Presumably, the same physical (e.g. thermodynamics) and biological (e.g. evolution) principles apply everywhere throughout the universe. That’s actually a fundamental assumption of cosmology.
In which case, then yes, any alien life we may happen to discover will share much in common with life here on Earth.
And yes, we can probably expect such intelligent life to have developed forms of things we might file under “redemption,” although it’s highly unlikely that such alien redemption would be anything like the Christian variety, or anything like human religion at all.
The question from a specifically Christian point of view would be, if intelligent life does indeed exist elsewhere, then what does that mean for the status of Jesus Christ as a historical figure? The question would have to be asked, why would God send his Son to one planet and write off all the others?
Or would Christians assert that humanity occupies a special position among species in the Universe precisely because Jesus was sent here and not to Alpha Centauri.
Christianity has consistently opposed efforts to move humanity (and Christians specifically) from the center of the universe to its fringes. Discovering that we weren’t the only intelligent species in the universe, and that there was even less about humanity that was particularly special would probably be an even larger shock than discovering that the Earth isn’t the center of the universe.

If you believe, like a lot of people do, that religion is an evolutionary by-product, then it stands to reason that an alien civilization would have some form of religious mythos and beliefs. And since God Becoming Flesh is a common archetype among many earthly religions, odds are it’s gonna pop up somewhere in the alien culture.
what this means is that there’s a good chance that some Christians will be able to point to this and say, “See, the God of Abraham actually visited you guys, but instead of Jesus it was Gleep-Glop.” The danger in this is that both species will consider their own version the “proper” mythos.
Now if we find them, that means we’ll be technologically advanced enough that they won’t be much of a threat. (Don’t believe the Avatar hype. If humans wanted to, those Na’vi would be done for)
However, if they find us, and they’re True Believers, we’re in big trouble.

I read an argument in First Things several years ago about how humans would need to evangelize aliens about Christ. I could not follow the logic at all–that there could only be one incarnation one time, one place.

(Sorry, can’t resist. Pretend this is typed in a font that sounds like Carl Sagan’s voice…)
Maybe that is why Jesus is taking so long to return to Earth: he’s busy making the salvation rounds of billions and billions of planets in billions and billions of stars in billions and billions of galaxies in the sheer vastness of the cosmos. Right now, he may be walking on a liquid methane lake before the 39-and-a-half disciples of Rigel 7.

Try this on for size: According to this recent article, there is a movement to have dolphins declared “non-human persons”.
Now this is not as New-Agey or eccentric as it seems. Dolphins have a comparable brain-body ratio, and are highly intelligent. Their “language” can’t be decoded (yet), but they seem to have series of clicks that they use to uniquely identify individuals–that is to say, names. It’s also important to point out that, lacking hands and having vastly different sense apparatuses than we do, it’s very hard to compare their intelligence to ours or that of other land animals. This is what makes the prospect of communication difficult, too (for a fictional version of this issue, see the classic “Dance of the Changer and the Three”). If you read up, the estimated intelligence of dolphins is all over the map, since no one really knows.
Now, I’m agnostic, given the state of our knowledge, as to how intelligent dolphins are; but there’s sufficient doubt that I’d never harm one and would fight against their being harmed. They do seem to exhibit some “fallen” traits–they have been observed to rape and to attack and batter others of their kind, for example. On the other hand, revelation and Scripture have nothing to say about them.
I tend to come back to Mark 9:40, John 10:16, and John 21:18-22. Jesus says that whoever is not against him is for him and that he has other sheep. Though these verses obviously were not written in the context of dolphins or extraterrestrials, I think they certainly leave open the possibility of a relationship between God and other intelligences. Then the last quote, “What is that to you? Follow me,” in my view, warns us against too facile a view as to who is in God’s graces, and against assuming that God deals with other life in ways that are our business, or that we can even understand.
In any case, if we ever do manage to communicate with cetaceans or aliens, I guess we’ll find out.

Rod,
Have you not read C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy? Another good religious pondering on this subject is “The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell.

Oh, Rod, I was going to recommend you read ‘The Sparrow’, but I see Scott beat me to it. But yes, you should really read ‘The Sparrow’. (The author is a convert to Judaism, but she was trying to ‘think like a Christian’ when she wrote the book, and it shows.) There is a sequel called ‘Children of God’ as well. And yes, you should also read the Perelandra Trilogy by C.S. Lewis. As well as “A Case of Conscience’ by James Blish, which involves a priest responding to the discovery of a supposedly ‘unfallen’ race on another world.

did not St. Paul say “all of creation is groaning towards salvation”?
of course – when he said it – he pretty much thought “all of creation” referred to planet Earth – he probably did not contemplate other life on those far away stars in the sky.
the non-human persons thing might apply to elephants as well – they mourn their dead and even visit year after year sites where specific elephants have died.

The hypostatic union of Christ’s human and divine natures does not preclude a hypostatic union of his divine nature with another nature of an non-human but divinely ensouled life form. I believe that’s one of the speculative bits of medieval cogitation on plural worlds (yeah, they were thinking about it long before us). Original sin comes through Adam and Eve; if life forms on other worlds were not descended from Adam and Eve, then original sin from them does not descend to them. It would only descend if there was a parallel fall in those worlds. Et cet.

We had this discussion once at an SF “con” in the late 80′s. It was quite entertaining. One guy (David Brin, I think) made the comment that any such aliens would, if course, have their belief systems and ideologies that may include some sort of religion. Since they would be far more advanced than us, they would have the same regard for our religious beliefs as we do for the animist beliefs of some primitive tribe in the Amazon. If so, they would visit the Earth to convert us to their religion.

