MINORITY REPORT –PART ONE: ANIMALS AND THE SAINTS

“The saints are exceedingly loving and gentle to mankind, and even to brute beasts ... Surely we ought to show them [animals] great kindness and gentleness for many reasons, but, above all, because they are of the same origin as ourselves.” 

                                                                         ~ St. John Chrysostom 

            The Christian tradition, on the whole, has not been kind to animals.  As we have seen, the dominant voice in the history of the tradition has held that animals were created for the benefit of humans.  Therefore, as Augustine explained in The City of God, animals are “subjected to us to kill or keep alive for our uses,” or as Aquinas expressed it in his Summa Theologica, “charity does not extend to irrational creatures.”[1]  This viewpoint has had devastating consequences for animals and, I would argue, for humans.  It is a viewpoint that is alive and well today as our culture uses and abuses billions of animals every year for human convenience and entertainment. 

            But there has always been another voice in the Christian tradition, a voice pleading for compassion for our fellow creatures, a voice that recognizes our obligations to animals.  In this post, I want to take a brief look at the earliest part of that tradition, considering how stories of the lives of the saints recognize the connection between compassion for animals and holiness.  In coming posts, I’ll look at some of the writings of John Wesley, Humphrey Primatt, and social reformers like William Wilberforce, whose faith compelled them to plead for – and act with - mercy and compassion toward our fellow creatures.  

Saint Blaise.with animals

           

IMAGE OF GOD: WE CANNOT BE HUMAN WITHOUT THE ANIMALS

“God’s resolve to create in the divine image is coupled with a commissioning to have dominion. . . . It is as representative (image) of God that we are given capacity for power in the world.”

                               ~ Bruce Birch

In last Friday’s post, I took a very brief look at some of the traditional understandings of what it means to be created in the image of God and how that has led to the perspective that humans, separated from the rest of creation with the gifts of reason and will, are privileged in creation.  We saw that these traditional understandings of our creation were heavily influenced by philosophical ideas from different times and places and that those philosophical views about what it meant to human were grafted onto theological interpretations of our creation in God’s image.  In particular, many theologians, notably Augustine and Aquinas, were strongly influenced by Aristotle, including Aristotle’s view that there exists a natural hierarchy, with the “lesser” things in creation existing for the benefit of the “greater.”  Thus, the church traditionally reasoned, animals were created for the benefit of humans, which was fully in keeping with our privileged status as the only creatures in God’s image and thus (it was thought) the only creatures capable of being in relationship with God.  We shall see in a later post that there have always been Christians who have felt that compassion for animals is a necessary part of what it means to be Christian, but the mainline traditional view, that animals were created for human benefit, has resulted in a great deal of suffering by God’s creatures and has kept humans from living more fully into the purpose for which we are created. 

Aristotle

 Before I turn to what I call the “minority report” on animals from the Christian tradition or the consequences of the church’s mainline traditional view, however, I would like to take a closer look at how modern Old Testament scholarship is changing our understanding of what it means to be created in the image of God.  Over the last few decades, as scholars have come to better understand ancient cultures in which the stories of the Old Testament were preserved and written down, a new perspective has arisen that has garnered nearly unanimous support among those scholars.  This perspective underscores, in keeping with all Biblical teaching on power and privilege, that our creation in God’s image brings with it significant responsibility, answerable to God.  

PRAYING FOR PETS

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children,

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

                                                             ~ Matthew 18:3

            In church this morning, I listened to a delightful presentation on the children’s worship service.  The speaker talked about some of the things that are different between that worship and worship in “the big church,” including the fact that in the children’s worship, “we probably pray for pets more often.”  This observation made me consider why we don’t pray for pets in “the big church.”  It’s a question that seemed worthy of a brief reflection, and a minor detour from my discussion of the image of God.  

            I think the reason we don’t pray for pets as adults in church is that it seems silly or trivial; it seems like a topic not worthy of God’s attention.  I would argue that nothing could be further from the truth.

WHY HAS THE CHURCH TRADITIONALLY TAKEN A DIFFERENT VIEW?

[I]rrational animals . . . are dissociated from us by their want of reason, and therefore by the just appointment of the Creator subjected to us to kill or keep alive for our uses . . . .

                                               ~ St. Augustine, The City of God, Book 1

            If it is true, as I argued in earlier posts, that our creation in the image of God imposes on us an obligation to care for our fellow creatures, that Scripture tells us that how we relate to animals is reflective of our character, and that Scripture’s teachings on the right use of power extend to animals as well as humans, why has the Church traditionally taken the view that we owe no duty of care to animals?  To understand that, we need to consider early conceptions of what it meant to be created in the image of God and where those conceptions came from.[1]

Because Scripture says that humans alone are created in the image of God, most theories about what that might mean centered on those traits that were believed to set humans apart from other animals, including our rationality, moral consciousness, capacity for relationship, sense of responsibility to (or ability to be in relationship with) God, and even our upright posture and facial expressiveness.[2]  In his book, The Liberating Image, Richard Middleton attributes the diversity of opinion on the subject to the infrequency with which the phrase appears in scripture and the fact that until quite recently, most interpreters have disregarded the context of the phrase as it appears in Genesis 1.  Instead they have relied on “extrabiblical, usually philosophical, sources to interpret the image and end up reading contemporaneous conceptions of being human back into the Genesis text.”[3]  One of the earliest and most significant philosophical influences was Aristotle, with his theory of a natural hierarchy whereby plants were meant for the use of animals, and animals for humans.[4]  Augustine and Aquinas, both hugely influential, drew heavily on this idea.   

                                                               St. Augustine

St. Francis Day: How To Be A Blessing To The Animals

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord"

                                          Psalm 150:6 

            If you have read the About Me section of this blog, you know that my journey toward understanding animal welfare as a theological concern began with an idea to include animals who really need a blessing – shelter pets in need of the blessing of a loving home – in a St. Francis Day Blessing of the Animals service.  To that end, I contacted the Washington National Cathedral and the Washington Animal Rescue League (WARL) and arranged just such an event.  (The event, that year and in all the years following has included animals from both the WARL and the Washington Humane Society, as well as representatives from both organizations and the Humane Society of the United States Faith Outreach Department.)  It seemed fitting, therefore, that as I begin this blog, I should mark St. Francis Day by presenting the remarks I made at that first blessing event, before I had any idea where this road would lead or how central this issue would become to me. 

            These remarks were in the year following Hurricane Katrina and present at the event were dogs WARL had rescued from that disaster.  The remarks also reference then-pending legislation.  While Katrina and some of those bills are in the past, there are always animals in need of rescue from natural or man-made disasters and there are always legislative issues requiring our attention.  The remarks, therefore, remain just as relevant today as they were when they were first made.

            Finally, by way of introducing these comments, I would like to observe that St. Francis has become quite tame and domesticated in our modern understanding.  We picture him surrounded by birds and bunnies, praising the sun and the moon.  This does him a great disservice.  St. Francis was a radical theologian, who walked away from a life of wealth and comfort to live in poverty and serve the unwanted – be they human or animal.  He calls us to a radical faith based in service and grounded in the understanding that all of creation belongs to and is loved by God.  St. Francis tells us that caring for the animals as God cares for us is not a part-time theology for the children and their pets – it is the way we are called to live every day.