This is the second of our prize-winning entries for the
2006 Essay Competition for students of theology. Benjamin Platt is a student at
King’s College, University of London
‘Animals are God’s creatures.’ (Catechism of the Catholic
Church, n. 2416):
What are the theological and practical implications of this statement?
BY BENJAMIN PLATT
‘Fear not, O beasts of the field…’ (Joel 2:22-23)
We are told that on the sixth day, when God had created the world and
everything that lives in it, including humankind, he ‘saw all that He had made,
and found it very good’ (Genesis 1:31). What can be inferred from this? One
might comment on something we are not told, namely, that ‘God saw all that He
had made, and found it very good, but humans especially good.’ On the contrary,
we are invited in Genesis to see how God values the whole of his creation
equally. Having taken note of this, one might then go on to point out that
nowhere in Genesis does God inform human beings that the world was made
especially for them, as an edifice wrought for their exclusive convenience.
Indeed, it may be that such an understanding of nature would cheapen its worth
in our eyes, which might in turn lead us to inflict harm upon it, and
incidentally upon ourselves. Sadly, this understanding, with its symptomatic
malady, is the prevailing one. We do violence to a world that better deserves
our love and profound respect and, in the suffering of animals used for meat,
experimentation, fashion, product testing, and blood sport, or in the travails
of those animals affected by the damage humans do to the environment, we see
this obdurate and ignorant malignity most immediately and keenly manifested.
All this is not to say that we humans do not occupy a special place in God’s
scheme of creation, or that we are not uniquely privileged in sensibility and
capability, and correspondingly dear to our creator. It is rather to suggest
that we have spurned the responsibility that comes with such gifts, and have
instead pursued our own selfish and misguided interests. We read in Genesis
1:27-28, that we are to ‘Fill the earth and master it’; more fatal words have
never been committed to paper, but how should we understand them? Keeping in
mind that this is a command issued by a being of supreme lovingness, shall we
not conclude that it is an injunction to care for the earth and its inhabitants
with a like love? In Genesis 2:15, the first man is placed in the Garden of
Eden, ‘to till it and tend it.’ If the Hebrew words used here are examined
closely, we discover the mark of an unmistakable spirit. Avad means (as well as
‘to till’ or work) to serve or worship God. Our ‘tilling’ of the earth is thus
simultaneously a connection with and worship of the divine. Further, shamar,
‘tend’, more typically means to guard or watch over.
Needless to say, our treatment of animals often falls short of this ideal by
which they are creatures to be honoured and loved for the sake of themselves and
their creator, and it is merely Genesis’s acknowledgement of human power that
for the most part continues to reflect humanity’s attitude to animals: ‘We shall
do what we like to them, because it is good for us, and because we can’. But
what is good for us (or rather, what we imagine is good for us) is not, of
course, necessarily good for our fellow creatures. Actually, it can be painful,
frightening, frustrating and deadly for them. Against this human selfishness,
the divine command that we should ‘fill the earth and master it’ requires that
any treatment of animals that interferes with their wellbeing is an aberration
in clear defiance of the Gospel imploration to all-embracing love. That we
should love all of creation equally – and in particular animals – can rarely
have been more movingly put than it was by Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers
Karamazov. He has the monk Zosima ask this of us:
Love the whole of creation, both the whole and each grain of sand.
Each leaf, each sunbeam of God, love it. Love the animals, love the
plants, love every object. If you love each object you will also
perceive the mystery of God that is in things. Once you have perceived
it, you will begin untiringly to be more conscious of it with each day
that passes. And at last you will love the whole world with an
all-inclusive, universal love.
Love the animals: God has given them the basis of thought and an
untroubled joy. So do not disturb it, do not torment them, do not take
away their joy, do not put yourself in opposition to God’s intent. Man,
exalt not yourself above the animals: they are sinless, and you in your
grandeur fester the earth with your appearance on it and leave your
festering footprints after you – alas, almost every one of us …
(The Brothers Karamazov, Part II, Book VI).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994), unfortunately, has chosen to
propagate the notion that ‘God’s intent’ in creating animals was simply to serve
the needs of humans. It opts to interpret Genesis 1:28 as a carte blanche to use
animals as if they were mere ‘things’. However, as will appear, the Catechism’s
position on animals is at odds with the nature of a supremely loving Creator and
thus condemns itself to internal incoherence. We read in paragraph 2415 that:
… Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined
for the common good of past, present and future humanity. Use of the
mineral, vegetable and animal resources of the universe cannot be
divorced from respect for moral imperatives.
This ‘moral imperative’ is akin to one incumbent on villagers eager to see
their local general store well stocked and in good repair for the comfort of
themselves and their descendents: the animal kingdom, along with the rest of
nature, is here no more than an object of human utility. Nonetheless, there is a
proviso:
Animals are God’s creatures. He surrounds them with his providential
care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. Thus
men owe them kindness. We should recall the gentleness with which saints
like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Phillip Neri treated animals (para.
2416).
Weak Logic
The logic of the Catechism’s reasoning on this point is hopelessly weak; the
sun, for example, also gives God glory ‘by its mere existence’ and his
maintenance of it, but it would be nonsense to claim that we owe it kindness on
that account. While admitting that animals are creatures deserving of kindness,
it appears loath to give the reason why; they are sentient beings capable of
feeling pain, fear, and frustration. Anyone blessed with love and kindness will
naturally wish to avoid causing them such unhappiness, but their capacity for
suffering is not spoken of here. Whether this is a lingering influence of
Scholasticism which the Catechism is unwilling to relinquish or not is unclear,
but its final position is firmly stated in the next paragraph:
God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in
his own image. Hence it is legitimate to use animals … (para. 2417).
