Abstract
Many Christians believe that they have a divine permission to kill animals for food, fur and other human uses. The objective of this chapter is to take issue with this common notion by critically looking at the way theological concepts like “the Will of God” and “the Word of God” are traditionally interpreted. The first part of this chapter, “The Will of God,” presents an apt and sophisticated understanding of this difficult and widely misunderstood theological term. The second part, “The Word of God,” starts from the premise that divine commands and divine permissions in the Bible, including God’s changeable view on eating meat, are to be interpreted in relation to their particular and therefore limited historical contexts. The third part of the chapter is called “The Importance of Philosophical Ethics” and reasserts the Christian conviction that ethical reflections in philosophy are of continuing importance to Christian ethics. The harm done to animals by inflicting pain on them is compared to the harm done by killing them. The fourth and final part of this chapter, “The Necessity of a Reorientation,” is a concise plea for a radical change of human perception and conduct: both academic theological ethics and the moral teaching of the Christian churches ought to be characterized by a presumption against the permissibility of taking the life of an animal, particularly, but not exclusively, a sentient one.
Introduction
In his witty metafictional novella The Lives of Animals, South African author John M. Coetzee, Nobel laureate in literature in 2003 and honorary fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, relates the story of novelist Elizabeth Costello and her advocacy of animal rights. According to Coetzee’s narrative, Costello has been invited by Appleton College at Waltham in the United States of America, where her son John is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, to deliver the prestigious annual Gates Lectures. She does not choose the topic of literature and writing for her talks but speaks about animal protection instead. Costello does not mince words when expressing her abhorrence of industries that experiment on and slaughter animals. According to Costello, drug-testing laboratories, factory farms, and abattoirs demonstrate that we “are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty and killing … bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the purpose of killing them.”Footnote 1
After Costello’s first lecture, the college president hosts a dinner at the Faculty Club. In the ensuing conversation, he refers to dietary prohibitions observed in religious communities and thereby initiates a lively discussion about divinely permitted or forbidden foods and the theological vindications for killing and eating animals. “Perhaps we invented gods,” Elizabeth Costello remarks shrewdly at a certain point, “so we could put the blame on them. They gave us the permission to eat flesh … It’s not our fault, it’s theirs. We’re just their children.” “Is this what you believe?” the president’s wife asks cautiously. Costello replies using a quote from the King James Bible translation (Genesis 9:3)—“And God said: Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you.” Costello adds, “It’s convenient. God told us it was OK.”Footnote 2
In this chapter I intend to reply to Elizabeth Costello’s momentous suspicion that God might be a purely human invention, an allegedly supernatural fabrication that permits and therefore justifies the killing and eating of (nonhuman) animals and thereby lets human beings off the hook. The focus of my argument will be not the metaphysical and philosophical question of the existence of God or gods, but the metaethical and theological question of whether a historically situated biblical passage may legitimately be regarded as the unsurpassable ethical norm and authoritative expression of the divine will with regard to eating or not eating animals and whether such an alleged biblical permission may apply to all believers or even all human beings at all times. In other words, are Elizabeth Costello and all those Christian believers right when they maintain that the killing and eating of animals was permitted by God in the Bible once and for all?
My objective to take issue with Costello’s argument is anything but a rhetorical device. It rather is an honest attempt to face up to her critical interpretation of theological concepts such as the divine will and revealed moral norms, which have indeed been used throughout Christian history as theological justifications for the human killing of animals. Conceding the legitimacy of Costello’s argument, though, does not entail overlooking the flaws in her position. Quoting a single text from the Bible to demonstrate the alleged will of God hardly does justice to the comprehensiveness and diversity of the biblical texts, to modern historical-critical biblical scholarship, and to contemporary theological reflections on the will of God. The first part of this chapter, “The Will of God,” therefore tries to present a more appropriate understanding of this widely misunderstood and difficult theological term. The second part, “The Word of God,” starts from the premise that divine commands and divine permissions in the Bible, including God’s—somewhat fickle, as we shall see—opinion on eating meat, are to be interpreted in relation to their historical contexts. The second part also deals with the role of animals in Christ’s own life and the widespread assumption that the Abrahamic religions are less animal-friendly than, for example, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The third part of the chapter is called “The Importance of Philosophical Ethics” and reasserts the Christian moral tradition that the “philosophical debate about ethics is of continuing importance to Christian ethics.”Footnote 3 It takes up philosophical arguments on the respective harm done to animals by inflicting pain on them compared to the harm done by killing them. The fourth and final part of this chapter, “The Necessity of a Reorientation,” is a concise plea for conversion: both academic theological ethics and the Christian churches’ official moral doctrine ought to be characterized by a presumption against the permissibility of taking the life of an animal, particularly, but not exclusively, a sentient one.
