A Theological Take on Aliens

Here Be Monsters

Denizens of social media have, by now, probably all been exposed to the latest extraterrestrial rumor cycle. Grainy footage. Breathless headlines. Government file releases. Podcasts with ominous thumbnails. Even the White House has decided to play in the sandbox, though admittedly the administration is never one to waste a useful distraction when inflation is biting, foreign policy adventures are going sideways, and midterms are looming.

But beneath all the viral hysteria lies something far older and far more familiar than little green men.

Here’s the truth: human beings have always populated the unknown with monsters.

The current fascination with aliens is really no different from the sea serpents and leviathans sketched into the corners of medieval cartography. Fifteenth-century map-makers would reach the edge of explored territory and, lacking knowledge, fill the blank spaces with dragons, krakens, and creatures of the deep. “Here be monsters.”

And in fairness to them, the instinct is understandable. Human beings do not tolerate ambiguity particularly well. We are meaning-making creatures. When sufficient knowledge is absent, the imagination rushes in to complete the picture. That pattern repeats itself whenever civilization encounters a new frontier.

When Europeans crossed the Atlantic, rumors spread of monstrous races and kingdoms of gold. During the industrial revolution, people feared machines would eventually swallow humanity whole. In the nuclear age, we imagined mutants and radioactive wastelands. And now, standing at the edge of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, genetic engineering, and renewed space exploration, we once again find ourselves staring into a fog bank without a proper vocabulary.

So we create myths.

That is how ancient sea monsters become modern extraterrestrials.

“Human beings have always populated the unknown with monsters.”

The Modern Alien Myth

The alien myth carries all the anxieties of late modernity: secret governments, invasive surveillance, technological overreach, fear of human obsolescence, and the suspicion that creation itself is slipping beyond human control. The extraterrestrial obsession is less about what may exist “out there” and more about the instability people feel down here.

And yet history teaches us something important: monsters tend to retreat as knowledge advances.

As exploration progressed, the dragons disappeared. As astronomy matured, the heavens ceased being populated by gods riding chariots across the sky. What once appeared supernatural gradually became intelligible.

Which is not to say the universe is small or empty or devoid of mystery. Christianity has never taught that reality is disenchanted. Quite the opposite. Gerard Manley Hopkins was right: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

But there is a difference between mystery and hysteria.

The irony, perhaps, is that the real danger has never primarily been hidden in the stars. The greater monsters have almost always emerged from the human heart itself: pride, violence, greed, lust for power, utopian delusion, and the ancient temptation from Eden that man can become as God.

We keep searching for monsters in the heavens while carrying them around in our own chest.

“We keep searching for monsters in the heavens while carrying them around in our own chest.”

Unexplained Phenomena and Epistemological Humility

Before turning to the theological implications, however, it is worth addressing the practical question that inevitably follows all of this speculation: what exactly are we supposed to make of the endless stream of cockpit videos, grainy radar recordings, strange lights, tower-to-pilot audio, and unexplained aerial phenomena circulating online?

Epistemological humility is probably called for.

It is unwise to assume that because we presently lack a satisfactory explanation for some phenomenon—and because it does not fit neatly inside our existing paradigm—it must therefore be extraterrestrial. Human beings have a long history of mistaking the unexplained for the otherworldly.

Could some sightings involve classified military technology? Atmospheric distortions? Sensor anomalies? Psychological suggestion amplified through mass media? Almost certainly many do.

But could there also be realities we do not fully understand?

Possibly.

Scripture certainly does not present reality as exhausted by materialism. The biblical worldview includes principalities and powers, angels and demons, “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). Christianity has never claimed that the cosmos is merely mechanical.

So is it conceivable that at least some experiences people report could involve manifestations associated with spiritual realities? Perhaps. Scripture itself contains moments where heavenly realities become visible within ordinary history.

“Scripture itself contains moments where heavenly realities become visible within ordinary history.”

If you had positioned a GoPro outside the tomb on Easter morning, I suspect it would have recorded the risen Christ emerging in the glory of His resurrection. Elisha truly saw Elijah taken up in the whirlwind with chariots of fire. Nebuchadnezzar truly looked into the furnace and saw one “like a son of the gods” walking beside Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Biblical miracles were not hallucinations. They occurred in public space and time.

I am not an absolute cessationist, and I do believe the spiritual realm is real.

But spiritual realities are not merely another species of material object floating somewhere within the universe waiting to be photographed like wildlife. Spirit, properly speaking, is not composed of the same “stuff” as created matter. Genesis distinguishes heaven, earth, sea, land—the created order itself. Spirit belongs to a different category altogether.

A spirit has no measurable dimensions, no mass, no geographical coordinates in the ordinary sense. You cannot place it under a microscope or weigh it on a scale. Jesus Himself says of the Spirit in John 3: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Which is simply to say: the spiritual realm is real, but it is not reducible to physics.

“The spiritual realm is real, but it is not reducible to physics.”

For that reason, I am personally disinclined to interpret every unexplained aerial phenomenon as an unveiling of the heavenly realm. The modern UFO imagination often collapses angels into aliens and demons into interdimensional travelers, as though spiritual beings were merely advanced biological organisms with superior propulsion systems.

Not how Scripture speaks.

What are those things?

