Dominion and Communion - Patristic Theology and Ethics of Humanity's Relationship with Animal Creation

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DOMINION AND COMMUNION: PATRISTIC THEOLOGY AND THE ETHICS OF HUMANITY’S RELATIONSHIP WITH ANIMAL CREATION

BY

Ian Charles Jones BA, Baylor University, 1999 JD, University of Virginia School of Law, 2002 MA, St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 2009 MPhil, Fordham University, 2013

DISSERTATION SUMBITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF THEOLOGY AT FORDHAM UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK FEBRUARY, 2016

ProQuest Number: 10013400

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation could not have reached its completion without the attentive guidance of my supervisor, Dr George E. Demacopoulos, who reviewed successive drafts and provided me with both encouragement and helpful critique. Dr Demacopoulos agreed to my project of bridging historical theology with contemporary ethics despite its unconventionality in the field of historical studies, and what success I have achieved in this endeavor is owed in large part to his sympathy for the vision of my project. Another pivotal figure in all stages of this dissertation was Dr Charles C. Camosy, one of my readers and the professor whose bioethics course launched my interest in the subject of animal ethics. It was my term paper for the same course, titled “Duties of a Steward: Articulating an Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Animal Welfare,” that became the seed for this much larger project. Where Dr Demacopoulos provided me with valuable feedback from a historian’s perspective, Dr Camosy did the same from an ethicist’s perspective. The active involvement of both professors in all phases greatly enhanced my efforts to bridge these two fields. I would also like to thank my reader, Rev. Dr Joseph T. Lienhard, SJ, for his helpful attention to detail in suggesting revisions, and my examiners, Dr Harry P. Nasuti, and Dr Christiana Z. Peppard, who graciously agreed to sit on my committee to provide me with challenging perspectives I doubtless would not have explored otherwise. Finally, I cannot imagine having completed this project without the loving and generous support of my parents, Ken and Anastasia Jones, who allowed me to revisit my days as a much younger student by offering me their home as a place to stay while completing my research and writing.

i

Table of Contents Acknowledgements

i

Introduction

1

Chapter 1: Patristic Understandings of the Natures and Capacities of Non-Human Animal Creatures

11

I. Reading these sources with an eye to animal significance

13

II. The hierarchical ontology of animal creation

19

III. Animals for human use and benefit

28

IV. Design of animals revealing God’s glory, wisdom, and providence

33

V. Animals as moral examples

39

VI. The state of paradise and the present state

54

VII. Conclusion

62

Chapter 2: Patristic Understandings of Human Dominion: the Basis for Responsibilities toward Creation

64

I. The rational human soul as ruler: humanity made in God’s image

65

II. Human humility and human exceptionalism: patristic exegesis of Genesis 2 and its interplay with Genesis 1

80

III. The composite human with a mediatorial vocation

94

IV. Paradise and its recovery

102

V. Human dominion revisited after the Flood

111

VI. Christ as archetype of human dominion, and the saints as His imitators

114

VII. Conclusion

117

Chapter 3: Christ-Like Dominion in the Lives of the Saints

ii

126

iii I. The texts: genre, audience, and purpose

134

II. Asceticism revisited

142

III. Use of animals for skins and food

145

IV. Tenderness and cooperation between saints and animals

154

A. Saintly service to animals: mercy and hospitality

156

B. Animal moral or spiritual agency

159

C. Animal service to saints

167

1. Animals cooperating with saints

167

2. Animals honoring departing or departed saints

168

3. Animals showing mercy toward saints

172

V. Saintly command and animal obedience

173

VI. Saintly hostility to harmful animals

183

VII. Conclusion

192

Chapter 4: Contemporary Animal Ethics in Dialogue with Traditional Sources I. David Clough: critiquing and reappropriating theological sources

197 199

A. Creation

201

B. Reconciliation

209

C. Redemption

216

II. Andrew Linzey: the radical demands of the perennial gospel

221

A. Christ-like dominion as service to sentient creatures

222

B. Ethical case: meat eating versus vegetarianism

231

C. Ethical cases: animal experimentation and genetic engineering

233

D. Linzey as animal-rights theologian: critique and appreciation

236

iv III. Roger Scruton: traditional conclusions through modern methods A. Varying animal capacities and their moral implications

240 242

B. Rationality, and the bases for duties of rational (moral) beings toward non-rational (non-moral) beings IV. Conclusion

247 258

Conclusion

264

Bibliography

285

Abstract Vita

Introduction

The recent publication of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’ has marked an important step in the recognition that concern for the earth belongs not exclusively on the left end of the political spectrum, but to all people, especially Christians by virtue of their rich theology of creation. The pope has issued a call for all of us to think and act on behalf of care for God’s world, and we need not hold to any particular ideology or even be in the Roman communion to see the rightness of this call. Even the most ardent climate change skeptic, for example, can recognize that the consumerist mentality rampant in modern Western society is at odds with the ascetic renunciation of worldly concerns that permeates the Christian tradition and the gospel itself. Disputes over scientific evidence may continue and are indeed important for public policy, but from a theological perspective, it should not strain the bounds of credulity to believe human choices can affect creation on a global scale. According to Genesis, it would not be the first time. Among the issues in the “ecological” family, the ethical treatment of animals stands out as especially significant, both theologically and practically. Theologically, the Judeo-Christian foundation for our authority as rulers of the earth is located in Genesis 1:26, but that passage specifically refers to human dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the animals of the land, not over “creation” or “the earth” generally. While Genesis 2:15 says God placed Adam “in the garden of Eden to till and keep it,”1 our authority as beings in God’s image and likeness (Gen 1:26-27) pertains to animals in a unique way. We need to ask ourselves what is contemplated in it and what is not. Practically, care for animals implicates questions of care for the wider environment, as both wild and tame animals depend on the natural world for their 1

This translation is from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), as are all Scripture quotations unless otherwise indicated. 1

2 sustenance. While it is possible to address questions of animal treatment in isolation from larger ecological questions by focusing only on specific actions we should not take against animals, such an approach already assumes a certain ideal of our relationship with animals: a negative one whereby we may do nothing better than to leave them alone, instead of a positive one whereby we are responsible not only for refraining from abuse, but also for protecting and perhaps even nurturing their ability to live in accordance with their natures. Although this dissertation deals with the subject of animal treatment specifically and not with ecological questions more holistically, it aims to be attentive to the relationship between the two, bearing in mind that the answers to one set of questions have ramifications for the other set. Non-human creation is often treated as merely instrumental, a means to the end of human happiness and flourishing, or at least of meeting human needs. Particularly in the developed world, these ends are conceived of in consumerist terms, in which desires tend to masquerade as needs, sometimes actually taking on that character by becoming addictions. While this dynamic is harmful to the planet and to humans, it is devastating in a direct way to non-human animals as sentient creatures, capable of feeling the painful effects of their exploitation. The two modern institutions that most clearly emblematize the large-scale, efficiency-oriented exploitation of the modern world are the industrial “factory” farm and the research laboratory, both of which treat the animal in value-neutral terms, as either a unit of production or a source of data. The benefits to the public are obvious: artificially cheap meat and dairy products in the former case, and advances in scientific knowledge in the latter.2 Notwithstanding the hidden costs of the 2

Detailed information on these practices may be found in, among other sources: Charles Camosy, For Love of Animals: Christian Ethics, Consistent Action (Cincinnati: Franciscan Media, 2013); Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: HarperCollins, 2009); Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002); Andrew Linzey, Animal Gospel (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster

3 environmental degradation and the adverse impact to public health caused by factory farming, demand for large quantities of meat and dairy at low shelf prices drives a system that relies on what may fairly be described as concentration camps for animals. The same may be said for the demand for medical research in pursuit of new discoveries and treatments. It is not unfair to characterize public sympathy for animals as sincerely felt but arbitrarily granted, arising inconsistently due to lack of information and reflection. The recent public outcry over the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer’s killing of Cecil the Lion, going so far as to force him into temporary hiding owing to death threats, is enough to demonstrate that many in the public do feel sympathy for animals, even at an intense level. It is interesting to speculate, then, as to how much of the righteous indignation against Palmer came from people who routinely enjoy low-cost meat and dairy. Considering that this reaction was quite mainstream, I suspect the answer is that a substantial majority of his critics are consumers of factory-farmed animal products. There are a couple of possible explanations for the discrepancy. The first is that a lion naturally commands more sympathy than a cow, pig, or chicken, perhaps because of its majestic air, or perhaps because of its status as a threatened species. In either scenario, the sympathy runs to the species and not the individual, so Cecil is valuable as a member of a majestic or threatened species. This is likely part of the reason for the disgust with Palmer’s action, but it does not account for concerns like the amount of time it took Cecil to die (forty hours) or for the labeling of his killing as murder.3 There seems also to be a well-placed sympathy for the suffering and death of Cecil as an individual animal. And this is just one example that stands apart from the

John Knox Press, 1998); and Andrew Linzey, Animal Theology (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994). 3 See, for example, Rose George, “The hunter who killed Cecil the lion doesn’t deserve our empathy,” The Guardian (July 29, 2015) [cited 25 September 2015]. Online: http://www .theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/29/hunter-killed-cecil-lion-walter-palmer.

4 countless people who have strong emotional attachments to their pets, investing them with value as individuals with some claim to honorary membership in the human family. But this sympathy begs the question of the discrepancy: if so many people care about the needless suffering and killing of individual animals, why are the factory farms in business? There would not be that kind of supply without a commensurate level of demand. When outrage over the system is expressed, it is often stereotyped as coming from either those on the cultural fringes or those with a nearly superhuman ability to go without foods ordinary people cannot go without. Whether demeaning or flattering, the effect of the stereotype is to marginalize the issue. When the cost of compassion becomes too high, it can be easier to shift one’s attention elsewhere. This myopia, I submit, is at the root of the current disparity between our instrumentalizing of animals on the one hand and our sentimentalizing of them on the other (which, in the final analysis, is simply another way of instrumentalizing them). If compassion is to be real rather than arbitrary and convenient, it will be necessary to examine our own practices with an openness to critique and change. We must confront the ways in which not only Palmer’s choices, but our own, contribute to the degradation of animals. One way of countering an instrumentalist attitude, sometimes employed in philosophical ethics, is to focus inquiry on whether animals have “intrinsic” value, that is, value in themselves independent of their extrinsic utility. In a Christian setting, this concept may be adjusted to refer to value vested in them from outside, by their Creator. Although the idea that animals have some value as God’s creatures may not be particularly controversial among Christians in the abstract, there nonetheless exists a fear of compromising human uniqueness by virtue of the imago Dei that can stifle serious reflection on questions of animal ethics. Particularly among conservative Christians, there is a suspicion that an interest in compassion for animals can only coexist with

5 an underlying misanthropy, a demotion of humans as objects of ethical concern. It may not be surprising, then, that Christian tradition has been criticized for setting humanity on such an exclusive pedestal as to sideline animals as objects of ethical concern.4 On the other hand, it has been correctly noted that this characterization of Christian attitudes is often exaggerated, while Christian resources supporting a gentler view toward non-human creatures are overlooked.5 The tradition contains a complex array of sources, often ratifying customary uses of animals but often allowing for a higher view of them while maintaining human uniqueness. The “intrinsic” or “invested” value of animals would imply limits to what we may do to them but, depending on the character of human dominion, might also imply affirmative responsibilities to care for them. It is difficult, however, to deduce a set of specific prescriptions from an isolated general concept such as intrinsic value. The Christian resources studied in this dissertation start instead from the other end: endorsing either explicitly or implicitly a range of behaviors in relation to animals. Rather than serving as a deductive project, this dissertation takes a largely inductive approach, analyzing these unsystematized behaviors (with attention to specificity of context) and categorizing them so as to discern a structure from which we might abstract principles applicable in similar contexts. The method bears marked similarities to that of Elizabeth Theokritoff in her book Living in Creation,6 on which I rely for frequent interpretive support—and also for occasional relief from the burden of originality, as many of my best thoughts have already been expressed more eloquently by her. Under this approach, the nuances of the texts in their various genres will be engaged, but the investigation is not primarily for the 4

See, for example, John Passmore, “The Treatment of Animals,” Journal of the History of Ideas 36:2 (1975): 195-218, at 209. 5 Robin Attfield, “Christian Attitudes to Nature,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44:3 (1983): 369-86, at 369. 6 Elizabeth Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009).

6 purpose of exploring these variations for their own sakes. The purpose, instead, is directed toward ethical application. What this means in a disciplinary sense is that the historian may be inclined to find not enough attention to contextual nuance and historical particularity, while the systematician or ethicist may be inclined to find too much. This likely outcome flows from the nature of my project, which is one of constructing a patristic-based ethic and thus naturally searches for unifying themes among diverse expressions. As Georges Florovsky affirms, the “experiential” element in dogmatics and ascetics consists not so much of the “personal spiritual intuition” of the saints as individuals, but of their common participation “in the fullness of the spiritual experience of the Church itself.”7 It is this participation that gives them authority as normative ethical sources, together with other repositories of the Church’s tradition, including Scripture, doctrine, liturgy, canons, and pastoral theology, all of which constitute and are constituted by the Church’s life.8 As Stanley Harakas notes, the moral principles behind the “rules” articulated in these sources can be identified and often generalized to judgments in other contexts. Attention to the reasons behind rules avoids legalism while still allowing for guidance in practical judgments.9 And rules as well as principles ultimately do not stand alone but are meant as guideposts on the road to following Christ.10 Thus, for our topic, rules and principles help identify the outlines of what Christ-like dominion might look like, but they cannot exhaust it, as they provide guidance but not always conclusive determinations for practical judgment (phronesis) in concrete situations. 7

Matthew Baker, “‘Theology Reasons’ – in History: Neo-Patristic Synthesis and the Renewal of Theological Rationality,” Theologia 81.4 (2010): 81-118, at 91, citing Georges Florovsky, “The Work of the Holy Spirit in Revelation,” The Christian East 13.2 (1932): 49-64. 8 Stanley S. Harakas, Patristic Ethics (part 1 of The Wholeness of Faith and Life: Orthodox Christian Ethics; Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1999). 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid.

7 The sources examined fall into three main groups, spread across four chapters of the dissertation. The first group, discussed in chapters one and two, are composed mainly of Greek and Latin patristic homilies on the creation and flood narratives in Genesis. In the first chapter, the subject is animals themselves: their natures and functions, and the value that might be said to attach to these. The second chapter shifts the spotlight to humanity, investigating our nature and vocation, especially in terms of our creation in God’s image and our possession of dominion. The homilists are some of the most prominent theologians of the fourth century: Basil, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom in both chapters, joined by Gregory of Nyssa in the second. In both of these chapters, other works by these authorities aside from Genesis homilies are also consulted where helpful in supplementing their thought on animals or fasting. The next group of sources, discussed in chapter three, consists of Greek and Latin hagiographical materials that feature interactions between holy figures and animals. These sources will be explored as narrative illustrations of theological principles, specifically regarding implied understandings by late antique and early medieval Christians of animals and the exercise of human dominion over them in a God-like manner. The last group of sources, discussed in chapter four, is constituted by the works of three contemporary animal ethicists: the theologians David Clough and Andrew Linzey, and the philosopher Roger Scruton. I will analyze the thought of these scholars in terms of harmony and tension with the traditional Christian sources, as well as contributions toward fuller reflection on animal ethics beyond what can be gleaned from the tradition. More will be said in the individual chapters regarding my selection and interpretation of specific sources in each group. We can expect to see these ancient Christian texts illustrate perspectives on animals very different from, and more nuanced than, the relatively consistent but narrowly focused views on

8 humans and animals that arose during the Enlightenment. On the one hand, René Descartes’ identification of rational thinking as the requisite ontological marker (or at least the epistemological assurance of ontological status) effectively denied being and value to nonhuman creatures, all of which became automata distinguishable by the degrees in which they deceptively appeared to have life and feelings.11 Vivisection existed earlier, but Cartesian thought paved the way for a more widespread public acceptance of the practice.12 The way in which this Cartesian rationalism objectified non-human creatures lives on in our efficiencyoriented industrial and scientific institutions, such as the factory farm and the laboratory. It is a view in which humans have become less like God’s representatives and more like God’s replacements, claiming authority but not acknowledging the limits that would come with accountability to an external source of that authority. This is what Theokritoff refers to as the “culture of control,” aiming at overcoming all natural limitations (and ignoring the pedagogical value that comes with them) in the pursuit of a world ordered according to our own will.13 Dominion becomes domination in an overestimation of humanity’s status and prerogatives vis-àvis other creatures. But the Enlightenment also yielded an opposite and equally unbalanced view, involving an underestimation of humanity’s status and prerogatives. This came with Jeremy Bentham’s classical utilitarian reduction of the measure of moral value to pleasure and pain, together with his affirmation that animals did indeed feel these things. Bentham restored rightful concern about animals through recourse to sentience, thus swapping Descartes’ exclusive moral criterion of

11

See René Descartes, Discourse on Method 4-5; Principles of Philosophy 1.7. Gary L. Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 175-76. 13 Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 22-26. 12

9 rationality for a different exclusive criterion.14 As a result, an abusive form of human exceptionalism was discarded in favor of a denial of the concept altogether, so that humans now differed from other sentient creatures only in degree and not in kind. Human dominion may have been considered a raw fact, but not a valued vocation grounded in any theological conception such as the imago Dei. This view lives on in the modern “animal rights” movement as advanced by the utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer. In this paradigm, interests are what count, and human and animal individuals are considered as the sum of their interests (whether conceived of as the experience of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, or as the satisfaction of preferences), rather than in terms of the classical-Christian view of beings with natures that have ends (tele), the fulfillment of which constitutes a flourishing life. The unique end of human nature, traditionally bound up with the imago Dei and rational dominion, finds no place and thus can only be conceived of negatively, as the abusive parody of dominion against which this view is reacting. The patristic and hagiographical sources studied in this dissertation do not take either of these reductive approaches. Rather, what can be discerned across all the differences in homiletic and narrative emphasis is that the unique dignity of humanity, “human exceptionalism” as it were, is a source of responsibility, not license. Dominion is theologically grounded in the imago Dei, so that the basis of human rule over animal creatures is God’s rule over us. If God is an oppressive and selfish tyrant, then we have our model for how we are to exercise our rule over the animals, and many of our current practices may be justified by reference to Genesis 1:26. But if God is a loving Creator and Father, many of our practices must be reexamined in light of their disparity with the ground of our authority. Nonetheless, in addition to the paradise narratives of Genesis 1 and 2, there is also the post-flood narrative of Genesis 9, in which God sanctions a 14

See Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation 17.1.2-4 & n.

10 different kind of authority for fallen humanity, including the killing of animals and the eating of meat. There is an “eschatological balance” between the former, representing the ideal condition that Christ has already restored, and the latter, representing the present conditions that we have not yet empirically transcended. Therefore, the homilies and narratives will not consist entirely of Edenic depictions or prescribe an Edenic ethic. Inspiring as that might be, it would offer little guidance by itself and without empirical balance. Despite the fact that it is humans who are responsible for the postlapsarian conditions, we continue to hold the responsibility of dominion, and this entails some measure of discretion in negotiating this eschatological paradox in which we find ourselves and the world.15

15

See Stanley Harakas, Living the Faith: The Praxis of Eastern Orthodox Ethics (Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing Co., 1992), 215-21.

Chapter One

Patristic Understandings of the Natures and Capacities of Non-Human Animal Creatures

This chapter and the next will focus on Genesis homilies by the fourth-century bishops Basil of Caesarea, Ambrose of Milan, and John Chrysostom—three important figures, two Greek and one Latin, of the immediate post-Nicene period.1 Their exegesis of the accounts of creation, fall, and flood give clues as to their understanding of the purpose, function, and value of animal creation and its relation to humans—but only clues, not explicit indications. Animals do not comprise an isolated subject for these fathers, whose homilies and writings situate them in relation to the rest of irrational creation, to rational humanity, and to their Creator. Ambrose states, “We cannot fully know ourselves without first knowing the nature of all living creatures.”2 The statement may run the other way as well: we cannot fully know other living 1

My reasons for selecting these three, together with Gregory of Nyssa in the next chapter, concern their high standing in both the Eastern and Western churches, together with the fact that all these authorities directly concerned themselves with understanding and explaining Genesis’ creation accounts, which are the most foundational theological sources for questions surrounding animals and human dominion over them. While Gregory’s On the Making of the Human Being also exegetes Genesis 1-2, that work focuses on the structure of the human being and discusses animals in a more general sense, mainly in comparison to the human or as representatives of a subset of human capacities. Accordingly, Gregory will not be engaged in depth until the next chapter, when we will probe into the dynamics of the rational soul, including its internal governance of its “animal” aspects and its external governance of concrete animals in the world. 2 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.2.3 (trans. John J. Savage; The Fathers of the Church 42; New York: The Fathers of the Church, 1961), 229. Ambrose investigates the first and second creation accounts of Genesis in his Hexameron and his separate work Paradise, respectively. His Hexameron (cited by book, chapter, and paragraph number) largely follows Basil’s work of the same name, often in the exact details. But while Basil’s work includes substantial moral teaching, Ambrose’s work expands the moral dimension to a considerable extent. A relatively small percentage of Ambrose’s work is a direct engagement with the text of Genesis; instead, he 11

12 creatures without first knowing ourselves. Because animals are often associated with irrational passions and humans with right-ruling reason, and because proper relationship between the these two pairs (human/animal and reason/passion) is expressed in Genesis’ concept of dominion, any attempt to sever the subject of animals from the context of theological anthropology is bound to provide an incomplete picture. Nonetheless, the patristic homilies on Genesis track the accounts, and Genesis 1 narrates the making of inert matter, plants, and animals all before the making of humanity. Therefore, although animals are never completely extricated from their relationships with humans, and even less so from their relationship with their Creator, these patristic figures have a great deal to say about them based on their divinely endowed natures and capacities, and it is this subject that forms the main theme of the present chapter. But despite the attention these authorities give such details, the particularities point mainly in the direction of animals’ collectively glorifying God by revealing His wisdom and providence in their manifold designs, of their serving as moral examples, and of their providing for human needs. If we can identify patristic understandings of common animal tele, they are these. In terms of animals in their speciated natures, we do not find particularized tele, other than the normative idea (particularly strong in Ambrose) that, whatever natural qualities an animal

takes a few verses as departure points for meandering discussions informed by various disciplines, such as biology, philosophy, and theology. In this way, his Hexameron resembles the work of Basil by the same title, which influenced him. Boniface Ramsey states that Ambrose used Basil’s Hexaemeron as a model, “without following it slavishly.” He also says, “The text of Gen. 1:1—2:2, upon which he was commenting, gave him sufficient scope to touch upon a vast array of the natural sciences, from astronomy to zoology, with the intention of using the natural world to point out moral lessons. The result, however, is that The Six Days of Creation is also a compendium of the popular science of the day.” The six books of this work are based on nine sermons preached by Ambrose during Holy Week between 386 and 390. Ambrose (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 56. When both Basil and Ambrose are cited for a proposition, the source more closely representative of the language I use is cited first.

