Anthro-Expansivity and the Natural Next Step of The Great Commission: A Longitudinal Application Concerning the Trajectory of the Age of Exploration

Anthro-Expansivity and the Natural Next Step of The Great Commission 

A Longitudinal Application Concerning the Trajectory of the Age of Exploration  

1. Introduction

2. Anthro-expansivity Past to Present

3. From Celestial to Extraterrestrial Beings: A New Age of Exploration 

4. Conclusion: Anthro-expansivity and the Eschatological End Game

Introduction

On May 13, 2014 during daily mass, Pope Francis stated in his Homily, “If tomorrow, for example, an expedition of Martians arrives and some of them come to us ... and if one of them says: 'Me, I want to be baptised!', what would happen?”  His answer was that he would baptize them, even if they were little green men with long noses and big ears.    This may seem shocking to some. Whenever a popular science magazine hints at the possibility of extraterrestrial life, even in microbial form, the comment feeds online inevitably fill with people prophesying mass exodus from organized religion in the event of such claims being objectively validated.  The homily was about not closing the doors of baptism to anyone in need and the Pope here was not speaking uniquely, he was actually piggybacking on a recent line of thought in the church concerning extraterrestrials that has developed in the last century and is traceable in seed form back to the 15th century.  The position on extraterrestrials also has its roots in experiences the Catholic Church faced during the age of exploration and develops out of assumptions given at its founding by Jesus Christ.  

The purpose of this paper is to explore anthro-expansivity, that is, the idea that if a movement bills itself as accepting and inclusive it must have the most expansive definition of what it is to be a human.  This idea is the underpinning of all “life issues” in Christian morality, that what it is to be a human is mysterious, a creature made in the image and likeness of God, and that Humans are born with dignity and cannot lose it.  This is the fulcrum of the abortion debate.  The best and true argument against abortion is an assertion of dignity and a better safe than sorry attitude toward human life.  If we are not sure that the in utero being is human, and there is no way of objectively accounting for human nature, then better safe than sorry.  The axiom is this, better to accidentally treat a dog with the dignity of a human, than to accidentally treat a human with the dignity of a dog.  

The paper will trace how anthro-expansivity has been the case for Christianity starting with The Great Commission of Matthew 28: 16-20.  The paper will review how it is a foundational and necessary component  of Christianity showing how Christianity has time and again encountered mysterious or despised populations and redefined them inclusively.   Lastly the paper will explore the biases concerning and implications of interacting with an extraterrestrial civilization and then discuss how anthro-expansivity applies to extraterrestrial life, by employing the expansive attitudes of St. Paul, especially as they appear in his letter to the Romans, where he is trying to unite a fractured Roman church for the purposes of further expansion to Spain. All of this will be situated within the metanarrative of salvation history in conjunction with the natural flow of the age of exploration.

Anthro-Exclusivity, Anthro-Authenticity, and Anthro-Expansivity   

Since the dawn of postlapsarian humanity, there has been a need by groups of humans, given the influence of original sin, to engage in practices of anthro-exclusivity, meaning, when one group labels another group or other groups as non or sub-human.   The basic moral counterpoint to anthro-exclusivity is the golden rule.  Absolute anthro-exclusivity will put a person in an absolutely self centered mode of being, believing that they are the only example of a true or authentic human and thereby seeking to rob all others of dignity in a variety of ways and to a varying degrees.  The golden rule seeks, on an individual level to reorient the believer to be anthro-expansive, to see others as yourself.  This is a very hard state of consciousness for most people. In the treatise, Aneusomy Syndromes and Eschatological Retention the reader may have noted how this attitude played out regarding those defined as somehow syndromic by medical science.  It is hard for an individual to regard a syndromatic person as one would oneself.  It is hard for society to see their import for the greater good and even conceive that they may play a necessary role in God’s plan for humanity.  Anthro-exclusivity may be conceived philosophically among the intelligentsia of certain cultures, for example in our modern secular world it is possible that certain racially minded empiricist may define human life genetically using scientific knowledge.  But most likely it is simple turns of language in the popular tongue that push an agenda of degradation to its most dangerous ends.    

For example the Bible mentions the word “dog” about thirty times, most of the time it is not in a good light.  About half of the time it is an insult directed at a specific person or group of people.  The term is of course exclusionary, but specifically as an insult it places the recipient of the derogatory remark among the animal kingdom and outside of humanity.  This may seem a trivial detail, but there are a great many ways to insult people, some more damaging than others.  When an insult places the recipient outside the scope of humanity, the dignity afforded fellow humans is lost and the recipient is subject to the treatment afforded, say, a dog.  Once such an anthro-exclusive insult seeps into a culture and becomes the normative way that an opposing culture is denominated, it is all the easier to treat them without dignity. 

In Matthew 15:21-28 and in Mark 7:24-30 one sees the sacred authors playing on this theme in ingenious ways.  Jesus seems to seek putting a woman who lays outside his temporal mission off using this derogatory term but is one upped by her use of the same term.  Matthew’s account is the harsher of the two,

Then Jesus went from that place and withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.  And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.”  But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.”  He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.”  He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”  She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”  Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

Jesus was silent to the woman in the first instance, telling his disciples that it is only to Israel that he has come.  But when confronted by her, Jesus uses the typical Hebrew insult to frame his same response to her.  In this exchange she outwits him by extending his analogy in her plea for an exception.  She does not demonstrate insult, instead she exhibits humility, the key ingredient for seeking spiritual healing, in order to garner corporeal healing for her daughter. 

If Jesus was outright rude and/or racist and if she outwitted him in truth, then the story is unsettling.  We do not like to think of our savior as someone who would demonstrate unjust prejudices.  He is one of three examples we have in the Bible of anthro-authenticity, that is, he is an example of what a human is supposed to be according to God’s plan.  The only other examples we have of that state are Adam and Eve as they existed in paradise and the data we are able to gather from that story is sparse, simply that they had jobs to do and were naked without shame.  Jesus on the other hand is our primary example of anthro-authenticity.  He abides in postlapsarian reality, just like us, and is therefore the example of how to be anthro-authentic in a postlapsarian world, as opposed to paradise.  The New Testament repeats his narrative from four different points of view and couples that with a variety of commentary.  According to those commentaries, he is the “New Adam” the only postlapsarian example we have of anthro-authenticity.  We expect Jesus to be morally perfect and when he not only seems disinterested in healing someone, but also uses brute derogatory language toward them because they are of a different culture we are horrified. 

The easiest way to reconcile Jesus’ anthro-authenticity and his use of a derogatory slur is to argue that he, or the sacred author, was using her to teach a lesson.  Jesus meets everyone where they are.  His disciples and all subsequent Christians are not close to that point of anthro-authenticity yet.  In order to get the disciples and the reader of the Gospel to the point of The Great Commission in chapter 28:18-20, where anthro-expansivity is offered to all nations, there is work to be done.  As we shall see in the following paragraphs, it is possible that one of the devices of this interaction is the same as the device used in the good samaritan, that what you expect to meet is a gentile monster, but what you actually meet is a fully moral human who acts just as you would hope to be at your best.  As we shall see, Jesus, seeing a woman who earnestly seeks aid, knows humility is just around the corner, as it would be from anyone seeking aid and utilizes this as an anthro-expansive lesson for his apostles.   

 

 Jesus uses the syrophoenician as his second lesson concerning anthro-expansivity.  The lesson seems to cover the scope of Matthew’s Gospel. It starts with the arrival of the Magi who set the stage for how gentiles have things to reveal concerning the messiah, and ends with The Great Commission where the gospel is spread from Judaism, to the wide gentile world.  These two stories frame two encounters Jesus has with gentiles, the second being the syro-phoenician woman and  the first being the cure of the centurion's servant in Matthew Chapter 8:5-13

When he entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.”  He said to him, “I will come and cure him.”  The centurion said in reply, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed.  For I too am a person subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”  When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.  I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  And Jesus said to the centurion, “You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.” And at that very hour [his] servant was healed.