The Will of God
Let’s be frank: the history of the Christian churches sufficiently demonstrates that religion in general and the concept of “the will of God” in particular have been employed to legitimate oppression and violence. Such misuse of religion is called “sacralism” by Catholic theologians Matthew Lamb and Gregory Baum. Baum observes, “The fear that God is an ideological construct to preserve [the dominant] order in society marked by inequality is a troubling experience for many contemporary Catholics. Women, in particular, often wonder whether the God proclaimed by the [Catholic] Church is a sacralization of patriarchy.”Footnote 4
With regard to killing animals for food, clothing, and scientific research, Holy Scripture and textbooks of moral theology, eloquent sermons, and authoritative ecclesial pronouncements have been amply used throughout history to justify the killing of (nonhuman) animals as permitted by God. Elizabeth Costello’s reference to Genesis 9:3 (“Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you”) is an apt example for this tradition. Another telling example is paragraph number 2017 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, an official and authentic compilation of Catholic doctrine propounded by the papal magisterium: “God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing … Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice, if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.”Footnote 5
In the context of the Catholic Church’s traditional teaching on animals, the term “using” in the preceding statement is not restricted to the use of animal products such as milk, eggs, or honey.Footnote 6 “Using” certainly includes the moral right to kill animals for food and fur and in the context of animal testing. Even though both the Roman Catholic Church and almost all other Christian churches have become more animal-friendly, at least rhetorically, in recent years, their fundamental moral teaching on animals has still remained substantially the same: animals are God’s creatures, but they are subordinate to human beings, who alone are made in the image of God. Animals may therefore be killed for various reasons and in various ways. Few leading representatives of Christianity are vegetarians or vegans. Hunting and fishing are almost always supported or even practiced by ecclesial authorities. In some traditionally Catholic countries, so-called Hubertus masses are celebrated in churches at the beginning of November, in which both professional and sport hunters in their hunting attire give thanks to God for their having killed animals. Frequently, some of the animals who were brought down during the hunt are placed before the altar.
The concept of the will of God is historically charged. Through people invoking the will of God, crusades were initiated, wars were fought, the burning of heretics was decreed, and the brutal colonization of native people was executed: “One can find theologies ideologically supporting almost every bias that ever raised its ugly head in history … Theologies have abounded attempting to rationalize imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, capitalism, militarism, totalitarianism, communism … fascism, anti-Semitism, Nazism, chauvinism … clerical authoritarianism, etc.”Footnote 7
Learning from past mistakes, contemporary Christian theologians are therefore very keen on closely linking the will of God to the welfare of people. In his apologia for liberal Christianity, On Being a Christian, the internationally renowned Swiss theologian Hans Küng writes,
God wills nothing for himself, nothing for his own advantage, nothing for his greater glory. God wills nothing but the advantage of the human being, his genuine greatness and her ultimate dignity. This then is God’s will: human well-being. God’s will, from the first page of the Bible to the last, aims at human well-being on every level, aims at the definite and comprehensive well-being, in biblical terminology the “salvation” of each human being and all of them. God’s will is a helping, healing, liberating, and saving will. God wills the life, the joy, the freedom, the peace, the salvation, the ultimate happiness of the human being: each and all of them.Footnote 8
No doubt, taking leave of the divine legitimization of wars and human exploitation and declaring instead that God is fundamentally and basically concerned about the good of all and of each individual human being is a big step forward. Küng’s interpretation of God’s will forbids Christians to confuse this will with outdated conventions or fashionable ideologies that stop at nothing. It does not permit them to theologically support imperialism and totalitarianism, racism and sexism, or anti-Semitism and clerical authoritarianism. Yet it still permits Christians, alas, to persist in anthropocentrism and speciesism, for according to Küng’s definition of the divine will, God seems to be exclusively interested in human beings’ lives and flourishing.
