A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Andrew Linzey

  • Groaning of Creation: Index of posts

    Thought it might be helpful to have links to all my posts on Christopher Southgate’s book on animal theodicy, The Groaning of Creation, in one place. 1. Intro 2. The only way? 3. God so loved the world 4. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy 5. Heaven can wait 6. Priests of creation 7. The Read more

  • The Groaning of Creation 7: The (vegetarian) restaurant at the end of the universe

    We saw in the previous post that Southgate thinks humans should play an active role in “healing” the creation by ameliorating some of the negative effects of the evolutionary process. And we’ve also seen that chief among those effects, in his view, are the problem of animal suffering and the problem of extinction. Turning to Read more

  • C.S. Lews on democracy and authority

    I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the Read more

  • All theology is animal theology

    Christopher: Considering animals in relationship to God is not something extra or foreign to Christianity. In my opinion, a serious doctrine of Creation cannot ignore the rest of the living world and the Creation as a whole and finally be Christian. Even rocks glorify God. And frankly, neither can a complete doctrine of Redemption or Read more

  • The Fall and natural evil revisited, pt. 2

    In the last post I expressed my unease with the notion of a cosmic fall, largely on the grounds that, for it to be radical enough to exculpate God from creating an order shot through with suffering, death, parasitism and predation it would risk creating a gulf between God and his creation. If fallen angels Read more

  • August reading notes

    Some highlights from the past month: I blogged a bit about Keith Ward’s latest, Re-Thinking Christianity here, here and here. Ward continues his streak of intelligent, accessible theology that straddles the popular and the academic. The takeaway lesson from RC is that there isn’t exactly an unchanging core of doctrine, but that Christianity has changed Read more

  • The cow-man cometh

    This story reports that the UK has given the green light to scientists to create human-animal ‘chimera’ embryos for research purposes (see here for a bit more background). Essentially this involves combining an animal egg (cows in this case) with human genetic material to create an embryo from which stem cells can be extracted. The Read more

  • Liberation, human and animal

    (This post actually started out short. Honest!) Christopher (at his new blog) directs our attention to this article by Andrew Linzey on the connection between violence against animals and violence against humans. Clearly it’s not a matter of cruelty to animals causing violence against human beings in a straightforward way. Rather, as Linzey says, “cruelty Read more

  • Who is my neighbor?

    *Christopher has posted the text of a talk he recently gave on Christianity and the environment. It’s terrific stuff, with a very Lutheran and Benedictine flavor. I think that rooting our ethics (including our environmental ethics) in our response to what God has first done for us is exactly right and it’s one of the Read more

  • Creatures of the Same God

    I’m excited to see that Anglican theologian Andrew Linzey is publishing a new book by this name. It looks like it will build on his earlier work on animal theology and develop it in some new ways. Unfortunately, I don’t see any indication that it will be available here in the US upon publication, and Read more