 Interestingly in this story Jesus does not protest that his mission is only to the house of Israel, nor does he derive the centurion with demeaning slurs.  It may be that Jesus is tactful, knowing his cultural “betters” when he sees them. But that does not keep with anything else that happens in the gospels from sadducees to pharisees, all the way through his death at the hands of the very Romans who at this point he would be showing restraint towards.  

One helpful interpretation could be that the Gospel of Matthew is trying to bring the reader to a point concerning anthro-expansivity.  After an introduction where the magi are able to intuit meanings concerning the messiah that the other characters cannot, the sacred author uses these synoptic stories to tackle two distinct problems that the disciples and all Christians will need to know to practice an anthro-expansive attitude.  The first thing the disciples need to know is that distance is not a factor.  So what we have in this story is not a cultural focus.  The surprising thing the centurion gentile has to reveal to both Jesus and the disciples is that he understands that Jesus’ power is not bound by geography.  When Jesus says he will go to his house the centurion stops him and points out the he can do it from a distance.  Given that twice now the gentile has shared knowledge with the Jew, we become certain here that an anthro-expansive attitude is not a “Jewish man’s burden” so to speak.  It absolutely benefits all parties involved. 

The Great Commission speaks of spreading the gospel to all nations.  That would mean covering a large distance.  For the disciples to understand this means that they would need to understand that the power of Christ transcends distance.  Jesus himself is actually amazed the centurion's intuition and uses it as a starting point to explain to the disciples about the rapid acceptance the gospel will meet across the Gentile world.  Historically it would be the hellenized Jewish Christians who spread the word to Gentiles, then the Gentiles who take the gospel to the farthest reaches of the known world.  Hence the Gentiles did reveal to the Jews the true geo-transcendence of the gospel.  

With the story of the syrophoenician woman, Jesus is no longer surprised by the faith of the Gentiles, but seems to more calmly accept the situation.  In both of the stories it is the gentile, not Jesus who seems to explain the breadth of Jesus’ mission and meaning by means of their wisdom and humility before the messiah of the Jews.  If the encounter with the centurion taught the disciples how expansive the mission of the messiah could be in terms of distance, the syrophoenician woman teaches them how expansive the mission must be culturally.  Cultural inclusivity is actually a harder sell than physical traversal. Traveling is a matter of finding the proper mode, but cultural inclusivity takes a moral shift coupled with a sense of humility as both Jesus and the syrophoenician woman demonstrate.  

The syrophoenician woman assumes the humility of one who deserves treatment like a dog, and Jesus assumes the humility of one who is bested by a foreign woman.   By allowing the Gentiles to make the major point in each case, Jesus is showing the disciples what they will need in order to fulfill The Great Commission, that is, the humility of knowing that you are not better than the Gentiles if you are a Jew.  They are human like you and not to be defined otherwise, thus approach them as you would want to be approached.  If the Messiah himself could be bested by such people maybe they are worthy of respect.  In this second story, once again distance is a factor, the daughter is healed from afar, and added to that, in order to bring the disciples a little further toward The Great Commission, is the cultural angle.  Notice that Jesus does not feel the need to follow her to her house to heal her daughter.  Also notice Jesus is culturally neutral with the disciples in private, he seems to dispassionately explaining his mission and but curiously leaving their mission uncommented upon.  Then when the woman confronts him, he acts as any of his disciples might, with the standard cultural insensitivity of anthro-exclusivity.  When the Jewish messiah is bested in the exchange there can be no doubt that anthro-exclusivity is not to be the modus operandi.  You cannot assume that Gentiles are dogs if you are the Jewish messiah, therefore simply being Jewish will certainly not grant you such an assumption.

After the disciples are exposed to the two lessons concerning the Gentiles, 1) no distance is too great for the redemptive power of God  and 2) anthro-exclusive derogatory terms are flipped to antho-expansive ends in the messiah’s teaching, the last thing Jesus shares with them is The Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 nicely framing the entire Gospel in conjunction with the infancy narrative of the Magi. 

Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

Jesus’ instruction is to baptize and make followers of all nations.  The baptismal ceremony is both the great leveler as well as the great catalyst of anthro-expansivity.  John uses it as a leveler in his ministry calling for the Jews to come back to authentic Judaism.  He is using the ritual bathing known as Mikveh.  This would be an immersion in water that a Jewish person would undergo to free himself from ritual impurity, such as after childbirth or after touching a corpse.  It is also part of the conversion process a gentile must go through to become Jewish.  John used this ritual in the Jordan to denote a conversion experience of repentance of heart rather than ritual purification.  Hence his harsh treatment of those who seem to be coming out simply for show. 

For the disciples baptism is adopted from its original purpose, conversion to Judaism of the Christian variety, and used to achieve a new purpose, anthro-authenticity by adoption into the person of Christ.  If all nations are ritually targeted for immersed in the baptism of the messiah of Israel then how can one define any nation as inferior to Israel? 

St. Paul’s letter to the Romans gives commentary on the process bringing baptism to its theological completion concerning both anthro-authenticity and anthro-expansivity.  As a background note, it is important to remember that the Jewish Christians, presumably the community leaders, had been expelled from Rome with all the other Jews during a brief exile because of civil trouble.  During this time the gentile Christians had assumed a leadership role.  When the Jewish Christians returned, there was a protracted and ugly power struggle.  One aim of Paul’s letter is to settle these issues before he visits Rome so that he can use the city as a starting point for his Spanish mission.  Paul takes the same tact as Jesus in the previous stories and assumes humility on all sides by dealing out mass humiliation in the beginning of his letter culminating in chapter 3

we have already brought the charge against Jews and Greeks alike that they are all under the domination of sin, as it is written “There is no one just, not one, there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God.  All have gone astray; all alike are worthless; there is not one who does good, [there is not] even one.”

Just as Jesus allows himself to be bested by the Gentiles on the preceding stories, who are humbling themselves by coming to a Jewish messiah, St. Paul is humbling both Jewish and gentile Christians by reminding them that no group or person is beyond sin.  No person  ever meets the standard of actual anthro-authentic except Christ, so don’t presume to be better than each other. 

For Paul how salvation works is by binding yourself to the one true example of postlapsarian anthro-authenticity, Jesus Christ, through baptism.  He expounds upon this in Romans 6 where he states, “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.  For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.” 

Christ’s universal call to sacramental baptism in The Great Commission is the primary act of anthro-expansivity.  In it God extends the fullness of humanity all of us who are corrupted by original sin and therefore not living up to what it means to fully be a human.  God does this by allowing us to bind as a unit to the one postlapsarian example and take credit for authentic human nature through effective association with him even though we don’t deserve it.

That lack of merit is the key to understanding how we use anthro-expansivity as Christians.  As Jesus stood on the mountain and offered The Great Commission, he was the only authentic human around.  From that point on the disciples had a task, they had become bound to him because, even in their undeserving state, he treated them as authentic humans.  Now they must go forth and see all humanity as a family, showing no bias.  They must practice absolute anthro-expansivity and accept any person who may genuinely ask inclusion as a new Christian.  As a gentile Christian living in the twenty-first century, it may seem self evident that they would immediately go out to the gentile world and get to work, but the gentile world is full of “dogs”, people less than humans.  But, if Jesus had a mission to the Jews, the disciples now have a different mission.  It takes a specific demand of Jesus, “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them” to drive home that the time of anthro-exclusivity is done.  The next section of this paper will cover the development of the anthro-expansive view as it has been continually pushed past perceivable limits during early Christianity and through the age of exploration.  In the final section we will discuss anthro-expansivity as it applies to extraterrestrials, that being the natural next step in the age of exploration.       

  

Anthro-expansivity Past to Present

In this section of the paper we will cover the trajectory of anthro-expansivity from the beginning of humanity, through the biblical scope of salvation history and up to our present time. From the Christian point of view there is a trajectory of salvation history that clearly demonstrates the patience of God in his plan to draw all humanity himself while at the same time preserving free will and allowing for human development.  There are a host of complementary ways to conceive of the flow of salvation history each of which has its own beauty.  For example, already explored by the author was the idea of framing salvation history using the terminology of the treatise Ordinary and Extraordinary Religions.  The current paper concerns anthro-expansivity and for that purpose it may be helpful to review the first man typology as presented throughout the Bible.  