Küng’s On Being a Christian was first published in German in 1974, one year prior to Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation and one year prior to Andrew Linzey’s Animal Rights. The so-called animal turn, a term denoting “an increasing scholarly interest in animals, in the relationships between humans and other animals, and in the role and status of animals in (human) society,”Footnote 9 had not arrived yet. As far as academic theology and the moral teachings of Christian churches are concerned, animals today do in fact matter somewhat more than forty years ago, when On Being a Christian was first published. Yet even today, animals do not matter as much as they should. In his foreword to the 2013 publication The Global Guide to Animal Protection, Anglican archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu, one of Christianity’s most eminent and respected representatives, accurately commented, “In many ways, it is odd that my fellow Christians have failed to see the issue of how we treat animals as a Gospel issue. After all, animals are also God’s creatures … It is a kind of theological folly to suppose that God has made the entire world just for human beings, or to suppose that God is interested in only one of the millions of species that inhabit God’s good earth.”Footnote 10
God’s will, therefore, may be defined as his concern for the welfare of all sentient beings, both human and nonhuman, for their welfare on a thriving and sustainable planet Earth. Bearing God’s constant care for his creation in mind and living in his presence, Christians and all people of goodwill should begin to experience themselves “as part of creation, as stewards within it, not separate from it.”Footnote 11 The US bishops’ 1991 pastoral statement Renewing the Earth explains the ethical implications of such an existential attitude: “Accordingly, it is appropriate that we treat other creatures and the natural world not just as means to human fulfillment but also as God’s creatures, possessing an independent value, worthy of our respect and care.”Footnote 12
Let me add that God’s will defined as a longing and an option for the integrity of creation and the ultimate happiness of all sentient beings is an indispensable yet rather general and basic ethical guideline. It does not exempt us from delving into the intricacies of biblical hermeneutics, cognitive ethology, and moral philosophy. It does not spare us the effort of formulating guiding principles and specific rules. Searching for the will of God does not provide us with perfectly clear solutions to every ethical dilemma we might face and with absolute and infallible certainties. The human effort of discerning God’s will therefore closely resembles the human search for the fairest, most compassionate, and most humane ethical decision for all and each (sentient) creature. It may be achieved only in a tentative and approximate mode.Footnote 13
If all of God’s creatures have inherent value, does this imply that we should refrain from killing animals? But if the killing of animals is prohibited by the will of God, why do biblical texts occasionally seem to permit the killing of animals for food, as Elizabeth Costello’s quotation at the beginning of this chapter suggests? Moreover, did not Jesus himself eat meat, at least fish, on some occasions, and is he not the moral model we are called to imitate?
The Word of God
An approach to the Bible that takes it seriously as a historic compilation of diverse literary texts does not permit a fundamentalist, literalist, and biblicist reading of it. It does not permit the quotation of a single biblical sentence out of context in order to prove a moral point or terminate an ethical discourse. Instead, it requires a more comprehensive knowledge of the numerous and various biblical writings and their literary genres. It requires a certain familiarity with the historical-critical method of interpreting the Bible and respect for its principles. To once more return to Elizabeth Costello’s reference to the divine permission for eating the flesh of animals in Genesis 9:3, one does justice to this text (“Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you”) only when it is seen as occasioned by specific historical circumstances and experiences. It must be taken not as the authoritative, final, eternal, and incontestable verdict of God for all times and all places, but rather as a situational concession of God, both to human frailty and to the apparent scarcity of edible vegetation after the Flood.Footnote 14 Moreover, it goes without saying that the biblical author or authors had no knowledge of the modern-day sciences of animal sentience, cognitive ethology, and dietetics.
According to the Bible, God’s permission for humans to eat animals was not God’s initial intention, but a later development, for right after creating both animals and human beings on the sixth day, God announced,
See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. (Genesis 1:29–30)
The diet of paradise clearly is a vegetarian, even vegan diet. The diet of the eschatological peaceable kingdom of God is a vegan one too, for both human and nonhuman animals: “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. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den” (Isaiah 11:6–8).
