Are we alone in the universe? Certainly not: there are angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, and there are powers and principalities neither good nor even benign. The former aid us in the war we wage against the latter.

But are we alone in the popular sense of being the only intelligent life in the cosmos? Or, are there extraterrestrials, some of whom may even have “visited” Earth in what we euphemistically refer to as Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAP).? That is the question — isn’t it? — currently en vogue with each new release of Pentagon files or photos.

From time to time I think about this and ponder how the existence of “alien” life might factor into our Christian theology. If they were to come, would we evangelize their species? Man fell, but what about non-man? What about those not in Adam? Christ died for the sins of the whole world, yes, but just this world or perhaps others, too?

I do not know; this is larger than I am and I do not greatly concern myself with it:

O LORD, I am not haughty;
I have no proud looks.
I do not occupy myself with great matters,
or with things that are too high for me (Ps 131:1-2).

Recently, I read a letter from C. S. Lewis to Dom Bede Griffiths (8 Feb 1956) that addresses these questions quite well. I do not know the context of the letter, but the content is quintessential Lewis:

One often wonders how different the content of our faith will look when we see it in the total context. Might it be as if one were living on an infinite earth? Further knowledge would leave our map of, say, the Atlantic quite correct, but if it turned out to be the estuary of a great river — and the continent through which that river flowed turned out to be itself an island — of the shores of a still greater continent — and so on! You see what I mean? Not one jot of Revelation will be proved false: but so many new truths might be added (C. S. Lewis, Letter On Living The Faith, HarperOne (2026), p. 151).