COMMON CREATURELINESS:

CREATION CARE AND ANIMALS, PART FOUR

“For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other.  They all have the same breath and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity.  All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.”

                                                                  ~ Ecclesiastes 3:19-20.

            In my last three posts, I have looked at the work of various creation care authors who, while making many excellent points regarding our right relationship with the earth, have failed to address our right relationship with animals.  At least one author, however, shows us how a “green theology” perspective can specifically address our obligations to animals.  
          In his book, Living With Other Creatures: Green Exegesis And Theology[1], Richard Bauckham considers how the church has traditionally understood its relationship with animals and reconsiders that relationship, analyzing several scriptural passages that deal directly and indirectly with animals.  He considers two issues in particular, the ecological setting of first century Palestine and Jesus’ role in ushering in the kingdom of God, “in order to show that the kingdom includes the whole of creation and that some of the acts in which Jesus anticipated the coming kingdom point to the redemption of the human relationship with the rest of creation.”[2]  He does this, however, without conflating animals with non-sentient creation. 

           
Bauckham begins with a look at the history of the Christian understanding of “dominion” over animals.[3]  While recognizing the tradition of saints and their care of animals, Bauckham acknowledges that the dominant voice of the early church understood the rest of creation, including animals, as entirely available for human uses.  Yet, he says, initially this perspective understood that there were limitations on those uses, as expressed in the natural order of things.  With the Enlightenment, however, and the belief that humans could overcome natural limitations through technology, that sense of living within the limitations of God’s created order was lost.  As a corrective to this view, he argues, the church has more recently turned to the word “stewardship” in place of “dominion” as a means of re-envisioning our relationship with the rest of creation.  But for Bauckham, even stewardship is an insufficient understanding of who we are and our place in the world because it continues to see our relationship to the rest of creation “vertically;” humans are placed above creation in order to care for it.  What is needed, he asserts, is a renewed understanding of our “common creatureliness” with other creatures, a rebuilding of the “horizontal” nature of our relationships.

            Bauckham reviews the synoptic gospels with an eye toward exploring this theme and provides extensive exegesis of a number of passages.  He emphasizes both the dependence of the people in Jesus’ time and place on the land and the contemporary understanding of the coming of God’s kingdom as a renewal of, not escape from, the earth.  His exegesis stresses that Jesus’ perspective was informed by the Jewish tradition of compassion for animals and that his teachings are grounded in this assumption.  For Bauckham, it is clear that God’s kingdom will include peace for and with the animals, including a restoration of human relationships with the wild animals that posed a serious threat to the lives and livelihoods of Jesus’ contemporaries.[4]

Hicks: The Peaceable Kingdom (Public Domain)

            Although Jesus Himself never directly taught about compassion to animals, Bauckham argues that all of Jesus’ teaching needs to be understood in the context of first century Israelite faith, with its tradition of God’s care for animals.[5]  Bauckham explicates a number of Old Testament passages that include compassion for animals and discusses how Jesus used them in his own teaching.  For example, Jesus pointed to laws requiring compassion for animals even on the Sabbath as a way to explain why doing good for humans is permissible on the Sabbath (Mt. 12:11-12; Lk 14:5; Lk. 13:15-16).   Bauckham also considers Jesus’ teachings regarding God’s provisions for all creatures and how Jesus used such examples to demonstrate that humans are also cared for by God.  This is an argument from the lesser to the greater: if God cares for the animals, how much more will he care about you?  This style of teaching, of course, only works if everyone already understands that God does, in fact, care for the animals. 

Jesus begins his ministry with animals.  Mark tells us that after his baptism, “the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness.  He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” (Mk. 1:12-13).  For Bauckham, this verse is extremely important, especially coming as it does after Mark’s prologue (1:1-5), which puts Jesus in a messianic setting.  This verse shows Jesus beginning his ministry and ushering in the new kingdom by re-establishing the peace with the wild animals lost after the flood.  It is significant that “Jesus does not terrorize or dominate the wild animals, he does not domesticate or even make pets of them.  He is simply ‘with them.’”  In this way, Jesus “affirms their independent value for themselves and for God.  He does not adopt them into the human world, but lets them be themselves in peace, leaving them their wilderness, affirming them as creatures who share the world with us in the community of God’s creation.” [6]   

Ludovico Carracci: Christ In The Wilderness Served By Angels. (Public Domain) (Interestingly, I could find no artistic depiction of Christ in the wilderness "with the wild beasts.")