Comparing God’s paradisal intention about a vegan diet in Genesis 1 and the eschatological vision in Isaiah with God’s post-diluvian permission to eat meat in Genesis 9 has traditionally led theologians to conclude that vegetarianism and veganism are paradisal exceptions or eschatological ideals, not preferable ways of human conduct on earth here and now. I suggest a different and theologically and ethically more contemporary reading of these biblical passages that is also more consistent with the fundamental biblical message of love, compassion, justice, and nonviolence: instead of our calling the refusal to kill animals for food “a wanton anticipation”Footnote 15 of the eschatological vision, vegetarianism and veganism may and even ought to be interpreted as “realised eschatology”Footnote 16. The eschatological promises of universal peace, vegetarianism, and veganism guide and challenge us to practice a lifestyle and create a social order that increasingly correspond to these ideals. Of course, we will fall short of a complete realization of God’s kingdom on earth. Our human endeavors are provisional, and even our best efforts will come within an “eschatological reservation”Footnote 17. Being aware of this will rid us of any perfectionistic compulsion and self-righteous hubris. Imperfection is inevitable; indifference is not. What we do and how we act really matters: it matters before God, before human beings, and before animals.
What does all of this mean with regard to the theological dimension and the moral evaluation of killing animals? The answer seems plain to me: on the one hand we are challenged to transform our individual and communal lives according to the eschatological ideals of nonviolence and justice toward human and nonhuman animals. This, of course, would include a vegetarian or—even better—vegan diet (realized eschatology). On the other hand, we must not forget that human peace will always remain a piecemeal peace, and human justice, imperfect (eschatological reservation). Even our efforts to stop the killing of (at least, but not exclusively, sentient) animals by human beings remain unaccomplished, since even vegans have to accept the (indirect) killing of mice, moles, and other animals as a by-product of harvesting the grain that feeds them. The insight that we will not achieve perfect nonviolence toward animals, though, does not release us from the duties of continually reducing human violence toward animals and from preserving their lives.
An informed and serious reading of the Hebrew Bible, or First Testament or Old Testament, in its entirety and complexity does not supply us with a convenient justification for our habit of killing animals indiscriminately and without qualms. But what about the teaching and the conduct of Jesus Christ? What do we know about his eating behavior? Did animals play a role in his life and his teaching?
The Second or New Testament of the Bible, which was written in the years AD 50 to 130, depicts Jesus Christ as the Messiah who preaches mercy and compassion and expresses his solidarity with the poor, the marginalized, and the underprivileged. Jesus, therefore, explicitly and implicitly was an advocate for those creatures who suffer and die at the hands of human beings in great numbers: animals. He spent forty days in the desert among free-living animals (Mark 1:12–13). He preached that God’s providence encompasses animals (Matthew 6:26). According to Jesus, rescuing a sheep who had fallen into a pit (Matthew 12:11) or an ox who had fallen into a cistern on a Sabbath day (Luke 14:5) ought to take priority over God’s commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. And after his resurrection Jesus instructed the apostles “to proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), not solely to human beings.
So far, so good, one might object. We do know that God cares for animals, and Jesus did not want animals to suffer needlessly. But we also know that human beings were more precious to Jesus than animals (Matthew 6:26) and that he was not a vegetarian. Jesus, of course, ate meat and fish, did he not?
The most honest answer to this question is that we do not know for sure.Footnote 18 We do not possess any historically verified knowledge about Jesus’s diet. Should he have eaten meat, as an observant Jew he certainly ate no pork and ate other meats rarely (almost exclusively on important Jewish holidays), for meat counted as a luxury in first-century Palestine. There are some who believe that Jesus was a strict vegetarian and refer to the Gospel of the Ebionites, a second-century text that is preserved only in fragments, and other apocryphal writings. As far as the official, canonical texts of the Bible are concerned, one ought to question, like Pope Benedict XVI,Footnote 19 the popular assumption that Jesus ate lamb at the feast of Passover prior to his death. The Gospels relate that Jesus ate fish, at least after his resurrection (Luke 24:42–43; John 21:10–14). We have to take into consideration, though, that from a theological perspective, the resurrection “has nothing to do with coming back to life (like Lazarus in John’s Gospel),” but rather “is a movement forward and upward unto a new level of life.”Footnote 20 The biblical authors therefore depicted the incredible event of the resurrection in a metaphorical and legendary way. There are serious theological reasons to assume that Jesus did not eat anything at all after his resurrection.
