What is it about?
If God’s grace is already present to outer space, then Christian doctrines such as creation and redemption become as public as outer space is public. The public Christian theologian should engage in astrotheology as well as astroethics. This article tenders seven steps toward becoming an astrotheologian and astroethicist. (1) Become sensitive to the Beyond and the Intimate when talking about the true God. (2) Think cosmically. (3) Don’t be bullied by the Cosmological Principle or the Copernican Principle. (4) Explore deep incarnation in deep space. (5) Add eschatology to deep incarnation. (6) By using a Theology of Culture, demarcate science, scientism, and pseudoscience. (7) Celebrate the 60th Anniversary of Astroethics. These steps presuppose a comprehensive hypothesis: the historical incarnation of the divine Logos in Jesus of Nazareth on Earth is constituted by the exchange of divine and creaturely attributes, the communicatio idiomatum; and, when communicatio idiomatum is combined with an eschatological vision of God's promised new creation, we can accompany the entire material history of all galaxies and all extraterrestrial creatures into the eternal perichoresis of God as Trinity.
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Why is it important?
The field of astrotheology expands both creation and redemption beyond planet earth to the cosmos
Perspectives
The author contends that speculation about sharing our universe with extraterrestrial life should be pursued by the astrotheologian
Prof Ted F Peters
Graduate Theological Union
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Deep grace in deep space? How to become an astrotheologian, Dialog, June 2022, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/dial.12736.
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