The Calamity From the Sky...
[Title taken off of Final Fantasy VII]
Why are so many space aliens hostile? Life is created by God, thus it should be good... unless like us it has fallen. To put it converesly, why is evil often from outer space? Mutants from every sort of science fiction, whether books or movies; even fantasy videogame monsters like Lavos and Jenova (from Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII respectively); and the list goes on.
In my humble opinion, interstellar travel is physically unfeasible, so though there may be other life out there it probably wouldn't visit us.
Except one from not just "out there" but for that matter a totally different plane of existence...
...and which C.S. Lewis depicts in the famous Space/Ransom Trilogy as being in our universe but in a higher (and faster) manner, and having been cast down to Earth and bound there.
Yes, I'm speaking of the Devil.
My point here is, are today's menaces from outer space actually in any way linked with him in some primeval corner of man's mind? Do we have some sense, even without believing Christianity, that Evil fell to our world from the Heavens?
And if so, I wonder whether it is of mere analogous meaning with Heaven as a totally different dimension, as most Theologians describe, or whether there's some overlap in the manner described by Lewis that makes this sense actually rather accurate. Do any of our readers, or anyone they know, know whether that would be excluded by Catholic doctrine?
After all, if Heaven and Earth are both to be made new (cf. Revelation about "a new Heaven and a new Earth," unless I'm remembering seriously wrong), surely that means man will be in both of them. Would man wander back and forth from the two or would they be in some respect unified, Heaven more a higher state added to us existing in a better material reality of Earth, rather like the High Elves still living in both the material world and the spiritual world in Tolkien's work (it's mentioned around the ford with Glorfindel -- not Arwen, movie loverizers!! -- in LotR)? I'm curious how the spiritual and material meet and affect one another, and this is but one issue that is involved.
Why are so many space aliens hostile? Life is created by God, thus it should be good... unless like us it has fallen. To put it converesly, why is evil often from outer space? Mutants from every sort of science fiction, whether books or movies; even fantasy videogame monsters like Lavos and Jenova (from Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII respectively); and the list goes on.
In my humble opinion, interstellar travel is physically unfeasible, so though there may be other life out there it probably wouldn't visit us.
Except one from not just "out there" but for that matter a totally different plane of existence...
...and which C.S. Lewis depicts in the famous Space/Ransom Trilogy as being in our universe but in a higher (and faster) manner, and having been cast down to Earth and bound there.
Yes, I'm speaking of the Devil.
My point here is, are today's menaces from outer space actually in any way linked with him in some primeval corner of man's mind? Do we have some sense, even without believing Christianity, that Evil fell to our world from the Heavens?
And if so, I wonder whether it is of mere analogous meaning with Heaven as a totally different dimension, as most Theologians describe, or whether there's some overlap in the manner described by Lewis that makes this sense actually rather accurate. Do any of our readers, or anyone they know, know whether that would be excluded by Catholic doctrine?
After all, if Heaven and Earth are both to be made new (cf. Revelation about "a new Heaven and a new Earth," unless I'm remembering seriously wrong), surely that means man will be in both of them. Would man wander back and forth from the two or would they be in some respect unified, Heaven more a higher state added to us existing in a better material reality of Earth, rather like the High Elves still living in both the material world and the spiritual world in Tolkien's work (it's mentioned around the ford with Glorfindel -- not Arwen, movie loverizers!! -- in LotR)? I'm curious how the spiritual and material meet and affect one another, and this is but one issue that is involved.
Labels: Great Authors, Literary Video Game, Musings
posted by Shakespeare's Cobbler at 6/22/2008 11:41:00 PM
3 Comments:
Hello. There are people who read this blog.
Other than that--hmmm. One could also ask why beings of superhuman wisdom also tend to come from the heavens. There seems to be a literary/sci-fi precedent for ETs that have a certain severe benificence to them. Perhaps we have a collective unconscious memory of angels too.
As for the interaction between the spiritual and material realms--if I started trying to think that out it'd be way too long for the comments section.
One could. As I thought would have been clear given the fairly well (or so I thought) implied context, it's that the Heavens are up but evil fell from them because evil ain't allowed in Heaven. It'd tie directly into the more commonly noticed (and often criticized) idea of Heaven as upward, and lend a bit more evidence toward there being something to it.
Nb. I used "ain't" to show emphasis for some reason, as if talking in the serious cowboy voice would be more emphatic. *shrug*
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