A Thinking Reed

Author: Lee M.

  • Notes on an animal theodicy and soteriology

    Early in my blogging career (on Verbum Ipsum, my Blogspot predecessor to ATR) I, perhaps with delusions of grandeur, wrote a five-part series called “The Atonement and the Problem of Evil” (the series is archived here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V). My reason for writing it was a hunch that the problem of evil is best addressed not just by trying to answer the question “Why is there so much evil in the world?” but also by talking about what God is doing about the evil in the world. Theodicy should not be separated from soteriology, in other words.

    I think it holds up fairly well, but in retrospect I see that I neglected an important topic, the problem of animal suffering. Many thinkers including C.S. Lewis and one of my old teachers, philosopher (and atheist) William Rowe see the problem of animal suffering as one of the most difficult problems for any theodicy. This is because none of the standard responses to human suffering seem available for dealing with non-human suffering. Animals can’t be morally improved by suffering, nor can they be said to deserve their suffering as punishment for sin. It can’t even be chalked up to a necessary consequence of free will, since we don’t think animals have free will, at least not in sense used by traditional “free will” theodicies. In short, much animal suffering seems to be severe, gratuitous, and without redeeming features of any sort. The question, then is whether we have reason to believe that God is a) concerned about animal suffering and b) is going to do something about it.

    I think we do have reasons to believe that God is concerned about animal suffering and will do something about it based on the kind of God that we believe he has revealed himself as. All Christians agree that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveal the character of God. This character is one of self-giving love that enters into solidarity with us by sharing our human condition. And this love is exemplified on the Cross as nowhere else: Jesus “loved his own to the end” (Jn. 13.1). But does this have any relevance for animal suffering? In his Animal Theology Andrew Linzey suggests that the Cross shows us not only God’s solidarity with human suffering, but God’s solidarity with the suffering of all sentient creatures. “If it is true that God is the Creator and sustainer of the whole world of life, then it is inconceivable that God is not also a co-sufferer in the world of non-human creatures as well” (p. 50).

    If God has entered into solidarity and made a new covenant not only with all human beings, but with “all flesh,” then it might not be too much of a stretch to think that God will raise all flesh, all sentient creatures, to newness of life. If Jesus is the firstfruits of a new creation, why shouldn’t we follow the Bible in anticipating that this will include more than human beings? This seems a more promising approach to theodicy than one that tries to write off animal suffering as necessary to the greater good of the whole. If “not even a sparrow falls” without our Heavenly Father’s knowledge, can we consign billions of sentient creatures to exclusion from his Kingdom?

    Obviously any kind of post-mortem existence for animals raises some difficult questions since we don’t really know what kind of “selves” animals have, especially the lower ones. Then again, there are some difficult questions about post-mortem human existence and I don’t know that we can draw a bright line between human beings and other animls such that only the former are capable of surviving death. Whatever else we know it seems virtually certain that animals have some degree of “subjectivity” which could, in principle, be resurrected or re-embodied in some way.

    If Christians are right that God created the world and called it good and that he entered into that creation in a unique and miraculous way, then I think we can reasonably suppose that God has purposes for his creation that extend beyond his purposes for human beings. Clearly we occupy a pivotal position in those purposes if Christian teaching is to be believed, but we don’t exhaust them. Did God create the natural world and billions of living creatures merely to discard them? Just as we believe that our bodies will, in some way that we can’t really imagine, be raised, I think we can hopefully affirm that our animal kin will be raised to share, in a way appropriate to their natures, in the life of the Blessed Trinity.

  • Debating tactics

    Only in Berkeley would you get a debate between Christopher Hitchens who thinks that all religion is evil and Chris Hedges who merely thinks that all “religious orthodoxy” is evil billed as a debate over the merits of religion. Hitchens seems to like soft targets; I’d like to see him debate a serious orthodox Christian thinker: Stanley Hauerwas, maybe? I have a feeling the cantankerous Texan could hold his own against Hitch.

  • Beyond the meat (or “meat”) centered diet

    This article makes a fair point that meat substitutes are not automatically healthier than actual meat, but it also seems to presuppose a fairly unimaginative version of vegetarian eating.

    Personally I eat very little in the way of meat substitutes. Sure I enjoy the occasional veggie burger or Quorn pattie, but I would say that 90% of my meals don’t involve any “fake meat” products, including tofu.

    I think vegetarian eating will get boring (and therefore harder to sustain) if you think of it as essentially the same as the “classic” American meal (slab o’ meat, potatoes, anemic overcooked vegetable of some sort) with the meat simply swapped out for some kind of substitute. I think you’re much better off, in terms of variety and tastiness of food, if you try to get away from that model, or at least don’t make it the staple of your diet.

    For instance, one of our favorite cookbooks is both completely vegan and none of the recipes make us of meat-substitues. They’re all based on traditional Mediterranean recipes. Indian and Thai food are also very veggie-friendly cuisines that don’t involve making a lot of substitutions. Relying too much on meat substitutes ironically reinforces the idea that meat is central to good eating.