The reader will remember that typological interpretation is the interpretation of the Old Testament based on the assumed fundamental theological unity of the two Testaments.  This type of interpretation sees the prophetic nature of the Old Testament not just as a series of pronouncement by inspired men called prophets, but remembers that God is the master of all creation, and therefore it sees an entire narrative that in multivalent ways proclaims the coming of the Messiah.  

When using this type of interpretation the reader takes something in the Hebrew Scriptures, a person, thing or event, and uses it as a foreshadowing or prefiguration of something in the New Testament.  A person invested with skill in this type of interpretation would see it as blindingly obvious that in the stories of the deluge, the crossing of the red sea, and the destruction of Sisera’s force in Judges, there are key common elements;  a mass of people representing evil were wiped out by means of water while a perceived weaker group of people representing good were given their lives by means of water.  These stories would be typologies of baptism, where water cleanses the guilt of original sin, wipes away evil, and grants new and everlasting life.  This is a basic and rudimentary example of typological interpretation.  In this type of interpretation the use of common themes or details that run through the whole of scripture is extremely helpful.  The commonalities can be as complex as a meta-narrative or as simple as a scene or even just a detail, but the key is the repetition reaching its fulfilment in the New Testament.  Here we will give a brief recount of the first man typology in order to illustrate anthro-expansivity as a Christian cornerstone.  Since this is not a paper on scripture interpretation we will be forced to forgo a detailed analysis and only note what is necessary for our thesis, but the typology will be useful for our purposes.

The first man typology will show how God uses the process of salvation history to work with humanity’s desire to be anthro-exclusive and narrows the scope of saving action to a finer and finer point before introducing anthro-expansivity across the scope of humanity.  The typology starts with the “first first man”, Adam.  The information needed to explore concepts of anthro-expansivity is fairly common knowledge.  He is the first man God made, he loved God and was loved by him, and he and his wife are examples of anthro-authenticity as they abide in paradise.  But they failed and turned away from God.  For the next three chapters of Genesis it is clear that all of his descendents are each worse than the last.  

At this point God conceives of a new plan, he regrets making humanity, but does not destroy it completely.  Instead God seeks to preserve humanity by means saving the most just human alive (not exactly summative accolades given the time period), along with his wife, three children and their wives.  Noah is the “second first man” and his story parallels that of the first first man all the way down to a fall story in chapter nine, the elements of which are directly linked, though in mirror form, to the fall of chapter three.  By biblical account, all of humanity can trace itself to Noah and his three sons.  Through the medieval Christian era it was assumed that all peoples of the earth had sprung from these three.  The general wisdom was that inhabitants of Africa were the descents of Ham, the inhabitants of Europe were the descendents of Japheth and the inhabitants of Asia were the descendents of Shem.

With the second first man and the second fall, the same story was repeating itself as humanity spread and became depraved once again.  God’s next plan was to work the solution from “inside the machine” so to speak.  Instead of destroying all of humanity, God selects one person and seeks to change humanity with that person and his descendents, making them an example by means of his covenantal relationship with them.  What is interesting about this is that this seems to be the point that God starts working with a sort of favoritism, which seems to play into human anthro-exclusively.  Though even in Old Testament literature it is clear that God is the God of all people, and loves all people and God constantly reminds the Hebrews that they were chosen specifically because of their “unworthiness”,  it becomes easy at this point to see the Jews as somehow specially anthro-authentic.  Possibly what is going on is that by utilizing such a selection is that God is playing on our postlapsarian need to be anthro-exclusive.  We all want to be on the “inside” or in the special group.  All human groups and nations see themselves as somehow possessing this status, even if in a small way, or by way of some unfulfilled destiny.  It is an anthro-exclusive arrogance we have.  But God works with humans as we are, not as he would like us to be.  When Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden, they are ashamed of their nudity.  At this point God makes them clothes and personally dresses them, even though he would have had it otherwise.  Humans want to be in a “special group” so we can exclude others.  Now God is using this concupiscent urge to slowly shape and attune us to the messiah.  The shaping will be twofold and have a narrowing  focus in terms of its target.         

As the nation of Israel turns away from the very basic covenant, God offers aid by a the slow revelation of two more first men that work “inside the machine of Israel”.  These would be Moses and Elijah.   Moses is the “first man according to action”.  Moses establishes the nation of Israel by bringing God’s revealed law to Israel and making them one people in a law based structure, as opposed to simple tribal covenant with God.  In Exodus Chapter 32, when the Israelites worship the golden calf after contracting the new covenant, God threatens to destroy them and “make a great nation” of Moses, i.e. start all over.  This would make narrative sense given after God’s creation of humanity there was a mass destruction of all of humanity with the exception of the “second first man” Noah.  Moses could have been the “second first man” of Israel genetically.  But,  Moses prays for reprieve in a story linked to the prayers of Abraham for Sodom and Gomorrah, where the cities were destroyed, but the just were spared, only to fall again in the cave.  God relents his destruction of Israel and allows Moses to deal with them.  From this point until the next first man each Hebrew can be a good Hebrew by following the law that God had contracted with them as a people.  The next first man will represent a shift from action to motive.

Elijah is the “first man according to conscience”, and ushers in the prophetic tradition of turning your heart to God.  He is the last of the prophets of God left after the purging by Jezebel.  Elijah also works from inside the machine like Moses, but at a different, more spiritually advanced end.  The machine to be fixed by Abraham is humanity and the inner working is Israel.  The “machine” to be fixed by Moses is Israel and the “inner working” is the bodies of the Jews doing the acts of the Laws, each individually and hopefully ultimately collectively.  The “machines” to be fixed by Elijah are the individual bodies of the Israelites, which may be acting properly but are not properly disposed.  The “inner workings” are the intentions and dispositions of the individual Israelites.  Through Elijah, once again, God is slowly advancing his people toward perfection.  Elijah receives his call and reestablishes the covenant and on Mount Horeb, or Mount Sinai the place Moses established his covenant. Elijah is appointed to create a new royal dynasty.  From this point on, simply doing the action was not good enough, one must also want to belong to God with sincerity.

Through all of the history of Israel, one sees God seeking a people and a people who often are reluctant to turn to him.  What you get is a slow progression of narrowing and narrowing toward perfection in each stage.  First with Noah and a covenant with all humanity, then with Abraham and a particular family, then with Moses and those in that family who can follow the rules, then with Elijah and those in that family who follow the rules with sincerity.  At each turn one sees a diminishing of destruction and an increase in mercy on God’s part; from the sparing of the human race in Noah, to the sparing of the just in Sodom and Gomorrah with Abraham, to the sparing Israel even though they were not acting in justice according to the covenant with Moses, to the second chance offered a corrupt Israel through Elijah.  Each stage allows for greater responsibility on the part of Israel; from the special and singular relationship offered Abraham, to the need for correct action offered Moses, to the proper intention offered Elijah.

Given that Israel has this special relationship with God, it comes across in the New Testament that a portion of them who are not in tune with Elijah in his intention and sincerity of action utilize anthro-exclusivity and view the Gentiles as dogs or less than human.  This is not the Hebrew narrative for itself.  Hebrews actually do see themselves as beacons for how Gentiles are to regard God.  According to Jewish thought the Gentiles will find God by coupling the Noahide Code with the compatible parts of their culture.  The Jews would see this action as completely appropriate for the gentiles, just as the Sinai covenant is completely appropriate for them.  In fact all of the lineages of the Bible,  but especially the ones in early Genesis, have the primary purpose of reminding the reader that we are all one big family.  But it is easy to fall into the postlapsarian trap of anthro-exclusivity and it is clear that many of the sadducees and pharisees that Paul and the Apostles interact with in the New Testament have done just that.

