The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian Thought: A Study in Colliding Values

Rod Preece and David Fraser,1
The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian
Thought: A Study in Colliding Values
ABSTRACT
A common contemporary view is that the Bible and subsequent
Christian thought authorize humans to exploit animals purely as
means to human ends.This paper argues that Biblical and Christian
thought have given rise to a more complex ethic of animal use
informed by its pastoralist origins, Biblical pronouncements that
permit different interpretations, and competing ideas and doc-
trines that arose during its development, and in uenced by the
rich and often contradictory features of ancient Hebrew and
Greco-Roman traditions. The result is not a uniform ethic but a
tradition of unresolved debate. Differing interpretations of the
Great Chain of Being and the con ict over animal experimenta-
tion demonstrate the colliding values inherent in the complex his-
tory of Biblical and Christian thought on animals.
Recent secular interpretations have tended to por-
tray Biblical and Christian thought as encourag-
ing the domination and exploitation of nonhuman
animals. For example, Edward Payson Evans, Lynn
White Jr., Peter Singer, and Roderick Frazier Nash,2
among many others, have interpreted the Genesis
account of creation as the beginning of Judeo-
Christian oppression of animals and nature. In
Society & Animals 8:3 (2000)
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2000Genesis, God gave humankind “dominion over the sh of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”3 This is often read as God’s
granting a license to treat animated nature as a mere means to human ends.
Genesis is the origin, it is frequently argued, of a consistent Christian disre-
gard for the value and well being of animals. Thus, White interpreted the
Biblical creation story to mean that God had planned all of nonhuman nature,
“explicitly for man’s bene t and rule: no item in the physical creation had
any purpose but to serve man’s purposes.” And Singer prefaced his account
of Christian thought regarding animals with the statement: “To end tyranny
we must rst understand it.”
It is our contention, however, that such interpretations constitute a misread-
ing of Genesis, that they ignore traditional understanding of Biblical passages
regarding animals, and that they fail to recognize the complexity of the devel-
opment of animal ethics in the Christian tradition. We do not contend that
the tradition has consistently acknowledged the inherent worth of animals
or has led to satisfactory treatment of animals. Rather, it is a complex and
inchoate tradition in which the status and appropriate treatment of animals
have been repeatedly discussed and debated.
Animals in the Scriptures
It was one of Karl Marx’s more perceptive insights, later borrowed by deter-
minist sociologists in general, that a society’s values and ideas re ect pri-
marily the self-serving demands of the society’s economic organization.
According to that view, attitudes to animals in Christian thought must rst
be understood in the context of the pastoralist culture in which they arose.
The pastoralist economy hinges on the use of domestic animals as reposito-
ries of wealth, sources of food, and items of trade. In Marxian analysis, ani-
mals must be viewed as possessions that can be used for human purposes;
moreover, for pastoralists to prosper, perhaps even to survive, these living
possessions must be treated with appropriate care.
What Marxian economic determinism obscures from our view is that this bal-
ance between ownership and care was achieved in early Biblical thought by
granting animals a special status. Unlike human artifacts such as the hoe and
246
Rod Preece and David Fraserthe plough, animals were seen as having been created by God and entrusted
to humans for care in a relationship that the translators of the Bible into
English termed “dominion,” a translation that does scant justice to the Hebrew
term radâ.4
This term can be interpreted in two ways. One is a kind of despotic domi-
nation such as the subjugation of one people by their enemies (Judges 14:4;
Nehemiah 9:28). The other, as John Passmore notes, would imply treating
animals “in a manner of a good shepherd, anxious to preserve them in the
best possible condition for his master.”5 In the second sense, “dominion” was
also used to describe God’s relationship with the world (Psalm 72:8). Writers
such as White and Singer evidently assume that the dominion granted to
humans in Genesis implied despotic subjugation. According to Andrew Linzey,
however, this interpretation “con icts with a great deal of scholarly evidence.”
Linzey points out that human dominion over other creatures was granted in
the context of creating humans in God’s image. In that context, humans were
intended to share not only some of God’s prerogative but also, in Linzey’s
words, “his moral nature”, acting toward creation as God had done, bring-
ing order to chaos and bringing blessing and goodness, not tyrannical mas-
tery, to the world.6
Indeed, that was the more customary historical interpretation of “dominion.”
