Christian Ethics and Nonhuman Animals
God
is love (1 John 4:8, 4:16)
Dr. Lisa Kemmerer
Montana State University, Billings
ABSTRACT: In a world humming with animal rights and
animal liberation, it is important to assess Christian teachings with regard to
human-nonhuman responsibilities and interactions. This article explores the lives of saints, humanism and idolatry,
God’s rights, and the life and teachings of Jesus, including central concepts
such as service, compassion, mercy, and love, that we might better understand
Christian spiritual duties with regard to creation, and more specifically, with
regard to other animals. This article
is not critical in nature, but reveals how much we might learn from the
spiritual and moral teachings of the Christian tradition about our place in the
larger universe.
Christians,
like Jews, hold the Tanakh as sacred, though they call this group of texts the
Old Testament. Christians, like Jews,
worship a God who created a non-violent, vegan world; in the peaceable kingdom
“no creature was to feed on another” (Hyland, Slaughter 21). Christians,
like Jews, have been given a rulership in which they are to lovingly tend and
serve, and in which people are created in the “image of God,” with “the
capacity to reflect God’s love and compassion” (Kaufman 26). For Christians, as for Jews, animals are not
created for people, but live for themselves and for God (Sorabji 199). “God makes the animals before man, and
pronounces them good without man (Gen. 1.24-25): they are made by God and for
God” (Griffiths 8). “The God of Israel delights in all that He has made. All creatures sing their Creator’s praises,
and are dear to Him for their own sakes” (Scully 92). For Jews and Christians, who hold the same creation story sacred,
who both honor the Tanakh/Old Testament to be sacred, the value of animals lies
with God, “who made all things good and precious in his sight” (Linzey After 13). What does the Christian tradition, the New Testament, add to this
rich inheritance of sacred teachings with regard to human-nonhuman interactions?
Old
Testament writings regarding animals are particularly important because the
primary Christian text, the New Testament, focuses on the life of Christ and
offers less explicit information about how humans ought to interact with
animals.
There is
relatively little about animals in the New Testament. They are referred to incidentally in descriptions of everyday
life and appear in parables and figures of speech, but they are never the
express topic of any passage. . . .
The Old Testament point of view on animals was taken as valid in Judaism
at the time of Jesus, and in the New Testament is considered as
self-evident. (Vischer 15)
The
New Testament assumes knowledge of the Old Testament, and does not repeat much
of what is taken for granted in the Judeao-Christian tradition based on the Old
Testament. The Old Testament, combined
with the New Testament, provides Christianity with all that is needed to
protect animals: Christianity has “created a state of mind out of which the
modern movement for the legal prohibition of cruelty to animals grew up” (Hume
3).
Saints, a Benevolent
Creator, and Sentients
In
both early and medieval Christianity, Christian morals demanded compassion
toward animals (Hughes 313). Saints of
all ages have modeled kindness, and are famous for their love of all
creatures. For those closest to God,
the nature of animals, and their complete subjugation to the ever-growing power
of human beings, requires Christian charity and Christ-like protective
tenderness (Polk 185). Christian saints
remind the faithful that to be in relationship with God is to have amicable
relations with animals.
Hagiographies,
stories recording the lives of saints, demonstrate that holy people in the
Christian tradition, people known for their proximity to God and for living up
to the Christian ideal, were compassionate and tender toward animals. These documents testify to a host of
“courageous Christians: saints and seers, theologians and poets, mystics and
writers who have championed the cause of animals. The list must include almost two-thirds of those canonized saints
East and West, not only St. Francis but also St. Martin, Richard of Chichester,
Chrysostom, Isaac the Syrian, Bonaventure, and countless others” (Linzey, Animal Gospel 27). Christianity has a
long tradition of “saints returning to paradisal relations with the animals,
communing with them and curing them” (Sorabji 203). Many saints found little to separate humans from the rest of nature
(Polk 185).
St. Francis of Assisi “valued every species and was drawn into wonder and
prayer by individual creatures” (Hughes 315, 316). He taught Christian humility and the equality of all creatures
(White 1206-07). As part of his
missionary work, Francis “asked for captive animals, and cared for or released
them. If wild animals were given to
him, he treated them gently and let them go.
Often they sensed his friendship so strongly that they stayed near him
instead of fleeing” (Hughes 317). St.
Francis insisted that his followers exemplify compassion toward all living
beings, and it was his deepest hope that kindness might flow from people toward
the great expanse of the created world.
