Humphrey Primatt on the “Sin of Cruelty”

“Pain is pain, whether it be inflicted on man of on beast; and the creature that suffers it, whether man or beast, being sensible of the misery of it whilst it lasts, suffers evil; and the sufferance of evil, unmeritedly, unprovokedly, where no offense has been given; and no good end can possibly be answered by it, but merely, to exhibit power or gratify malice, is Cruelty and Injustice in him that occasions it…. We may pretend to what religion we please, but cruelty is atheism. We may make our boast of Christianity, but cruelty is infidelity. We may trust to our orthodoxy, but cruelty is the worst of heresies.” – Humphrey Primatt, 1776

St. Francis, Cardnial Newman, and John Paul II on Caring for Animals

“Not to hurt our humble brethren [the animals] is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission: To be of service to them whenever they require it” – St. Francis of Assisi

“Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God…there is something so dreadful, so Satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.” – Cardinal John Henry Newman

“[St. Francis] looked upon creation with the eyes of one who could recognize in it the marvelous work of the hand of God. His solicitous care, not only towards men, but also towards animals is a faithful echo of the love with which God in the beginning pronounced his ‘fiat’ which brought them into existence. We too are called to a similar atttitude.” – Pope John Paul II

Three Theologians on Eschatological Vegetarianism

“Christian vegetarianism might be understood as a witness to the world that God’s creation is not meant to be at war with itself. Such a witness does not entail romantic conceptions of nature or of our fallen creation but rather is an eschatological act signifying that our lives are not captured by the old order.” ― Stanley Hauerwas & John Berkman, “The Chief End of All Flesh” Good News for Animals?: Christian Approaches to Animal Well-Being.

“Vegetarianism is a valid and valuable way of anticipating the kingdom of God by practicing what God most intends for the world. It is a sign of our trust in God’s intentions for the world and our hope in God’s plan for the world’s ultimate redemption.” ― Stephen H Webb, Good Eating.

The Interdependence of Human Sin and the Suffering of Animals

“[man] must never treat this need for defensive and offensive action against the animal world as a natural one, nor include it as a normal element in his thinking or conduct. He must always shrink from this possibility even when he makes use of it. It always contains the sharp counter-question: who are you, man, to claim that you must venture this to maintain, support, enrich and beautify your own life? What is there in your life that you feel compelled to take this aggressive step in its favor? We cannot but be reminded of the perversion from which the whole historical existence of the creature suffers and the guilt of which does not really reside in the beast but ultimately in man himself.” ― Karl Barth

…So, as Neil Messer concludes…

“A properly repentant attitude to human sin and the brokenness of the world should lead us to avoid the violent exploitation of non-human animals whenever we can.” ― Neil Messer

What is a Charitable Heart?

“What is a charitable heart? It is a heart which is burning with charity for the whole of creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons – for all creatures. He who has such a heart cannot see or call to mind a creature without his eyes becoming filled with tears by reason of the immense compassion which seizes his heart; a heart which is softened and can no longer bear to see or learn from others of any suffering, even the smallest pain, being inflicted upon a creature. This is why such a man never ceases to pray also for the animals.”

-St. Isaac the Syrian, cited in Vladimir Lossky’s, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.

P.T. Forsyth’s Plea for an ‘All Creatures’ Day’*

‘Now what day should we have for All Creatures’ Day? You will not find that in the almanack either. But what better day could we have than this selfsame Christmas Day? For was Jesus born among other children? Was He born into a nursery? Was there a crowd of other children all eager to see the new baby, and all clapping their hands when they did? Nothing of the kind. You know He was born in a stable, with a horse-trough for a cradle, with straw for a bed, and the cattle for company. There was the ass on which His mother rode, there were the asses of the other travellers who had got rooms in the inn; there were the cows belonging to the farm, and the fowls pecking in the straw; and there were the sheep—well, the sheep, of course, were in the fields, where the angels’ message came to the men who were taking care of them. The animals were nearer to the infant Jesus than any children were. And how often He spoke of the animals when He grew up; and He never spoke as if he despised them, but always as if He watched and loved them. And how very much the animals owe to Jesus! How much better the religion of Jesus has made people treat animals! The animals owe Jesus a great deal, if they but had a tongue to tell it. Yet they have tongues. I once saw a very old carving of the Nativity over a great church door. Now, I have seen several old pictures of the Nativity with the animals standing by or looking in with great interest at the stable window. But in this case they were still more interested; they were very affectionate to the baby, and their tongues expressed it. For it was two cows, and they had come up to the manger. You may know, perhaps, how curious cows are about clothes. They eat the cottage wash sometimes when it is hung out on the hedge. Well, among the swaddling clothes they found the baby; and they were so far from being disappointed that they felt quite loving, and they were licking it with their great rough tongues. I often think cows very kindly animals, but I never thought so more than then. Very likely the artist, with a kindly humour, wished to represent the homage of the creatures for the little Jesus. And he knew that they could not speak and praise with their tongues like men. So he made them worship in the only way their tongues could’.

– P. T. Forsyth, ‘Dumb Creatures and Christmas: A Little Sermon to Little Folk, 1903’ in Descending on Humanity and Intervening in History: Notes from the Pulpit Ministry of P.T. Forsyth (ed. Jason A. Goroncy; Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013).

*Thanks go to Jason Goroncy at Per Crucem ad Lucem for this remarkable reflection of P.T. Forsyth’s.

On the Import of Christian Ontology for Animal Ethics

A good friend of mine once handed me a book written by Joseph Campbell, and asked me what I thought of the exerpt on the page she had dog-eared. The piece denigrated the Judeo-Christian conception of God as “other” than nature, in favor of a more pantheistic conception. Campbell’s criticism was based on the view that treating the divine as transcendent, as standing outside the immanent world, leads to a neglect of nature. I explained to my friend that he seemed to mistake Christian orthodoxy, with gnosticism, and asked why he ignored the immense value conferred on creation, not only when God pronounces it “very good” in Genesis 1, but also when God himself enters into it, taking on flesh, and radically identifying himself with his creatures?

The assumption that an immanentized God somehow inevitably will ensure the protection of nature because it makes nature itself divine is, I think, a mistake. As is more often the case, identifying nature with the divine, like any naive collapse of “is” into “ought”, simply serves to “deify” various forms of violence, hierarchy and oppression, as expressions of a divine will. In contrast to this, the Christian view, which not only emphasizes the transcendence and otherness of God, but also God’s abiding love and concern for his beautiful but fallen creation, can serve to keep open the gap between “is” and “ought”, cautioning us not to fashion our understanding of God’s will simply by looking to nature as it is, but to imagine nature redeemed by God, and restored to peace. The ontological distinction between Creator and creature, as Hans Urs von Balthasar has said, serves “to remind us that we are not Creator.” And finally, as David Clough reminds us,

“Once we confess God as creator of the universe, we acknowledge a single fundamental binary opposition, that between creator and creature, that relativizes all creaturely differences to points of detail. It is much easier to avoid anthropocentrism in the context of an account that recognizes a basic duty of giving honour and worship to a being beyond the human.”

–David Clough, “The Problem with Human Equality: Towards a Non-Exclusive Account of the Moral Value of Creatures in the Company of Martha Nussbaum”

Thus, far from being inferior to a pantheistic – or even secular – ontology, the basic and most fundamental distinction in Christian ontology, that between creator and creature, God and creation, actually provides a crucial reminder that the relative differences that may exist between species, pale in comparison to what we have in common: namely that we are fellow creatures, finite and dependent beings, who, to echo the words of St. John Chrysostom, are “of the same Source”.