I recently picked up a fascinating book by the author James Blish, well known among science fiction fans for his wide breadth of interest and depth. I’d read Blish before and always enjoyed his work in large measure because it is not mind candy, but rather writing that made me work. A Matter of Conscience does not disappoint. In fact, it is a very unusual sort of science fiction though it would be hard to imagine taking up the subject were it not for the license that an imaginary world offers. Let me explain.

The matter of conscience at hand concerns a world in which a race of beings has evolved devoid of any religious orientation whatsoever but with a moral imperative, indeed a harmonious existence at peace with itself and all other beings of the world, sentient and otherwise. It is in short, Eden before the fall from grace. Into this idyllic paradise come four scientists charged with the task of recommending whether this world some 57,000 light years from earth should be permitted to join a federated league of planets. At least one of the four whose political views are not unlike those of some today sees the planet as a ripe source of resources to enrich the earth, but otherwise a race of repugnant aliens whose rights and very existence have no merit of their own. At the other end of the continuum is a scientist priest, a Jesuit trained in biology and a man who finds himself so in harmony with this world that he quickly learns the native language and comes to regard the inhabitants as his friends.

If the story evolved no further it would perhaps border on the trite—but Blish is not that kind of writer and he means to plunge us into a moral dilemma that I promise you will not foresee. The matters of conscience, in the plural, are many and beg questions which we are faced with increasingly in our polarized world of today. Here are a few. Is there a moral imperative; a knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil that exists or can exist without a belief in a higher being? Are we a product of parental and societal conditioning or are we able to think freely? Do we indeed possess free will? And these are just a few of the questions Blish takes on in this extraordinary work.

I am not going to spoil things for you in case you might like to read this book yourselves, and in any event Blish is too clever for that. He does not leave us with absolutes but with more questions than answers. Along the way he explores –in a very direct way, the theology of Manichaeism. The Manicheans held that God was a highly powerful though not all powerful being opposed by an equal force of evil–we can call it the devil. Humans and the world they inhabit in this construct are proxies for the struggle between these forces. What is at stake is humanity’s soul. The ancient and modern Church hold Manichaeism as heresy, denying Satan powers akin to those of God and particularly powers of creation.

The work I referred to earlier that Blish leaves us with is what has occupied my thinking for some days now. I do not subscribe to the Manichaean theology of a black and white world—one in which good and evil strive for possession of our souls, however it may feel that way at times when we observe extreme inhumanity, hatred and immorality around us. How to rise above this, is precisely what Blish is asking us to consider as our matter of conscience. Is there indeed an innate understanding of right and wrong within us—quite literally part of our human DNA? If so, how does it become perverted or distilled as we grow into adulthood? Is faith-as some would suggest- and rigid adherence thereto-the only path to redemption? Is free will merely a level playing field for a struggle between good and evil or the opportunity to discover divinity within us?

Answers to these questions are well beyond my theological knowledge. But the process of thinking about them has been productive even if the answers are not yet clear. If this is the sort of work you’d like to take up I invite you to read Blish and be surprised at where his story takes you.