Theologically significant view on Earth from a vantage point

Photo taken October 28 2014 from Chang'e 5-T1 spacecraft
Image Credit: Chinese National Space Administration, Xinhuanet
NASA/APOD

The Chinese robotic spacecraft has taken a truly iconic image and I am grateful to the professional astronomers in APOD for noticing it and calling our attention to the magnificent point of view.

As for Astrotheology:

God the Creator our Heavenly Father
The very first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, writes that in the beginning God created heaven and earth.

This verse implies that either God of Israel has created everything, including Earth, Sun, Moon, the entire Universe in which you and me exit or He has created nothing.

That is a fairly simple matter. A believer in One God, may he or she be a Jew, Christian or Muslim, accepts the Biblical revelation as a source of truthful information about how everything came into existence. A non-believer rejects that revelation and looks for other less religious answers in the ultimately mathematical Laws of the Nature.


So what about Jesus Christ?
The majestic image raises another matter that is significantly more complex.  Already from the little distance of one light second that separates moon from Earth, the relative size of our planet is considerably diminished. Take a few light minutes more distance and you can hardly see the Blue Marble. Anyone further away than that must use highly sophisticated observation methods in order to know that there are planets orbiting the Sun.

As long as we Christians have lived in the Geocentric world of old so easily understood and observable to us humans, there has been no problem calling Him the Lord.

But any Christian immersed into the depths and distances of outer space must ask himself or herself what it means that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in shall be saved (John 3:16)

What world? Did Jesus atone for the sins of the entire Universe on this little distant planet in one of the wings of the Milky Way?

Some Christians are so deep into the Geocentric world even they know the facts of modern Cosmology that they see Cosmic Christ on the cross. We have been talking about this matter in many previous blog texts.

Personally, I have learned from the Church and believed that Jesus Christ is totally human, He is thus Le Petite Prince who was born as a human - not as a humanoid - and whom Father has made the King of the Kings and the Lord of the Lords. On this planet. In the same time, Jesus Christ is totally divine and thus through Him the entire Cosmos and everything that is in it has been created.

Go figure...

Bible is a Geocentric, Anthropocentric and Christ-centric collection of books. And yet, it contains matters that reach beyond those limits talking about a God who calls each and every star in the Universe by name.

Go figure...