13 has, we ought to respect them in our actions toward it. These are no small points to remember when determining what a Christian ethic of dominion looks like.

I.

Reading these sources with an eye to animal significance As homilies, these works are naturally oriented toward the exhortation of their audiences

to the Christian life, including to asceticism, moderation, chastity, kindness, and an appreciation of the Creator through creation.3 All of these topics are of higher priority, for these homilists, than the value of animals or how humans ought to treat them. In fact, their primary purpose has little to do with animals in themselves, so we should be cautious in interpreting what they say about animals, as any praise they give them on the surface may actually be directed elsewhere. It would be a mistake to conclude, however, that animals are of no concern to them. Though not occurring frequently, certain specific comments indicate the responsibility these sources believe humans have for animals. Moreover, their general vision of the Christian life and the order of creation is applicable to particular questions on the treatment of animals. Their vision of asceticism and moderation has much to say about the virtue of being content with less, and thus demanding less from creation to satisfy our appetites. Likewise, their talk of kindness is broad enough to include animals as proper objects and beneficiaries of compassion from the rational being charged by God with ruling over them. These matters concern the proper character of human dominion, and are thus “anthropocentric,” according to one of the interpretations that might be given to that word. For all the respect these figures pay to various animals, we ought not to expect it to amount to an acknowledgement of an inviolable “inherent dignity” that would prohibit humans 3

While the homilies on Genesis form the centerpiece of this chapter and the next, other homilies by these fathers will be cited where particularly applicable to questions concerning animals.

14 from using them within limits. Those limits, however, are recognized from the vantage point of humans understanding their own responsibilities, not from a sense of the animal’s “rights” or even the animal’s “value.” With respect to the latter, although it is odd to imagine responsibilities running to subjects without value, and although we may say generally that these fathers see animals as having value by virtue of being God’s creatures,4 they provide little by way of distinguishing levels of value among kinds of animals. These sources organize creatures hierarchically in terms of their capacities, and while we might attach a different level of value to each kind of animal depending on its position in this hierarchy, that move from description to valuation will be ours, not theirs. Indeed, one of the main ways contemporary thought can contribute to a conversation with these late antique Christian sources is to articulate the bases for this kind of valuation. Accordingly, an investigation of animals in themselves (to the extent possible) is a proper prelude to investigations both of human dominion over them and of modern thinking regarding their value. The strands on which this chapter will concentrate involve how these fathers present animal natures, capacities, and activities, seen through a theological lens interpreting animals as teaching humans about the Creator’s glory, wisdom, and providence, as well as showing humans by example how to (and not to) live.5 Thus, the twin concerns of these homilists may be labeled moral and doxological: as Basil says following one of his moral analogies, “I have only one 4

We may assume, moreover, that they do not contradict the words of Christ regarding the value of the sparrow to God (Matt 10:29), but even these words are difficult to apply as singling out animals for special value, considering Christ uses similar words for not only birds but also lilies and grass (Matt 6:26-30; Luke 12:24-28). And it needs hardly to be mentioned that the ending of each pericope is always that humans are of much more value or much higher priority to God than these plants or animals. See Matt 6:26, 6:30, 10:30; Luke 12:24, 12:28. 5 Thus, although humans remain the point of reference (and must so remain, since we are the ones observing and interpreting animals), the patristic passages examined in this chapter involve a wide range of animal species and their particular characteristics.

15 object, to make all I say turn to the edification of the Church.”6 It is important to remember how much these goals drive these homilies, and not only Basil’s, but Ambrose’s and Chrysostom’s as well. Animals manifest qualities that, when viewed analogously in humans, provide vivid illustrations of virtues or vices.7 Such presentations of animals lend themselves to heavy anthropomorphizing: quite often, the writings on their faces appear ambiguous as to whether these thinkers view particular animals as actually having moral qualities themselves, or only as representing them. Despite the tenor of their speech sometimes suggesting the former, the substance of their ontology indicates the latter. These fathers, two Greeks and one Latin, show a strong unity of thought, despite occasional divergences that are not systematic and are difficult to attribute to differences between Greek and Latin thinking. This chapter and the next will not, therefore, fit comfortably with the East/West contrasts that became common in twentieth-century theology. The resources reviewed here reveal that, in both East and West, the emphasis on human greatness (by virtue of rationality) tended to overshadow the bond of humanity with the rest of material creation. We will find a focus that is undoubtedly “anthropocentric” when the reference is framed only in terms of the created order, but the motives for centering the discussion on the human must be 6

Basil, Hexaemeron 7.6 (NPNF2 8:93). The critical edition of this work is in Basile de Césarée: Homélies sur l’Hexaéméron (eds. and trans. Stanislas Giet; Sources chrétiennes 26 bis; Paris, 1968), and this is the source of cited Greek terms. However, unless otherwise indicated, English quotations are taken from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series. Robert Grant correctly notes that Basil’s Hexaemeron shows his exegesis to be more literal than allegorical. Early Christians and Animals (New York, 1999), 77. Grant also avers that these homilies are based partly on Aristotle and partly on lore collected by Plutarch and others, and arranged by Basil for homiletical purposes. He argues Basil was likely a reliable source for ancient views of animals, since such views would have been included in the fields in which he was most proficient: rhetoric, grammar, and philosophy. Ibid. Nonetheless, there is at least one instance, discussed below, where Basil’s view departs from the scientific knowledge of his day. 7 In other words, in animals, we see our own qualities reflected back to us. See Romano Guardini, Learning the Virtues that Lead You to God (Manchester, N.H.: Sophia Institute Press, 1987), 48.

16 examined. Most of the time, motives will be uncovered that are directed beyond creation (and thus beyond the human) toward the Creator, and intended to direct humans beyond themselves. Nonetheless, the Greek fathers will not come across as the “pro-animal” champions portrayed by Robert Wennberg and Richard Sorabji in stark opposition to the “anti-animal” rationalism of the Augustinian West. Wennberg argues that Augustine of Hippo emphasizes the existence of animals for humans, thus giving them instrumental but not intrinsic value,8 and he quotes Sorabji’s explanation of Augustine’s pivotal influence in the West: The Stoic view of animals, with stress on their irrationality, became embedded in Western, Latin-speaking Christianity above all through Augustine. Western Christianity concentrated on one half, the anti-animal half, of the much more evenly balanced ancient debate. Although there were other strands in Western Christianity, I think this accounts for the relative complacency of our Western Christian tradition about the killing of animals.9 In contrast to Augustine’s view, Sorabji cites Basil and Chrysostom as both indicating that the purpose of animals goes beyond their usefulness to humans. While his appeal to these figures is not altogether misplaced, the evidence he presents in support of his argument is only sometimes helpful or even reliable.10 In any event, Sorabji’s characterization of ancient Christian thought on 8

Robert N. Wennberg, God, Humans, and Animals (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 302. Ibid., 303, quoting Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 2-3. To dispel the notion that Eastern Christianity has preserved a less “complacent” attitude toward the killing of animals than its Western counterpart, it suffices to inform the nearest Greek yiayia of one’s choice to become a vegetarian, and to note the reaction. Or, to recall Aunt Voula’s popular line from My Big Fat Greek Wedding: “What do you mean he don’t eat no meat? Oh, that’s okay. I make lamb.” If the Eastern tradition contains special reservations toward killing animals that the West has lost, these seem not to have not percolated to the popular Orthodox consciousness. 10 According to Sorabji, Basil asserts that “animals live not for us alone, but for themselves and for God,” and one of the prayers in the liturgy bearing his name mentions that God has promised to save both humans and animals. Sorabji, Animal Minds, 199-200, 202 & n. 32-33, 59, citing Basil’s Liturgy; see also Andrew Linzey and Dan Cohn-Sherbok, After Noah: Animals and the Liberation of Theology (London: Mowbray, 1997), 84, quoting, without a primary source citation, a prayer allegedly in Basil’s Liturgy. An inquiry to other scholars by Dr Charles Camosy received a response that the quoted portions could not be found in Basil’s Liturgy and 9

17 animals as a debate with Augustine on one side and Basil and Chrysostom on the other is simplistic to the point of inaccuracy. The influence of Augustine on subsequent Latin thought is beyond the scope of this dissertation, but we will find in our examination of pre-Augustinian Eastern and Western thought that the quality attributed by Wennberg and Sorabji to Augustine’s influence—namely, a stress on animal irrationality—is present with force in both Greek and Latin patristic thought before Augustine. At the same time, it would be a mistake to see this stress as “anti-animal” in itself. Attention must be given to the way this stress is functioning in the patristic works. If the animal, despite or even through its irrationality, serves as a moral rebuke to the human, then it cannot be assumed the distinction between rationality and irrationality can properly serve as a theological justification for exploitation. Indeed, trying to articulate such a justification would go against their aim, for exploitation itself is an activity whereby reason serves the passions, in an inversion of the anthropological ordering presented as normative by these Orthodox authorities. But before we can delve into this anthropological ordering, it will be necessary to lay the groundwork by talking about the animal, whose capacities are understood by these sources as incorporated within the human being. We will find that the principal value of animal creation is to point beyond itself to its Creator, and this point yields at least two others: First, it is humans

were most likely spurious. Along the same lines, Andrew Linzey quotes Chrysostom, without citing to a primary source, as having said that “we ought to show kindness and gentleness to animals for many reasons and chiefly because they are of the same origin as ourselves.” Linzey and Cohn-Sherbok, After Noah, 77; Andrew Linzey and Tom Regan, eds., Love the Animals: Meditations and Prayers (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 65. As with Basil, no source has been found, but the unattributed quotations are nonetheless widely circulated. One website labels the alleged Basil prayers a “hoax” (though not laying blame with Linzey and Regan): https://animalsmattertogod.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/st-basils-animal-prayers-are-a-hoax-partfive/ [cited 16 September 2015]. The blogger traces the prayers to the second decade of the twentieth century: https://animalsmattertogod.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/st-basils-animalprayers-are-a-hoax-part-six/ [cited 16 September 2015].

18 that are uniquely able to understand animals as pointing to the Creator, and this ability—part and parcel of the rational capacity that will be explored in the next chapter—is the reason for the moral priority given to them in these sources. This priority is illustrated by the homilies’ emphasis on human value, to the end of having the members of the audience live in a way consistent with the special dignity God has given them. Second, searching for evidence of animals’ “intrinsic value” according to the categories of modern philosophical ethics is to go about the question the wrong way, implying as the term does that the highest and most secure value of a being has a source internal to that being. From the perspective of the Christian tradition as articulated in these patristic sources, all creatures, humans included, have value because they are endowed with it by their Creator: the value subsisting in their being comes to them from beyond it.11 In this case, there can be no question of a violation of an animal’s value, if that divinely-granted value exists in tandem with divinely-permitted uses. Thus, ethical questions would not be settled even if we could specifically determine animal value from these sources. At the same time, it is no more proper to take permission out of context than it is to take value out of context. Each of these questions, permission and value, informs the other, and these thinkers take both for granted. Their moral motivation to place the accent on human dignity does lead them, however, to give less emphasis to animal value (and human kinship with animals) than can be found in Genesis. But the same motivation (bracketing the question of value) also leads them to push their listeners to an ascetic renunciation of pleasures, thus placing limits on

11

The legacy of this traditional Christian understanding may be seen in the Enlightenment era in Thomas Jefferson’s assertion in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

19 the extent to which their audience may, in good faith, avail themselves of the permission God has given for the use of animals.

II.

The hierarchical ontology of animal creation The patristic sources see God’s presence in all creation,12 but their view is far from a

“biocentric” or “ecocentric” egalitarian understanding of creation as an undifferentiated or pantheistic dissemination of divinity. Rather, in expounding their ontology of living creatures, the fathers follow the Genesis 1 creation narrative and unite it to the Greco-Roman hierarchical system of souls that they inherited through Philo of Alexandria,13 so that the Genesis story progresses up the ontological ladder as it proceeds chronologically. Ambrose notes that the earth was the first element to be given life (Gen 1:11), although this plant life had no animating soul.14 He is characteristically close to Basil, who remarks that plants and trees may be said to “live” (ζῆν), due to their faculties of receiving nourishment and growing, but they are neither “living beings” (ζῷα) nor “animate” (ἔμψυχα), devoid as they are of motion and sentience.15 Because 12

See, for example, Ambrose’s statement that the divine Word permeates every creature. Ambrose, Hexameron 6.3.9 (FOTC 42:232). 13 See The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged (new updated ed.; trans. Charles Duke Yonge; Hendrickson Publishers, 1993) (especially On the Creation; Allegorical Interpretation; Questions and Answers on Genesis; A Treatise Concerning the World). A critical Greek text of De opificio mundi and Legum allegoriae is at Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt I (eds. and trans. L. Cohn and P. Wendland; Berlin 1896). The Greek of these two texts is also available in Philo I, De opificio mundi and Legum allegoriae (trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker; LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956). Greek fragments of Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin (of which only the Armenian version is extant) can be found in Philo Supp. 2, Quaestiones et solutiones in Exodum (trans. Ralph Marcus; LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), app. A. 14 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.1.1 (FOTC 42:159-60). 15 Basil, Hexaemeron 7.1 (SC 26 bis:392). The word ζῆν is the infinitive of the verb ζάω, or ζῶ, meaning simply “to live.” The word ζῷα is the plural of the noun τό ζῷον, which, in addition to indicating a “living being,” is also used as a word for animal.” Given the similarity of the verb and the noun, it is curious that Basil affirms one and negates the other as applied to plants. This

20 they have only vegetative souls capable of nourishment and growth, plants occupy the lowest rung on the ontological ladder of living beings. Above them are animals, which have animating souls that build on the vegetative capacities by incorporating motion and sentience. For Basil and Ambrose, animals are divided not according to the modern classification based on anatomical and physiological features (mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, etc.), but according to the element of their domain: water, air, or earth.16 This division tracks the creation narrative of Genesis 1 but has the awkward effect (from our taxonomical perspective) of placing sea urchins with whales, bees with eagles, and ants with lions.17 Among animals, those occupying the lowest ontological plane are the aquatic animals, created on the fifth day (Gen 1:20-23). Basil says this is the first time there arises a living being (ζῷον) that is animate (ἔμψυχον) and sharing in sensation (αἰσθήσεως μετέχον).18 Ambrose specifies that this living being has a sense of self-preservation and an instinct to shrink from death.19 Noting that Genesis calls aquatic beings “reptiles of living souls” (ἑρπετὰ ψυχῶν ζωσῶν), while naming the terrestrial animal as a “living creature” (ψυχὴν ζῶσαν), Basil says the difference is that aquatic beings have only an imperfect life, being animated by strictly bodily phenomena and lacking souls that feel the genuine affections and emotions that land animals

can be explained by Basil’s linking of ζῷα to the adjective ἔμψυχα, which denotes having life, or breath, in oneself. Basil’s understanding likely arises from Genesis 1:30, in which God gives the plants as food to every animal or moving thing “which has the breath of life in itself” (LXX: ὃ ἔχει ἐν ἑαυτῷ ψυχὴν ζωῆς). 16 “The fact that there are three races of living creatures [—] those of the earth, the air, and the water—is not open to doubt.” Ambrose, Hexameron 5.12.37 (FOTC 42:193). 17 Like the writers, I sometimes use the term “fish” when referring to all swimming animals, and “birds” when referring to all flying animals. Non-fish water species or non-bird air species are discussed under their more particular designations (e.g., sea urchins, bees). 18 Basil, Hexaemeron 7.1 (SC 26 bis:392). 19 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.1.1 (FOTC 42:159-60).

21 have.20 Their faculties of sight and hearing are coarse because they are in the water, and they lack memory, imagination, and the social life.21 Basil remarks that, unlike terrestrial animals, aquatic animals are not only dumb, but unteachable and untrainable.22 This is a point on which he apparently diverges from the learning of his time, as ancient experience knew of tame fish.23 Basil’s purpose may be to illustrate fish as occupying the ontological rung between plants and land animals. Just as likely, he has in mind another point he makes: that because the gills’ work takes the place of respiration, and so fish die when removed from water, they have a life apart from the lives of those on land, making them unable to bear even the touch of the human hand; thus, they cannot practically be trained.24 His view is especially surprising given his grouping of mammals such as dolphins with fish in the category of aquatic creatures. Today, we understand dolphins to be some of the most intelligent and trainable animals of all, notwithstanding their existence in water. But for Basil to make such distinctions would be to complicate the ontological ladder by committing to a different organizing principle than the water, air, and earth groupings of Genesis 1. Despite this aquatic “lowliness,” there is a patristic admiration of fish to counterbalance Basil’s words concerning their limitations. Both he and Ambrose discuss the great variety among fish, Ambrose saying there are far more animal species in the sea than on the land.25 We will discuss a deeper aspect of their admiration below, in the section on the frequent patristic employment of animals as moral examples. 20

Basil, Hexaemeron 8.1 (SC 26 bis:430-35), quoting Gen 1:20, 24. Ibid. (NPNF2 8:95). For example: “‘The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib.’ But the fish does not know who feeds him.” Ibid., quoting Isa 1:3. 22 Ibid. 23 The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers translation includes a footnote indicating that Basil’s view contradicts ancient experience in this respect. See Basil, Hexaemeron 7.1 (NPNF2 8:90 n. 2). 24 Ibid. (NPNF2 8:90); see also Ambrose, Hexameron 5.3.10-11 (FOTC 42:167). 25 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.2.5 (FOTC 42:162); Basil, Hexaemeron 7.2 (NPNF2 8:90). 21

22 A brief digression is warranted to comment on an unusual and significant aspect of Ambrose’s discussion of water creatures, which appears in his discussion of water itself. His assertion that “human ingenuity is unable to compete with the natural products of the sea”26 shows the reverent humility he might be expected to communicate to his audience. But he goes on to make statements that are difficult to explain, seemingly becoming so enrapt in his panegyric on the element of water that he compares anything pertaining to the earth, including plants and land animals, unfavorably to anything pertaining to the water, including commercial sea vessels.27 For all the condemnations of greed and gluttony scattered throughout his homilies, it is odd to see Ambrose praise commercial enterprise in comparison with living creatures God placed on the land. The reason seems to be Ambrose’s viewing water in terms of its baptismal significance: he mentions that water is given to us as a source for the remission of sins.28 Because of its purifying nature, animals that are harmful on land are harmless and even pleasant in water.29 Ambrose says this effect stands to reason, as baptism washes away guilt and replaces it

26

Ambrose, Hexameron 5.11.33 (FOTC 42:188). “What delightful scenes in meadow or garden can equal the prospect of a light blue sea? Your flowers may flash forth a golden hue, but the wool of the sea has its golden refulgence, too! Whereas the colors of the flowers quickly fade, the other retains its hue for many a day! From afar we note the lily’s brilliance in the garden. From afar, too, we see the flashing sails of the ships. A breath of perfume follows one; a breeze, the other. What use does a leaf supply to equal the advantage of the commerce of ships at sea? Lilies give us sweet odors for the pleasure of our senses, whereas sailing ships bring sustenance for mankind. . . . [I]n contrast to the ships of commerce, the steed runs to no purpose. The latter, because devoid of cargo, runs in vain. The other has its holds filled with sustenance for men.” Ibid. 5.11.34 (FOTC 42:188-89). 28 Ibid. 5.11.35 (FOTC 42:190). Ambrose cites the whale’s belly that held Jonas as a type of Christ’s tomb in the earth, and so he says salvation is in both elements. The sea, however, is the better example of piety, because the fish welcomed Jonas after men had rejected him, and so preserved, in a typological sense, Christ whom men crucified. He also notes that Peter was weakened on the sea, but without falling, whereas he denied on land what he had confessed on the waters. Ibid. 29 Ibid. 5.2.6 (FOTC 42:162-63). As examples, he says water snakes are not poisonous, the lion is gentle in water, the frog and mustela (or marten) are repellent in marshes or on land but pleasing 27

23 with innocence.30 At this point, his turn to sacramental theology seems to override any other concerns, including consistency and accuracy. For example, so keen is he to present water in baptismal terms that he asserts nothing in water can be considered impure.31 This entire rhetorical turn is a significant departure from Basil, who asks only, “How can shells give kings purple of a brilliancy not surpassed by the flowers of the field?”32 Such unexpected tangents are more common in Ambrose’s homilies on Genesis than in those of either Basil or Chrysostom, and they make attention to Ambrose’s particular purpose in certain segments of his homilies all the more important. As we discussed, the purposes of the patristic orators are not centered on animals, so we cannot assume all their statements about animals express their consciously worked-out thoughts on animal value. Above the swimming creatures are the flying creatures that Genesis names as having been created at the same time (Gen 1:20-23).33 Birds are presented as ontologically, physically,

in water, and sea-wolves and sea-lions do not prey on lambs or calves. Sea-lions even flee from sea-calves, which Ambrose sees as a fulfillment of Isaiah 65:25. Ibid., 163-64. 30 Ibid. 5.2.6 (FOTC 42:164). 31 “For this reason, that which is not in the same status as the land animal they cannot consider impure.” Ibid. 5.2.6 (FOTC 42:164). How he reconciles such an assertion with Leviticus 11:9-12 is unknown. These verses of the Law specify that a sea creature must have fins and scales to be considered pure. If Ambrose is arguing from the Christian perspective, free from the dietary restrictions of the Law, it is odd that he cites the Jews as his example. Moreover, his argument then applies equally to a land pig and thus proves nothing about water specifically. I recognize that the assertions of these figures must not be lifted out of context, but the true puzzle comes when they are inexplicable even in context, and Ambrose stands head and shoulders above the others in providing these kinds of puzzles. 32 Basil, Hexaemeron 7.6 (NPNF2 8:94). Basil’s Hexaemeron 4.6-7 also includes an explanation of why “God saw that it was good,” but here also, his description of water’s goodness is much more measured than that of Ambrose, focusing mainly on water’s practical function in the world, and he concludes by saying that for all its goodness, the ocean is surpassed in beauty by the Church. 33 Basil mentions the flying creature third, after he has mentioned aquatic and terrestrial animals. But this is only because of his premature analysis regarding the souls of terrestrial animals, thus necessitating his backtracking to discuss flying creatures, which come after swimming creatures in Genesis. See ibid. 8.2 (SC 26 bis:438-41).

