Theology Today - Vol 19, No. 4 - January 1963 - ARTICLE

500 - The Space Age and Christology

The Space Age and Christology
By Charles K. Robinson

THE headline feats of astronauts and cosmonauts open up in dramatic fashion even for the scientific layman a possibility which has long been entertained by some members of the scientific community: the possibility that in the course of technological advances in communication and space travel the occupants of this planet may discover that they are not, within this spatio-temporal universe, the sole rightful claimants to the title "man." It may then be appropriate in advance, as it were, for Christians to ponder the implications which such a discovery would properly have for Christian theology and Christian life.

When such a possibility is posed, one common mode of reaction (among Christians, as well as non-Christians) is that of disquietude. What would such creatures be like? Might not their mode of life in both its organic and personal respects be quite different from our own-perhaps even alien? What if they should turn out to be more intelligent than ourselves, so that we could no longer view ourselves as the highest living creatures?¹

It is not the purpose of this essay to speculate in any details as to what such creatures, if they exist, might be like. However, the topic under consideration assumes by definition that such beings would be enough like us to be appropriately embraced within the concept "man": that, however different from us, and however superior or inferior, such a creature would be consciously intelligent and volitional in respect of himself and in relation to other similar creatures, capable of modifying himself and others through self-conscious intellectual and volitionally-purposive activity in a common environment, capable of responding in giving and receiving relations of love toward others, and, finally, capable of responding in a trusting and obedient relationship of faith toward God his Creator.

¹ The uneasiness which frequently underlies such questions makes one wonder whether there may not be a certain irony in the superiority with which contemporary man views the unenlightened "parochialism" of the Middle Ages: a period when the common man was not overly prone to be shaken by the prospect that there might exist other personal creatures, quite different from ourselves, and perhaps even superior to us in intellectual powers. Indeed, the existence of such creatures was not merely entertained as a possibility, but affirmed as a fact. They were, as I recall, referred to as angels.

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Should the technological advance of communication and space travel actually disclose to us other such "human" beings and bring us into effective relationship with them, certain ethical implications of the Christian Gospel are clear no matter what the state of this other civilization might be: the need for mutual understanding and service in love, Indeed, this universal requirement might well be the most immediately urgent one in a confrontation of two mutually alien powers each concerned with its own preservation and prerogatives.

However, the topic of this essay lies in a narrower (but not for that reason ultimately less significant) area of kerygmatic and theological concern: God's self-revealing relation to men in history. In order to pursue this question let us, in admittedly oversimplified fashion, imagine two alternative "states of grace" in regard to revelation.

Let us suppose that mutual relationships between our two civilizations have developed to the point where we have attained a thorough knowledge and understanding of their religious history (and/or lack thereof). And let us suppose further that it should turn out to be the case that they have never experienced in their history any revelatory event really comparable to the perfect incarnate life of Jesus of Nazareth.²

The supposition we are now undertaking to examine need not involve the assumption that in such a case God must have left himself wholly "without witness." (The limited scope of the present essay precludes a discussion of the nature of "general revelation," but let the reader take whatever concept of general revelation he may hold and apply that to the situation we are imaginatively considering.) Our present supposition does not necessarily exclude even the possibility that God might have related himself to such a civilization through "special revelation" in their own history. The essential element in this supposition is simply that this other people have not in empirical fact been given a "final revelation" authentically com-

² For purposes of brief examination at the level of theoretical possibility such a supposition can be made quickly and easily by the mere act of supposing. However, in the actual empirical case such a conclusion on our part as Christians could be rightly drawn only after the most open, searching, and sensitive enterprise of coming to understand their history as they themselves understand it-lest we incur the divine judgment of refusing to acknowledge what in fact God may have done.

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parable to that which we in our history have received in the face of Jesus Christ.

Now, in such a situation, what changes in the basic task and theology of the Christian church would be appropriate? None. This answer may seem simple to the point of absurdity. But I do not really see how any other genuinely Christian answer could be given. The task of the church would simply be expanded into a new area, a new world of personal relationships for effectively loving our neighbors-including, as always, the missionary endeavor to proclaim effectively the gospel of final revelation and redemption freely offered in Jesus Christ, the incarnate, crucified, and risen Lord.