Saints
demonstrate “a reversal of the relationship of fear and enmity between humans
and animals that appertains after the Fall and the Flood” (Linzey, After 100). St. Jerome, St. Guthlac of Croyland, and St. Godric lived with
wild animals. St. Kieran of Saighir
“lived with a wild boar, a fox, a badger, a wolf and a deer” (Vischer 26). Hagiographies even credit animals with a
spiritual understanding that humans lack, as in the story of St. Columba’s
white horse (Waddell). Sometimes
animals assisted saints, such as the wild ass that helped Abbot Helenus. At other times, saints assisted animals, as
when St. Godric harbored a stag from the terror and cruelty of hunters.
Christianity,
“for roughly fifteen centuries… held the natural world in some form of close
relationship with humanity and God in
their
doctrinal and moral reflection” (Johnson 17). Pope John Paul II noted that St. Francis “looked upon
creation with the eyes of one who could recognize in it the marvelous work of
the hand of God” (Scully 24). St. John
of the Cross noted that animals “are all clothed with marvelous natural
beauty,” reflecting the image of God (Linzey, After 79). The influential monk, Thomas a Kempis, commented, “If
your heart were right, then every creature would be a mirror of life and a book
of holy doctrine. There is no creature
so small and mean that it does not put forth the goodness of God” (69). Animals share “the breath of life, each in
their own way bearing His unmistakable mark” (Scully 2). The German theologian Meister Eckhart wrote:
Apprehend God in all things,
for God is in all things.
Every single creature is full of god
and is a book about God.
Every creature is a word of God.
If I spent enough time with the tiniest
creature—
even a caterpillar—
I would never have to prepare a
sermon. So full of God
is every creature.
Catherine
of Siena wrote that those devoted to God love all of God’s creatures “so
deeply” because “they realize how deeply Christ loves them,” and to love what
is loved by God because it is loved
by God, is the essence of a Christian heart (Linzey, After 74).
We
are part of a universe that faithfully reflects the design of a loving and
generous creator—a world that can exist, and can only continue to exist, through God’s attentive care. “God cares also
for the other 99 percent of creation, not just for the 1 percent (actually,
less than 1 percent) that humans constitute” (McFague 35). Christians
“must never destroy without serious justification and without acknowledging
that all life belongs not to us but to God” (Linzey, After 105). Animals “are
God’s creatures: …we have an obligation to the Creator to respect what is
created” (Linzey, Animal Gospel 49). If people
understand themselves to be “created by God, who knows us and loves us and has
a plan for us, so we will tend to see [animals]—entirely dependent beings just
like us, made to some purpose beyond our full knowing, formed of the same dust
and fated for the same death” (Scully 306-7).
Christians are to act on this knowledge, and the conservative Christian
Matthew Scully writes:
If, in a given situation, we have it in our
power either to leave the creature there in his dark pen or let him out into
the sun and breeze and feed him and let him play and sleep and cavort with his
fellows—for me it’s an easy call. Give
him a break. Let him go. Let him enjoy his fleeting time on earth,
and stop bringing his kind into the world solely to suffer and die. It doesn’t seem like much to us, the
creature’s little lives of grazing and capering and raising their young and
fleeing natural predators. Yet it is
the life given them, not by breeder but by Creator. It is all they have. It
is their part of the story, a beautiful part beyond the understanding of man,
and who is anyone to treat it lightly?
Nothing to us—but for them it is the world. (43)
Life
is sacred in the Christian tradition, because it is of God. Christians are to see “every life, ours and
the lives around us, even in trial and sorrow as the gifts they are—no creature
slighted in being what it is, all exactly as they are meant to be” (Scully
304). If Christians treat the world
(and all its myriad creatures) with loving care, they acknowledge each creature
as God’s, as a priceless individual, and thereby express reverence for God’s
works, for God’s sovereignty. “To
affirm the blessedness of creation is to affirm an independent source of its
worth…. [A]ll creation has an
irreducible value” (Linzey, Christianity
8). If a Christian visits the abattoir
or factory farm, and finds “in the darkest and tiniest stall or pen, . . . the
filthiest, most forlorn little lamb or pig or calf. . . that is one of God’s
creatures” (Scully 26). God has an
interest in creation; each creature has intrinsic value in God’s sight, and the
justice and mercy of God extends to all
of creation (Linzey, After 120).
The Anglican priest, Dr. Humphrey Primatt, seems to have offered the first
theological argument for extending justice to animals. In A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and
the Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals,
Primatt
writes: “Love is the great Hinge upon
which universal Nature turns. The Creation is a transcript of the divine
Goodness; and every leaf in the book of Nature reads us a lecture on the wisdom
and benevolence of its great Author . . . . [U]pon this principle, every
creature of God is good in its kind; that is, it is such as it ought to be”
(Murti). Primatt spoke not only for
creeping and flying beasts, but also for human beings. He noted that differences are irrelevant in
a universe created by God in which we are asked to love—each being is created
exactly as God intended, whether with dark skin or light, whether gay or
straight, whether cuckoo or louse.