    I’m not saying that vegetarians should avoid meat substitues, as I’ve heard some suggest. The point is to reduce cruelty to animals, not cleanse oneself of the “taint” of liking the taste of meat. Often in a pinch a veggie burger is the best alternative for me (the ones sold by Burger King are actually pretty good). But I think that giving up meat can actually open new horizons of good food that one might not have considered otherwise, since it can require you to be a little more creative about what you eat.

  • Niebuhr and the neocons

    Thanks to Michael Westmoreland-White for pointing out this interview with liberal theologian and social ethicist Gary Dorrien. Dorrien, who now holds the Reinhold Niebuhr chair in social ethics at Union Theological Seminary, points out that while Niebuhr held many different and incompatible political views over the course of his life, the current US policy in Iraq is completely at odds with the main thrust of Niebuhr’s thought which emphasized the perils of unintended consequences and the selfishness of collectives such as nations that often clothes itself in the robes of righteousness.

    Q. What insights of Niebuhr’s are most pertinent for the nation’s public life today?

    A. His sense that elements of self-interest and pride lurk even in the best of human actions. His recognition that a special synergy of selfishness operates in collectivities like nations. His critique of Americans’ belief in their country’s innocence and exceptionalism — the idea that we are a redeemer nation going abroad never to conquer, only to liberate.

    Q. You’ve written two critical books on political neoconservatism. Don’t many neoconservatives claim to be Niebuhrians?

    A. In various phases of his public career, Niebuhr was a liberal pacifist, a neo-Marxist revolutionary, a Social Democratic realist, a cold war liberal and, at the end, an opponent of the war in Vietnam. He zigged and zagged enough that all sorts of political types claim to be his heirs. Even the neoconservatives can point to a few things.

    But over all, they’re kidding themselves. Niebuhr’s passion for social justice was a constant through all his changes. Politically he identified with the Democratic left. We can only wish that the neocons had absorbed even half of his realism.

    Niebuhr often gets criticized nowadays for having been too complacent about the use of power and inattentive to the need for a Christian ethic that offered a countercultural witness to the norms of “realism.” And while there’s some truth to that, we could still stand to re-learn some of the lessons he tried to impart.

  • Links of interest

    Some stuff worth reading from the past couple of days:

    On the new genre of “food ethics” writing.

    The promise of religious environmentalism.

    The legacy of Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II.

    Libertarianism vs. “low-tax liberalism”

    Ron Paul shakes up the GOP.

  • Friday metal – Mastodon, “The Wolf Is Loose”

  • Let the peaceniks have their say!

    Good article at Reason on the Ron Paul-Rudy Giuliani showdown:

    No one knows precisely what morbid formula inspired the Sept. 11 attacks. Most likely, it was some mix of U.S. foreign policy exacerbating radical Islamists’ already deep-seeded contempt for Western values.

    But to suggest that we shouldn’t even consider that our actions overseas might have unintended consequences is, frankly, just ignorant. And to attempt to silence anyone who says otherwise by attempting to define them as the lunatic fringe of political debate is not only ignorant, it’s an embrace of ignorance—a refusal to even hear ideas that might challenge your own perspective.

  • Just War theory and the “charism of discernment”

    This post from Catholic theologian William Cavanaugh revisits some of the arguments of pro-Iraq war Catholics, in particular papal biographer George Weigel (link via Eric).

    Weigel’s notion of a “charism of political responsibility/discernment” is muddled at best. Here’s the relevant passage from his “Moral Clarity in a Time of War”:

    If the just war tradition is indeed a tradition of statecraft, then the proper role of religious leaders and public intellectuals is to do everything possible to clarify the moral issues at stake in a time of war, while recognizing that what we might call the “charism of responsibility” lies elsewhere-with duly constituted public authorities, who are more fully informed about the relevant facts and who must bear the weight of responsible decision-making and governance. It is simply clericalism to suggest that religious leaders and public intellectuals “own” the just war tradition in a singular way.

    As I have argued above, many of today’s religious leaders and public intellectuals have suffered severe amnesia about core components of the tradition, and can hardly be said to own it in any serious intellectual sense of ownership. But even if today’s religious leaders and public intellectuals were fully in possession of the tradition, the burden of decision-making would still lie elsewhere. Religious leaders and public intellectuals are called to nurture and develop the moral-philosophical riches of the just war tradition. The tradition itself, however, exists to serve statesmen.

    There is a charism of political discernment that is unique to the vocation of public service. That charism is not shared by bishops, stated clerks, rabbis, imams, or ecumenical and interreligious agencies. Moral clarity in a time of war demands moral seriousness from public officials. It also demands a measure of political modesty from religious leaders and public intellectuals, in the give-and-take of democratic deliberation.

    Now, you could legitimately argue, I think, that public officials have the unique responsibility for making decisions to go to war, but that’s no reason to suppose that they are given a unique gift of discernment or judgment. It’s true that they will often have access to privileged information (though, fat lot of good it did ‘em in the case of Iraq) but that’s a separate issue.

    What Weigel seems to imply is that public officials are granted almost supernatural aid in deciding whether or not a given war is just. I can’t imagine what in the tradition would support this claim unless we’re reverting to the idea of the king as God’s anointed.