            As Bauckham points out, Jesus never uses human superiority as a means to devalue animals, instead Jesus uses this hierarchy only to point to the vastness and steadfastness of God’s love for all.[7]   

            Like Wirzba, Bauckham takes up the topic of ritual sacrifice and the eating of meat.  He acknowledges that Jesus did not condemn the sacrificial system (when properly practiced) and in all likelihood participated in sacrifice himself.  He also concludes, given the culture in which he lived and the wealthy homes to which he was invited, that it is most likely that Jesus ate meat from time to time.[8]  Thus, he concludes that the case cannot be made from scripture that “meat-eating is absolutely wrong,” but in contrast to Wirzba, he is careful to say that this does not mean there are not good Christian arguments for being vegetarian, although he does not elaborate on what those might be.[9]

Rembrandt, The Supper at Emmaus. (Public Domain) Seeing Christ through breaking bread.

             Bauckham also stresses that in the Bible, all creation praises God.  He explains that animals “bring glory to God simply by being themselves and fulfilling their God-given roles in God’s creation.”  Our own praise in our distinctly human voice, he continues, is worthless unless we likewise live our whole lives to God’s glory.  Part of that is the right exercise of dominion, recognizing our power over the animals, our responsibilities to them, and our common creatureliness with them.[10]  I think is observation by Bauckham is of particular significance in a world where we have bred animals into caricatures of themselves,[11] where we keep so many of them in cramped, filthy, barren cages that prevent them from exhibiting any of their natural behaviors, and where we subject others to such painful and frightening experiments that they sometimes kill themselves trying to escape.  In these cases, it would seem that we have not only taken away the animals’ ability to praise God, we have made a mockery of our own praises, as well. 

            In Living With Other Creatures, Bauckham has recognized the connectedness of humans, animals, and the rest of creation without losing their distinction.  In contrast to Hall, Davis, and Wirzba, he acknowledges and honors that sparrows and wild animals and domestic animals are not the same thing as trees and streams and grains.  God’s love and care extends to all of creation and “humans and animals alike exist for God’s glory” and both will enjoy the peace of the new kingdom when all of creation is renewed.[12]

            The work of “creation care” theologians, including "agrarians," then, is an important tool for helping us recognize our obligations to care for the earth.  It has significant common ground with a theology of animal welfare, but creation care as it is often understood is not sufficient to open our eyes to the particular plight of animals.  Animals are not “nature,” “the land,” “natural resources,” “the biosphere,” “species,” or "food chains." They are sentient individuals who, like humans, know both suffering and joy. Nevertheless, these creation care discussions do provide us with new perspectives on our relations to the rest of creation and an understanding of the grave consequences our misunderstanding of “dominion” has had.  Bauckham shows us that these perspectives can be broadened to help us re-imagine our relationships with and obligations toward animals.

Rembrandt, Lion Lying Down (Public Domain)

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[1] Bauckham, Richard. Living With Other Creatures: Green Exegesis and Theology. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011.

[2] Bauckham, p. 64.

[3] Bauckham, pp. 15-62.

[4] Bauckham, pp. 71-76.

[5] Bauckham, p. 80.

[6] Bauckham, pp. 109-10.

[7] Bauckham, p. 97.

[8] Bauckham, p. 101.  As I noted in footnote in last week’s post, there has been much debate over whether Jesus was a vegetarian. 

[9] Bauckham, p. 104.

[10] Bauckham, pp. 149-50.

[11] For example, factory farmed turkeys have been bred to have such heavy breasts (because Americans like white meat) that they cannot mate.  Chickens intended for food are bred to grow so fast that often their own skeletons can’t keep up.  Their legs can break under them, leaving them to starve to death in an overcrowded barn because they can’t get to food.

[12] Bauckham, p. 97.