Now, if amongst men, the differences of
their powers of the mind, and of their complexion, stature, and accidents of
fortune, do not give any one man a right to abuse or insult any other man on
account of these differences; for the same reason, a man can have no natural
right to abuse and torment a beast, merely because a beast has not the mental
powers of a man.
For, such as the man is, he is but as God made him; and the very same is true
of the beast…. And being such, neither
more nor less than God made them, there is no more demerit in a beast being a
beast, than there is merit in a man being a man. . . .
[T]he author and finisher of our faith, hath commanded us to be merciful, as
our Father is also merciful, the obligation upon Christians becomes the
stronger; and it is our bounded duty, in an especial manner, and above all
other people, to extend the precept of mercy. . . . [A] cruel Christian is a monster of ingratitude, a scandal to
his profession and beareth the name of Christ in vain. (Murti)
Primatt added a spiritual moral
imperative: “Pain is pain, whether it is inflicted on man or on beast; and the
creature that suffers it, . . . suffers Evil" (Murti). Justice
understood in this light is not simply “rendering to each their due,” but is
more profoundly understood as “rendering to each their dignity as a creation of
God” (Martin-Schramm 440). We are not
allowed to harm others—any others. “We may pretend
to what religion we please," Primatt concludes, "but cruelty is
atheism. We may boast of Christianity; but cruelty is infidelity. We may trust
to our orthodoxy; but cruelty is the worst of heresies” (Murti). When creation is understood to be God’s, the
“abuse of animals—like the oppression of human beings—is opposed to the way of
life that God has ordained” (Hyland, Slaughter
1). Scully notes, “cruelty is not only a denial of the
animal’s nature but a betrayal of our own” (303).
A God-centered Faith,
Salvation for All, and Divine Rights
Christian
humility is central to recognizing our place in creation. Christian humility asks knowingly: “[W]hat
are we to Him but what [animals] are to us?” (Scully 35). Both
idolatry and humanism are inimical to Christianity. Human arrogance and human-centered ideals deny a God-centered
faith, and affirm the infectious blight of humanism, a belief system where
people are the measure of all:
Many of us seem to have lost all sense of
restraint toward animals, an understanding of natural boundaries, a respect for
them as beings with needs and wants and a place and purpose of their own. Too often, too casually, we assume that our
interests always come first, and if it’s profitable or expedient that is all we
need to know. We assume that all these
other creatures with whom we share the earth are here for us, and only for
us. We assume, in effect, that we are
everything and they are nothing.
(Scully xi)
If Christians
“neglect the place and significance of other creatures in God’s good creation,
Christian theology fundamentally weakens itself, and its claim to be . . . God centered” (Linzey, After 119). For
Christians the value of creation, of each creature, “does not lie in whether it
is beautiful (to us) or whether it serves or sustains our life and
happiness.… Only God, and not man, is
the measure of all” (Linzey, “Liberation” 513). What is profitable for human beings is not the measure of
Christian morality. Humanity is not the
center of the Christian universe; this world was not created for human
purposes. Robert Runcie, Archbishop of
Canterbury, notes that the concept of God “forbids the idea of a cheap
creation, of a throw-away universe in which everything is expendable save human
existence” because the “universe is a work of love” (Linzey After 13). Even “that which seem[s] of
little worth in human eyes [is] of value in the sight of God” (Hyland, God’s 47). The Old and New Testament “are united in their conviction that
the world of living creatures exists because God loves them, and sustains them,
and rejoices in them. . . . The central
point is. . . the recognition of worth, of value, outside ourselves. Human beings are not the sum total of all
value” (Linzey, After 12). Humanism
is human-centered, Christianity is God-centered. Instead of focusing on human welfare, on what benefits human
beings, Christianity requires that people see
animals
as fellow creatures on their own terms, some glorious and mighty like the
elephant, some fearful and lethal like the tiger, some joyful and gentle like
the dolphin, some lowly and unprepossessing like the pig, but not a one of
them, however removed from our exalted world, hidden from its Maker’s
sight. (Scully 26).
Christianity
“reminds us that creation is not just a colorful backdrop for human actions,”
and aligns us “with something good, permanent, and infinitely greater than any
plan we could ever conceive or any profit we could ever gain” (Scully 304).
