Wilkinson, David. 2024. 'Theology and Cosmology', St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. Edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/TheologyandCosmologyWilkinson, David. "Theology and Cosmology." In St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. University of St Andrews, 2022–. Article published August 30, 2024. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/TheologyandCosmology.Wilkinson, D. (2024) Theology and Cosmology. In: B. N. Wolfe et al., eds. St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. University of St Andrews. Available at: https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/TheologyandCosmology [Accessed ].David Wilkinson, 'Theology and Cosmology', in St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, ed. by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. (University of St Andrews, 2024) <https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/TheologyandCosmology>
1 Introduction: cosmology and theology in the public arena
Perhaps the most famous and certainly the best-selling book ever on cosmology is Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (1988). Carl Sagan, in his foreword, described it as
a book about God […] or perhaps about the absence of God […] The word God fills these pages [...] a universe with no edge in space, no beginning or end in time, and nothing for a Creator to do. (Foreword, in Hawking 1988: x)
This absence of God was represented in the media and in a number of other popular science books when discussing cosmology, yet it has not been representative of the history of cosmology and the breadth of contemporary theological engagement. Even among fellow physicists, Hawking’s absence of God is not widely shared. The cosmologist Paul Davies, in his 1983 book God and the New Physics, struck by the law and circumstances of the universe, wrote that: ‘It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion’ (Davies 1983: ix).
Cosmology as a scientific discipline has had a complex but fruitful series of relationships with philosophical and theological insights and questions (Bishop et al. 2018). It has also posed its own questions and offered insights to philosophers and theologians. This has been played out not only in the academic arena of theology and philosophy but also, as A Brief History of Time indicated, within the community of professional scientists and the general public (Jeans 1930; Eddington 1932; Davies 1993; Bryson 2003; Wilkinson 2001; Hawking 2018; Wilkinson and Hutchings 2020). One of the most important areas of science has been to engage the public in the big questions of what it means to be human, of our origin, and of our fate.
There are a number of other excellent standard articles on cosmology in relationship to philosophy and theology (Smeenk and Ellis 2017; Halvorson and Kragh 2021). The tendency of some authors is to split the article into two distinct parts, outlining modern cosmology and then asking what this means for theology. This is helpful in many ways, but it sometimes underplays the historical interaction. Therefore, this article weaves the scientific and theological questions through the historical narrative, illustrating a mutual enrichment which may at times be messy but has ultimately been fruitful (Kragh 2004). There have of course been strong voices within popular discourse which have used contemporary models of cosmology to attack or reject theological views (Hawking and Mlodinow 2010; Krauss 2012). Yet, rather than the widespread objection – championed by new atheism and some sections of the media – that theology and science are in conflict, cosmology illustrates that the actual relationship between theology and the physical sciences is much more open.
2 Definitions of cosmology
Cosmology is rather difficult term. As with theology, its etymology is simple (the study of the world) but its breadth of use both in technical disciplines and popular discourse is vast (Hetherington 2014). It was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount’s Glossograhia. It has been used in religious discourse to refer to creation stories and myths which explore the place of human beings in relation to the rest of the natural world and to the divine, but is used widely within the contemporary physical sciences to refer to the origin, large scale structure, and the future of the universe (Peter and Uzan 2013; Ryden 2017; Durrer 2021).
It relates closely to, and is dependent on, astronomy (the observation of the universe) and astrophysics (the understanding of the physics of the observable universe). Often the three subject areas work in a confusing overlap of boundaries and definitions, but cosmology has grown in its scientific stature because of the development of observational data about the universe and the development of understanding of physics, not least in particle physics.
Indeed, one of the fascinating features of the growth of cosmology in the physical sciences in the twentieth century has been the way that it has returned to one of the most central questions: the place of human beings in the cosmos (Vainio 2018).
3 Cosmology in ancient religious texts
Caution is needed when reading a modern understanding of cosmology back into ancient religious texts which were written before the development of modern science and do not share the methodology, language, or interests of the approach developed during the scientific revolution in the West from the sixteenth century onwards. It is this mistake which led to the growth of scientific creationism in the twentieth century, originating in the culture wars of the US and exported mainly through some forms of evangelical Protestantism around the world (Morris and Parker 1982; Numbers 1992; Coleman and Carlin 2004; Numbers 2006; Ruse 2022). In its most extreme form, Genesis 1 has been read to give a scientific account of the creation of the universe, with the origin of the universe dated as thousands rather than billions of years old on the basis of the genealogies running through the early chapters (see Creation in the Old Testament). A number of scientific arguments are then deployed to argue that the dating of modern cosmology is wrong or that the universe was created ‘looking old’ (Byle 2001; Williams and Hartnett 2005). These arguments appear not within the standard peer reviewed science journals but in journals and publishers committed to the creationist case (Faulkner 2018). They are rejected not only by the majority of scientists but also by biblical scholars who argue that the Genesis text is not intended to be read in this way (Lucas 2001; Barton and Wilkinson 2009; Walton 2011).
However, what the ancient texts do reveal is an interest in the heavens. The Babylonians were keen astronomers in terms of observing the stars. In the British Museum, there is evidence on cuneiform tablets that Halley’s Comet was observed at both its 164 BCE and 87 BCE apparitions (Stephenson, Yau and Hunger 1985). Astronomical observation was widespread in the ancient world, with detailed records from Greek, Egyptian, Mayan, Near Eastern, Indian, and Chinese cultures (Neugebauer 1942: 237; Aveni 1980; Subbarayappa 1989: 25–40; Pedersen 1993; Micheau 1996: 992–993; Evans 1998; Hoskin 1999; 2003; Kelley and Milone 2011: 293). Some of this observation was linked to celestial omens or to the activity of gods (Pingree 1998: 125–137; Rochberg 2004), but this did not always translate into cosmology in the modern sense of understanding the origin and structure of the universe itself. For example, stories in the ancient Near East such as the Babylonian creation stories Enuma Elish or the Atrahasis epic, or Egyptian ideas of creation in such works as The Teaching of King Merikare, told stories of how the universe was formed in battles of the gods, did not connect with modern observations.