I am not sure I agree with you about what Orthodoxy teaches about the Fall. Everything I have seen points to Eastern Christianity taking a much more limited view of the Fall, and the seminal work on it remains St Athanasius’ On The Incarnation, where he portrays the effects of Original Sin as a stain on human nature. This is rather different from the Augustinian view where the fall isn’t just a stain (which in principle can be washed away), it’s a fundamental corruption. But even in the West theologians generally held that the effects of the Fall were limited to the Earth (what medievals called the “sublunary sphere” of creation). The Heavens remain untouched. You can find this in Dante, and in the 20th century in CS Lewis who in fiction posited a race of unfallen Martians and developed what an unfallen life (and death) would be like. Finally, until very recent times no one discussed space aliens, but another race of sentient beings was known: the Angels. They were completely untouched by Adam’s Fall, but suffered a fall among their own kind prior to Adam (maybe prior to the world?)– though this Fall affected only the Fallen ones aong them leaving the rest untouched, unless there’s more to that story than we know.
So all in all I have to say I would imagine alien life as unfallen unless of course it had fallen on its own (which seems entirely possible of course)

Rod,
I believe that the Church teaches that death entered into the world, meaning the earth. It would be rather an injustice to suggest that sentient beings, in their own relationship with God on another world would at all be influenced by us-or us by them. God’s Love and Justice preserves us from such contamination not of our doing.
Our fallen nature has everything to do with our particular relationship with God and how that fallenness influences our posterity. The vacuum of space provides an insular barrier, blessedly, between the closed systems of separate worlds. When the scripture writers spoke of creation, they did not envision other worlds with sentient beings

Yes, they would need a Messiah – alien incarnate and all that. Unfortunately, that narrows it down to Wayne Newton.

Scot and Hector, I third The Sparrow and its sequel, Children of God. I think they’re the best novels about the interaction between humans and human religion and aliens ever written. They also give a very sobering view about the effects of an advanced alien culture on a less-developed one even when the mission is fully peaceful and optimistic. On the other hand, I just recently read A Case of Conscience after decades of hearing about it, and I really think it’s vastly overrated. Blish has some interesting points, but I think his theology (or his understanding of it, anyway) is somewhat shallow, and his point seems a bit muddied.
Although it doesn’t deal with aliens, I’d like to go a little off topic and recommend the classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, another great science fiction novel about science, progress, and faith. Especially for any with a crunchy outlook, there are many rewards in it.
Lindsey Abelard: Since [aliens] would be far more advanced than us, they would have the same regard for our religious beliefs as we do for the animist beliefs of some primitive tribe in the Amazon.
This reminds me of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! where the Pierce Brosnan character keeps saying, “They’re far more advance than we are so the must be peaceful!” Right before they start shooting everyone….

Hey I have seen enough movies about aliens to know they would clearly need redemption, but many appear beyond any hope of redemption. I mean really, body snatching, etc. Bad aliens. Nothing to do with the fall of humanity though, that would be a distortion of the Bible I think.

Here is a link to what appears to me to be a good examination of the history of this question from a Catholic perspective:
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0591.html

Rod,
You are correct in your understanding of Orthodox theology regarding the Fall/Original Sin and the idea that all Creation was affected by the Fall. I would take that to mean all of the universe, not just Earth.
Gerard Nadal, is it fair that all plants and animals, all life on Earth regardless of whether it is human or not, is subject to death because of the choices of a pair of humans? Or is it fair that we inherit the consequences of Adam’s and Eve’s sin? Does the vacuum of space provide a barrier to entropy?

That last “Your Name” post was mine

Lindsey wrote:
“. . .they would have the same regard for our religious beliefs as we do for the animist beliefs of some primitive tribe in the Amazon.”
Which is exactly the attitude, on our part, that resulted in attempted cultural genocide of Native Americans, amongst others.

The Mormons apparently believe there are numerous alien planets, each with their own gods and that we are only accountable to our universe’s god. They also believe that humans can become gods of other planets, at least according to Wikipedia. Hmmm. I think God probably loves people on other planets too and sends them a savior who can talk to them in their own particular culture and way. There’s a certain universal truth that I think probably applies to everyone in the universe. “Love one another as I have loved you” would be the first and greatest law.

Your Name above,
In regard to your question about animals dying, my understanding is that traditional Christian theologians held that that was (in some sense) a result of the fall of the rebel angels, not the fall of man. The tenor of the New Testament talks a lot about the devil being ‘the lord of this world’ and so forth. This seems to comport better with our understanding, since the mid 19th century, that animals evolved long before humans. In his aforementioned ‘On the Incarnation’, for example, St. Athanasius talks about death as inherent to animal nature (at least in a fallen world dominated by the devil), but suggests that _humans_ only become liable to death after the fall of man.

Re: Gerard Nadal, is it fair that all plants and animals, all life on Earth regardless of whether it is human or not, is subject to death because of the choices of a pair of humans?
It is simply not sound to take “death” as meaning “biological death”. That’s as big an error as arguing against Copernican astronomy because Joshua commanded the sun to stand still (an argument Luther actually used). Moreover the text of Genesis itself contadicts such an interpretation: note that there was another tree in the Garden which Adam and Eve had not eaten of: the Tree of Life whose fruit granted immotality. Adam and Eve were not in fact deathless at any time. Add to this the fact that the Lord foretold that they would die “on the very day” they ate the forbidden fruit. This obviously did not happen so either God was lying, mistaken, or talking about a form of death that has nothing to do with the cessation of bodily functioning. I think the latter is the only acceptable option there.
The Orthodox Church has never endorsed a foolish lireralism in approaching Scripture (or the Fathers for that matter). It is wrong to insist on such here.
Re: Or is it fair that we inherit the consequences of Adam’s and Eve’s sin? Does the vacuum of space provide a barrier to entropy?
What does entropy have to with sin? The ancients (and medievals, and moderns right up to CS Lewis) thought that the Earth was indeed unique in being tocuhed by human sin, but they did not interpret that as having anything whatoever to do with physics. We are in Young Earth Creationist territory when we start down that route. The Earth is alone in being affected by human sin because the Earth is only the place where humans dwell. Should we someday travel to other worlds then those worlds would become affacted by our sins since we would be living and, yes, sinning there. But until then, yes the rest of the universe is free of human sin (though not necessarily of some putative alien sin). Why make this more complicated than it needs to be?