24 and socially intermediate between fish and land animals. Basil believes birds to be generally trainable, except for those whose timidity makes them (like fish) shrink from contact.34 Birds and fish are linked in their common origin in the water and their corresponding “swimming” motion, using either wings or fins to cut through their respective elements, air and water.35 But birds also have a link with land animals, their legs attesting to the fact that they collect food from the earth.36 There are many different kinds of birds, including those that go near human habitations and even seem to enjoy being handled, and those that avoid humans.37 Again, birds are shown as sharing qualities both of fishes, which do not appreciate human society, and of land animals, which often (but not always) do. Social patterns and eating habits differ among species. Some birds flock together, while others are solitary. This latter kind includes birds of prey, for as Ambrose says, “greed avoids participation.”38 At the top of the animal hierarchy are the land animals. Just as living things were created from the waters on the fifth day, these are created from the earth on the sixth. This marks the second time the earth has produced life, the first having been the production of vegetation.39 34

Ibid. 8.3 (SC 26 bis:444-45). Ibid. 8.2 (SC 26 bis:440-41); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.14.44 (FOTC 42:197-98). 36 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.14.46 (FOTC 42:198); Basil, Hexaemeron 8.2 (NPNF2 8:96). 37 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.14.49 (FOTC 42:199); Basil, Hexaemeron 8.3 (NPNF2 8:97). 38 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.14.47 in Savage, trans., 199, listing doves, cranes, crows, ravens, and thrushes as social birds. See also Basil, Hexaemeron 8.3 (NPNF2 8:96). 39 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 7.13 (trans. Robert C. Hill; The Fathers of the Church 74; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 99. Compared with the other works examined in this chapter and the next, Chrysostom’s homilies are less dogmatic, synthetic, and systematic, and more explicitly exegetical, particularly toward moral ends. Chrysostom proceeds passage by passage, paying great attention to fine linguistic details, but mostly for the purpose of exhorting his listeners to lead better Christian lives, rather than explaining themes of creation or theological anthropology. According to his contemporary, Julian of Eclanum, Chrysostom mediated the Scriptures “rather by exhortation than by exposition,” which Robert Hill suggests may have been due to his understanding of his pastoral role. Hill adds that “perhaps more accurately, his exposition was conducted only to the depth that would serve exhortation. This moral purpose of his in the commentary on Gn is certainly always 35

25 Now, it produces the “living creature” (ψυχὴν ζῶσαν) (Gen 1:24), described by Basil as having a soul that directs the body and that, though irrational, can feel genuine affections and emotions.40 He remarks that, in comparison with aquatic animals, “inhabitants of the earth are gifted with greater vital force,”41 and further: Without doubt terrestrial animals are devoid of reason. At the same time how many affections of the soul each one of them express by the voice of nature! They express by cries their joy and sadness, recognition of what is familiar to them, the need of food, regret at being separated from their companions, and numberless emotions.42 In addition to emotional feeling, most quadrupeds also have keen sensory feeling and a powerful capacity for memory,43 which we may observe provides a link to the highest ontological rung,

to the fore . . . . Not only do critical exegetical details go without mention, but the dogmatic force of the text can yield to its moral content.” Introduction to Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis (FOTC 74:11, 15). Nonetheless, dogmatic and exegetical themes are present, even if in the background. Chrysostom’s strong moral interest leads his exegesis in a direction emphasizing human exceptionalism even more than the other fathers discussed in this chapter. A reader interested in ecological themes may be disheartened by the lengths to which he goes in order to find humanoriented meaning in passages that, on their face, appear to be speaking about something else, or at least not exclusively about humans. Rather than holding out his interpretation as exclusive, it is most likely he is highlighting certain aspects that advance his goals of encouraging his audience to strive higher. He suggests as much when he says, “[W]henever I consider all these things, I am amazed by the Lord’s loving kindness for our race and by man’s lack of response, as well as the devil’s envy; the evil spirit, after all, could not bear to see an angelic way of life in a human body.” Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 15.15 (FOTC 74:204). The loftier a picture Chrysostom can paint of humans at their creation, the more tragic will his hearers feel their voluntary departure from this state, and the more motivated will they be to avoid sin. As one writer states with reference to the medieval development of the concept of human personality and its relationship to sin: “In order to conceive the terrible destructiveness of sin, it was first necessary that our whole natures should have been conceived as so rich and intricate that there is something in them that can be terribly destroyed.” Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly Sins Today (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 8. 40 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.1 (SC 26 bis:430-35). 41 Ibid. (NPNF2 8:95). 42 Ibid. By comparison, as we have already seen, “[a]quatic animals, on the contrary, are not only dumb; it is impossible to tame them, to teach them, to train them for man’s society.” Ibid. This passage is part of the digression that makes Basil later have to backtrack to discuss birds in the order narrated by Genesis. 43 Ibid.

26 that of humanity. One of Basil’s more remarkable examples of animal emotion and memory is the way a camel, after it has been struck, hides its grudge until an opportune moment for payback.44 In lieu of reason, God provides animals with the power of feeling and instinct. Both Basil and Ambrose cite the dog as an animal not gifted with reason, but nonetheless taught by nature things that sages have barely been able to discover through long study and complicated arguments.45 Ambrose says, “That dogs are devoid of reason is beyond all doubt,” but “their sagacity of sense perception has taken on the trappings of reason.”46 The lamb, unlike the shepherd, never confuses another sheep with its mother,47 and likewise, the mother recognizes her lamb among many, showing that sheep have “a more subtle sense than our perception which makes them recognize their own.”48 These examples of the sheep and the dog are cited by Olivier Clément in his conclusion that, for Basil (and we may add Ambrose), the higher animals, those having rich capacities for feeling and the ability to enter into some kind of relationship with humans, are logikoi alogikoi,49 44

Ibid. (SC 26 bis:434-35). Basil compares the camel to an unforgiving and vindictive person. Although he does not say so, and in fact explicitly states a few sentences earlier that without a doubt terrestrial animals are devoid of reason, such a behavior suggests a capacity for some level of calculated planning beyond emotional reaction. But there is no reason to believe Basil is any less aware of this than we are. His definition of “reason,” then, includes something beyond these capacities. 45 Ibid. 9.4 (SC 26 bis:500-01); Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.21-23 (FOTC 42:239-42). Basil provides a vivid example: “When the dog is on the track of game, if he sees it divide in different directions, he examines these different paths, and speech alone fails him to announce his reasoning (συλλογιστικὴν). The creature, he says, is gone here or there or in another direction. It is neither here nor there; it is therefore in the third direction. And thus, neglecting the false tracks, he discovers the true one. What more is done by those who, gravely occupied in demonstrating theories, trace lines upon the dust and reject two propositions to show that the third is the true one?” Basil, Hexaemeron 9.4 (NPNF2 8:104). 46 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.23 (FOTC 42:241). 47 Ibid. 6.4.25 (FOTC 42:243-44). 48 Basil, Hexaemeron 9.4 (NPNF2 8:104). 49 “Certes, dit saint Basile, les animaux ne disposent pas de la plénitude du logos : seul l’homme, de ce point de vue, peut être dit logikos, appelé à dire le sens, et à dire par le langage . . . .

27 having, if not a personal quality in themselves, at least a personal potential to be found in relation with humans: Certes, il n’est pas une personne au sens humain de ce mot, mais il a quelque chose de personnel, à un autre degré, dans un autre sens. Et cette tension vers l’existence personnelle s’accomplit dans le lien aimant entre l’animal et l’homme. Si l’homme est l’image de Dieu, l’animal peut alors se définir comme « l’image de l’image ». Ou encore, pour le grand théologien du 14e siècle, saint Grégoire Palamas, l’animal comme « énergie » trouve en l’homme son « essence » stable. Dans le « coeur » de l’homme qui est le « lieu de Dieu ».50 This passage surely rings true for most people who have experienced the “personal” loyalty of a dog.51 But for all this, Basil also says the souls of these animals are in their blood and so are of the earth’s substance, not surviving the flesh’s decomposition.52 The one exception is the highest land animal, the human being, endowed with a rational soul (which incorporates the capacities of the lower souls). Though sharing the sixth day of creation with the other land animals (Gen 1:2431), humans have a uniquely superior ontological position—an extensive subject that is the matter of the next chapter.

Plusieurs notations de Basile prouvent que, pour lui, les animaux supérieurs, ceux avec qui l’homme peut nouer un lien ou qui peuvent lui servir d’exemple . . . , sont des logikoi alogikoi. Soit que Dieu compense en eux ce défaut du logos par la richesse des sensations unifiées en « un sens plus subtil que notre intelligence, qui permet à chacun de reconnaître ce qui lui est propre », tel l’agneau qui, entre mille, reconnaît sa mere, et inversement. Soit même que ce sens devienne une sorte de rationalité instinctive, capable de résoudre en un instant des syllogisms qui demanderaient une longue réflexion à l’homme : ainsi le chien qui, poursuivant une proie, sait démêler la bonne entre plusieurs pistes ébauchées par celle-ci.” Olivier Clément, “Les Animaux dans la Pensée Orthodoxe,” Contacts: Revue Français de l’Orthodoxie 145:1 (1989), 35-44, at 37-38. 50 Ibid., 39. 51 Indeed, there is an intensely relational quality proper to the dog’s nature that disposes it to loyalty, thus making it seem one of the most “personal” animals of all, even compared to other animals declared by scientific consensus to be of equal or greater intelligence. 52 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.2 (SC 26 bis:434-37); cf. Lev 17:11. Basil says blood thickens and turns to flesh, which decomposes into the earth; thus, blood, flesh, and earth are of the same substance, which is ultimately the same substance as the animal soul.

28 III.

Animals for human use and benefit As alluded to above, one key question for some contemporary ethicists involves the

dichotomy between intrinsic and instrumental value: is something valuable in itself, or only because it is useful? That God creates, calls “good,” and provides for all creatures indicates something like the former: not intrinsic value in a completely autonomous sense, but value “in themselves” because God invests them with value as part of their being. But from the patristic viewpoint, the “intrinsic” value of non-human creation does not preclude its instrumental value for humans. In fact, the writings abound with references to the usefulness of animals to humans and the creation of animals for human benefit. Chrysostom says animals were not created to serve their own needs, but for humans.53 Ambrose supports this assertion, stating that fish are given to man for his use, and also that “birds exist for the sake of man. The contrary is not true: that man exists for the sake of birds.”54 Sometimes animals can be killed for the uses they provide: Indian worms are sources of silk,55 and the frog and murena are delicious as food.56 But animals are useful not only in their deaths, but also in doing what they do by nature: the cock’s crow wakes us up literally, but for those like Peter, also spiritually.57 Even poisonous plants and animals are useful in the sense that they provide for our correction: serpents are scourges for those of immature character, but they do not harm those with strong faith,58 and sea creatures are 53

Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 28.5 (trans. Robert C. Hill; The Fathers of the Church 82; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 186. But as discussed below, he balances this statement elsewhere, saying that animals are not here simply for our use, but to proclaim the Creator’s glory. Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 7.12-13 (FOTC 74:98-99). 54 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.5.13, 5.23.79 (FOTC 42:168-69, 219). 55 Ibid. 5.23.77 (FOTC 42:218). 56 Ibid. 5.2.6 (FOTC 42:163). In referencing the murena, Ambrose sees to be talking about what we know as the moray eel. 57 Ibid. 5.24.88 (FOTC 42:223-24); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 8.7 (NPNF2 8:100). 58 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.6.38 (FOTC 42:251) (citing Ps 90[91]:13; Acts 28:3-6; Mark 16:18); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 9.5-6 (NPNF2 8:105-06) (citing Ps 90[91]:13 for walking on the

29 full of threats so that we might rely on the Creator for protection.59 So despite the fact that the world abounds with creatures we find harmful, menacing, or obnoxious, Chrysostom insists that nothing has been created without a purpose, as even God testifies in calling creation “very good.” Accordingly, if we do not understand why a creature exists, it is better to blame our own intellectual limitations than to find fault with God’s creation.60 This attitude indicates that, in spite of the changed conditions effected by the fall, nature as we know it is not at odds with God’s purposes. More will be said below on this question. Chrysostom lists among the tangible benefits provided by animals those of food, service, and medicine: In like manner, therefore, as with the trees, so too with the wild beasts: some are useful for our food, others for serving us. The species of wild beasts and reptiles, too, are of no little help to us, and if somebody is prepared to study them in a right mind, he will find even now, when control over them has been wrested from us owing to the disobedience of the first human creature, that the benefit is great that comes to us from them. I mean, physicians get from them many things which they employ as medications capable of promoting the health of our bodies. Otherwise, what great harm would have come from the creation of the wild beasts at a time when they, like domestic animals, were intended to come under the control of the creature soon to be created.61 Although insisting that his hearers need not know how animals are good in order to trust God’s own assessment of creation, Chrysostom nonetheless provides examples of their goodness as judged from the perspective of human benefit. This perspective is of such importance that he repeats the uses of food and service when discussing the creation of the animals from the earth

serpent and the basilisk, and mentioning the event in Acts 28:3-6 regarding Paul being unharmed by the viper’s bite). 59 Basil, Hexaemeron 7.6 (NPNF2 8:94). 60 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 7.11-12, 10.12-13 (FOTC 74:97-99, 135-37); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 8.7 (NPNF2 8:100) (“Our God has created nothing unnecessarily and has omitted nothing that is necessary.”). 61 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 7.15 (FOTC 74:100).

30 even before the creation of humans.62 He repeats these uses yet again when discussing the creation of woman after God found the animals not to be suitable helpmates for Adam: despite their helpfulness, they are irrational and thus inferior,63 for although beasts were good for service or food, only woman could offer conversation and comfort by sharing her being.64 While Genesis 1:29-30 makes clear that the original diet provided by God was vegetarian, Chrysostom conflates the post-fall use of animals with the pre-fall narrative. Surely this is a conscious decision, as he would be well aware of the sequence of the narrative, knowing God does not give animals to humans for food until Genesis 9. Chrysostom’s choice to use this anachronism suggests that the purposes for which animals were created include not only their original purpose, but the purposes foreseen by God for the altered state of creation after the fall, which must also be considered legitimate purposes.65 Despite a consensus that animals can be used by humans, there is a similar consensus that there are (ill-defined) limits to the ways humans may use them. Ambrose says that when thrushes return at the end of autumn, “[w]e contrive snares for them, acting as cruel hosts. We catch them in different ways, either by surprising them when they land or by deceiving them by a whistling 62

Ibid. 7.16 (FOTC 74:101). Ibid. 15.4 (FOTC 74:196). 64 Ibid. 15.11 (FOTC 74:200). 65 Not uncommonly, it is Ambrose’s rhetoric that presents more of a problem of explanation: “Nature gave us nourishment and did not prescribe vice. These things were given for common use. Therefore, you were not to claim anything as your own personal property. For you did the earth give generously of her fruits. For you did the waters generate the scari and the acipenseres and all their produce. Not satisfied with these, you have tasted food that is forbidden to you.” Ambrose, Hexameron 5.1.2 (FOTC 42:160). Regarding the scari and the acipenseres, a footnote explains that these are “[a] species of fish regarded as a delicacy by the Romans.” Ibid., n. 3. It is one thing to anachronistically name animals as useful for food when discussing paradise, as explained with Chrysostom above. But it is truly perplexing to single out fish, when they are no more given by God as food at that point in the narrative than are land animals. The possible explanation is that he is reading the fasting guidelines contemporary for his day back into paradise. Eating fish is sometimes allowed when eating the meat of land animals and birds is proscribed; and yet, the stricter fasts do involve abstention from fish as well. 63

31 sound, or by trying ‘to snare game in toils.’”66 As we have seen, Ambrose, to an even more marked degree than Basil and Chrysostom, is prone to prioritize the immediate goal of his argument ahead of concerns for systematic consistency. Given the wider arc of his thought, it is unlikely he means to say humans may not trap birds for food. More consistent with his overall thought is a wish to highlight the fallen condition, prompting his hearers to regret that these are the means sometimes necessary for obtaining food, and thereby encouraging them not to pursue these means any more than necessary for sustenance. As the next chapter will explore in greater depth, not going beyond the bounds of sufficiency is a key element to a Christian ethic of consumption, which in turn impacts how animals are used. Another limit to which Ambrose appears especially devoted is respect for animals in their natures, and not treating them contrary thereto. He asks, “Do you wish to turn the creatures that have been generated to the profit of man? You will all the more accommodate creatures to man’s pleasure if you will not deny to all creatures what is appropriate to their natures.”67 Instead of directly attacking the motive of self-interest, Ambrose appeals to it by positing a win-win situation: respecting the proper nature of each kind of animal is actually best for humans, too. Taking a point from Basil, he praises fish for breeding only within their own species,68 and he condemns human-induced injury to nature by cross-breeding land animals (for example, a donkey and a horse): Certainly there are cases in which nature suffers more in the nature of defilement rather than that of injury to the individual. Man as an abettor of hybrid barrenness is responsible for this. He considers a mongrel animal more valuable than one of a genuine species. You mix together alien species and you mingle diverse seeds. 66

Ibid. 5.14.48 (FOTC 42:199). Ibid. 6.3.10 (FOTC 42:233). 68 “With them the reproduction of each species is invariable, and natures are not mixed. There are none of those unions which, on the earth, produce mules and certain birds contrary to the nature of their species.” Basil, Hexaemeron 7.2 (NPNF2 8:91). 67

32 You go to the extent of frequently forcing animals to a forbidden copulation—all this in the name of “efficiency.”69 This point appears fairly straightforward, but later he takes it further, criticizing the mixing of foods (such as seafood stuffed with land products, or vice versa) in luxurious cuisines, saying we question God’s providence by mingling what does not come mingled in nature.70 It is the force of such moralizing digressions that makes Ambrose’s statements so difficult to apply. The trouble lies not only in lifting his statements out of their original context to apply them to other cases; they are difficult to apply even to the cases we might imagine were immediately before him. The entire enterprise of cooking involves some degree of transformation of natural products from their “as is” condition in nature. Taken literally, Ambrose could be understood as imposing a moral imperative for a “raw” diet, the healthiness of which is controversial even today. But this is one of several instances in which it is better to isolate the general point he is trying to communicate in such a peculiar way. As his praise of the sea over meadows and of sea vessels over horses indicates his appreciation for God’s provision of water for the remission of sins, here his denigration of mixing foods indicates both an ascetic caution against luxurious satisfaction of the palate and a desire to respect and not to mutilate nature. It would be difficult, however, to abstract “natural law” principles from Ambrose’s statements to apply to concrete cases for determining what would constitute respect for or mutilation of nature. More particular considerations for proper and improper uses of animals, based on the patristic theology of human dominion, will be explored in the following chapters.

69

Ambrose, Hexameron 5.3.9 (FOTC 42:166). He goes on to condemn making men eunuchs through castration for the same reason: that it is an audacious assault on nature. 70 Ibid. 6.2.5 (FOTC 42:229-30).

33 Despite emphasizing the uses of animals, Chrysostom also specifies that they are not here only for our use, but also to proclaim to us God’s glory.71 Even this role, however, is for our benefit, as the unique rational capacity makes humans the only creatures able to interpret animals as revealing and praising God. Because the instructive purpose of animals is so important in these patristic writings on creation, the next two sections are devoted to different kinds of instruction: first the doxological, using animal capacities to instruct us in God’s wisdom and providence, and next the moral, using animal “character” traits to instruct us in ways to live.

IV.

