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Friday, January 31, 2020

Did Jesus die for Klingons?

Christian Weidemann argues:

Every major religion on Earth could easily accommodate the discovery of (intelligent) alien life, with one exception: Christianity.

...Now imagine the universe is teeming with other intelligent civilizations. What is a Christian believer supposed to say? Claiming that Christ died only for us, while the rest of the universe is screwed, would be incompatible with God’s love. If, however, earthly Jesus died for the whole universe, myriads of extraterrestrial sinners included, we would have to accept a geocentrism even more preposterous than the spatial variant. Neither is there a way out by suggesting that other intelligent species may not have been “fallen.” This proposal amounts to a negative human exceptionalism that is totally unbelievable, given that alien species are subject to the same general evolutionary mechanisms as we are. Natural selection favours “selfish” traits.

What about multiple incarnations? Here another difficulty of traditional Christian doctrine comes into play: Christ has two natures—he is “truly God and truly man.” But how are members of completely different biological species (“truly man” and “truly Klingon,” let’s say) supposed to stand in a relationship of personal identity? Even worse, if the number of sinful species in the universe exceeds a certain threshold, God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously. However, no single person who is an embodied being with a finite nature, i.e. a “truly” biological organism, can be more than one such being at the same time. If, on the other hand, the incarnations were not personally identical, many different persons with a divine nature would result—too many even for a Christian. Finally: May extraterrestrial sinners have been reconciled to God by means different from a divine incarnation? Perhaps, but even if the Christian believer concedes alternative means of salvation she is stuck with the highly implausible geocentric claim that the incarnation, i.e. one of the most remarkable events in the history of the cosmos, happens just 2000 years ago on our planet, although myriads of other inhabited planets were also available.

Therefore, I conclude, the traditional Christian believer can’t make theological sense of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

(Source)

1. And this is from a lecturer in Protestant theology! With "friends" like these...

2. Why isn't it possible for Christ to have died "only" for humans? Suppose intelligent aliens exist, but suppose they likewise rebelled against God. So they're fallen too. In that case, why should God's "love" extend to rebels? What about God's justice? Is it "incompatible with God's love" if God doesn't rescue Satan and the fallen angels?

3. Is it "preposterous" if an "earthly Jesus" died for other extraterrestrials? What if other extraterrestrials in the universe are also human?

4. Weidemann assumes evolutionary mechanisms shape our morality, but that's highly contentious. He'd have to mount a case for this for a start.

Besides, just because an act is "selfish" doesn't necessarily mean it's sinful. It's selfish for me to walk on the beach alone when I could be having a conversation with a friend, but it's not necessarily sinful for me to do so.

In theory it's possible aliens could have evolutionarily "selfish traits". Such as caring more about themselves than other aliens. But that's not necessarily sinful. Just like it's possible humans might care more about other humans than other animals, but still care for other animals.

5. The multiple incarnations dilemma is an interesting one. Granted, I'm no philosopher or theologian, but I'll try to take a stab at this:

a. For one thing, why assume "God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously"? Why couldn't God incarnate himself sequentially?

b. What's more, even if the Son of God incarnated himself simultaneously, I don't see how this would be problematic if, as most traditional Christians believe, God is outside spacetime. Why couldn't a timeless God have multiple instances of himself at multiple points in the spacetime continuum? Take the fiction of C. S. Lewis. Lewis wrote about Aslan in Narnia as well as Maleldil in Perelandra. We know Lewis meant both to be the Son of God. I envision Narnia and Perelandra sort of (not quite) paralleling other worlds. (Indeed, consider whether God the Son could have become incarnate in parallel universes rather than other worlds within the same universe.)

c. I assume some form of Cartesian dualism is true. If so, then it's possible for humans to become disembodied. Our souls can be decoupled from our bodies (at death). We live on despite the death of our physical bodies. Meanwhile our corpses rot away; they become dust and ashes. At the same time, God promises his people new bodies in the world to come. As such, it's possible for our souls to inhabit more than one body. (As an aside, this likewise calls to mind scifi shows like Altered Carbon where people have their minds uploaded to a cloud, then downloaded to various bodies.)

Why couldn't something like this be true of the Son of God too? However an objection might be humans cannot possess more than one body at the same time. Perhaps a response could be that that's not necessarily the case for the Son of God. For one thing, he is omnipresent, unlike humans.

d. As far as the issue of identity, was the Son of God's pre-resurrection body identical to his post-resurrection body, given his pre-resurrection body died and deteriorated?

e. Weidemann floats the rejoinder that the salvation of extraterrestrials could have occurred with "alternative means of salvation" absent the incarnation (I agree). However, he immediately dismisses it because it means the Christian is "geocentric". However I don't see what's necessarily wrong with "geocentrism"? Why is it necessarily morally problematic for God to have saved Earthlings by having the incarnation (and crucifixion and resurrection)?