However, if they find us, and they’re True Believers, we’re in big trouble.
In that case, you better find out quickly how to properly worship Gleep-Glop. I imagine many clergy will go along with this, if history is accurate. Many Aztec priests became Catholic clergy.

While there are passages from the Fathers and the Scriptures about how “all creation” works towards salvation, one must read this as “Earth” as the Fathers would not have known about extraterrestrial life. I think (this is my personal opinion) that if we encountered sentient alien life-forms, we would see a religion extremely similar to Orthodoxy in belief and prayer, if not in external forms. They too would be working out the path of salvation. If there was a race that did not “fall,” we would probably not encounter them in space, as they would remain in communnion with God in an Eden-like environment. However, the Final Judgement (I think) will occur once and for all time, for humans and for all sentient life in every dimension and universe; in all of Creation. This is all highly speculative, however, and the focus of Orthodox life must be prayer and achiving our own communion with God.

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn is an intriguing novel about this subject, set in the Middle Ages! A very interesting book.

I’ve thought about this… I’m guessing there will be contending bands of evangelicals, one side wanting to convert the aliens, the other side thinking that evangelism to aliens is meaningless.
Me, I think religion is for _humans_, it’s about the fact that _humans_ are imperfect. The idea of a fallen creation is a metaphor to remind us that life is tough. If you think it’s not a metaphor then you must think that at some time in history the physical universe was entirely benevolent — how? No sharp rocks to bump into? No water to drown in? I think it’s a metaphor.

Two crucial examinations of this question are The Man and The Fire Balloons in Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. One deals with the question of the uniqueness of the Incarnation, the other with sin and inter-species evangalism.

I disagree with Conway’s assertion that “Darwinian evolution is very predictable.” There are some repeating trends within relatively closely-related groups of organisms, for instance the repeated evolution of saber-teeth across many different time periods in many different types of mammals. But…. those are just mammals, and mammals are ridiculously specialized oddballs when compared to the bulk of life on Earth. Steven Jay Gould compellingly argued, in his book “Wonderful Life,” that evolutionary trends are so subject to irreproducible climate and geological conditions that there would be no way to turn back the clock and let things go and turn out exactly the same way again.
Sentience could just as well have arisen in dolphins, or octopi; some paleobiologists also point to unusually big-brained predatory dinosaurs, the stenonychosaurs. There’s no guarantee intelligent alien life, even on a world that’s basically like our own, would look anything like a human. And if they didn’t have grasping hands or vocal speech or communal social structures, their brain functions would be vastly different from ours as well.
I realize this has nothing to do with your “what about the Fall?” question; I’m more addressing the bothersome trend in popular fiction to depict all aliens as just people with forehead prostheses.

Wow Rod, it’s kinda scary to be on the same wavelength. I posted a piece last night about the same topic and the first response I got was from a Mormon who argued that this poses no problem for them since they already believe in multiple inhabited worlds according to the Pearl of Great Price. I, on the other hand, as an evangelical Christian, must rely upon what the Old and New Testaments say. There are of course intriguing passages that many have attributed to alien visitations, but more realistically we need to read the text in light of what they believed about the cosmos. Thankfully we know much more of what their cultural “neighborhood” believed with the discovery of many ancient Near Eastern texts. In my own reading, nothing precludes extraterrestrial life forms, even sentient ones. And sentience seems to be the demarcation in our discussion. If we find algae on a far flung planet, it’ll be amazing and even revolutionary in terms of the biological sciences. But finding evidence of a species that has, like us, reached out from beyond their world to other worlds, immediately raises deep theological questions. Can Christianity accommodate such a seismic shift in our understanding of the world/universe? As I said in my own blog post, we did with the Copernican revolution, we’re doing it now with the evolutionary revolution (though evangelicals more haltingly), so I suspect Christianity will adapt to and survive the new reality of otherworldly intelligences. Some Christianities will not adapt and so they’ll take up a niche and hole up in their intellectual corner and eventually go extinct. Oh, and by the way, I for one welcome our new alien overlords!

Unless their some manner of hyper-moral beings that do no wrong because they cannot conceive of doing so, then I’d say that they definitely do qualify as fallen- that they suffer the same mortal temptations to selfish and harmful behavior as we do. What I think is most likely is that it would push biblical literalism fairly solidly into the fringes in favor of more allegorical interpretations.
On the other hand I recall reading a short story once about an interplanetary expedition that discovered a civilization destroyed by a completely unexpected nova- they were advanced enough that the explorers found recorded documentation of a fairly peaceful society advanced enough to know what was happening and of their panic in the last few minutes as it came seemingly out of nowhere. The kicker was that the distance and timing were just right that it would have shown in the sky above Bethlehem at just the right time.
Evidence like that might point the other way, but would have its own set of far more disturbing implications associated with it.