In Seasons of 1728, James Thomson, former divinity student, understood our
role as “the Lord and not the Tyrant of the world.” In Self-Interpreting Bible
of 1776 John Brown, the staid Biblical traditionalist, declared it an “honourable
dominion over the creatures.” “Gentle dominion,” avowed George Nicholson
in his 1801 On the Primeval Diet of Man. In 1802, Joseph Ritson described the
dominion of Genesis as instituted, “for the sake of authority, protection, and
the glorious of ces of benevolence and humanity.” In her popular novel Agnes
Grey (1847) Anne Brontë insisted that the passage, together with other Biblical
texts, implied a signi cant human responsibility to what she called our fel-
low “sentient creatures,” although her commentary also showed how the
issue was a cause of constant dispute between the compassionate and the
sel sh. Other commentators too saw the message of stewardship and res-
ponsibility extending well beyond Genesis. Thus, in An Essay on Humanity
to Animals (1798), the Anglican priest, Thomas Young, cites passages from
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Proverbs, Jonah, St. Matthew and
The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian Thought
2471 Corinthians to argue that God cares for the animal realm and requires us
to do likewise. Victor Hugo, a Roman Catholic, tells us in Les Misérables (1862)
that according to St. Matthew “duty to all living creatures” is one of the four
duties of humankind.7
The scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, repeatedly reinforced the care
aspect of the relationship. For the great King David, an early indication of
his suitability as a monarch was his diligence and courage in protecting his
father’s sheep (1 Samuel 17:35). Later, when the prophet Nathan rebuked
David for abusing his power, he did so by rst telling a story about a poor
man who lavished care and affection on a lamb (2 Samuel 12:2), thus not
only evoking David’s sympathy but also reminding him of the proper rela-
tionship of monarch to subject. When God selected Rebecca as the wife of
Isaac and the mother of her nation, the sign that she had been chosen was
her willingness, when asked for water by a thirsty stranger, to water his
camels as well, “until they have had enough” (Genesis 24:19) - itself no mean
feat. Indeed, a conscientious shepherd protecting a ock of sheep was such
a positive image that it became a common metaphor for divine goodness
(Psalm 23:1-4), and sometimes descriptions of divine love even began to sound
like lessons in animal husbandry:
For these are the words of the Lord God: Now I myself will ask after my
sheep and go in search of them. As a shepherd goes in search of his sheep
when his
ock is dispersed all around him, so will I go in search of my
sheep and rescue them no matter where they were scattered. . . . I myself
will tend my
ock, I myself pen them in their fold, says the Lord God. I
will search for the lost, recover the straggler, bandage the hurt, strengthen
the sick, leave the healthy and strong to play, and give them their proper
food. Ezekiel 34:11-16 (The New English Bible)
Thus, the pastoralist culture of the Bible could hardly be described, other
than for ideological reasons, as encouraging ruthless exploitation of animals.
It was, rather, a culture that recognized animals both as possessions who can
be used and killed for human purposes and, at the same time, as wards
entrusted by God to humans for diligent care.
These two elements, though making sense in a pastoralist context, may appear
contradictory in later historical contexts, and perhaps this seeming contra-
248
Rod Preece and David Fraserdiction has encouraged many modern scholars to emphasize one element,
usually the
rst, at the expense of the other. Perhaps the very existence of
this tension, heightened by the plausibility of different interpretations of
Biblical texts has encouraged an ongoing debate in the Christian tradition.
A third element also important in Christian thought, if less stressed in Biblical
texts, furthers this tension. The scriptures and later Christian philosophy
sometimes treat animals not merely as living possessions deserving diligent
care but, by a relationship bordering on kinship, as close links to humankind -
partly because both humans and other species came into existence as works
of God. Thus, the writer of Ecclesiastes (3:18-20) noted that humans and ani-
mals alike are created from dust, return to dust, and that “all draw the same
breath.” Isaiah (11:6-8) describes a kinship utopia in which the wolf dwells
with the lamb, the leopard lies with the fatling, and the child has no fear of
the asp.
Unlike the often quoted account of creation in the more recent P-narrative
(Genesis 1), in which humans are told to “subdue” the earth and have “domin-
ion” over other species, the older J-narrative (Genesis 2) presents a very dif-
ferent view of the human-animal relationship. In The Yahwist’s Landscape,
Theodore Hiebert explained that P’s view is conspicuously hierarchical. At
creation, God commands humans to rule (radâ), to exercise dominion over
other animate life (1.28).
Whether one wishes to construe such rule as benevolent or harsh - and both
are possible within the limits of the term in biblical usage - there can be no
doubt that radâ represents control and power, since it is used customarily of
kings and always of those with authority over others. By contrast, J conceives
of this relationship in terms that are more communal. As animals and humans
alike are made from the earth’s topsoil, they possess no distinct ontological
status, both being referred to simply as living beings . . .8
In the J-narrative, we read that God placed the rst man in the garden and
then, out of concern that the man was alone, formed the animals and the
birds and brought them to him, though none proved to be a fully satisfac-
tory companion. Later, God’s promise never again to ood the earth took the
form of a covenant made not only with humans but with all animals as well
(Genesis 9:9-17).