Again, the logic displayed in the jump from premise to conclusion is feeble:
to be able to proceed from ‘God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those
whom he created in his own image’ to the conclusion that therefore ‘it is
legitimate to use animals’, two completely unwarranted presumptions must be at
work.
The first is that our stewardship of animals amounts to little more than seeing
to our provisions, reducing these living beings to the level of ersatz
commodities, denied the respect due to creatures possessing their own ends; a
view already noted above.
The second is that such callousness is God’s will. But would a loving creator
imbue beings ‘destined for the good of humanity’ with the capacity for suffering
which our very use of them elicits? The answer must, of course, be no; if He
did, then we are left with the awkward result that anyone who shares, say,
Dostoevsky’s benevolence towards animals exceeds God in terms of love.
A Perfect Love Mirroring His Own
Moreover, as we have seen, a proper reading of Genesis will reveal that in
bestowing upon us our ‘mastery’ over nature, God can only have meant it to be
employed in a spirit of the most perfect love for the whole, that is, a perfect
love mirroring his. Indeed, that the God revealed to us in the Gospels should
have intended it to mean anything else is unthinkable. ‘God entrusted animals to
the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image,’ says the Catechism.
Christians, in turn, entrust themselves to the stewardship of him in whose image
they were created, and as surely as they expect love and mercy from him, so too
should they dispense the same to those that live under their power. If they do
not, then they fail to live in the image of their God, and have strayed far from
Christ-like love and service.
In the next paragraph the Catechism allows that animals are fitting objects
of love, thereby betraying itself to the charge of incoherence within the wider
theological precepts just outlined. However, this concession is tempered by the
qualification that such love should never equal that due to humans (para. 2418).
But how consuming and exclusive should the love of any given object be? Once
more, we need to be mindful of God’s equitable regard for all of his creation,
and must aim for an encompassing friendship with nature. True, healthy, joyous
love cannot exhaust itself on one thing to the detriment of another, but is
constant, and charges and permeates one’s relationship with everything from ants
and colours to people and mountains. Such perhaps will be the love enjoyed and
shared in the promised Kingdom of God. But before we examine the significance of
our treatment of animals in that respect, a certain state of affairs should be
acknowledged.
Nature and ‘the problem of evil’
Nature is, unquestionably, an amoral phenomenon (it cannot be said to be either
morally ‘good’ or ‘bad’; it simply is). From tapeworms to tigers, it displays
markedly parasitic and predatory tendencies. As philosophers such as J. S. Mill
and Arthur Schopenhauer have eloquently stated, this characteristic of being
‘red in tooth and claw’ hardly seems consonant with the existence of a loving
creator.
On why it is that violence, predation and parasitism exist in nature, or for
that matter in the human world, it would be pointless my wasting words: I don’t
know. And yet while this is not the place to discuss ‘the problem of evil’, the
way we respond to the realities of the natural world is of critical importance.
The perceived ‘immorality’ or anyway ‘amorality’ of animals has often been used
as a weapon to attack the idea that they have rights. Some claim that they have
no rights because they carry out no duties (oddly ignoring the duty evident in
the diligent parenting seen throughout the animal world, or in the protection
afforded to each other by herd animals for instance). Others say that because
humans are part of the animal kingdom they may imitate the predatory and
parasitic behaviour found in it and exploit their weaker cousins. To be a
Christian means to dismiss such thought with the utmost vigour, and we should be
mindful of Christ’s teaching when tempted to speak of the ‘savagery’ of nature:
You hypocrites! First take the plank out of
your own eye, and then you will see clearly to
take the speck out of your brother’s ...
(Matthew 7:5).
Christian ethics is fundamentally eschatological, concerned with bringing
about a world ripe with God’s love. As we have seen in our consideration of
Genesis, this must mean the whole world, of itself and in the way we treat it.
It is essential that Christians be embarrassed neither to believe this possible
nor to act as if it were so; only by actively working towards it will it come
about (that is to say, only by putting God’s grace into effect), and this shall
necessarily involve eschewing every form of violence; there will be no
slaughterhouses in the Kingdom of God – it is not difficult to do without meat,
it is easy. Neither will there be laboratories where animals are made to suffer
on our account because we make ourselves sick by ingesting tobacco smoke,
alcohol, fat, sugar, chemicals and air pollution, or weak through lack of
exercise; there will be no indolence, if only because there is too much to be
done. New ways of living must be found. In the words of St Paul:
For I reckon that the sufferings we now endure bear no comparison
with the splendour, as yet unrevealed, which is in store for us. For the
created universe waits with eager expectation for God’s sons to be
revealed… if we hope for something we do not yet see, then we look
forward to it eagerly and with patience (Romans 8:18-25).
And yet we do see it, but perhaps not quite aright. All that the world awaits
is our love. Kindness and non-violence to animals must be a foremost concern in
the realisation of the eschatological vision; the question now is how we are to
move from our current disharmony with nature towards the concord and friendship
with God’s creation for which we are intended.
