Sittin Pretty

So I'd never heard such a rational and persuasive argument about extra-terrestrial salvation until I read this:

Of course, the possibility of extraterrestrial organic life -- even intelligent organic life -- is not a new thing for the Faith. The best short essays I've seen on the question are from C. S. Lewis. One is called "Religion and Rocketry," and the other is "Will We Lose God in Outer Space?" Lewis points out several basic criteria that must be met before organic life on other worlds would pose a theological problem to Christianity.

1. It must exist, which we don't know.
2. It has to be sentient. Alien oysters cannot sin any more than ours do.
3. It has to have fallen. An unfallen race is not in need of redemption.
4. We must know that, being fallen, it has been denied the chance of redemption by God. How on earth (or Thulcandra) we'd ever figure that out beats me.

5. We have to be convinced that the redemption will be forever denied this hypothetically existent, hypothetically rational, hypothetically fallen race. After all, if you'd visited earth 10,000 years ago you would not have seen too many obvious clues that redemption was in the works for us. And since the only way to know that God has no plans to redeem them is to know the mind of God, this seems an especially tricky hurdle to get over.

6. We have to know that redemption via an incarnation, death, and resurrection of God the Son in this fallen alien nature is the only way in which God redeems fallen creatures and that such a redemption will never be granted such creatures.

As Lewis says, if our faith never encounters a bigger challenge than this, we are sitting pretty.