Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-rnpqb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-28T07:27:56.940Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Jesus and the Star Folk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Edward P. Echlin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As science finally eliminates the moon as a living habitat telescopes probe ever further for extraterrestrial vitality. NASA expects, barring terrestrial catastrophes, to probe Mars every two years eventually recovering Martian rocks for laboratory investigation. These, with Martian fragments already found in Antarctica, may soon resolve whether or not life has existed, lives now, or will evolve on that frigid, thin atmosphered planet. The European Space Agency anticipates launching early next century an ‘Interferometry Observatory’ to seek signals of life from relatively earthlike planets. These explorations from both sides of the Atlantic, with advances in astronomical science, the popularity of space fiction, art, and para-religious phenomena make certain that, for the foreseeable future, people will wonder about extra terrestrial life, its possibilities, its traces, its evolutionary potential, and its unnoticed presence even now.

Humans have wondered about star folk for a surprisingly long time. In the golden age of Greece philosophers debated the possibilities of a plurality of worlds including planets with intelligent life. In the 5th century BC Pythagoras thought the moon, visible from earth then as now, was inhabited. So did Epicurus and famously somewhat later the prolific essayist and biographer Plutarch. Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle dismissed pluralism. But some early church Fathers, including Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Jerome, were open to possibilities of stellar life. Aquinas, like Augustine, thought this earth alone was habitable but resolutely affirmed Divine omnipotence. Three years after Thomas’ death the Bishop of Paris (Etienne Tempier) in 1277 fuelled speculation about extraterrestrials by condemning the proposition ‘that the First Cause cannot make many worlds’.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 79 , Issue 925 , March 1998 , pp. 146 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Christopher Moss, SJ, ‘Can we believe in aliens?’The Tablet, 12 July, 1997, pp. 892‐893.

2 Dick, Steven J., Plurality of Worlds, the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant, CUP, 1982, pp.27,36Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 89.

4 Pascal, Blaise, Pensées, Krailsheimer, A.J., ed. & trans. Penguin, London, 1995, p.60Google Scholar

5 In Dick, Plurality of Worlds, pp.94‐95.

6 Crowe, Michael J., Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750‐1900, CUP, 1986, pp. 10‐13Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., p. 558.

8 Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience, Thomas, Owen, ed., Harper, New York, 1966, p.89Google Scholar.

9 Woodrow, Alain, The Jesuits A Story of Power, Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1995, p.llGoogle Scholar.

10 Crowe, Extraterrestrial Life Debate, p.436; John Hedley Brooke, Science & Religion, Some Historical Perspectives, CUP, 1991, p. 303.

11 Eiseley, Loren, The Immense Journey, Harper, New York, 1957, p. 162Google Scholar.

12 Crowe, Extraterrestrial Life Debate, p. 558.

13 Moule, C.F.D., The Origin of Christology, CUP, 1977, p. 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Murphy, Roland, The Tree of Life, An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature, Doubleday, N.Y., 1990, p. 138Google Scholar.

15 ‘Christ in the Universe’ in The Poems of Alice Meynell, Harper, New York, 1923, p.92.Google Scholar

16 Austin, Richard Cartwright, Baptised into Wilderness, a Christian Perspective on John Muir, John Knox, Allenstown, 1987, p. 16; alsoGoogle Scholar Frederick Turner, John Muir From Scotland to the Sierra, Canongate, Edinburgh, 1997, pp.42‐79Google Scholar.

17 Hayden, Tom, The Lost Gospel of the Earth, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1997, p.219Google Scholar.

18 Edward P. Echlin, ‘Jesus, the Hope of Creation’, The Month, Nov. 1997, pp.440‐441.

19 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, ‘As kingfishers catch fire’Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Selection of his poems and prose, Gardner, W. H., ed., Penguin, London, 1963, p.51Google Scholar.

20 Vincent Rossi, ‘Liturgizing the World: Religion, Science and the Environmental Crisis in Light of the Sacrificial Ethic of Sacred Cosmology’, EcoTheology, July 1997, pp. 61‐84.

21 Quoted in Mayne, Michael, This Sunrise of Wonder: Letters for the Journey, Fount, London, 1995, p. 291Google Scholar.

22 David Toolan, SJ, ‘Why Care About Cosmology?’Origins, 1997, p.483.