Design of animals revealing God’s glory, wisdom, and providence Elizabeth Theokritoff observes that what Basil does in his Hexaemeron is to “listen” to

the cosmos for echoes of the divine Word and Wisdom that permeates creation, encouraging his audience to allow nature’s wonders to lead them to remember the Creator.72 Theokritoff’s observation about Basil’s vantage point extends also to Ambrose and Chrysostom. The starting point is belief in the Creator, allowing us to “read the book of creation in a different way” and see God’s providence and care in all of it.73 An important patristic theme in this respect is that of design: numerous examples of animals’ abilities to care for themselves and others of their kind indicates God’s care for them 71

“You see, it was not simply for our use that everything was created by him, but on account of his great prodigality: while some things were created for our use, other had this purpose—that the power of their Creator might be proclaimed.” Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 7.12 (FOTC 74:98). And again: “it wasn’t simply for our use that he produced all these things; instead, it was also for our benefit in the sense that we might see the overflowing abundance of his creatures and be overwhelmed at the Creator’s power, and be in a position to know that all these things were produced by a certain wisdom and ineffable love out of regard for the human being that was destined to come into being.” Ibid. 7.13 (FOTC 74:99). 72 Elizabeth Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009), 49-50, citing Hexaemeron 5.3, [5.6], 5.9. 73 Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 50.

34 and desire that they thrive, from the smallest to the greatest. Chrysostom says that creation of animals by a word shows us God’s power, and the assignment of certain ones to the sea shows us His love by giving them ample space not to hinder each other and also to prevent their harming humans.74 Chrysostom customarily emphasizes God’s care for humans, but here he also describes God’s love as extending to the welfare of animals. The point is obviously to illustrate God’s benevolence, but benevolence must have an object, and here that object is the sea animals, which Chrysostom notes are directly blessed by God by being commanded to increase and multiply: “This is the blessing, that they should grow to a great number. You see, since the creatures he made had life in them, he wanted their life to be lasting.”75 God’s desire that animal life thrive may be for the sake of individual animals, for humans, or for the entire ecosystem. The overall thought of Chrysostom and the other patristic thinkers indicates all of these, but with an emphasis on the good of humans. According to Basil, “Beasts (τὰ θηρία) bear witness to the faith.”76 In like manner, Ambrose asserts that “[f]ar more conviction is gained f[ro]m the observation of irrational creatures than from the arguments of rational beings. Of more value is the testimony given by nature than is the proof presented by doctrine.”77 He notes that all living creatures know by instinct to avoid what is harmful, even if they have not experienced the particular things that are harmful.78 These instincts often help them navigate life when humans are often misled: for

74

Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 7.11 (FOTC 74:97-98). Ibid. 7.12 (FOTC 74:98). 76 Basil, Hexaemeron 9.5 (NPNF2 8:106). 77 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.21 (FOTC 42:239). 78 “Why is it that doves, even at the moment of their birth, are terrorized by the sight of a hawk? Why are wolves dreaded by sheep and hawks by chickens? In irrational animals there is a certain innate fear of creatures of a different species to the extent that, even though these animals are irrational, they have a feeling that death is something to be shunned. Such being the case, how 75

35 example, animals know which plants not to eat, while humans have sometimes had to endure the painful lessons of hindsight.79 Animal instincts, including the innate knowledge of how to protect themselves and their young, witness to God’s care for all beings.80 Following Basil, Ambrose provides examples of animals that know instinctively how to treat their own injuries.81 Both fathers also name animals whose behaviors show they can predict the weather and take measures to prepare for it.82 This gift is from the kindness of God, who provides for all irrational creatures as well as plants, this being a sure sign of divine care for us too.83 Likewise, Ambrose cites various kinds of birds that can predict storms and adjust their behaviors accordingly.84 Basil asks, “[I]s not reasoning intelligence eclipsed by animals in their provision for atmospheric changes?”85 The lesson he draws is twofold: the Creator cares for all creatures, and we ought to imitate these animals in taking care for what is to come—meaning, in our case, the next life true is it that the first man, fully and indubitably endowed with reason, should be conscious of the fact that death is something to be avoided!” Ambrose, Paradise 5.29 (FOTC 42:307). 79 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.21 (FOTC 42:239). 80 Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (SC 26 bis:490-93); Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.19, 6.4.29 (FOTC 42:237-38, 246). 81 Basil names the bear, fox, tortoise, and serpent, each which heal injuries by recourse to a certain kind of plant. Ambrose uses these exact four examples in his own work. Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (SC 26 bis:490-93); Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.19 (FOTC 42:237-38). A short while later, Ambrose identifies the she-goat, lion, leopard, bear, and deer and says each knows what natural remedy to seek out to cure its maladies. Ibid. 6.4.26 (FOTC 42:244-45). Many of these examples are found in Pliny, Historia naturalis 8, 10. See Ambrose, Hexameron (FOTC 42:245 n. 17). 82 Ants cut grains so they will remain food sources rather than germinating, and they only leave the grain out if the weather is going to be sunny. Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (SC 26 bis:494-95); Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.20 (FOTC 42:238). The swallow’s arrival announces spring, the sheep’s gorging on grass announces winter, and the hedgehog closes the northern or southern door to its hole, depending on the direction the wind will blow. Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.20 (FOTC 42:238-39); Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (NPNF2 8:103). The sea urchin can also predict the weather, anchoring itself to a rock when a storm is coming and thereby proving to be a better forecaster than astrologers. Basil, Hexaemeron 7.5 (NPNF2 8:93) (calling the sea urchin a “little contemptible creature”); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.9.24-25 (FOTC 42:178-80). 83 Basil, Hexaemeron 7.5 (NPNF2 8:93); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.9.24-25 (FOTC 42:178-80). 84 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.13.43 (FOTC 42:196-97). 85 Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (NPNF2 8:103).

36 rather than the present one.86 Ultimately, God’s providence for unreasoning creatures exists to encourage us to ask Him for the things we need for salvation.87 Basil’s statement is not a denial of divine concern for animals in their own right, but this kind of concern is not the subject of these patristic inquiries. Its presence must be read between the lines, such as in Ambrose’s statements (themselves allowing a range of interpretations) against confusing animal natures. The authors’ most immediate and most evident interest lies in the spiritual edification their hearers can receive from reflecting on God’s provision for irrational creation. Marvels permeate all of creation: air, water, and land. Huge whales live in the depths of the Atlantic, appearing like islands or peaks.88 Every bird, according to Basil, has something in its nature we should admire and that should lead us to glorify the Creator.89 Ambrose discusses the diversity among birds, their varying physical traits adapted to their needs and providing evidence of “admirable design” in nature.90 Some birds have traits of intelligence and character that approximate reason: the vigilance of geese defended Rome from invasion when the enemy was coming to the city through underground passages.91 Vultures follow men to battle in expectation of carnage, thus showing an instinct much like human reasoning.92 An insect, the locust, is cited by both Basil and Ambrose as an example of obedience to God, Scripture

86

Ibid. Ibid. 8.5 (SC 26 bis:458-59). 88 Ibid. 7.4, 7.6 (NPNF2 8:92, 8:94); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.11.32 (FOTC 42:187). 89 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.7 (SC 26 bis:464-68). 90 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.2.74 (FOTC 42:217). For example, the crow has divided talons, but the raven does not; carnivorous birds have hooked talons; swimming birds have webbed feet. Ibid. Also, the swan has a long neck, to scout for food in deep waters; this design also makes its cry sweeter. Ibid. 5.22.75 (FOTC 42:217); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 8.7 (NPNF2 8:100). 91 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.7 (SC 26 bis:464-68); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.13.44 (FOTC 42:197). Ambrose specifies that the enemy was the Gauls, and he remarks that the Roman gods were sleeping, but the geese were awake. 92 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.7 (SC 26 bis:464-68); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.23.81 (FOTC 42:220-21). 87

37 attesting it does no harm to the land until it receives a sign from heaven.93 But God also kindly sends the remedy for the plague in the form of a certain bird that eats the locust.94 Land animals, too, are formed by God with physical characteristics suited to their needs.95 Various animals remind us of the change we will undergo at the resurrection: for example, the chameleon’s change of color, and the hare’s turning white in winter.96 Basil cites the metamorphosis of the horned worm of India (from caterpillar to buzzing insect to flying creature) for the same lesson.97 More remarkably, Ambrose cites (as fact) the legendary phoenix of Arabia, which reaches five hundred years in age and builds a casket of incense, myrrh, and other aromatic plants, dies there, and returns to life from the flesh’s moisture.98 These fathers find marvels in all creatures in the hope of nurturing gratitude, faith, and reverence in their audience. But we are left with a glaring problem, briefly addressed already but better articulated by Theokritoff: The natural world has all sorts of features that suggest anything but wisdom and love. If the smallpox virus and the killer parasite have a metaphysical “principle of existence” at all, it might be argued, then that principle images cruelty and destruction. Clearly, we cannot simply look at the actual state of the world and read off the Creator’s original and ultimate will for creation. It is for precisely this reason that the Fathers see a fall, a dislocation in God’s original plan, as affecting the whole created order . . . . This does not mean that things cease to bear the hallmark of their Maker in any way. A wicked human testifies to free will; and a virus, however deadly to other organisms, testifies abundantly to the vibrancy and 93

Basil, Hexaemeron 8.7 (SC 26 bis:468-69); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.23.82-83 (FOTC 42:221); cf. Ex 10:12-15. 94 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.7 (SC 26 bis:468-69); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.23.82-83 (FOTC 42:221), cf. Ex 10:12-15. This bird is the σελευκίς, or thrush. The question why such a remedy would be necessary, when these obedient insects would surely have flown away if given a divine command to do so, is not engaged. 95 Carnivores do not need long necks, but herbivores do, so as to reach short plants. The elephant has a prominent trunk enabling it to reach the ground despite its cumbersome size. Basil, Hexaemeron 9.5 (NPNF2 8:105); Ambrose, Hexameron 6.5.30-31 (FOTC 42:246). 96 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.23.77-78 (FOTC 42:218-19). 97 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.8 (NPNF2 8:100). 98 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.23.79 (FOTC 42:219).

38 adaptability of life. But those characteristics often function in a way that causes conflict and destruction.99 Hence, Chrysostom’s insistence, cited above, that our ignorance of the goodness of particular creatures does not mean the Creator is any less benevolent. To quote Theokritoff again, “When we speak of created things as imaging the divine will . . . we are affirming that there is a rationale in God’s providence for the existence even of those creatures whose ‘movement’ appears to be purely destructive.”100 From the fallen human vantage point, it is counterintuitive to see things that threaten us with pain and even death as good in any way, because their potential to lead us to God through remembrance of our mortality cuts against our more immediate desires and therefore more readily triggers a reaction of fear or disdain. It is through our ascetic struggle against this instinctive reaction that the less palatable aspects of creation are able to perform their pedagogical function, and in so doing, reveal that unlike humans, they have never fallen away from the divine will. As Theokritoff explains in terms of the Byzantine “constitutional right of revolution” against a tyrannical emperor, humans in their disobedience forfeited the right to enjoy the obedience of the rest of creation: This image makes it very clear that non-human creation has never deviated from serving God. The “curse” very clearly refers to the character of the earth in relation to man; in the first instance, it is a curse on the soil as man tills it. The earth does not cease to serve God faithfully; but its “obedience” now is not to make life pleasant for man, but to make it difficult. The only suggestion that other creatures somehow participate in man’s disobedience has to do with predators: we sometimes meet the idea that they have joined man in transgression, taking advantage of the concession allowed to man when he was given flesh to eat after the Flood. This testifies to the Fathers’ very strong sense that God did not originally make living creatures in order for them to end up as food, either for us or for each other.”101

99

Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 58. Ibid., 59. 101 Ibid., 85, citing Chrysostom, On Genesis Hom. 17.9. 100

39 Theokritoff here echoes Ambrose’s point that the earth is cursed not in itself, but in humanity’s work. If our works perpetuate the pattern of the fall, aiming toward what is below rather than what is above, the earth will bring forth thorns and thistles until we properly care for it.102 It is not nature that has deviated from God’s will. It was only humans who fell by abuse of their free will; while the rest of creation groans in travail under the fallen conditions, it still praises God naturally, by being what it is.103 And yet, it is not our fallen perspective that leads us to the intuition that the “red in tooth and claw” functioning of nature must be different from God’s essential will for it. This functioning is, however, consistent with God’s providential will, whereby nature has adapted to the human choice to attempt an existence independent of God, and constantly reminds humanity of the ultimate futility of the endeavor. But while animals thus ought not to be considered as deviating from God’s will in themselves, various species display behaviors that, when observed and interpreted by our rational intellect, provide patterns to shun in the moral life: certain actions that are not wrong for them are wrong for us.

V.

Animals as moral examples Basil and Ambrose speak extensively on the characteristics displayed by different

animals and what they teach us about the qualities we should strive to attain or avoid. Ambrose 102

Ambrose, Paradise 15.77 (FOTC 42:355-56). This idea is eloquently expressed by Theokritoff when she says, “Clearly, there are different ways of ‘worshipping’; other earthly creatures do not worship consciously. Yet there is a sense in which they are ‘offering worship’ simply by being as God has made them, by reflecting his glory. Our own thanksgiving is a characteristically human, conscious activity; but it also makes us part of a greater movement, a cosmic hymn of praise from all created things.” Living in God’s Creation, 158-59. She cites Athanasius for her point that “out of all creation, only man has strayed from God’s purpose. The elements have never ceased to recognize the Word as their Maker and their King.” Ibid., 167, citing On the Incarnation 43.

103

40 expresses the moral ambiguity of the animal when he says: “Wild creatures have a nature that is simple and one which has no concern in the perversion of truth. And so the Lord has ordained that those creatures to whom He has bestowed a minimum of reason are endowed with a maximum of feeling.”104 The simplicity of the animal is morally ambiguous to us, for its very irrationality is what prevents it both from perverting the truth and—what Ambrose does not say here—from consciously seeking it. That animals have not experienced a “fall” as we have is only to say that they have no rational capacity that can discern between good and evil and choose evil. And yet, as we will see in chapter three, the Christian tradition abounds with tales of animals instinctively recognizing their Creator in the person of a saint. Although these hagiographies and ascetic writings are in a different genre from patristic exegetical homilies, the distinction would not prevent these very patristic authorities from affirming their value in the tradition or, more specifically, their portrayal of animals responding to saints. On the contrary, they would affirm these stories as concrete illustrations of what they teach more abstractly: that every kind of creature praises God in its own way. The irrationality of the animal, then, cuts in both directions: in the positive, it provides a pre-reflexive unity with its environment,105 and an immediate, instinctive response of obedience 104

Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.22 (FOTC 42:241). An interesting contrast between animals and humans in their respective relationships with the natural environment can be found in scattered statements in Guardini’s Learning the Virtues. Guardini specifically mentions the animal’s unity with its environment in these words: “An animal is essentially in harmony with itself. More accurately, for the animal the question does not exist. It is naturally adaptive to its environment just as it is and is absorbed in it. That is why it gives us the impression of ‘naturalness.’ It is exactly as it must be according to its nature and the surrounding conditions.” Ibid., 26. And again: “How does a healthy animal grow and develop? By following its urges. Then everything turns out well, for instinct keeps it from going wrong. If an animal is satisfied, it stops eating. If it is rested, it gets up. When the urge toward procreation is active, the animal follows it. When the time has passed, the urge is silent.” Ibid., 85-86. Guardini here expresses a common understanding of the difference between humans and animals in their environments, one also articulated by Agent Smith in The Matrix: “Every

105

41 to the Creator,106 not to mention frequent acts of care and affection toward its own and sometimes even toward other species; in the negative, it indicates greed, gluttony, anger, lust, and the many other passions that, in humans, are sinful if untamed by reason. But as animals do not have the rational capacity, the application of moral categories to them as moral actors would be out of place.107 It is through our rational capacity that we are able to identify certain animal behaviors as worthy of emulation and others as worthy of avoidance. This discernment, however, mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed, and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.” The misdirection of rationality causes consequences to the world much graver than anything a “dumb, savage, brutish” animal could cause. 106 Guardini is helpful here, too: “Why does an animal make so strong an impression of stability, of being at one with itself? This is so because it is ‘nature,’ a living being without a personal soul. The ‘spiritual’ element within it—order, meaningful being, and behavior—is the spirit of the Creator, not its own. But man possesses a spiritual soul, a free and rational personality. Through this he is worlds above the animal, but for this very reason, he lacks the animal’s natural stability and unity. He is endangered by his own spirit, which constantly tries to overstep its own nature and to become self-determined, and thereby also to question and deceive itself.” Ibid., 20. 107 “We can speak of justice only in relation to man; it does not exist in the animal world. Where we seem to discern something of the sort—perhaps in noble horses or highly bred dogs—it is a reflection of the human being in the animal which lives with him. Of its own nature, the animal knows nothing of justice, for it lacks that which is central to justice: the person.” Guardini, Learning the Virtues, 48. Guardini answers the question “what is a person?” with reference to the unique rational faculty and the capacities opened up by it: “It [the person] is the manner in which man is man. A lifeless thing in nature exists as a thing, something without feeling, whose form, qualities, and energy are determined by the laws of nature. A living creature exists as an individual, a being that lives, grows from an inner center, maintains itself, unfolds, propagates, and dies. It, too, is determined by interior and exterior necessity. Man, however, exists as a person; that means he is not merely there, but he is conscious of himself. He knows about himself; he is master of himself; he carries out his own work with judgment and in freedom. He stands not merely in a physical or biological relation to other persons, but converses with them and lives in a community which is established on a basis of intelligence.” Ibid., 48-49. His intermediate category, the “living creature,” includes both plants and irrational animals, as he describes it with reference to the vegetative function shared by both, and leaves out the sentience proper to animals but not plants. Nonetheless, it is the sentience of animals that allows them to reflect—to humans—the qualities of humans. But Guardini’s point is that this capacity to “image” human qualities should not be confused with proper possession of those qualities.

42 is necessarily based on a criterion other than simple observance of nature, or else there would be no means of saying we should imitate the kindness and eschew the cruelty. We must get our criterion of distinction from some other source, some starting point to which we apply our rationality. The precepts of the gospel provide that criterion for our patristic thinkers, but they themselves are not explicit about this, instead presenting nature as a book whose mere reading ought to be our tutor in convicting us of God’s faithfulness and our faithlessness. Through all the moral examples these sources provide, the main point can be summed up in Basil’s statement: “When we consider the natural and innate care that these creatures without reason take of their lives we shall be induced to watch over ourselves and to think of the salvation of our souls; or rather we shall be the more condemned when we are found falling short even of the imitation of brutes.”108 This lesson, however, can only be learned by those who already accept the gospel, at least at a rudimentary level that would allow them to share first principles with their homilists, such as their possession of souls that are in need of salvation and that open the possibility of a life above that of “brute” existence. In a sense, the life of these “brutes” is the condition we are to be saved from: the daily struggle for survival, pleasure, and pain avoidance that, no matter how successful it may be for a time, ultimately comes to the same end of death and decay for all. At the same time, the animals do so many things well which humans ought to do even better but actually do more poorly. In fact, when animals do what they do by nature, they are not only more “rational,” but more “virtuous,” than we are when we disobey, despite the fact that both reason and virtue are, properly speaking, impossible for them. It is the interplay between these two realities of animal life, “virtuous” and vain as seen from the

108

Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (NPNF2 8:103).

