Kardashev’s Scale and the Kingdom of God: Part 1 – Christianity and the Cosmos

Despite our acknowledgement of the bigness of God and the length of eternity, Christians tend to focus on the here and now. Surely, it’s appropriate to emphasize presence in the present. We have but one life. There is but one earth. And yet, really, there is so much more.

I love thinking about the “more.”

In part, this is due to my interest in science fiction, especially as it increasingly becomes reality. As a Christian, it also has to do with my awe. God is the God of the cosmos, beyond the visible, beyond time, beyond our imagining.

And even though divinity and the cosmos stretch beyond our imagining, such imagining can be good.

We need more Christians thinking well about how to be the Church now. We also need more Christians thinking well about how to be the Church tomorrow.

This series is about the Church tomorrow, and in the far future.

To many, the subject matter of this series will sound like fiction. I’ll use words like “multiverse” and entertain the possibility—and the eventual probability—of interstellar travel.

This series is fun more than it is practical. But it is also an exploration that matters for Christians in the future. Most Christians, like most people, have given precisely zero thought to how living on other planets will affect our theology. What about when technology allows us to move beyond the temporal and spatial bounds of our immediate cosmic neighborhood? What will it mean when we deplete the sun? Or when we colonize—or create—other planets?

Only the first of those questions is realistic today. But if the Lord tarries, all of them will become inevitabilities. I want to explore what that means.

To order this series, I’ll follow the stages of what’s called the Kardashev Scale.

Energy. Lots of Energy.

We don’t need to look far to see our world is changing fast. The global population continues to grow. We’ll reach nearly 10 billion people by 2050, which is wild, considering Earth was home to barely over six billion in 2000.

Technology, too, is zooming forward faster than we can manage. Artificial intelligence. Quantum computing. Bioengineering. Ingestible robots, volcanic mining, and diamond batteries. We live in an incredible time.

But those two rapidly changing realities—human population and increasingly powerful technology—demand one thing: energy.

Lots of energy.

As human society progresses, our energy demands only become more enormous. That’s where Nikolai Kardashev comes in.

The Kardashev Scale

Kardashev, a Russian astrophysicist working in the middle of the last century, developed a scale to measure a civilization’s progress. Initially, the scale included only three levels, or types.

Type I refers to a civilization that has mastery over the energy of its native planet. In the case of humans, this means we will become a Type I civilization once we can control all energy available on Earth. (Think harnessing wind, water, tectonic shifts, storms, and all the natural resources of our terrestrial ball.) As a species, we’re not a Type I civilization quite yet—we’re more like a Type 0.7-0.8. But at the rate our technological advances are going, it is likely we will achieve Type I status in the next 100 to 200 years.

Type II civilizations have mastery over the energy of their host star. For us, this means we’ll be Type II when humans can control all of the sun’s energy.

Type III civilizations have mastery over the energy of their galaxy. For humans, that’s the Milky Way.

This is as far as Kardashev went—because what was the point of going any farther? Well, apart from the fun of it, physics and engineering (and some philosophy bordering on metaphsyics) have compelled us to imagine far beyond our own Milky Way galaxy. As such, four new levels have been added to the Kardashev Scale.

Type IV civilizations have mastery over the energy of their entire universe.

Type V civilizations have mastery over the energy of the multiverse.

Next, Type VI civilizations are so advanced they have mastery over time and space themselves. These hypothetical civilizations can actually create universes.

Lastly, Type VII civilizations go beyond our ability to even hypothesize. What is beyond time, space, and our present dimensions? Whatever is there, a Type VII civilization has mastery over it.

Kardashev and the Kingdom

You might be thinking, “Why are you wasting time thinking about colonizing other planets and galaxies?” To an extent, that’s fair. There are so many pressing, important matters the next country over—not to mention the next block. Why should we concern ourselves with space travel?

To be sure, I am no proponent of needlessly wasting resources to travel to other solar systems when kids in Aleppo can’t safely travel to other neighborhoods. That said, it is neither practical nor ideal to concern ourselves entirely with today without a thought to tomorrow. We need to think about both.

The kingdom puts very real calls on our life in the here and now. But the kingdom is eternal, so it is sensible—and in cases like this, a real pleasure—to think about the kingdom tomorrow.

We should think about how controlling weather might impact our theology before we are able to do it fully.

We should think very hard about what living on the moon or on Mars will mean for our faith.

The spinning of the world and the expansion of the universe don’t wait for our theology and practice to catch up. How many times has the church been badly caught off guard by advances in technology and science!

Again, this is a series that is mostly speculative. Beyond Type I civilizations, there is no chance of the ramifications of other phases on the Kardashev Scale playing out in our lifetimes. And yet, it’s important and fun to ponder what such a future might mean. Thought experiments are as important in our faith as they are in our science.

That’s what this is. It’s not pure science fiction. Nor is it pure practicality. It’s a Christian thought experiment that becomes more relevant with every passing year.