Everything that exists is God’s, and humans have been charged with a rulership
“as a wise king rules over and protects his subjects, or as God reigns over
creation, sustaining, cherishing, and safeguarding every living thing (Kowalski
24). We have been given a rulership in
which we “take care of what God entrusts to us—our lives, our health, and all
the world around us, including animals” (Kaufman ix). “If humans are to claim a lordship over creation, then it can
only be a lordship of service” (Linzey, Animal
Gospel 43). Our service is not just
toward humans, or toward furry, large-eyed animals, but all creatures, for if
not even a sparrow falls without God knowing then we are not too important to
notice such creatures ourselves (Scully 2).
Christians who want to understand God’s will “strive to see the world through
God’s eyes rather than [their] own” (Kaufman 2). The Christian God cares about all aspects of creation. A good and loving God must remain morally responsible for and invested in every sentient
being, for “a redeeming God could not eschew the sighing and suffering of all
creatures” (Linzey, Animal Gospel
34). Nothing that has lived and
suffered can be overlooked by a just and good God. The New Testament assures us that our fellow creatures share in
Christian salvation:
I consider that
the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory
about to be revealed to us. For the
creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for
the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of
the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free
from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the
children of God. We know that the whole
creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation,
but we ourselves… (Rom. 8:18-23)
Other
books in the New Testament also announce that the whole of creation shares the
curse and the promise; all of
creation is united in Jesus and awaiting salvation:
With all wisdom
and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his
good pleasure which he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time,
to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Eph. 1:9-10)
[F]or in him
all things in heaven and on earth were created… all things have been created
through him and for him. He himself is
before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he
is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, so that he might come to have
first place in everything. For in him
all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased
to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through
the blood of his cross. (Col. 1:16-20)
Each
animal has eternal significance; all of creation is contained in Christ and
reconciled through Christ. Christian theologians
include nature in their spiritual vision, “interpreting it as God’s good
creation, a revealing pathway to the knowledge of God, and a partner in human
salvation” (Johnson 6).
For Christians, “the whole debate about animals is precisely about the rights
of the Creator” (Linzey, Animal Gospel
44). Andrew Linzey, a contemporary
theologian exploring human obligations toward creation, posits “theos-rights”
(as distinct from animal rights), “emphasizing the priority of God’s right in
creation” (Christianity 71). Because God is “sovereign Creator, all
rights in an absolute sense are God’s” (Linzey, Animal Gospel 50). Linzey
focuses attention on the “value of a God-given life” ( Animal Gospel 45). “All
creation, large and small, intelligent and unintelligent, sentient and
non-sentient has worth because God values it” (Linzey, Christianity 9).
Theos-rights rest on nothing less than “the will of God” (Linzey, Christianity 75).
Theos-rights demand that Christians exercise power only towards God’s ends
(Linzey, Christianity 87, 96,
98). Through the covenant, “God elects
creatures of flesh and blood into a relationship with himself and humanity”
(Linzey, Christianity 80). What
we owe God is that we “value what God has given” as highly as each creature
values his or her own life (Linzey, Christianity
87). Each creature finds his or her own
life worthy of protection and preservation, whether dove or dromedary. Linzey asserts that Christians are to
“conceptualize what is owed to animals as a matter of justice by virtue of
their Creator’s right. Animals can be
wronged because their Creator can be wronged in his creation” (Linzey, Animal Theology 27).
The Gospels and Jesus as
Moral Exemplar
The most important New Testament documents are the Gospels, which record the
life and teachings of Jesus. The
Gospels provide the basis for a Christian life. Most importantly, Jesus exemplifies the Christian life of love
and compassion.
The life of Jesus provides a
vision of Genesis 2, of how we are to serve and lovingly tend creation. The Gospels reveal Jesus engaged in
self-sacrificing service to “the least of these” (Mat. 25:40), deeply concerned
for the oppressed and downtrodden. He
is recorded as saying, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and
servant of all” (Mk 9:35). “[W]hoever
wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be
first among you must be slave of all.
For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his
life a ransom for many” (Mk. 9:35, 10: 42-5).
Jesus ministered to the lawless and healed the sickly. He exemplifies the ideal
Christian life. “The power of God is
redefined in Jesus as practical costly service extending to those who are
beyond the normal boundaries of human concern: the diseased, the poor, the
oppressed, the outcasts. He inspired
“many social reformers, from slave abolitionists to animal protectionists”
(Kaufman 30). In Christianity, humans are not an elite
in the sense of luxuries and power, but are “the servant species: the species
given power, opportunity and privilege to give themselves, nay sacrifice
themselves, for the weaker, suffering creatures” (Linzey, Animal Gospel 44).
