Article 5: To Live is to Learn

Authors note: Due to the sheer volume of articles this series has resulted in I want to take a moment to tell you they are intended to be read sequentially, the ideas building on each other as they progress. While they can also be read individually, a fuller understanding can only be reached by starting at the beginning, found here: https://www.pjbenjamin.net/a-long-overdue-elucidation/

Stated for clarity’s sake, here is the Third rule again. I will top each article with it and embolden the relevant section to be covered.

Rule Three of the Firmament:

All intelligent races in existence likely stand within one or more of these states

*Primordial
-Made New and Blameless
-Corrupted and Afflicted:
- Recipients of Passive Wrath
- Promised and Waiting
- Justified or Judged
- Made Blameless Anew
-Maturing and Blameless
-Authoritative and Blameless
-Mutually Interactive

Since the moment I began writing down the rules for the Firmament, I was excited about my third. What, I wondered, are the real options for life out there? What sort of fiction is ridiculous for Christians to consider, and what holds up to scrutiny? Scientifically I can accept all sorts of creatures, and spiritually I can accept all sorts of powers beyond the box standard human. What has me so intensely curious is what can we accept morally. As soon as we enter into discussions of morality, we inevitably must ask what, if any, are moral absolutes. Some we know biblically, and yet not all are applicable to all forms of life. I think we can safely assume theft will never be acceptable regardless of the life in question. But how would we interpret something like adultery for a race without marriage, like the angels? What makes something sinful for any given race?

To understand any of my attempts to address those questions, allow me a brief disclaimer. From here on out we will be diving into some heavy topics. It is important to me, vital even, that you understand that this is extrapolation. I do not make my guesses out of some extra-biblical special revelation. Nor will I. I am looking to the bible, as I have pointed to in Rule One, and taking what we can know from that as a blueprint. I will, where I can, give biblical or literary examples. In others, I will try and appeal to logic or common sense. Regardless, I will remind you that this fiction, no matter where it is grounded, is a creation of my own. As we move forward with the “Rule”, perhaps I have stumbled on true categories that apply to all intelligent life in our universe, and perhaps I am wildly off the mark. To the very best of my abilities, I have kept the focus on not directly contradicting scripture. If at any point my words point away from his word, then they have failed their intended purpose wholly. If anything I urge you to seek out clarification and to begin to imagine a universe filled with other creatures as equally beloved as our own to him.

Made New and Blameless

All races begin somewhere. As I discussed in the previous article there is a variety of options at God’s disposal for how a race enters into having the distinct agency of intelligence. Those beginning points, those first steps into the world as creatures of will, are what the state of being Made New and Blameless is all about. This first real category of intelligent life does not require a large degree of example. One need merely read *Genesis 2-3 to get a snapshot of it. There we see our moment when we are given a soul, a will of our own, sentience. Whatever words we use, it is all just the same ideas attempting to encapsulate what makes us different from any other animal.

All creatures, I believe, are created with a purpose, as well as perfect for that purpose. To be clear, this does not mean being perfect in its entirety. At least, not if we are thinking of perfection as a completed state. All are created with room to grow. Progress is part of life, and as real in its intention as anything else. When Adam and Eve were created, they were created with a job to do. They were created to steward this planet God had made. They had all they needed to do this, and began as any child new to walking might, with one hand held tight to their father. They were made new, and were as of yet blameless.

My reasons for considering New and Blameless as its own category for an intelligent race are simple enough. Much like a child must learn to walk, speak, and obey instruction before their formal education in kindergarten can commence, so too must a race be taught and prepared before it can properly learn its intended place in creation. While in this state they have the opportunity, in purity and safety, to ask what it means to be alive, what it means to have a will, and what it means to be whatever race they are. Who is God, and why did he make them? What is this universe, and what does it contain?

In a discussion with my brother recently we talked about Adam’s time before Eve. The Bible says that it was not good for man to be alone, and so God brought all the living things to Adam for him to see and name, yet no helper was found for him. I think we can all agree that God did not, at this point, slap a hand to his forehead in astonishment that the goat was an inadequate mate for his image-bearer. Rather, what he was doing was teaching Adam. He made sure Adam had seen and named all the life available, and by doing so taught and proved that man himself was categorically different. It is this sort of foundational teaching that typifies the Made New and Blameless, and I think would be for any newly created race. I believe this is a state that a race might well be in for quite a long time, even generations, even though humanity did not. It is possible, though by no means definite, that death does not visit a race in this state.

