A Promise is a Promise: God's Covenantal Relationship With Animals (original) (raw)
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Imaging Elohim to Nonhuman Animals: Genesis 1:26-29 and Genesis 9:1-3
In this paper, I connect the phrases “image of God” and “dominion” from Genesis 1:26–28 to the dietary allowances and implied restrictions that God offers to humans in Genesis 1:29. This task requires an inquiry into the context of the imago within the first chapter of Genesis. This inquiry takes two forms. First, I explore the meaning of “image” in the context of the ancient Near East, ultimately arguing for a functional component to it. Second, I examine the particular God (Elohim) whose image humanity bears in conjunction with the functional term “dominion.” A comparison of Elohim and Marduk, the deity of the Enuma Elish, in conjunction with an exegetical consideration of verses 29–30, yields a thoroughly non–violent interpretation of the imago. A comparison of the nature of the imago in Genesis 1 with its nature in the re–creation narrative of Genesis 9:1–3 reveals a troubling shift. The non–violent functional dimension of the image is tainted in a way that renders it difficult to trace back to Elohim. In fact, the functional reign of humanity as depicted in Genesis 9 aligns more easily with the imago Marduk. This reading is further evident in the absence of the term “dominion” in Genesis 9 and the introduction of the terms “fear” and “dread.” Such a reading of the imago Dei and its functional dominion opposes instrumental understandings of nonhuman animals, both in pre–modern Christianity and especially in the wake of the Cartesian reduction of animals to machines. Furthermore, it speaks to how the “great work” of God is not limited to a concern for the well–being of humans alone. The challenge for contemporary Christians is to consider honestly how they can avoid the irony of claiming for themselves the loving, compassionate, and kenotic God that they refuse to image to nonhuman creatures. Such a consideration elicits a more inclusive form of the golden rule: Be to the animals what you would have God be to you.
SBTS Dissertation, 2022
“If you have no doctrine of creation, you have no doctrine of salvation.” With one pithy sentence, Peter Gentry exposes the foundational support for my dissertation. It has become popular recently in the interaction between theology and science to diminish the distinction between humans and animals. This is problematic. Starting from a basis of sola Scriptura, I look through the biblical data on humans and animals. The first chapters of Genesis are very important and are reviewed in detail. The following two chapters look at the rest of the Old Testament and the New Testament. From this data, it is clear that though humans are similar to animals, they are also distinct. Central to this distinction is the “breath of life” in man. This is an ontological distinction that includes both the physical capacities and immaterial aspect of man that are not found in animals. This includes man being made in the image of God, man’s moral stance before God, and the connection to Christ’s work as a man. Four modern theologians are reviewed who take a different methodological path with the result that they come to different theological conclusions. A final chapter brings together the biblical data with its implications for theology.
Vetus Testamentum, 2024
Three new monographs have appeared in 2023 that explore the Bible and nonhuman animals: Peter Joshua Atkins, The Animalizing Affliction of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4: Reading Across the Human-Animal Boundary (London: T&T Clark, 2023); Dong Hyeon Jeong, Embracing the Nonhuman in the Gospel of Mark (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2023); Saul M. Olyan, Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible (New York: OUP, 2023). This review brings these books into conversation, suggesting six questions that they grapple with and which might stimulate further research.
Animals and the Image of God In the Bible and Beyond
Dialog, 2009
This article examines theological thought pertaining to the imago Dei doctrine in light of its relation to non-human animals within the framework of biblical, intertestamental Jewish, and early Christian writings. Evaluating theological understandings of human nature as they relate to and interact with theological and philosophical understandings of animals and animal nature, the author finds that the understandings of the image of God and dominion as they are ideally conceived in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures are significantly more closely related to the ideas of human-animal continuity, compassion, and responsibility than to human rationality or the human immaterial immortal soul (and the entailed implication of animals’ lack thereof ).