Some, since Hermann Gunkel in 1895, have argued that the Genesis account of creation in the Hebrew Bible is dependent on some of these stories in the ancient Near East. Noting parallels, some have simply reduced the Genesis account to a copy, while others wanting to defend the purity of Genesis as revelation direct from God have emphasized the differences. The truth is probably more complex (Lambert 1965: 294; Tsumura 1989: 156–157; Wenham 1987: xlviii). The writers of Genesis probably knew the Babylonian stories, the Hebrew patriarchs had links with Mesopotamia, and there was a widespread distribution of cuneiform texts. However, the move away from a multitude of divinities towards one divine creator was a significant move for the subsequent development of astronomy and cosmology.
The polemical aspect of Genesis 1 in this respect is very developed (Hasel 1974: 81–102; Lucas 2001; Wilkinson 2002). The claim that God is the sole creator of the universe is represented not only in the first verse (‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’, Gen 1:1), but also in a number of other ways. For example, verse 16 uses the language not of sun and moon but of ‘the greater light’ and ‘the lesser light’. The most probable reason is that in many neighbouring cultures the names ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ were the names of gods. Genesis 1 seems to be attacking this saying that they are not gods but simply lights, created by the one true God. Other examples run through the chapter in the creation of stars and the great sea monsters, and in the ease of separation of waters.
The creator of the Old Testament is a sovereign creator, free to create without constraint by other gods or humans. There is an extravagance in creation which demonstrates the glory of God (Psalm 19; Psalm 148), engenders awe and questions in human beings (Psalm 8), and is sustained by God’s wisdom and faithfulness (Prov 8:22–36; Isa 40:9–31).
The Lord’s encounter with Job is of particular interest (Job 38:1–42:17). The story is about a person who loses everything and struggles with the perception of moral chaos not helped at all by the not-so-wise counsel of friends. In chapter 38, the Lord finally appears to Job in answer to repeated demands for vindication and admission that his suffering is unjust. Rather than tackling Job’s complaints directly, the Lord takes him on a journey through all of creation. Some have charged it with irrelevance, while others have seen it as God wanting to humiliate Job. Tom McLeish has argued that neither is correct. He notes that God is named as Yahweh, the Lord who is known by his saving actions, and it is this Lord who invites Job to accompany him on a walk through creation, engaging him with questions. This reading picks up on the nature imagery throughout the book of Job and is an invitation to participate in dialogue on the nature of creation.
For McLeish, therefore, the Lord’s answer is the communication of new perspective. First, against a creation out of control or purely deterministic, the passage suggests a constrained freedom to the universe. Second, humanity is decentralized from any claim to primacy within creation, yet at the same time the human possibility to perceive and know creation is affirmed. Third, the great questions to Job about creation are an invitation to see our relationship with the physical world not as static but as transformative in both knowledge and agency. Fourth, the workings of nature are not a sideshow or hobby but at the heart of humanity is the quest for knowledge and understanding. Fifth, there is an eschatological horizon that looks forward to both knowledge and healing (McLeish 2016a: 146–148).
McLeish comments:
Scientists to whom I have recommended the reading of these chapters have always come back astonished – for here are the foundation questions of the sciences we now call ‘meteorology’, ‘oceanography’, ‘cosmology’, ‘astronomy’, zoology’. (McLeish 2016b)
This biblical affirmation of science in general and cosmology in particular has long been recognized. The Greek, Muslim, and Chinese tributaries of the river of modern science were significant, but several historians of science have pointed out the key contribution of the Judaeo-Christian worldview to the rapid success of the scientific revolution (Foster 1934: 446–468; Collingwood 1940; Zilsel 1942: 245–279; Oakley 1961: 433–457; Hooykaas 1973; Russell 1985; Harrison 1998).
Belief in a creator God, who created all things and invites human beings to explore that creation with questions, provides a fertile ground for the growth of cosmology. First, nature is demystified, no longer simply the realm of the gods to be feared by human beings. Second, a faithful and universal creator leads to the belief in regularities in all parts of the universe, i.e. laws of physics which apply to all space and time. Indeed, the work of Isaac Newton, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Johannes Kepler established a fundamental difference to earlier cosmologies developed by thinkers such as Aristotle and Ptolemy: that the bodies on the Earth follow the same physical laws as all the heavenly bodies, the so-called Copernican principle. Third, the invitation to question nature gives optimism that these laws are intelligible to the human mind. The belief in humanity’s creation in the image of God strengthens that optimism. Fourth, that God is free to create, unconstrained by human logic, means that one cannot deduce the nature of the universe by philosophy, rather one has to look at what God has done. This is the importance of observation in the empirical method of science. It was this belief that led to Galileo taking the revolutionary step of pointing his telescope to the heavens and giving more weight to what he saw there than to the teachings of Aristotle on the structure of the solar system. Fifth, within the Judaeo-Christian worldview the physical in the purposes of God is affirmed, from the importance of the land in the Old Testament to the bodily resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament. This was seen to affirm not only the physical sciences but also the development of technology and experiments to explore the universe. Getting your hands dirty in science was not to be demeaned, compared to the purity of philosophic thinking. As Reijer Hooykaas commented:
The biblical conception of nature liberated man from the naturalistic bonds of Greek religiosity and philosophy and gave a religious sanction to the development of technology, that is, to the dominion of nature by human art. (Hooykaas 1973: 67).
To these points add two others may be added, which will become important in what follows. Within the biblical literature, there is a strong theme of awe and delight in the wonders of creation. This will resonate with the response of people of faith and of no faith in discoveries of astronomy and cosmology. In addition, the Judaeo-Christian worldview shows particular interest in beginnings and endings. In the New Testament, the key to understanding both the creation of the universe and future new creation is focused in Jesus Christ (Col 1:15–20).
The Old Testament and New Testament witness therefore provide a Christian mandate to explore the origin, structure, and end of the universe, and considerable optimism that such work is not only encouraged by God but is a Christian vocation. Christians therefore need not be fearful of such explorations or dismissive of their importance.
4 The beginnings of modern scientific cosmology: Einstein provides a framework
While the foundations of cosmology can be traced back a long way, there is widespread debate in the literature as to when modern scientific cosmology begins. Some associate it with the explanation of the structure of the solar system by Copernicus and Galileo and the celestial mechanics of Isaac Newton. Christopher Smeenk and George Ellis point to the 1917 paper on General Relativity by Albert Einstein, but they go on to note that this only became a mainstream area of physics and astronomy from the 1960s onwards, due to the flood of data coupled with advances in atomic and nuclear physics (Smeenk and Ellis 2017). Hans Halvorson and Helge Kragh reflect this, arguing that physical cosmology in the modern sense only became established after the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965, which was a key piece of evidence to support the Big Bang model of the universe (Halvorson and Kragh 2021). Indeed, they argue further that it may only be after Jim Peebles’ book Physical Cosmology in 1971 that one can really speak of cosmology being taken seriously as a distinct subject within the scientific world (Peebles 1971).