If anything, wouldn't the incarnation imply how far the moral rot in humans has spread that God the Son had to become flesh like us to save us rather than implying anything virtuous about humans? There's no room for pride in the criminal who had to have another pay for his crimes because he had no other options for restitution left to him.

16 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. "Claiming that Christ died only for us, while the rest of the universe is screwed, would be incompatible with God’s love." <-- As if Calvinism hasn't already addressed this on Earth itself.

    But more importantly, why would the rest of the universe be screwed (i.e., unable to be saved since they have no Jesus of their own) anyway? There are so many assumptions taken for granted and just smuggled in this entire argument.

    1) The Fall took place when a man in Eden sinned against God while in Eden. It applies specifically to men only, and specifically to those who existed where Eden was located--on a particular planet containing four specific rivers.

    2) All creation suffers from the this. Horses didn't sin against God, yet get turned into glue. Etc.

    3) Christ didn't die for the horses. That is incompatible with God's love! Why? "Shut up," he explained.

    4) But seriously why go off-planet to find examples where God didn't die for other intelligent life? Sure, not the same level of intelligence (other species are too smart to create Congressional oversight committees, after all). But Jesus didn't die for any of these creatures, despite them suffering due to the sinfulness of man.

    5) And why does Weidemann think intelligence is so important when he says "Now imagine the universe is teeming with other intelligent civilizations"? What if we instead imagined the universe is teeming with other horse civilizations? Would they be suffering under sin?

    6) Okay, fine. Let us suppose that other human-ish civilizations exist, where the universe is in fact teeming with them. Why would we assume that because humans sinned on Earth and therefore need a redeemer that these other human-ishes are under the curse of sin and therefore need a redeemer too? Angels are a close equivalent to men, insofar as we know they are moral agents and there are some who clearly fell. But when the angels sinned, their guilt was not transferred onto us. Nor did Adam's sin get applied to angels. Why, then, assume that any other intelligent life that exists would be in a state of sin whatsoever simply because we sinned? If only someone had explained how Adam and Christ functioned via federal headship, this whole convoluted Weidemann fantasy could have been nipped in the bud.

    7) "Even worse, if the number of sinful species in the universe exceeds a certain threshold, God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously." Interesting that he believes that level of depravity is possible. He must have visited Detroit.

    Regardless, there's still no mention of horse-Jesus in his view. Seriously, what does Weidemann have against horses?

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  3. > Every major religion on Earth could easily accommodate the discovery of (intelligent) alien life, with one exception: Christianity.

    If this sort of hypothetical ranks with the major problems we have to deal with, then thinks are looking pretty good.

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  4. Steve and others have already said most of what I was going to.

    //May extraterrestrial sinners have been reconciled to God by means different from a divine incarnation? //

    It was an in-house debate among both medieval theologians as well as post-Reformational puritans whether God could save sinners in some other way besides atonement. So, it shouldn't be automatically be dismissed.

    An objection that is more common but which Weidemann didn't specifically mention is that on some interpretations of the New Testament, Jesus could only be incarnated once [e.g. "once for all" Heb. 7:27; 9:12, 26; 10:10; cf. Heb. 1:3 "sat down"], and that it was only for humans [e.g. Heb. 2:16]. But those statements are made in a restricted and narrow context of human salvation. Without regard to every other possible form of sentient life. Yes, it's true that Heb. 2:16 does say that Jesus didn't die for angels. But that doesn't necessarily exclude other embodied agents. So, logically speaking, it's not impossible for Christ to have been incarnated multiple times and sacrificed multiple times.

    Moreover, there are various passages that Universalists use to support their view [e.g. Col. 1:15ff.] which could theoretically be used differently to imply that Jesus could have saved other embodied sentient agents, not only in this physical universe, but other physical universes in a possible multiverse, through His one/singular atonement in 1st century Palestine.

    Pointing out that the NT states Christ only died for humans, doesn't necessarily preclude the salvation of other embodied agents. For all we know, humans could be like the species that's analogous to head of a household. Paul said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household (Act. 16:31). So, the salvation of other sentient beings could be opened up to them by the salvation of at least some of humanity.

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    Replies
    1. "Steve and others have already said most of what I was going to."

      Are you referring to a previous post of Steve's? Which one? I'd be interested in reading it if you are.

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    2. I meant in this blogpost. Especially Steve and Peter's comments above.

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    3. Hm, I don't see any comments from Steve in this post? Am I missing something?

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    4. I probably should have said Steve's original post, instead of referring to his "comments". The latter suggested statements made in the combox. Which I didn't mean.

