Our Place in the Cosmos

A recent post by Scout over at the Banned by HWA blog (Riders on the Earth) which addressed Herbert Armstrong's teaching that humans would one day colonize an "unfinished" Cosmos. Scout wrote: "We are all riding on this bright cerulean planet as it moves through the grand expanse of the Cosmos.  And the grand expanse is thickly populated by celestial objects.  These shining celestials pose a constant question to us as we look up at the vault of heaven about human destiny that is not answered." Of course, this brought up a whole host of memories and subjects which I haven't addressed in a while.

In considering these big questions like those related to our place in the Cosmos, I'm afraid that too many of us tend to forget that the Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments were NEVER intended by the Almighty to be used as a science textbook! Does the Creator know all about the Cosmos? YES, of course, God knows all there is to know about "his" creation. Humans, however, do NOT know very much about the Cosmos. Granted, we know a great deal more about it than the ancients did, but we are still in the infancy of exploring and understanding the Cosmos. Indeed, consider this, scientist only discovered the first planet outside of our own solar system in 1995!

With this context in mind, we are better prepared to tackle the subject of references to the Cosmos in Scripture. Hence, when we read in the book of Genesis that "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day" (Genesis 1:3-5, ESV), we understand that the primitive people for whom this was written had no understanding of a planet spinning on its axis and rotating around a star! Clearly, the intent of the passage is to identify God as the Source of light, and the time period that constituted an earth day. This is made even clearer in what follows.

Continuing, we read: "And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day." (Genesis 1:14-19, ESV) Once again, it is self-evident that the inspired author of this passage intended to identify God as THE Source - THE Creator. For me, it is also abundantly clear that this person believed that God had created all of those lights out there in the great dome which humans of his age believed surrounded them (as in, there purpose being "to give light upon the earth." In other words, no awareness that those lights were other stars with planets spinning around them!

Thus, when we read things like the eighth Psalm, we must remember the context of what must have been David's understanding of the Cosmos. He wrote: "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas." (Psalm 8:3-8, ESV) Once again, those remarks were made by an individual who did NOT have our understanding of what the moon and stars actually are. Clearly, David was contemplating what he saw in the night sky as reflecting God's greatness compared to the seeming insignificance of humankind.

Hence, when the anonymous author of the epistle to the Hebrews wrote about Christ as the current and most perfect representation of the Divine ever made available to humankind and asserts his superiority to the angels (Hebrews 1), we understand that what he/she wrote in the second chapter of that epistle really had NOTHING to do with the Cosmos! We read there: "Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will." (Hebrews 2:1-4, ESV) So, we see that the author is focused on salvation through Jesus of Nazareth - NOT on the Cosmos!

Continuing, we read: "For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, 'What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.' Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source." (Hebrews 2:5-11, ESV) Clearly, God intended for humankind to have an eternal relationship with him and to rule with Christ in his Kingdom (as supported by other passages of Scripture).

Now, there may be a role for humans to play in the Cosmos someday, but the ancients didn't really have any comprehension of what they were seeing in their night sky. They had no concept of the universe as we understand it, and our own understanding is very incomplete. In short, the people whom God chose to write the Bible did not understand what stars or solar systems actually are. They simply had no comprehension of an atmosphere surrounding a round globe. They knew nothing of the Big Bang or had any awareness that some of those lights which they saw in the night sky are entire galaxies - a vast collection of stars. Concepts like black holes, and the multiverse were completely unknown to them. Moreover, they wouldn't have understood any of those things if God had shared those concepts with them! So, it's great to speculate about our role in the Cosmos, but we have much to be thankful for in the fact that Christ has made it possible for us to someday understand our place in the Cosmos in a much more comprehensive way than we do now.