Turmarion,
Yes, I really liked ‘The Sparrow’. Interestingly, her use of scientific concepts, including some ideas from population ecology, was based on real science and was done very cleverly. Without giving too much of the plot away, I read about something called ‘the paradox of enrichment’ shortly after reading ‘The Sparrow’, and was struck by how she had worked that idea into her book. The treatment of sexuality was also interesting, I thought. As was the treatment of the problem of evil
I guess tastes do differ, because I liked ‘A Case of Conscience’ (though it had some pretty big flaws). I also liked Blish’s pair of novels about the apocalypse (Black Easter) though they are _very_ dark, and decidedly unorthodox in their theology, and may focus on evil and ‘black magic’ a lot more than some people’s taste. It does get into some very interesting discussions of the problem of evil, and the relationship between good and evil.
Karl G,
That’s a good story- the title is I think, “The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke.

I wonder how well the aliens will welcome their new, human overlords.
I think it will be interesting to see alien worlds turned into battlefields as the various varieties of Christian land armies to save the natives only to find themselves fighting the Muslims who have landed with the same idea.

Ought to be interesting to find out that God is an alien and Jesus was just a lost astronaut. Try this on for size. We get invaded by aliens and focibly converted to their faith or be put to death for blashempy. This, of course, is all conjecture as religion itself is. An intelligent race will not need religion as a crutch to lean on to advance their civilization. Since religions are born out of ignorance and die from knowledge, an alien entity will probaly have no such thing in their culture.

I have to throw in my 2 cents worth on the SciFi titles here. I love the Lewis trilogy, found Blish pretty provocative when I read it in the 70′s… but the books that appealed to me the most were Zinna Henderson’s “People” stories. Her primary focus was racial prejudice… but her vehicle was what would happen if essentially unfallen aliens tried to live among us.
These were written in the ’50s, way ahead of the fashionable curve of racial justice.

Christians: just ask them if they know Jesus. If the answer is no, begin mission work, as usual. If the answer is yes, invite them to Wednesday night church and supper, as usual.

I wonder if we do ever find an alien, if Christians could bring themselves to consider the slimy, green, bug-eyed, multi-tentacled critter an equal of man.
Probably not so hard for them to consider that it would be equal or superior to women and homosexuals.

I can’t believe that religious people are so arrogant that they would even ask such a question

I’d think the theoretical alien would stand in the light of the Resurrection, right? Perhaps more perfectly than Christians…perhaps less perfectly than a British Civil Servant.

The Bible blames nature’s imperfections on the actions of the first human couple. However, we know from the fossil record that death, disease and predation existed long before the first humans. Given that the Bible is wrong about the cause of the problem, it hardly makes sense to trust its solution.

Re: if we encountered sentient alien life-forms, we would see a religion extremely similar to Orthodoxy in belief and prayer, if not in external forms.
Would aliens even have religion? If they were unfallen I would argue that they would not. God would simply be part of their daily reality. There would be no need for sacrament and ritual; they would walk with God as Adam and Eve did. Fallen aliens like us would probably have various forms of religion. Some would be paganistic, the result of the aliens reaching toward God on their own. But perhaps the Lord would have also given them their own Revelation as well.

It would be very entertaining if aliens arrived and started proselytising for their own religion. Imagine the arguments!

Robert Stovold,
Wrong- Christian tradition tends to blame death (to the extent that death is an evil) on the fall of the rebel angels, which presumably happened before any life existed, not on the human fall. Like I said above, St. Athanasius was quite clear in his “On the Incarnation of the Word” that death was inherent to animal nature even before the Fall.
And the more we learn about the world, the more convincing the teachings about both the Angelic and the human fall seem to be.

sorry, that should say above, _animal_ death is viewed as something inherent to the world after the angelic fall. And probably also human death in the strictly physical sense. St. Mary was untouched by original sin, and she may or may not have ‘died’ in the strictly physical sense- this doesn’t change the fact that though her assumption into heaven, she is seen as having been preserved from death in some kind of deeper sense. I think Jon’s post above makes a lot of sense in this regard.

In the beginning the Bible says there was one Adam, one Eve and one Garden of Eden. There was peace from the presence of God in this garden. Death and carnality may have existed outside the garden but it was not in this garden. If space aliens exist, they need to be in God’s presence to have eternal life.

I want to put in another plug for C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy. Especially the first two books, “Out of the Silent Planet” and “Perelandra.” (The third book, “That Hideous Strength” takes place on Planet Earth so really doesn’t count for this discussion.)
Lewis posits that it is this world, which he names “Thulcandra,” that is fallen. In “Perelandra” he attempts to retell the story of the Fall, but at any rate, the creatures on Mars and Venus in his story are not fallen. However, they are in danger of falling.

Haven’t read all 44 previous comments, so forgive me if this is redundant. I take issue with your “genetic” analogy because it is too specific to humans. Humanity was God’s conduit for Grace pored out on the rest of creation. At “The Fall” all of creation was separated from from God. It is not so much genetic as atmospheric (but universal,in the cosmic sense–is there a cosmic atmosphere?). The Word of God became part of creation to redeem all of creation–including any other sentient life that may exist. He specifically became human to re-establish that conduit of grace. This only needed to happen once. How could the Word, once incarnate, become incarnate again as something else? Either He would have to abandon His human nature, or another person of the trinity would have to become incarnate, or there are more than three persons in the Divine Nature.

So…Out of 45 responses, not one (unless I missed one in my quick skim) says that we don’t have to worry about it since there is no such thing as aliens anyway???

