hardly scientific to exclude all reference to the religious convictions that have to a large extent shaped the course of our history and still command the assent of the majority of the human race.
The actual message that is on its way is stimulating and thought-provoking. “We cast this message into the cosmos” it begins. Then comes a reference to the staggering dimensions of the universe. “Of the two hundred billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy,” we read, “some, perhaps, many—may have inhabited planets and space-faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message.”
It is short enough to be quoted in full. Here is what we are going to tell any who may chance to pick it up. “This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so that we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe.”
This is a brief, comprehensive, and moving statement. Some might say that it does well to exclude any religious speculations and confine itself to simple, observable fact. But, of course, it doesn’t. In some ways these words are as much a statement of faith as the Apostles’ Creed. When I queried the omission of theology from the disciplines mentioned in the capsule some may have thought: “Well, that’s no loss: why bother these people with God-talk when we can stick to the objective sciences?” But this is no objective statement (even if there is such a thing—which is doubtful). There is a philosophy here—even a theology. Listen: “We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.” That is a new theological answer to the first question of the Catechism: “What is the chief end of man?” It is also a statement of secular eschatology, eschatology being the department of theology that deals with the ultimate destiny of us all. It is spelled out in greater detail than most theologians would care to risk. “We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.” Is that really your great hope, the working hope of the bulk of human beings on our planet? I find this a fascinating, mind-stimulating speculation and have no inclination at all to rub it out in the name of my religion. But it in no way corresponds to the final hope that billions find in the Bible—the hope of the triumph of the Kingdom of God. And I am sure that our President, in whose name this message went, would be the first to declare that his ultimate hope lies elsewhere.
Hope is not a word from the lexicon of science. It is a theological virtue—one on which I intend to concentrate this year during the Sundays of Advent. I find this statement stimulating, and thought-provoking, but theologically defective. What it does do, however, is to force us to relate what we profess to believe as Christians to this dazzling picture of the universe presented by modern science, and our first attempts to voyage into its mysteries. We cannot shut ourselves into our sanctuaries and express our faith in the words and images of another era in human understanding of the universe, and then emerge into a space-age which seems to demand different ways of thinking and believing. In other words, there should be no wall of separation between Church and Space. I have said here more than once that the God revealed in the Bible is not one whose glory is in the least diminished by any discoveries about the vastness of the universe, and that the values for which Christ stands—love, truth, peace, humility, hope—are as valid for the first colonizers of the planets as they were for the Galileans who heard the Sermon on the Mount. But it would be wrong to pretend that there are no questions raised for an orthodox Christian by the new picture of the universe with which we are now living.
Most of these questions will relate to the figure of Jesus Christ himself. I once sat at a table with a very distinguished astro-physicist and a Christian evangelist, the late D. T. Niles. Niles was about to conduct a Christian mission at Edinburgh University and the other was in agreement that the students should have the opportunity to be confronted with the claims of the Gospel. Then he opened up his own doubts and reservations. “What I find hard to believe,” he said, “is that one who lived two thousand years ago in a little corner of this planet could possibly have the supreme importance you attach to him in this immense universe.” Niles thought for a moment and then said: “That’s a big question—but, first of all, you have to make up your own mind about Jesus Christ. Who is he?”
This is why I have set before you in apposition to the message to the planets this extraordinary statement of the apostle Paul. “God has placed everything under the power of Christ and has set him up as head of everything for the Church. For the Church is his body, and in that body lives fully the one who fills the whole wide universe.” If the apostle were to have lived on into our new understanding of “the whole wide universe” I don’t believe he would have altered one word of what he says here about Jesus Christ and his Church. It is commonly thought today that the first Christians were those who had actually met, or heard about Jesus and were so impressed that later they began to spin greater and greater myths about him until he ceased to be an historical character but became a kind of heavenly King. In fact, it was the living Christ, risen and ascended, who first awoke their faith, and it was only later that they began to collect the material about his earthly life. What they were saying was not that there was once a Jewish teacher whose life was so amazing, and whose death was so tragic, that he must be thought of as reigning somewhere in heaven but that they had been gripped by a living Lord in whom God himself had come to share their human adventures and rescue them from evil. They knew that they had been called into a company so closely united to this Lord that it could be called his body on earth. “For the Church is his body” as Paul reminded them, and then added the tremendous words: “and in that body lives fully the one who fills the whole wide universe.” The Gospel tells us of a man who lived our life, shared our sufferings, died our death, in one particular place on this tiny planet at one particular time (“under Pontius Pilate,” says the creed) and at the same time announces that he is the disclosure of the eternal God, the rescuer of the whole human family, and the final Lord of the entire universe. We have lived for about a hundred years with a vivid picture of the historical Jesus. Perhaps now the Bible is speaking to us again of this cosmic Christ.
Having said that, let me confess that I have trouble relating this cosmic Christ to the possible existence of other beings, other civilizations elsewhere in the “whole wide universe.” I have no answer to such questions as: “Did they also experience an incarnation? Was Jesus born more than once elsewhere? Did other races need to be redeemed? Or did God have some other way to communicate with them?” I feel no urge to deny that any such creatures ever existed in order to preserve my belief in the uniqueness of Christ. I am content to believe that the God revealed to me by Jesus is the Creator and Governor of the whole wide universe, and therefore have no hesitation in singing: “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne,” or praying with the apostle that I “may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that (I) may be filled with all the fullness of God.” That Jesus is the one who “fills the whole universe” I can joyfully affirm without having all my questions about how or when or where satisfactorily answered.
So let me now try to compose a little message for Mars (or anybody else who might be out there). I am not implying that this is what should have been enclosed in that capsule that was tossed into the cosmic ocean since I am speaking specifically as a Christian. But there are some things that I am sure millions of other faiths would also have liked expressed. I would want to add to some of the good things that were said and enclosed in that packet something like this:
Dear Martian, this scientific information, these records of music, these expressions of our hopes and aspirations are the product of a long story (as we count time), and in that story by far the most powerful influence has been the belief, held in every section of our planet from earliest times, that our lives—and everything that exists, including your planet—are not accidental happenings with no meaning but the result of the activity of a supreme Mind and Will that we call God. This God has been pictured in many ways and some of these