The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian Thought
249Other passages explicitly extend human moral requirements beyond those
of pastoralist husbandry. The Talmud tells us, “It is forbidden, according to
the law of Torah, to in ict pain upon any living creature, even if it is own-
erless,” thus indicating that our responsibilities extend to animalkind in gen-
eral, not only to animals as possessions. The writer of Proverbs (12:10) tells
us that it is a “righteous” person (not merely a prudential one) who avoids
cruelty and “regardeth the life of his beast.” Moreover, the Book of Enoch
(7:4-5), a Judaic text of around A.D. 150,9 almost certainly based on earlier
sources, tells us that it was only after the
ood that humans “began to sin
against birds and beasts and reptiles and sh, and to devour one another’s
esh and to drink the blood.” Early Christians accepted The Book of Enoch
as one of the Holy Scriptures.10 A fourth century Bishop of Constantinople,
John Chrysostom, proclaimed: “Surely we ought to show other [species] great
kindness and goodness for many reasons, but above all because they are of
the same origin as ourselves.”11
Many animal-oriented Biblical passages pertain to domestic animals, which
is scarcely surprising in a pastoralist context. Biblical references to wild ani-
mals are often less positive. For example, David was celebrated for having
killed wild animals when necessary to protect his father’s sheep. Nonetheless,
various passages portray wild animals as also important to God. Psalm 104,
for example, portrays God as having created the earth for the bene t of wild
animals and birds as much as for humans and their domestic herds and ocks.
Moreover, in the speech to Job from the whirlwind, God uses a series of
rhetorical questions to illustrate divine care for species of animals that are of
no utility to humans. God asks, for example, “Who provides the raven with
its quarry when its edglings croak for lack of food? Do you know when the
mountain-goats are born or attend the wild doe when she is in labour? . . . Who
has let the wild ass of Syria range at will and given the wild ass of Arabia
its freedom?” (Job 38:41; Job 39:1 & 5, New English Bible).
Some of those of faith have described a sense of kinship with animals a deriv-
able not only from the scriptures but also from reason (John Locke), or from
the intuitions of the human soul (Dostoevsky and Tolstoy). Carl Gustav Jung
describes it as resting “on the deeper foundations of a primitive attitude of
mind - on an unconscious identity with animals.”12 These thinkers and authors
of the scriptural passages just cited believe that a form of kinship links ani-
250
Rod Preece and David Frasermals to us, that animals are more than just our wards, and are worthy of con-
cern in their own right.
The Great Chain of Being
In the development of Christian animal ethics many traditional legends empha-
sizing our relationship to the animal realm were Christianized and localized.
Androcles and the lion, for example, became St. Jerome and the lion in the
west, St. Sergey and the bear in the east. Many of the saints were known by,
and sometimes sancti ed for, their animal relationships. Along with the famed
case of St. Francis of Assisi, we
nd, for example, Blaise as patron saint of
sick cattle, who gave sanctuary to wild animals, Gall as patron saint of birds,
who shared his cave dwelling with a bear, and numerous other instances.13
This does not dispel the colliding values inherent in Christian thought. A lov-
ing father may well have related St. Jerome and the lion to his children of an
evening before visiting the churchyard the next day to participate in a cock ght
more or less sanctioned by the clergy.14
It is, however, with the development of the idea of the Great Chain of Being
(scala naturae) - described by Arthur O. Lovejoy as “one of the half-dozen
most potent and persistent presuppositions in Western thought”15 - that we
encounter most clearly the inherent tension in attitudes to animals. The con-
cept had its origins in classical Greece but was rst systematized by the veg-
etarian, Plotinus, in the third century A.D., and it came to the fore in the early
Middle Ages, dominating Western thought until the latter half of the eight-
eenth century. The doctrine arranges everything in nature hierarchically in
its appropriate niche, from the angels through humankind (in some versions
with Europeans before Asians, Amerindians, and Africans and men before
women) to the higher mammals to the lowest insects.
In recent scholarship, the negative elements of the Great Chain have been
emphasized, claiming that the doctrine differentiated superior humans from
lesser creatures and that humans were free to use animals at their whim.
David Maybury-Lewis asserts that in the chain, “man . . . was most perfect,”
which persuaded “man . . . that the natural world was his to exploit.”16 Richard
Milner tells us that the scale treated the inferior realm as “base.”17 The doc-
trine, so we are led to believe, was oppressive of other species. And so it was
The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian Thought
251in some cases. François Fénelon (1615-1715), theologian Archbishop of Cambrai,
used the phrase, “more perfect,” to describe human superiority. In addition,
Fénelon followed Aristotle and Aquinas in asserting, “in nature not only the
plants but the animals are made for our use.”18 Cornelius a Lapide (1567-
1637), a Flemish Jesuit, went even further, announcing, “lice,
ies, maggots
and the like were not created directly by God but by spontaneous genera-
tion, as lice from sweat.”19 Such creatures were so beyond signi cance in the
scale that God would not have deigned to create them.