To the list of Speculative Fiction (formerly known as Science Fiction) I would add Ray Bradbury’s poem “Christus Apollo”. I have used this with youth groups on starry solstice nights. There are many other authors who have worked on this theme.
Also Star Trek has explored some of these themes – albeit obliquely. I recommend from the Original Series, “Bread and Circuses” and from Next Generation, “Rightful Heir”. There are many religious themes in Star Trek and there is a fine book on the subject, “The Religions of Star Trek”. Other TV series have also explored the role of religion and alien cultures.
I am amazed no one has optioned Lewis’ Space trilogy for film.
This is such a broad topic that there ought to be a separate thread for it – wait there is – I started it.

First, as Cardinal Ratzinger insisted some years ago, the Fall is a historical fact and the need for redemption for human beings follows from that fact. No beings other than human beings are known to be in need of redemption.
Second, it is more likely that Bigfoot exists than alien intelligent life forms.

Second, it is more likely that Bigfoot exists than alien intelligent life forms.
some might say intelligent alien life is more likely than the Fall being “historical fact”. so shouldn’t we have plans for both possibilities?
although i agree an intelligent alien lifeform existing at the same time as us is highly unlikely. but plenty of things are unlikely.

This, of course, is all conjecture as religion itself is. An intelligent race will not need religion as a crutch to lean on to advance their civilization. Since religions are born out of ignorance and die from knowledge, an alien entity will probaly have no such thing in their culture.
How “intelligent” or “advanced” does a race need to get in order for it “not to need” religion? We have become technologically advanced far beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors even two centuries ago, and we have certainly not come anywhere near the point of “not needing” religion “as a crutch”. This seems to be a continuing fantasy of secularists: that there is some magic points of “advancement” or “enlightenment” at which religion will go away.
***
Has anyone read Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series — the one where Earth is invaded by lizardlike aliens in 1943, so the World War II belligerents have to stop fighting one another and work together to fight the aliens? The alien lizards are advanced enough to have interstellar travel, and they have a religion based on worshipping the spirits of past emperors. At one point they start to open temples on Earth to the spirits of their emperors. Cleverly they never try to suppress the various human religions, but they offer privileges to humans to worship the spirits of the lizards emperors.
***
So…Out of 45 responses, not one (unless I missed one in my quick skim) says that we don’t have to worry about it since there is no such thing as aliens anyway???
Ah, Stephanie, but then the thread itself wouldn’t exist! I remember many conversations in my teenage years about, e.g., whether Superman could modulate his X-Ray vision so that he could see through Lois Lane’s dress but not her underwear. Pointing out that the question was meaningless becaise Superman didn’t exist not only didn’t occur to anyone, but would have been considered irrelevant, since it would have ended the conversation, and the conversation itself was the whole point.

The point of the Incarnation is that God is with us. All of creation is redeemed – past, present, and future. Karl Rahner has written that we cannot know how unredeemed man would have turned out because God is with us. That is the Good News and it may well need to be spread to aliens for them to appreciate, but they are already God’s children.

Re: How could the Word, once incarnate, become incarnate again as something else?
This strikes me as setting limits on God. If God can become man, He can certainly become anything thing else incarnate, even here on Earth: from a cat to an amoeba to an oak tree. I am wary of any theological point that appeals to a “God can’t do X” argument. A very few of these are valid (i.e., God can
t will himself to nonexistence) but most are not.
Re: I am amazed no one has optioned Lewis’ Space trilogy for film.
Lewis had intelligent life on Mars and Venus. At the time he wrote this was not a impossible conjecture. Nowadays we know this isn’t true.

Many authors have chosen to use religion in their plots concerning aliens. Then one most people will have heard of (at least) is Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, though his rather heavy-handed irreverence might be difficult for some. Brin’s Uplift trilogy has the added bonus of dealing with both aliens and cetaceans (and simians!).

Tolkien mused quite a bit on this topic and his musings were very thoughtful.
If you strip the baggage from the word “alien” all it really means is “other”
Tolkien’s elves were other in both origin and nature from humanity; their “fall” was similar, yet different from humanity’s fall. In fact, the real climax of the _Lord of the Rings_ is when Galadriel refuses the ring; since the elvish fall is different from the human fall, so too the reconciliation.
Tolkien introduces Man into his story about Elves (Silmarillion) already in possession of a dark secret; the nature of the dark secret and its implications (death and redemption) are foreign to the elves, and something of great interest.
Unfortunately his exploration of the topic is fragmentary (mostly found in unfinished tales and the (scholarly) works published post-humously by his son)… so therefore neither complete in thought nor easily accessible to most readers.
He also hints (along with pious speculative tradition) that one of the reasons for the original angelic rebellion was rebellion against God’s entry into creation as Christ… an unwillingness to submit to a “lesser” creation. The upshot of which is that while the rebellion is Universal, the redemption is unique in time and space. I only wish he had received more encouragement to work on his greater work (The Silmarillion) that he might have turned his genius for True Myth on more of these interesting speculations.
If one is interested in the topic, it is worth hunting down the Tolkien fragments.
So, the short answer is: perhaps.

Re: I am amazed no one has optioned Lewis’ Space trilogy for film.
Lewis had intelligent life on Mars and Venus. At the time he wrote this was not a impossible conjecture. Nowadays we know this isn’t true.
I think many audiences would be perfectly willing to suspend disbelief in this regard for the sake of a good movie. I mean, we know there is no such place as Hogwarts nor such a thing as magic, either, but that hasn’t prevented many people from enjoying the Harry Potter books and movies.
I always figured that it was the explicit Christianity of Lewis’ space trilogy that has kept movie producers from wanting to touch it. It’s so deeply woven into the plot that I don’t think it could be extracted or even toned down very much without completely altering the story beyond recognition.
(The one I’ve always wanted to see made into a movie or series of movies is Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, but perhaps the story is just too involved in many ways to be easily reducible to a good movie script.)

