What it would mean for the more conservative strands of the faith has been the focus of my thought. There are a number of ways I could go but I have not yet fully worked out a satisfactory path.
This post will go through several ideas that will be integral to any type of answer and how they might need to be laid out.
Foundation One: The Bible. Any approach in answering this question must be faithful to the Bible – Old and New Testaments – and the teachings and claims it makes. This may seem obvious, but the earlier post made it clear that some strands of Christianity consider the Bible – parts of the Bible – to be useful moral teachings with a few archetypal stories thrown in. My position is that the Bible is the inspired word of God. It must be central and cannot be sidelined if it proves inconvenient.
Foundation Two: Trinitarian. God is triune, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There are difficult consequences following from this (including the Incarnation) that cannot be ignored. It would be possible to make things a lot easier by depersonalising God, denying the Trinity or slipping into one or other heresy.
Foundation Three: Imago Dei. All humans are created by God in His image (Genesis 1:26). There are different ways the image has been interpreted and means, but whatever it is, there is something unique about humans as they possess a likeness with God.
Foundation Four: A soul with free will. Partly following on from Foundation Two, I believe humans are created with a volitional soul. Working out exactly what this means will be tricky as philosophers are not all convinced there is such a thing as free will and theologians are not all convinced that we have any left after the Fall.
Foundation Five: Special and General Revelation. There is a distinction between a general revelation that God provides in the world and the special revelation that is His Word, the Bible and his Incarnation in Jesus Christ. Just how far it is possible to go with general revelation, how much can be known about God and His plans, is a question that will be important to any solution on Christianity and intelligent alien life.
Foundation Six: I am a Catholic. Any path through these questions I take will have a certain ‘Catholic-ness.’ I do not want to have answers that are Catholic-only, but it may mean the capital T Tradition of the church will provide some extra guidance.
Summary
These are not the only issues that will need to be addressed and each one of these foundations brings with it many implications. However, these elements represent the key reference points and concepts that must be present in any solution on how the possibility intelligent alien life relates to Christianity.