But what if this other civilization should be far superior and advanced beyond our own so that our civilization would seem insignificant by comparison? Well, indeed, what if? As twentieth-century American Christians we may still tend easily and unthinkingly to assume (if or insofar as we are indeed concerned about "foreign missions" at all) that the Christian missionary proclamation is somehow or other one special benefit (among numerous others) which men of good will from a superior civilization may deign to confer upon the benighted masses of inferior civilizations. (Fortunately, for us, this association of Christian missions and colonialism is being on many sides severely shaken.)

Let us recall, if we still can, the scandal and offense intrinsic within the Christian message of God's revelation and redemption: God himself in the sovereign freedom of his wisdom and love has in fact chosen the historically insignificant (as world civilization goes) to be the actual medium in history of his self-disclosure and offer of reconciliation for all history (even the most worldly-significant).

The Biblical understanding of God's saving-activity toward mankind does not imagine God as looking around among world powers in order to select the greatest or most meritorious. He does not select but elects a people who were of no account worldly-wise and chooses to disclose himself to and through them. As a matter of fact, the Hebrews were, if we can trust at all what they said of themselves, a people sunk in historical slavery. Later the book of Deuteronomy reminds: "not because you were more in number," not because of your "power and the might of" your "hand," and "not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart" were you deliv-

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ered from bondage and made God's particular people (Deut. 7: 7; 8: 17; 9: 5).

And the New Testament understanding of God's final decisive act of revelation and redemption in Jesus Christ does not witness to an overwhelming display of worldly power and glory in the manner of a breathtaking spectacle in cinemascope and stereophonic sound! It is said, rather, that the Son of God humbled himself, taking the form of a servant; that he came to his own people in an insignificant, out-of-the-way, conquered province of a grand world empire, and that his own people received him not; but that to as many as received him and who continue to receive him he gave and gives the power to become the children of God.

In the Gentile missionary activity of the early church a small group of historical no-accounts proclaimed, in the midst of a great world civilization which despised the Jews as a strange, backward, and inferior people, that a historical no-account, a Jew, a man executed as a criminal, was in fact the Redeemer of all mankind. One of the results of their missionary proclamation in the power of the Spirit is that nearly two thousand years later we, citizens of another great nation and civilization, have the opportunity of discerning the relativity of all human achievements of greatness before our Creator whose "power is ever made perfect in weakness."

The possible future situation which we have been imagining would, if this other civilization were superior to our own, confront us as Christians with a missionary task in no respect essentially different from that which has always been laid upon the Church (however adequately or inadequately she has and now does respond). Indeed, in such a new situation the concrete apologetic mode of appropriate missionary proclamation might well be more akin to that of the early Church than is our present missionary situation in which missionaries (American and European) bear the burden of a "reverse onus" just because of the technological and materialistic superiority of the civilization from which they come!

There are other theological issues which are pertinent here but which lie beyond the limited scope of this article, What about the ultimate destiny of those who have lived and died in history (wherever located spatio-temporally) without any confrontation with special revelation and/or without decisive confrontation with final revelation in Jesus Christ? How shall it finally come to pass that at the

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name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue confess to the glory of God the Father, that God may indeed be "everything to everyone"? (Phil. 2: 9; I Cor. 15: 28; cf. Rom. 5: 18-19; 11: 26, 32-36; Phil. 3: 21; Col. 1: 19-20.) It seems to me that such theological questions in the imaginative situation we have been considering would not be qualitatively-though they would be quantitatively -different from those already pertinently raised by our own history on this planet.

In an age oriented toward the mathematically measurable we may do well to beware of being overawed by the quantitative, lest we lose valid perspective upon the personally qualitative. How small our solar system is in comparison with the vast reaches of our spatial universe, how short or late our time is in comparison with the age of the physical universe, how many light-years distant from us some other civilization might be: such quantitative considerations as these are not directly theological issues at all. The extent to which we may be lured into thinking that they are, is the measure of our loss of vision on the unique significance of the reality and quality of personal life in all men and decisively in the incarnate personal life of Jesus of Nazareth. In Christian theology the only directly numerical issue of crucial import is the transmathematical question as to the personal destiny (in this spatio-temporal continuum and in the world-to-come) of every individual "human" being created in the "image of God" for the purpose of becoming, in responsive freedom, conformed to the "image of the Son." This issue would not be pertinent to even a billion billion personal individuals unless it were, in precisely the same way, pertinent even to one.