Or as William Shakespeare says through Hamlet to Horatio: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Short answer?

Who knows.

And that’s okay. As a disciple of Jesus I’m committed to the work of His kingdom. My job as a teacher and preacher is to handle God’s oracles with care and his gospel, not to chase down and buy into every conspiracy. In fact, Paul explicitly commands Christians to avoid foolish controversies.

The Deeper Theological Issue

And that observation brings us to the deeper theological issue.

Because beneath all the UFO speculation lies an increasingly common assumption: namely, that humanity is not unique. That man is simply one more intelligent species among many in a vast and morally indifferent cosmos.

But the biblical story simply does not permit that conclusion.

The late Brevard Childs argued that the Bible is not merely a loose anthology of religious documents. It is the unified, canonical witness of the people of God to the living God. The scriptures possess what Childs called a “canonical shape.” The final form of the text imposes its own theological logic, its own rule of faith, its own interpretive boundaries.

And one of the most striking features of that canonical drama is how relentlessly anthropocentric it is precisely because it is relentlessly christocentric.

The Bible is not ultimately the story of “life in the universe.” It is the story of God’s covenantal commitment to humanity through Jesus Christ.

“The Bible is not ultimately the story of ‘life in the universe.’ It is the story of God’s covenantal commitment to humanity through Jesus Christ.”

Humanity, Covenant, and the Son of Man

From the opening chapters of Genesis, mankind is presented as unique within creation. Humanity alone bears the image of God (Genesis 1:26–28). Humanity alone receives dominion. Humanity alone becomes the covenant partner through whom creation itself will be ordered and healed.

The creation account climaxes not with stars, galaxies, or angelic beings, but with the creation of man and woman. Everything else functions as preparation for covenant communion between God and humanity.

And the New Testament intensifies that focus rather than relaxing it.

Jesus does not call Himself “Son of the Cosmos.” He calls Himself “Son of Man.”

That title, drawn from Daniel 7, Psalm 8, and Israel’s prophetic tradition, is not generic. It is covenantal. Representative. Human. Jesus stands as the true Adam, the true Israel, the faithful human being through whom the destiny of the world is restored.

The incarnation therefore matters enormously.

The eternal Son did not become merely “a creature.” He became man.

“The Word became flesh” does not mean God vaguely joined material existence. It means He entered specifically and irrevocably into human nature.

And He remains human forever.

The resurrected Christ is not an abstraction floating somewhere beyond embodiment. He bears scars. He eats fish. He reigns bodily. Even now Scripture calls Him “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

“He bears scars. He eats fish. He reigns bodily. Even now Scripture calls Him ‘the man Christ Jesus.'”

Why Extraterrestrials Create Theological Tension

That creates immense theological tension with the modern extraterrestrial imagination.

Because if one introduces fully rational extraterrestrial civilizations as parallel covenantal subjects before God, then the entire structure of the biblical drama becomes unstable.

Would they bear the image of God too?

Did they fall? 

Do they require redemption?

Would Christ have to become incarnate repeatedly across countless worlds?

Would there be multiple covenants? Multiple Adams? Multiple atonements?

The New Testament everywhere presents the incarnation and atonement as once-for-all events. Hebrews particularly insists upon the finality of Christ’s work:

“He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

Once for all.

Not once per planet.

And this is where the modern alien myth subtly collides with Christianity at a foundational level. The biblical story is not infinitely expandable. It possesses a center.

And that center is a human being: Jesus of Nazareth.

“The biblical story is not infinitely expandable. It possesses a center. And that center is a human being: Jesus of Nazareth.”

The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

The covenantal imagery of Scripture makes this even sharper. Throughout the Bible, God’s relationship to His people is portrayed as a marriage covenant. Israel is the bride. The Church is the bride. Christ is the bridegroom.

The culmination of history in Revelation is not an interstellar federation of species gathered beneath cosmic bureaucracy. It is the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The Apostle Paul says Abraham would “inherit the world” (Romans 4:13). Not merely a strip of Middle Eastern real estate, but the renewed creation itself through the singular seed, Christ.

The entire biblical narrative converges there.

And perhaps most importantly of all: Christianity teaches that God’s eternal purpose before the foundation of the world was already centered upon this human Christ.

Paul writes in Colossians 1 that all things were created through Him and for Him. Ephesians speaks of God’s purpose before the ages. First Peter says Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world.

The universe itself is ordered around Jesus Christ.

And Jesus Christ is human.

That’s always been the central claim of Christian teaching, no matter what Gnostic sects may have believed.

“Christianity teaches that God’s eternal purpose before the foundation of the world was already centered upon this human Christ.”

The Real Center of the Universe

Which means the deeper cultural fascination with extraterrestrials may reveal something profoundly tragic about modern Western civilization. We increasingly struggle to believe that humanity possesses genuine dignity, centrality, or transcendence. We have become embarrassed by anthropocentrism. Embarrassed by incarnation. Embarrassed by the idea that history itself could revolve around one Jewish man from Nazareth.

So we search the skies.

But Christianity stubbornly drags us back to earth, Bethlehem, Golgotha, an empty tomb outside Jerusalem.

The center of the universe is not hidden beneath classified Pentagon documents, but a resurrected human being, seed of woman, Son of Man, seated at the right hand of God.