While this may be to some simply an historical argument, it is instructive for a number of reasons. First, as a widely accepted area in mainstream science cosmology is still relatively young. Its progress has been rapid and significant, but a number of large questions remain. Second, its historical development – especially in the latter part of the twentieth century – has grown with theological questions rather than separate from them. The theology has often been intertwined in the importance given to observational evidence, in assumptions about the intelligibility and universality of the laws of physics, but also in the lives of some of the pioneers of the field.
For those within the scientific community at the beginning of the twentieth century, physics was in the twilight of its career, with its most important work achieved and only a few minor details to be cleared up (Agar 2012). James Clerk Maxwell’s formulation of the equations of electromagnetism was a strong explanatory tool allowing the development of new technologies. From the orbits of planets to the electric light bulb, physics had achieved much and was near retirement. It was still not clear what the ether was, i.e. the medium that light travelled through, but that type of question was not deemed relevant to the fact that these equations worked and the perceived universality of the laws of Newton and Maxwell. It was believed that the minor details concerning the radiation given off by a heated body and the orbit of Mercury would surely be solved very soon. These minor details were solved, but they led in fact to a twentieth century revolution of physics though quantum theory and relativity.
Pivotal to the revolution was Albert Einstein, and quantum theory and relativity would become the theoretical superstructure of the development of cosmology. In 1905, Einstein suggested that the speed of light in a vacuum was the same however one measured it (Einstein 1905: 891). This remarkable intuitive insight led to the theories of special and general relativity. In special relativity it led to conclusion that, contrary to all our everyday experience, clocks run slow if you accelerate them on a spaceship close to the speed of light, while mass increases and length contracts. The General Theory of Relativity extended this to show that clocks also run slow in strong gravitational fields (Einstein 1916: 771). This could be understood by thinking of space-time as a stretchy fabric, distorted or warped by the presence of mass. In other words, the mass and distribution of matter determines the geometry of space and the rate of flow of time. This complex interaction of matter and space-time was described by a set of equations, whose solution gave the geometry of space-time and showed how bodies moved within it (Kaku 2015).
Einstein then applied this theory to the universe as a whole. At this point, Einstein assumed that the universe was static in time. To maintain this static universe Einstein had to introduce a new term into his equations, a cosmological constant (O'Raifeartaigh et al. 2017: 431–474). Almost immediately, Willem de Sitter proposed a solution of the Einstein equations which led also led to a static model of the universe but, in contrast to Einstein, assumed the universe to be empty. It is in this work that Matteo Realdi and Giulio Peruzzim conclude:
Modern Cosmology was born in 1917, with Einstein’s and de Sitter’s models of the universe. Since that year, it became clear that General Relativity represented, and still represents, a fundamental tool for Cosmology. (Realdi and Peruzzim 2009: 247)
However, this assumption of a static universe would have to be later revised (as shall be seen in section 5).
While he was revolutionizing the understanding of the large-scale universe, Einstein was also working on the universe on the smallest of scales. In 1905, he worked on the emission of electrons when a metal surface was bathed in ultra-violet radiation. This showed that light not only exhibited wave-like properties but also particle-like properties as photons or quanta of energy. This led to an understanding of the world at the atomic level which was radically different from the everyday world. The everyday world, described by the mechanics of Newton, was both picturable and predictable. In contrast, the quantum world of photons and electrons was unpicturable, and unpredictable. It was a word of uncertainty and uncaused events.
Yet Einstein himself opposed the radical uncertainty that was accepted by most quantum theorists. In a letter to fellow physicist Max Born he said that he could not believe that God would play dice with the universe (1926; see Einstein 1971). In 1935, with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, he attempted to construct a paradox to show that quantum theory was flawed (Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen 1935: 77–780). However, later experiments showed that Einstein was wrong.
The sense that God does not play dice probably lies behind another famous Einstein statement: ‘Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not’. The quote is inscribed in stone in Princeton University and became the title of Abraham Pais’ biography of Einstein (Pais 1982). When asked to clarify this, Einstein commented: ‘Nature hides its secret because of its essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse’ (Ebison 1983: 76). Here one sees Einstein’s belief that science, although not easy, would give insights into the universe that were reliable rather than uncertain. One also sees something important of what Einstein meant when he deployed language of God. Some have interpreted Einstein’s use of such language to claim that Einstein believed in a personal God. This was not the case. Although he described himself as a ‘deeply religious man’ (Einstein 2006: 7), he rejected any concept of the personal God of Christian theism (Einstein 1930: 3–4). He did however experience awe and mystery and, in the laws of physics, saw an ordered and harmonious wholeness to the universe. For Einstein it was nature rather than God that inspired admiration. Thus, when he said ‘science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind’ (Einstein 1956: 26), one needs to be careful not to enrol him into the ranks of Christian apologists.
Einstein however certainly became one of the key scientists who saw that science cannot be divorced from bigger metaphysical questions. As discussion of the expanding universe began to become centre-stage, cosmology began to expand both science and theology’s horizons.
5 The expanding universe: Hubble and Lemaître
As Einstein was debating his theory with de Sitter, astronomers were beginning to see that observations of the cosmos may help humans to understand its structure and origin. In particular, two questions were important. First, what was the distance to galaxies outside the Milky Way? And second, how were they moving? A galaxy, due to its constituent stars and gas, emits light in a characteristic spectrum. In 1912, V. M. Slipher was investigating such spectra. He observed that for certain galaxies key features in the spectrum were all shifted towards the red part of the spectrum. This redshift of galaxies was interpreted by Slipher to mean that they were all moving away from Earth at speeds greater than 1000 kilometres per second. He reported his findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in 1914, a year before Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. However, at this point its full significance was not clear.
