From the Unpublished Collection of Letters
by St. Theophan the Recluse
With great
pleasure, I am ready to tell you a word or two to dispel your misunderstandings.
You are sure
that all the celestial bodies are inhabited with sentient beings and that these
beings tend to do evil just like us (we can even say they are fallen).Thus,
they have a need in certain means for their salvation, and that this entails a
wonderful arrangement of death and the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It follows that you have an intractable problem: how could Jesus Christ be the
Savior for them? Could it be so that He was Incarnate, suffered and died in
every of those worlds? You cannot solve this problem and this situation bothers
you and shakes your faith in the Divine Economy of our salvation.
The fact that
such thoughts bother you is your own fault, for it happens not because of the
character of these thoughts. They are just a chain of dreams, which cannot be
true at all, while the Divine Economy is true. There is no way we can let these
thoughts shatter your faith.
Although you
keep the idea about the beings from the other worlds in mind for a long time,
and there are many arguments for it, it is still just a probable assumption. It
is very unlikely that there are inhabitants – yet still somewhat likely. You have no right
to state firmly “yes, there are” until you personally make sure that there are
certain beings. To be more accurate I should say it is possible that they exist,
but it is also possible that they do not. Think about navigators. A navigator
comes to an island, and everything points to the fact that there must be some
inhabitants. However, when he gets ashore, he sees nothing. Alternatively, just
think about the ancient times when people have not multiplied yet. At every
turn, you could meet the signs of undeniable habitability, while there were no
inhabitants at all. The same is with the celestial bodies – there are plenty of
hints that they are inhabited. What is more interesting is that whether they
are still waiting for their inhabitants or there will be none at all: who knows
what is the Lord’s will concerning them! We need to visit these worlds and make
sure before to say firmly “there are”. Otherwise, we cannot say more than
“probably”.
To protect the
truth from assumptions is like fighting with ghosts. This is why you will not
find a denial of your theory in any respectable theological book. Theologians
do not think that denial of dreams is reasonable. Imagine that a Polish
rebellion is taking place. You are in a command of a squad. You are approaching
a forest, hear a noise and see people with axes in smoke. It seems these are
the rebels. However, should you command to fire, you could make an unforgivable
mistake. These people can be the civilians who are cutting wood. You should
make sure in advance whether they are rebels, how many of them there are and
what is their position – only then can you retaliate against them. Why to
engage if there is no obvious danger?
The same is
with your thoughts: make it obvious that there are inhabitants on celestial
bodies, and then we will begin to deny any oppositions to our holy faith.
Since the
existence of the inhabitants on other planets is just a probability, the field
of probabilities is limitless; dreamers have a broad scope to work with.
Perhaps, the same happened to you; as soon as you began to assume something,
your dreams enslaved you. Assuming that there are certain beings on other
worlds you begin to imagine their life although you have no data for this. You
had to limit your thinking to assumptions of their existence on which there are
certain hints and tell yourself that you should dig deeper because of the lack
of information. But you did. An enquiring spirit haunted you and enslaved you.
But let it be so.
You should have
argued in the following way: let us say there are sentient beings in other
worlds. What did they do? Did they follow the commandments and the will of God,
or did they violate the commandment and were disobedient? You can say neither.
At the same time, I think that they could either sin or not, because in case of
our ancestors sin was not a necessity but depended on their freedom. They fell,
but they may not have fallen. The same concerns the inhabitants of other
planets: they might either preserve the commandment, or not. If they did
preserve the Lord’s commandment, then any further dreams regarding the ways of
their salvation are senseless.
In this case,
the beings are in the state of the primal communion with God and Holy Angels.
They enjoy living in a condition in which we all will be after the universal Resurrection.
However, you recognized their falling as doubtless and continued to develop
that idea. Well, let us say that they also fell. However, can we say anything
about the way of their salvation without knowing the extent of their sin?