In any case, the simple and straightforward question “What would Jesus do (today)?” is more important than historical speculations. Although this guiding slogan, which originated in evangelical Christianity, should not be used in an overly simplistic and unqualified way, it does have an incontestable significance, not least with regard to eating animals. I therefore agree with US peace activist, writer, and Catholic priest John Dear, who writes,
Some biblical scholars conclude that Jesus didn’t eat meat. All agree that Jesus wants us to practice perfect compassion throughout our lives … So the real question is what would the nonviolent Jesus want us to do today, in such a world of rampant violence? I believe that he would want us to do everything we can to help end violence and turn this into a world of nonviolence and compassion. That would include becoming a vegetarian.Footnote 21
If Christian theology wants to seriously engage in contemporary debates about the status, the welfare, and the rights of (nonhuman) animals, it does not suffice to argue about the correct interpretation of certain biblical passages and to ask questions about Jesus’s diet, however important these questions might be. A theology that does justice to animals rather ought to constitute a fundamentally revised approach to the whole of Christian doctrine. The content of such “animal theology,”Footnote 22 which was first presented by Andrew Linzey, is Christian dogma read or reread from the perspective of contemporary exegesis and biology, cognitive ethology, and the preferential option for God’s poor and exploited creatures.
Animal theology deals with three main areas of the traditional Christian doctrine: creation and the notion of human dominance, superiority, or specialness; incarnation, the doctrine that affirms that God became human in the person of Jesus Christ; and redemption, humanity’s reconciliation with God and its salvation by and in God through Jesus Christ. The traditional humanocentric bias of these fundamental Christian doctrines is reinterpreted by Linzey in a way that makes room for (nonhuman) animals: human uniqueness is understood as a special responsibility to act not as the master but as the “servant species”; God’s becoming flesh in Christ affirms all flesh, both animal and human; and animals are not excluded from God’s redemptive purposes—they are not without souls and will be granted immortality and supreme happiness after their earthly death.
Through his cooperation with Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Linzey has developed his “animal theology” beyond the confines of the Christian tradition into a Judeo-Christian animal theology.Footnote 23 An even more comprehensive notion of the term would suggest an examination and reinterpretation of all major religious traditions with regard to their theological understanding of animals, primarily Islam (as the third Abrahamic religion); Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism (all of which originated on the Indian subcontinent); and Daoism, Baha’i, and African and Native American religions.Footnote 24 In a comparative perspective, Hinduism, Buddhism, and especially Jainism seem to be more compassionate toward animals than the monotheistic religions. Yet a close theological scrutiny reveals that according to the tradition of these three religions, it is frequently not outstanding compassion for the animal that is the dominant factor for animal-friendly behavior, but the spiritual advancement of the practitioner or the belief that the practitioner himself or herself might be reborn as an animal (reincarnation).Footnote 25 Some contemporary Buddhist scholars and teachers, among them Thich Nhat Hanh, Norm Phelps, and Geshe Thupten Phelgye, emphasize the first precept (sila) of moral conduct that prohibits all killing and calls for a vegetarian or even vegan diet.
The Importance of Philosophical Ethics
The Catholic and Anglican traditions of the Christian church, in particular, have always been convinced that the “philosophical debate about ethics is of continuing importance to Christian ethics.”Footnote 26 These traditions emphasize the compatibility between moral theology and philosophical ethics and are convinced that both philosophical and theological ethics must be informed by human reason. The late Richard McCormick, a Jesuit and a leading moral theologian, has expressed this fact in a masterly way: “Since there is only one destiny possible to all men, there is only one essential morality common to all men, Christians and non-Christians alike.”Footnote 27 The distinctiveness of Christian morality refers to a believer’s religious motivation for acting in a certain way and to the individual’s support by a Christian community of like-minded believers, not to the rules and tasks themselves. Animal theology and theological animal ethics must therefore be connected to and informed by the debates in philosophical animal ethics.
There are several ethical schools or theories that support the cause and the protection of animals: the utilitarian welfare theory, the rights theory, the feminist care tradition, and the generosity theory. The utilitarian welfare theory goes back to Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Bentham demanded that human beings act in such a way as to maximize pleasure and minimize pain of both human beings and animals. Bentham was the mentor of Peter Singer, who in the 1970s initiated an animal liberation movement that has denounced the assumption of human superiority as arbitrary and “speciesist” and has compared it to the ideologies of racism and sexism. According to Singer, all sentient beings, human or animal, have a basically equal claim to the recognition of their interests. Of course, as a utilitarian Singer attaches great importance to the weighing of competing interests, not to moral and legal rights. In contrast, the animal rights theory (Tom Regan, Gary Francione, and Gary Steiner) regards animals as intrinsically valuable, as “subjects of a life” who have certain individual rights that normally must not be infringed, even if it would benefit human beings to do so. Both the feminist care tradition and the generosity theory go beyond utilitarianism and animal rights: the former argues for attentiveness, sympathy, and emotional engagement in our relationships with animals and examines the links between species oppression and gender oppression (Carol Adams, Marti Kheel); the latter contends that animals have an analogous status to that of children and therefore should be seen as having not equal claim but greater claim upon grown-up humans precisely because of their vulnerability and relative powerlessness (Andrew Linzey).
