Truth Unites - If Aliens Exist, Does Christianity Collapse?

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Gavin Ortlund explores whether the discovery of extraterrestrial life would undermine Christianity, arguing that the Christian faith is able to absorb even something as surprising as aliens.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

If aliens exist, does Christianity collapse? A lot of Christians wonder about this, and it feels threatening because if Christianity is true, we're accustomed to seeing human beings at the center of everything. But do we need to be threatened by this? This is a fun topic to think through, although it seems a bit quirky. Actually, this is really useful. It's kind of a helpful thought experiment because it brings up broader questions about the expectations we bring to the table when we're evaluating Christianity.

Now let's start with talking about some alien movies. I love alien movies. Most of, most alien movies are about hostile aliens, like the old movie Independence Day, remember this from the 90s, or lots in this genre. War of the Worlds is another, so many others we can think of the course, the whole alien franchise, but I think when you have benevolent aliens, like in the movie Arrival, from 2016, underrated movie, great movie, or an older favorite of mine, contact. So here you have benevolent aliens. Those movies almost raise questions, even more, spiritual questions. I talked about that in a video I put out on Carl Sagan's book, Contact, which I read and was fascinating, because the question comes up, you know,

how do you make sense of this? And if you're a Christian, what's the conclusion to be drawn here? I think this topic raises some interesting, larger methodological questions. Let's think it through quickly in a fun video with four thoughts. Number one, Christianity is capacious. I just wanted to use the word capacious. I love this word. Capacious means capable of holding a lot. Christianity is roomy. Christianity is spacious. Christianity has a lot of absorbing power.

It can take on a lot without capsizing. And the reason for this is because there are relatively few claims that Christianity makes that would falsify it if they were discovered to be incorrect. There are some. We're not saying there's no falsification issues, but they're relatively few. So one example would be if Jesus did not write. from the dead. If you could find the bones of Jesus and you knew for sure they were of Jesus, that would be a falsification event. But there's relatively few things like that. Even stranger

possibilities than aliens wouldn't actually disrupt the core claims of Christianity. Suppose you got transported into an alternate dimension, like in Spider-Man into the Spider-verse and the sequels to that really cool movie. Even something as bizarre as that wouldn't undo the positive claims for Christianity, like the existence of God and the resurrection of Christ. And the reason Christianity can absorb all these other counterintuitive and surprising possible discoveries is because, secondly, Christianity's claims are specific. The Bible and other Christian resources simply don't address the question of aliens. Scripture is written with us a focus on human history, human redemption, the things we need to

know about, and it just doesn't go into later scientific discoveries. discoveries, you know, when Einsteinian physics replaces Newtonian physics, this isn't a theological event. This is just a scientific event because the Bible never says that Newton was right and Einstein was wrong. It also doesn't say that Einstein was right. It just doesn't talk about that. There's so many things the Bible doesn't talk about. Actually, it's helpful to think about this and, you know, give some fun examples here. Here's some other things the Bible doesn't tell us. How smart is the angel Michael? Who would we? in a chess match, Michael or Gabriel? If they play 10 games of chess, does Michael win 10 out of 10,

or is it 6 and 4, or how does it go? Why did God make Stevenson 218? That's the biggest star in our galaxy. It's really big. Don't worry, it's just about 10 billion times larger in volume than our sun, so it's absolutely massive. And the Bible doesn't tell you anything about it. It just says God made all the stars. What color eyes did Jesus have? What color hair? How tall was he? Somebody might say, hey, you need to know this information. If you're going to pray to this person, you didn't know what he looks like. The Bible doesn't tell us.

What is heaven going to be like after the first 100 hours? What will you be doing 100 hours into your time on the new earth after the final judgment if you're one of the redeemed? We don't know. In the details, we can say some things about it. Point is, just fun questions trying to get to cement this in our minds that there's just so much the Bible doesn't claim. And actually, it's important to understand that. So we don't create tension in areas where there needn't be tension. Here's a key point. The Bible is trying to answer the questions

we need to have answered, not every question we might bring to it. And so a perceived problem with something like aliens says more about our expectations than anything that's actually intrinsic to Christianity. Third point, God is infinite, free, and creative. I think this is a theologically accurate statement to say God is creative. And so what we don't want to do is put God in a box and say, well, he's not allowed to do things outside of my expectations and my sphere of awareness. There are people who have made the argument that multiple intelligent physical creatures would greater magnified divine wisdom and divine love. But I think we also just need to be careful not to insist upon that either and just to be open-minded. and that's what I'm encouraging here is just to be open-minded toward reality if you're a Christian.