We need a
conception of ourselves in the universe not as the master species but as the
servant species. . . . We must move
from the idea that the animals were given to us and made for us, to the idea
that we were made for creation, to serve it and ensure its continuance. This actually is little more than the
theology of Genesis chapter two. The
garden is made beautiful and abounds with life; humans are created specifically
to “take care of it” (Gen. 2:15).
(Linzey, “Arrogance” 69)
Human
dominion is a privilege of responsibility that requires self-sacrificing
service (Hume 6-7). Jesus, the
Christian moral exemplar, lived a life devoted to weak and imperfect beings. His overall message speaks of compassion and
service of the strong for the weak, of the high for the lowly. “We love God by serving God’s creation. We love our neighbors by serving our
neighbors, and the farther they stand below us in the hierarchy of power—the
more they stand in need of our help—the greater is our moral obligation to
serve them” (Phelps, Dominion 150).
I suggest that
the failure of the Church to champion humaneness is a fundamental failure on
its own part to understand its own Gospel.
For that Gospel as exemplified in Jesus Christ is about service to the
sick, poor, disadvantaged, diseased, imprisoned, and all others who are
regarded as the lowest of all, and not least to the whole world of suffering
non-human creatures. . . . We cannot
love God and be indifferent to suffering creatures. (Linzey, Animal Gospel
94)
“If
our power over animals confers upon us any rights, there is only one: the right
to serve” (Linzey, Animal 38), and
few humans are in need of our service so much as animals trapped in labs and herded
to slaughter.
Jesus teaches Christian morality in word and deed. Nowhere is this more clear
in the New Testament than in the Beatitudes (Mathew 5:3-12), which start with
the words “blessed are.” It is here
that Christians find a succinct statement of Christian virtues, and a vision of
who the faithful are to strive to become.
The Beatitudes provide “a training manual for exercising the dominion of
love” (Phelps, Dominion 151). Three of the beatitudes are particularly
important for understanding rightful Christian relations with animals.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Mat. 5:5). “[M]eekness
is the child of love and compassion. As
such, it is the quality that most clearly displays the image of God in our
lives” (Phelps, Dominion 151). Based on his demeanor, Jesus was equated
with the lamb, a creature so meek as to be helpless. William Blake wrote:
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o’er the mead; . . .
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild
He became a little child. . . .
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Though
powerful in ways we cannot comprehend, Jesus was as meek as a lamb, never
seeking “advantage through the suffering of another” (Phelps, Dominion 151). All creatures are safe in the company of those as meek as Jesus.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will
receive mercy” (Mat. 5:7). Christians
“above
all should hear the call to mercy. They
above all should have some kindness to spare.
They above all should be mindful of the little things, seeing, in the
suffering of these creatures,” a life that is God’s, and that is worthy of
Christian care (Scully 325). For those of faith, “sensitivity to
suffering is a sign of grace and also a litmus test of our fidelity to the
passionate Creator God” (Linzey, After
132). “Kindness
to animals is a small yet necessary part of a decent and holy life, essential
if only as a check against human arrogance and our tendency to worship
ourselves, our own works and appetites and desires instead of our Creator and
His works” (Scully 99).
While kindness may not always be profitable, “[t]here are truths greater than
our own wishes” (Scully 310). In the
Christian tradition there is “a higher law regarding [animal] care and we must
answer to it—not just when it suits us, not just when we feel the spirit upon
us, and not just when it’s cost-efficient, but always” (Scully 308). The
New Testament commands: “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful” (Lk.
6:36). Jesus was concern for the weak
and vulnerable, those exploited and overlooked. For Christians, the “more
deeply someone can be damaged by our cruelty, the greater is our obligation to
show mercy. And our cruelty damages no
one more deeply than the defenseless animals on whom we turn our terrible
power” (Phelps, Dominion 152).
Christian mercy extends “to all the living souls who find themselves in our dominion”
(Phelps, Dominion 154). Mercy is at the heart of our relationship
with God, and at the heart of our relationship with animals. As we require mercy, so do they. “Why just say grace when you can show it?” (Scully 45). “Any theology which
desensitizes us to suffering” cannot be Christian theology, for Christianity is
“centered on the divine vindication of innocent suffering” (Linzey, After 132).
“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they
will be called children of God” (Mat. 5:9). “At the heart of the Christian Gospel is the dream of universal
peace, a world where humans are no longer violent and cruel to other creatures”
(Linzey, Animal Gospel 81). The New Testament teaches that “wisdom from
above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy”
and that a “harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace”
(James 3:17-18 ). The peacemakers
exemplify the Christian life because the
Godly spirit “continually seeks to lead the human race out of the violence and
selfishness that made a hell out of the paradise” (Hyland, Slaughter 3).
The
Christian spiritual life promotes peace with every creature, and creates a
spirit of universal benevolence (Murti).