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    5. I’m not sure I follow, because I wrote this post, but Steve recently did do a (far better) post here:

      http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/02/did-jesus-die-for-little-green-men.html

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    6. //Claiming that Christ died only for us, while the rest of the universe is screwed, would be incompatible with God’s love. If, however, earthly Jesus died for the whole universe, myriads of extraterrestrial sinners included, we would have to accept a geocentrism even more preposterous than the spatial variant. //

      Re-reading the quotation of Weidemann above, I realize that my comments about the Universalistic passages actually was addressed by him. He just rejected the idea as a worse form of "geocentrism". But how is that not similar to an objection like Jesus couldn't be the savior of all of humanity if he specifically incarnated as a Jew and in Israel? So, physical location on earth [or in space] and race [or species] shouldn't necessarily matter. Especially since we're talking about an incarnation into space. By necessity it's going to be finite and localized. That is, if we're going to reject the idea of pantheistic [or maybe better panentheistic] incarnation. Otherwise it would involve multiple cases of Nestorianism whereby the 2nd person of the Trinity dwells in each embodied sentient being.

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    7. I didn't even realize you wrote the blogpost. I usually check who wrote the blogpost to prevent just this thing from happening. I apologize.

      In fact, for this very reason, one of my pet peeves is how many online blogs and articles don't require the author to be named at the top, and reserve it for the bottom.

      Unedited, here's a file of some of my pet peeves which I've jotted down quickly for the past few years without regard to punctuation. Since, I never intended anyone to read it other than myself. While it's not listed as first, my dislike of authors being named at the bottom instead of the top was probably the first thing I wrote down. My comments in brackets are my clarification for the readers of his combox comment:

      ////
      when authors begin their books with a puzzle you need to figure out with the clues and hints. If you mistake the hints, then you don't get the real story. Example books are by diane duane. The Wounded Sky and Spock's World

      when hangers are hanged with the hook pointing out.

      perfectly smooth knobs and dials on radio. make them into the shape of a decagon (10 sided) or hexagon (six sided) or Icosagon (20 sided). function before beeauty. save plastic? then make the knob smaller. maybe more expensive to mould many sided polygon. But how much harder?

      the fact that internet blogs and article almost universally have the author at the bottom instead of the top. [bolded for readers of this blogpost]

      When webpages use a color of font that light in color. For example, when the font is the color gray and the background is white. It makes it difficult to read.

      When webpage fonts are so small it's difficult to read them.

      Property Taxes. Evil!!!!!

      crapple of apple, ipads etc [This is regarding my dislike of Apple products which some call Crapple]

      divorce laws. see joe rogen videos on the subject. Also his interview of dave foley

      Reviews with spoilers without warnings. Especially reviews where there's a spoiler in the title of the review.

      Pizzas not cut in equal pieces [unless specifically asked, it's not alright IMO]

      When two actors who look alike are cast into the same movie/tv show. it can be very confusing

      Microsoft Text Document sometimes makes the default "Find" search going "Up" instead of "Down". Why would it do that now after 25 years?

      When contributors to LibriVox have terrible voices or accents
      https://forum.librivox.org/viewtopic.php?t=31977
      ////

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    8. In my list of pet peeves I didn't fully explain myself because I didn't write them for other people to understand, but to jot down the bare minimum to remind myself what I meant. Beside not writing complete thoughts or sentences, I didn't worry about punctuation, spelling etc.

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    9. Thanks, AP! Of course, I can't mind at all, because it's a huge compliment for me to be mistaken for Steve. :) (Unfortunately the reverse isn’t true!)

      I've never looked into it, but maybe there's a way to change the location of the author. Perhaps with some JavaScript code. I think other weblog services or CMSes may have it built-in (e.g. WordPress?).

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    10. //Thanks, AP! Of course, I can't mind at all, because it's a huge compliment for me to be mistaken for Steve. //

      I got back online to say just what I now discovered you said yourself. Your clarity of thought is similar to Steve's, and you should be flattered that you've been mistaken for Steve. If you started posting more numerous blogs than Steve on Triablogue, then maybe Steve might be mistaken for you ;-) If I recall correctly, a few months back someone else mistook one of your blogposts as Steve's.

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    11. "I got back online to say just what I now discovered you said yourself. Your clarity of thought is similar to Steve's, and you should be flattered that you've been mistaken for Steve. If you started posting more numerous blogs than Steve on Triablogue, then maybe Steve might be mistaken for you ;-)"

      Thanks for the encouraging words, AP! However I think the reality is I'm at best (i.e. not here but in a parallel universe where I've reached my full potential) still a very, very, very poor man's Steve Hays.

      "If I recall correctly, a few months back someone else mistook one of your blogposts as Steve's."

      Oh yeah, I seem to recall this too. I don't remember where though.

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    12. Whenever people confuse me with Hawk, I try to maintain the misidentification as long as possible to bilk it for all it's worth.

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