Theology of Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life
The following is a blog manuscript usually updated daily as time and grace allows.
*Beginning June 21, 2020 all revisions and updates are in bold red until the following Saturday when updates of the previous week change to regular black text. ALSO - Catholic Cosmography, a new essay (see menu at right), to follow Sacred Scripture and pure logic to explore, explain and understand creation.
Theology of Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life :
A Vision of the Big Picture of Ultimate Reality
John Nicholas Joseph Lupia
Praying the St. Michael Chaplet Since 1969
Preliminary Remarks.
The creation account in Genesis reveals God created everything in heaven and earth. It is very clear God in perichoresis or circumincession spoke within Himself saying "Let us make man in our image and likeness." In six days God created all things living and inanimate which are accounted for showing God invented them, not as the Carl Sagan image of the old man tinkerer of an unenlightened mind but as the living dynamic Triune God who is omniscient. As the creating artist, architect and composer the Lord selected from the realm of infinite possibilities and truths what He wished to create and how to create them in His symphony of Life. Only an infinite and eternal Creator can create an infinite and eternal universe. One huge glaring deficit in the account of the six days is that no angels were created by God, only men. This is a rather extraordinary point since angels are paramount in all of divine revelation. We shall explore this deficit quotient in this theological subject on intelligent extraterrestrial life since God made man everywhere throughout infinity. Christ cast Himself as the Sower in his Parable of the Sower as one who sows the seeds broadcasting them where He wills and so human life springs up everywhere. So when you hear "angel" think "man" in some other part of the galaxy or among the infinite galaxies and grasp that they are the ones who live now in glory with God and surround us with devotion and God's mercy.
Biblical Exegesis on Cosmology and Angelology
"... it is not the Gospel that changes; it is we who begin to understand it better." St. Pope John XXIII
"Taking Scripture as our guide we do not err, since the Holy Ghost speaks to us through it. If I should misunderstand or be mistaken on some point, whether I deduce it from Scripture or not, my intention will not be to deviate from the true meaning of Sacred Scripture or from the doctrine of our Holy Mother the Catholic Church. If this should happen, I submit entirely to the Church, or even to anyone who judges more completely about the matter than I." (The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Kavanaugh & Rodriguez, O. C. D., translators (ICS : 1973) :70.
Physical sciences can never be wholly and correctly understood without Catholic theology. God is love, and for those inflamed with the fire of this love they are given the gift of knowledge by the Holy Spirit opening wide their understanding by another gift given in love so that all mysteries can be ascertained with the certainty of God's holy Word our infallible guiding light and pilot.
It is absolutely certain that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists found in the teachings of Jesus. Traditionally we have called these extraterrestrial brothers and sisters in glory "angels".
A. When Jesus defended the doctrine of the spirit and resurrection - extraterrestrial civilizations can be discerned in his teaching.
1. Matthew 22:33. “God is the God of the living, not the dead.”
a. A confirmation of the existence of the spirit and soul.
b. A new teaching revealing that angelic and human natures are the same but in different dimensions of the time space continuum.