                                 

Jesus is the “last first man”.  The typology finds its fulfilment in Jesus as the anthro-authentic first man.  This is why Jesus is considered “the New Adam” by Pauline theology.  He presents the fulfillment of all the first men leading up to him.  The most obvious hint one gets concerning this is the transfiguration,  Where, when on the mountain, Jesus is met by Moses and Elijah and converses with them.  These two “first men” are specifically channeled to how the individual reacts the them.  They do not start nations from scratch, just as Abraham does not start humanity from scratch.  According to Jewish thought Israel is the nations by which all other nations will calibrate and get right with God.  But to follow the trajectory of salvation history using the first man typology, there is also an investment by each individual, both by deed and intention.  So the scriptures provides a “first man” for each, bringing the Israelites along slowly.  Then comes the fulfillment, the one example of right act and intention, the summation of Moses and Elijah, the one example of anthro-authenticity as present in postlapsarian human existence.  Once again, up to this point there has been a narrowing from humanity, to nation/family, to individual action, to individual intention.  Now that narrowing explodes out to all humanity as the messiah fulfills his mission and gives The Great Commission upon the Mountain.

From this point on, it is up to the apostles to help us and for us to help each other.  The reader will remember that after the expulsion from the Garden, God makes clothes for the humans, but also note that after the second fall, Noah is clothed by his sons not God.  Now God has come in the form of man and bound a portion of humanity to himself.  The Great Commission is an offering of that binding to all humans, and that offer demands an anthro-expansive world view as the apostles set out from their small strip of land on the eastern Mediterranean Sea.  For simple tradesmen like the apostles Israel must have seemed like the whole world, but now one gets a sense that they are not afraid to see the large world a conquerable.  

It is a beautiful motion from the infinite vastness of God emptied and bound hypostatically to human nature in the smallest single celled zygote, which expanded to a full human, absolutely insignificant dust of the universe, born in a backwater part of a backwater province in the empire.  But that infinity bound by absolute finitude then explodes across the entire empire within a few generations.   The Acts of the Apostles recounts how the apostle Philip goes down into Ethiopia and how Paul concentrically travels to Syria, to Asia Minor and on to Rome.  Tradition says that Peter also made it all the way to Rome and early tradition has St. Thomas missionizing India, formerly a grecian province.  The Christians of that country follow an ancient tradition and to this day claim him as their founder.  The Apostles clearly set out to cover the entire breadth of the greatest empire known and seek its conversion.  Though Jesus claimed his personal mission was to the Jews, it was clear by the end that this was not the mission of the apostles.  So much so that Paul indicates in more than one of his letters that he had plans to go all the way to Spain.

  

Spain is a very symbolic region biblically speaking.  In the book of Jonah, it is clear, Jonah’s plan to escape God consisted of leaving Israel and going as far as he could from God’s “territory” so as not to have to spread a message of repentance to the heathen Assyrian capital Nineveh.  His aim is to get all the way to Spain, then considered the “end of the world”.  Jonah’s anthro-exclusive attitude saw the Assyrians as blood thirsty animals, and any attempt to convert them would be like an attempt at converting a lion or bear.  Here is a typology that is extremely useful for understanding anthro-expansivity.  Because on the way God demonstrates himself as sovereign of all creation by having Jonah swallowed by a whale during a storm at sea.  He stays there for three days and prays to God for deliverance.  In chapter 2, Jonah’s prayer transitions from how God should save him from the “whale belly situation” that he was in, to how God should save him from the “death situation” that he was in, praying as if he had actually died.  

This is not an out of place literary leap given that there are many references to sub-aquatic states being death states in the Judeo-Christian tradition, starting with the beginning where the void is described in Genesis 1 as water, to the host of baptismal typologies we have previously discussed in this very paper.  Full immersion baptism ritually creates a situation where one dies to this world and rises in Christ.  And indeed Jonah emerges from the whale after three days, just as Christ emerges from the tomb after three days.   Jonah only makes it one third of the way through the city before the entire town converts from the king to the cattle.  In fact, Jonah is the only prophet in the entire Bible who is successful in his mission while he is performing his mission.  He is the only prophet who lives to see the fruit of his labor, fruit that ripens in absurdly rapid fashion according to the narrative.

A popular pilgrimage in the medieval times and still today is the Compostela de Santiago.  The main pilgrimage route to Santiago follows an earlier Roman trade route, where the pilgrim goes to the symbolic “end of the world” located in Spain. One major point of the book of Jonah is that God is creator, sovereign and father of all creation and all nations even to the end of the world.  Jonah’s failed escape by sea and inability to escape in Spain shows that God’s power is all encompassing. It included mercy for the merciless Assyrians and the repentance felt spread across their empire and was so extensive in its breadth that even the animals invested themselves in the penitential rites.  Typologically Jonah’s “death and resurrection” and the subsequent mass conversion of the Gentiles to God are what Christ is speaking of in Luke chapter 11 when he says that the only sign that will be given is the sign of Jonah.    

It seemed that after the Roman imperial conversion Christianity was well on its way to converting all nations.  Then the setback of the Islamic conquests starting in the 7th century seemed to take Christianity and put it in a holding pattern.  Even during this standstill in the medieval period the Christian west could still envision all nations and could envision Islam falling and all nations turning to Christ.  However, the Apostles on the road with Jesus could probably only in their wildest dreams envision some sort of conversion of Israel, that small strip of land on the Eastern Mediterranean and a messianic Kingdom in Israel that abides unmolested by the less than human gentiles.  But God’s plan for the Apostles was The Great Commission and an anthro-expansive attitude, even though their narrow view would have kept them and the movement at home.  God also had plans for Europe as Christianity rested with a mind to convert Islam and be done with salvation history.  After all, in 1491, how much more room is there for anthro-expansivity?   

It is common knowledge that when Columbas hit the Bahamas in 1492 he believed that he was in Asia, and maintained that belief until his dying day.  It took a little time for subsequent explorers to determine just how large a land mass had been discovered.  The fact that there was a set of whole new continents with whole new civilizations on them threw a chink in the perceived flow of salvation history.  Much like the problem the apostles faced when they perceived the mission of the messiah being only to the nation of Israel and then finding themselves flung to the four corners of the greco-roman world, now explorers who were seeking China had expanded the world of possible converters by an inestimable number.  But more interestingly to the final purposes of our task here, is that none of these civilizations “fit” into the mission.   

Lets re-cap, the Apostles thought they would only need to establish good governance in Israel, and the Gentiles would follow suit in according to the Noahide Code.  Then the Apostles found themselves traversing the empire in an anthro-expansive mission to bind all humanity into one spiritual family.  But the medieval world, deducing from the biblical table of nations, saw that world as one biological family, each continent descended from one of the sons of Noah.  They believed that if Islam would come over to Christianity, the job would be almost done.  So what is to be done when explorers hit a new continent with vast complex civilization, as advanced as their own, but that don’t fit into the table of nations? It turns out that when infinity bound by absolute finitude, exploded across the entire Roman empire, that empire was rather insignificant in terms of terrestrial population.   

The first question asked was, “are these creatures human?”  To view this as somehow arrogant or racist is anachronistic.  It was the firm belief of Christianity that the three sons of Noah had populated the three known continents, so are these people other beings?  Thus far, this discernment is a unique challenge that had to be faced by the Roman Catholic Church.  The protestant denominations did not truly exist until Luther’s trial 1521 thirty years (a biblical generation) after the discovery of the New World.  The other ancient Christianities in the East did not partake in the endeavors of the Age of Exploration until after the issue had been settled in the popular mind.

Two factors played into answering the question.  The first is the actual purpose of the table of nations.  It is not supposed to be a document used for anthro-exclusivity, but anthro-expansivity.  The point of the lineages in the Old Testament is to remind us of the familial nature of humanity.  To use this document counter to its purpose would be demonic and a sin against the Holy Spirit.  The second is the vague nature of our Christian definition of a human according to Genesis, a creature made “in the image and likeness of God”.  It is impossible for humans to know God in God’s self, God’s essence is beyond our understanding.  Christianity believes God is a communion of persons forming the one true God, and we know God seeks us and loves us.  But God is mysterious, thus as creatures made in his image we are mysterious in and of ourselves and even to ourselves.  In Catholic thought there is no dead ringer method or metric for identifying a fellow human.  Any defining done will by default categorize and any categorization will exclude.  As is now clear, our job is not to exclude, but to be anthro-expansive, to treat every human with the dignity afforded a child made in the image and likeness of God.  Honest mistakes should err on the side of caution.  As was previously noted, better to accidentally treat a dog with the dignity of a human than accidentally treat a human with the dignity of a dog. It was in this vein that Pope Paul III penned his Bull Sublimus Dei in 1537.   The letter defines the limits of proselytization as set only by the desire to be prostalitized, the ability by a“nation to seek God and basically comprehend the faith.”

The Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, . . . the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.

By virtue of Our apostolic authority . . . the said Indians and other peoples should be converted to the faith of Jesus Christ by preaching the word of God and by the example of good and holy living.

According to this document, once a nation demonstrates understanding and desire, the rest follows and baptisms can begin, even for members of that nation who don’t obviously demonstrate these, infants for example.  If members of a “community” can demonstrate these two things, then the community itself is included in the human family, even though there may be no common lineage to be drawn, or in a more modern world any genetic relationship.  If one were to argue that the natives of the Americas are genetically related to the natives of the other three continents, it is easily pointed out that such a line of reasoning is anachronistic.  Certainly Paul III did not know this nor could he have.  His metric for anthro-expansivity remains the same regardless.  

There are two great possible future circumstances where anthro-expansivity will need to be brought to bear with special force given its relevance.  One is the possibility of genetically altered beings and how they are “defined” and what the purpose the alteration serves.  This is a population discovered by humanity from within, but the metric applies, if such creatures as a community understand and desire Christianity the community is to be prostalitized, and thereby treated with dignity befitting a human.  The other great possibility is genetically opposite, a race of beings who exhibit civilization, abide in heretofore unreachable places (the deepest reaches of space) and are genetically completely distinct.  What is to be done with them will be the topic of the remainder of this work.   

From Celestial to Extraterrestrial Beings: A New Age of Exploration 

As was mentioned earlier, every time a scientific finding indicates life in outer space, the news article discussing it is lit afire with comments suggesting a mass exodus from organized religion.  This portion of the paper will focus on Christianity's Great Commission to prosthelytize all nations as it would include extraterrestrial nations and explore various implications of that commission.  As we move through the remainder of this paper it may be useful to ponder why so many secularly minded empiricists think that the discovery of alien life would engender mass religious disillusionment.  Such a claim certainly does not stand the historical test.  There was a point when the ocean was as much a travel barrier as outer space.  It was a seeming insurmountable wasteland.  But when it was traverses, and a “new world” containing intelligent life was discovered on the other end, the people doing it were adherents to a religious system and saw no reason to forgo their beliefs.  All that happened, as noted, was further systematic discussion concerning theological anthropology.  It is only very recent historical circumstances that set exploration and discovery at odds with religion, and even that tension is a very small minority of the Christian religion. 

For example the entire eastern spectrum of religions would probably have no theological conflict with any idea of extraterrestrials.  The mythologies that inhabit those religions are mindbogglingly vast for a westerner in terms of both time and space.  In the west we are linear and progressive, but in the east they are cyclical and expansive.  The idea in the eastern religions is one of captivity in “this world” and salvation is escape either through moksha or nirvana.  But “this world” is not this planet.  It is all existence that is mutable, so it would include any world fathomable by the finite mind.  It would include any world that one could travel to, across water or space.  It even includes the gods in the hindu traditions and the comparable celestial buddhas and bodhisattvas in the buddhist tradition all of whom are under the power of karmic samsara.  

A perfect example would be Amitabha Buddha.  Amitabha is a celestial Buddha who is enlightened and abides in the heavenly realms.  As interesting as it would be to go over the entire story if Amitabha, for our purposes it simply suffices to note that his terrestrial life sounds much like Siddhartha Gautama.  He was king of a mighty empire, and one day a monk came and taught him darmah.  He abandoned his kingdom and sought enlightenment ultimately achieving it and uses it along with his seemingly endless merit for the benefit of all sentient beings, a classic Mahayanan theme.  What is most interesting to us is the fact that Siddhartha’s story is situated in a particular kingdom in Indian history.  Tradition places his birth in Lumbini and places him among the Kshatriya caste in the hindu system.  He is very obviously regarded as an “earthling” by all accounts.  Not so Dharmakara who would become Amitabha Buddha.  He seemed to rule a vast empire before becoming a monk, but what empire is quite mysterious.  There are more than a few hints that his origin stories take place in another world or system of worlds, “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” so to speak. 

For Buddhists or Hindus this would be no problem.  Their view of Karmic Samsara and reincarnation knows no bounds.  Their understanding of time and space is almost infinitely expansive compared to the western view.  They posit a reality so infinite concerning time and space it begs escape.  Western religions miss the mark on the opposite end with the  Ussher chronology of the 17th century, calculating the earth's age around 6,000 years.  Our problem is not that we want to escape the vast mutability of the world, but that we want to cling to the small world we have.  And since the age of exploration that small world has been expanding beyond our comfort time and again.

For the western, and especially Christian, mind, the world started small, in God’s garden, and grew by propagation and expansion.  The simple, by comparison, story is recounted in the Bible, and all the lands and landmarks are fairly well documentable.  From the garden the humans expand east covering their little world till they hit an insurmountable void of water, the oceans.  This void was filled with living beings, but only navigable if you kept land in sight.  It was part of this world, yet it was no doubt a barrier as demonstrated in Job chapter 38, where God chastises Job for his ignorance and impotence, “Have you entered into the sources of the sea, or walked about on the bottom of the deep?” (v 16).  The heavens also are seen in this same chapter as a barrier of ignorance and impotence, “Have you tied cords to the Pleiades, or loosened the bonds of Orion?  Can you bring forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or guide the Bear with her children?  Do you know the ordinances of the heavens;  can you put into effect their plan on the earth?” (v31-33)  The themes of this chapter is oft repeated especially in the wisdom literature of the Bible.  The twin barriers of the vast ocean and the vastness of space are so archetypal that it is cliche yet still effective to summon an experience of the magnificence and vastness of the infinite by standing on the shore of the ocean at the change between day and night.  This is, perhaps the first reason that secular empiricist see the discovery of extraterrestrial life as a knock to organized religion.  It does spit in the cosmology of the literary biblical world.  But Christianity has never had a problem with cosmological synchronicity, the ability to synchronize cosmologies with Christianity acquiring the good and jettisoning the bad.  This began with Paul philosophically and spread as Christianity itself spread through the gentile world leaving behind some of its jewish nature.  The same types of updating using pagan cosmologies are reflected in the theology of the pillars of catholicism, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.  Again one can see in the traversal of the sea that the abrahamic cosmology was adapted from a flat earth supported by pillars with a vaulted dome sky as evidence presented itself otherwise.  The physical construction of the cosmos has always been under God’s purview, and therefore our limited knowledge is not surprising.  But with a vocal minority clinging to a limited number of biblical accounts as historical against empirical evidence, non believers cling to a stereotype that all Christians will become disillusioned if the cosmology is refuted.  Once again, the “human family” cosmology has already met this exact challenge with the discovery of the new world, and it was handled with a theologically appropriate response in Sublimus Dei.       

 It may seem common sense that beings demonstrating human qualities could be found across the oceans on disconnected land masses, but that was not a common assumption in the early 15th century.  Neither was it necessarily easy to view such land masses as a “unit” with the three known continents as one plant.  But that was the interpretation that prevailed rather than the interpretation presented by the phrase “the New World” which connotes an ultimate “otherness”.  Outer space presents as a different type of barrier.  Much like the sea this barrier, for a long period of time, space was thought to possess life, and not just life, but sentient life.  But one primary difference between the barrier of the ocean and the barrier of the heavens is that when traversing the ocean the discovery of human life wasn’t a surprise.  The explorers were expecting to meet the humans of Asia, so the humans of the Americas are an interesting twist on expectations, the surprise was not the humans, but the new land mass, “the New World”.  The life discovered was relatively quickly defined as human because it absolutely suited the expectation.    The heavens however are another matter.  

