A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • WASM 1: The difference that difference makes

    In chapter 1 of Why Animal Suffering Matters, Linzey identifies several differences between humans and non-human animals that are typically offered as justifications for disregarding the interests of animals. In a neat twist, though, he aims to show that, properly understood, they call for a greater consideration of animal interests.

    Animals as natural slaves: Aristotle and St. Thomas contend that “brute” creatures are naturally made for the use of human beings. Linzey counters that Aristotle confuses a natural hierarchy with a moral one and St. Thomas’s account of power is insufficiently Christian. Christianity portrays a God who sacrificies himself for his creation – the “higher” for the “lower.” Being “higher” on the scale doesn’t give you unlimited rights over the “lower.”

    Animals as non-rational: The suffering of rational creatures is held to be more morally significant than that of non-rational ones. Humans experience existential dread, foreboding, and a sense of their own mortality, for example. But this can cut both ways: a human prisoner may be able to understand his plight and devise some comforts, but an imprisoned animal will be unable to understand what’s going on, heightening its terror and suffering.

    Animals as non-linguistic: Animals lack language–at least a language we can understand. But this implies that they lack the ability to represent their interests to us or to consent to things being done to them. This increases rather than decreases the burden of proceeding cautiously in our treatment of them.

    Animals as non-moral: Animals are not moral agents, at least not in the full-fledged sense that (most) humans are. But this means that they are morally innocent and cannot deserve to have suffering inflicted on them, much less benefit morally from any such pain, as humans might sometimes be thought to.

    Animals as soulless: Animals are frequently taken to lack an immortal soul that can survive death. But, if anything, this implies that it’s worse to treat them badly since they can’t receive recompense in the afterlife for their suffering. Linzey quotes C.S. Lewis’s essay on vivisection: “animals cannot deserve pain, nor profit morally by the discipline of pain, nor be recompensed by happiness in another life for suffering in this. Thus all the factors that render pain more tolerable or make it less than totally evil in the case of human beings will be lacking in the beasts. ‘Soullessness’ in so far as it is relevant to the question at all, is an argument against vivisection” (p. 27).

    Animals as devoid of the divine image: Human beings are said to be the only animals created in the image of God. But Linzey contends that recent OT scholarship shows that this shoud be understood in a “functionalist” sense: human beings are God’s representatives on earth, and their task is to treat creation with loving kindness. Even more, a “Christ-shaped” notion of lordship suggests service to creation, not mastery over it. Thus “dominion” means caring for the rest of creation, including animals.

    Linzey’s analysis yields a reconfigured list of differences that support, rather than undermine, solicitude for animals’ well-being:

    –Animals cannot give or withhold consent

    –Animals cannot represent or vocalize their own interests

    –Animals are morally innocent

    –Animals are vulnerable and relatively defenseless

    Linzey points out that these characterisitics are also shared by very young children, and our general sense is that these characteristics impose greater obligations to look out for children’s interests, not a license to exploit them. He notes that both animals and children are “exceptional cases” that don’t fit comfortably into traditional moral theories. Those theories tend to take rational, adult humans as the paradigm of moral concern and, consequently, are driven to more or less ad hoc measures to make room for children and animals. But the differences between “normal” adult humans on the one hand and children and animals on the other calls for a de-centering of our moral thinking:

    The practical upshot is that we cannot continue to privilege human suffering as if it stands alone as a unique source of moral concern. Some animal-friendly philosophers advance solicitude for animals on the basis that they are, inter alia, like us. But my thesis is that their very alterity in many respects should underpin their moral claim. The usefulness of animals, paradoxically, is that they help us to grapple with the moral relevance (as well as irrelevance) of difference. (p. 37)

    Linzey concludes the chapter with a reflection on a Good Friday sermon by John Henry Newman in which Newman compares the suffering of Christ on the cross to that of an innocent lamb. That suffering–the suffering of one who is completely innocent and vulnerable–ought to call forth our greatest reserves of sympathy and moral concern.

  • Coming attractions

    Last week I received my copy of Andrew Linzey’s new book, Why Animal Suffering Matters. I’ve only just started it, but it looks like Linzey develops in more detail an argument that he’s deployed in some of his other works: the differences between animals and humans, instead of justifying a lower moral status for animals, actually justifiy a radical revision in the way we treat them. This is because those characteristic differences (e.g., moral innocence, relativie helplessness) are such that they call for a response of mercy and compassion on our part. I expect to do some more in-depth blogging on this as time allows.