It is, however, a gross misreading of the scala naturae to deem it a consistent
repudiation of the worth of animals. The writings of Macrobius, Cardinal
Bellarmino, and Leibniz 20 emphasized the proximity to each other of the
beings of the chain. In Instinct Displayed (1811) the Quaker, Priscilla Wake eld,
used the idea of the chain to argue the case for our responsibilities to other
creatures.21 In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), the Puritan,
John Locke, laid stress on nonhuman reason and the linkage of everything
in nature:
There are some Brutes, that seem to have as much Knowledge and Reason
as some that are called Men; and the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms are
so nearly join’d, that if you will take the lowest of one, and the highest of
the other, there will scarce be perceived any great difference between them;
and so on till we come to the lowest and most inorganical parts of Matter,
we shall see everywhere, that the several Species are linked together, and
differ but in almost insensible degrees. 22
In Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), Locke draws the appropriate con-
clusions and insists that children should be raised to abhor the mistreatment
of “sensible,” that is, sentient, creatures. In Essay on Man (1734), Alexander
Pope, a Roman Catholic, writes that the interdependence of human and ani-
mal should be stressed:
Vast chain of being, which from God began. . . . Connects each being, great-
est with the least; Made Beast in aid of Man, and Man of Beast; All serv’d,
all serving! Nothing stands alone; The Chain holds on, and where it ends,
unknown. (1.8.5 and 3.1.22-26)
252
Rod Preece and David FraserIn Metamorphose der Tiere (1819), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe states explic-
itly: “Each animal is an end in itself (Zweck sein selbst ist jegliches Tier).” Goethe
followed Leibniz and Spinoza in arguing that each animal species is in itself
an instance of perfected design, in contrast to the view of Fénelon and oth-
ers that perfection increases as we move higher in the Great Chain. The con-
tinuity of nature was an important theme for Goethe who invested considerable
energy in anatomical research to prove that there is no signi cant disconti-
nuity between humans and other species. Moreover, Nicholas Boyle, Goethe’s
nest biographer, goes so far as to assert that after 1783, for Goethe, “the
supreme religious issue is not the relation between men and gods . . . but the
relation between man and animals.”23
In the late eighteenth century, the poetry of the devout and mystical William
Blake and the Divine Love and Wisdom of the equally devout and mystical
William Swedenborg emphasized an anti-rationalist appreciation of the ani-
mal realm, apparently unconstrained by the Great Chain concept. Nonetheless,
the dominant theological in uence in the late eighteenth century and in much
of the nineteenth century was William Paley’s “Theory from Design,” which
greatly resembled the Great Chain of Being and could be used, like the Chain
itself, to elevate or demean the animal realm. Explicitly in the writings of
John Ray (a pre-Paleyan exponent of the theory), Gilbert White, and William
Cowper, we nd the theory employed to raise the status of animals.24
Thus, it is unwarranted to imagine the Great Chain, or its Paleyan deriva-
tive, as solely, or even primarily, a justi cation for oppression. It was, like so
much of Western thought, a doctrine that allowed different interpretations
and emphases and constituted one of the arenas of colliding values that have
suffused Christian animal ethics.
Animal Experimentation
The collision of values is again clear in the centuries-long debate on animal
experimentation. Traditionally, René Descartes is offered as the exemplar of
the Christian rationalist tradition, treating animals as irrational machines on
whom experimentation may be performed without fear of wronging them.
In recent years, there has been a dispute as to whether Descartes allows for
animal sensation25 but little disagreement about whether Descartes felt his
The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian Thought
253theory justi ed his own animal experimentation or whether other animal
experimenters used Descartes’ views to justify their use of animals. Of per-
haps greater importance, many modern commentators have asserted that
Cartesianism has become the pervasive later attitude in the Western world.
To take but one example, Jim Mason tells us that,
More than any other thinker, Descartes detached humanity from the nat-
ural world and set it up as the ruling class, aloof from and absolutely unre-
lated to its underlings. From him we get the thinking that prevails in the
modern era - that of a human race so superior to the rest of nature that we
are distinctly apart from it.26
Mason’s claim has some merit, but, in its hyperbole, it distorts both Descartes’
view and, more emphatically, its role in the later Christian tradition. Thus,
in a 1645 letter, Descartes’ advice is that one should not “imagine . . . the earth
[made] for the bene t of man, [nor attribute] to other creatures imperfections
which do not belong to them, in order to raise himself above them.”27 Moreover,
many Christians were aghast at Descartes’ apparent treatment of animals as
nothing more than machines. Henry More, the celebrated Cambridge Platonist
who greatly in uenced Isaac Newton, accosted Descartes in a 1648 letter
“with the internecine and cutthroat idea that you advance in the [Discourse
on] Method, which snatches life and sensibility away from all the animals . . .”28;
and in his Metaphysical Colloquy of 1641 Pierre Gassendi, a Roman Catholic
priest, ridiculed Descartes’ illogical inconsistencies with regard to the ratio-
nality and sentience of animals.29 The very reason that we know that Port-
Royal Jansenist vivisectors deemed the cries of their canine victims nailed to
a board as “only the noise of a little spring that had been touched” is because
of the ire the seminarians aroused.30 And Robert Boyle, the reputed English
chemist, complained in 1686 that,
The veneration wherewith men are imbued for what they call nature has
been a discouraging impediment to the empire of man over the inferior
creatures of God: for many have not only looked upon it, as an impossible
thing to compass, but as something impious to attempt.31
We should take at least as much note of the “many” who found the experi-
ments “impious” as of the views of the experimenters.