Universal peace will
not come of its own accord. Christians are
to, “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Mat. 6:33),
and are to remember that “love, compassion, and peace” are at the core of
righteousness and God’s kingdom (Kaufman 2).
For Christians, a peaceful, compassionate lifestyle, and the anticipated
peace that is to follow, are the actualization of “the knowledge of the Lord” (Guthrie 598). Christians, then, are to strive for
universal peace, a vision that is central to the Christian way of life and
anticipated for the future. Christians
“cannot be true ambassadors of Christ’s peace nor agents for the world’s
reconciliation,” if they do not have peaceful intent (Kaufman 41). By working for universal peace in our
daily lives, Christians “cooperate with God’s Spirit in the work of wholeness
and renewal” (Linzey, After
109).
More fundamental even than the beatitudes is the New Testament commandment to
love. Love is “the paramount
scripture... essential to the Christian
way of life” (Allen 12: 214). “Cogito
ergo sum: ‘I think, therefore I am’?
Nonsense. Amo ergo sum: ‘I love, therefore I am’” (Coffin 11). Almost all Christians agree that love is
“the paramount scripture . . .
essential to the Christian way of life” (Allen 12:214).
1
John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16 state simply, “God is love.” In this passage love is “not merely an attribute of God but
defines his nature, though in a practical rather than philosophic sense. . .
. God’s nature is not exhausted by the
quality of love, but love governs all its aspects and expressions” (Buttrick
12: 280). Christian sensitivity to
suffering measures fidelity to a compassionate Creator and is understood to
originate in the munificence of divine love, which connects each of us with the
Almighty (Allen 12: 214).
Christian service entails
generous, risky love, such service is central to the ministry of Jesus. “If we love nothing, we suffer little, if at
all” (Linzey, After 102). As God was born and died for mortal,
earthling creations, Christians are to engage in costly, loving condescension
toward creation. Jesus as moral exemplar provides a
paradigm for a way of life that ends on the cross. He revealed
“the sacrificial nature of lordship,” calling Christians to a similar servitude
(Linzey, Christianity 87, 96). Jesus models a life of all-embracing love
culminating in death on the cross, the ultimate sacrifice. Christians
are to seek redemption by entering into suffering, by serving as Christ served,
by helping the powerless animals under our dominion, and thereby sharing some
of what Jesus suffered on our account.
An
understanding of Christian love, or of God’s love, that limits care and
affection “is spiritually impoverished” (Linzey, 1997: 131).
Love is not a “zero-sum game” or some
sort of hydraulic fluid whose volume is perforce static. This is the argument of “compassion fatigue”
and it only holds short-term.
Long-term, all religions and especially Christianity, teach that one can
expand one’s capacity to love, and ought consciously to do so. (Halley, Unpublished communication)
Christianity teaches that one can expand
one’s capacity to love, and ought consciously to do so” (Halley, unpublished
manuscript). For practicing Christians,
love is understood to be limitless. “In
the story of the Good Samaritan and elsewhere, Christ expanded the idea of
‘love your neighbor’ outwards from the small circle of ‘Jews’ to a much larger
circle of people including Samaritans….
St. Paul continued the process (Gal. 3:28), extending the circle to
include all gentiles…. Perhaps there is
no limit” (Halley, Unpublished). Christians must not condemn animals “with
a zero-sum vision of compassion that assumes a fixed and finite reserve of
available love” (Scully 139). Christian
spirituality entails a vision of limitless love, and a life that reflects this
understanding.
And what is this Gospel? It is nothing less than the conviction and
experience that God loves the whole world.
What we see in Jesus is the revelation of an inclusive, all-embracing,
generous loving. A loving that washes the
feet of the world. A loving that heals
individuals from oppression, both physical and spiritual. A loving that takes sides with the poor,
vulnerable, diseased, hated, despised, and outcasts of his day. A loving that is summed up in his absolute
commitment to love at all costs, even in extreme suffering and death. (Linzey, Animal
Gospel 23)
The “love of God is inclusive not only of
humans but also all creatures”
(Linzey, Animal Gospel 24). To “know the Word made flesh requires that
we honor all flesh” (Linzey, After 103). Jesus was of the flesh, and Christians view Jesus as God. Jesus was God born as animal; God the
primate.
Christianity is rooted in “compassionate service to others” and affirms
personal responsibility to care for all
that has been created (French 488).
“God’s love is free, generous and unlimited,” and it is “a poor theology
that wants to limit love” (Animal Gospel
24, 69). The New Testament informs
that the “fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). Christians are expected to strive for these
attributes of spiritual excellence.