43 human perspective, that informs the complexity of the fathers’ presentation (unaware as they may seem to be of this complexity). Despite his description of fish as dumb and unteachable, Basil says, “Fish do not always deserve our reproaches; often they offer us useful examples.”109 For instance, they have a special gift whereby each species instinctively respects the boundaries of its space as determined by a law of nature, in contrast to the law of greed and restlessness that governs humans.110 Basil says the annual migrations of some kinds of fish for the purpose of spawning are also based on a “common law of nature,” favorably comparing their obedience with the lack thereof demonstrated by humans. Though reinforcing the notion that fish lack reason as a capacity, Basil says their obedience to God’s law makes them more rational, effectively, than humans who disobey.111 Ambrose concurs,112 stating that, following nature rather than the deliberations of reason and rhetorical argument, fish know the proper time to give birth (cf. Ecc 3:2), like all other creatures besides humans, for whom “[a]n unsettled and arbitrary desire to produce offspring leads to an uncertain time for childbirth.”113 Ambrose characterizes as “loyal devotion” 109

Ibid. 7.3 (NPNF2 8:92). Ibid. 7.3-4 (NPNF2 8:92); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.10.26-31 (FOTC 42:180-86). Even “[t]he monsters that dwell in this sea . . . never cross their boundaries to ravage islands and seaboard towns.” Basil, Hexaemeron 7.4 (NPNF2 8:92). 111 “A fish does not resist God’s law, and we men cannot endure His precepts of salvation! Do not despise fish because they are dumb and quite unreasoning; rather fear lest, in your resistance to the disposition of the Creator, you have even less reason than they. Listen to the fish, who by their actions all but speak and say: it is for the perpetuation of our race that we undertake this long voyage. They have not the gift of reason, but they have the law of nature firmly seated within them, to show them what they have to do. Let us go, they say, to the North Sea. Its water is sweeter than that of the rest of the sea; for the sun does not remain long there, and its rays do not draw up all the drinkable portions.” Ibid. (NPNF2 8:92-93). 112 “Because a fish is mute and deprived of reason, is it, therefore, an object of contempt in your eyes? See to it that you do not begin to be more contemptible to yourself, if you prove yourself to be more irrational than the irrational creatures. . . . What is more rational than this migration of fish[?]” Ambrose, Hexameron 5.10.29 (FOTC 42:184). 113 Ibid. 5.10.30 (FOTC 42:185). 110

44 the fish’s motive for crossing the seas, in contrast to the human desire for material profit,114 and he asks who can deny that these capacities and instincts were implanted in them by divine power.115 Although properly speaking, rationality requires the ability to discern, the appointed telos of this discernment is the pursuit of God’s will; thus, when fish follow God’s will by nature and we abuse our freedom by failing to do so, they are more “rational” in that they reach their appointed telos, whereas we miss ours. Ambrose laments that our devotion to our own young falls short of that of the seals: whereas we are content to kiss our children, these mothers open their wombs back up to theirs. He asks, “Who on beholding this devotion would not, even though he were able to attain it, consider himself to be their inferior by far?”116 We see a variation on the point just discussed, that animals’ obedience to the law of nature makes them (figuratively speaking) more rational and virtuous than we are. But juxtaposed with this positive example is a negative one: the aquatic food chain, whereby the strong prey on the weak only to be preyed upon themselves. Basil notes that “the conqueror and the conquered are both swallowed up in the belly of the last. And we mortals, do we act otherwise when we oppress our inferiors?”117 Ambrose warns, “In their case, perhaps, this violent way of living has grown from inner compulsion, whereas with us it springs from avarice, not from nature.”118 With this example, we have a complexity added to our working understanding that animals, in following their natures, are following God’s will. Ambrose acknowledges that it 114

Ibid. Ibid. 5.10.31 (FOTC 42:186). 116 Ibid. 5.3.7 (FOTC 42:164-65). He apparently draws on Basil, who reports of the seals: “[I]t is said, if they see their little ones, still quite young, frightened, take them back into their belly to protect them.” Basil, Hexaemeron 7.2 (NPNF2 8:90-91). 117 Ibid. 7.3 (NPNF2 8:91). 118 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.5.13 (FOTC 42:168). 115

45 might be “inner compulsion” that creates the predatory life of fish, but he does not praise it. This is not particularly problematic, however, because he excuses it for that very reason, and his purpose in citing the example (as always) is for his audience’s practical application. More problematic is the example of the “unnatural” union between the viper and the sea lamprey, which serves as an image of adultery.119 Till now, we have been accustomed to the idea that “nature” has not fallen, but merely functions differently. But now we have an example of nature acting unnaturally. Ambrose likely does not have such problems in mind when giving this homily; rather, to state the point again, he and Basil are concerned primarily to edify their hearers, not to present an airtight systematic theology. They characterize behaviors they want to condemn in humans in ways that make sense to the ordinary people in their audience. But it still raises the question of the nature and extent of non-human creation’s involvement in the fall, which will be explored in the next section. Basil and Ambrose also mention other negative sea examples,120 which Ambrose says we must use for self-perfection, so that we might not found our own well-being on our neighbor’s harm.121 119

The union is grounded on desire rather than similarity of species, and its unnatural character makes it an image of human adulterous unions, which similarly do violence to nature. Ibid. 5.7.19-20 (FOTC 42:175-76). Basil uses this example to shame those who would contemplate adultery by telling them, “[L]earn what creeping creature you are like.” Basil, Hexaemeron 7.6 (NPNF2 8:93). But this union also serves as a positive example, by which Basil and Ambrose exhort wives to stay with their husbands, no matter how fierce they may be, and exhort husbands to cast aside their savage dispositions for their wives’ sakes. Ibid. 7.5-6 (NPNF2 8:93); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.7.18, 20 (FOTC 42:173, 175-76). 120 The crab waits until the oyster opens its shell, then inserts a pebble so that it cannot close it and is easy prey. Basil, Hexaemeron 7.3 (NPNF2 8:91) (“Such is the malice of these animals, deprived as they are of reason and of speech. But I would that you should at once rival the crab in cunning and industry, and abstain from harming your neighbor; this animal is the image of him who craftily approaches his brother, takes advantage of his neighbor’s misfortunes, and finds his delight in other men’s troubles.”); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.8.22 (FOTC 42:177). Also deceptive is the squid, which disguises itself as a rock in order to catch fish swimming by, prompting Basil to compare it to unprincipled people who change to suit the situation: wolves in sheep’s clothing. Basil, Hexaemeron 7.3 (NPNF2 8:91-92); cf. Matt 7:15. Ambrose makes a

46 The air creatures provide the bulk of Basil’s and Ambrose’s moral examples. Some represent simple traits: for example, the cock tends toward boastfulness, the peacock toward vanity.122 The halcyon (which, as a sea bird, Ambrose uses to transition from water animals to air animals) lays its eggs in the sand during harsh mid-winter weather, right before a two-week period of calmer weather (known by sailors as “halcyon days”). The eggs hatch after the first week, and the mother nurtures her young during the second.123 The lesson Ambrose extracts is one of his more unusual ones. The mother does not fear for her safety during the stormy weather in which she lays her eggs, nor does she fear for the safety of her brood in the event the subsequent calm were to be broken: She does not protect them from the cold, but considers that they will be safer with the comfort of divine warmth, by means of which she may all other things disdain. Who is there among us who does not cover his little ones with garments and who does not protect and shield them within the walls of his home? Who is there who does not close the windows on all sides to prevent even the slightest breeze to enter? And while we so anxiously attend to clothing and warmth, we are therefore depriving them of the protecting cover of celestial clemency, whereas the halcyon, by casting her brood out naked, has thereby clothed them with vesture that is divine.124 The length to which Ambrose goes to make his point is far beyond that of Basil, who, in connection with this same example, merely poses a standard rhetorical question asking what God will not do for us if He shows such care for the halcyon.125 If Ambrose intended for his audience to take his moral lesson literally, that would be alarming. But a few chapters later, he bemoans

different moral comparison: the squid represents those who ensnare others with temptations. Ambrose, Hexameron 5.8.21 (FOTC 42:176). 121 Ibid. 5.8.23 (FOTC 42:177-78). 122 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.3 (NPNF2 8:97); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.14.49 (FOTC 42:200). 123 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.13.40 (FOTC 42:194-95). 124 Ibid. 5.13.42 (FOTC 42:195-96). 125 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.5 (NPNF2 8:98).

47 that fact that the poor expose their infants,126 even though that seems to be the very sort of action he is prescribing in the passage above. If not literally, then, how does he mean to be understood? It is one thing to point to the halcyon’s instincts as an image of radical faith in God; it is quite another to condemn the uniquely human way of caring for children, the absence of which would constitute abuse and neglect. At such a point in the homily, it is easy for the reader to craft a interpretive principle that the human is always in the wrong. But then we must remember how Ambrose so effusively praises the ships on the sea in comparison with the animals on the land. Taking both instances into account, the better explanation is that Ambrose tends to a style that employs excess to emphasize a point in the moment, without much thought of how it fits into a big-picture system.127 His point here is merely that the halcyon is a model of faith in God: not a different point from Basil’s, just made with a more dramatic style. But it does present challenges for the application of Ambrose’s statements to ethical questions. At the least, his statements should rarely be taken at face value. Several other birds serve as examples for the parent-child relationship. The swallow shows motherly devotion by building her nest near human homes, so that her young will be used to humans and thus be safer from bird enemies. Disposed to wandering, she lays aside her freedom and skillfully builds the nest by herself, demonstrating parental affection and “farseeing and instinctive knowledge.”128 She also displays medical skill, using “certain curative agents” to heal blindness in her young due to eye injuries. This bird’s industriousness is a rebuke to anyone who would complain of poverty while not providing for his family.129 She also builds 126

Ambrose, Hexameron 5.18.58 (FOTC 42:207). This conclusion also fits with the conclusion above regarding his example of the “unnatural” mating behaviors of certain reptiles. 128 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.17.56-57 (FOTC 42:205-06). 129 Ibid. 5.17.57 (FOTC 42:206-07); Basil, Hexaemeron 8.5 (NPNF2 8:98). 127

48 without harming her neighbor, providing us a model for trusting God for our welfare rather than cheating others.130 Crows feed their young for a long time and escort them when they are learning to fly, but humans stop nursing early, and the poor ones expose their infants while the rich avoid additional pregnancies so as not to divide their inheritance. Ambrose asks, “Who except man himself has taught us ways of repudiating children?”131 Ironically and perhaps inadvertently, he answers his own question in the next paragraph, discussing the harshness of the hawk toward its progeny, throwing them from their nests when they first start trying to fly.132 The eagle also abandons her offspring, but only one of the two after testing their mettle. Basil calls this “the greatest injustice” and tells his audience to “[b]eware of imitating the cruelty of birds with hooked talons.”133 But uncharacteristically, Ambrose speaks of the matter very differently: “The eagle does not therefore reject her young because of natural cruelty. This is, rather, the result of her soundness of judgment. There is no refusal of what is native, but rather a rejection of what is alien.”134 Again, Ambrose is more indulgent in his assessment of animal behaviors than of comparable (or even more tender) human behaviors. Although he does not view the eagle as naturally cruel for rejecting her weak fledgling, he sees the waterfowl as kind for adopting the disowned eagle into her brood. While she supports the nestling of another species with impartiality, we show cruelty by abandoning our own children.135 Here as elsewhere, his examples and conclusions are difficult to apply. Just as he surely does not want his audience to follow the halcyon in her laissez-faire parenting as a 130

Ambrose, Hexameron 5.17.57 (FOTC 42:206-07). Ibid. 5.18.58 (FOTC 42:207); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 8.6 (NPNF2 8:99). 132 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.18.59 (FOTC 42:208). 133 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.6 (NPNF2 8:99). 134 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.18.60 (FOTC 42:208-09). 135 Ibid. 5.18.61 (FOTC 42:209-10); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 8.6 (NPNF2 8:99) (making similar points with the osprey—another bird of prey—as the waterfowl). 131

49 model of faith, he surely does not want his audience to follow the eagle in its renunciation of its offspring as a model of discernment. And yet, he is willing to take the risk of employing the metaphors in order to emphasize the importance of faith and discernment. Just as birds provide images of parenting, they also provide images of children’s devotion to their parents. In particular, the stork, whose behavior Basil considers “not far from rational intelligence,” shows a very moving filial piety.136 He explains, “Encircling their father, who dropped his feathers because of old age, they warm him with their own wings, and providing food in plenty, they even furnish strong support in flight, gently raising him on each side by the wing.”137 Citing this example, Ambrose adds that whereas these birds display these virtues of piety and gratitude by natural grace, we do not want to lift the burden of our ailing father, but would rather pass on the job to servants.138 His conclusion is scathing: “none of us have effectively imitated the virtues of irrational creatures, not even when an example has been set before our eyes.”139 136

Basil, Hexaemeron 8.5 (SC 26 bis:452-53) (Το δὲ τῶν πελαργῶν οὐδὲ πόρρω ἐστὶ συνέσεως λογικῆς). 137 Ibid. (SC 26 bis:454-55). 138 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.16.55 (FOTC 42:204). Ambrose eloquently discusses the virtuous traits displayed by the stork: “This act of carrying one’s parent is, in fact, an expression of piety. . . . The Romans are accustomed to call this bird ‘pious’—a title which these birds have without exception merited has been bestowed by decree of the Senate on scarcely a single emperor.” Ibid. (FOTC 42:205). 139 Ibid. (FOTC 42:204). There are many other birds cited by any of these three fathers as images of vice or virtue. The “artful” partridge demonstrates the consequences of dishonesty: stealing the eggs of another partridge and nurturing them, she is disappointed to have labored in vain when they hatch and recognize the voice of their natural mother and go to her. The devil similarly tries to claim God’s creatures, who, like the Gentiles, leave him for Mother Church when they hear Christ’s voice in the gospel. Ibid. 5.14.49, 6.3.13 (FOTC 42:200, 234-35); cf. Basil, Hexaemeron 8.3 (NPNF2 8:97) (mentioning the partridge’s deceit and jealousy but saying only that it helps huntsmen seize their prey, omitting Ambrose’s example and spiritual metaphor). The owl, which has keen night vision but is dazzled by the bright light of the day, represents the sinner, who loves the darkness but cannot abide the light of Christ or the Church. Ambrose, Hexameron 5.24.86 (FOTC 42:222-23). For the same reasons, Basil likens the owl to

50 Other bird examples illustrate that creation praises God by being what it is, and that it is humans who interpret it as doing so, seeing their own potential reflected in it. The birds’ habit of “sing[ing] the praises of their Creator” at the transition points between day and night reminds any “person of natural human sensibility” to end the day by singing psalms.140 Still others serve as examples for our way of life with their natural social and military organization, which is superior to the compulsory character of our own since the fall.141 One of the more powerful examples involves the way storks are freely escorted by crows, which model hospitality but putting themselves in danger to help protect the storks against attacks by other birds.142 And it should be noted here that “freely,” as used in the context of animal behaviors, does not mean the people who “give themselves up to vain science.” Basil, Hexaemeron 8.7 (NPNF2 8:99). Certain birds are models of chastity. The main one is the dove, described by Chrysostom as gentle and companionable, teaching Noah patience by coming back to him. Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 26.13 (FOTC 82:153-54). Basil likewise mentions the dove as always seeking company. Basil, Hexaemeron 8.3 (NPNF2 8:97). Ambrose says it is guileless, Ambrose, Hexameron 5.14.49 (FOTC 42:200), and chosen by God’s Law as a chaste victim. While the pigeon has grace, the turtle dove has chastity, as shown by a dove widow’s refusal to find another mate: “God has therefore infused into the turtle dove this sentiment for the virtuous practice of continency,” thus doing by natural grace what Paul wishes all could do. Ambrose, Hexameron 5.19.62 (FOTC 42:210), citing 1 Cor 7:8; cf. Basil, Hexaemeron 8.6 (NPNF2 8:98) (“Listen, O women! What veneration for widowhood, even in these creatures devoid of reason, how they prefer it to an unbecoming multiplicity of marriages.”). Continence is also seen in the vulture, which is said to experience parthenogenesis, thus exposing the biased faithlessness of anyone who would deny the miracle of the Virgin Birth and Incarnation of God. Ambrose, Hexameron 5.20.64-65 (FOTC 42:211-12); Basil, Hexaemeron 8.6 (NPNF2 8:99). 140 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.12.36 (FOTC 42:192); see also 5.24.84 (FOTC 42:221) (stating that birds sing at evening, “lest they depart without offering such thanks as a creature owes to glorify his Creator”). 141 One example is the crane’s guard duty and flight rotations. Ibid. 5.15.50-52 (FOTC 42:20003); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 8.5 (NPNF2 8:98). Another is the stork’s military-like order. Ambrose, Hexameron 5.16.53-54 (FOTC 42:203-04); Basil, Hexaemeron 8.5 (NPNF2 8:98). A third is the bat, which shows love in action, hanging with others in a pendant, so that if one gives way, they all fall apart. Basil, Hexaemeron 8.7 (NPNF2 8:99); see also Ambrose, Hexameron 5.24.87 (FOTC 42:223). 142 Ambrose comments that, while they offer their lives for strangers, we endanger our souls by closing our doors to them. In the meantime, the crows we see as enemies are known by storks as protectors. Ambrose, Hexameron 5.16.53-54 (FOTC 42:203-04); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 8.5 (NPNF2 8:98).

51 same thing it often means in the human context, where it is understood as the opposite of bondage to the necessities of nature. For the animals, by contrast, what is done “freely” is precisely what is done by nature, including those “virtuous” acts that humans have to be compelled to do by the artifice of legal sanctions. This is the fundamental way that we, as fallen humans, may see animal existence as a positive example. Our relationship to our nature likewise ought to be such that we are naturally inclined to work virtue without being compelled to do so. Few animals seem as morally insignificant from a human perspective as insects. And yet Basil and Ambrose reserve some of their highest praise for the industrious bee,143 which shares home, food, and work, and freely devotes itself to its king, chosen by nature’s endowment of superior physical and character traits.144 Ambrose says the bee considers it an honor to fight to the death in defense of its king, and he describes it as strong in wisdom and virtue.145 Basil tells his listeners to imitate it, noting that it builds its cell without injury to others, innately knowing the geometric arrangements that will support the weight of the honey, for which it works hard and “by which both kings and men of low degree are brought to health!”146 Ambrose makes the same statement,147 so we see that his and Basil’s great admiration of this creature of God does not prevent them from endorsing the human use of the product resulting from its hard work. To the 143

Basil, Hexaemeron 8.3-4 (SC 26 bis:444-53); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.21.70 (FOTC 42:215). On a pedantic note, Basil and Ambrose quote Proverbs 6:8 for the bee’s diligence and wisdom, but the passage is actually about the ant (μύρμηξ). Basil, Hexaemeron 8.3-4 (SC 26 bis:444-53); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.21.70 (FOTC 42:215); Prov 6:6 LXX. Elsewhere, Ambrose cites the same passage while exhorting his hearers to imitate the ant’s diligence: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, and consider her ways and be wise than she.” Ibid. 6.4.16 (FOTC 42:235-36), citing Prov 6:6. 144 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.4 (NPNF2 8:97); Ambrose, Hexameron 5.21.67-71 (FOTC 42:212-16). 145 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.21.67-71 (FOTC 42:212-16). 146 Basil, Hexaemeron 8.4 (NPNF2 8:97). 147 “Behold the bee, see how busy she is, how admirable in her industry, the results of whose labors are serviceable to kings and commoners and are sought after by all men.” Ambrose, Hexameron 5.21.70 (FOTC 42:215).

52 extent we can read these modern ethical concepts into the sources anachronistically, “intrinsic” and “instrumental” value do not appear as mutually exclusive categories. But it ought to be clear that, despite the permissibility of using the bee’s work for our purposes, Basil and Ambrose value the bee itself by virtue of the wonders it reveals about its Creator. Basil and Ambrose cite terrestrial animals both as negative moral examples,148 and as positive ones.149 One of the most moving examples, which cannot but elicit fellow-feeling by humans disposed to sympathy, concerns the dog’s unrivaled loyalty and gratitude.150 Dogs have a natural instinct to protect their masters, not only loyally dying with or for them, but also sometimes serving as reliable witnesses.151 Ambrose tells of a dog in Antioch wailing and pinning down his master’s murderer, who stood in the crowd feigning concern for the victim. The dog’s testimony rendered the man unable to deny his guilt. Ambrose judges that, having failed to defend his master, the dog took it upon himself to avenge him, while we ignore insults 148

The donkey is lazy and stupid, making it “an easy prey to all mischance” and teaching us to remain alert in body and mind. Ibid. 6.3.11 (FOTC 42:234); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (NPNF2 8:102-03). The wily fox hides and “deserves our hatred and warrants our aversion for his total lack of caution while laying snares for his victims.” Ambrose, Hexameron 6.3.12 (FOTC 42:234); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (NPNF2 8:102-03). The lion is too proud to mix with other wild animals or eat food from the previous day, and he terrifies other creatures with his roar, even if they can outrun him. Ambrose, Hexameron 6.3.14 (FOTC 42:235); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (NPNF2 8:102-03). The leopard’s coat mirrors its emotional instability and unpredictable fierceness, reminiscent of the shifting hearts and minds that led the Jews away from Christ. Ambrose, Hexameron 6.3.15 (FOTC 42:235); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (NPNF2 8:102-03). We ought to bridle our passions rather than follow the horse in his intemperate pleasure with the mare. Ambrose, Hexameron 6.3.10 (FOTC 42:233-34); see also Basil, Hexaemeron 9.3 (NPNF2 8:102-03). In addition, Basil includes the examples of the steady ox, the untamable wolf, the timid stag, and the sluggish bear. Ibid. And Ambrose warns us to avoid imitating the ferocity of wild beasts, for which they are killed. Hexameron 6.3.10 (FOTC 42:233-34). 149 The lamb is innocent. Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.25 (FOTC 42:243-44). And although the bear is wild and deceitful, she shows her love for her newborns by licking them into bear form. We should imitate her by training our children into likenesses of ourselves. Ibid. 6.4.18 (FOTC 42:237). 150 Basil, Hexaemeron 9.4 (NPNF2 8:104); Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.23-24 (FOTC 42:241-43). 151 Basil, Hexaemeron 9.4 (NPNF2 8:104); Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.23-24 (FOTC 42:242-43).

53 against our Creator.152 Another instance in which “irrational” nature condemns us is the fidelity of the ox and the horse, which refuse to carry their yoke with any other but their mate, while we want to switch spouses.153 Ambrose stresses our fall by saying humans go below nature, showing unwillingness to meet even the standards of decency displayed by animals: “What has man to offer—he who pays no heed to what is enjoined on him and is oblivious to the dictates of nature?”154 Perhaps the most pointed—and the most problematic—statement is Basil’s rhetorical question that if the lioness and she-wolf love their young, what is our excuse for violating nature in not taking proper care for children or parents?155 As referenced at the beginning of this section, it is problematic because Basil offers a generic “nature” as an imperative for moral action, but his own examples have shown that different species behave differently in this regard. On the one hand, he attributes τοῖς ἀλόγοις “invincible affection [that] unites parents with children,”156 but on the other, we have seen his negative example of the cruel mother eagle. We return, then, to the point delineated earlier: despite the statements on their surface, which suggest we should know what is right or wrong based on our observation of nature, the real criterion by which Basil distinguishes between behaviors to be imitated or avoided is the gospel. How do we know we should imitate those species that are tender rather than harsh toward their children? It is the gospel that guides our moral intuitions and Basil’s moral preaching, which we then see confirmed in nature, and by which we judge human behavior via analogies to the behavior of different animal species. Otherwise, could not the existence of certain human individuals who 152

Basil, Hexaemeron 9.4 (NPNF2 8:104); Ambrose, Hexameron 6.4.23-24 (FOTC 42:242-43). Ibid. 5.7.18 (FOTC 42:174). 154 Ibid. 6.4.22 (FOTC 42:240-41). 155 Basil, Hexaemeron 9.4 (NPNF2 8:104). 156 Ibid. 153

54 are cruel toward their offspring simply serve as evidence that humanity has a range of “natural” behaviors, sometimes inclining toward the eagle’s example, in which case we would be left with no means of excluding its normative value? But the fact that all of these examples do not establish the normativity of “raw” nature should not distract us from what they reveal. Whether a species behaves virtuously or viciously by our standards, and thus serves as a moral lesson for either imitation or avoidance, it is one with its nature. The thrust of the patristic examples is that the animal may not transcend its nature as we are called to do, but neither does it descend below it as we in fact do. The predators have the excuse of being irrational and intended to be directed by rational humans properly exercising dominion. On the other hand, we (though not prohibited altogether from being predators) must face what we do and reconcile it with what we are called to do and be. If the animals are not what they were intended to be, it is because we have failed in our own calling. It would be rather unfair of us to devalue animals on that basis.