Let us now consider in imagination another possible alternative "state of grace" in regard to revelation: our encountering another "world of men" who had experienced in their history a revelatory event authentically comparable to the perfect incarnate life of Jesus of Nazareth. And in order to clarify what "comparable" would have to mean here, let us first briefly review what is essentially involved in our Christian faith in the final and once-for-all reality of that perfect revelation and redemption wrought in our history through that Incarnation whereby "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself."

505 - The Space Age and Christology

In and through the historical life of Jesus of Nazareth we have in fact apprehended by the perception of faith God's own disclosure of his perfectly loving will toward us and toward all men. The finality of this revelation does not consist merely in its having been given at a certain point in our chronological historical time, but rather in the teleological fact of its perfection and completeness and the eschatological fact that the life of Jesus of Nazareth constitutes thus already, continuingly, and henceforth forever that perfect final goal for which we were created "in the image of God," toward which we are being transformed, and to which we shall each in his own unique way be ultimately by God's grace conformed.

This teleological-eschatological finality is realized in the purity of Jesus' faith and love, trust and obedience, perfectly actualized and triumphantly maintained in, with, through, and despite his experiences of the profoundest depths of every essential dimension of spiritual negativity and suffering common to mankind. The victorious perfection of his life and death, as completely triumphant over all the negative powers which assail human life-lack of identity, isolation, meaninglessness, powerlessness, and, finally on the cross, the experience of forsakenness by God, which is the appropriate lot for us as sinners-is "once-for-all" in that it can never in time or eternity be surpassed or superseded and need never in our history be repeated (barring the possibility of such an interruption of our history as would destroy the written and personal testimony to that event, as is conceivable in a total nuclear war).

The perfect, final, once-for-all triumph of Jesus' life and death, gloriously manifested to those who were granted to be witnesses of his resurrection, we have ourselves experienced not only as revelatory of the perfect pattern of God's will for human life but also as redemptive. Insofar as we are willing in each moment to allow ourselves to be brought into real relation with him-through the mediating reality of the Holy Spirit-we find ourselves dependently receiving the reconciliation of forgiveness and the transforming power to become toward the final goal of his perfected faith and love, trust and obedience. For in the very moment of his death when he trustingly commits his spirit to the Father the perfect triumph of the power of God as actualized in a finite human self (like unto us in all respects, sin only excepted) is consummated and

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henceforth made available to all those who are willing to receive that very power through relational dependence upon him,

As Christians, then, we in fact apprehend the finality and once-for-all-ness of revelation and redemption as accomplished for us and mediated to us through one man, Jesus of Nazareth. However, it is the ultimate prerogative of God alone to reveal himself, and of the Creator to re-create in redemption. Thus, if we have in fact experienced perfect final revelation and redemption as coming to us through the finite human self of Jesus of Nazareth we are driven to the conclusion-however we may or may not wish to theorize about the "how"-that the ultimate Person whom we here encounter as Revealer and Redeemer can be none other than God himself. Such in essence is the meaning of the Incarnation.

The finality of this incarnational relational-union between the eternal being of God (who remains distinctly God even in his experiencing-from-within the sufferings of a human life) and the temporal reality of Jesus of Nazareth (who develops and lives as a distinct, limited, finite human self) consists in the perfection of its qualitative mode, which must in the last analysis remain a mystery to us. The "once-for-all-ness" of this incarnate union is its everlasting duration once brought into reality by the initiating will and power of God.

Now, there is nothing in the essential content of what we have here been noting concerning the final and once-for-all reality of God's revelation and redemption wrought through his Incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth which could not conceivably also characterize another final and once-for-all revelatory and redemptive Incarnation of God in another "Jesus" ("Deliverer") within and for the sake of another history on another world.

Certainly, our discovery of the reality of another Incarnation would introduce a modification in our Christian theology. But it would be a modification by way of addition rather than subtraction. And the addition would be not one of further improvement, as though the perfection of Incarnation could be improved upon by more than one instance! The addition would lie in the empirical introduction, into our theological comprehension of revelation, of another concrete mode of Incarnation in another finite "human" self within the particular circumstances of another history.