To believe in an infinite creator means reality is going to be interesting. Just think about how many stars there are and how many angels there are. That alone already shows you you've got this seemingly endless ocean of things, all of which are diverse. and if you've got that many stars and that many angels already out there, aliens really wouldn't be that big of a deal, honestly. You could just be open-minded about this. We're going to be constantly discovering new things about God in heaven for all eternity, so we can really have an open-minded attitude. Think about this, the animals that God has created. Did you know that the mimic octopus can impersonate multiple other animals like lionfish, sea snakes, and flowers? fish, and it, you know, so these different animals, and it doesn't just change its color and shape, which it can do, it actually acts like them. It mimics their behavior. Crazy. Did you know that the vampire squid, which lives almost totally in the dark and itself glows in the dark, can literally turn itself inside out? Did you know that leaf cutter ants work together in an incredibly

complicated and organized society to bring back leaves to their underground nest. Do you call it an ant nest? They're with the center of their colony. And they don't eat the leaves. They bring them there to grow fungus. Meanwhile, their bite force is 2,600 times their body weight. These insects are crazy that God has made. The mantis shrimp, did you know the mantis shrimp can see more colors than human beings can see. And we could go on and on and on. I was just researching some of my favorite examples of just fascinating things about the animal kingdom, how high a giraffe's blood pressure has to be to pump the blood all the way up the neck, how flying squirrels manage to steer mid-air, how liar birds can mimic almost any sound they hear from chainsaws to camera shutters to car

alarms, and then they use those impersonation skills in courtroom displays. I mean, we could go on and on. The animal kingdom is amazing. I think I was probably like in my early 20s, I watched the planet Earth documentaries and just, I think a Christian theologian should be able to be captivated with wonder at the fascinating world that God has made. And those are just animals. We could talk about plants. We could talk about other things God has made. The point is simply, God is not predictable. Don't put them in a box. God is might. mind-bogglingly creative. I think we can say, give me a little bit of grace here in my language, say God has capacities for delight, God has a sense of humor, and God is the kind of person who,

so to speak, is capable of saying, sure, why not? How can you not say that when you look at the world that God has made? So the point is, simply, if you're a theist, you should have an open mind toward reality. If there's anybody who should have a capacity for wonder and for saying, well, maybe, I don't know, let's think about it. It should be a theologian. Fourth, what about the incarnation and redemption? Here's where the real theological questions come up. Sin and redemption. So we can envision a couple of different possibilities. Number one, aliens are unfallen and therefore don't need redemption. They'd be like the angels. Possibility number two, aliens are fallen and Christ's work is cosmic. So you might go to passages like Colossians 1 to say that the incarnation here on

planet Earth has universal significance. Possibility number three, aliens are fallen, but God could redeem them differently. And so you could say, and just keep an open mind for different methods of redemption for the aliens, and there's other possibilities as well. Whether any of these would be correct, we don't know, and we don't have to know. But the point that we're making is that Christian theology has conceptual room for all of this. Again, Christianity has absorbing power. It's capacious. It's roomy. Christianity is not like a hotel room in Manhattan where you can only fit three shirts in it because it's so cramped. Christianity is like a mansion in the countryside where you've been there a week, you know, and all of a sudden, after eight days, you discover a whole

new wing of the mansion, and it's like, wow, there's more space over there. This is like Christianity it can absorb a lot. The view that appears more cramped, more restricted, and has less resources would be a strict naturalism. Because this view arguably has a harder time explaining any rational creatures anywhere because consciousness and moral instincts are already mysterious under a strict materialism.

Something like theism and certainly Christian theism, I mean, what it already posits is so vast that you can fit a lot. lot in a worldview like that. So aliens would not threaten Christianity at all. They would simply raise new theological questions. It'd be fascinating, but that would happen within a worldview that can accommodate that. What does make the difference with Christianity is the existence of God and the resurrection of Christ. Those are the anchors. God and Jesus. And then everything flows out from there. So this is why I put out videos on those topics, like my argument for God from eternal truths,

my favorite argument for God, or this one on the resurrection of Christ, and I have a book coming out where I make my full case. I was just, is it weird to read your own book? I was rereading some sections of it last night, kind of just preparing. I'm excited about this book. I really poured my heart into it. It's called Why Christianity Makes Sense, A Book About Jesus, the mysteries of the world, and the longings of your heart. The whole theme is Christianity makes emotional sense, as well as rational sense. And it goes through all the arguments for why I think Christianity makes sense, but then it tries to localize them all to your heart, because that's what the gospel must do, because the reception of Christianity is as personal as anything else. It's as personal as falling

in love or being afraid of death. The same part of you that falls in love or is afraid of death, that's the part at which you access Christianity. And so I'm trying to speak to the human heart, even as I'm saying, but it also does explain the world around you pretty well. That comes out in September. I got a new cover. I'm so excited. I loved working with Zondervin on that, and I just can't wait for it to be out there. Link in the video description if you want to pre-order that. Fun video. Thanks for watching. Let me know what you think.