project in Berkeley, Calif., has developed similar ideas. He insists in the S.C.P. Journal that it is unlikely that an "unfallen" race would visit earth. The reason: God would not want to contaminate the visitors with sin. Moreover, they could teach us nothing that God has not already said in the Bible. If races are "fallen," he reasons, they would lack the supertechnology to span the light years and make contact with each other. But Fetcho suspects that we probably are alone. To him, the Bible seems to indicate that the entire universe fell with Adam and Eve and that its redemption is connected with the work of Jesus Christ. For instance, Romans 8: 19-23 ("... we know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now"). Perhaps, Fetcho proposes, the UFOs are real but are not visits by space beings--they are, rather, caused by "extradimensionals," that is, demons.

Strange stuff. But then, as Presbyterian Jennings says, where UFO speculations are concerned, "the sky might as well be the limit." If the radio discs on earth ever do pick up coherent beep-beeps from another form of life, or the spaceships ever do land, however, the theologians may be forced to consider in systematic earnest the Psalmist's ancient question: "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?"

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