¹ Lazzari, Edmund Michael, ‘Would St. Thomas Aquinas Baptize an Extraterrestrial?’, New Blackfriars, 99, 1082 (July 2018)Google Scholar, Abstract, p. 440.

² Ibid., p. 451.

³ Summa Theologiae III, q. 8, a. 4. Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut dictum est, ubi est unum corpus, necesse est ponere unum caput. Unum autem corpus similitudinarie dicitur una multitudo ordinata in unum secundum distinctos actus sive officia. Manifestum est autem quod ad unum finem, qui est gloria divinae fruitionis, ordinantur et homines et Angeli. Unde corpus Ecclesiae mysticum non solum consistit ex hominibus, sed etiam ex Angelis. Totius autem huius multitudinis Christus est caput, quia propinquius se habet ad Deum, et perfectius participat dona ipsius, non solum quam homines, sed etiam quam Angeli; et de eius influentia non solum homines recipiunt, sed etiam Angeli. (Hereafter cites as ST.) (All translations are my own.)

⁴ Beings that are sentient, but not rational, cannot experience the beatific vision, and so cannot be incorporated into the Mystical Body; see ST I, q. 12, a. 4, ad 3: “The sense of sight, because it is entirely material, in no manner can be elevated to something immaterial. But our intellect or the angelic intellect, because it is in some manner according to nature elevated from matter, is able to be elevated higher to something beyond its nature through grace.”

⁵ ST III, q. 8, a. 4, obj. 1.

⁶ ST III, q. 8, a. 4, ad 1.

⁷ On the hypothesis that ETIs exist, Aquinas would regard it reasonable to think that God would give them the gift of grace which orders them to the glory of divine fruition. For the reasoning he uses to answer the question of whether angels were created in grace is applicable to ETIs. Aquinas notes that: “[O]ne cannot discover an efficacious reason for which of the [two opposite] opinions be truer, because the beginning of creatures depends on the simple will of the Creator, which is impossible to investigate by reason...” (Scriptum super Sententiis, Bk. II, dist. 4, q. 1, art. 3). However, he goes on to say: “nevertheless according to agreement with other of his [God's] works, one can sustain one side as more probable than the other.” Using the latter mode of reasoning, Aquinas argues in a sed contra: “[I]t pertains to divine freedom to infuse grace into all who are capable of grace, unless something resisting is found in them, much more than he gives natural form to any disposed matter. But angels from the beginning of their creation had the motion of free will, and there was nothing in them impeding [the infusion of grace]. Therefore it seems that he immediately infused grace in them” (Sent., Bk. II, d. 4, q. 1, art. 3, sed contra 3).

⁸ See Sent., Bk. III, dist. 1, q. 1, a. 2, s.c.: “It was not suitable that one of the most noble creatures be entirely frustrated in achieving its end. But human nature is among the noblest natures. Since, therefore the whole [nature] was corrupted through sin in the first parent, and was so deprived of the beatitude for which it was made, it was fitting that it be repaired.” Since ETIs are material rational beings the same reasoning applies to them.

⁹ Lazzari, “Would St. Thomas Aquinas Baptize an Extraterrestrial?”, p. 455, note 57.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 456. Note that if the ETI fall was prior to Christ's death and resurrection, Aquinas would hold that the ETI individuals living at the time could not be saved by Christ as instrumental cause of grace, but rather would be saved, as were the Patriarchs, by faith in a future savior. Similarly, Aquinas would reject the notion that the angels received the grace moving them to submit themselves to God, (thereby gaining their beatification), from Christ as man, as this event occurred before the Incarnation.

¹¹ See ibid., p. 450: “Christ's Passion redeems us by our being incorporated into His mystical body and thus our sharing in His saving actions.”

¹² De Veritate, q. 29, a. 4.

¹³ In ST III, q. 8, a. 4 Aquinas speaks of Christ as man illuminating the angels. Aquinas speaks of another effect that Christ's Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection had on the angels in Super Epistolas S. Pauli, ad Ephesios, #2: “The effect of this hidden plan was to restore all things. For insofar as all things are made for the sake of man, all things are said to be restored. . . . All things he says which are in heaven, i.e., the Angels—not that Christ died for the Angels, but by redeeming man, the fall of the Angels was repaired.”

¹⁴ Sent., Bk. III, d. 19, q. 1, qc. 1.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Note that Aquinas worked with an inexact translation of Damascene. Damascene states categorically “for what is not assumed, is not healed” (“to gar aproslepton, atherapeuton”). This axiom was articulated earlier by Gregory of Nazianzus in Epistola, 101.7 and is more commonly attributed to him.

¹⁷ Aquinas quotes Damascene's dictum three times in objections, twice as a sed contra and once in the body of an article. And in ST III, q. 3, a. 1 he paraphrases it: “Et ideo conveniens fuit ut carnem sumeret ex materia ab Adam derivata, ut ipsa natura per assumptionem curaretur (so that through assumption the nature itself would be healed).”

¹⁸ ST III, q. 5 a. 4: “Secundo, repugnat utilitati incarnationis, quae est iustificatio hominis a peccato. Anima enim humana non est capax peccati, nec gratiae iustificantis, nisi per mentem. Unde praecipue oportuit mentem humanam assumi. Unde Damascenus dicit, in III libro, quod Dei verbum assumpsit corpus et animam intellectualem et rationalem, et postea subdit, totus toti unitus est, ut toti mihi salutem gratificet idest, gratis faciat, quod enim inassumptibile est, incurabile est.”

