Is there life anywhere else in the Universe?

Question 60060.

Whether extraterrestrial life exists is one of those questions people expect a minister to duck. I am not going to duck it, but I am going to disappoint anyone hoping for a verse that settles it, because there is no such verse.

What I can do is show you what Scripture actually claims, where it is silent, and why the silence itself is telling. Then I want to ask why the question grips us so hard, because I suspect that is the more revealing matter.

What Scripture positively claims

The Bible tells us that God made the heavens and the earth, that the stars were made by Him and are named by Him, and that the whole created order exists to display His glory. It tells us the earth is the theatre of redemption. It tells us that on this planet, God became man.

It also tells us there are creatures beyond the earth. Angels are not terrestrial, they are not human, and they are numerous beyond counting. So the idea that God only ever made life on one small rock is already ruled out by the text, though not in the way the question usually intends.

Beyond that, on the specific matter of biological extraterrestrial life, Scripture says nothing at all.

Reading the silence properly

Silence in Scripture is not the same as denial, and it is not the same as permission either. It means the subject falls outside what God chose to reveal, and the honest response is to say so.

I am always uneasy when Christians build confident cosmology out of verses that were never addressing the question. Taking a phrase about the heavens declaring the glory of God and turning it into a statement about microbial life on Europa is not exegesis, it is decoration.

So my answer on extraterrestrial life is that I do not know, that Scripture does not say, and that I am not troubled by not knowing.

Would extraterrestrial life create a theological problem?

Some Christians assume it would, and I understand why. If there are other intelligent beings, are they fallen? Did Jesus die for them too? Would He have to become one of them?

Take the simplest case first. Bacteria on Mars would create no theological problem whatsoever. Nobody thinks bacteria need redeeming. If God chose to scatter simple life across the galaxy the way He scattered wildflowers across a hillside, that would tell us something about His generosity and nothing at all about the gospel.

Intelligent moral beings elsewhere would be a harder case, and I will not pretend otherwise. But even there, note that Scripture already describes intelligent moral beings who are not human, some of whom fell and for whom no redemption is offered. The idea that every rational creature must be redeemed the way we are is an assumption, not a doctrine.

The uniqueness of the incarnation

What Scripture will not allow is the notion of repeated incarnations. The letter to the Hebrews is emphatic that Jesus offered Himself once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and that He entered once for all into the holy places.

He took human flesh, and He kept it. The risen Jesus is still a man, and He will be a man for ever. That is not a temporary costume He might put on and off across the galaxy.

So whatever we might imagine about extraterrestrial life, it must sit under that fixed point. The Son became man, once, here, and the cross was not a local branch of a franchise.

Why the question grips people

I notice that the search for life elsewhere carries an emotional weight out of all proportion to the evidence. People do not usually get misty-eyed about geology.

I think that is because the question is really about loneliness and meaning. If we are alone, the universe feels cold. If we are not, perhaps somebody out there has answers, or has arrived somewhere we have not. It is a religious longing wearing a lab coat.

That is worth naming gently in conversation, because the longing is real and the gospel speaks directly to it. We are not alone. The universe is not empty. It is inhabited by the God who made it and who has spoken.

What about UFO reports and abduction claims?

Here I would separate two things. Unexplained things in the sky are unexplained things in the sky, and most of them turn out to have ordinary causes. I have no particular interest in defending or debunking radar traces.

The claims that concern me pastorally are the ones with a spiritual payload. Where contact experiences come with a message, and the message is that Jesus was an enlightened teacher, that there is no sin, that humanity is evolving into godhood, then we are no longer discussing astronomy. We are discussing deception, and Paul warns that the enemy disguises himself as an angel of light.

I have written more fully on this in what about aliens and UFOs, and the connection to occult and New Age teaching is discussed there.

Holding the question with humility

Christians have twice made fools of themselves by insisting Scripture taught something it did not. We should not repeat the exercise by declaring that the Bible forbids extraterrestrial life when it does no such thing, and we should not swing the other way and treat every fresh headline as prophecy.

The Bible was given to make us wise unto salvation. It was not given as a survey of the galaxy, and the fact that it does not satisfy our curiosity on every point is a feature of revelation, not a defect.

So I am relaxed. If they announce microbes on some distant moon tomorrow, my Bible will read exactly the same on Thursday as it did on Wednesday. See also how creation reveals God.

Extraterrestrial life and the argument from scale

A version of this question runs on size rather than biology. The universe is vast, we are tiny, therefore we cannot possibly matter and the Christian story looks parochial.

I find that argument oddly weak once you examine it. Since when did physical size determine worth? My wedding ring is smaller than my car and I know which one I would run into a burning building for. Value is assigned by the one who values, not measured with a tape.

And the psalmist got there long before the telescope. He looked up, felt small, and asked what is man that you are mindful of him. The Bible has never been under the impression that we are large.

What extraterrestrial life would not change

Suppose tomorrow morning the announcement came. Confirmed, unambiguous, life on another world. What in my faith would need revising?

Not the character of God. Not the fall of man. Not the incarnation, the cross, the empty tomb, or the promise that Jesus will return. Not one line of the Apostles’ Creed. The discovery of extraterrestrial life would enlarge my sense of the Maker’s generosity and leave the gospel exactly where it was.

That is worth saying out loud, because some believers carry an unspoken fear that their faith is one press conference away from collapse. It is not. A faith that rests on a resurrection witnessed in daylight by hundreds is not fragile in that way.

Speculation, prophecy and keeping our heads

What I would ask Christians to avoid is the habit of folding every new headline about extraterrestrial life into a prophetic scheme. I have heard it suggested that a disclosure event will explain away the rapture, and while I hold to a pretribulational and imminent removal of the church, I will not tie that hope to a scenario Scripture never mentions.

Date-setting and scenario-building have damaged our credibility more than any sceptic ever has. If you want to know what Scripture actually promises about the Lord’s return, read what the rapture is rather than the speculation.

Curiosity about extraterrestrial life is fine. Building doctrine on it is not.

A question that keeps us humble

There is a discipline in saying I do not know, and questions like extraterrestrial life are good practice for it. The Bible answers what it answers, thoroughly and without apology, and then it stops.

Deuteronomy puts it well when it says the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children. That verse has saved me from a good deal of foolish speaking over the years.

So I hold the question of extraterrestrial life loosely, and I hold the resurrection tightly, and I recommend that order to anyone.

So, now what?

If a friend asks you whether Christians believe in aliens, do not bluff. Say the Bible does not address it, that you have no objection in principle to God making life wherever He pleases, and that what Scripture insists on is the once-for-all coming of Jesus to this world.

Then turn the telescope round. The remarkable thing is not that the universe might contain other life. The remarkable thing is that the God who flung the galaxies out came to a backwater province and was born to a teenage girl in a stable.

He determines the number of the stars, He gives to all of them their names and yet He knows your name. Does that not strike you as the more astonishing claim?

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Psalm 19:1, ESV