VI.

The state of paradise and the present state The subject of patristic understandings of the prelapsarian and present states of creation,

and the place of animals in each, appears at many points in these chapters, because we are always talking about either the eschatological (and perhaps protological) ideal or the empirical reality. Some sub-themes are better suited to the following chapter, owing to the situation of animals within the context of human dominion. Here I would like to mention several points that help to lay the groundwork for what will be said in the next chapters. First, while these Orthodox authorities emphasize spiritual and moral readings of paradise, they say they are not excluding a literal understanding of the prelapsarian state as

55 recorded in Genesis. Chrysostom asserts the garden was named to prevent people from claiming it was heavenly and not earthly, contrary to the literal sense of Scripture.157 Likewise, Ambrose states that “heaven” and “earth” mean what they say.158 Moreover, although some think beasts symbolize sin and sinners, Ambrose insists each species is “uncompounded by nature,” thus showing he is not using animals merely as a stand-in for something else, but is also talking about them as biological entities.159 Clearer still is the pronouncement of Basil: I know the laws of allegory, though less by myself than from the works of others. There are those truly, who do not admit the common sense of the Scriptures, for whom water is not water, but some other nature, who see in a plant, in a fish, what their fancy wishes, who change the nature of reptiles and of wild beasts to suit their allegories, like the interpreters of dreams who explain visions in sleep to make them serve their own ends. For me grass is grass; plant, fish, wild beast, domestic animal, I take all in the literal sense. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel.”160 This is not to say Basil is rejecting the allegory of Origen and the “Alexandrian” school; rather, he is condemning its abuse, which he sees as a mythologizing tactic for heretics of various stripes. Origen himself admits the historical sense as valid, and Basil follows him in adopting a tiered approach whereby the presentation of the literal sense is for the edification of the less 157

Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 13.13 (FOTC 74:175). Ambrose, Hexameron 6.2.6 (FOTC 42:231). Ambrose follows up this point by saying that Moses had Egyptian wisdom but welcomed the Holy Spirit, preferring truth to the vanity of the world’s philosophies. He only thought it worth bothering to write what is relevant for salvation: that God made earth, which at His command and Jesus’ activity produced plant and animal life. But he did not delve into astronomical details, as this is vain and fleeting knowledge “which deceives and deludes us in our attempt to explain the unexplainable.” Ibid. 6.2.8 (FOTC 42:23132). Basil likewise says that Moses passed over what was not important for our edification. Basil, Hexaemeron 9.1 (NPNF2 8:102). 159 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.2.4 (FOTC 42:229). This is his assertion despite the straining we have seen to exalt all things nautical owing to the baptismal significance of water. 160 Basil, Hexaemeron 9.1 (NPNF2 8:101), quoting Rom 1:16. Basil goes on to say that some follow a “distorted meaning of allegory” and thus “give a majesty of their own invention to Scripture,” “under a pretext of exegesis.” Ibid. (NPNF2 8:102). Although the Cappadocian Fathers appropriate what they find helpful from Origen, here we see pains taken to avoid the danger of excessive allegorization impeding his audience from “hear[ing] Scripture as it has been written.” Ibid. 158

56 sophisticated hearers (such as the majority of his congregation, to whom his sermons are most likely directed), while the spiritual sense is for those more able to rightly understand such subtleties and less likely to be led astray into heresy by probing them.161 Basil does not insist that a literal understanding means the narrative must have actually happened in the exact chronological sequence of narration,162 but rather that there is a correspondence between the figures used in the narrative and those figures as we know and refer to them (i.e., a fish is a fish).163 For our purpose of appropriating patristic homilies as resources for animal ethics, this is the key point. Statements carrying spiritual messages are not thereby voided of their potential to tell us something about animals as we know them empirically. Second, it is helpful to be aware that these thinkers do not always scrupulously separate the literal and allegorical levels in their homilies. For example, they employ something akin to code-switching when discussing the serpent that tempts Eve. Chrysostom says animals could not talk, even in paradise, and thus, the devil used a serpent and spoke through it to deceive Eve.164 The envious devil saw it overcoming other animals by its craftiness and used it as an instrument 161

See Richard Lim, “The Politics of Interpretation in Basil of Caesarea’s Hexaemeron,” Vigiliae Christianae 44 (1990), 351-70. This article provides a very good analysis placing Basil’s selfstyled literalism in its more nuanced overall context, as described all too briefly above. A particularly salient conclusion is: “What Basil is criticizing here cannot have been an Origenist allegorical method, which admits the validity of the historical sense. Instead, Basil is virtually attacking a ‘translational’ type of allegorization, perhaps akin to modern handbooks on the translation of dream symbolisms.” Ibid., 357. 162 For an excellent investigation of the range of variation in details accepted in antiquity, even for accounts purporting to narrate the history of the same event, see Jordan Henderson, “Josephus’s Life and Jewish War Compared to the Synoptic Gospels,” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 10 (2014), 113-31. 163 To quote Lim again, “The scriptural words remain for him the standard against which all things must be judged. It would be an anachronistic mistake—and certainly an overstatement!— to call Basil, as Amand de Mendieta does, a fundamentalist. But his commonsensically expressed regard for the scriptural word is unmistakable: ‘Hearing grass I think grass; I understand everything—plant, fish, wild and domestic animal—in the literal sense. For I am not ashamed of the gospel.’” Lim, “Politics of Interpretation,” 351-70, 358, citing Basil, Hexaemeron, 9.1. 164 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 16.4 (FOTC 74:209).

57 to deceive the woman with conversation.165 When she accuses the serpent, God does not give it the chance to reply, but curses it. The punishment of the devil’s instrument indicates punishment of the devil,166 “[j]ust as a loving father punishes the man who killed his own son, and destroys the sword and dagger by which he committed the murder.”167 While Chrysostom identifies the serpent as the devil’s instrument, he makes no clear distinction between the two in application: the animal instrument becomes the stand-in for the demonic agent. Ambrose and Basil similarly blur the line between the demonic and animal subjects. For Basil, “[t]he serpent is shifty; so he has been condemned to crawl.”168 For Ambrose, the reason “the serpent crawls on his breast and belly” is that “he has fallen from celestial happiness because of his thoughts of earth.”169 The serpent’s punishment of eating the earth is also an image of our own fallen state.170 If Ambrose is clear that it is the serpent, not humanity, that is cursed,171 it cannot be said that any of these fathers is clear that it is the devil, not the serpent, that is cursed. Rather, the devil is cursed by means of the curse on the serpent. This is one example of an animal being cast into the “powerful but disempowering category of symbol,”172 as discussed in greater depth in chapter three. In this role, the animal assumes the burden of representing something of value, but is divested of its

165

Ibid. 16.3 (FOTC 74:208-09). Ibid. 17.22-24 (FOTC 74:233-35). 167 Ibid. 17.24 (FOTC 74:235). 168 Basil, Hexaemeron 7.3 (NPNF2 8:92). 169 Ambrose, Paradise 15.74 (FOTC 42:353). See the following chapter for a discussion of the contrast between rationality and irrationality being outwardly manifest in the upward- and downward-inclining physical structures of humans and animals, respectively. 170 “When we eat the earth, it seems that we are in a sort of warfare. When we eat the herbs, there is a certain advance. When finally, we eat bread, then our life of trial has reached its terminus.” Ibid. 15.76 (FOTC 42:355). 171 Ibid. 15.77 (FOTC 42:355). 172 Laura Hobgood-Oster, Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 15. 166

58 own value by functioning as a signifier rather than being seen as a concrete entity (or hypostasis) in itself. Third, there is significant variation in the conceptualization of paradise among these three fathers, at least on the surface. Basil holds that the original diet in paradise for both humans and animals was vegetarian, indicating that predation and death were not in God’s essential will for creation. Humans and, by extension, other animals, received God’s permission to eat meat after the flood, as a concession to the fallen state (Gen 9:3). But although survival by predation is a result of the fall, the order of paradise will be restored, as anticipated even now through the ascetic renunciation of worldly pleasures and excesses.173 One of the means of accessing the way to paradise reopened by Christ is through fasting, which, like the Sabbath, gives animals mercy: No living being (ζῶον) laments death, nowhere is there blood, nowhere is there a sentence by the unmerciful (ἀπαραιτήτου) belly being carried out against the animals (ζώων). The cook’s knife has stopped; the table is sufficient with things growing naturally (αὐτομάτοις). The Sabbath was given to the Jews, in order that one might rest, it says, ‘your beast of burden (ὑποζύγιόν), and your child.174 In emphasizing that the way to paradise is reopened, Basil links the destinies of humans and animals, in both fall and restoration. The implication is that, just as animals were part of creation in the beginning, so will they be in the end, or rather, the new beginning. Chrysostom renders explicit the contents of this implication when he says that all creation, not just humanity, will be delivered from bondage: Now what is this creation? Not thyself alone, but that also which is thy inferior, and partaketh not of reason or sense, this too shall be a sharer in thy blessings. For “it shall be freed,” he says, “from the bondage of corruption,” that is, it shall no longer be corruptible, but shall go along with the beauty given to thy body; just as 173

Basil, “On the Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2: On Humanity” 6-7, in Basile de Césarée: Sur l’origine de l’homme (eds. and trans. Alexis Smets and Michel van Esbroeck; Sources chrétiennes 160; Paris, 1970), 238-47. 174 Basil, “On Fasting, Discourse 1” 7 (PG 31:176a), quoting Exod 20:10.

59 when this became corruptible, that became corruptible also; so now it is made incorruptible, that also shall follow it too.175 However, despite this high view of participation in salvation by non-rational creation, Chrysostom takes an approach to the character of animals in the prelapsarian state that differs somewhat from that of Basil. He says that before the fall, even wild and savage beasts obeyed humans,176 thus suggesting that, apart from human dominion, the animal state was predatory. Perhaps the perspectives of Basil and Chrysostom are not as incompatible as they appear on the surface: if the state of paradise is not to be conceived except as one in which human dominion was properly exercised over the rest of creation, the savage tendencies of the wild animals would not have a chance to manifest themselves but would be always directed by rational human rule. But this attempt at reconciliation of the two fathers is unlikely to succeed in view of Chrysostom’s above-referenced statement on the crafty serpent’s overcoming other animals in the prelapsarian world; apparently, he envisions spaces in which human dominion was not exercised, leaving animal interactions in their wild state. This subject will be revisited in more depth, and in dialogue with the thought of Gregory of Nyssa, in the next chapter. As for Ambrose, he passes over Genesis 1:29 and 9:2-3 and names among the foods produced for us in paradise not only fruits, but also fish.177 His statement may appear midway between the views presented by Basil and Chrysostom but is actually less internally coherent than either, at least in terms of its placement in a homily purporting to exegete Genesis. Whereas Basil’s approach may emphasize the originally intended harmony of all creation and thus implicitly bolster the value of animal life, and Chrysostom’s approach may emphasize the need for rational human dominion to 175

Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 14 (PG 60:523-40, at 530; NPNF1 11:445), on Rom 8:21. 176 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 16.4 (FOTC 74:209). The contrasting perspectives on the prelapsarian state in this respect are discussed in fuller detail in the next chapter. 177 Ambrose, Hexameron 5.1.2 (FOTC 42:160).

60 order the otherwise “naturally” savage behavior of animals, Ambrose seems simply to provide a narrative illustration of the Church’s fasting discipline. It is uncertain what this says about the relative value of fish life vis-à-vis that of plants on the one hand and that of other kinds of animals on the other, although it is fair to suppose that a life form’s value is considered commensurate with its place in the ontological hierarchy. Finally, the changed nature of the relationship between humans and animals in the postlapsarian world is articulated in a new dispensation through God’s covenant with Noah after the flood. Even though animals have not sinned, they are also killed in the flood. Chrysostom explains that, because they were created for humans rather than themselves, once humans are removed, there is no need for animals. Thus, humanity’s state is imputed to them so that they receive the same punishment as do humans, just as the earth receives the curse when Adam sins. In both cases, the occasion for the curse is human sin, and non-human creation receives the consequences vicariously, as dependent on humanity. Conversely, when humanity pleases God, the rest of creation shares in the resulting prosperity, just as animals are spared along with Noah and his family.178 God manifests His mercy and goodness not only to the rational human being, but also to irrational beings, since He is Creator of them all.179 Animals are spared and even made parties to the covenant God establishes with Noah and his progeny. However, while animals may seem coequal with humans in this respect, they are not: animals are included for the consolation of humans, so that we might know our honor, since it is because of human esteem that the animals have a share in God’s generosity.180 This is not the only occasion on which Chrysostom seems as if he is about to make a point about the dignity of animals, only to reverse 178

Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 22.17, 26.10 (FOTC 82:81, 151); cf. Rom 8:21. Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 26.1 (FOTC 82:144). 180 Ibid. 28.5 (FOTC 82:186). 179

61 course by saying his point is really about the dignity of humans. But we should not interpret even this apparent bait-and-switch to mean that animals have no value, but only that they have a value commensurate with their tele, the purposes for which they were created. Because these purposes are inseparable from their service of humans, it is we who mediate the relationship between animals and God.181 In gratitude for his family’s deliverance from the flood, Noah chooses to sacrifice clean cattle and clean birds to God. Chrysostom notes that in the covenant God makes with Noah, while the shedding of human blood is prohibited, it is only the consumption of animal blood that is forbidden, rather than its shedding. Thus, God grants humans “security in their carnivorous diet.”182 That we are now in a very different world from the state of paradise is shown by Basil’s citation of the use of traps for animals as an application of human rationality and as evidence of our creation in God’s image.183 The same may be said of Basil’s statements that the elephant is subject to us in spite of its huge size,184 and that neither its strength nor that of the lion or tiger prevent these animals from being trained so that “[t]hey’re taught as if children, cringe like weaklings, lashed as if timid. They assume our habits, having been corrected by us and having lost their own impulses.”185 All of these captive animals are put in a position different from that which they would have enjoyed in paradise, being compelled to serve the human by physical constraints and manipulations, rather than their service arising as a spontaneous response to their

181

We will see this idea in narrative form in chapter three. Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 27.15-17 (FOTC 82:173-74). The next chapter investigates this subject in greater detail, including Chrysostom’s explanation of the nexus between the new diet and the new sacrifices. 183 Basil, “On the Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1: On that which is according to the Image” 910 (SC 160:188-95). 184 Basil, Hexaemeron 9.5 (NPNF2 8:105); Ambrose, Hexameron 6.5.32-35 (FOTC 42:247-49). 185 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.6.36 (FOTC 42:250). 182

62 Creator experienced in and through the human. And so we are led to the subject of the next chapter: patristic thoughts on the nature of human dominion.

VII.

Conclusion In these homilies, especially those of Basil and Ambrose, we see an incredible attention

to the details of their society’s knowledge of the animal kingdom. No detail is too fine or arcane to be significant. All are construed to the same end: the glorification of God. As we have seen and will continue to see in the following chapter, these sources are consistent in demarcating non-human animals from humans based on the respective absence or presence of rationality. They do not remark on the sharing of the sixth day of creation between humans and terrestrial animals as an indicator of special communion between them, yet they do not fail to notice that the animals are not suitable companions for Adam. Nonetheless, they take seriously the fact that Genesis records God declaring creation “good” even before the creation of humans. And it is their wonder at God’s love even for irrational creation, love that is manifested by providence for all creatures, that places the patristic understanding of animal value in such a different framework from the Cartesian rationalism that has influenced post-Enlightenment perspectives on rationality. If we read their remarks on “dumb brutes” as benignly condescending at best and utterly devaluing at worst, it is because we are on the other side of Descartes’ deprivation of being to the non-thinking entity: Ceux qui explorent les sources de la relation du consommateur sadique avec la nature s’arrêtent souvent au 17e siècle. A cette époque, Descartes définissait l’animal comme une machine dépourvue de sentiment. En introduisant la relation entre « res cogitans » et « res extensa », Descartes a posé les bases de la distinction la plus avancée entre le sujet et l’objet et, par là-même, d’une relation si objectivée qu’elle en devient inhumaine avec tous les êtres qui ne sont pas doués du « cogito » cartésien.

63 Selon Descartes, seul l’homme peut ressentir, connaître, douter, souffrir. Quant aux objets, c’est-à-dire tout le reste des creatures, ils sont insensibles, incapables d’expérience, morts. Les animaux, comme le corps humain, se comportent envers le monde comme machines dépourvues de vie. L’homme, maître de la nature et du monde, doit contraindre les forces de l’eau, du vent et de la terre à le servir.186 Certainly, the Orthodox authorities we study here do not equate irrationality with insensibility, incapability of experience, dead bodies in mechanical locomotion. For them, many of the “higher” animals, though irrational, have genuine affections and instincts that enable them to care for themselves and one another. In fact, it is because of their irrationality that God compensates them by giving them heightened sensations and emotions. The distinctions among the levels of animal creation suggest these fathers would attribute different value to different types of animals, depending on the level of sentience and intelligence. Nevertheless, all animals have value as God’s creatures, manifesting the Creator’s wise and providential love, so none can be reduced to the status of mere instrumentalities. Their value includes purposes (tele) given by their Creator as proper to their natures. The concept of dominion in Genesis, then, cannot serve as carte blanche to circumvent ethical accountability for either the ends for which or the means through which humans use animals.187 It is to this concept of dominion that we now turn.

186

Tatiana Goritcheva, “Les Animaux dans la Pensée Orthodoxe” (Contacts: Revue Français de l’Orthodoxie 145:1 (1989): 24-35, at 27. 187 See Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 59, stating, “But if the natural order does reflect a purpose, then our ideas for improving it have to be measured against a rationality beyond our own.”

Chapter Two

Patristic Understandings of Human Dominion: the Basis for Responsibilities toward Creation

As the last chapter focused on animal creation in itself, this one is devoted to an exploration of the place of humans vis-à-vis the animals. It will continue our examination of the exegeses of Genesis’ creation narratives by Basil, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom, including in addition a study of the thought of Gregory of Nyssa. The creation accounts are sometimes blamed for providing a theological justification for the anthropocentric idea that humans, for whom the rest of the world was made, have license to dominate and exploit nature for whatever purposes they deem fit.1 Challenging this misconception of the Christian tradition, this chapter will continue our analysis of these Greek and Latin patristic thinkers to offer a basis for human ethical responsibilities toward animals grounded in the meaning of human dominion, especially mediation between God and the rest of creation.2 Although the peculiarities of each thinker are discussed, special attention will be devoted to identifying common themes, as these unifying elements allow for the discernment of principles to be applied in today’s ethical conversations.

1

See Richard Young, “The Biblical Perspective: Anthropocentric, Biocentric, or Theocentric?”, Epiphany 14.2 (1994), 3-17. 2 The word “responsibility” is preferred to “duty” to avoid implying a deontological ethic, which this dissertation aims to avoid, although the concept of duty may not be excluded entirely, at least in the more obvious cases. 64

65 I.

The rational human soul as ruler: humanity made in God’s image Despite certain interpretive differences, Basil, Gregory, Ambrose, and Chrysostom all see

critical significance in the Genesis 1 narrative of the creation of humanity according to God’s image.3 Following Philo of Alexandria, as they often do in their exegesis of Genesis, they understand this unique honor as referring to the human’s appointed position as ruler and to the rational capacity that enables the exercise of this rule in a God-like manner.4 It is important to note that rationality as used by these thinkers is not limited to the discursive reasoning process often associated with the term today, although their understandings are broad enough to encompass that meaning. Rationality is best understood in conjunction with its associated characteristic of rule: as that which enables humans to exercise the dominion granted to them. This applies externally, in governing the world, but even more importantly and foundationally, internally, in governing oneself by directing the person toward virtue and its divine source. As Gregory says, we are created rational (λογικοὶ) and have a mind (νοῦν) to be interpreters and teachers of the divine (τῶν θείων).5 Seen this way, reason is the faculty or cluster of faculties capable of recognizing and communing with God, as well as recognizing and pursuing the range of goods necessary for ordering the self and the world in harmony with God’s will.6

3

When examining the original text of pertinent scriptural passages, the Septuagint (LXX) text will be used, as that is the version employed by the Greek Fathers. In translation, unless otherwise indicated, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) will be used. 4 Philo, De opificio mundi 23.69, 25.78. 5 Gregory of Nyssa, De Pauperibus Amandis I (PG 46:453-69, at 465A). The critical text for this homily is in Adrian Van Heck, Gregorii Nysseni Opera, vol. ix (Leiden, 1967), 93-108. 6 This understanding is supported by G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1961), “λογικός,” 805. The English definitions include “rational,” “logical,” “intellectual,” and “spiritual.”