This proclamation defended both the existence of the spirit after physical death and simultaneously the belief that at the end of time all spirits of the deceased shall rise from the dead reunited to a new glorified body. Applying this same principle to the physical universe one could with simple use of logic extrapolate the syllogism : God is not a God of a dead universe outside and way beyond earth’s atmosphere, but rather, of one teeming with life. CCC 328 the jargon needs clarification that angels are spiritual beings wherein spiritual as spirit belongs to the created order and has some form of being and existence in the physical cosmic creation and most probably electromagnetic in nature. That angels are non-corporeal simply means not in the form of our current biological state but like Christ in glorified bodies that synthesize matter and electromagnetic radiation. With an intellect and will the living electromagnetic spirit can control matter and step into time space wherever and wherever it chooses instantly. Gilder & Shmitz (2018) have successfully mapped the magnets discovered in the human brain. We are all electromagnetic in spiritual nature linked to our physical organic biological body. Angels, who were once like us never fell and advanced into glory. Consequently we are inextricably linked in an infinite cosmic web or Christ.net. Those separated from Christ are the Christ.nyet. This explains quite well the Catholic teaching of the "Communion of Saints". The realm of people in the Church Triumphant, Militant and Suffering are all linked together as our Christ-net. Jesus taught he is the vine and we are the branches in his most august prose. "Hence, when we unite ourselves to Jesus Christ to adore God we join at the same time with the Angels and Saints in a heavenly harmony which renders the praise of the Godhead still more perfect. We can well make our own the words of Father Olier [Pensees choisies, p. 169] : "May all the Angelic Host, the mighty Powers that move the spheres of heaven, forever pour forth in Jesus Christ whatever be wanting to our song of praise." Adolphe Tanquerey, Spiritual Life (1930) : 96 no. 184
"We go on living our own lives and think much too little of how in God we are all united with each other and all together are united with Him." Blessed Titus Brandsma, Carmelite priest and martyr.
2. Luke 20:36. Mk 17:25. The Sadducees attempted to trap Jesus with the dilemma of the bride of seven brothers.
Jesus gave the surprise punch line that those in the resurrection of the dead become like the angels. (cf also Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25). Conversely, angels were human like us.
Angels are Human Beings Like Us
There is no rational basis to assume intelligent life throughout the universe is not as our own. Humans are made in the image and likeness of God and Jesus established that image and likeness beyond the Roddenberry sci-fi conjecture of green men with long noses. Intelligent life is sharing in the life of God, the Most Holy Trinity. Therefore, extraterrestrial intelligent life equal and greater than our own is certainly like Christ, human and bearing God's hallmarks of divine image of God in Christ.
"Each symbolizes individually some attribute or other of that infinite Being." Adolphe Tanquerey, Spiritual Life (Tournai : Desclee & Co., 1930) : 96 no. 183. The exact same thing is true about each individual human being, i.e., the each of us individually symbolizes or reflects some attribute of the Trinity. Their true distinction lies in our civilizations histories. Angels did not fall like Adam and Eve and retained their original perfect state seeing God face-to- face conversing as Adam and Eve had done before the fall.
Since Jesus is the king of angels and Mary is their queen then it stands to reason that angels share their nature, glorified material bodies once human like theirs.
Fallen vs. Un-Fallen Natures.
Earth’s Humanity Suffers Genetic Deficit
The fall of mankind has left our nature destitute of faculties it once had with our original parents that are now lost. Jesus was like Adam and the supernatural powers he exhibited were most probably those our first parents shared prior to their fall, like the ability to walk on water, for example.
Since angels are humans like our own first parents we can see they possessed capacities beyond our fallen condition that is now deprived of them since God as part of our punishment took them away. Basically this means that some of our strings of genetic code were removed and some modified.
When St. Paul says Christ is like us in all things but sin, it is a type of rhetorical figure “irony” yet it encapsulated and preserved intact the apostolic doctrine of the true human nature of Jesus Christ. The double-edged doctrine means that Christ was without sin in moral act and deed and moreover in his very nature, conceived without sin. Consequently to the later proposition Christ born without “Original Sin” shared in the very nature of Adam and Eve’s original state and that of the infinite multitudes of angelic intergalactic civilizations. Consequently, Christ could not really be like us in all things at all. He was above our fallen nature and we use the Latin term supra + natura to describe that in the English word “supernatural”. Everything about Jesus is supernatural for he and his mother Mary share the supernatural condition that was originally granted mankind in design and intention prior to the fall. All humans, for the past 50,000 years or so since Satan and his demons were zapped into Meteor Crater Park, Arizona, and were plunged into the core of the earth, we are born in sin as a result of original sin. But Christ was not subject to that and so was born in an “un-fallen human nature” like our first parents. If we straightened out our terminology Adam and Eve’s supernatural state is really what the original natural state of being for humanity is and that our current terrestrial state is sub-natural, or diseased. Original Sin infected mankind through our first parents Adam and Eve. Jesus said he came to heal the sick and no one on earth throughout fallen history is excluded from those to whom Christ has come.