254
Rod Preece and David FraserLater, we may encounter Claude Bernard being aware of the animals on
whom he experimented as nothing but organisms that conceal from him the
problem he is seeking to resolve. Bernard’s Introduction to the Study of
Experimental Medicine (1865) convinced the medical community of the value
of the arti cial production of disease by chemical and physical means through
reliance on animal models.32 Nonetheless, we should not imagine Bernard as
the ultimate representative of an ongoing Cartesian victory. Those who were
appalled at animal experimentation included Joseph Addison, Alexander
Pope, Samuel Johnson, Victor Hugo, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Lord Tennyson,
Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin and C. S. Lewis.33 To take but a few examples,
in To Mr. Congreve (1693), Jonathan Swift, the Dean of St. Patrick’s, re ected
and advanced public antipathies to the scienti c passion for dissecting ani-
mals dead and alive. In Miscellanies I (1743), Henry Fielding, the novelist,
penned a satirical and caustic parody on Experiments on the Cuttle sh by
Abraham Tremblay, as reported in the proceedings of the Royal Society (407,
January 1742/3). Robert Browning wrote two anti-vivisection poems (“Tray”
(1879) and “Arcades Ambo” (1889)) and remarked further that he would
“rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a sin-
gle dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two.”34
Robert Louis Stevenson strenuously opposed experiments on proverbial guinea
pigs, even though the experiments were designed to provide a cure for a dis-
ease from which he suffered.35
If one follows the determinists, Marxian or otherwise, in understanding ideas
and values in their economic and social context, one may recognize that the
human health interests of the society, the professional and pecuniary inter-
ests of the experimenters, and the personal interests of the af icted will have
played a major role in determining their attitudes toward experimentation.
Thus, their “unconscious identity with animals” (Jung) would have threat-
ened their economic, social, and medical needs. Cartesianism provided a con-
venient philosophical rationalization. However, it would be unwarranted to
conclude, as the above examples of opponents of animal experimentation
re ect, that human self-interest was always dominant.
The Complexity of the Con icts
In much of the recent intellectual discussion of Christian animal ethics,
we encounter the assumption that the Christian voice is one. For example,
The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian Thought
255several writers have referred to the Christian doctrine that animals do not
have immortal souls.36 Certainly, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, among
many others, conform to the supposed doctrine, even though they acknowl-
edge a minor level of obligation toward other species - Augustine telling us
it would be inappropriate to kill even a
y to gain a coveted award37 and
Aquinas praising the merits of kindness toward animals.38 Yet, the popular
and in uential kabbalist, Robert Flood (1574-1637), proclaimed that immor-
tal souls inhabited animals as well as humans, a view reiterated by the devout
William Wordsworth (among many other Romantics, including Coleridge
and Southey)39 at the turn of the nineteenth century. In Man’s Mortality (1643),
Richard Overton, the revolutionary Puritan leveler, proclaimed, “all other
Creatures as well as man shall be raised and delivered from death at the res-
urrection.”40 The view was consistent with that of Arnobius and Origen in
the early Christian years, John of the Cross in the sixteenth century, John
Milton and the Cambridge Platonists (including Henry More) in the seven-
teenth, and repeated by the Reverend John Hildrop, the Reverend Richard
Dean, and Leibniz in the eighteenth. Moreover, Bishop Joseph Butler, with
Paley the most in uential Anglican theologian of the eighteenth century,
thought it a nigh certainty that animals had immortal souls while John Wesley,
founder of Methodism, could see no reason why they would not.41 Stevenson
thought dogs would be in heaven before any of us. Neither Christianity
speci cally, nor the Western mind generally, is in unison on the issue.
In fact, there are great varieties in attitudes to animals among, say, the Desert
Fathers of the fourth century, the Albigensians of the twelfth, Franciscans of
the thirteenth, Puritans of the seventeenth, of cial Catholics of the nineteenth,
and Old Order Mennonites of the twentieth. In addition, there is consider-
able variety within each of these. Close identi cation with animals was rel-
atively common among the Celtic saints but less so among the Italian saints.