66 Basil defines the human being as “a rational creature (ποίημα λογικόν) of God, having come into being according to the image of his Creator,”7 and asserts that God’s image is present where there is the power to rule.8 Referring to the power to rule over the fish, Basil says the ruling principle (τὸ ἀρχικόν) is in the human mind (λογισμῷ) and soul (ψυχῇ), not in the body (σώματι) or the flesh (σαρκί).9 To be made in God’s image is to be given the superiority of reason (λόγου περιουσίαν).10 Ambrose asserts that the human is the culmination of created things, given the greatest benefits of all: “While you share with the rest of creatures your corporeal weakness, you possess above and beyond all other creatures a faculty of the soul which in itself has nothing in common with the rest of created things.”11 Thus, humanity “holds the principate over every living thing and is what might be called the summation of the universe and 7

Basil, “On the Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1: On that which is according to the Image,” 11, in On the Human Condition (trans. Nonna Verna Harrison; Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005), 40. Basil’s two homilies on the origin of humanity are considered by some scholars to be a continuation of his better known Hexaemeron, which deals with the six days of creation up to, but not including, the creation of humanity. However, this attribution is not universal, and some scholars consider them pseudepigraphs. See David L. Clough, On Animals I: Systematic Theology (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 121-22 n.41, citing Robert Grant. This dissertation includes them as part of the Basilian corpus, as they have been traditionally considered, though not unanimously even then. The reference for the critical edition of these homilies is: Basile de Césarée: Sur l’origine de l’homme, (eds. and trans. Alexis Smets and Michel van Esbroeck; Sources chrétiennes 160; Paris: Cerf, 1970). Nonna Verna Harrison, a translator of these homilies into English, comments, “Alexis Smets and Michel van Esbroeck, the editors of the Sources chrétiennes edition translated here, consider them to be Basil’s homilies ten and eleven On the Six Days of Creation.” Human Condition, 14. See also Peter Bouteneff, Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 136-37, arguing for Basil’s authorship. Philip Rousseau cites them as Hex. 10 and 11. Basil of Caesarea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 341-46. Unless otherwise indicated, English quotations come from Harrison’s translation, and Greek words come from the critical edition. 8 “[W]here the power to rule (ἡ τοῦ ἄρχειν δύναμις) is, there is the image of God.” Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1,” 8, in Human Condition, 36-37. 9 Ibid., 6, in Human Condition, 34-35. 10 Ibid., 7, in Human Condition, 36. 11 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.1.1-2 (trans. John J. Savage; The Fathers of the Church 42; New York: The Fathers of the Church, 1961), 227-28.

67 the delight of every creature in the world,” having been made with the power of reason so as to strive after virtue, receive grace, and imitate God.12 For Chrysostom, rather than indicating a physical or ontological resemblance to the immaterial God, the words concerning humanity’s creation according to God’s image reveal a similarity of dominion, which is unique to humans among creatures.13 He says that “image refers to the matter of control, not anything else; in other words, God created the human being as having control of everything on earth, and nothing on earth is greater than the human being, under whose authority everything falls.”14 Both Chrysostom and Gregory remark on humanity’s having been created last in the sixday sequence as an indication of human dominion: everything else is created first so that humans might enjoy it and rule over it upon coming into being, as a king rules over his subjects.15 Gregory, moreover, interprets Scripture here as teaching about the soul: that what is perfect comes last, including and building on the prior, lower levels.16 This model likely derives from the

12

Ambrose, Hexameron 6.10.75 (FOTC 42:282). John Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 8.8, 9.6, 10.8-9 (trans. Robert C. Hill; The Fathers of the Church 74; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 109, 120, 133. 14 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 8.9 (FOTC 74:110). 15 Ibid. 7.16, 8.5 (FOTC 74:101, 107); Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 2.1-2 (NPNF2 5:390). Here, Gregory and Chrysostom seem to borrow from Philo directly. See Philo, De opificio mundi 25.78, 29.87-88. This teaching has been cited by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: “The Fathers of the Church in a manner fitting to God and appreciating the temporal sequence [in the production of the various species of creation] taught that every species was created before humankind in order for humankind to enter into a full kingdom and take action as king, priest, and teacher.” “Message on the Day Designated for the Protection of the Environment,” Constantinople (September 1, 1995), quoted in Bishoy M. Mikhail, Peace with Nature: Orthodoxy and the Environment (Mariout, Egypt: St Mina Monastery Press, 2003), 35. 16 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 8.7 (NPNF2 5:394). In his introduction to this work, Gregory indicates his desire to supplement his brother Basil’s Hexaemeron, which discusses the six days of creation up through the making of the terrestrial animals, with a discussion of humanity, for “no other existing thing, save the human creation, has been made like to God.” He intends to use Scripture’s explanations, with reasoning, to reconcile statements about humanity that seem to be opposed and says, “The scope of our proposed enquiry is not small: it is second to none of the wonders of the world—perhaps even greater than any of those known to us, 13

68 Aristotelian threefold classification of souls: (1) vegetative, having the power of growth and nutrition, and proper to plant life; (2) sentient, having the activity of sense and perception, and proper to animal life; and (3) rational, partaking of reason and ordered by the mind, and proper to human life. The higher levels or kinds of soul incorporate and build on the lower ones.17 Just as the rest of creation must come before its ruler, so the lower kinds of soul must come before the highest kind, which makes use of the lower faculties. Thus, the proper order is for the rational mind to govern the body, not to serve the body’s passions.18 Chrysostom likewise says the human soul’s creation after the body establishes its higher nature, just as humanity’s creation after the animals establishes dominion over them. In both cases, the serving entity is created before the

because no other existing thing, save the human creation, has been made like to God: thus we shall readily find that allowance will be made for what we say by kindly readers, even if our discourse is far behind the merits of the subject.” Making of Man Introduction (NPNF2 5:387). This desire on Gregory’s part has caused discussion, as Basil’s two homilies on the origin of humanity also supplement the Hexaemeron and have been ascribed by some to Gregory. But as Harrison notes, the editors of the Sources chrétiennes consider them Basil’s tenth and eleventh homilies on the six days of creation. Harrison argues that their content is more similar to Basil’s theology as expressed elsewhere, than to Gregory’s. Human Condition, 14-15. Still, it is curious that Gregory would not know of these homilies and would assume, as he does here, that the consideration of humanity is lacking in Basil’s Hexaemeron. 17 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 8.3-5 (NPNF2 5:393-94). Thus, the soul of a particular being is named for its highest capacity. Unreasoning animals have sentient souls, which by definition include the vegetative capacity. Likewise, humans have rational souls, which by definition include the sentient and vegetative capacities. This sequence obtains not only in the order of creation (from plants to animals to humans), but also in the development of the human soul in conjunction with the growth of the body. Ibid. 29.8, 30.29 (NPNF2 5:421-22, 426). Gregory indicates that these stages are degrees of perfection, and therefore only the human soul is the true and perfect soul, as it uniquely partakes of all three operations. Ibid. 30.32-33 (NPNF2 5:427). This threefold classification is also in Philo. Questions and Answers on Genesis, II 59. 18 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 14.1 (NPNF2 5:402-03). For Gregory, God’s image is seen not only in sovereignty over other creatures, but also in the capacity for self-governance, which allows humans to grow freely into the fullness of good proper to God. This is a key point that will be elaborated below.

69 ruling one.19 The analogy between the soul’s dominion over the body and human dominion over the animals is an important patristic theme to which we will shortly return. Another feature of Genesis 1 seen as indicating human exceptionalism is that God, rather than creating humanity by simple fiat in the same way as the rest of creation, first engages in counsel and deliberation.20 For Basil, God does this not for lack of skill, but to show that the human is “perfect (τέλειος) before God.”21 Chrysostom likewise says God’s apparent deliberation is not out of necessity, but to instruct humans that their value exceeds that of all other creatures, which were made for them.22 Gregory points out that counsel precedes the making of man “so as to prepare beforehand for him material for his formation, and to liken his form to an archetypal beauty, and, setting before him a mark for which he is to come into being, to make for him a nature appropriate and allied to the operations, and suitable for the object in hand.”23 The archetype to which Gregory refers suggests a teleology to human nature: it comes into being for a mark, which determines the function to which it is suited. Gregory’s next chapter argues that “the construction of man throughout signifies his ruling power,” thus specifying the

19

Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 13.11 (FOTC 74:174). I employ the term “human exceptionalism” in its common usage, referring to the view that humanity is superior to the rest of material creation. No opinion is intended as to the relationship of humans with non-material, purely intellectual creation (i.e., angels). The hierarchical ordering of the latter relationship is explored in the Scholastic tradition, particularly by Thomas Aquinas. But in these patristic sources, the connection between humanity and angelic beings that is most relevant is the very existence of a connection: the anthropological view that human nature is a union of the intellectual, angelic nature with the material, animal one. 21 Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1,” 3, in Human Condition, 32-33. 22 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 8.4, 8.6 (FOTC 74:107-08). 23 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 3.1-2 (NPNF2 5:390). This observation appears in a chapter titled, “that the nature of man is more precious than all the visible creation.” 20

70 function; and the following chapter asserts that “man is a likeness of the Divine sovereignty,” thus specifying the archetypal mark.24 As the archetype is the immaterial and incorruptible God, the divine image in humanity must refer not to the body, but to the immaterial and incorruptible soul. Basil says human identity is located in the rational part of the soul (τὸ λογικὸν τῆς ψυχῆς), the only aspect of the human that does not perish, and the body is its instrument.25 Accordingly, there is an ordering or taxis, with the rational soul in charge of the whole human organism, as the intelligent principle animating and directing the body. Ambrose similarly asserts the body cannot constitute God’s image,26 or else God would be material and passible.27 The soul longs for things that are heavenly and incorruptible, not earthly and corruptible, and the flesh is like a garment for the soul to use.28 Although Ambrose seems to identify the person with the soul alone, his intent is to praise the wisdom and virtue proper to the soul.29 But he understands the person to be body and soul

24

Ibid. 4-5 (NPNF2 5:390-91). 25 Basil, “On the Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1,” 7, in Human Condition, 35-36. Based on the Pauline contrast between the inner and outer human, rather than on the Platonic separation of body and soul as independent essences, Basil recognizes “two human beings.” D.S. WallaceHadrill discusses patristic independence from Platonic thought, which saw the human soul as “a purely spiritual entity, uncreated and eternal, which enters the human body either in obedience to universal cosmic law or through its decline from its original destiny. There is no true harmony between body and soul, the body constituting a tomb or prison from which it is the object of the soul to be freed.” In contrast, the fathers recognize that the soul is evidenced by bodily movements and is thus shared between humans and animals. The Greek Patristic View of Nature (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1968), 67. This distinction is generally correct, although it requires refinement in terms of what is meant by “soul.” 26 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.7.40 (FOTC 42:253). Ambrose’s discussion of the sixth day of creation, including the making of humanity, demonstrates a similar metaphysical perspective on body and soul with that of Basil and Gregory. 27 Ibid. 6.8.44 (FOTC 42:256). 28 Ibid. 6.6.39 (FOTC 42:252-53). 29 Ibid. 6.7.43 (FOTC 42:256). When Scripture says, “Attend to thyself alone,” it means to attend to the soul and mind, “whence all our deliberations emanate and to which the profit of your works is referred. Here only is the fullness of wisdom, the plenitude of piety and justice of which

71 together, as he and distinguishes between: (1) “ourselves,” referring to body and soul; (2) “ours,” referring to our bodily members and senses; and (3) “what surrounds us,” referring to our possessions.30 The soul is made to God’s image because it is through it that humans may be conformed to God’s Image, who is Christ: “The ‘image’ of God is virtue, not infirmity. The ‘image’ of God is wisdom. The ‘image’ of God is He alone who has said: ‘I and the Father are one,’ thus possessing the likeness of the Father so as to have a unity of divinity and of plenitude.”31 As the aspect of humanity capable of receiving and manifesting Christ’s wisdom and virtue, it is the soul that must be in God’s image. Chrysostom likewise stresses that virtue flows from the right use of reason, and thus the animals were not fitting to be helpmates for Adam “like himself” because, for all their usefulness, they were irrational and therefore inferior.32 While all of these Orthodox authorities are in agreement on the point, Ambrose goes furthest in articulating an explicitly Christocentric vision of how the powers of the human soul reveal its status as made after God’s image. It is in this light, rather than by assuming a Platonic

God speaks—for all virtue comes from God.” Ibid. 6.7.42 (FOTC 42:255). Moreover, in the soul is “man’s entire essence,” because it gives him life, thus distinguishing his existence from the lifeless earth of which his body is composed. Ibid. 6.7.43 (FOTC 42:256). This point also applies to animal souls, but the human soul by its nature transcends the constraints of a strictly animal existence and allows for knowledge of the Creator. The soul, by which humanity is made to God’s image, is the means of dominion over the animals, whereas the body is related to the animals: “In one there is the holy seal of imitation of the divine. In the other there is found base association with beasts and wild animals.” Ibid. 6.7.43 (FOTC 42:256). 30 Ibid. 6.7.42 (FOTC 42:255). 31 Ibid. 6.7.41 (FOTC 42:254). 32 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 15.4 (FOTC 74:196). This passage includes a quotation of Genesis 2:19, wherein God forms the animals from the earth. Like the other writers, as will be noted below, Chrysostom notes no mark of honor for animals in this formation, despite a similar formation being a mark of honor for Adam.

72 or Manichean dualism, that we should understand Ambrose’s enthusiasm for Scripture’s occasional use of “soul” to refer to the whole person by synecdoche.33 As noted above, these patristic figures see a parallel between the dominion of the rational soul over the body and the dominion of humans over the beasts. Humans, who are made in God’s image, rule irrational animals (the “external beasts”), which are not; likewise, the human rational soul, which is made in God’s image, rules the body and its passions (the “internal beasts”), which are not. In this, they follow Philo, who sees the mind, unique among all creaturely souls in being free from necessity, as occupying the same ruling place in the human being as the human occupies in the world; indeed, he cites this freedom and corresponding moral accountability as the basis for human rule over other animals.34 Basil says that through reason (ὀ λογισμός), humans rule not only the animals, but also—and more importantly—the passions, not included in God’s image.35 He names as “beasts” various vices and sins: anger, deceit, hypocrisy, sharpness

33

Ambrose, Hexameron 6.8.46 (FOTC 42:258-59). And it is in the same light that we might understand his overlooking of Scripture’s converse use of synecdoche with the word “flesh” (σάρξ). See, for example, Isaiah 66:23 (καὶ ἔσται μῆνα ἐκ μηνὸς καὶ σάββατον ἐκ σαββάτου ἥξει πᾶσα σὰρξ ἐνώπιόν μου προσκυνῆσαι ἐν ιερουσαλημ εἶπεν κύριος) and Isaiah 40:5 / Luke 3:6 (καὶ ὄψεται πᾶσα σὰρξ τὸ σωτήριον τοῦ θεοῦ). 34 Philo, A Treatise Concerning the World 5, in The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged (new updated ed.; trans. Charles Duke Yonge; Hendrickson Publishers, 1993), app. 1. This work is not included in the critical text on which the Loeb translations are based. See also De plantatione 10.41-42 (stating that the unfallen world is represented by paradise, in which were only rational virtues, and the fallen world by the ark, in which were bodily passions and vices). 35 Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1” 8, in Human Condition, 36-37. For Basil, Scripture’s description of human rule over the fish and wild beasts represents rule over irrational (τοῦ ἀλόγου) passions. Ibid., 19, in Human Condition, 45-46. These fathers have a precedent in Philo for seeing animals as symbols of various passions. Legum allegoriae, II 4.9-12. But Philo also offers certain animals as symbols of virtues: for example, the ass as representing hard work, and the sheep as representing improvement. De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini 34.112. Likewise, while the serpent that tempted Eve symbolizes pleasure, the serpent of Dan is “a figure of endurance, a most sturdy virtue, [which] will be found to bite a horse, the symbol of passion and wickedness.” De agricultura 24.109 (Colson and Whitaker, LCL).

73 in insults, vindictiveness, greed, and lust.36 Humans must rule their thoughts (τῶν λογισμῶν) in order to rule all other things properly. To that end, rule over the animals “trains us to rule the things belonging to ourselves.”37 It is this exercise of internal dominion for which humans will have to account before God.38 Both Basil and Gregory consider failure of self-governance as slavish, inasmuch as humans put themselves in bondage to the body’s passions, which God meant them to rule.39

36

Lust is a raging horse, neighing rather than speaking, thus allowing Basil to play on ἀλόγος as both irrational and wordless. “It [Scripture] transferred him to the nature of those without reason (τῶν ἀλόγων), because of the passion with which he associated himself.” Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1,” 19, in Human Condition, 47, citing Jer 5:8. Likewise, it is worthless to be able to tame a raging lion but not to tame the raging of anger in oneself, just as it is unbecoming to rule winged creatures but to have unstable, airy thoughts higher than human nature. Ibid., in Human Condition, 47-48. Basil’s warning not to think things greater than human nature is a caution to remember that humans are dignified not from themselves, but from God. He develops this theme further in his second homily. 37 He continues, “For it is misplaced to be governed at home and govern nations, to be ruled within by a prostitute and be mayor of the city by public consent. It is necessary that household affairs be managed well and that good order within be arranged, and thus to receive authority over others. Since the word of Scripture will be turned back at you by those you rule if your household affairs are disorderly and disorganized, namely ‘Physician, heal yourself’ [Lk 4.23], let us heal ourselves first.” Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Basil says that power to rule was given to humans as soon as they were made, and it is a renunciation of the noble dignity of their nature that they should serve the passions as slaves. Ibid., 8, in Human Condition, 36-37. Gregory says that to reverse the order is for those with a “slavish disposition, who bring the reason into bondage to the impulses of their nature and pay servile homage to the pleasures of sense by allowing them the alliance of their mind.” Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 14.1 (NPNF2 5:402-03). Self-governance in this context should not be understood exclusively in a Kantian sense of a conscious decision to do one’s “duty” as against one’s desires. It should also be seen as harmonious with the idea in Aristotelian-based virtue ethics that developing virtuous habits orients the desires toward the good so that the choice of the good becomes natural and instinctive. These are best seen as two stages of the process of ethical development: in the first, the passions are stronger, and it takes a more conscious and concerted exercise of the will to resist them. Like physical resistance training, such exercise develops strength so that the practices that were difficult at first become easier. Reaching this second stage should not be viewed as contrary to self-governance, but rather, as its proper end, freeing the subject from the “slavish disposition” noted by Gregory and Basil. (None of this excludes the need for divine grace at all times.)

74 Corresponding to these two kinds of dominion, external and internal, these patristic sources point to a range of uses for the rational function, from the earthly to the divine. Basil argues that, because animals usually have superior physical traits such as size, strength, speed, or natural weapons, human rule over them requires mental superiority: “What is lacking in strength of body is encompassed by the employment of reason (τοῦ λογισμοῦ). How does the human being move great weights? By thought (ἐπινοίᾳ) or bodily vigor (τόνοις σωματικοῖς)?”40 He describes the different ways humans rule animals by the ingenuity of the mind, devising traps to capture lions, leopards, and birds, and asks finally: “Do you see in what sense you have come to be according to the image of God?”41 The sense in which Basil uses reason in these passages is technological, involving calculation and planning—the kind of reason that can identify and exploit efficient causes in nature.42 But reason is not limited to a value-neutral, instrumental capacity. Basil also says that when Paul speaks of the inner man being renewed, he is referring to the rational soul,43 so “reason” has a meaning richer than technological “know how.” It is a spiritual faculty, enabling the human being to commune with God, the source of renewal. Thus, reason is manifested in different ways depending on the object toward which it is directed, whether earthly or heavenly.44 Gregory treats the subject similarly in noting that humans are

40

Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1,” 6, in Human Condition, 34-35. Ibid., 9-10, in Human Condition, 37-39. 42 Basil also says, “Because receiving the power to rule (δύναμιν τοῦ ἄρχειν) through the superiority of reason (τοῦ λογισμοῦ περιουσίᾳ), the human being leads the most disobedient toward order like runaway slaves; those whom he is unable to draw to himself through great gentleness are of necessity enslaved. Thus everywhere the power to rule given by the Creator is innate in the human. Therefore swordfish and hammer-headed sharks and whales and sawfish and cowfish and all those called fearful among aquatic beasts have come to be subject to humans.” Ibid., 9, in Human Condition, 38. 43 Ibid., 7, in Human Condition, 35-36. 44 Bringing these two ends together, Theokritoff states, “Our vocation as human beings, material creatures in God’s image, is to make matter holy, starting with our own bodies. Various practical 41

75 slower, smaller, and more defenseless than most animals, but asserting that what seems a deficiency is actually the motive for obtaining dominion. Human limitations promote the use of horses for travel, sheep for wool, oxen for work, dogs and birds for hunting, crocodile skins for armor, and animals for shoes.45 While the mind is the agent effecting this external rule, it is even more important that it rule internally. The connection of mind (νοῦς) and rational judgment (φρόνησις) with God is so intimate that Gregory speaks of God not as having given (δέδωκεν) them to humanity, but as having “imparted” (μετέδωκε) them, “adding to the image the proper adornment of His own nature.”46 Gregory’s strong connection of rationality to the very nature of God is minimized by Eric Meyer in his argument that, for Gregory, desire (a faculty shared with animals) is ultimately of

schemes to conserve and protect the environment can be useful and even vital; but only through recovering our own human integrity, our likeness to God, can each of us lay the foundation for a more sound relationship with and use of the world around us.” “Creation, Incarnation, and Transfiguration: Material Creation and Our Understanding of It,” Sobornost/ECR 11.1-2 (1989), 31-40 [under name of Elizabeth Briere], at 36. 45 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 7.1-3 (NPNF2 5:392-93). Compare Philo, De opificio mundi 28.84-86. 46 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 9.1 (NPNF2 5:395). This understanding of rationality as uniquely imparted to humans from God’s own nature raises the question whether Gregory is an exception to D.S. Wallace-Haddrill’s statement that “[a]gainst the earlier Platonising tendency of Alexandria to regard man’s rationality as a sharing of the divine mind by natural right, later theologians came to regard it rather as a reflection or image of divinity given to man as an act of grace by God.” Greek Patristic View, 75. This Alexandrian Platonising tendency can be seen in Philo, who says God “grudged not a share in his own excellent nature to an existence which has of itself nothing fair and lovely, while it is capable of becoming all things.” De opificio mundi 5.21 (Colson and Whitaker, LCL). Philo sees God’s breath in Adam as a procession of divine spirit, so that humanity partakes of both mortal and immortal natures, body and intellect. This makes humans “of near kind to the Ruler,” as the human mind is “a copy or fragment or a ray of that blessed nature.” Ibid. 46.135, 50.144, 51.146 (Colson and Whitaker, LCL). It is difficult to see how Gregory’s distinction between giving and imparting is different from Philo’s apparently Platonizing, “emanationist” view of the relationship between the uncreated and created.