To interpret this information fully for the structure of the cosmos, the distances to these galaxies needed to be known. This is no trivial task, but, in 1929, Edwin Hubble presented a paper to the National Academy of Sciences on his findings, perhaps one of the greatest experimental papers of modern astronomy. Under the title ‘A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra Galactic Nebulae’ he showed that the further away the galaxies were, the faster they were moving away from Earth (Hubble 1929: 168–173).
While some of this was happening, the Belgian Georges Lemaître was fighting in the trenches in the First World War (Mitton 2017: 2.28–31). After the war, he went back to study, moving from mining engineering to mathematics and physics and at the same time trained as a Roman Catholic priest. It was a time when interest in General Relativity was exploding. Arthur Eddington had successfully tested relativity’s prediction of the bending of starlight by gravity when in 1919 he observed the total eclipse from the island of Príncipe (Kennefick 2019). Eddington had also written a popular book on the subject (Eddington 1920), a publishing trend which would accompany the scientific development of cosmology. Lemaître engaged with Einstein’s work and spent time in Cambridge with Eddington. He also brought into his thinking Hubble’s work on distances and velocities of galaxies. This led him in a 1927 paper to discover a solution of the equations of General Relativity for an expanding rather than static universe (Lemaître 1927: 49–59). This has meant that some have called him the ‘Father of the Big Bang’, which is pushing things a little too far. The paper was not widely noticed, and in reality Lemaître had merely rediscovered Alexander Friedman’s solutions of 1922. Further, as Kragh points out, this paper described simply an expanding universe rather than a universe with a beginning. The Big Bang universe would have to wait until 1931, when Lemaître would use terms such as ‘primeval atom’ and ‘fireworks theory’ (Kragh 2013: 2.28–30).
However, when Eddington and others in the 1930s became interested in an expanding universe, Lemaître pointed out his earlier work to Eddington. So impressed was he with the solution, Eddington had a translation published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1931 (Lemaître 1931a: 483–490). Yet Eddington was not fully convinced on philosophical grounds. In his Presidential Address to the Mathematical Association in the same year, Eddington stated: ‘Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me’ (Eddington 1931: 450).
Lemaître’s response was quick, and theologically fascinating (Lemaître 1931b: 704; Lemaître 1931c: 706). It was clear that he was committed to using science to explore the origin of the universe rather than claim that this was the exclusive domain of a creator God. Simon Mitton comments that the response ‘left no doubt that this theologian would not hesitate to engage in serious science when discussing the origin of the universe’ (Mitton 2017: 2.30). J. P. Luminet calls Lemaître’s response ‘the charter of the modern Big Bang theory’ (Luminet 2011: 2911). This may go too far historically but, as shall be seen, the conviction that even the very moment of the universe’s history could be explored by scientists as well as theologians has motivated cosmology in the latter half of twentieth-century observation. Lemaître is a powerful example that cosmology is not a threat to Christian belief but something to be welcomed by the theologian.
This period is also a reminder of the importance of how these questions of cosmology and theology grabbed public attention. It is interesting that the expanding universe was quickly popularized by Eddington, who no longer seemed to find it repugnant (Eddington 1933). In an important piece of work, Jon Reynolds points out that Arthur Eddington and the then-secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, James Jeans, were phenomenally popular in speaking about science in books and newspaper articles and on radio (Reynolds 2017). By 1937, 139,000 copies of The Mysterious Universe (Jeans 1930) had been printed by Cambridge University Press and 56,195 copies were sold of Eddington’s The Nature of the Physical World (Eddington 1928; Whitworth 1996: 53–82). Reynolds is right to argue that the influence of these scientists on the general public was often underestimated in introducing the new physics from the subatomic world to the universe at large. However, both were also people of faith, Eddington as a Quaker and Jeans as an Anglican. While not always explicit about theology, their openness to the big questions encouraged British churches in the mid-war period to be open to science.
6 Big Bang and Steady State: Hoyle and God
The term ‘Big Bang’ was coined by Fred Hoyle in 1949 to describe a theory he vehemently fought against, and as Kragh illustrates it took more than two decades until Hoyle’s phrase became common in the scientific literature (Kragh 2013: 2.28–30).
In 1946, Lemaître had described at greater length his ideas of the expansion of the universe from a primaeval atom (Lemaître 1946). However, his framework needed considerable work in the late 1940s from George Gamow, Ralph Alpher, and Robert Herman to transform it into a workable model of the physics of the early universe (Gamow 1951). They outlined how the universe expanded from a hot dense state of atoms and photons, and they made predictions of the amount of helium and a radiation pervading the whole of the universe, called the Microwave Background Radiation. However, observations could not at the time test these predictions.
In contrast, Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi, and Thomas Gold were strongly opposed to a model of the universe with a beginning in time. Hoyle had met Bondi and Gold while working during the war on radar and signals (Mitton 2011). Their steady-state universe of 1948 was not a static universe of the kind envisioned by Einstein in his early thinking. They accepted that the universe was expanding but they wanted to avoid a beginning, for philosophical and theological reasons. The theory was founded on the ‘perfect cosmological principle’, that the universe in its large-scale features is not only spatially but also temporally homogeneous. It also reacted against those who would use the Big Bang to argue for a creator through a first-cause argument. Hoyle strongly opposed the idea of a Big Bang, which he considered to be metaphysical and illegitimate, indeed a scientific version of the biblical Genesis account (Kragh 2014).
The strength of Hoyle’s commitment was evident as observations of the microwave background in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, and then measurements of the amount of helium in the universe in the 1960s, meant that most people abandoned the steady state for Big Bang. Hoyle, however, was never convinced, creating even more ingenious possible non-Big Bang solutions to the observational evidence.
The strength of the theological controversy can be seen in some radio broadcasts that Hoyle made in 1949. Again, one sees the importance in cosmology of the popular arena. In the period 1949 to 1950, Hoyle gave a series of talks on the BBC which were then printed in The Listener, the BBC magazine, and published in a best-selling book The Nature of the Universe (Hoyle 1949: 567–568; Hoyle 1950). He called the hypothesis that all matter was created in a big bang at a particular time in the remote past ‘irrational’, and outside science. Kragh helpfully points out that, as a broadcaster, Hoyle needed word-pictures to get over technical and conceptual points, and ‘big bang’ was just one of them (Kragh 2013: 2.28–30). This was a time when the debate between steady state and Big Bang occurred in public discourse rather than scientific meetings. The reason for this was simply due to lack of observational data that could distinguish between the models.
