Feature
1 July 2024
In 2021, the Ethos Institute published an article by its resident theologian, Dr Roland Chia, titled Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life (ETI): Some Theological Reflections (https://ethosinstitute.sg/extraterrestrial-intelligent-life/). In 2023, the Methodist Church in Singapore hosted the astrophysicist-theologian Rev Dr David Wilkinson, as he gave a set of lectures titled Star Wars, Star Trek & Exoplanets: The Search for God in a World of Aliens. (The recordings are at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkGbMAsKJ9A and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0tx4XqTT5M). These recent reflections cover substantial theological ground and invite Singaporean Christian audiences to tune in to an ongoing theological conversation in the field known as exo-theology or astro-theology.
This present article joins the conversation from a slightly different angle. We will start with neither theology nor science, but with science-fiction—in particular, those narratives which feature encounters between terrestrial humans and extraterrestrial intelligences. With as few spoilers as possible, we will be drawn into these imagined scenes of human-alien encounters, and from those scenes draw forth theological insights. We will observe how imagining human-extraterrestrial interactions can have a meaningful impact on our humanity, and how such conceptual explorations can stimulate theological reflection.
Omniscience and Providence
We begin with Ted Chiang’s award-winning short story, Story of Your Life, which was adapted into the feature film Arrival, starring Amy Adams. (I have not caught the film, so I make no comments on whether the page or screen does better here.) The premise is typical: extraterrestrial intelligent life shows up and attempts to communicate. But their language is vastly different, particularly in its treatment of time.
We humans are utterly bound and constrained by linear time. Temporality is deeply embedded in our human psyche and in our various human languages; the alien language has none of these. How does one understand, much less communicate with, an extraterrestrial intelligence which understands time so differently?
Theologically, God is such an intelligent life-form who is unconstrained by time, who embodies concepts as eternity, omnipresence, and omniscience—concepts that we finite humans strain to grasp. Story of Your Life chastens its reader to approach the millennia-old debate about determinism and free will with humility and circumspection.
With a space-faring Jesuit priest as its protagonist, Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow also dives headlong into questions about the role of divine orchestration, superintendence, or guidance throughout various triumphs and tragedies. Indeed, the novel’s title is a reference to Matthew 10:29, and its plot provides a thought-provoking angle to this pithy saying of Jesus. The Sparrow’s reader is reminded of the biblical character Job, and is confronted with the awareness that divine providence is at times surprising, or even painfully insensible to the finite human mind. Again, humility is much needed in theological reflection on omniscience and omnipotence, on providence and pain.
Beauty as a Universal (Divine) Value
In The Sparrow, human-alien contact arises not from a desire for conquest, for access to valuable resources, for expansion of the human race, or even out of mere human curiosity. Rather, the longing for extraterrestrial contact is undergirded by a quest for Beauty, specifically a piece of music radiating from a distant planet. This is not physical attractiveness, but Beauty in its abstract sense of sublimity, harmony, and elegance. Some strands of contemporary Christian thinking reflect on and appeal to the triad of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. (See, for instance, C. S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, edited by David Baggett, Gary Habermas, & Jerry Walls). And rightly so, in my view.
Yet, by novel’s end, both the protagonist and reader of The Sparrow discover that the object of this quest is much different from what was originally anticipated. The reader is forced to reconsider the very nature of Beauty, and the extent to which this so-called ‘transcendental’ is conditioned by finite human perspectives and proclivities. Or, put more simply: if Beauty is a gift from God, but an alien civilisation has a vastly different conception of Beauty, what does this imply for the universality of Beauty and of Beauty’s relation to God?
Heaven-like Utopias – and what to do with them
Relatedly, imagine an alien civilisation where Beauty, Truth, and Goodness are found in full measure. In C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra, we are presented with such an extraterrestrial utopia, a society which is—to use Christian language—without sin. At one level, this forces us to reflect theologically on the pervasiveness and power of human sinfulness: Would human contact with a perfect alien culture in fact result in its corruption; its “Fall” as it were?
At another level, one might question whether it is even possible that such a utopia exists. James Blish’s A Case of Conscience considers whether a perfectly Arcadian extraterrestrial race is a creation of God or of the Devil. And if the latter, how should this be dealt with by the Church? Would an exorcism be in order and, if so, what would such an exorcism look like? Perhaps more importantly, how would this perfect alien society perceive such an attempt?
Meeting of Minds and the Might of Meaning(s)
Another award-winning work is Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. The cast of its eponymous box-office adaption includes Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, and Ben Kingsley. (In this particular case, the book far surpasses the film.) In this novel and its sequels, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, various extraterrestrial species are encountered. In each encounter, the potential arises to demonstrate power—the power of physical violence, as well as the power of the communication of meaning.