Thus, the Christian attitude to animals is, in the words of Linzey, “an ambigu-
ous tradition.”42
As a generality, to which there are numerous exceptions, we may say the
unsympathetic Fénelon position played the major (but not sole) role in Catholic
thought, the sympathetic Goethian position found its major (but not sole)
expression in evangelical and secular traditions. As late as 1984, the Roman
Catholic Church was still reiterating the Aquinas-Fénelon message when Pope
256
Rod Preece and David FraserJohn Paul II announced, “it is certain that animals are intended for man’s
use,” though that did not imply that we lacked certain fairly minimal oblig-
ations toward them. The Goethian image looms large in the explicitly Christian
novels of the Brontë sisters, Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo and Tolstoy - covering
Protestant, Orthodox, unof cial Catholic and unorthodox Christian view-
points. When we look to early animal welfare legislation in Britain, evan-
gelical Christians are its prime (but not sole) movers, aided by the pens of
such established church animal welfare proponents as Richard Dean, Humphry
Primatt, Thomas Young, and John Styles.43 Indeed, the early English Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, instituted to enforce the legislation,
declared itself to be “conducted on exclusively Christian principles.”44
Thus far, in describing the con icting Christian views of animals, we have
tended to draw fairly simple battle lines and to locate different individuals
on opposite sides - Boyle, Descartes and Bernard as supporters of vivisection
and More, Swift and Johnson as opponents. With animal issues, however, we
often see a degree of con ict or contradiction within the thinking of individ-
uals, such that even writers commonly claimed as defenders of animal exploita-
tion often have another side to them. Notoriously, St. Augustine paid little
heed to animal interests, yet still avowed that
All things, which are, are good . . . beasts and all cattle, creeping things and
fowls of the air . . . praise Thy name. . . . I decided that all things above were
better than those below, but that both together were better than the things
above alone.”45
Equally notoriously, Immanuel Kant insisted that “Animals are not self-con-
scious, and are there merely as a means to an end. The end is man.” Yet Kant
appears less con dent of this conclusion when he adds, “the more we come
into contact with animals the more we love them, for we see how great is
their care for their young.” Further, William Leiss, in Domination of Nature,
tells us that Francis “Bacon’s great achievement was to formulate the con-
cept of human mastery over nature much more clearly than had been done
previously and to assign it a prominent place among men’s concerns.”46
Nonetheless, that selfsame Bacon around 1597 commended “Charity” to ani-
mals, and complimented the Turks because they “are kind to Beasts, and give
Alms to Dogs and Birds.” He averred that “The inclination of Goodness is
The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian Thought
257imprinted deeply in the nature of Man; insomuch that, if it issue not toward
Men, it will take unto other living creatures.” This he acknowledged a part
of the “Goodness of Nature.”47
To summarize, within Christian thought we see a history of con ict and
contradiction that de es any simple classi cation. Some of the con icts
involve different denominations with different views about the human-
animal relationship. However, within denominations, there also have been
competing views, and sometimes the debate has occurred within individ-
ual souls.
Concluding Remarks
Biblical and Christian thought presents us with a complex view of the status
of animals. At a fundamental level, animals are viewed through a pastoral-
ist lens, whereby certain use of animals is seen as legitimate while diligent
care of animals is highly valued. Nonetheless, Christianity shares with a num-
ber of other religions the belief that all creatures are God’s creatures and
recipients of divine concern. How these beliefs are to be interpreted and trans-
lated into action has been the subject of recurring debate. It has been a debate
in uenced by economic forces, ecclesiastical institutions, sheer individual and
collective self-interest, as well as by honest, legitimate, and well-considered
differences of interpretation. The result has been and likely always will be a
lack of consistency.
In describing the complexity of Biblical and Christian thought about animals,
we are not claiming that human treatment of animals in the West is, or has
been, salutary. Nonetheless, setting the record straight has important practi-
cal implications. If, as some have claimed, Christianity gives humans license
to dominate and exploit nonhuman animals at will, then any signi cant reform
in our treatment of animals would require a repudiation and reversal of the
West’s most in uential religion. But if, as we argue, the Christian tradition
is more complex, in many cases emphasizing both human and divine care of
animals while legitimizing certain forms of animal use, then at least some
reforms would require that the Christian West collectively remember, rather
than repudiate, its most fundamental principles of animal ethics.
258
Rod Preece and David FraserNotes
1
Correspondence should be sent to Rod Preece, Department of Political Science,
Wi rid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada, N2L 3C5 or David Fraser, Faculty
of Agricultural Sciences and Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia,
2357 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z4. We are indebted to Rev. Dr.
Gary Hauch and Rev. Dr. Terry Anderson for helpful and incisive comments on
the initial draft of this paper; and to Paul Waldau and an anonymous reviewer for
sound yet friendly critiques of the originally submitted paper.
2
Edward Payson Evans, Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology, New York: D.
Appleton, 1897; Lynn White, Jr., ‘The Historical Root of Our Ecologic Crisis,’ Science,
155, 1967, 1203-7; Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd edition, New York: New York
Review of Books, 1990; Roderick Frazier Nash, The Rights of Nature: A History of
Environmental Ethics, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. In a much more
perceptive interpretation of Biblical views, Schochet refers to domestic animals as
“the delicate tool” (63), while noting that this utilitarian attitude was balanced by
feelings of compassion for, and kinship with, animals. Elijah Judah Schochet, Animal
Life in Jewish Tradition: Attitudes and Relationships, New York, KTAV Publishing
House, 1984, 46-79.