¹⁹ ST III, q. 1, a. 2.

²⁰ Sent., Bk. 3, d. 12, q. 3, a. 1, qc. 1, s.c. 2.

²¹ “Oportuit” can be translated as “it is proper or becoming” rather than as “it is necessary.” Even if one translates it in this passage as “it is necessary,” it still could be understood in a sense that falls short of absolute necessity; see note 37.

²² Sent., Bk. 3, d. 12, q. 3, a. 1, qc. 1.

²³ ST III, q. 5, a. 1. Here is another similarly qualified statement: “As Augustine says in De Trinitate 13, God could have taken on man elsewhere than from the stock of that Adam who bound the human race by his sin. But God judged it better to assume vanquished human nature–through which he would vanquish the enemy of the human race–from the very same race” (ST III, q. 4 a. 6).

²⁴ God cannot choose the past to never have been does because there is no such thing (an event cannot both have been and not have been), nor can he create another God, as God is the uncreated one. See De Potentia, q. 1, a. 3.

²⁵ Aquinas does hold that certain acts by a divine person could not secure human salvation. He says that “if his [Christ's] body was not a true body but an imaginary body, then he did not undergo a true death either. . . . And in this manner it would also follow that the true salvation of man did not ensue; for it is necessary for an effect to be proportioned to its cause” (ST III, q. 5, a.1). A fake atonement is in nowise meritorious; paying the price of sin in false currency is no payment at all.

²⁶ Sent., Bk. III, d. 19, q. 1, qc. 1. This text was quoted earlier; it corresponds to note 14.

²⁷ See Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. IV, chap. 54: “The order of divine justice so stands … that sin is not remitted by God without satisfaction. No one purely human, however, could make satisfaction for the sin of the entire human race, because anyone who is purely human is something less than the entire ensemble of the human race. It was necessary, therefore, so that the human race could be freed from the sin common to it that someone would make satisfaction who would be a human being, to whom the satisfaction pertained, and someone beyond human, so that the merit would be sufficient for satisfying for the sin of the entire human race. As far as the order of beatitude, there is no one greater than man except for God; for angels, granted that they are superior as to the condition of their nature, are not nevertheless as to the order of the end, because they are made blessed in the same way as humans. It was therefore necessary that God become man in order to destroy the sin of the human race so that man might attain beatitude.”

²⁸ See ST III, q. 46, a. 2: “For if he [God] had wanted to free man from sin without [man] making any satisfaction, he would not have acted contrary to justice. For a judge cannot dismiss a fault without punishment and preserve justice when his place is to punish a fault committed against another, be it against another man or against the whole republic or against a higher ruler. But God does not have some superior, but he himself is the supreme and common good of the universe. And therefore, if he remits sin, which has the notion of fault from this that it is committed against him, he causes injury to no one; just as any man who remits an offense committed against himself without satisfaction [being made], does not act unjustly, but mercifully.”

²⁹ See ST III, q. 64, a. 2, ad 3: “The Apostle and their successors are vicars of God as to the regimen of the Church instituted through faith and the sacraments of faith. Whence, just as it is not permitted to them to constitute another Church, so too it is not permitted to them to hand on another faith or institute other sacraments; rather the Church of Christ is built by the sacraments which flowed from the side of Christ hanging on the cross.” If God were to apply the salvific effects of Christ's cross to ETIs, he most likely would do so through baptism, given that ETIs and humans would belong to the same Church. However, as institutor of the sacraments, God could determine that fallen ETIs be incorporated in the Mystical Body in a manner other than by baptism.

³⁰ Lazzari, “Would St. Thomas Aquinas Baptize an Extraterrestrial?”, 451.

³¹ See ST III, q. 64, a. 2, s.c.: “Only God can instutite sacraments.”

³² See De Rationibus Fidei, c. 5: “The mode of repair ought to be such that it is suited to the nature to be repaired and to the wound.”

³³ See ST I, q. 104, a. 3, ST I, q. 104, a. 4, ad 1 and De Potentia, q. 5, a. 4.

³⁴ Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. 4, chap. 55.

³⁵ See ST III, q. 1, a. 2 and Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. 4, chap. 55.

³⁶ Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. IV, chap. 55.

³⁷ Summa contra Gentiles, IV chap. 54. Note that Aquinas distinguishes two senses of “necessary:” “Something is said to be necessary for some end in two ways; in one way as that without which it is not possible, as food is necessary for the preservation of human life; in another way, as that through which one more suitably arrives at an end, as a horse is necessary for a journey. That God become incarnate in order to repair human nature was not necessary in the first way, for God through his omnipotent power could have repaired human nature in many other ways” (ST III, q. 1 a. 2).

³⁸ Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. IV chap. 54.

³⁹ See Lazzari, “Would St. Thomas Aquinas Baptize an Extraterrestrial?”, p. 451, note 59Google Scholar; Lazzari names theologians Gerard O'Collins and Augustine Di Noia.

⁴⁰ In Symbolum Apostolorum, a. 4.

⁴¹ Aquinas would most likely regard fallen ETIs existence as improbable on the grounds that God is unlikely to leave them unredeemed and yet their redemption through Christ, though possible, is hard to reconcile with divine wisdom.