  • What’s going on with TEC?

    The headlines say that the Episcopal Church has overturned its “moratorium” on gay bishops. N.T. Wright, predictably, scolds the Americans for fomenting “schism.” But more nuanced interpretations of what’s going on are available. See Christopher here and Father Jones at the Anglican Centrist here.

  • Christians need not apply?

    Following up on the news that Francis Collins has been nominated to head the NIH, Slate has a curious article asking whether Collins is too religious for such a position. The article makes it clear that Collins has impeccable credentials (MD, PhD in physical chemistry, coordinator of the national genome project); not only believes in evolution and its compatibility with Christian faith, but is an outspoken critic of creationism and Intelligent Design; and rejects the idea that human personhood begins at conception and supports stem-cell research. From a liberal point of view, there wouldn’t seem any grounds for worry that Collins would replicate the Bush-era politicization of scientific decisions.

    And yet, the article still manages to spend the majority of its space wringing its hands about Collins’ possible “religious agenda”:

    His passionate defense of religion has earned some harsh criticism. When rumors of the appointment began to circulate in May, University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne blogged, “I’d be much more comfortable with someone whose only agenda was science,” saying he was worried “about how this will affect things like stem-cell research and its funding.” (In fact, Collins is clear on his support of stem-cell research.) Sam Harris was predictably unimpressed with Collins’ ideas. “Most reviewers of The Language of God seem quite overawed by its author’s scientific credentials,” Harris wrote shortly after it was published. “His book, however, reveals that a stellar career in science offers no guarantee of a scientific frame of mind.”

    Harris does not make a genuine attempt to consider the book’s ideas, but he is correct that the philosophy espoused by Collins, which he calls “theistic evolution,” has so far managed to evade sustained and careful scrutiny. Now that he has been chosen as the most important scientific administrator in the country, overseeing $40 billion of grants and programs, the scientific community can be forgiven for a few jitters over exactly where Collins comes down on the inevitable, often glaring contradictions between science and Scripture.

    First off, I find the idea that theistic evolution (TE) has evaded scrutiny pretty bizarre. Theologians and philosophers have been wrestling with the relationship between science and scripture for over a hundred years; just because the American political debate has been myopically focused on evolution vs. creationism doesn’t mean that TE hasn’t received careful scrutiny (which isn’t to suggest it’s free from problems). But more to the point, the central claim of theistic evolution, at least in most forms, is that evolution can be understood on its own terms with reference to natural causes and without explicit reference to God. So, pretty much by definition, it’s hard to see what insidious influence Collins’ faith is supposed to have here.

    The article goes on to say that Collins distinguishes between “unsolved” and “unsolvable” problems: the former are those problems likely to be explicated by future scientific advances, the latter those that remain permanent mysteries of the human condition. (The philosopher Gabriel Marcel made a similar distinction between problems and mysteries.) The piece says that Collins sees the human moral sense as well as the apparent “fine-tuning” of the universe for the emergence of life as mysteries that point to the existence of God, and warns that

    [t]his is the area where Collins’ religion is most in danger of intruding on his science. He believes that it’s possible to see evidence of the divine in things like physics equations or patterns of human behavior. While Collins would never suggest that science could furnish any final proof for the existence of God, he’s fond of mentioning that the Bible occasionally uses the word evidence. That is to say, he thinks the presence of the divine can be directly observed, even if it cannot be measured and tested.

    I think the standard that’s being set here is startling. Nearly all religious people see “evidence” of the divine in humanity and in the order of the universe. And nearly all religious people believe that something like direct experience of God is possible. The implication is that virtually any religious person is potentially disqualified from important scientific positions, or at least highly suspect. To be acceptable, is Collins required to be agnostic on all philosophical and religious questions of any significance? (Not to mention, in practical terms, it’s very difficult to see how accepting a modified version of the design argument [i.e., the fine-tuning argument] or suggesting that the human moral sense gives us clues to God’s will would affect the work of a NIH administrator.)

    The problem is the same as the problem with the “new atheists”: a kind of scientific imperialism (or scientism) that thinks all interesting philosophical or religious questions can be settled by empirical demonstration in the narrowest sense (or else are meaningless). It’s the return of the old, discredited logical postivist method where “evidence” is construed in a way that rules out, by definition, reasonable grounds for religious belief.