There are two problems that extraterrestrial life will need to surmount if it is to be sheltered under the umbrella of anthro-expansivity.  The first is that the sentient life outer space or “the heavens” was thought to contain in the past has a long an inconsistent mythology across human history and even prehistory.  Springing out of the first problem, the second is that extraterrestrial or celestial life forms have never been considered human.  The closest biblical example of human-extraterrestrial would be the nephilim in Genesis 6, a hybrid of celestial beings and terrestrial beings.  There are similar stories of such heros in any given pagan mythology, but celestial kingdoms, nations and/or communities in and of themselves are never accounted as human, they are usually advanced of humanity even if they may share the same lot to a certain extent. 

An extremely ancient view would have seen the heavens and the seas as teeming with life.  Recall that in the ancient world “the heavens” would have been synonymous with outer space.   In the ancient understanding anything that was animated was living, hence the word “animal”  so the seas obviously had a variety of fish and the heavens had the celestial beings.  These beings moved across the sky in perfect order in a static pattern and seemed practically undisturbable.  This peace and regularity is drawn on to accredit the heavenly beings an advanced station in the cosmos.  Their beauty and predictability, not to mention living where God or the gods lived, seemed to show that they knew their purpose and did not hesitate in their course like a terrestrial being.  Thus any planet that followed a course against the other celestial beings was looked upon as rebellious, as was hinted at in Jude 1:13-16

They are like wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shameless deeds, wandering stars for whom the gloom of darkness has been reserved forever.   Enoch, of the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied also about them when he said, “Behold, the Lord has come with his countless holy ones  to execute judgment on all and to convict everyone for all the godless deeds that they committed and for all the harsh words godless sinners have uttered against him.” These people are complainers, disgruntled ones who live by their desire

                

Enoch, would be one of the few humans who could reliably comment on celestial beings given that he, Elijah, Jesus and the Virgin Mary are the only terrestrials in the Catholic tradition who abide corporeally among  the celestial beings.  His assessment is that wandering stars (planets that don’t follow the course of stars) are an indicator of rebelliousness.  The rest of the stars follow the for ordained harmony of the cosmos.  Thus from the beginning the heavens were seen as teeming with life.

It was only more recently in human existence that the popular mind began to lose a sense that the celestial beings were living beings and grasped them as planets or stars.  Slowly over the recent millennia that “heaven” was seen exclusively as a spiritual or non-empirical “place”.  Previously only the intelligentsia would have entertained that notion.  But one begins to see a shift even with the dawn of Christianity, which attempts a balance of both of these views.  Certainly in popular art one sees Jesus literally ascending into outer space after The Great Commission, and the star of Bethlehem is portrayed as an angel as much as a star in any nativity scene.  But even theologically the transition can be seen in the belief of the glorified body as presented by saint Paul.  Many people of the time would have assumed the stars were sentient beings, but also the idea that heaven was spiritual more than just up was beginning taking hold.  So Paul asserts that there is a glorified body that seems to transcend time and space, yet at the same time it is very much likened to the celestial bodies terrestrials see each night.

Not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for human beings, another kind of flesh for animals, another kind of flesh for birds, and another for fish.  There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the brightness of the heavenly is one kind and that of the earthly another.  The brightness of the sun is one kind, the brightness of the moon another, and the brightness of the stars another. For star differs from star in brightness.  So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible.  It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful.  It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one. (1Cor 15:39-44)

  

Though Paul distinguishes between celestial bodies and resurrected bodies it is the main way that he gets across the “type” of body into which one will raise.  It is a short leap from there to the popular belief among Christians that we become angels when we die, which is not the orthodox belief.   As astronomical observation became more and more accessible, especially through instrument, the popular mind more and more accepted the inanimate nature of the celestial light show, so to more and more heaven became a spiritual idea distinct from outer space.  The angels and gods that inhabit “the heavens” as outer space have long since died in the popular mind, but like any standard mythology the new replaces the old, the young gods replace the old and celestial beings have been replaced by extraterrestrial beings who serve almost the exact same psychological and sociological function, but updated for a new cosmology and a new paradigm for interacting with the cosmos.

It may be helpful to take some time to review the types of beings that abide in the heavens according to both the ancient and the modern cosmology as well as compare and contrast their function.  The end goal will be to neutralize some of the old belief concerning celestial beings in order to be able to complete the necessary cosmological synchronicity and include extraterrestrials under the scope of anthro-expansivity.

For the sake of ease we are going to distinguish between extraterrestrial beings and celestial beings, though etymologically the names mean the same thing.  In this paper when we use the term celestial being we are referring to a being that lives in the (physical) heavens according to the old cosmology.  Examples would be gods, angels, demons, tirthankaras, and celestial bodhisattvas and buddhas.  When we refer to extraterrestrials we are referring to beings that live in the (physical) heavens according to the new cosmology.  The popular way to refer to them would simply be “aliens”, but specific mythological examples of these would be classical greys and greens, klingons and vulcans,  jedis and jawas, tralfamadorians, hrossa, séroni, pfifltriggi and an almost innumerable host of others.

A major difference is that, even before the great cosmological shift, celestial beings have been conceived of as much more spiritual in nature.  Not that they weren’t  part and parcel of creation, both “gods” and angels are conceived of in this way, but their abidance was of a different nature than ours, not just up, but in terms of substance.  They were and are not conceived of as “animals” of a different variety that live far away.  So, for example, when the gods come to earth, they take human form, but this is opposed to some other form that is presumably superior and possibly interpreted as “spiritual”.  The Hindu gods would take an Avatar.  They are not human, nor do they become such, they simply inhabit a human body, but remain a celestial being substantially.  The celestial bodhisattva of mahayana buddhism can manipulate karmic samsara to such an extent as to willfully reincarnate for a purpose, on earth for example.  In doing this they are as human as any other human who has transmigrated countless times, but the abiding buddha nature transcends this reincarnation according to the Mahayanan tradition. 

Angels in the Bible are vague as to their nature.  Early in the Hebrew scriptures when the narrative is more henothistic in nature, they seem to descend and be physical beings appearing different than humans.  Hence you can have a race of men such as the nephilim, a celestial terrestrial hybrid.  At other points in the Bible it is clear that angels are spiritual beings able to assume other forms much like a god and even take possession of a human, but never take on human nature.  All of these themes converge in the christological debates of the first centuries of the church, when the early Christians were arguing about the nature of christ’s presence.  Was he God or just “a god” who took on a human body? That was Arius’ logos-sarx christology.  Was he almighty God in a human body? (apollinarianism)  Did he have a body, or was his corporeal existence an illusion ? (docetism) and on and on.  The early fathers had to vet every conceivable way that celestial beings interacted with the earthly realm in order to arrive at the proper orthodoxy of true God and true man.  By the time Islam comes onto the world stage angles are generally seen as completely otherly, and the angels of the Quran are defined a being's light, not having corporeal bodies.   

With the coming of Copernicus and Galileo in the early 16th century the heavens collapse into the same world as the earth and the laws of physics begin to be mathematically applied across the scope of God’s creation.  The seeming infinite void  of the ocean had recently been fathomed and a new look at the heavens using new instrumentation and especially advanced mathematics was underway.  By the time of Newton about a century later, all of reality is seen as a unit and there is no longer a hierarchical understanding of the cosmos with the heavens situated in a privileged place.  The concept of the “universe”, of which earth is a part, but all working under the same operation, was slowly creeping even to the popular level.  At this point any beings that may be living in the universe also operate under the same laws of physics and causality, therefore in the new cosmology there is no longer a great chain of being as was conceived.  However the conception that there may be other sentient beings of the same order, but different quality did not immediately gain quick consideration either.  There is a long transition period, which we are perhaps still in, where the assumption of the biblical account of creation of humanity are taken as historical, or at least effective.  Where life is seen as starting on earth and abiding there.  God made the heavens and the earth, but in terms of creation, life according to this order is assumed to spread from earth to the cosmos.  Any other beings that God may have made would be spiritual beings, not empirically verifiable.  This assumption gives fodder for a second reason that empirically minded non believers would expect a mass exodus of religion at the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrials. But even in the 15th century brilliant minds, once the ocean is transversed, can apply the lesson learned there to the heavens.  Thus a rare man like Nicholas of Cuza could state in his De Docta Ignorantia    

Life, as it exists on Earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose in a high form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled – and that with beings perhaps of an inferior type – we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and allowing their origin to God, who is the center and circumference of all stellar regions.