As far as the killing of animals is concerned, there are differences between proponents of utilitarianism and those of animal rights and among all kinds of other ethicists. Quite a number of philosophers, theologians, and other folks share “the view that although we have strong reasons against animal cruelty, we lack strong reasons against painlessly killing animals in the prime of life”Footnote 28 and act accordingly. The opposite argument, though—that “death is an instrumental harm in so far as it forecloses the valuable opportunities that continued life would afford”Footnote 29—should not be easily dismissed.
The harm done by providing (self-)conscious animalsFootnote 30 with a wonderful life and then killing them painlessly is demonstrated in Michael Lockwood’s fictional case of a company called “Disposapup”Footnote 31: Many families, especially those with young children, like to have a puppy in their home. Yet there is the problem of what to do with the animal when the family goes on a holiday. Some imaginative entrepreneurs come up with the idea of a company that offers families the service of putting their companion dog down at the start of each holiday and providing them with a new puppy upon their return. Their enterprise, which they call “Disposapup Ltd,” offers their clients a young dog for sale, takes him or her back before the summer vacation, exterminates the dog painlessly after a happy albeit brief life, and supplies a replacement puppy on demand.
Most people, both from ethical intuition and reflection, would feel uncomfortable with such an operation. They understand that the attribution of inherent value to animals—first and foremost but not exclusively to those who are (self-)conscious and sentient—requires viewing them as “subjects of a life”Footnote 32, who have a right to life that human beings ought to respect. When Elizabeth Costello in J. M. Coetzee’s novella The Lives of Animals is told by one of the faculty members of Appleton College that he does not believe “that life is as important to animals as it is to us,”Footnote 33 she replies, “Anyone who says that life matters less to animals than it does to us has not held in his hands an animal fighting for its life … When you say that the fight lacks a dimension of intellectual or imaginative horror, I agree. It is not the mode of being of animals to have an intellectual horror: their whole being is in the living flesh.”Footnote 34
Where does all of this leave Christian ethics? In a brief final section, I would like to outline some of its basic principles on killing animals, which follow from a serious reading of the biblical texts and from a theological engagement with philosophical ethics.
The Necessity of a Theological Reorientation
Christian theological ethics ought to start from the premise that the killing of an animal, first and foremost but not exclusively a (self-)conscious and sentient one, is to be seen as an exception to the general rule of protecting animals’ lives. This rule might be overcome only on a restricted number of occasions and only if intelligible and adequate reasons beyond human habit and human pleasure can be provided. To give an example, no animal rights activist is obliged to offer himself as a willing host for tapeworms or place her children’s heads at the disposal of lice. Animal protection advocates also must openly acknowledge “the dangers posed from potentially encephalitic water snails, malarial mosquitoes, poisonous snakes, or the many other hazards faced by the very poor, especially in their everyday environments.”Footnote 35 Like self-defense against human aggressors, self-defense against animals who threaten to kill or hurt a human being or who inflict some other substantial damage on him or her is basically permissible and might even be obligatory in exceptional cases. But Christian ethics is not willing to label every case of so-called “pest control” or other extinction of animals as justified self-defense. Neither does it label the killing of animals for food, fur, or fun as generally permissible. On the contrary, killing animals for leisure or human physical fitness is always wrong. This, of course, disqualifies hunting for sport right away. Hunting for food (subsistence hunting) or fur and raising and slaughtering animals for food are permissible only if there is no other way to secure human health or survival. Since at least for the vast majority of people living in the so-called developed world, numerous viable and healthy alternatives to animal-based food, fur coats, and leather boots are offered, no adequate reason and convincing purpose for killing animals seems to exist in this regard.
