In the 19th Psalm, we read:

   The heavens declare the glory of God,

               and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

How do the heavens declare to us God’s glory? We could consider the astonishing beauty; the order and the variety. The heavens are also remote, mysterious, and (largely) inaccessible. The sky is above us literally, but also above us in the sense of being beyond us and exceeding us in every way: in scale, and grandeur, and beyond our understanding.

The sheer enormity of sky above us inspires wonder and joy, but also something like terror when we realise our smallness and vulnerability. We know the Psalmist feels this keenly, as we read in the 8th Psalm:

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

The proper response to beholding the heavens is humility. If what we see in the sky above us is so much greater than us, and its enormity and grandeur so unfathomable, how much more the One who made and governs it all? Indeed, Solomon would later pray “heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you” (1 Kings 8:27). God is great beyond our comprehension, and the heavens help us to see that. So, we are compelled like the Psalmist, to wonder at the grace of God who would care for us: such small and feeble creatures. We should be moved to praise and thanksgiving.

In light of this, I find it astonishing when unbelievers tell us that the enormity of the universe is a modern discovery that has somehow undermined Christianity. They say things like: “the Bible makes man the centre of the universe: the object of God’s special care and concern. But we know now that the universe is so large, and that man is such an infinitesimally insignificant part of it. The universe we find ourselves in is not the universe we would expect to find if the Bible were true.” Believe it or not, some philosophers treat this as a serious argument.[1]

So, what’s our answer? To start, we could point out that the enormity of the cosmos is not a modern insight, as is often supposed. King David, writing Psalm 8, clearly had a sense of it. So did the medieval church. Consider this from Christian philosopher Boethius, writing some 1,500 years ago in The Consolation of Philosophy:

“The whole of this earth’s globe, as thou hast learnt from the demonstration of astronomy, compared with the expanse of heaven, is found no bigger than a point; that is to say, if measured by the vastness of heaven’s sphere, it is held to occupy absolutely no space at all.”

Earth’s humble position in the universe is no new discovery! The Christian worldview has always had room for an unimaginably enormous universe.[2] As for why God would create such as vast universe, Christian thinkers have had no trouble proposing explanations. A prominent theologian of the 13th century wrote:

“For He brought things into being in order that His goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because His goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, He produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided and hence the whole universe together participates the divine goodness more perfectly, and represents it better than any single creature whatever.”[3]

It is fitting that God’s infinite goodness would be declared by an immense universe (practically infinite to us), rather than a small one. And notice that the above explanation has nothing to do with us. God’s purposes in creation are not ultimately man-centred at all, but ultimately God-centred. He creates for his own glory – for the manifestation of his goodness – not just for our benefit.

We might also question the basic logic of the argument presented to us. Why would mere geometric size correlate with importance in God’s eyes? He is infinite. He is not bound by space or time. He is perfectly capable of showing meticulous and perfect concern for every atom (even every quark!), without even beginning to be exhausted. Thus, there is no strictly logical reason to think there is a conflict between the fact of a vast cosmos, and God’s concern for man.

So, God certainly is able to care for us, but the question remains: why does he care for us? We can acknowledge there is something deeply intuitive about associating smallness with insignificance. We are hardwired to read the universe allegorically. To say we are insignificant before the heavens simply because we occupy a smaller volume is nonsense. But if we allow ourselves to reason from the vastness of the universe to the glory of the Creator, our intuition makes sense: to say we are insignificant before the Creator of the heavens is perfectly sound.

So, we do not deny the immense size of the universe, and nor do we deny that we occupy a very humble part of it. So, if you think the size of the universe shows us that mankind is insignificant before God, you’re right! It’s an insight that’s throughly Biblical: “what is man that you are mindful of him?” The heavens do teach us that we are very small, indeed. There is nothing at all in us that is so great as to make us intrinsically worthy of God’s care and concern.

That’s why when God showers his lovingkindness on us, we call it grace (entirely unmerited favour). This is exactly in keeping with the Biblical pattern of how God works. The same sceptics who mock our faith today would no doubt mock Old Covenant Israel. They would say: “Out of all the great and mighty nations on the earth, you are the smallest and weakest. You think God choose you, to be the special object of his love and care? How ridiculous!” But what does God say? This is what we read in Deuteronomy, chapter 7:

7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

And what about the church? The same sceptics mock the church, saying: “if your religion were true, wouldn’t all the world’s greatest intellects, the wisest, and most powerful men believe? But the church, the supposed chosen of God, is full of the weak and the poor and the ignorant.” How does God respond? This is from 1 Corinthians, chapter 1:

27 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

So, there we have it. God’s choice of where he bestows his love is not made according to worldly standards. Not by size or greatness, or anything else. His aim is to the glorify himself – not us. So, when he raises up the weak and the lowly, who have nothing in themselves to boast about, he gets all the glory: as he deserves.

That is why it fits perfectly with God’s nature to say that out of all the innumerable heavenly bodies (that we cannot begin to number!) he would elect this tiny rock we call Earth – a mere speck of a speck lost in the vastness of the cosmos – to be the centre of his love and care. As we read in Genesis, he would choose to make this little rock first, and all the stars of the heavens would be relegated almost to a footnote: “he made the stars also”. Indeed, he would himself descend to this little rock, in the form of a servant, for the sake of underserving sinners.

In the heavens we have a wonderful picture of the electing grace and mercy of God.

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[1] Thomas, E. (2017). Does the size of the universe prove God doesn’t exist? Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/does-the-size-of-the-universe-prove-god-doesnt-exist-8664

[2] A critic could respond by observing that Boethius nonetheless would have placed the Earth at the centre of the universe – and so even if it was understood to be very small, the Earth nonetheless occupied a privileged place. But, in fact, the default geocentrism of medieval cosmology was not an idea borne of pride in man’s importance at all, but actually of deep humility. Medieval philosophers thought in spherical coordinates. To be at the centre, to the medieval mind, is to be at the bottom of the universe: a lowly, humble estate. Modern cosmology, that places the Earth in the heavens among the planets, would probably sound to a medieval man like sacrilegious vainglory. They may have been mistaken as to the facts of their cosmology, but their error was not in making man too important. For more on this, see C. S. Lewis’s The Discarded Image.

[3] From Question 47, Part I, The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas. Retrieved from https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1047.htm