What you see in this passage from the mid 15th century is the shift from celestial beings as we defined them to extraterrestrial beings as we defined them.  These beings are carnal in nature, operate under the same natural laws as we do, and are seen as creatures who share our condition, though perhaps possessing more or less advanced technologies and/or knowledge.  Even though that remained a rare view, Nicholas of Cuza was a Cardinal and was later declared a saint.  This is evidence that an openness to cosmological synchronicity is the modus operandi of the Roman Church despite its understandable slow and cautious advance.

With the oceans sentient human life was expected and was immediately discovered.  With space, the inhabitants were originally conceived of as of a different order, then relegated to “spiritual” by the religious mind and banished to another dimension, then relegated to mythology by the empirical mind leaving outerspace bereft of life.  Humans have been exploring space physically for over half a century and instrumentally since the time of Galileo and we have yet to find and verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial life.  This delay may also be the reason for slow acceptance of the idea of extraterrestrial life in the new cosmology.  But life that abides in the heavens in by now most certainly conceived of as extraterrestrial, and not celestial as we defined it.  Celestial beings do not fall under the framework of empiricism.   

There is a great contrast between celestial beings and extraterrestrial beings, yet mythologically the serve a very similar purpose.  Our purposes here are to explore the possibility of anthro-expansivity regarding extraterrestrials.  Above we noted how a cosmological shift taking place during the age of exploration which shifted the understanding of celestial beings to that of extraterrestrial beings.  Given that now those that abide in the heavens are seen as operating according to the same order as humans, why is there a mythology.  This may need to be explored and either neutralized or brought in line anthropologically such that cosmological synchronicity can completely play out and anthro-expansivity can be better applied.  Otherwise the mythologies, as they are, put extraterrestrial civilizations functionally on par with celestial beings archetypally and this could hinder anthro-expansivity. 

Angels in the Bible are messengers of God just as the gods of the ancient world also often brought knowledge to humans.  A quick survey of biblical angels from an number of nameless “angels of the Lord” delivering particular messages, to Gabriel’s annunciation, show these angels as bringing helpful information that advances life for the better.  Similarly the Quran is thought to have been delivered by the angel Gabriel to Muhammad.  The gods of the old pagan religions also often bring information to the humans, like Krishna to Arjuna, Enki to Utnapishtum, and of course Hermes/Mercury.  Conversely Christianity and Islam believe in demons just as the early pagans believed in gods that sought malicious ends for humans.  Thus celestial beings can either be benevolent or malevolent.  Since a celestial being’s existence is of a higher order, the good or bad that it brings to humanity or to the individual’s life is almost exclusively portrayed as a game changer.

Interestingly the delay in discovery of any extraterrestrials has allowed a mythology to develop around their existence.  The transition from celestial to extraterrestrial is all but complete cosmologically, but mythologically the functions have just shifted cosmological clothes.  Stories about extraterrestrial civilizations always picture them as advanced to our own.  This makes natural sense in that since we have not discovered them, they would need to discover us, meaning they, being the explorer heroes, would be the advanced ones.  In a perfect imaging of the celestial beings, the interaction with extraterrestrial beings comes with either the benevolent intent of the extraterrestrials to bring us the peace and stability they enjoy as a civilization or with the intent of the extraterrestrials to enslave or eradicate us by means of horrifically technologically advanced warfare.

These themes may be an outplay of the guilts and regrets regarding our own experiences concerning the age of exploration to date.  The traversal of the ocean could have gone better.  This leads to a conundrum regarding anthro-expansivity.  Despite seeing extraterrestrials as part of the same universe and not necessarily as a “new world”, the lingering of the archetypal function from the ancient world puts extraterrestrials in a position of, forgive the pun, alienation.  

To bridge this alienation, true anthro-expansivity must be brought to bear.  Not only must Christianity appropriate the empirical cosmology in order to fulfill The Great Commission,  but we must also reserve the archetypology of celestial beings for celestial beings and regard extraterrestrials as creatures in absolute harmony with our nature, both good and bad.  The Catholic Church, for once, may just be ahead of the curve on this front.  The Vatican’s chief astronomer, Argentine Jesuit father José Funes S.J., explained the possibility of extraterrestrial life in 2008, and said that God’s mercy could be offered to aliens if it were needed.  Speaking at the British Science Festival in 2010, one of then-Pope Benedict XVI’s astronomers said he would baptise an alien “if they asked”.  It is piggybacking on this that Pope Francis’ made his remarks in 2014.  It is perhaps because of the experience of the Roman Catholic Church in the age of exploration that such calculations are being considered even now.  The metric for baptism is clearly the same as applied in Sublimus Dei.  One would need to regard the extraterrestrial civilizations simply as other “nations” to be converted according to The Great Commission. 

The last thing to be addressed is the stirring despair one may feel when considering The Great Commission.  When one looks at the sheer vastness of the known universe and the absolute infinitesimallity of even our galaxy, which by its girth makes our solar system infinitesimal, one may feel a little despair concerning the task ahead, and a little doubt as to whether our religion could be the true one given the vastness before us.  If one adds to that the possibility of a multi-verse, one can only sigh at how out of reach our goal is.  This is a last reason that empirically minded non believers might expect a mass exodus from organized religion in the event of the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life.  It has been part and parcel of the atheistic emericests methodology to utilize the smallness of the biblically accounted abrahamic cosmology to overwhelm believers for close to two centuries.  They feel it takes away from the assumed anthropocentricity of the genesis accounts and therefore not only geographically, but anthropologically and existentially combats the Judeo Christian narrative. To make believers feel small and “not special” in the universe would certainly drive them away from “fake sky wizards” and drive them to a mechanistic empiricism.  So, it may help to speculate on some of the possible theological challenges that would be faced if extraterrestrial civilizations are discovered.

Though it may be daunting to conceive of the vastness of the universe as subject to The Great Commission, the emotive sensation probably was not much more sever than the first apostles conceiving of missionizing the empire, or the first European Christians speculating on the task at hand regarding the “New World”.  This emotive sensation triggered by an expansive view of reality and humanity keeps the Christians on their collective toes regarding the constant need to be compassionate to those they conceive of as others, and ever vigilant as to the need to spread the gospel, because there is a long way to go.  But this flies in the face of the entire narrative of Christian missionary history as well as the basic lesson of the centurion in Matthew chapter 8, God’s power knows no geographical limit.  

The smallness of the Abrahamic cosmology is constantly being challenged by new discovery and the largeness of the universe in terms of distance and time.  The expanse that has happened as a result of the age of exploration, in terms of distance, and then the new projections as to the age of the human animal, by archaeological discovery, has forced Christians to grapple with new ways of evangelically applying the gospels.  Now we are possibly entering a new expansion in space.  If civilizations are met, they must be met with the same anthro-expansivity as the early missionaries theoretically applied.  Our smallness in the universe cannot be a deterrent to the vastness of our mission.  According to the Christian narrative God chose the smallest most insignificant means to demonstrate his power, the homeless outcast and executed criminal from backwater Galilee.  That such a “hero” could hold sway across the Roman empire, which executed him, and then hold sway in the new world should be encouragement enough that anything is possible with God.  Quite simply, by asserting the vastness of the universe, the atheistic empiricist plays directly into the Judeo-Christian narrative.  God uses the small and minutely insignificant to accomplish the great.  Magnifying the problem only magnifies the greatness of God.

Spreading the Gospel to all nations is not only possible it is the plan of salvation history.  Matthew's Gospel makes it quite clear, from the appearance of the Magi to The Great Commission, that all creatures made in the image and likeness of God are ready for the message.  Jesus does not say spread the gospel over the earth, or to the four corners of the earth, but to all nations.  The commission is not a matter of geography, it is a matter of anthropology, a matter of extending the Body of Christ through baptism, and extending a chance at anthro-authenticity by means of anthro-expansivity. 

