The discovery of intelligent life does not mean there’s another Jesus. The incarnation of the son of God is a unique event in the history of humanity, of the universe.
But is this necessarily the case? The Bible does not contain any clear teaching on this question, so it is perhaps not surprising that over the years this topic has prompted some interesting speculation among Christians. One of them was the English poet Alice Meynell (1847-1922). Meynell, a Catholic herself, apparently wouldn't have agreed with Rev. Funes. In the closing stanzas of her poem "Christ in the Universe" (one of my favorite poems!), she writes:
Nor, in our little day,
May His devices with the heavens be guessed,
His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way
Or His bestowals there be manifest.
But in the eternities,
Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
A million alien Gospels, in what guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
O, be prepared, my soul!
To read the inconceivable, to scan
The myriad forms of God those stars unroll
When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.
The great Christian author and apologist C. S. Lewis also addressed this issue. In an essay entitled "Religion and Rocketry," Lewis points out that there are a number of possibilities with regard to the Incarnation and extraterrestrial beings. First, it is possible that they will turn out to lack "rational souls." In other words, they would be essentially like animals on earth, who have no need for salvation and thus no need for the Incarnation. Second, they might have "rational souls" like us, but have never fallen. This is an idea that Lewis explored in the first two books of his science fiction trilogy--Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. In the former book, Lewis' hero Ransom travels to Mars, whose inhabitants have never experienced sin. In the latter book, Ransom is sent to Venus, where he succeeds in helping the "Adam" and "Eve" of that planet resist the Devil. The third possibility Lewis discusses in "Religion and Rocketry" is that "the eternal Son...may have been incarnate in other worlds than Earth and so saved other races than ours" (and here he quotes Meynell). Fourth, it is possible there was another means of redemption for extraterrestrials than the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection--"the Great Physician may have applied different remedies." The final possibility Lewis discusses might be the most intriguing:
It might turn out that the redemption of other species differed from ours by working through ours. There is a hint of something like this in St. Paul (Romans 8:19-23) when he says that the whole creation is longing and waiting to be delivered from some kind of slavery, and that the deliverance will occur only when we, we Christians, fully enter upon our sonship to God and exercise our 'glorious liberty'.
On the conscious level I believe that he was thinking only of our own Earth: of animal, and probably vegetable, life on Earth being "renewed" or glorified at the glorification of man in Christ. But it is perhaps possible it is not necessary to give his words a cosmic meaning. It may be that Redemption, starting with us, is to work from us and through us.
This would no doubt give man a pivotal position. But such a position need not imply any superiority in us or any favouritism in God. The general, deciding where to begin his attack, does not select the prettiest landscape or the most fertile field or the most attractive village. Christ was not born in a stable because a stable is, in itself, the most convenient or distinguished place for a maternity.
All of these are interesting possibilities, but there is, of course, no way for us to know for sure. Perhaps "in the eternities" we shall "compare together [and] hear a million alien gospels," but perhaps not. Perhaps Rev. Funes is right in saying that the Incarnation is a "unique event in the history of ...the universe." Either way, that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14) remains an astounding thought.
Image of a galaxy from wikipedia.org