The theological dimension went alongside the popularization. Craig McConnell has argued that, in these talks, Hoyle ridiculed biblical cosmology and attacked Christian belief in hope in the face of death (McConnell 2006: 151–168). The talks led to numerous letters to the BBC, and a pamphlet written by one of the celebrity preachers of the day, Leslie Weatherhead, entitled ‘“Really, Mr. Hoyle!” A Reply to the Broadcast Talks on “The Nature of the Universe” by Fred Hoyle’. The BBC gave airtime to Christians wanting to respond to Hoyle, including the novelist Dorothy L. Sayers. But McConnell also points to a less well-known response. William McCrea was a leading physicist and former secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society who had helped Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle publish early versions of their work in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. McCrea was also a member of the ‘Victoria Institute’, which aimed to explore genuine dialogue between science and Christian thinking. In the early 1950s, McCrea gave a number of key lectures at the Institute, which explored in a detailed and balanced way both the scientific and theological responses to both Big Bang and steady state models (McCrea 1951: 105–135). McCrea did not see steady state as a threat to belief in a creator God, nor did he want to use Big Bang to try and prove God.
McConnell differs from Kragh, who downplays the importance of the theological questions (Kragh 1996: 251). Rather he argues that the theological framing of the Big Bang–steady state debate by Hoyle drew both specialists and non-specialists into the wider discussion. It remains a case study showing that the interactions between science and religion are neither predictable nor controllable.
7 The Big Bang and a revival of the cosmological argument
While Hoyle was using science to attack Christian faith, others were beginning to use an expanding universe and a beginning to if not promote belief in God, but at the very least to state that cosmology was consistent with a Christian doctrine of creation. In an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences given in 1951, entitled ‘The Proofs for the Existence of God in the Light of Modern Natural Science’, Pope Pius XII claimed:
Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, it [science] has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well founded deduction as to the epoch [some five billion years ago] when the cosmos came forth from the hands of the Creator. Hence, creation took place in time. Therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore God exists. (Pope Pius XII 1951)
Lemaître was present at this address, but it would be fair to think that he may not have approved. Nevertheless, other cosmologists were saying similar things, if not going as far as the Pope. Oxford mathematician E. A. Milne, in discussing the expansion of the universe, concluded with the words: ‘The first cause of the Universe is left for the reader to insert. But our picture is incomplete without Him’ (Milne 1948: 233). Likewise, Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University, E. T. Whittaker, wrote:
There is no ground for supposing that matter and energy existed before and was suddenly galvanized into action. For what could distinguish that moment from all other moments in eternity? […] It is simpler to postulate creation ex nihilo – Divine will be constituting nature from nothingness. (Whittaker 1942: 63)
By the latter part of the 1960s, Hoyle’s term ‘the Big Bang’ was being used widely to refer to the beginning of the expansion of the universe. This started to suggest the misleading picture of a big explosion and the need for someone to set off such an explosion. The redshift of galaxies, coupled with the microwave background radiation, had suggested that the universe was expanding, and if it was expanding then there must have been a beginning to that expansion. However, this raised a problem. As one goes back in time, the universe becomes smaller, and its density becomes infinite. This was known as the singularity problem. It was a problem because the equations of general relativity broke down at this point. In addition, as the universe became very small, the two great theories of twentieth-century physics came into conflict. General relativity was concerned for the whole universe, while quantum theory was concerned for things at the smallest scale. When the universe was very young both should apply, but the theories were inconsistent. The current laws of physics broke down and could not describe the initial moments of the universe.
Noting that the universe had a beginning, Robert Jastrow in God and the Astronomers (1978) argued that astronomy in fact pointed towards belief in God, rather than posing a challenge:
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. (Jastrow 1978: 116)
The temptation here is to go back to revive the cosmological argument. When the temporal history of the cosmological model of the origin of the universe failed to explain the very first moment, it was natural for some to argue that God was the cause of the Big Bang. While for some popular apologetics this has been reduced to ‘who lit the blue touch paper of the Big Bang’, others have dealt with argument at a much deeper level (Craig 1980; Copan and Craig 2004; Loke 2017). In 1979, William Lane Craig revived the Kalām cosmological argument, in his book of the same name (Craig 1979). It is named after medieval Islamic scholasticism from which the key ideas for the argument arose. Pointing to the eleventh century Muslim philosopher Al-Ghazali, and how his work was influential for the Christian theology of Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas (Al-Ghazāli 1962: 15–16; Kovach 1974: 141–172), Craig sees the force of the argument of the metaphysical impossibility of actual infinities and sees it resonate with the scientific picture of temporal origins (Craig 1991: 85–96). While some have followed him on this, it has also been the focus of debate with fellow philosophers (Mackie 1982; Craig and Smith 1993; Smith 2007: 183).
However, such arguments have both scientific and theological problems (Alcalde 2019). These can be illustrated in Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and played out in its worldwide media attention. Hawking reports his motivation as stemming from a Vatican conference where he heard Pope John Paul II say that the first moment of the universe lay beyond science and was only the territory of theology. This was a misreporting of the Pope, but Hawking nevertheless believed that the initial moment of the universe should be open to scientific exploration. To describe the initial moment, Hawking needed to try and unify relativity and quantum theory into a quantum theory of gravity. This ‘theory of everything’ would explain the initial conditions of the universe and remove the need for the intervention of a creator God (Hawking 1988; Wilkinson and Hutchings 2020). While not able to construct a quantum theory of gravity, his sense was that this kind of theory would mean:
It is possible for space-time to be finite in extent and yet have no singularities […] at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions of space-time. (Hawking 1988: 135–136)
Hawking wanted to get rid of God as the first temporal cause of the universe. Although he explored applying quantum theory to the universe, using string theory, M-theory, and multiverse theory (Kaku and Thompson 1997; Hawking and Mlodinow 2010), his work was not completed or fully accepted by other cosmologists. Yet his very attempt can be welcomed by theologians.
The attempt to revive the cosmological argument in temporal form faces two main dangers. The first is a ‘God of the gaps’ argument, where God becomes the easy answer to current scientific mystery. Hawking’s work is a reminder that, if a quantum theory of gravity is found, such a god is pushed out of the gap into irrelevance. Second, Hawking is attacking a deist God rather than the God of Christian theism. Theism sees God as the creator and sustainer of all of the universe’s space-time, as much involved in all events and laws as in the initial conditions.