This makes Jesus in some ways very unlike us hence the rhetorical form used by St. Paul accomplished this quite successfully.
Angels had this nature and now they are in the glorified nature sharing that as that of Christ risen from the dead in what we call spiritualized matter. This is our destiny too since we are all branches of one infinite intergalactic cosmic human family. Christ is the bread of angels and so we all share one body one spirit in Christ. We await entering Church Triumphant to join them. Meanwhile the glorious infinite array of light surrounds us , each and everyone of us individually and collectively as a whole planetary population. Just as Christ during his post resurrection appearances stepped in and out of sight so too angels. The fallen angels live beneath the crust of the earth in the pit of Meteor Crater Park, Arizona. There is where they are doomed and all persons condemned to dwell with them. St. Paul described this reality to the infant church and immortalized this doctrine in Ephesians 6:12 "For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." And they were cast out and sent to earth. Revelations 12:9 "The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him." Job 38:17 " Have the gates of death been shown to you, or have you seen the gates of darkness?" Today we know where Tartarus is located at Meteor Crater Park, Arizona, the "Gate of Hell". Matthew 25:41 calls this the eternal fire prepared for them.
In understanding cosmology one must necessarily understand creation is not achromatopsic, i.e., black or white wherein zero material being exists and then wham a big bang. This error in logic is due to the false assumption that the universe was created in time since sacred scripture says "in the beginning". However the Greek "En arche" as an idiom has meaning beyond the vernacular and was used by Aristotle in his book Metaphysics to mean or signify "the first principle and cause for all being and existence." The phrase "en arche" can be construed metaphysically, which is critical for any cosmological theology removing it from the fallacy of being created in the realm of time which would necessitate a beginning since time does not exist with God in eternity. Creation was created in eternity and time followed as a direct result. This is not a small nit picking point or issue. Rather we see God as the first principle and cause of all being and existence as the opening phrase in both Genesis and in St. John's Gospel's prologue. God does not have a blank mind asking himself "Gee what should I do?" God sees everything from all eternity. The infinite universe and infinite humanity, infinity, the infinite realm of stars, galaxies, and other life forms were always contemplated, understood, completely known in the divine mind and clearly expressed in the Arabic numeration system of infinite whole numbers.
Cosmographic Modeling Using the Algebraic Numeration Systems of Hindu-Arabic Numerals
Algebraic science of quantitative infinity can surely express itself in counting as well as whole numbers without the exclusion of the former which heretofore has been an unsupported bias of the system without rational explanation from the outset so it appears. This is no small point since the bias inherent within the system is so subtle it goes unnoticed until pointed out. Clearly the cause is the Hindu root where the belief in a finite egg shaped universe is the foundation of its cosmography, a Hindu religious bias no longer a requisite to the Algebraic system. This limitation imposed upon the system since its inception from the 7th to ninth centuries A.D. has unconsciously inhibited the thinking of physicists and cosmographers for well over a millennium. Its about time to liberate the system and our minds to enable us to think in terms of infinity more productively.
The unconscious logical error of physicists calculate the density of a pie-in-the-sky anomaly imputing the entirety of matter in its 1.3% of atomic structures and wind up recreating the finite egg universe of Algebras birth. The religious astronomer immediately sees the light! Eureka! "In the beginning God created" is the favorite biblical citation which follows the literary or vernacular of the Greek completing disregarding its incompatible alternate meaning in the metaphysical sense used by Aristotle.
