Abstract
The current scientific framework of the discovery of exoplanets provides a particular challenge to Christianity, with its belief in the incarnation of Christ in its center. Given the new insights of potential life beyond our planet, the Christian point of view could be challenged as being too anthropocentric and geocentric. The problem is not a totally new one, as christocentrism is already questioned by interreligious dialogue on Earth. I will survey the options there are, focusing on a very particular relation, the one between Christianity and Judaism. Within this interreligious dialog, I will concentrate on the eschatological dimension as a test case for my Christological model. According to the Jewish philosopher of religion Franz Rosenzweig, it is just the idea of a Christ which will lose its impact at the end of all days. How does this challenge relate to the necessity of the idea of a ‘Cosmic Christ’?
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Notes
- 1.
From a Barthian Perspective, this naming is of course problematic. One would be better to call it a ‘theology of astrobiology’, clarifying by this that the movement of theology’s thought still has to start with the gospel and not with the insights or questions of astrophysicists. Nevertheless, ‘Astrotheology’ is a much shorter term and shall henceforth be understood in the meaning of a ‘theology of astrobiology’. Peters’ proposal was partially answered by a special section in the June 2016 issue of Zygon on ‘Exoplanets and Astrotheology’, edited by the author of this paper (Losch 2016).
- 2.
Likewise, according to Rosenzweig, the people of Israel could lose its exclusive relatedness to God that day. Letter 1.11.1913 to Rudolf Ehrenberg: ‘An diesem Punkt, wo Christus aufhört der Herr zu sein, hört Israel auf erwählt zu sein; an diesem Tage verliert Gott den Namen, mit dem ihn allein Israel anruft; Gott ist dann nicht mehr “sein” Gott’ (Rosenzweig et al. 1979: 135).
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Losch, A. (2017). The Cosmic Christ’s End: The Cosmological Meaning of Christ in an Interreligious Perspective, with a Focus on Jewish-Christian Eschatology. In: Fuller, M., Evers, D., Runehov, A., Sæther, KW. (eds) Issues in Science and Theology: Are We Special?. Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62124-1_4
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