Maybe, their sin was so small that it was possible to limit their salvation to
the measure of correcting one’s self. Otherwise, the sin could be so serious
that it excluded such possibility. The dark spirits are the example in this
case. You should have kept in mind all such conditions and not focused on one
of them because all of them are probable.
Finally, you have
only one way of restoring yourself – the incarnation of God, His death on the
Cross and Resurrection. We believe that the Divine Economy was the free act of
God, but not the act of necessity. The exceptional character of restoration in
our world is adapted to our circumstances. However, we still cannot say that it
was necessary. The Church sings, “From a Virgin didst Thou come, not as an
Ambassador, nor as an Angel, but the very Lord Himself incarnate”. Thus, it was
possible for a mediator or an angel to become a savior. In case of our world,
the Lord Himself wanted to incarnate, while on other worlds a mediator or an
angel or someone else could be the one who performed the act of salvation.
You have
accepted one point of view, while there can be plenty of them. Assuming that
other worlds are inhabited by sentient beings, you state that they were also
created. But what if they were not created, but came there from Earth? What if
Earth is aimed to become the spot of life for other planets? People could
spread and settle on other worlds, just like they have spread all over the
Earth from one place. The Lord said, “In my Father's house are many mansions”
(John 14:2). Why can we not recognize other planets as these “mansions”? Why
can we not assume that people after their death live on this or that planet, on
this or that sun, and will settle there with their bodies after the universal
Resurrection? Tell me, why our small Earth is honored so much? God does not
divide His creatures into big and small ones. He loves them all and cares about
all of them equally. If He decided to make one planet the hotbed of people,
then it did not matter which one exactly to choose for this purpose. No matter
which planet to take, there is still the question: why is it chosen? Any of
them will mean nothing in comparison with the whole universe. There is nothing
to say against such an assumption.
Furthermore, if
we assume there are inhabitants on other planets, nothing prevents us from
saying that they live according to God’s will: they preserved their holiness
and purity, did not violate God’s commandments and did not rebel against God,
just as it happened on our planet. Only Earth rebelled, while other planets
remained quiet. However, God, Who cares about any creature, did not abandon us.
He organized the way for our restoration, which we accept with faith and
through which we find salvation. If the parable, a shepherd leaves ninety-nine
sheep and goes to look for the one, which is lost… We should not think that
while the Lord cares a lot about the Earth, other worlds are forgotten, and
that after what was done on our planet, there is nothing He can do for other
planets. The main goal of creation is God’s glory and to show God’s infinite
perfection. In our world, they are expressed through the Divine Economy, while
in other worlds they can be expressed in a different way. If we assume that
these sentient beings have a different way of life and blessing, it would be wiser
to assume that they continuously live in a bright state of the blessed.
Now, let us
assume they are fallen. There is no reason to think that they needed the
incarnation, and that it had to occur on every planet. The power of incarnation
and the sacrificial victim to save us through accepting them with faith. Why
can we not say that the sacrifice made on earth affected other worlds as well?
Why not to assume that the inhabitants of other planets find salvation in the
same way? When it comes to faith the Lord is infallible. There are even Angels
sent to those who want to inherit salvation. All the planets have a connection
and affect each other, and we know nothing about this bond. We cannot assume
that one of them can be excluded from this union. And if there is a physical
connection, then why can we not say that there can be a moral one? If a
celestial body affects other bodies physically, why can we not assume they
affect each other morally too?
This is all that
came to mind and I could say to comfort you. However, do not forget that all of
these ideas are just probable assumptions, which we can live without, and
should continue to live without such assumptions:
“For now we see
through a glass, darkly; but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
“Seek not out
things that are too hard for thee, neither search the things that are above thy
strength. But what is commanded thee, think thereupon with reverence, for it is
not needful for thee to see with thine eyes the things that are in secret. For
many are deceived by their own vain opinion; and an evil suspicion hath
overthrown their judgment” (Sirach 3:21, 22, 24).
Translated from: http://rushill.ru/stati/pravoslavie-i-inoplanetyane.html
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