Noblesse Oblige: Theological Differences between Humans and Animals and What They Imply Morally
The author reviews the work of select theologians, ethicists, and biblical scholars who suggest that the difference between humans and animals should not serve solely as an ascription of a special status to humans, but also as the foundation for a responsibility that humans bear toward animals. As an added reflection, the author explores common categorical differentiations in systematic theology: God and creation; human and nonhuman; elect and non-elect. In the first and last of these categorical differentiations, unique identity entails both a special status and responsibility. The latter is normatively directed to those who are categorically different. As such, the categorical difference between humans and animals establishes a foundation for moral concern.
The Third Covenant: People, Animals, and Land in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures
The Hebrew covenant unfolds along three trajectories, what can be called three "covenants" or three "aspects" of the divine plan for creation. [1] These covenants are not separate, but represent different, non-sequential aspects of the same unfolding of sacred history. Envisioned as a triangle, one point would be Abraham and his line, the second point would be the Nations, and the third point would be the land and the animals, all bound together in ties of mutuality. The lines connecting the dots would be the proper sets of relations among these three covenant-bearers, and it is the proper ethical and spiritual relations that can be termed "the Kingdom of God" in Christian parlance. God is the "between" that links Jews, Nations, and Earth, [2] that connects the various chosens in a common vision of reciprocity, kinship, and peace. How do the three covenants inhere within one another? I address this question by taking cues from scripture in order to articulate a more profound respect for earth and its creatures.
A Biblical View of Animals: A Critical Response to the Theology of Andrew Linzey
"Since Peter Singer's landmark work, Animal Liberation, was published in 1976, the issue of humanity's moral relationship to animals has become a hot topic. 1 Not surprisingly, Christians have begun to re-consider the issue of animal rights. 2 Christian Vegetarians, as they call themselves, have begun to proclaim their "humane" lifestyle as a logical extension of the redemption found in Christ. In light of the trends, I believe it is now necessary for the Church to investigate again what holy writ has to say about humanity's relationship to animals as it compares with so called "Christian Vegetarians and Christian Animal Rights Activists.""
Complex Attitudes towards Animals in the Hebrew Bible
T&T Clark eBooks, 2023
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God's Future for Animals: From Creation to New Creation
God's Future for Animals: From Creation to New Creation, 2021
God loves animals and gives them a special place in creation. So, do animals also have a place in God’s work op redemption? Will there be animals on the new Earth? Will we see our beloved pets in the afterlife? This book takes up the challenge to think in a responsible way through these questions. The author focuses in particular on the physical restoration, the prophetic proclamation of the coming animal peace, the attitude of God and humanity towards animals, and the questions of the relationship between biblical life, the future of animals, and vegetarianism. What can the Bible and Christian doctrine reveal to us about God’s way with animals?
Animal Liberation and the Bible: Christianity and the Question of Speciesism
Peter Lang, 2021
Animal liberation contends that humans and animals are of equal value and that standard views of human uniqueness are an anthropocentric prejudice called "speciesism." It advocates ending human use of animals in recognition of animal rights. Animal liberation theology attempts to ground similar views in the Bible. It typically envisions an original creation free of predation to be restored free of meat-eating and animal use. It views animal sacrifice as murder and speaks of a "deep incarnation" by which God in Christ takes on "all flesh" for the salvation of all creatures in a "cosmic redemption." This is the first full-fledged critique of animal liberation in general and so-called speciesism in particular from a biblical and theological standpoint, with accompanying scientific and philosophical analysis. After it introduces the major thinkers, the book demonstrates the incoherence of animal liberation with human evolution, the use of animals in the domestic and religious life of Israel, and the New Testament assertion that God the Son was uniquely incarnated in the human Jesus for human salvation. This book reasserts historic Christian faith as sufficient to the scientific, philosophical and ethical challenges posed by animal studies, and concludes with an appraisal of key ethical concerns regarding animal use and foundational issues within the animal liberation movement.