The reader of Ender’s Game quickly observes a relatively prosaic fact: Violence often results from poor communication. And conversely, that effective communication and the genuine sharing of meaning often (not always) help avoid violence. This is, of course, of theological significance for Christians who view ourselves as followers of the Prince of Peace, and who are called to be peacemakers (Matt 5:9).
At the same time, the series also drives reflection upon a dilemma: It is indeed good that we are “of the same mind” (Phil 2:2), but would it still be quite as good if each of our individual minds are literally shared with and subordinated to another (the Formics in Ender’s Game), or if our minds were inescapably controlled by the divine (the Godspoken in Xenocide)?
The Ender’s Game series also depicts the power of meaning. The human-extraterrestrial interactions on the planet Lusitania artfully illustrate how apparent acts of violence and death can convey very diverse and even antithetical meaning(s) in different cultures. For sure, generations of thoughtful cross-cultural missionaries have reflected on differences in cultural values and valences. Yet, encountering in Speaker for the Dead the deaths of several key characters and other characters’ response thereto, the reader is both saddened by the depth of miscommunication, and surprised by the true meaning attached to those deaths.
These extraterrestrial encounters find a theological parallel on this our present terrestrial ball, in that Jesus’ crucifixion is not always apprehended as good news. (The careful reader of Scripture will observe this truth even among the earliest disciples and onlookers.) One reflects upon how Jesus’ death has been interpreted by some as the greatest sacrifice known to humankind, but by others as horrendous divine child abuse. There is theological meaning in violence and death, even great and powerful meaning. Yet Speaker for the Dead reminds us that such meaning is not a universal given, but must be carefully communicated.
The Human Power to Delimit, and the Limits of Human Powers
There is great might in meaning, and there is power in communication. However, as these various novels reveal, the meeting of minds and the act of communication is fraught with difficulty.
In Solaris and The Invincible, the Polish novelist Stanislaw Lem presents the reader with alien beings that are in some ways uncannily familiar, yet in other ways extremely foreign. Through his deliberate non-anthropomorphic depiction of extraterrestrial intelligence, Lem forces the reader to reflect on our human expectations and biases. When can one conclude that understanding and communicating with a particular species of extraterrestrial life is simply impossible? Which other beings are capable of meaningful communication? And which are worth our attempts at communication? In other words, where are the limits?
The Ender’s Game series goes further to formalise this question, by delimiting categories. Raman is the category of sentient aliens with which mutual communication is possible, while Varelse are extraterrestrials with which no meaningful communication can occur. This seems a reasonable and logical taxonomy, a distinction in categories that is arguably needful in interactions with different species of extraterrestrial life. Still, the reader’s thoughts are provoked by these words:
The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have. (Speaker for the Dead)
The Bible affirms that we human beings, created in God’s image, have been given great power to name the animals (Gen 2:19-20). We, finite creatures ourselves, are gifted with the capacity to put labels upon the created universe. We have power to place things in categories, to delimit one from another.
Yet, one also thinks quickly to our own terrestrial discoveries, that of the so-called New World and its unfamiliar inhabitants. How many limits were wrongly and badly placed, when those trans-Atlantic explorers failed to properly delimit native peoples as full human beings, worthy of equal honour, care, and love? What terrible things happen when we humans get the labels wrong, when we perceive the created world differently than its Creator intended?
Finally, Lem’s somewhat dense novel, His Master’s Voice, describes humanity’s abject failure at decoding a supposed extraterrestrial signal. The various responses to such a disappointing result tell us more about ourselves than about extraterrestrials. The reader is led to confront the depressing possibility that humanity is too simple, too primitive—too limited—to grasp the message from beyond.
Yet this leads also to theological reflection on divine accommodation. God, the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent Creator of the Universe, condescends himself to our human level, in order that we might even begin to apprehend and communicate with him. The infinite God communicates with us via our limited human language, through our limited human concepts and metaphors, and ultimately takes on bounded human flesh in the Incarnation. God knows our limits better than we do, yet he does not allow these to limit his communication to us. This is grace. And, theologically, this is what every finite human in fact needs.
Conclusion
We have considered but a few pinpoints of starlight in a vast galaxy of science-fiction writings. Still, even this small sampling of imagined human-extraterrestrial encounters has forced us to confront our place as finite creatures before an infinite Creator, and to consider with humility our attempts at communicating meaning to and with others. May our ongoing imagining of extraterrestrial interactions continue to abet and even invigorate our theological reflection.
The views in this article are entirely the author’s own and do not represent the official position of the Trinity Annual Conference or the Methodist Church of Singapore.
Rev Gilbert Lok is a minister of the Trinity Annual Conference (TRAC) of The Methodist Church in Singapore, and currently pastors at Barker Road Methodist Church.