    Cavanaugh puts it well:

    Regardless of the facts of this particular case, moral judgments about war, like all moral judgments, are not primarily a matter of good information. Good information is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for sound moral judgments. Sound moral judgments depend on being formed in certain virtues. Why a Christian should assume that the president of a secular nation-state would be so formed – much less enjoy a certain “charism” of moral judgment – is a mystery to me. “Charism” is a theological term denoting a gift of the Holy Spirit. To apply such a term to whomever the electoral process of a secular nation-state happens to cough up does not strike me as theologically sound or practically wise.

    It’s also worth pointing out that the Constitution envisioned war being declared by Congress, not the President (Article I, Section 8). While again it’s true that public officials have a unique responsibility for making these decisions, they aren’t guaranteed a special wisdom. It seems to me that only an inflated, quasi-monarchical concept of the presidency would even be tempted to impute this kind of “charism” to the occupant of the Oval Office. If the decision to go to war was kept with Congress (or, heck, with a plebiscite), there would probably be much less temptation toward this kind of obscurantism.

  • Lewis on the “true myth” of Redemption

    No doubt readers are getting a bit tired of this, but the Lewis letters are so bloggable. Maybe because, at least as they appear in the book, they’re almost like blog-entries themselves.

    In the fall of 1931 Lewis is on the verge of embracing Christianity. In September he’d had an important conversation with Hugo Dyson and Tolkien about the importance of myth and how Christianity is the “true myth.”

    In October he writes to his good friend Arthur Greeves:

    What has been holding me back (at any rate for the last year or so) has not been so much a difficulty in believing as a difficulty in knowing what the doctrine meant: you can’t believe a thing while you are ignorant what the thing is. My puzzle was about the whole doctrine of Redemption: in what sense the life and death of Christ “saved” or “opened salvation to” the world. I could see how miraculous salvation might be necessary […]. What I couldn’t see was how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) two thousand years ago could help us here and now — except in so far as his example helped us. And the example business, tho’ true and important, is not Christianity: right in the centre of Christianity, in the Gospels and St Paul, you keep on getting something quite different and very mysterious expressed in those phrases I have so often ridiculed (“propitiation” — “sacrifice” — “the blood of the Lamb”) — expressions wh. I cd only interpret in senses that seemed to me either silly or shocking.

    Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself (cf. the quotation opposite the title page of Dymer) I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose “what it meant.”

    Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call “real things”. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a “description” of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The “doctrines” we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that wh. God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Does this amound to a belief in Christianity? At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approached the other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also nearly certain that it really happened… (pp. 288-9)

    Lewis picks up on this distinction between the thing itself and the doctrines about it later in Mere Christianity where, in his chapter on Redemption, he emphasizes that the theories about the Atonement are not the objects of belief, but the event itself:

    Theories about Christ’s death are not Christianity: they are explanations about how it works. […] A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.

    We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ’s death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself. (pp. 54-56)

    What I find intriguing here is Lewis’s insistence that the “true myth” itself can “work on us” without our having an explicit theory about how it works. On the face of it, this makes a lot of sense. Many (perhaps most?) Christians throughout history have no doubt enjoyed Christ’s benefits without having much in the way of an explicit theory of Atonement. Maybe it’s a legacy of intellectualistic Protestantism to put so much emphasis on holding the correct doctrine. More sacramental forms of Christianity have always believed that the benefits of Christ’s work come to us in tangible (edible!) forms, not just through understanding.

    Of course, there’s a danger in reducing Christianity to a kind of “magic;” there must, we think, be some cognitive element. An interesting question is raised here about people who are severely mentally handicapped and may have little or no grasp of doctrine. Surely we don’t think that precludes them from being beneficiaries of Christ’s work? But, leaving aside these hard cases, it does seem that an understanding of the “how” might not be completely “separable” from the “what.” There might be understandings of the Atonement, for instance, that are so wrong-headed that they preclude a decent grasp on what Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection do for us. And it’s not clear to me at least that believing that “Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself” doesn’t entail some further beliefs about how this works. “Narrative” and “story” have become important notions in some recent theology, but is first-order narrative sufficient without some second-order doctrinal reflection?

  • We’re all lost

    I agree entirely with the spirit of this article. The point of Lost, I’ve always thought, isn’t to “solve” the mysteries, whatever that might look like. I see it as essentially a metaphor for the human condition – we’re thrown into this world that may or may not have a larger meaning. Things are ambiguous; there’s just enough evidence to support a variety of interpretations, but not enough for one to be overwhelmingly obvious. All the characters (and, by extension, the viewers) are trying to find meaning in a world that may or may not have any. Locke, more than any of the other characters, embraces the idea that there is an overarching purpose at work, and is therefore characterized in several episodes as a “man of faith.” Jack could be taken to represent the Enlightenment belief in human rationality, Sawyer is ruthless social Darwinism, etc. These all represent different ways of responding to the world. I think it was Gabriel Marcel who distinguished betwee a problem, which is something to be solved, and a mystery, which is something to be entered into. Lost offers a mystery in this sense: the characters enter into their strange surroundings and cobble together more-or-less coherent responses to them. It’s all very existentialist.