3
This is the King James version of Genesis 1, 26, the one traditionally used by those
who denounce the Christian tradition. As we shall see, interpretative translation
is a constant dif culty, especially with regard to ‘dominion’. Hereafter, we shall
employ the New English Bible translation for Biblical quotations.
4
For a learned discussion of the concept and its relation to justice, see Robert Murray,
The Cosmic Covenant: Biblical Themes of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation,
London: Sheed and Ward, 1992.
5
John Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature: Ecological Problems and Western
Traditions, London: Duckworth, 1974, 9.
6
Andrew Linzey, Christianity and the Rights of Animals, New York: Crossroad, 1991,
25-28.
7
James Thomson, The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence, ed. James Sambrook, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1972, 9, Seasons, ‘Spring,’ line 241; John Brown, Self-
Interpreting Bible, Glasgow: Blackie, 1834 (1776), 2: George Nicholson, George Nicholson’s
On the Primeval Diet of Man (1801): Vegetarianism and Human conduct Toward Animals,
ed. Rod Preece, Lampeter: Mellen, 1999, 12; John Ritson, An Essay on Abstinence
from Animal Food as a Moral Duty, London: Richard Phillips, 1802, 164; Anne Brontë,
Agnes Grey, London: Penguin, 1988 (1847), 105-6; Thomas Young, An Essay on
Humanity to Animals, London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1798, 9-33; Victor Hugo,
Les Misérables, trans. Norman Denny, London: Penguin, 1982 (1862), 81.
The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian Thought
2598
Theodore Hiebert, The Yahwist’s Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel, New
York: Oxford University Press, 157. Hiebert explains that the Pentateuch is thought
to consist of “a combination of four different sources or documents, authored by
four different writers living at different times in Israelite history.” (24) The oldest
have been attributed to the Yahwist and are designated J. These older narratives,
it is hypothesized, “were later incorporated into a new edition of Israel’s begin-
nings prepared by Priestly Writer(s)/Editor(s) (abbreviated P).” (24)
9
It has become customary to give dates as c.e. (common era) or b.c.e. (before com-
mon era). However, the commonality is restricted to the Abrahamic tradition. The
terms could thus appear demeaning to all outside that tradition. While BC and
AD are also agenda laden, it is now well known that they do not coincide with
the birth of Christ, and are thus arti cial, almost arbitrary, and, in our view, for
that reason preferable.
10
See George Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages, Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins, 1997 (1948), 187-8.
11 Homily 39 on the Epistle to the Romans.
12 C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Re ections, New York: Vintage, 1985 (1963), 101.
13 For a lengthy list, see E. S. Turner, All Heaven in a Rage, Fontwell: Centaur, 1992,
(1964), 25; and for an entirely separate one, Rod Preece, Animals and Nature: Cultural
Myths, Cultural Realities, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999, 127.
14
E. S. Turner, All Heaven in a Rage, 57, notes that medieval cock ghts on their
premises were acquiesced in by the church. It should be added, however, that the
clergy were forbidden to participate.
15
Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, New
York: Harper & Row, 1965 (1936), viii.
16
David Maybury-Lewis, Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World, New York:
Viking, 1992, 36, 37.
17
Richard Milner, The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity’s Search for Its Origins, New
York: Henry Holt, 1990, 201.
18 Quoted in Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 187.
19 See Seamus Deane’s notes to James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
London: Penguin, 1993, 324.
20 See Rod Preece, Animals and Nature, 120-121.
21 Priscilla Wake eld, Instinct Displayed in a Collection of Well-Authenticated Facts, exem-
plifying the Extraordinary Sagacity of Various Species of the Animal Creation, 4th edi-
tion, London: Harvey and Darton, 1821 (1811), passim, but initially viii.
22
John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, London: H. Hills, 1710 (1690),
vol. 2, 49.
260
Rod Preece and David Fraser23
Nicholas Boyle, Goethe: The Poet and the Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992,
vol. 1, 399.
24
For John Ray, see Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation, New York:
Garland, 1979 (1691); for Gilbert White, see The Natural History of Selborne, London:
Folio Society, 1962 (1789); for William Cowper see The Task (1785).
25
See John Cottingham, A Descartes Dictionary, Oxford Blackwell, 1993 and A. Denny,
Descartes’ Philosophical Letters, Oxford: Clarendon, 1970, for the af rmative case,
and Gary Steiner, ‘Descartes on the Moral Status of Animals,’ Archiv für Geschichte
der Philosophie, 80, 3, 1998, 268-291, for the negative.
26
Jim Mason, An Unnatural Order: Uncovering the Roots of our Domination of Nature
and Each Other, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993, 37.
27 For a fuller version of the letter see Rod Preece, Animals and Nature, 120.
28 Quoted in Gary Steiner, ‘Descartes on the Moral Status of Animals,’ 268. The Latin
original is at n. 1.
