Why Caring About Animals Is Central To What It Means To Follow Christ

Recently, I was invited to speak at the adult forum at Christ Episcopal Church in Rockville, MD.  I was, of course, delighted to accept.  I very much enjoyed the hour, and hope that the congregation did, as well.  I'm sharing below a copy of my remarks.  

Christ Episcopal Church, Rockville, MD

 

Dominion In The Image Of God –

Why Caring About Animals Is Central To What It Means To Follow Christ

Remarks at Christ Episcopal Church, Rockville, MD

September 30, 2018

Good morning.  Thank you for inviting me here to talk with you, and thank you for the work the St. Francis Flock is doing in raising the issue of animal welfare as a Christian concern, and thank you for your support of this important work, Rev. Simpson.  There is a lot that I could talk about today, but given our limited time, I thought I would try to lay out what I think are the foundational concepts for a theology of animal welfare, and then answer any questions the group may have. 

I want to start with what might strike you as a fairly startling proposition:  that caring for animals is not just an appropriate Christian concern, I believe it is fundamental to what it means to be human, what it means to be created in God’s image, and what it means to carry out God’s will on earth.  To support that idea, I want to focus on the creation stories, which form the foundation of our understanding of our place as humans in God’s creation.  Specifically, I want to focus on the idea that we are created in God’s image and given dominion over the animals. That’s an idea that traditionally has been used to excuse exploitation of animals, but I think it is telling something very different indeed – and something that goes beyond what many mean when they use the word “stewardship” in place of dominion.

ANIMALS AND THE TRINITY

PART TWO

Disproportionate use of the goods of the earth, despoiling creation, harming other creatures, abusing other persons, are unnatural ways of being in relationship because God is not glorified by them.

                                           ~ Catherine Mowry LaCugna

            Last week, I began this discussion of the Trinity with a look at the work of Catherine Mowry LaCugna, who steers us away from speculation regarding God’s “inner life” and urges us to understand the Trinity by looking at God’s work in the world through the Son in the power of the Spirit and to respond with praise to God through the Son in the power of the Spirit.  She urges us, in short, to consider the Trinity as God’s way of being in communion with us, and allowing us to be in communion with Him, in an outpouring of love and response of praise.  This communion, she argues, will reshape who we are and how we order our lives. 

            It is clear from her writings that she intends to include all of creation - including all God’s creatures - in the scope of her vision.  So, in God In Communion With Us, she says a Trinitarian theology grounded in the economy of salvation understands that we are created to live in “authentic communion with God, with other persons, and with all God’s creatures.”[1]  In God For Us she explains the Trinity is “overflowing love, outreaching desire for communion with all that God has made” and that when we establish a new household of God, it will be “the dwelling place of all creatures.” [2]  But what, exactly, does this mean, and how do “all creatures” fit into her theological framework? 

Photo credit: David Wye

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.  

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

WHAT IS THIS BLOG ALL ABOUT?

He expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry.

                               Isaiah 5:7

Welcome to Dominion In The Image Of God!  I hope you will visit the About This Blog and About Me pages to learn more about what has motivated me to launch this project and why I believe this topic is so important.  It starts with Genesis 1:26, which tells us that our relationships with animals are inextricably linked with our creation in God’s image.  I believe that, just as our creation in God’s image has been called foundational to what it means to be human[1], so our relationships with animals are foundational to who we are and how we relate to God.  It is my hope that in learning to fulfill the responsibility given to us at the creation to treat animals with mercy and compassion on God’s behalf, we can not only make the world a better place for animals, but we can become more fully human as God intended us to be, growing into God's image and drawing closer to Him as we care for what is His.