Re: “Lewis had intelligent life on Mars and Venus. At the time he wrote this was not a impossible conjecture. Nowadays we know this isn’t true.”
Lewis’s conjectures about the flora and fauna of Mars and Venus were purely fanciful, and not at all scientific. Venus was covered with water and floating islands, for Heaven’s sake, instead of the hellish atmosphere it actually has. When I saw “Avatar” with its fanciful floating mountains, I instantly thought of C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy.
There’s nothing wrong with constructing an alien world with flora and fauna that probably couldn’t exist – it is merely another form of fantasy, and should probably be differentiated from Science Fiction.
If they can make “The Screwtape Letters” into a movie, which is apparently planned, I don’t know why they couldn’t make the space trilogy, except that it is much less well-known than some of Lewis’s other books.

I apologize if this has already been said, but I don’t have time to read the comments.
If all of creation is fallen – including alien life – because of Man’s actions then the implication is that the God of the Bible is only the God of Man and not of the Universe. Thus I doubt most rational theologians would believe that an intelligent alien civilization – especially if more advanced then our own – was created for our benefit as were the birds, fish, etc.
Fr. José Gabriel Funes, SJ., director of the Vatican Observatory, said the following during an interview by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in May 2008: “To use St. Francis’ words, if we consider earthly creatures as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters,’ why can’t we also speak of an ‘extraterrestrial brother?’”
“We who belong to the human race could really be that lost sheep, the sinners who need a pastor. God became man in Jesus in order to save us. So if there are also other intelligent beings, it’s not a given that they need redemption. They might have remained in full friendship with their creator.”

Would space aliens need redemption?
Show me one and I’ll ask him.

Max,
The question has very important ramifications that would destroy the theological rationale of some Christian sects:
Many Protestant scholars agree with Funes, saying that the discovery of extraterrestrial life would not pose a major challenge to their faith or theology, especially if it was not intelligent or morally aware. But on the evangelical side, there is a deep concern, one reminiscent of the battles over evolution. “My theological perspective is that E.T. life would actually make a mockery of the very reason Christ came to die for our sins, for our redemption,” Gary Bates, head of Atlanta-based Creation Ministries International, told me recently in a critique of the Vatican conference. Bates believes that “the entire focus of creation is mankind on this Earth” and that intelligent, morally aware extraterrestrial life would undermine that view and belief in the incarnation, resurrection and redemption drama so central to the faith. “It is a huge problem that many Christians have not really thought about.”

A point to ponder…
Would it be more scary to know there is other sentient life on other planets – or that we are it, and there is no one else but us. Are we one of many, or the First Seed? Are we the Who’s for some other transcendent Horton, or are we alone and the most advanced forms of being? What are the ontological implications of these nuggets?
Creativity counts more than spelling. No points given for unambiguous responses.

Alicia, Find John Cleese’s reading of “Screwtape Letters” – it is definitive.
I know Asimov’s “Foundation” has been optioned a few times. It wiould be a daunting work to film. I think the “I, Robot” film was an attempt to see what the reception would be. They would make a great series, as long as they are not so reverent to Asimov’s spirit that they are heavy handed.
The Lewis Space Trilogy does not HAVE to be on Mars and Venus. Some small liberties with location would not work against the greater themes.

When Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and John spoke/wrote of ‘the whole world’ (being under sin, subject to sin, awaiting redemption–John writing, “not only for our sins but also the sins of the whole world”) the word they used was cosmou.
John 3:16   “For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
All three uses of ‘world’ above, are cosmou. It’s where we get ‘cosmos’. It encompasses ‘universe’, ‘world’, ‘inhabited world’.
The book of Hebrews (10:12-14) says, “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”
One sacrifice, a single time in a single place, perfecting for *all time* everyone who is being sanctified.
If you believe the Bible, the answer’s straight-up and clear.
If you don’t, the question of ‘alien redemption’ doesn’t matter.

Re: If you believe the Bible, the answer’s straight-up and clear.
The Bible also tells us that the sun goes around the Earth, that the Eaeth is flat, and that the value of pi is exactly 3.
None of that is true.
Beware a naive literalism.

R Hampton,
Interesting point to be sure. Though here too I disagree with Evangelicals.
For one I will say that I find it incredible, in the literal sense of the word, that life just sprung up from the correct arrangement of the right stuff at the right time. I’m further skeptical that primitive life, entirely unguided, evolved into higher forms of life such as Einstein or Angelina Jolie.
So, I’m of the mind that life was created by God, and it’s development was providentially guided.
Thus, if life is to exist extra-terrestially, it too was created by God. If any of that life bears any resemblance to what we call “persons” then, again, that would be the work of God.
What that would mean as regards the need for Christ here and elsewhere is impossible to say without actually meeting this “person”.
I will venture that if they are rational beings with free will, sooner or later one will have “fallen” in the Christian sense of the word. Heck, even some of the angels fell.
It’s just hard to get too involved in this hypothetical, given my perspective, inasmuch as I discount the main premise: The existance of extraterrestial beings with rationality and free will.

I used to be a firm believer in extra-terrestrials after years of watching Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series on PBS. However, once I applied philosophical reasoning and Christian thinking to the question, I arrived to very similar conclusions as those outlined in Benjamin Wiker’s excellent article (many thanks to John E. for posting it.)
Of course, if aliens land on Earth tomorrow I’ll have to radically re-think my ideas about alien life and accept that they exist. I only ask that those of you who insist that belief in God doesn’t agree with your logic will do likewise if it is Christ who returns to Earth instead.

Another Dreher “woo-woo” piece. Give me a break.
What, are we to assume poor Jesus had to hop from planet to planet dying for the sins of the residents of each orb one at a time? What a career choice!
I’ll give Rod credit for one thing, he wrote a piece that serves to highlight just how silly his worldview (universeview?) really is.