Here Craig has helpfully argued that, while Hawking undermines the attempt to prove God, he in fact raises the possibility of God as sufficient cause for the universe (Craig 1990: 473–491). This should not be pushed too far into an attempted proof, but, if a theory of quantum gravity is discovered, the metaphysical question remains: where do the laws of physics such as this come from? To ask where the laws of physics themselves come from is not ‘god of the gaps’, rather it is a question which goes beyond science.
One can push the Hawking approach even further in another way. The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), held by Christians over many centuries, may find new expression in a physical understanding of the universe which emerges out of a quantum fluctuation, rather than a god who makes some pre-existing matter explode.
8 Cosmology and the resurrection of the design argument
From the 1950s onwards there was a growing appreciation that the laws and circumstances of the universe seemed to be astonishingly fine-tuned for the existence of carbon-based life. In 1957, Robert Dicke suggested that changes in the fundamental constants of nature would preclude the existence of humans as observers within the universe (Dicke 1957: 363–376; 1961: 440–441). Thus the presence of observers needs to be recognized as a selection effect; we see the universe as it is because we are here. In universes which have different physical constants, there would be no observers to see them.
This was called the ‘anthropic principle’ by Brandon Carter in 1973. He named it in reaction to the Copernican Principle, which had been interpreted to mean that humans do not occupy a privileged position in the universe. He stated: ‘Although our situation is not necessarily central, it is inevitably privileged to some extent’ (Carter 1974: 291–298, original emphasis). For many theologians there was caution in drawing theological implications. The destruction of the design argument – first in the critiques of Immanuel Kant and David Hume, and then in the more important work of Charles Darwin in showing that natural selection provided an alternative to design – meant that there was reluctance to go down that road again.
However, several cosmologists knew little of this history and so moved forward with some enthusiasm. Sir Fred Hoyle – who, as seen above, had little time for orthodox Christianity – had with a number of collaborators brilliantly worked out how elements such as carbon and oxygen had been formed in the death-throes of stars. Yet the creation of carbon is dependent on some very fine-tuning of the energy levels in atoms. This unlikely situation led Hoyle to speak of being shaken in his atheism. He went further in looking at biological evolution and concluded:
A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question. (Hoyle 1981: 12)
As a result of these considerations, he moved from atheism to a much more open dialogue and wrote a book entitled The Intelligent Universe (Hoyle 1983).
The cosmologist Paul Davies was writing in the popular arena at around the same time. He would eventually coin the phrase ‘The Goldilocks Enigma’ to express the puzzle of why the universe was just right for human life (Davies 2007). It is interesting to note here that neither Hoyle nor Davies were writing from the perspective of faith communities. Further, they were not attempting to prove the existence of God. The awe of anthropic balances was simply leading them to ask if there was a deeper story to the universe. It is also interesting that these suggestions were being made in the public arena of popular science.
A number of theologians and philosophers have engaged the anthropic principle to argue for and against theism (Swinburne 1979; 1990; Craig 1989: 389–395; Smith 1991: 347–350; Leslie 1992: 521–540).
While there have been significant variations in the formulation and expression of the anthropic principle, John Barrow and Frank Tipler helpfully articulate the weak and strong anthropic principles:
Weak anthropic principle ‘Observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable because we must take into account the fact that our location is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with observers’.
Strong anthropic principle ‘The Universe must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage’. (Barrow and Tipler 1986: 16, 21)
The weak anthropic principle becomes explanatory of fine-tuning only if it is coupled with a proposal that our universe exists among many universes where the constants of physics are different. The concept of multiverse has become central to popular culture, explored by numerous science fiction authors and movie franchises from Marvel to Star Trek. In contemporary cosmology a multitude of multiverse models have been developed. One model suggests that our universe is one in a sea of bubble-universes, all with different physical laws. Another claimed that the expansion of the universe will be halted by gravity and the universe will contract to a Big Crunch. Some of these models then went further, speculating that the universe would ‘bounce’ back into a new Big Bang, and that the process of this oscillating universe goes on forever, thus providing an infinite number of universes. Yet another model comes from a bizarre interpretation of quantum theory by Everitt, saying that whenever a measurement is made of the quantum world the universe fulfils all quantum possibilities, forming a new universe with each possibility. Billions and billions of independent and slightly different universes are produced in this model.
Lord Martin Rees, the current British Astronomer Royal, is one of the pioneering cosmologists of his generation, and has been fascinated with the interpretation of anthropic balances. In 2000, he wrote Just Six Numbers which reviewed the apparent fine-tuning of six numbers which determine the kind of universe we inhabit. These numbers include the ratio of the electric force/gravitational force and the number of spatial dimensions in the universe (Rees 2000). He shows that, if any of these numbers were slightly different, no life would exist in the universe. He also notes the contingency that the basic laws are intelligible and calls this ‘remarkable’. He then asks what this means, and rejects those who would say that this is just the way things are. He quotes a parable of the philosopher John Leslie, who wondered what you would feel like if, on the day of your execution, all fifty marksmen aiming their guns at you missed. Leslie rightly suggests that you would not be prepared to say it merely happened but would seek some reason for it (Leslie 1989). However, Rees does not see God as the answer. He notes it as a possible explanation but then moves on without assessing or arguing against it. His own answer is that the anthropic principle selects this universe out of many. He views this as ‘compellingly attractive’ and ‘a natural deduction from some (albeit speculative) theories’ (Rees 2000: 150).
However, it needs to be stressed again that this coupling of the anthropic principle with a theory of many universes is more of a metaphysical suggestion than a physical theory. The question must be asked: in what sense do other universes exist if they have no observable consequences? There are many who argue with some justification that talk of many universes goes beyond physics, to the extent that it becomes an explanation of the way the world is on the same level as philosophical and theological explanations (Holder 2017; Boulding 2022).
Nevertheless, multiverse theory must be taken seriously by theologians. In a similar way to Darwin providing an alternative explanation for design in the biological world, multiverse theory provides a less scientifically-grounded but at the very least a metaphysical possibility of explanation of design. More positively, multiverse speculation exhibits a sense of awe in the intelligibility of the physical laws and fine tuning of the laws and circumstances of the universe.