The number of people who have stopped wearing fur and eating meat and who thereby reduce the number of animals being killed has been constantly rising in the past decades and years. This is also true with respect to the Christian faithful. Many Christians, however—above all, church leaders and theologians—still feel somewhat uneasy and defensive when confronted with the demands of the animal rights movement, as two examples from my native Austria clearly demonstrate. One of Austria’s leading Christian advocates of environmental protection is Michael Rosenberger, a Catholic priest who teaches moral theology at the Pontifical University of Linz. Although he speaks out in favor of humane treatment of animals, with regard to a vegetarian diet, he flatly refuses its binding character and contends that “from the outset a normative obligation to vegetarianism is completely unfounded.”Footnote 36 The then bishop of the diocese of Graz-Seckau, Egon Kapellari, in 2006 gave an interview to an Austrian hunting magazine. In it he praised the hunters he had gotten to know over the years as “decent people, who had a strong character”; he called them “peaceable mountain troupers, favorable rangers somehow, whom one could trust.”Footnote 37 The interviewer for the hunting magazine surely was highly pleased. At the end of the interview, the bishop was asked whether he enjoyed eating venison. Kapellari replied, “I am not a vegetarian and I would like to emphasize that I am in no way ideologically burdened. I do eat venison, but rather infrequently.”Footnote 38
It is about time that Christian theological ethics turned the tables and regarded those people as ideologically burdened who in the face of the massive, brutal, and unnecessary killing of animals and all its negative consequences, even for humans (health problems, waste of resources, environmental degradation, global warming), go on eating meat. Christians would be well-advised to join British philosopher Stephen R. L. Clark, who characterized “flesh-eating” as “empty gluttony.” Clark rightly contends, “Honourable men may honourably disagree about some treatment of the non-human, but vegetarianism is now as necessary a pledge of moral devotion as was the refusal of emperor-worship in the early Church.”Footnote 39
Notes
- 1.
J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 21.
- 2.
Coetzee, Lives, 41.
- 3.
R. Gascoigne, Freedom and Purpose: An Introduction to Christian Ethics (New York: Paulist Press, 2004), 49.
- 4.
G. Baum, Amazing Church: A Catholic Theologian Remembers a Half-Century of Change (New York: Maryknoll, 2005), 80-81; see also M. L. Lamb, Solidarity with Victims (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 10–14.
- 5.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., revised in accordance with the official Latin text, promulgated by Pope John Paul II, 1997, accessed May 2, 2014, http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-elieve/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/epub/index.cfm.
- 6.
See D. Jones, The School of Compassion: A Roman Catholic Theology of Animals (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2009), 171.
- 7.
Lamb, Solidarity, 14.
- 8.
H. Küng, Christ sein, 5th ed. (Munich: Piper, 1975), 241 (my translation). Cf. the critical comment in A. Linzey, Animal Theology (London: SCM Press, 1994), 69.
- 9.
A. Peters, S. Stucki, and L. Boscardin, “The Animal Turn—What Is It and Why Now?,” Verfassungsblog (blog), April 14, 2014, http://www.verfassungsblog.de/de/the-animal-turn-what-is-it-and-why-now/#.U2YIhmCKDcu.
- 10.
D. Tutu, “Foreword: Extending Justice and Compassion,” in The Global Guide to Animal Protection, ed. A. Linzey (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), xv.
- 11.
United States Catholic Conference, Renewing the Earth: An Invitation to Reflection and Action on Environment in Light of Catholic Social Teaching, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1998), sec. III A.
- 12.
United States Catholic Conference, Renewing the Earth, sect. III B.
- 13.
Consider the statement of the British moral theologian Kevin Kelly: “I had tended to accept too passively whatever happened as God’s will. I now realise that it is only by fully accepting responsibility for whatever lies in my control that I am enabling God’s will to be truly realised. In a sense, it is up to me to ‘create’ God’s will.” K. Kelly, “50 Years Receiving Vatican II: A Personal Odyssey,” CatholicIreland.net, May 10, 2012, http://www.catholicireland.net/50-years-receiving-vatican-ii-a-personal-testimony.
- 14.
See Linzey, Animal Theology, 127–29. On the relation between the Bible and Christian ethics in general, see T. Deidun, “The Bible and Christian Ethics,” in Christian Ethics: An Introduction, ed. B. Hoose (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998), 3–46.
- 15.
K. Barth, “Justifiable Killing,” in Animals and Christianity. A Book of Reading, ed. A. Linzey and T. Regan (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2007), 193.
- 16.
C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Nisbet, 1935).
- 17.
J. B. Metz, Zur Theologie der Welt (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 1968), 144.
- 18.