Shuey, I’m not sure why I’m supposed to be chagrined that an atheist thinks theological speculation by people who adhere to an opposing belief system is nonsense. By definition you do — so what? “Nanny-nanny boo-boo” is kind of childish.

It would make sense to me to find aliens having negative humans traits, but I doubt they would come here to invade. This is because space is so large that nearly anything they want will be closer elsewhere than Earth. Water for example is plentiful in the Oort cloud of our solar system, and easier to take than water on Earth.
The Earth itself is the only thing that wouldn’t meet this criteria. But biology will result in the odds being high it wouldn’t be of use to them either. One reason is that handedness of organic molecules. The only ones edible to you are ones of the same handedness as the molecules you’re made of. Even if their handedness was the same, we are made of a subset of the available amino acids. Even if that set were the same, our biologies would likely be incompatible. Think of how many plants are toxic to us and we evolved here.
The same rules apply to us, which means we would be unlikely to invade and take from the aliens because of simple economics.
Now radio is different because its cheap and goes everywhere. Now lets tie this back to the theological speculation. Short wave radio is an example of radio which really can’t be ad supported because it propagates too far. So as a general rules there are two kinds of programs. State run with strongly biased viewpoints, and religious programming.
So if we get a phone call from ET it will either be like VOA or WWCR.

As I understand it, we do not carry (original) sin like “a defected gene,” but instead live with the consequences of sin.
I know scientists expect to find intelligent life out there, but I think they’re going to be disappointed. Their expectation is based on a faulty principal, i.e. that Darwinism explains everything. As Orthodox Christians, we don’t believe this. Only man was created in the image of God and I don’t recall anything in Genesis alluding to life forms on other planets. Many Orthodox believe that alien sightings, abductions, etc. are the result of demons in the astral plane playing tricks on us. If this is the case, they are definitely “broken!”

C.S. Lewis touches on this in chapter 14 of “Miracles.” I’ll quote just a part:
For this reason I do not think it at all likely that there have been (as Alice Meynell suggested in an interesting poem) many Incarnations to redeem many different kinds of creature. One’s sense of style–of the divine idiom–rejects it. The suggestion of mass-production and of waiting queues comes from a level of thought which is here hopelessly inadequate. If other natural creatures than Man have sinned we must believe that they are redeemed: but God’s Incarnation as Man will be one unique act in a drama of total redemption and other species will have witnessed wholly different acts, each equally unique, equally necessary and differently necessary to the whole process, and each (from a certain point of view) justifiably regarded as ‘the great scene’ of the play.

I suspect that if we ever encounter “aliens,” they will actually be fallen angels who are trying to deceive us.

This thought occurred to me this evening during a 90 minute drive…
How supremely arrogant it is to assume that visiting aliens would need to be a part of our understanding of redemption. What if the first aliens to contact us were a missionary group sent to tell us about their version of redemption?! Not all explorers are necessarily military or economically oriented. How well would an alien missionary be received? What would the masses of people do, hear, see, feel? Does our need to redeem another species bear a misplaced anthropomorphism?
All fun points to ponder. I have 5 hours of driving tomorrow, so I will ponder aplenty.

Wake up people, “aliens” Are demonic and will be the “end times deception” talked about in s rupture where even the “elect would be deceived” as it states in scripture.

Rod, very sensible assessment!
Though I have pretentions as a fantasy writer and admit that you help inspire me, I must confess that from a religious perspective I cannot but agree with you about these questions.

Re: I don’t recall anything in Genesis alluding to life forms on other planets.
Genesis doesn’t mention other planets. Or for that matter atoms. Or kangaroos. Or….
I don’t think the argument from silence works very well.

Jim said, “Wake up people, “aliens” Are demonic…”
So, can you give an example of an alien who is also a demon? Have you met either one lately?

Angels are created beings and yet they were not corrupted by the fall of man and are in no need of redemption. I think that nixes the idea that all of creation is in need of redemption.

The Bible is clear that sin entered the world through one man, Adam, and was fixed by one man, Christ (Romans 5:12). The emphasis on Adam seems to limit the transmission of the sin-nature, though not its consequenses, to his own descendents.
So it seems plausible that the fallenness of those not descended from Adam would be caused by, and therefore remedied by, different means. The really interesting questions arise from what a race of non-fallen beings would look like.
What would our interactions with them be like? Would we introduce sin into their society? Or what about a race of partially fallen beings? Say sin entered their world in the second generation?
And of course the most interesting question, regardless of their state of fallenness, would be how does God interact with them? Is humanity to the fallen universe as the Jews were to the fallen Earth? That is, did Christ come once to this universe to redeem all sinners everywhere? Or does God have a different plan of salvation for different corners of the universe? Ought SETI to be seen as missionary activity?

Interesting question that won’t get an answer unless and until we meet an alien!
This question has been treated by C.S. Lewis in his space trilogy, and by Walker Percy in “Lost in the Cosmos”.
Lewis does touch on Dreher’s question of how a fall in one world could affect all: first, Mars fell, then Earth. Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Ransom, in part, Venus didn’t. It was made clear that each successive act of salvation by God would have to be more weighty than those previous.
Percy deals with the question in many ways. He first notes that we are more alien to ourselves than aliens would be. He also considers how a first contact situation might unfold: among the questions they might ask us, before getting too close, are directed at whether we are fallen and what have we done to repair it.
Makes you wonder whether the vast interstellar spaces serve as a cosmic quarantine, don’t it?