John Polkinghorne cautioned that the fine tuning of the universe and the intelligibility of its laws should be used as proofs for a creator but may be pointers to a deeper purpose to the universe, and that they do find a natural explanation in the Christian view of the universe as creation (Polkinghorne 1988).
9 Uncertainties, SETI, and the fate of the universe: cosmology and theology in the twenty-first century
The inability to find a consistent and fruitful theory of quantum gravity is not the only frustrating uncertainty of physical cosmology in the twenty-first century. Humility among cosmologists is encouraged by the fact that humans are in the dark over what some ninety-five percent of the universe is made of.
Only five percent of the mass energy of the universe can be seen directly though the light that it emits. This electromagnetic radiation is emitted at all wavelengths from gamma and X-ray through to radio waves. However, from the early 1980s onwards it started to become clear that there was a large percentage of the universe, around twenty-five percent, in the form of dark matter. Dark matter does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation. Its presence is however inferred from how galaxies form and evolve, from gravitational lensing, and from the cosmic microwave background (Trimble 1987: 425–472). While there are compelling arguments to believe that this dark matter is a type of particle, work still continues to try and detect it. Another way to narrow down the possibilities of what this dark matter can be illustrates an important new component to cosmology (Davis et al. 1985: 371–394; Bertone 2010). Observations and theory construction are now joined by mathematical simulations of how stars, galaxies, and the universe evolve. Computers are able to generate model universes from assumptions about initial conditions and then evolve those universes through time to see what structures they produce. The simulations are then compared to observations which can constrain or change the initial conditions.
Thus, the search for dark matter illustrates that cosmology does not have all of the answers, but continues to ask questions which go beyond the everyday experience of human beings on Earth. The methodology of cosmology, involving simulations, again illustrates trust in the universality, simplicity, and intelligibility of the laws of physics.
If twenty-five percent of the universe is in the form of dark matter, another seventy percent of the universe is in the form of dark energy. In 1998, astronomers attempted to find the solution to a question which at that time had only two possible answers: depending on the amount of mass in the universe, would the rate of expansion of the universe slow down for ever, or would the expansion reverse and the universe contract? The conclusion that they came to was a complete surprise for the cosmological theories of the time, and was of such significance that the scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011 (Riess et al. 1988: 1009; Perlmutter et al. 1999: 53–60). Far from slowing down, the universe was accelerating in its expansion due to some unknown type of force, the so-called ‘dark energy’ (Kirshner 2016). There had been no theoretical prediction of this apart from Einstein’s original inclusion of his cosmological constant in his solution of the equations of general relativity for the universe. This accelerating universe was yet another reminder of the ability of observation to surprise the theorist.
This raises some interesting challenges and opportunities for the theologian. An accelerating universe is not at face value good news for the eternal survival of this creation. Rather it points to a future of futility where the universe will rip itself apart or end in a slow cold heat death.
The belief in science as saviour has been introduced into this discussion by some cosmologists. Some see hope in the myriad of bubble universes which will continue independent of this one. Some have argued that the ability of humans to manipulate the environment will lead to the creation of forms of life able to survive such a universe, but this is increasingly impossible in an accelerating universe (Dyson 2004; Tipler 1996). In the fate of the universe, science is not the saviour. Paul Davies is more honest in saying that an ‘almost empty universe growing steadily more cold and dark for all eternity is profoundly depressing’ (Davies 2002: 48).
This sense of futility in the physical end of the universe is an important area of dialogue for theologians. Some may suggest that the heat death of the universe is simply irrelevant for Christian theology, either because it is too far into the future or because a different end to the universe may be brought about by God outside of natural processes. Both of these options run the risk of denying a God who is the source of time, space, matter, and both beginning and end. A God who is involved in creating the world with the physical laws that indicate a future of futility but then ignores or supersedes such creation is not the God of Christian tradition.
For the Christian tradition, the world is good but not destined to last forever. A number have argued that the theme of new creation, which is a new heaven and earth, is the central category of hope in the New Testament (Wilkinson 2010). God’s purposes are not merely to redeem human beings but to redeem all things. The evidence and embodiment of that hope is in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Here God’s continued commitment to the physicality of the universe in creation, incarnation, resurrection, and new creation becomes immensely important in any dialogue with cosmology.
Hope is expressed in the New Testament not in terms of God throwing away this universe and starting again, but a transformation of this creation into new creation. The bodily resurrection of Jesus thus becomes the first-fruits of that which will happen not just to human beings but to the whole physical creation (1 Cor 15:23). The bodily resurrection demonstrates a very important aspect of this, that the transformation consists of both continuity and discontinuity. That is, the resurrected Jesus was the same as but different to the Jesus who died on the cross. While he was recognized by the disciples and interacted with the world physically, for example by eating, there were other times when he was not fully recognized and appeared in rooms with locked doors (Luke 24:36–43; John 20:19–29).
Thus, the Christian theologian will want to hold both continuity and discontinuity in thinking about God at work in the transformation to new creation in the light of the heat death of the universe. Models which simply say that God works ‘outside’ of natural processes stress discontinuity at the expense of continuity. Models which align God’s work completely with current scientific models stress continuity at the expense of discontinuity.
For example, the French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) sought to blend science and religion using the metaphor of evolution towards the Cosmic Christ. His main purpose was to establish the person of Christ as the convergent focus of cosmic evolution. For him evolution converged in an Omega Point which he identified with Christ. There is much to commend in this cosmic understanding of Christ. Indeed, for Paul in Col 1:15–20, Christ is the origin and sustainer of this creation and the origin and sustainer of new creation, and so Teilhard de Chardin’s passion to universalize Christ and to ‘Christify the universe’ reflects a strong biblical tradition (Deane-Drummond 2006; Udías Vallina 2009; Salmon and Farina 2011; Jax and Wendel 2020; Haight 2023).
Teilhard de Chardin became popular in a number of theological and church circles which were attracted by his spirituality. However, he was rejected by many biologists and had little influence on cosmology. The one exception is Frank Tipler, who attempted to develop an Omega Point model in response to the heat death of the universe. Yet, as seen above, this model does not work with the accelerating universe, and the theologian would add that Tipler does not give sufficient attention to Christ.
For some, this adoption of evolution stressed continuity and a view of optimistic progress of the whole universe. Heat death subverts this optimism. Yet Teilhard de Chardin was right to stress the centrality of Christ. From a very different theological perspective, this point was also made by T. F. Torrance, who recognized the importance of the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus in thinking about space, time, and matter (Torrance 1969; 1974; 1976).