Fallen humanity has been cursed with genetic modifications that have denied us the grace to behold the Godhead our former nature once enjoyed. God in His mercy allows fallen man to behold Him through the faculties of his mind clearly manifested through the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit : wisdom, knowledge, counsel, understanding, piety, fear and fortitude. Surely the tender loving Father of mercies wishes us to not be hindered by limitations of a numeration system that shackle our minds from beholding His infinite goodness and to contemplate the infinite realms of His cosmic creation.
God Created Freely
And God saw that it was good and said "Yes". The free will of God chose to call everything into existence and being in order to share the glory of His being and life with Him for ever. This means you and I and every "angel" or more precisely "person" also really existed eternally in God's mind created in His image and likeness for nothing exists that God has not contemplated eternally. Our very essence and existence is our first part called "spirit" which coexisted in the mind and heart of God. In God's infinite array of attributes each person is created directly from one or some that God has chosen to form them into existence to emulate in the infinite cosmic mosaic of life. When each of us were sent by God through space and time to be born we received our second and third parts, namely, our body and soul. Think of it this way, we are downloaded from the Godhead into a physical body and soul. Our spirit remains in heaven with God while we exist on earth as separate distinct persons from His Godhead and go through life in the struggle to reunite spirit, soul and body into perfect harmony with the divine mind of God.
Earthly Pre-Existence
Since the universe is eternal and we too contemplated within the Triune Godhead then everything has coeternal existence within God's contemplative mind. The person God created you to be is most probably different in some ways and to varying degrees from the person you are right now resulting from the effects of original sin and the accretion of vices and deficiencies through neglect or abuse. The spiritual life is to stop living the self created person and allow God to reform you into that He eternally intended.
Our eternal existence as a spirit in the mind and heart of God always was loved and your eternal future known. We have no memory of our earthly pre-existence, since memory is the faculty of the soul. Our glorified state with God in heaven together with the entire infinite intergalactic cosmic family will not require merely our earthly memory since we share in God's omniscient nature.
Not All Men Are Created Equal
There are nine choirs of angels or should we now say nine categories or groupings of human persons that is true throughout infinity. This is also reflected in ecclesiology where we see these nine categories comprise the one body of Christ.
Christ Cosmic Savior
Jesus came to save the human race throughout the infinite cosmos. The holy angels in heaven received the graces necessary to remain faithful and devoted to God casting out of heaven those disloyal and hateful to the Trinity. Mary makes this crystal clear in her Magnificat when she says "My spirit rejoices in God my savior."
If Mary the queen of angels required Jesus to be her savior through his passion and death on the cross then too for all the angels.
Moreover, if God is Mary's savior, who received the grace of her Immaculate Conception conceived without Original Sin as a special grace unique given her in order to be worthy to conceive the Son of God in her womb then its only stands to reason that she also received all the graces necessary to raise Him as His holy handmaiden, adorer, and most intimate companion of his earthly existence.
God Created Adam and Eve
Our planet became the prison of Satan and his devil disciples. They were hurled to earth at the speed of light 50,000 years ago creating Barringer Crater, a huge impact crater where they now live beneath the crust of the earth in a place called Tartarus, chained and suffer unrelenting torment. So earth is not paradise anymore.
Throughout history the human study of nature has revealed to us how God created us through and evolutionary development reaching maturity some 50,000 years ago during the end of the Lower and early Middle Paleolithic period. This is how the human became separate and distinct from the animal kingdom and became unique ruling as Lord over all life on earth. When man was formed with an intellect and living spirit and soul he was given a partner Eve. Eve broke faith with God and tempted Adam. This was a result of temptation from the devil and his followers who vied with the Most Holy Trinity over our family having emerged from earth. Apparently these chaste angels lusted for the flesh of Eve and the issue she would bear. They abused their power and instead of guiding and protecting us from physical harm they lead us directly into their pit. The Lord knew their treachery and infidelity and so war broke out. This was not a Hollywood star wars version but rather one that was accomplished by the sheer power of mind and will. "Did God spare even the angels who sinned? He did not! He held them captive in Tartarus – consigned them to pits of darkness, to be guarded until judgment." 2 Peter 2:4
This is our battle to preserve our minds from erroneous thinking about ourselves, the world and our relationship with God and the unity and harmony that we share in an inextricable bond sharing in God's very life.
