For my fourth Campus Commentary, I attended the lecture “A Million Alien Gospels: Christian Theology and Life Beyond Earth by Dr. Andrew Davison from Massachusetts. The talk opened by introducing the source material for the title, which was a poem by Alice Meynell. Dr. Davison discussed the poem as a theological engagement with the concept of extraterrestrial life as an introductory note. To lead into the discussion about theology, Davison first introduced the scientific support for the potential of life beyond Earth: nebula theory, exoplanet telescopistry, and the amount of stars in the universe. Even given the possibility that life is extremely uncommon, with 16 billion Earthlike planets, life would still exist in 16 billion places. Davison’s point here did not seem to be seeking to convince the audience of extraterrestrial life, but rather to give the ability to believe that it could exist. This way, Davison is able to discuss the theological questions that would be complicated by the discovery of extraterrestrial beings while bracketing the concern of their existence. After asserting the conditions that allow for bracketing the existence of extraterrestrial life, Davison moves on to addressing theological questions, the first of which asks whether or not it is relevant that life outside of Earth was not mentioned in the Bible. Here, Davison references Thomas Aquinas, a theological medieval philosopher. The explanation applies the logic that was also applied to the relationship between the Moon and Sun in the Bible. God indicates in the Bible that the two cosmic lights are the Sun and Moon, in spite of the fact that Jupiter is larger than the Sun. Davison justifies this by claiming that the Bible only contains what is necessary to know, pointing out that “the Bible doesn’t mention aardvarks”. To keep the Bible as ‘for everyone,’ accounting for the sparsity of education, it would be logical for the authors to exclude things that are too foreign to the layperson. This seemed like a well-supported answer, with references to other names as well like Calvinism. The next question that Davison was concerned with is whether or not the concept of ‘man being constructed in God’s image’ is challenged by other intelligent life. Once again referencing Aquinas in the proposition of God being infinite, Davison presented a seemingly sound argument for this case as well. Given that God is infinite in plenitude and mortal creatures are finite, it would stand to reason that no single creature could capture the essence of God given that the finite cannot capture the infinite. I found this component the most interesting, because the intuitive next objection seems like ‘how could a finite amount of the finite capture the essence of the infinite?’ given that Davison has asserted that the entire ensemble of creatures would display the magnitude of God. I also very much enjoyed the organisation of Davison’s lecture, given the contextualisation for the ‘bracketed’ content allowing for discussion of what could follow.
