For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The obvious question raised by the passage is who are the families in heaven. There is no real consensus among commentators on the question. Some suggest that it refers to the Jewish people and the Gentles\u2014the Jewish people as the family in heaven, the gentiles as those on earth. Others have suggested that families in heaven are the angels. Some have suggested that it refers to Christians here on earth, as well as believers who have passed on in death.<\/p>\n Given my interest in astronomy and science fiction, it should not be shocking to any regular reader that I am tempted to suggest that should we ever discover extraterrestrial civilizations, then Paul\u2019s words here would be helpful. Something that theologians are likely to have to come to grips with at some point will be finding a way to accept the existence of such extraterrestrials and to fit them into our theological frameworks. I suggest that a passage like this from Paul\u2019s letter to the Ephesians might be useful in this regard. After all, we need to think about how God would relate to non-human intelligence. Obviously (it seems to me) the Bible was written to and for human beings; it was not written for angels, it was not written for animals, and it wasn\u2019t written for infants. Thus, the questions we might have about the ultimate fates of animals and infants, for instance, are not answered explicitly in the text. Likewise, the text does not deal with a question that is of interest to us in the twenty-first century, since the concept of other worlds and other beings living on them was not really something that Paul would likely have thought about or even imagined. The chances that Paul was thinking of alien beings is highly improbable from a historical or cultural context.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, I suspect that once First Contact occurs, this is one of the texts that will get used as we adapt to that new reality. Likewise, I suggest this passage will serve as an opening to a future theological\/academic discipline: comparative Christianity. That is, I suspect that we will find analogues of Christianity in alien garb simply because I suspect that the only way to reconcile sentient creatures is for God to become one and die for them. If you think it impossible that God\u2019s son could die an infinite number of times on an infinite number of worlds for an infinite number of species, I have a two-part question: first, on what basis is such a scenario impossible? I don\u2019t believe the Bible addresses the question either way. Second, is God\u2019s arm too short to save all life in the universe?<\/p>\n Assuming extraterrestrial intelligence piles on to another problem, if you would: the incredible naivet\u00e9 of how most think about eschatology and the second coming. Already, thanks to space travel, the popular image of Jesus\u2019 return is obviously not correct. Human beings have lived continuously in space for the last ten years (on the International Space Station); the ashes of two people are not on Earth at all and more are likely to follow, which complicates our picture of the resurrection: Eugene M. Shoemaker\u2019s ashes are on the moon (they were deposited there by the Lunar Prospector space probe in 1999) and Clyde W. Tombaugh\u2019s ashes are currently more than five astronomical units from Earth and bound for interstellar space after New Horizon\u2019s flyby of Pluto in July, 2015.<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve told my students, theology is mostly about our questions, not about the answers. Given an infinite, eternal God, there are more things we don\u2019t know or understand than we do, or ever can. God and his relationship to us and the universe do not fit into tidy little boxes: there aren\u2019t any boxes big enough. All we can manage is a bare outline, with few certainties, such as \u201cGod loves us.\u201d And \u201cwe sinners have been reconciled to God through the death of Jesus on the cross.\u201d Basic things. But there is so much else we are clueless about, and some of our certainties are likely wrong or at best incomplete and confused.<\/p>\n Ephesians 3:14-15 is an odd passage: For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. The obvious question raised by the passage is who are the families in heaven. … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/plugins\/send-to-kindle\/media\/white-15.png\")
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