A NEW CREATION FOR THE ANIMALS, 
OR, DO ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN?

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

The calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. . . .

They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;

For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

                                                                  ~ Isaiah 11:6, 9

            Before my forced blogging hiatus as a result of a broken wrist, I was blogging my way through David Clough’s On Animals, Volume 1: Systematic Theology.  Although it has been some time since my last post on the topic, there is but one chapter left and I think it is time to let the last shoe drop.  As you know if you read those previous posts, I cannot recommend this book highly enough; it provides a very thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion of the place of animals – and humans – in Christian theology, considering our modern understanding of animal nature together with a careful reading of scripture and Christian tradition.  For Clough, taking animal welfare seriously is simply a matter of living in accordance with what Christians have always believed.  I am especially grateful for Clough’s emphasis on animal welfare as “a vital theological task,” which touches on nearly every element of what it means to be a Christian, and for the way he consistently urges us to look at and understand animals in new ways, asking us to appreciate their complexity, their individuality, and their place in the world.  Previous posts in this series are A Vital Theological Task, All Creatures of Our God and King, On Humans and Other Animals, The Heart of the Matter, and Do Animals Sin?  There is also a discussion with the author himself, Q&A With David Clough.  This post will look at Part III of Clough’s book, asking whether animals will be redeemed together with humans.

DO ANIMALS SIN?           

“The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.  So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals, the birds and creatures that move along the ground – for I regret that I have made them.

                                                                          ~  Genesis 6:6-7

            Throughout his book, On Animals, David Clough consistently challenges our common human understanding of “animals” as simple creatures, wholly separate from humans.  Instead, he develops a complex image of our fellow creatures, urging us to appreciate the wide range of creatures with whom we share this planet, the richness and complexity of their lives, and many ways humans and other animals are alike.  In addressing the doctrine of atonement, he continues to invite us to broaden our understanding of other animals’ places before God, asking, among other things, whether animals sin and whether they are in need of reconciliation with God.     

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

ANIMALS AND THE TRINITY
PART ONE

 “Human beings are created in the image of the relational God and gradually are being perfected in that image (theōsis), making more and more real the communion of all creatures with one another.”

                         ~ Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us [1]

                        The Trinity!  Yikes!  Like many Christians, for much of my faith journey I had a fairly vague notion of the Trinity and found struggling to come to terms with how three are one to be a fairly esoteric and largely impossible task, without much bearing on the actual practice of my faith.  Then I read Catherine LaCugna and everything changed.  Suddenly, I saw that the practice of my faith was only possible because of how the Three are One. 

            I also saw that God as Trinity has radical implications for Christian ethics – including, yes, the ethics of how we relate to animals.  This post and the next one will seek to explore what our Christian understanding of God as Trinity might have to say about animals.   

Andrej Rublëv

           

ASK THE ANIMALS AND THE WILL TELL YOU:

A LOOK AT ANIMAL SENTIENCE

PART THREE:  ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

“Crows hold a grudge, and they are big gossips.”   ~ Prof. David Craig

“Mice value self-actualizaton.”  ~ Dr. Jonathan Balcombe

In Part One of this series on animal sentience we looked at animals and physical pain.  In PartTwo, we looked at animals and emotions.  In this Part Three, we’ll take a look at animal intelligence.  Humans have consistently underestimated animal intelligence and awareness of the world around them.  We tend to believe that animals go through life with very little understanding of what is happening around them, responding to their environment instinctively.  It turns out, however, that animals are much more intelligent than we have previously believed.  They make choices, they have preferences, they plan for the future and remember the past, and, just like humans, they suffer from boredom if they do not have enough to occupy them.  These realities have an impact on what it means to treat animals humanely and what our obligations of right dominion include.

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