See J. L. McKenzie, The New Testament without Illusion (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 19: “The fact that we do not know what Jesus looked like … will lead us to reflect further that there is much more than his appearance that is unknown to us.” See also Linzey, Animal Theology, 132–34; K. Remele, “Von Hermelinen, Menschen und Gott: Christliche Tierethik,” in Tier—Mensch—Ethik, ed. E. Riether and M. N. Weiss (Vienna: LIT, 2012), 178–79.; R. Bauckham, “Jesus and Animals II: What Did He Practise?,” in Animals on the Agenda, eds. A. Linzey and D. Yamamoto (London: SCM Press, 2008), 49–60.
- 19.
Benedict XVI, “Mass of the Lord’s Supper: Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI,” April 5, 2007, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20070405_coena-domini_en.html.
- 20.
D. Steindl-Rast, Deeper Than Words: Living the Apostles’ Creed (New York: Image Books/ Doubleday, 2010), 105.
- 21.
J. Dear, Christianity and Vegetarianism: Pursuing the Nonviolence of Jesus (Norfolk, VA: PETA), accessed June 15, 2015, http://www.afa-online.org/docs/Christianity%20and%20Vegetarianism.pdf. See also S. Tompkins, “What Would Jesus Do? The Rise of a Slogan,” BBC News Magazine, December 8, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16068178; “Archbishop Asks ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ in Christmas Issue of Radio Times,” Dr Rowan Williams: 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, December 5, 2011, http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2270/archbishop-asks-what-would-jesus-do-in-christmas-issue-of-radio-times.
- 22.
Linzey, Animal Theology.
- 23.
A. Linzey and D. Cohn-Sherbok, After Noah: Animals and the Liberation of Theology (London: Mowbray, 1997).
- 24.
On the status of animals in different religions, see also the First Annual Oxford Summer School on Animal Ethics 2014 at St Stephen’s House in Oxford, the topic of which was “Religion and Animal Protection,” accessed September 3, 2014, http://www.oxfordanimalethics.com/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/Brochure-Final.pdf.
- 25.
See D. Keown, Buddhist Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 40–43.
- 26.
Gascoigne, Freedom, 49. See also M. E. Marshall, The Anglican Church: Today and Tomorrow (Wilton, CT: Morehouse Barlow, 1984), 24–30.
- 27.
R. A. McCormick, “Does Religious Faith Add to Ethical Perception?,” in The Distinctiveness of Christian Ethics, ed. C. Curran and R. A. McCormick, Readings in Moral Theology, no. 2 (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 168.
- 28.
E. Harman, “The Moral Significance of Animal Pain and Animal Death,” in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, ed. T. L. Beauchamp and R. G. Frey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 726–37.
- 29.
D. DeGrazia, Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 61.
- 30.
See S. Coren, “Does My Dog Recognize Himself in the Mirror?,” Psychology Today, July 7, 2011, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201107/does-my-dog-recognize-himself-in-mirror.
- 31.
M. Lockwood, “Singer on Killing and the Preference of Life,” Inquiry 22 (1979): 157–71.
- 32.
T. Regan, The Case for Animal Rights. Updated with a New Preface (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 243–248.
- 33.
Coetzee, Lives, 63.
- 34.
Ibid., 65. See also A. Schweitzer’s concept of “reverence for life” in Linzey, Animal Theology, 3–7.
- 35.
C. Wilbert, “What Is Doing the Killing? Animal Attacks, Man Eaters, and Shifting Boundaries and Flows of Human–Animal Relations,” in Killing Animals, ed. the Animal Studies Group (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 37.
- 36.
M. Rosenberger, Im Zeichen des Lebensbaums: Ein theologisches Lexikon der christlichen Schöpfungsspiritualität (Würzburg, Germany: Echter), 185.
- 37.
E. Kapellari, “Gespräche über die Jagd: Ein fast mystisches Erlebnis,” Der Anblick 2 (2006): 35.
- 38.
Ibid., 37.
- 39.
S. R. L. Clark, “Empty Gluttony,” in Animals and Christianity: A Book of Readings, ed. A. Linzey and T. Regan (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1990), 202. Of course, from a present-day perspective, veganism would even be preferable.
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Remele, K. (2018). Killing Animals—Permitted by God? The Role of Christian Ethics in (Not) Protecting the Lives of Animals. In: Linzey, A., Linzey, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics. The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-36671-9_19
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