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Such an introduction of plurality into a prior understanding of unity would not be exactly without parallel in the history of theology as man's response to the experienced manifestations of God's own self-revelation! The orthodox understanding of the basis of the Trinitarian concept of God presupposes just such a historical process, No one had any adequate grounds for making a priori (prior to the manifestation of the Incarnation and the experienced reality of the Holy Spirit in the Church) any such introduction of plurality within unity. And it is emphatically not being here suggested that we now have any such grounds for introducing plurality within the unity of our concept of Incarnation.

Thus, I doubt very much the wisdom of speaking of a "Principle of Incarnation" within the Being of God. What we know about Incarnation is not some abstract "principle" about it, but the concretely given event of it. From this event we indeed know and trust God's love, and wisdom, and power (and if we accept as authentically Spirit-led the insight of Paul in his later epistles, we may even trust in the mystery of God's loving power ultimately to reconcile all men unto himself in the ages of ages). But if we cannot claim to know in advance that God must surely manifest himself by an Incarnation in any "human world" which he may create, neither do we dare presume to limit a priori what God, in his wisdom, power, and love, may in fact do.

It might perhaps be urged against the present line of argument that it involves the entertainment of the possibility of a Nestorian view of Incarnation. Perhaps it does! It certainly involves the entertainment of the possibility that if God has in fact brought into existence more than one "human" history there may be more than one "son" (human self) in whom he was, and shall ever remain, incarnate; and thus in each such Incarnation there would be two "sons": namely, the one eternal "Son" of the Father and a particular finite human "son" with whom the Son is incarnately united. In fact, however, I see no reason why a plurality of Incarnations would threaten the intimacy of God's incarnate union with the human son involved in each such Incarnation. What earthly (or unearthly) basis do we as men have for assuming that God's power is so limited that he could not unite himself as intimately with two or more finite human lives in two or more human histories as he could with only one?

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Worth noting here is the fact that the charge of Judaism, as of modern Socinianism and Unitarianism, against Christianity's introduction of plurality within the concept of God's unity, was that thereby God's unity would be denied. Now, if the contention of orthodox Trinitarianism is justified (as I think it is) that the ultimate unity of the only living God is not negated by the reality of relational plurality within his own inner Being, Christian orthodoxy would find itself in a strange position were it to contend, in the same breath, that the reality of relational plurality in the "downward" and "outward" incarnate union of God with his human creation must negate the unities involved!

Christians in worshiping the "one God, blessed holy Trinity," do not (unless they think of God as schizophrenic) worship three gods. Christians in worshiping the one God as incarnate in Christ Jesus do not (unless they fall into idolatry) worship the finite human self of Jesus of Nazareth-rather their worship is objectively focused and historically mediated through him, as him in whom God was and is, for us men and for our salvation, incarnate. If authentic worship of the one God in three Persons does not negate the unity of worship, why should the worship of the one God were he historically manifested and mediated through more than one Incarnation negate the unity of worship?

III

In conclusion, it cannot be too Strongly emphasized that the appropriate response of man to the self-revealing God is that of grateful acknowledgment of what God has in fact done within human history-not a priori reasonings about what God must do. I have not, indeed, so much as a private hunch as to whether or not the Creator has chosen to bring into existence more than one "human world," nor whether or not-if he has done so-he has manifested himself incarnately in such a world or worlds. Indeed, if I have an a priori inclination here, it is simply that of profound suspicion toward any philosophical-theological position which assumes in advance that it knows about such matters.

(This suspicion applies not only to explicitly philosophical-theological reasonings, but also to the kind of crypto-theology which sometimes parades under the banner of science. One would indeed have to keep one's head buried in the sand to dispute the

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facts of evolution. However, the scientist moves over into the sphere of philosophy and theology if and when he assumes that such-and-such inorganic physical conditions such as we have on this planet-are both the necessary and sufficient cause of the emergence of life as such and of human personal life. Such a supposition is on principle beyond laboratory demonstration, since the demonstrator, even were he to succeed in producing the organic from the inorganic, would, in this very production, introduce as a causal factor the pre-existence of the already-living-namely, in the person of the demonstrator!)

The purpose of this short essay has been merely that of suggesting an orientation of Christian thought toward possibilities raised by our contemporary scientific technological situation from the standpoint of that culminative and final revelatory and redemptive event of Jesus Christ through which God has in fact become incarnate in our history. If and insofar as Christianity is the historical religion par excellence, it is therewith that religion which is most really open, in a thoroughgoing empirical manner, toward whatever the only Creator and Lord of all history may in fact do in any history.