  • Stumbling blocks

    There’s a good interview with Francis Collins, author of The Language of God, at Books & Culture. This passage in particular struck a chord with me:

    You take both the Bible and evolution seriously. Did the harmony you find between evolution and your faith just come naturally?

    You know, it really did. When I became a believer at 27, the first church I went to was a pretty conservative Methodist church in a little town outside Chapel Hill. I’m sure there were a lot of people in that church who were taking Genesis literally and rejecting evolution.

    But I couldn’t take Genesis literally because I had come to the scientific worldview before I came to the spiritual worldview. I felt that, once I arrived at the sense that God was real and that God was the source of all truth, then, just by definition, there could not be a conflict.

    I returned to church as an adult after abandoning it for most of my teenage years and early-to-mid 20s. And even prior to that my religious education had been fairly minimal. If someone would’ve expected me, at the time I returned to church, to adopt a young earth creationist worldview I would’ve been completely baffled. It would’ve been a literal impossibility. (Fortunately, no one did; that’s liberal Protestantism for you.) Being educated outside of the creationist milieu had effectively inoculated me against any such proposal. It had long ceased to be a live option for me, and I had already learned that alternate readings of the Bible were entirely possible–and held by plenty of great theologians.

    Christians often forget that much of what we talk about, and the language in which we talk about it, is completely and utterly foreign and even unintelligible to people outside the church. To some extent that’s inevitable, and any serious religious conversion will require learning a “second language.” But Christians also need to be careful that we aren’t elevating cultural accretions to the status of essential tenets of the faith (I’d most emphatically include YEC here, but more “sophisticated” mainline versions of Christianity have this problem too). Insisting that converts (or re-verts) adopt such cultural baggage is placing stumbling blocks where they don’t need to be. Sometimes Christians take refuge in the idea that they’re a virtuous remnant holding out for truth against a pagan world; that kind of self-righteousness needs a heavy dose of humble self-examination.

    Incidentally, I see via Brandon that Collins has been nominated by the President to serve as the new director of the National Institutes of Health.

  • Like a pope needs an encyclical

    I don’t know if I’ll get around to reading Caritas in Veritate in its entirety (so far I’ve only made it through the introduction), but John Schwenkler is going to be posting thoughts on each chapter once a week (see here for details), which will undoubtedly provide food for thought.

  • More on Anselm, death, and redemption

    Christopher has an excellent follow-up post on Anselm and atonement, addressing some of the worries I had about Jesus’ death being a payment of sorts. Instead of trying to summarize it, I encourage you to read the whole thing.

    Some of what Christopher wrote brought to mind a passage from Denis Edwards’ Ecology at the Heart of Faith (which I talked about in the previous post). Here Edwards is discussing Karl Rahner’s account of redemption:

    [Rahner’s] focus is not on a forensic view of redemption, on Christ making up for human sin in legal terms, but on God embracing humanity and the world so that they are taken into God and deified.

    […]

    He sees the death and resurrection of Jesus as two distinct sides of the one event. In death, Jesus freely hands his whole bodily existence into the mystery of a loving God. In the resurrection, God adopts creaturely reality as God’s own reality. Jesus, in his humanity and as part of a creaturely world, is forever taken into God. God’s self-bestowal to the world in the incarnation reaches its culmination in the resurrection, when God divinizes and transfigures the creturely reality of Jesus. (Ecology at the Heart of Faith, p. 87)

    What I read Edwards as saying here is that Jesus offers his death, not as a payment, but as an act of total self-offering in trust. Because Jesus has made the perfect response to the Father, humanity–indeed, creaturehood–is taken into the divine life.

  • Kinship and cultivation, Francis and Benedict

    Catholic theologian Denis Edwards’ Ecology at the Heart of Faith provides a good model of engaging environmental issues using the classic Christian theological tradition.

    In chapter 2 he discusses the controverted issue of the image of God and dominion over nature. He argues that the imago is best understood as the human capacity for interpersonal love and relationship: with God, each other, and the rest of creation.

