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

In considering what it might mean to be created in the image of God, therefore, theologians began by asking themselves how humans were different from animals (at least in their understanding) and have understood creation in the image of God as something inherent in the way humans are made that explained that perceived difference.  Those differences have been understood as “‘capacities,’ ‘qualities,’ ‘original excellences,’ or ‘endowments’ that inhere in our creaturely substance.”[5]  These “capacities” have generally focused on two central elements: rationality and freedom (also called will).[6]  What set humans apart and placed them at the top of the natural hierarchy was human reason, and thus it was “in keeping with the order of nature, that man should be the master of animals.”[7]   

                                           St. Thomas Aquinas

Because (it was thought) only humans were capable of “rational thought,” it followed that only humans were able to make choices and decisions.  This idea came to be associated with humans alone as “spiritual beings,” “personalities,” and “moral beings.”[8]  Humans alone were understood to be actors in the world, while the animals were understood only to re-act to the world around them, driven by instinct rather than choice. 

With the Reformation, the Protestant understanding of the image of God focused less on something inherent in the way humans were made and more on humans’ relationships with God.[9] For the Reformers, the image of God was something that could be lost or distorted through sin, and thus our creation in God’s image brought with it obligation as well as privilege.  Nevertheless, they did not go so far as to re-examine our relationships with animals. They continued to understand humans as set apart from the animals by reason and will, and animals as created for human use. 

The idea of animals as “irrational” and thus not worthy of our care reached its pinnacle in the philosophy of René Descartes.  While Descartes was a philosopher rather than a theologian, as we have seen, philosophy has been a driving factor in theological understandings of image and dominion.  Descartes, who believed that the power of reason was a defining element of existence (“I think, therefore I am”), also believed that because (in his understanding) animals had no language, they had no thoughts.  Their lack of language, he reasoned “does not merely show that the brutes have less reason than men, but that they have none at all, since it is clear that very little is required in order to be able to talk.”[10]  Without thoughts, animals could not understand what was happening to them and therefore, although Descartes did not deny animals had “sensations,” he asserted that they had no ability to suffer.  Instead, everything they did was purely instinctual, “by disposition of the organs.”[11]  Andrew Linzey explains, “Descartes’ followers, the Port Royalists, reportedly ‘kicked their dogs and dissected their cats without mercy, laughing at any compassion for them, and calling their screams the noise of breaking machinery.’”[12]

                                            Descartes

 

While few people today adopt Descartes’ extreme view, his ideas and the association of the ability for “rational thought” with the ability to “suffer meaningfully” have had a pervasive influence on our understandings of the right treatment of animals and on our understanding of animals as “only,” of having little or no value, not meriting our sustained attention or concern – and certainly not meriting any sacrifice on the part of humans for the benefit of animals.[13]

In my next post, I will look at how modern Old Testament scholars understand the image of God.  As my previous posts suggest, considering the phrase in its scriptural and cultural context, these scholars argue that the phrase is intended vocationally.  That is, scholars looking at our creation in God’s image in its scriptural context, instead of through the lens of contemporary philosophy, have concluded that it has less to do with how we are made than what we are called to do.  Moreover, the context of the phrase makes it clear that the image of God and the call to dominion over the animals are two sides of the same coin.  We are not set above the animals in order that we may use them as we please, we are set alongside the animals in order that we may care for them and show them God’s love.  In later posts I will begin to take a look at animal sentience, that is, how animals experience the world, and we will see that the differences we have relied on to set ourselves above the animals are largely differences of degree rather than kind.  

 Understanding our role as representatives of God’s love to creation, and understanding how our fellow creatures experience the world, must bring us to reexamine our often thoughtless and exploitative interactions with the animals. 

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[1] In this blog post I can only touch on this topic in the most fleeting way.  For a more detailed examination of historic understandings of the image of God as well as more modern perspectives, see, for example, John Douglas Hall, Imaging God: Dominion As Stewardship (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1986) and J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005).

[2] Wright, Christopher J.H.  Old Testament Ethics For The People Of God (Downers Grove: IVP Academic 2004), 119.

[3] Middleton, J. Richard.  The Liberating Image: Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005), 17.

[4] It is worth noting that Aristotle used similar reasoning to defend both slavery and the inferiority of women to men.  See Linzey, Andrew. Why Animal Suffering Matters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 12. 

[5] Hall, John Douglas, Imaging God: Dominion As Stewardship (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1986), p. 89.

[6] Hall, p. 92-98

[7] St. Thomas Aquinas, “Summa Theologiae,” in Fathers of the English Dominican Province (trans.), The Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas, 2^nd ed. (London: Burns and Oats and Washbourne, 1922), quoted in Linzey, Animal Suffering, 12.

[8] Hall, p. 94.

[9] Hall, pp. 100-104.

[10] Descartes, René.  Discourse on Method in Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E.S. Haldane and G.R. T. Ross (London: Cambridge University Press), vol. I, quoted in Linzey, Andrew and Tom Regan, Ed., Animals & Christianity: A Book of Readings (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1990), 47.  

[11] See Linzey, Animal Suffering, 45-47; Linzey & Regan, Animals & Christianity, 45-52.

[12] Mahaffy, J.P.  Descartes London: Blackwood, 1901), 118 quoted in Linzey, Animal Suffering, 46.

[13] For example, in Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), author Matthew Scully discusses at length the views of Stephen Budiansky, author, animal behaviorist, “and defender of such practices as commercial whaling and elephant hunting.” Budiansky argues that whatever pain animals feel is “mere pain,” not meaningful, an unconscious neurophysiological reaction to external stimuli.  E.g., Scully, p. 6.