Now, we must pause for a moment to discuss “Sin”. As those in this category are labeled “Blameless” it intentionally implies that carrying blame would boot them from that category, and that blame I speak of is Sin. Now, this topic deserves and will receive its own article in time, as Sin is a greatly misunderstood concept within and without Christianity. Much so because it is predicated on the idea that we have a list of rules from God and all the wrong things to do are sins. There is certainly truth to this, but it is the weakest version of the truth. If we take sin down to its most basic level we find that all sin has one very crucial thing in common. A creature in sin has made a choice to go against the intentions of God. The first step in understanding this relationship with the category in question is on the topic of a creature’s nature. Foundationally all of life has a given nature, one they were created for and with, and this original nature is God’s first intention for them. A spider does not sin because it eats a fly, any more than a wolf pack does in taking down a deer. They are all acting as they were designed to. One could rightly say that all of creation that is acting according to its nature is acting with “righteousness” and all acting against is in “Sin”. A creature in Made New and Blameless has only its given nature, and as all would they will act out of it. Moving forward in the Firmament, when I attempt to assign what actions are sins or not for a fantastic race, this foundational understanding will be my starting point.

Humanity was given its nature as image bearers of God, made for a point and purpose. It was this nature that became corrupted by our eating of the forbidden tree. All creatures gain instincts from their parentage, and so do we. Only, as creatures of will, soul, and sentience, the nature we receive is of greater influence, and it has been corrupted. Our actions no longer come from a trustworthy place of intended purity. Instead, we act out of a corrupted nature, a “sin nature”, and until we are given a new nature can do no other. Not leastwise without overcoming what comes “naturally”. This is exactly what is going on when Jesus says that to follow him we must deny ourselves and take up our cross. This is precisely the intent with being “born again”, to be re-gifted with God’s nature, by way of the indwelling of the holy spirit, so that we can choose what might have been our original, image-bearing nature, and begin to act rightly. The “Law”, the list of rules for right and wrong, spell out specific instructions so that God’s people, who would otherwise act out of their corrupted nature only, can know what God’s intentions are. They can begin to know what his desires and plans for us are. They can know it as spoken and written because our ability to know intuitively has been damaged by something we lack the power to overcome ourselves. Though I will cover it more in Maturing and Blameless, I want to point out that humanity never completed the intended education of Made New and Blameless. The intellectual safety and purity of the garden were robbed from us by deception. We were tricked by an appeal to our senses (Eve saw the fruit was good to eat) and instead of relying on God’s word, as we were only just learning to do, we partook. We ate the fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil outside of God’s will and timing, and as a result, were plunged into a universe where we now knew Evil, yet had a broken relationship with the only one who could tell us what was Good. We had allowed our nature, our heart, to be corrupted. We could no longer learn as intended. I would say that all of human history since has been a desperate struggle to claw our way back by force to a paradise all but forgotten. Every new nation and political ideology has been an attempt to make an Eden, either for its figurehead or the masses. And every new generation thinks they are making progress toward this end. Yet no matter what advancement in medicine, distribution system of goods, nor adherence to an agreed ideal has brought us closer to addressing the inherent corruption of the human nature than we were at our expulsion. Imagine, if you will, a track field built near the Appalachian Trail. Humanity was all set to begin this great journey of natural wonders. But then we were deceived to not meet with our trusted guide, and instead have ended up on the track field. We have since been running in a circle trying to find the trailhead, but we cannot find it on our own. Certainly not by running around the track again. Yet as I said, progress is a part of life, and we cannot remain idle. We must either move in one direction or the other. We move further and further but make no progress toward our real destination. No matter if you turn to the left or to the right, the path won’t lead anywhere but itself. And once we are at last brought to the trailhead, we will never walk the path as Adam and Eve might have. Our race will have been changed by the generations of running instead of being led. We have had to learn the hard way.

* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+2&version=ESV