Mike, as a fan of Lewis’s space trilogy, I must correct you on one point. Mars or Malacandra, in “Out of the Silent Planet” was an uncorrupted, unfallen world that was put in danger by the introduction of venal men from the “silent planet” aka Thulcandra. Venus, or Perelandra, was in danger of falling. Weston and Devine, armed with scientific knowledge, were a danger to the entire, unfallen, Solar System.
You might be right about those vast interstellar spaces.

@Jon,
“The Bible also tells us that the sun goes around the Earth, that the Eaeth [sic] is flat, and that the value of pi is exactly 3. None of that is true. Beware a naive literalism.”
The Bible teaches none of those things and they could only be derived by taking an extremely literal reading and ignoring the varying types of literary styles employed in the Bible.
Shamus, on the other hand, is employing a critical reading and proper exegesis of the text. You should learn from him.

Thomas Paine, in Age of Reason, used this scenario as a means to ridicule revealed Christianity. He thought it ridiculous that poor Jesus Christ should have to travel planet to planet, dying again and again for the sins of earthlings, martians, and whatnot. Funny, Paine believed in aliens, but not original sin. Anyway, he does address the issue in his characterist manner, confident to the likeminded and haughty to his opponents.

Indeed, the LDS (Mormon) theology includes the following truths (hooray for modern prophets and modern revelation!)
- Our God has created “worlds without number” (Moses 1:33, in “The Pearl of Great Price”
- The worlds that are inhabited are inhabited with “begotten sons and daughters unto God.” (D&C 76:24, “Doctrine and Covenants”)
- Humans are literally spiritual “offspring” of our God, our Heavenly Father. (Acts 17:28-29). Therefore the “begotten sons and daughters” living on these other worlds are His offspring just like us, so they are human as well.
After this point, this is all my personal speculation and not official LDS doctrine, but here’s how I think the plan of salvation works for these other worlds:
- These worlds, which were created just the same way as ours and populated just as ours, began with an Adam-and-Eve type first inhabitants.
- These two fell from an Eden-like place through temptation similarly to how it occurred on our Earth.
- These fallen inhabitants are instructed about the gospel and the plan of salvation by prophets just like here on Earth, with one HUGE difference.
- These prophecies describe the birth, sacrifice, and death, of a Savior named Jesus on ANOTHER planet!
- Before (?) and after the death and resurrection of the Savior, He will visit each of these worlds to expound his new and everlasting gospel, in a similar fashion to how he visited the Americas after his resurrection and ascension (3rd Nephi 11, “Book of Mormon”).

It seems to me that even granted that all creation is tainted by our fall, that wouldn’t mean that all created beings need a redeemer.
In fact, we already have counterexamples–angels. Michael and Lucifer are created beings, quite as much as you or I or Jor-El are. If all creation is affected by our fall, than Michael and Lucifer are, as well. But Michael, affected though he might be, has not sinned, and we have no reason to think he needed redeeming–and Lucifer, by contrast, has certainly sinned, but we have no reason to believe that redemption is available to him. (Though I grant that some saints have speculated about that possibility.)
So if there are Tholians out there, it might be that their relationship with God was somehow impaired by our fall, and then, I suppose, we might hope that the relationship was repaired by Christ’s incarnation among us–but that wouldn’t necessarily mean that the Tholians had sinned, were under divine judgement, and needed redemption. Broken, perhaps, but not “just as broken as we are”, any more than the (unfallen) angels are.

… I personally believe the Lord so loves the whole Universe that He offers his Kingdom to All in it who do not forsake Him.
I will pose this to you now:
WHAT IF THE ALIENS ARE ASEXUAL?

ABSOLUTELY…the Bible does NOT teach those things! Where do you get your information?? Obviously, you haven’t actually READ THE BIBLE, have you? Though I don’t believe it should be taken literally as a whole, it does have brilliant insight – it states that “the sun comes up and the sun goes down”, as well as telling us that “water returns from where it came”… how could Ecclesiastes have known something like this in that day and age, other than divine inspiration?

“The Bible… Based on a True Story” – check it out!

Andrew S.: Well, the way the Tholians treated Captain Kirk, it seems like they might be fallen….

Mark Twain answered this question in “An Excerpt From Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” Captain Stormfield arrive at the wrong gate, where an oversize purple octpus was serving as clerk. After sternly extracting a confession that the Captain had gone off course, getting into a race with a comet headed for the other destination, the clerk tries to sort out what planet Stormfield is from. Stormfield arrogantly announced “Well, you might know it from this: its the one the Savior saved.” At mention of the name, the clerk’s head bowed instantly. Then in a soft voice he answered “The worlds he has saved is like to the gates of Heaven; none can count them.”
Unfortunately the only stand-alone modern reprint of this story is issued by Prometheus Press, accompanied by an essay longer than the story, penned by some atheist professor from somewhere in upstate New York. But actually, it is a very pious story, which refrains from being heavy handed about the exact nature of The Fall. but recognizes that God is God no matter where in the universe life may evolve.

It’s an interesting piece and thread. I read an article some 6 years ago in, I believe, the Atlantic Monthly, which analyzed how the world’s different major religions would possibly react to alien contact. Needless to say, Hindus and Buddhists would not be too discomfited, while Christians would undoubtedly face a major crisis. Interestingly, the article brought attention to a verse in the Koran that seemed to hint at life elsewhere in the cosmos, which might very well allow Muslims to be less confused by such contact than their Christian counterparts.
That said, being a student of the “Columbian exchange,” we can only hope that Christian missionaries are kept as far as possible away from any potential visitors, particularly any representative of the Franciscan order, considering their history of murder and mayhem in the Americas. Also, considering Christianity’s general track record with new contacts in our own world, I would hope that any hypothetical first encounter would be between “them” and our scientists.