Scripture demands a life of sacrificial, Christ-like love, which
originates in the munificence of God’s love and connects Christians with God
(Allen 12:214).
Christians
are obligated to work toward bringing about a peaceful kingdom on earth
(Buttrick 7: 312), to participate in the “final triumph of God’s will” through daily life (Allen 8: 115, Kaufman 30-31).
“Until all violence is
overcome by love, . . . creation
remains unfinished and incomplete” (Linzey, After
76). “Jesus affirmed that doing God’s will is essential to entering heaven”
(Kaufman 29). Hearing is not enough,
Christians must act on the teachings
of Jesus, to live lives of love and service.
“Jesus
did not advise his followers to wait patiently for the realm of God, but to
seek it actively” (Kaufman 31).
“The Lord’s Prayer,” one of the most commonly
repeated New Testament passages, reminds the devout: “Your kingdom come. / Your
will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mat. 6:10). The Peaceable Kingdom of the Old Testament,
the idyllic vision for the future, involves all Christians. The fulfillment of God’s plan can and will
happen on this very earth through the “work of all who believe in Jesus Christ
and his kingdom” (Buttrick 5: 250-51).
Jesus did not teach an otherworldly
religion; he did not tell his followers to accept the injustices of this world
and piously look forward to an afterlife in which goodness and justice would
rule. To the contrary, he told his
followers that they were to behave in such a way that life on earth would be a
reflection of the goodness of the heavenly kingdom. He told them to pray that God’s “will be done, on earth as it is
in heaven.” (Mat. 6:10) (Hyland, God’s 85)
Humans
have been “commissioned to liberate God’s creation” (Linzey, Animal Theology 71). Jesus commanded us to help those in need—whoever “those” might be. The life of
Jesus calls us to extend moral consideration—justice and compassion—to all of
creation. “Solidarity with victims, . .
. and action on behalf of justice” must now embrace “other species” (Johnson
15). The justice of God “extends to the smallest part of creation”
(Linzey, After 127). The devout are to spread Christian “care as
far and wide as possible, to be His instruments in a loving concern for all
creation” (Scully 20). The function of
the church is as “guardian of creation” (Daneel 535).
The life of Jesus and the Christian moral
imperative to act on behalf of the downtrodden must now be “extended to nature:
nature is the ‘new poor’; nature deserves justice” (McFague 30). All of creation is worthy of our attention
and spiritual energy. How we treat animals matters. “For [animals] as for us, if there is any
hope at all then it is the same hope, and the same love, and the same God” who
promises a return of universal peace on earth (Scully 398). The
Christian life is “witness to Christ’s love, compassion, and peace,” and
Christians are to “have a sense of contributing to God’s plan to reconcile all
Creation” to a peaceful, vegan world (Kaufman 48).
Christian morality is demanding,
all-encompassing, and rooted in compassion.
In the Gospels, Jesus
reminds that “only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” will enter
the kingdom of heaven (Mat. 7:21). “How we treat our fellow creatures is only
one more way in which each one of us, every day, writes our own epitaph—bearing
into the world a message of light and life or just more darkness and death,
adding to the world’s joy or to its despair” (Scully 398). Christians must ask themselves: “Do I seek to
help reconcile the world to God’s original intentions? Do I, to the best of my ability, express the
love, compassion, and peace of Christ?” (Kaufman 50).
When a man’s love of finery clouds his
moral judgment, that is vanity. When he
lets a demanding palate make his moral choices, that is gluttony. When he ascribes the divine will to his own
whims, that is pride. And when he gets
angry at being reminded of animal suffering that his own daily choices might
help to avoid, that is moral cowardice.
(Scully 121)
Faith in Jesus
“can, and should, make a difference
to our daily interactions with other creatures” (Linzey, Animal Gospel 13).
Christ transforms “human character, and will ultimately change the whole
creation” (Guthrie 598).
Christian
“regard for animals requires
actually giving up a few things” (Scully 107).
The Christian commitment to end suffering will be complex,
varied, and costly (as is Christian love and care for humans). “[T]o
stand with Jesus means to stand against the abuse of animals” (Linzey, Animal Gospel 13). Either the suffering
of other creatures “has moral value or it does not have moral value. Either there is a God or there isn’t. Either He cares about animals or He
doesn’t. Either we have duties of
kindness or we do not” (Scully 310). For Christians, the question at stake is
“whether to side with the powerful and the comfortable or with the weak,
afflicted, and forgotten. Whether, as.
. . economic actor[s] in a free market, [they] answer to the god of money or to
the God of mercy” (Scully 325). The question
is: What will you have for lunch?