29
Pierre Gassendi, Metaphysical Colloquy, or Doubts and Rebuttals concerning the Meta-
physics of René Descartes with his Replies (1641), Rebuttal to Meditation 2, Doubt 7,
in The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi, trans. Craig B. Brush, New York: Johnson
Reprint Corporation, 1972, 197-8.
30
Nicolas Fontaine, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Port Royal, Cologne, 1738, quoted
in L. Rosen eld, From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine: The Theme of Animal Soul in
French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie, London: Oxford University Press, 1940.
31
Quoted from Robert Boyle, A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv’d Notion of Nature
in Peter J. Bowler, Norton History of the Environmental Sciences, New York: W. W.
Norton, 1993, 89.
32
See Rod Preece and Lorna Chamberlain, Animal Welfare and Human Values, Waterloo:
Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1993, 53-54.
33
Joseph Addison, The Spectator, no. 120, 18 July, 1711; Alexander Pope, The Guardian,
no. 61, 21 May, 1713; Samuel Johnson, The Idler, no. 17, 5 August, 1758; Victor
Hugo: Gordon Robb, Victor Hugo: A Biography, New York: W. W. Norton, 1998;
Christina Rossetti: Jan Marsh, Christina Rossetti: A Literary Biography, London:
Pimlico, 1994, 433 ff. References to Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle and Ruskin may
be found at the same source; C. S. Lewis discussed the issue in That Hideous
Strength (1945) and wrote a lea et, c. 1950, for the National Anti-Vivisection
Society. For the latter, see Richard D. Ryder, Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes
towards Speciesism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989, 10-11. One might add that the
deist or occasional Christian Voltaire, Mark Twain, Thomas Hardy, and Wilkie
Collins (who devoted a whole novel to the issue: Heart and Science (1883)) were
also anti-vivisectionists.
The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian Thought
26134
Quoted in Donald Thomas, Robert Browning: A Life Within a Life, London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 1989, (1982), 263.
35 See Frank McLynn, Robert Louis Stevenson, London: Pimlico, 1994, (1993), 282.
36 See, for example, Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 200; Angus Taylor, Magpies,
Monkeys, and Morals: What Philosophers Say about Animal Liberation, Peterborough:
Broadview, 1999, 23; Barbara Noske, Beyond Boundaries: Humans and Animals,
Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997, 46.
37 Augustine, Confessions, London: Longman’s Green, 1897, bk. 4, ch. 3, 72.
38 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, vol. 2, 1, 102, 6, 106. For a more sophisticated than cus-
tomary treatment of Aquinas on animal souls, see Andrew Linzey, Christianity and
the Rights of Animals, 36-39.
39
S. T. Coleridge, A Lay Sermon (1817) in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Lay Sermons, ed. R. J. White, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 183, n. 6;
Robert Southey, ‘On the Death of a Favourite Old Spaniel’, Poems, Bristol: John
Cottle, 1797.
40
Richard Overton, Man’s Mortalitie, ed. Harold Fisch, Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 1968, 68.
41
Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, 2, 16-17; Saint John of the Cross, The Complete Works,
trans. A. E. Peers, Wheathamstead: Anthony Clarke, 1974, vol. 2, 5; John Hildrop,
Free Thoughts upon the Brute Creation, London, 1742; Richard Dean, An Essay on
the Future Life of Brutes, introduced with Observations upon Evil, Its Nature and
Origin, Manchester, 1767, 2 volumes; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Monadology, and
other philosophical writings, Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1964 (1714), sec. 82 ff., 265 ff.;
Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and
Course of Nature, London: Longman & Co., 1834 (1736), 13-30; John Wesley, The
General Deliverance (1788) in Sermons on Several Occasions, London: Wesleyan
Conference Centre, 1874, 281-6; Alexander Pope, who denied immortal souls to
animals, believed we owed them a special consideration on earth precisely on
that account.
42 Andrew Linzey, Christianity and the Rights of Animals, 22.
43 Richard Dean, An Essay on the Future Life of Brutes, 1767; Humphry Primatt, The
Duty of Mercy and the Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals, ed. Richard D. Ryder, Fontwell:
Centaur, 1992 (1776); Thomas Young, An Essay on Humanity to Animals, 1798; John
Styles, The Animal Creation: Its Claims on Our Humanity Stated and Enforced, London:
T. Ward, 1839.
44
See A. W. Moss, Valiant Crusade: The History of the Royal Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals, London: Cadell, 1961, 28.
45
262
Augustine, Confessions, bk. 7, ch. 12, 179; ch. 13, 180.
Rod Preece and David Fraser46
William Leiss, The Domination of Nature, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s
Press, 1994 (1972), 48.
47
Francis Bacon, Essays, London: R. Chiswell, 1706 (c. 1597), 30-31.
The Status of Animals in Biblical and Christian Thought
263