Speculation: Why an Infinite Universe?

Lately I've found myself wondering if the science-fiction dream of colonizing the stars isn't just a human dream, but one God has for us, too. This is pure speculation, of course, but it doesn't come from nowhere. You see, I found myself wondering if people would have children after the Resurrection. The Bible doesn't say one way or another, though some interpret something Jesus said in such a way as to come to the conclusion that people won't have kids, but I'll talk about that later. There is one thing that is clear regardless: after the Resurrection, humans will be immortal, which makes having children problematic due to issues that arise with an ever-increasing population.

Over the last couple of centuries, we've seen concerns over population growth, with fears that the number of people would outstrip resources, such as food. You see, population rates exploded when medical advances reduced mortality, especially child mortality, but people were still having the same number of kids. However, in more recent decades, the rate of human reproduction has dropped considerably (enough so that underpopulation has even become a concern in some places), and our farming technology has greatly advanced, which enables us to produce enough food to feed everyone (though we still tragically fail to distribute that food well). At the heart of these concerns, however, is that an ever-increasing population will eventually outstrip the production of resources needed to sustain it.

In the mortal world we know, this problem is avoided due to death. However, if people don't die and they can have kids, then the population will continuously grow. No matter how slow this growth is, it will inevitably exceed the planet's ability to sustain it. Needless to say, this is a huge logistical problem that needs solving! Even if God miraculously provides food for everyone (a distinct possibility—see the miraclous feedings of the 4000 and 5000), housing becomes a concern.

So we can see that having kids after the Resurrection does pose a very real logistical issue. In effect, the human population would continuously grow indefinitely and completely overrun Earth.

But what if the human population wasn't limited to Earth? What if God created an infinite universe with infinite planets we could inhabit? Why, in that case, humanity would have infinite space to expand into and unlimited resources with which to expand, provided we had a means for traversing the stars. God could certainly make that possible.

Notably, this problem would've existed for Adam and Eve had the Fall not occurred, as the command to multiply (that is, reproduce) was given before that tragedy introduced death to the world. This makes the likelihood of children after the Resurrection seem more likely to me. Further, Isaiah 45:18 says that God created the Earth to be inhabited. What if that isn't just true of the Earth, but of the entire universe?

The main counterargument to this speculation of mine that I can foresee is based in Jesus's answer to the Sadducees where Jesus says there won't be marriage after the Resurrection. This shows up in all three of the synoptic Gospels, though Luke's account of it is the most thorough. (Here are Matthew and Mark for comparison.) So we do know that marriage won't be a thing anymore once the Resurrection happens. Given Christianity teaches that sex should only be between a married couple, the logic chain is that if there is no marriage, there is no sex, and therefore no one is going to have any children.

However, to be blunt, the belief that there can't be sex after the Resurrection because there won't be marriage strikes me as preposterous. To begin with, we do not know what the relationship between men and women was before The Fall, nor what it'll look like after the Resurrection. The thing is, marriage itself is a social construct, and the idea that that construct is no longer in use after the Resurrection seems perfectly reasonable to me.

My points here are that marriage is an artificial thing and I see no reason to believe that people with the vastly superior level of maturity that we will have after the Resurrection wouldn't be able to navigate all of their relationships well, including sexual and parenting ones.

In the end, though, all of the ideas here are speculative in nature. I think it's really cool to think about, and I love the thought that sex, children, and parenting will exist after the Resurrection and that they'll lead to the slow, but steady populating of an infinite universe. To me, such an idea is awesome in the old sense of that word.

Thank you for reading.

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