Antediluvian Earth
After the fall of mankind fallen angels had relations with the human race as Genesis reports the creation of a now extinct race called nephilum, described as giants or titans of their day. The world was in chaos and Satan had destroyed God's precious design of his pure human family. This world is now gone survived only by Noah and his family as Jesus taught.
Consequences of Angelic or Extraterrestrial History
Angels do not send out radio waves. Since they did not fall and receive the curse of Adam “You must toil to eat by the sweat of your brow” they never had any need to develop advanced technologies like our fallen human culture did from necessity to survive. The weltanschauung of the angelic/demonic world like that in the film Predator (1987) is riddled with fault. Whereas that in the film The Entity (1982) is more in keeping and in conformity to reality.
ANGELOLOGY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Greek word angelos occurs 149 times in the New Testament : 67 in Revelation, 47 in Luke-Acts, 26 in Pauline Corpus, 20 in Matthew; 6 in Mark, 6 in Catholic Epistles, and 3 in John. The number of times the word occurs in Revelations makes it clear that this is the book about extraterrestrial intelligent life of our intergalactic family surrounding us and helping us continually until we are all united into the Church Triumphant.
Guardian Angels.
Luke 4:10 God sends angels to guard and protect us citing Psalm 90:11-12
The Catholic Church has always taught from its beginning the doctrine of the existence of angels and that each human being has a personal guardian angel who is their life's companion from conception in the womb until burial in the tomb or cremation. This theological doctrine is not new to the New Testament but one salient in the day of Jesus and the infant Church. The Church placed its seal of approval on this doctrine in various ways in the Gospels and the most obvious example is that found in the Book of Acts. When St. Peter was miraculously released from prison and ran to the home of the brothers knocking on the door the doorkeeper peeped and saw him saying to the brethren that St. Peter's guardian angel was at the door.
Matthew 18:10 teaches us that our guardian angels behold God face to face.
The theology of the guardian angel takes us to very profound regions of thought opening up and expanding our inner vision of the infinite universe teeming with, brimming with, radiant with life a cosmic intergalactic family of people like ourselves in glorified bodies like that of the Risen Christ who adore Him face to face and surround us and love us as our brothers and sisters in Christ.That we are all connected in the communion of saints in the cosmic network of spirits united to Christ as the vine and branches. The awesome peace of mind that floods our minds and hearts knowing God is so awesome and good dispels every fear and doubt in an all merciful adorable God who wins our minds and hearts forever.
Luke 22:43 angels can give us strength
Luke 1:20 God can empower angels to take away our faculty of speech.
Luke 16:22 angels bring the souls of the departed to heaven.
Christ King of Angels
Christ is Lord of all existence. Consequently he rules the infinite universe and intergalactic family and they serve him as Lord. Matthew 4:11; 26:53; Mark 1:13 Angels attended Jesus. Angels serve him doing his bidding while simultaneously beholding him face to face.
Luke 7: 27; Matthew 11:10; Mark 1:2 An angel prepares his way. Though the historical act was John the Baptizer he like our intergalactic family is described in Luke filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother's womb. The privileged state of St. John places him among the angelic family. This also shows that mortal men of earth will all become like the angels.
Christ's Return
The eschatological times are announced by the angels. Matthew 16:27; 25:31; Mark 8:38 Jesus returns with his court of angels Matthew 24: 36; Mark 13:32 Only Christ knows the hour of his return
Matthew 24:31 Angels announce the harvest
Matthew 13:39,41,49; Mark 13:27 Angels are his harvesters at the end of the world
Matthew 28:2,5 Angels reveal Christ's resurrection to the disciples.
Contact : john@reginacaelipress.com