    [W]hat is specific to the human can be seen as the personal, the capacity to go out from oneself to the other in interpersonal love. Precisely this personal dimension of the human involves the human in relationship not only with that radical other who is God, and not only with other human beings, but with the others who are our fellow creatures. Precisely because human beings are made in the image of God, they are called like God to care for every sparrow that falls to the ground. (p. 16)

    Edwards then goes on to consider the topic of human dominion over nature. Rejecting a sheerly exploitative understanding of dominion and an ecological egalitarianism that gives no special preference to human interests, Edwards opts for a view that emphasizes kinship with other creatures and care and cultivation of the earth. As he puts it, this combines the “Franciscan” focus on other creatures as our brothers and sisters with a “Benedictine” call to cultivate the earth in work, gardening, and building and to creative contemplation of the world in learning and study:

    Theologically, I would propose that this kinship brings into play what I have identified as the image of God in the human, the personal. It involves humans as persons, personally connecting with other creatures, respecting and loving them in all their differences from ourselves. (pp. 23-4)

    […]

    The language of cultivating and caring for creation can include the many ways in which human creativity is used for the good of the community of life on Earth. It includes not only farming with best land-care practice, but also cooking, gardening, building, painting, doing science, teaching, planning, taking political action and many other creative actions. (pp. 25-6)

    Edwards here is trying to balance an appreciation and respect for the otherness of the non-human creation with a sense of the importance of human culture and our unique role on earth. “What is crucial is that cultivating and caring for creation are based on the conversion implied in the model of kinship, a conversion in which human beings come to see themselves as interrelated in a community of life with other creatures, a community in which each creature has its own unique value before God” (p. 26). He rejects the metaphor of stewardship, which has become popular in some Christian circles, because it “can run the risk of suggesting an inflated view of the human as a necessary intermediary between God and other creatures” (p. 25). The non-human world has its own relationship with God apart from us. Cultivation of and caring for creation, founded on a recognition of kinship, implies both a creativity and a self-limitation on the part of human beings.

  • Cognitive ethology, the Left, faith, and dominion

    A long but worthwhile essay that to some extent recapitulates the argument made by John Gray in Straw Dogs. Gray’s contention was that the secular Left has largely jettisoned the metaphysics of Christianity but held on to its anthropocentric outlook and belief in a progressive history. Echoing Nietzsche, Gray argues that the scientific, secular outlook undermines, instead of underwriting, humanism.

    The author of this essay, Steve Best, maintains that the Left, even while taking pride in its progressive, enlightened, science-informed views, still has largely ignored the “animal question,” i.e., the fact that science increasingly reveals a continuity between human and non-human animals. Instead, progressives still largely hold on to the old, discredited humanism that posits an unbridgeable chasm between us and the rest of creation.

    As a Christian who’s also interested in moving beyond a strictly anthropocentric theology, I come at this from a slightly different angle. On the one hand, the Bible (not to mention simple observation) reveals that we have at least a de facto dominion over the rest of nature: what we do disproportionately affects the rest of the world whether we like it or not. On the other hand, historical Christianity has largely adopted an anthropocentrism that is at odds with the Bible, at least on some readings. For instance, in a brief but interesting book, German theologian Michael Welker argues that a close reading of the opening chapters of Genesis describes a human dominion that privileges human interests but also demands a care for the rest of creation:

    The mandate of dominion aims at nothing less than preserving creation while recognizing and giving pride of place to the interests of human beings. In all the recognizing and privileging of the interests of human beings, the central issue is the preservation of creation in its complex structures of interdependence. The expansion of the human race upon the earth is inseparable from the preservation of the community of solidarity with animals in particular, and inseparable from the caretaking preservation of the community of solidarity with all creatures in general. God judges human beings worthy of this preservation of creation. They are to exercise dominion over creatures by protecting them. Human beings acquire their power and their worth precisely in the process of caretaking. The mandate of dominion according to Genesis 1 means nothing more and nothing less. (Creation and Reality, p. 73, emphasis added)

    Traditionally–and perhaps understandably given humanity’s limited ability to affect the non-human world in the past–Christianity has adopted the view that the rest of the world exists for our sake. There have been debates about whether this is an authentically biblical view or one imported from elsewhere (e.g., classical philosophy). Either way, I believe Christianity has the resources to adapt to new understandings of our place in creation without jettisoning the biblical tradition and the essential tenets of Christian theology.

  • Barr on faith and evolution

    Since I was pretty critical of First Things a couple posts down, it seems only fair to note that Stephen Barr has been writing some excellent posts on Christianity and evolution (see here, here, and here).