Inasmuch as Jesus is present in all love and life here on earth, he is also
present in all suffering (Linzey, Animal
Theology 48-52). In “Still Falls
the Rain,” Edith Sitwell expresses the ongoing suffering of humanity, the
suffering of all life at the hands of humanity, including the suffering of
Jesus: “Still falls the rain— / Dark as the world of man, black as our
loss—Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the Cross.” Sitwell describes ongoing, human-induced
misery, and how God suffers with our indifference and cruelty:
He
bears in His Heart all wounds,--those of the light that died,
The
last faint spark
In
the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The
wounds of the baited bear,--
The
blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On
his helpless flesh . . . the tears of the hunted hare.
“If God is
pre-eminently present in the suffering of the vulnerable, the undefended, the
unprotected and the innocent, God’s suffering presence is to be located . .
. in the suffering of all the vulnerable, undefended,
unprotected and innocent in this world, including animals” (Linzey, After 129).
One
act of kindness, one way to make “earth as it is in heaven” is to become a
vegan. Steve Kaufman, founder of the
Christian Vegetarian Association, comments that a vegan diet is neither a
burden nor self-sacrifice, but part of a broader spiritual life “manifesting
core values such as love, compassion, and peace” (1). Many early Christians expressed their attentiveness to God’s creation
by abstaining from eating flesh.
James (Jesus’ brother) was widely
recognized as a vegetarian, and ancient sources also describe Matthew and all
the apostles as abstaining from flesh.
Many early church leaders practiced vegetarianism, including Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Arnobius, the Desert Fathers,
John Chrysostom, Jerome, and Tertullian.
Augustine, . . . acknowledged in the fourth century that Christian
vegetarians were “without number”.
(Kaufman 28)
Christians
living in the image of God will not “satisfy a taste preference at the expense
of others’ suffering,” but rather, will “reach out and assist those in need”
(Kaufman 30). Christians who respect
creation will assist God in “reconciling all Creation to a peaceful [vegan]
world. Because meat eating contributes
to environmental degradation and harms creatures whose spark of life. . .
derives from God, every meal in which we abstain from flesh becomes a prayerful
expression of love and respect for God” (Kaufman 2).
The human body is “a temple of the Holy Spirit” in the Christian spiritual
vision (1 Cor. 6:19). A flesh-based
diet is linked with leading health problems: heart disease, cancers, and
obesity, and numerous other serious health problems. A vegan diet will “help take care of animals, the earth, and our
bodies” and also helps to feed those who are poor by feeding grains to people,
instead of cattle, pigs, and chickens (Kaufman ix). A vegan diet is not only good for animals, but for all of creation.
A flesh-based diet “wastes about 80-90%
percent of grains’ proteins, 90-96% of their calories, 100 percent of their
carbohydrate, and 100 percent of their fiber.
If Americans reduce their meat consumption by 10 percent, newly
available croplands could provide enough food to feed those who die of
malnutrition and starvation. While
political and social factors significantly impact world hunger, Christians
could significantly help reduce world hunger if they chose plant-based diets. More grains would be available for hungry
people, and people could donate the money they saved to hunger relief. (Kaufman 18)
For
Christians, a vegan diet “expresses core Christian principles such as love,
compassion, peace, justice, and mercy. . . , helps spare animals from suffering
and death, preserve[s] human health, alleviate[s] world hunger, and prevent[s]
environmental degradation” (Kaufman 5).
For Christians, our God-given duty to serve creation does not permit
feeding 70% of the grain crop to cattle, causing soil erosion and the
destruction of rainforests for grazing cattle, nor does it allow for the use of
chemicals and fossil fuels, pollutants and poisons, or heaps of animal
waste—all of which are part and parcel of a flesh-based diet. The Christian duty to serve and lovingly
tend creation does not permit Christians to deplete the seas merely for the
taste of fish. “A diet that preserves
our health and avoids harming others expresses love. . . . [W]hen we consider our desires more
important than the well-being of others, we stray from Jesus’ message of mercy,
peace, and love” (Kaufman 30-31).
Conclusion
Christians accept the creation story of the Tanakh, which provides a spiritual
vision where all of creation is morally important, and where humans are the
servants of God, tending creation. For
those of the Christian faith, God is the measure of all, not human beings. Exemplary Christians, including saints,
reveal that those who are close to God are compassionate toward all creatures. The core of the Christian tradition is love;
Christians are called to love all that God has created. The Christian life is not passive, but
active. Through a Christ-like life,
those of faith are to recreate the peaceful world God intended, in which there
will be no exploitation or bloodshed. The Christian spiritual life is modeled
on the compassion of Jesus, both man and God, champion of the oppressed,
servant to those in need, protector of the abused.
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