In all of this, the theologian will not map the biblical account exactly onto the scientific account, nor see them as completely independent. Rather the theologian will come to the scientific description of the future of the physical universe with much to learn, but also much to offer. Theology proposes a different way of thinking about the future. As Polkinghorne and Welker noted:
Scientific prognosis puts to theology the question of whether it is not, in fact, ultimate […] despair that is the appropriate human attitude to the world in which we live. Theology’s response is to replace despair with hope and joy. (Polkinghorne and Welker 2000: 11)
That hope and joy is focused for the Christian theologian in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus. This has been very important in thinking about another area of huge public interest: scientific advance and theological challenge.
This final area for discussion brings the discussion of cosmology back to the place of human beings within the cosmos. In 2019, the Nobel Prize in Physics brought these two things together. The Prize was shared between cosmologist Jim Peebles, for laying the foundations of modern-day cosmology, and astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (Cho and Clery 2019: 166). In 1995, Mayor and Queloz discovered the first planet around another star beyond our solar system, not only opening a floodgate which has led to currently more than 5000 such exoplanets, but also beginning a new era of astronomy and astrophysics exploring within mainstream science the question of whether humans are alone in the universe. The cosmological significance of this area goes back to some of the earliest speculation on how central or special human beings are, both to the universe and to God.
The discovery of exoplanets includes some Earth-like planets which are small and rocky and orbit around host stars within what is called the habitable zone, where the surface temperature is within the limits that make possible the long-term evolution and sustenance of carbon-based life (Wilkinson 2016: 414–430; Goldsmith 2018).
The scientific and theological implications of these discoveries are both exciting and challenging, and have again not just engaged the scientific community but also reinforced popular interest in whether we are alone in the universe. A naïve argument goes that if most of the one-hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy have planetary systems, then there must be intelligent life out there. However, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) has to acknowledge a complexity of questions. The conditions for life do not immediately imply intelligent life, and, if there are myriad of planets with intelligent life, why have we not seen evidence for it in radio transmissions or in clear evidence that we are a visited planet? Yet governments and the scientific academy are both taking this with new seriousness, with NASA investigating both Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena in the Earth’s atmosphere and launching the James Webb Telescope to observe the atmospheres of exoplanets, looking for signs of life.
The possible discovery of life or intelligent life elsewhere in the universe may be seen by some to dethrone the special nature of human beings and question the universality of the incarnation and work of redemption of Jesus. Yet SETI is being engaged by theologians reflecting a long tradition of speculation about other worlds (Rahner 1957: 1061–1062; Dick 1982; 1998; Crowe 1986; 2008; Peters 2011: 644–655: Losch and Krebs 2015: 230–244; Wilkinson 2017; Peters, Hewlett and Moritz 2018; Davison 2018: 447–461; 2023).
This speculation was motivated by one of the strong biblical insights discussed earlier, that is God is free to create and is not constrained by either our existence or our logic. Further, that God is faithful creator of the whole universe means that the laws which produce life here on Earth may also lead to life on other planets. In terms of human uniqueness or the special nature of human beings, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa in the fifteenth century suggested that the special nature of human beings is defined by the gift of intimate relationship with God rather than by being at the centre of or alone in the universe (O'Meara 2012: 76). Unique relationship does not have to be justified by exclusivity. God is free to relate to human beings in a special way that does not preclude God’s love and commitment to the rest of the universe, whether it is animate or inanimate.
This is a helpful way to begin to think more about what it means for human beings to be made in the image of God. Often this has been understood to mean that human beings are completely different from the rest of the creation, but its setting in the early Genesis narratives recognizes continuity between human beings and the rest of creation. For example, in the week of creation described in Genesis 1, both the animals and humans are created on the same day (Gen 1:24–31), and in the more specific second chapter, ‘the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground’ (Gen 2:7). Yet, compared to other living creatures on the Earth, human beings alone are given a privileged and responsible position. They alone are made in the image and likeness of God, with considerable responsibility to rule wisely over the Earth. The precise meaning of ‘image’ is difficult because of its rarity in the Bible and uncertainty about its etymology (Clines 1998) but the possibility of alien life is a reminder of seeing human beings in relationship with God and in relationship with the rest of the created world. As Westermann comments:
The simple fact that the first page of the Bible speaks about heaven and earth, the sun, the moon and stars, about plants and trees, about birds, fish and animals, is a certain sign that the God whom we acknowledge in the Creed as the Father of Jesus Christ is concerned with all these creatures, and not merely with humans. A God who is understood only as the god of humankind is no longer the God of the Bible. (Westermann 1984: 176)
Indeed, the possibility of other life in the universe can be a positive area for theology. As John Haught comments: ‘Contact with ETs would provide an exceptional opportunity for theology to widen and deepen its understanding of divine creativity’ (Haught 2003: 179).
A more complex question for Christian theologians is how to view the Jesus events of incarnation and redemption in a cosmic perspective. If the cosmological models of the origin and fate of the universe have given insights into creation and new creation, SETI asks how the Christian tradition understands the relationship between the particularity in time and space of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the universality of his work of reconciliation. This has been focused in a debate on whether there may be multiple incarnations. This stretches back to Paul Tillich, Norman Pittenger, and Eric Mascall but continues to be an important topic (Tillich 1953: 96; Pittenger 1959: 249; Mascall 1956: 39–40; Davison 2023).
In reflecting on the overall theme that the questions of cosmology and theology are played out by scientists themselves, and often in the public arena, one of the strongest voices to raise this issue was the Oxford cosmologist E. A. Milne. Although sceptical about alien incarnations, he wanted to be open to cosmology and theology opening up new questions:
Is it irreverent to suggest that an infinite God could scarcely find the opportunities to enjoy himself, to exercise His godhead, if a single planet were the seat of His activities? (Milne 1952: 152)
Yet, struggling to hold together his Christian faith with some of these questions, he concludes: ‘We are in deep waters here in a sea of great mysteries’ (Milne 1952: 153).
The history of cosmology and theology reviewed in this article has ventured at times into this sea of great mysteries, but navigating them can open up new vistas of understanding God in creation and new creation, seeing humanity in its cosmic setting, and indeed spurring science on to learn more about the universe.