This interesting subject has come up on the
catholic.org forums. Here are my comments when it came up again not long ago.
Ah, yes. It’s a heavy burden knowing everything.
Just some random thoughts.
First, Jesus was begotten, not ‘created’, as you’ve stated above. This is quite explicit in Church doctrine. If He were created, he could not be co-eternal with the Father, and He could not have been the Word made flesh.
In John’s Gospel, the concept of Logos–the Word–suggests that God is infused through all His creation. God’s wisdom and judgement are perfect, and His ways are not our ways. Jesus is not only the Incarnation on Earth, He is the Word of God as well, and existed before all worlds. God will work out the redemption of all of His creation as He sees fit. Whether that is by Jesus’ Incarnation on Earth, or by some other means in other worlds, is a mystery–something we cannot know. It would be presumption to suggest we can, because we would be placing restrictions on what God can do.
The action of the Holy Spirit is not limited to time and space. He is the giver of life. He has spoken through the prophets on Earth. Perhaps He has given life and inspired prophets elsewhere. But that life may not be identical to us, and those prophets may not be like Isiah and Elijah, because the prophets of the OT were earthbound humans. They spoke universal truths, but those truths were expressed in a way that is relevant to our circumstances on Earth.
The Bible says nothing about extraterrestrial life, but it, and Church tradition, do talk about other creatures–angels, demons, etc. I am not suggesting that these live on other planets, just that it is never suggested that we are the only intelligent life–not the only beings invested with freewill. Some of these creatures chose to obey and serve God; others rebelled against Him.
Beings on other planets, if they exist, may be nothing like us physically, so the Incarnation of God as man would be completely meaningless to them. I doubt that God would create a race of beings in His image, and then provide no means for their salvation, because he would love them just as he loves us.
In our redemption story, God uses ordinary things–water, wood, nails, bread, wine–as means of our salvation. These may not be the ordinary things of other planets. The Bible speaks only of Earth’s creation in any detail, but it does say that He created Heaven and Earth. Perhaps He would use the ordinary materials of another planet to make Himself known there.
Jesus’ death and Resurrection, no doubt, did have an effect on the entire universe, but how God reveals Himself and interacts with the beings in other places is another question.
For all I know, humans are God’s only chosen race; this is all speculation. But I do know that God is all knowing, all powerful, and all loving.
Am I making any sense?
GOD’s evolving divine plan includes all the Cosmic Universe until the Annihilation…