All that is left to worry about is the specific challenges that extraterrestrial nations may have to the missionary.  Such challenges are only speculative, but some can be considered in theory even now.  For example, how would it square if we came across a hyper advanced race of extraterrestrials?  Wouldn’t their knowledge far exceed ours and therefore prove us inferior and limit our ability to prosthelytize.  This type of fear springs from the notion that our advanced civilization met with the inferior American civilizations and it was because of our advanced technology that the gospel was spread.  But nothing could be further from the truth of God’s ways or the historical facts on the ground.  When Europe met America in the 15th century, we were not more technologically or more culturally advanced than the native population.  The South American empires were as advanced as the European, and in some ways possibly more so.  the North American tribes had rich culture and technology, some of which was quite informative to the Europeans.

It is a particular concern of ours this day and age to be technologically advanced, but the early Christians were certainly not overly concerned with this.  From their point of departure with The Great Commission, the Romans were far superior culturally and technologically than their native culture, but this did not intimidate them.  Indeed it seems to be the plan of God according to scripture that the weak and simple triumph, so that the glory is obviously God’s and not the temporal power’s.  Hence in our formative narrative the smallest conceivable reality, an oppressed human outcast (Jesus), is the largest actor on the stage of salvation.  So if we encounter a civilization that is technologically or culturally considered advanced, even by our own standards, this should not dissuade us from practicing anthro-expansivity, as opposed to, say, anthro-evacuation and assimilation.  We approach with humility and a sense of awe at God’s plan for salvation.  

Another possibility that may engender dismay is encountering a civilization that far outdated our own.  Recorded human history is only about three millennia old.  Human beings have had anything like civilization for only around 60,000-80,000 years.  What if we encountered an extraterrestrial nation that exhibits civilization and even a recorded history for 300,000 years or 300,000,000 years?  Wouldn’t that throw off everything we know about salvation history?  No.  When God chose Abraham he came out of Ur of the Chaldeans.  That city is known for its great temple to the moon god.  When Abraham migrated to the Promised Land and was struck with famine he sojourned in Egypt, a civilisation whose dynasties had already lasted millennia even at that time.  These great civilizations far precede the ordinary flow of salvation history as started with the choosing of Abraham.  So to encounter and spread the gospel to a nations that predates the existing nations that carry it only makes sense.  

Another twist on that theme is the table of nations argument.  What if those nations pre-date “humanity”?  In our reckoning this would most likely take the form of genetic concerns as a way of defining races and species.  In case of such a feeling it must be remembered that the aim here is to be anthro-expansive.  In effect, they are humans, so what is the difficulty?  Certainly that they are a geriatric nation should not disqualify them?

But wouldn’t the fact that they predate the human family disqualify them from being human, what if there is no genetic connection or any connection by means of lineage?  First I would say, how do you know?  Once again, according to the knowledge and belief of the European explorers of the 15th century the natives had no connection to the by means of any human lineage.  They did not fit into The Table of Nations.  But it turned out that by the best archeological and genetic evidence we have now, five centuries later, we are still one big human family.  Perhaps the genes altered to fit a different environment and the lineages are still intact.

More importantly, Paul III did not base his anthro-expansive conclusions on genetics or lineages, but instead on cognitive and volitional considerations.  His assertion of this was then expanded to “all other peoples who may later be discovered by Christians.”  If we encounter an extraterrestrial civilization with a 300,000,000 year recorded history, the metric still applies.  Do they adequately grasp what they ask for? Then they are human and they still fall under the demands of The Great Commission regardless, as was demonstrated in Matthew’s Gospel, of distance or culture.     

Conclusion: Anthro-expansivity and the Eschatological End Game

                   

In Chapter 13 of Matthew’s Gospel the Jesus relates the parable of the wheat and the weeds.

He proposed another parable to them.  “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field.  While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.  When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.  The slaves of the householder came to him and said, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’  He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’  He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.  Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.”          

        

The point of this story is how patient God is concerning the time people need to develop in their life, and also how one cannot judge another until the end.  It is typical to apply the lessons of the parable on an individual level.  But for our purposes it may be helpful to apply it to the nations.  In his letter to the Romans Paul discusses the delay concerning the Parousia.  In it he laments that Israel has not accepted the messiah, but intuits that the reason is so that there will be time for the Gentiles to become a sign of God’s mercy and patience and then makes this claim to the Gentiles

I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers, so that you will not become wise [in] your own estimation: a hardening has come upon Israel in part, until the full number of the Gentiles comes in, and thus all Israel will be saved.

What is interesting about this is that one gets a sense of the soteriologically inclusive and soteriologically exclusive attitudes concerning those who assume an end of the world.  Those that are exclusive, meaning they believe the number of saved will be small,  usually see the world as ending sooner rather than later.  Those that are soteriologically inclusive, meaning seeing those that are saved as being larger, are willing to wait for the end and assume it is in the distant future.  

Thus in Medieval Europe concerns about the end of the world could be triggered by events like the bubonic plague, but the idea that Islam and Israel needed to convert first was solidly grounded in Paul’s  assertions.  When the New World is discovered, the church needed to explore a type of anthro-expansivity that combatted more than just cultural bias, it had to combat perceived historical lineages.  The expanse of the new conversion potential put off the end that much more.

Now we seem to have a grasp of world population and an angle on the numbers that would need to convert for the end to come.  The existence of other world religions and the encroachment of apathetic if not atheistic secular humanism are seen as roadblocks, but the mission is once again fathomable.

If extraterrestrial civilizations are discovered, the parable of the wheat and the weeds will once again be put into play.  We will need to be reminded that our job is to wait and extend the opportunity to bear fruit by using the methodology of anthro-expansivity.   

It is often hard to remember that there actually are books in the bible where people encounter celestial beings from the heavens and even one where a person goes to the heavens and interacts with those beings.  Apocalyptic literature was like the sci-fi literature of the ancient near-east.  It is not a useless idea to make the connections between the function of this genre and the genre of science fiction literature in the modern western world.  Both genres serve many similar functions.  Each serves to allow the author to discuss the future as they envision it.  Each genre allows the author to talk about socially dangerous topics in a coded way.  Both allow for the use of the imaginative aspect of the human spirit as it is applied to the heavens, a boundary that begs imaginative interpretation.

  In the Book of Revelations John is swept up in spirit into the heavens, that would be “the vault” or outer-space.  There he encounters strange creatures and receives important knowledge for his fellow Christians.  Apocalyptic literature is very easy to generally interpret, it can also be interpreted historically as kind of a social code book, it is also helpful to transculturally translate those symbols for one’s own day. 

As we defined things in this paper celestial creatures represent an older cosmology and are in some respects quite different than extraterrestrials as we defined them.  Thus it is obviously anachronistic to relate point by point John’s experience to that of an alien abduction.  However, for our purposes there is an interesting theme that plays out again and again.  The narrator is offered a vision of seven artifacts, one could say “technologies”, and as each is employed the momentum of the book gets more and each time more intense, and at the moment when all seems on the verge of a climax, seven more artifacts are introduced.  Those artifacts represent all kinds of cataclysm that happen to humanity during the end time, but they are employed by the author to instill a sense of patience for the audience, which are the churches suffering persecution.  

It seems thematic to anthro-expansivity.  Every time Christians think it is done it turns out there is a long way to go.  If the frontier of space yields whole new vast civilizations, and the universe yields a vast ultimately accessible multi-verse, then there will be much patience needed.  Yet, In the end there is peace and heaven and earth are united.  In the Book of Revelations, there are celestial beings, there are terrestrial beings, there are beings that were terrestrial and are now celestial.  The point is to apply anthro-expansivity to its ultimate end and get to a place where all things can come to fruition, but not to be over hasty about it.   In the end all of this will form one unit glorifying God. 

This paper has covered a lot of ground.  Historically we have traced the basic flow of salvation history through the lense of anthro expansivity.  Perhaps by way of conclusion it will simply suffice to say that we have tried to see a trajectory for the future as humanity expands its reach into God’s creation continuing that first expanse noted in Genesis chapter 11, “When they were migrating from the east, they came to a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.”  We are still trying to reach the heavens, but with the coming of the Holy spirit at pentecost, we are able to speak the same language, the language of salvation, offering an anthro-expansive attitude instead of a divisive attitude that would engender inability to communicate.