«CREATORE DEL CIELO E DELLA TERRA» LA FEDE CRISTIANA E LA NASCITA DELL'ASTROBIOLOGIA.

«The Creator of Heaven and Earth». Christian faith and the birth of astrobiology. The birth of astrobiology has put new questions and challenges to the Christian tradition and to its theology which professes God as the Creator of Heaven and earth. This contribution highlights a number of steps the Church and the theological research have performed in a century and a half of debates, academic disputes, censures and refusals together with cautious advances. The sciences of the living and consequently this new science - astrobiology - acknowledge a finality, a teleonomy. 01-Abstract 1-2015.indd 7 11/03/2015 10:02:30 8 StPat 62 (2015) 1 It owns an essential and well-known heuristic quality but it is unable to go beyond the horizon of our knowledge and of our reality. Only faith whose message is revealed and not discovered by any scientific learning can cover this gap and reach the sacred. Evidence and support are not needed otherwise faith would be reduced to a firm belief, a learning but it would never correspond to a free and voluntary step which faces darkness and hopes to meet the Unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]