76 more help in the ascent to God than is reason.47 Although it is true that human reason cannot reach the heights and depths of God, the desire that must continue to impel humans toward God is one that is already rationally informed of God as its object—a point that cannot be made concerning animal desire. Meyer acknowledges this when he says, “In Gregory’s ἀπάθεια, discourse [Meyer’s translation of λόγος] functions to direct desire toward its transcendent goal by militating against any premature collapse of desire into its ‘merely’ animal expression, or worse, its misdirection in vice,” and “The human is not the animal because of the presence of discourse.”48 But he continues: [A]t its limits discourse is subsumed and ‘animal’ desire draws the human further in divine communion. What remains is a negation of the negation: the final function of discourse is not to differentiate the human from the animal but to guard and guide the animal that stretches out toward the glory of God. The continuity between human and animal at the limits of discourse entail[s] that humanity’s spiritual service to creation in God’s image is not a ‘pulling up’ from above, in which human beings raise animals to a higher plane of existence; instead, it is a reconciliatory ‘getting down into,’ in which a deeper, ecosystemic integration (guided by wisdom) guards the multivalence of desire as an approach to God.49 While Meyer’s insight that humanity’s mediating role consists of a “reconciliatory ‘getting down into’” is sound, it ought not to preclude the reverse movement of “pulling up.” Just as the Word of God “got down into” the human condition precisely in order to pull it up, we might consider humans “getting down into” the animal capacities in order to elevate them by a divinely bestowed capacity lacking to animals. This idea is consistent with Gregory’s understanding of living a bodily life in a divine mode, which of course is modeled by the Incarnate Word.

47

See Eric Meyer, “Gregory of Nyssa on Language, Naming God’s Creatures, and the Desire of the Discursive Animal,” in Genesis and Christian Theology (eds. Nathan McDonald, Mark Elliot, and Grant Macaskill; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 103-16. 48 Ibid., 114-15. 49 Ibid., 115.

77 For Gregory, because God is the most beautiful and supreme good, the mind must continue to dwell on the beautiful and the good if it is to retain its likeness to its archetype.50 Through the use of animals as comparators, Ambrose argues that similar physical actions have deeper meaning when performed by humans, precisely owing to the rational faculty.51 He focuses on the spiritual nature of the rational soul, saying it is not bound by the body’s limitations and can transcend not only the present moment of sensory perception by contemplating other places, but even the sensory world entirely, so that it can attain to God, approach Christ, and enter heaven and hell.52 Chrysostom has a similar emphasis, describing the human soul as the higher, rational faculty elevating humans above the bodily mode of existence to which animals are subject and allowing them to live like the heavenly powers by God’s grace.53 However, he is far from ignoring human dominion over flesh-and-blood “external beasts.”54 That rationality and rule are the hallmarks of God’s image in humanity leaves open the question of the relationship of the divine image to the divine likeness of Genesis 1:26. While these fathers do not approach this question in exactly the same way, their differences are best 50

Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 12.9 (NPNF2 5:398-99). For example, birds have vocal capacities but cannot use them to articulate rational thoughts or express the contents of the heart. Animals can see but cannot interpret what they see. They can also hear, but only humans can reflect on what they hear and, in turn, speak words from God. Doves exchange kisses, but they do not compare with the kisses of humans, which plainly communicate friendliness, kindness, and affection. Ambrose, Hexameron 6.9.67-68 (FOTC 42:276-78). The last example is somewhat odd, considering that these sources in general do not deny the presence of genuine affections in animals. 52 Ibid. 6.8.45 (FOTC 42:258). For a similar point, compare Philo, De plantatione 5.22; Concerning the World 5, in Yonge, app. 1. 53 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 12.17 (FOTC 74:167). 54 Chrysostom argues that even after the fall, humans retained some degree of control over animals, seen by the fact that wild animals flee whenever humans appear, and that if wild animals ever harm humans, it is not because of control by the animals but because of fault by the humans. Ibid. 9.7 (FOTC 74:120). But he goes on to nuance this view, saying humans had complete control of the wild animals in the beginning, but that control has been replaced by fear and dread of them. Ibid. 9.8, 16.4 (FOTC 74:121-22, 209). 51

78 seen as diverse expressions of an underlying anthropological consensus. For Basil, God’s likeness is the endpoint or telos for humans who properly exercise reason. So whereas the divine image is in reason, present in humanity’s power, the divine likeness is in virtue, emerging through human free choice and activity. Basil explains that he has that which is according to the image in being a rational being (τὸ λογικὸς) but becomes according to the likeness in becoming Christian.55 The realization of the likeness, then, is the fruit of making right use of the blessing of having been made according to the image. In other words, reason is the actuality that, when directed toward internal governance, enables the actualization of the potentiality of Christian virtue.56 Accordingly, virtue is evidence that the human possesses and properly uses reason: the likeness manifests the image. Of all the Christian virtues that Basil could mention in connection with the divine likeness, he singles out kindness (ἡ χρηστότης), compassion (ὁ οἰκτιρμός), and sympathy (ἡ συμπάθεια), by which “you put on Christ.”57 Chrysostom approaches the question in a similar manner, saying “image” indicates “a similitude of command,” whereas “likeness” means “becom[ing] like God to the extent of our human power,” especially in terms of “gentleness and mildness and in regard to virtue.”58 Basil focuses more on the rational aspect when considering the image, whereas Chrysostom focuses more on the ruling aspect, but neither

55

Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1,” 16, in Human Condition, 43-44. Basil argues that there must be a difference between “according to the image” and “according to the likeness,” because to equate them would be to render one superfluous, thus blasphemously attributing idle words to Scripture. Ibid., 15, in Human Condition, 43. Gregory of Nyssa, as we will see, feels differently. 56 As Bouteneff notes, for Basil, “image” pertains to the rational soul, whose outward instrument is the body, while “likeness” pertains to the vocation to freely become God-like. Beginnings, 137. 57 Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1,” 17, in Human Condition, 44-45. In this text, the range of intended recipients of this sympathy is unclear: whether it includes only humans or might include animals as well. This question will be explored later with reference to other texts. 58 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 9.7 (FOTC 74:120).

79 to the exclusion of the other. Just as Basil identifies the image with reason (a capacity or power) and the likeness with virtue (an aspect of character), so Chrysostom identifies the image with the power to rule, and the likeness with the virtuous exercise of that power. Like Basil, Chrysostom specially mentions the qualities of gentleness and mildness as examples of virtue. Gregory approaches the question somewhat differently, making no distinction between the divine image and likeness.59 Although the presence of the mind reflects that humans are in God’s image, only when the mind is directed to the good do humans truly image God. Scripture’s phrase “in the image of God” is shorthand for all the gifts of God in which humanity participates, including virtue, wisdom, and free will.60 Gregory states that “[t]he image is properly an image so long as it fails in none of those attributes which we perceive in the archetype; but where it falls from its resemblance to the prototype it ceases in that respect to be an image.”61 As an image of the divine Ruler, the human was endowed with virtue, immortality, and righteousness so as to be perfectly like the divine archetype.62 And because virtue cannot be compelled, freedom is also a quality essential for likening human nature to divine nature. But if the mind abuses its freedom and departs from virtue, it departs from its likeness to God and thus fails to be an image of the divine nature. While Gregory differs from Basil and Chrysostom in his expression, they all agree that the end to which human reason is naturally directed is the

59

See Human Condition, 18; John Behr, “The Rational Animal: A Rereading of Gregory of Nyssa’s De Hominis Opificio,” JECS 7 (1999), 219-47, at 225. 60 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 16.10-11 (NPNF2 5:405). 61 Ibid. 11.3 (NPNF2 5:396-97). Gregory, who usually seems more akin to Philo in his speculations than do the other fathers, here departs from him by equating image and likeness. Philo allows for images that are unlike their archetypal model, and so sees the addition of “likeness” as indicating that humanity was to accurately resemble the divine archetype. De opificio mundi 23.71. 62 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 4.1 (NPNF2 5:391).

80 acquisition of virtue so as to be like God, thus showing the human being to be in God’s image actually, not only potentially.

II.

Human humility and human exceptionalism: patristic exegesis of Genesis 2 and its interplay with Genesis 1 Whereas the narrative of Genesis 1 builds up to the creation of humans in God’s image as

the crown of creation, the account of Genesis 2 starts with the creation of Adam and contains elements indicating both human greatness and human lowliness.63 Although these fathers differ in their expression of the significance of the two accounts, they follow Philo’s notion that the sense-perceptible, individual human formed from the earth is of another order than the intelligible genus of humanity created in God’s image.64 Basil says the human is lowly as having been made from dust, but great as having been personally molded by God: “If you look toward our nature alone, it is nothing and is worthy of nothing, but if you look toward the honor with which he was honored, the human is great.”65 For all Basil’s emphasis on human greatness, it is remembrance of humanity’s lowly origin—and eventual destination—in the earth that serves as an aid to governing the passions: “Let the earth, always present and remembered, be an ally to reason (τῷ λογισμῷ).”66 So Basil identifies the earth, when properly considered, as supporting rather than opposing reason and the virtue of humility.67 Having warned his audience to flee

63

This blend, however, is not absent from Genesis 1, as Gregory of Nyssa observes in his indepth discussion of creation as male and female pertaining not to God’s image, but to kinship with the irrational beasts. Ibid. 16.7-9 (NPNF2 5:405). 64 Philo, De opificio mundi 46.134-35. 65 Basil, “On the Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2: On the human being,” 1-2, in Human Condition, 49-50. 66 Ibid., 12-13, in Human Condition, 58-59. 67 This identification, of course, fits very well with the Latin origins of the word “humility” in humus: soil, earth, or ground.

81 lofty, airy thoughts that go above human nature, he now identifies remembrance of human origins in the earth as the remedy for sin. So the heights of the air are dangerous for the human mind, while the lowliness of the earth is safe. Human dignity comes from God’s gift, not from the material out of which humanity was fashioned. When passions overtake the human soul, it is not from remembering the heights to which God has elevated us, but from forgetting that we owe our dignity to God and supposing instead that we are great in our own right. Thus, humble remembrance of one’s lowly origins is actually an ally to the highest of human attributes: reason. It is only when we have a proper view of our place in relation to our Creator that we can have a proper view of reality as a whole, including our place on the earth. Along the same lines, Chrysostom sees God’s molding of Adam from the earth as a statement of humble origins that balances the lofty teaching of creation in God’s image, and he views this distinction as a major purpose for the two creation accounts.68 If we were aware only of our creation in God’s image from the first account, the temptation to pride would be too great, so the second account’s narrative of our origin from dust reminds us of our material composition, like the irrational beings.69 Chrysostom also contrasts the error of saying God’s breath of life indicates that the soul comes from the divine substance, with the error of saying souls change into the substance of brute beasts, asserting that “some accord the soul excessive esteem, others depress it unduly.”70

68

Hill remarks on Chrysostom’s uncritical approach to Scripture by saying that “[d]iversity of sources he knows nothing of: in Homily 12 he passes from one creation narrative to the next almost without reference to the duplication, just remarking that Moses had repeated his ‘first account’ in the interests of that cardinal virtue, akribeia, precision.” Introduction to Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis (FOTC 74:14). 69 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 12.13-14 (FOTC 74:164-65). 70 Ibid. 13.7 (FOTC 74:172). The first error sounds not far from Gregory of Nyssa’s speculation that God “imparted,” rather than “gave,” humanity mind and reason.

82 Despite this balance, the patristic emphasis weighs heavily on the side of human exceptionalism over kinship with the earth, as seen in the details highlighted and omitted in the exegesis of Genesis 1-2. Chrysostom notes that, although the divine command of Genesis 1 to multiply and fill the earth is common to humans and animals, the grant of dominion is unique to humans.71 Basil sees a unique spiritual meaning in the entirety of the command that humans grow, multiply, and fill earth. He notes that a similar command is given to the fishes (told to fill the waters): “These words necessarily concern both the things given you in common with other creatures and the things reserved as proper to you. For you grow as do the rest of the living creatures. . . . Therefore the things that were common to nature were also given to you.”72 But with respect to “fill the earth,” he finds a special meaning as applied to humans, who are not being told to overpopulate it, but to fill it by authority (ἡ ἐξουσία)—which God has given humans for dominion (κατὰ τὸ κυρίευμα)—and by reason (ὁ λογισμός).73 Elsewhere, Basil interprets all portions of the command spiritually as applied to humans; accordingly, the fact that the words are common to the irrational animals masks the unique meaning they have for humans.74 While recognizing that the common command indicates some level of similarity between humans and animals, Basil accentuates the difference through his spiritual interpretation for humans. 71

Ibid. 10.9 (FOTC 74:134). Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1,” 12, in Human Condition, 40. 73 Ibid., 14, in Human Condition, 42. 74 “Grow” refers to the body for the irrational animals (τοῖς ἀλόγοις ζῴοις) but to the soul for humans, involving progress toward God. “Multiply,” with respect to humans, pertains to the Church, so that the gospel might be proclaimed to the whole earth and many people might be born according to it. “Fill the earth” means humans should fill their flesh with good works. Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2,” 5, in Human Condition, 51-52. Here, Basil emphasizes the spiritual meaning to such an extent that it might seem he is denying they have a physical meaning for humans. From his first homily, however, it is plain that “grow” and “multiply” are not only spiritual for humans, but also physical. 72

83 Another exegetical method of Basil is to move between Genesis 1 and 2 to bolster human greatness. When discussing God’s molding of Adam in Genesis 2, he returns to Genesis 1, saying God created light, heaven and its luminaries, the sea and land, the plants and animals, by a word.75 Then he comes back to Genesis 2 to distinguish the creation of humanity, saying the human body was worthy to be molded by God’s hands, and concluding, “When you focus on what is taken [earth], what is the human being? When you understand the One doing the molding, the human is great, indeed he is nothing because of the material and great through the honor.”76 The omission here is that after molding (πλάσσω) Adam from the earth, God also molds (πλάσσω) the animals and birds from the earth (Gen 2:7, 19). This detail is obscured by Basil’s departure from Genesis 2 and his return to Genesis 1 when discussing the making of nonhuman creation.77 Granted, he does not see the two accounts as separate narratives, but rather, the second as a return to the first for a “zoomed in” view of how God created humanity.78 He understands them as indicating the creation of humanity in its different aspects: “[God] made the inner human being, he molded the outer. For indeed molding is suited to dust, making to that which is according to the image. As the flesh was molded, the soul was made.”79

75

Ibid., 2, in Human Condition, 49-50. Ibid., in Human Condition, 50. 77 That Adam is taken from the earth is a reason for saying he is lowly, and that he is molded by God is a reason for saying he is great, but on the basis of Genesis 2, both these qualities apply also to animals and birds. To arrive at human distinctiveness from the account of Genesis 2, a more consistent avenue would be to focus on the narrative points that God molds the animals as helpers for Adam, who exercises dominion by naming them, but that there was not found a helper comparable to him from among them. 78 Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2,” 12, in Human Condition, 58. Bouteneff asserts that it was an innovation of Basil to understand Genesis 2:7 as concerning how God made. Beginnings, 137. 79 Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2,” 3, in Human Condition, 50. 76

84 If molding is proper to the flesh, and God’s molding of Adam is evidence of human dignity, Basil might be expected to see this dignity as proper to not only the rational soul, but also the body—the feature shared with other physical creatures. But instead, he takes pains to distance humans from irrational animals: First it said that God indeed created (ἐποίησεν); in what follows it also says how he created (ἐποίησεν). For if it simply said that he created, you would have thought that he created us in the same way as the domestic animals, as the wild beasts, as the plants, as the grass. Therefore so that you may flee fellowship with the wild creatures (τὰ ἀγριώτερα), the Word has transmitted the particular loving skill of God concerning you. “God took dust from the earth” [Gen 2.7]. There it says that he created, here how he created. He took dust from the earth and molded it with his own hands.80 Here, Basil points to the molding of Adam and denies it was done in the same way as the creation of the animals, even saying the reason Scripture specifies that God molded Adam from the dust of the earth is to rule out fellowship with animals. This position is puzzling, to say the least. Genesis 2:7 says: «καὶ ἔπλασεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον χοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς». Genesis 2:19 says: «καὶ ἔπλασεν ὁ θεὸς ἔτι ἐκ τῆς γῆς πάντα τὰ θηρία τοῦ ἀγροῦ καὶ πάντα τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ». The difference is negligible.81 Because Basil has already stated that molding refers to the body, one would think it no problem for him to affirm that the molding of Adam and of the animals indicates, indeed, a fellowship between them.82 But this relationship is overlooked in favor of human uniqueness.

80

Ibid., 4, in Human Condition, 51. God molds Adam χοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς and molds the beasts and birds ἐκ τῆς γῆς. The variation in prepositions and the inclusion of χοῦν (dust) in connection with the molding of Adam do not seem to be so significant as to justify the massive and intentional distinction Basil makes between God’s molding of Adam and of the animals, and Basil does not refer to this difference anyway. 82 As discussed extensively below, Gregory of Nyssa has no trouble affirming this fellowship. 81

85 Like Basil, Chrysostom makes quite an uncritical contrast between the making of “the brute beasts” by fiat in Genesis 1 and the formation of “the wonderful creature of reason” in Genesis 2.83 The latter’s body is first made from the dust and then given a soul, its vital power: “Accordingly Moses said about the beasts, ‘Its blood is its life.’ But in the case of the human person its being is incorporeal and immortal, and has a great superiority over the body, to the same extent as incorporeal form surpasses the corporeal.”84 Chrysostom passes over the detail that God also molds the animals from the earth in Genesis 2:19. However, his express intent is to be highly attentive to detail,85 as shown by his treatment of Genesis’ use of the word “dust” as the material of Adam’s formation: “Even in this detail notice the regard for us. I mean, he does 83

Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 13.4 (FOTC 74:170-71). Ibid. 13.10 (FOTC 74:173-74). The reference to Moses’ statement in Leviticus 17:11 to support his metaphysical contrast between humans and animals presents difficulties. His phrasing seems to assume Moses is implying that for humans, blood does not contain life. The text, however, does not carry this implication: ἡ γὰρ ψυχὴ πάσης σαρκὸς αἷμα αὐτοῦ ἐστιν καὶ ἐγὼ δέδωκα αὐτὸ ὑμῖν ἐπὶ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου ἐξιλάσκεσθαι περὶ τῶν ψυχῶν ὑμῶν τὸ γὰρ αἷμα αὐτοῦ ἀντὶ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐξιλάσεται. (“For the life of all flesh is its blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement on the altar concerning your lives, for its blood atones for the life.”) The life of all flesh is its blood; there is no indication that Moses is differentiating among corporeal beings. Humans, of course, are not merely corporeal, but they are still corporeal. Taking Chrysostom’s reading to its logical conclusion might lead us to the absurd deduction that God would allow the Israelites to eat human blood, as human life would be seen as incorporeal rather than in the blood. Chrysostom would, of course, balk at this argument, but his case could be helped here by the finer distinctions of Philo, who says that “blood is the substance of the soul but of the sense-perceptive and vital soul, not of that which is called (soul) katexochen, (namely) that which is rational and intelligent. . . . [S]oul is one thing, and blood another, so that the substance of the soul is truly and infallibly spirit. The spirit, however, does not occupy any place by itself alone without the blood but is carried along and mixed together with the blood.” Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin, II 59 (Marcus, LCL). Philo makes the same distinction made by Chrysostom, but with necessary nuance. Ironically, it is the “Platonizing” Alexandrian Philo in this case who goes further in acknowledging human kinship with animals than the “literalist” Antiochene Chrysostom. 85 Hill notes that Chrysostom often urges his congregation “not to pass heedlessly by” any detail, for “Sacred Scripture says nothing idly or by chance; every single sound and syllable has a treasure contained in it.” Hill connects this emphasis on akribeia, “precision,” with the Antiochene school’s insistence on the literal sense of Scripture. Introduction to Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis (FOTC 74:18), citing Hom. 15, 18. 84

86 not simply take some soil, but dust, the finest grains of soil.”86 He does not explain exactly how this language is significant, yet he plainly sees it as an indicator of humanity’s comparatively exalted status. While admitting the human connection to plants and animals by common earthly origins, Chrysostom adds that humanity is superior, due to its formation and the immaterial soul, which is the foundation for rationality and dominion.87 So the fact that Genesis 2 speaks of animals coming from the earth indicates their communion with humanity in terms of humble origins, but the fact that it was God who formed both from the earth is not treated as revealing a communion in terms of high value. Humanity has both honored and humble status, but animals have only humble status. For Chrysostom, God’s breath of life (πνοή ζωῆς) breathed into Adam in Genesis 2:7 is his vital force and the origin of his rational soul, making him complete and perfect.88 In discussing the effect of this breath—that he “became alive”—Chrysostom speaks only in terms of vital force, which is shared equally with animals.89 Without this vital force, the human body would be a “lifeless shell . . . so that its total make-up and its succession to such great esteem all stems from that action of breathing made upon it by God.”90 Although any body would have this lifeless status without a vital force, Chrysostom finds special distinction in the case of humans. 86

Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 13.6 (FOTC 74:171-72). This observation is not original to Chrysostom, as Philo previously made it. De opificio mundi 47.137. While Genesis 2:19 states that God formed the animals from the earth, it does not apply the word “dust” to them. 87 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 12.13-14 (FOTC 74:164-65). 88 Ibid. 12.15 (FOTC 74:165-66). Similarly, Chrysostom later says, “What is the sense of that, ‘He breathed a breath of life’? The body made this way, it is saying, he wanted to have a living force and he so directed; this became for the creature a living soul—in other words, full of movement, with the ability to display its own skill through the movement of its limbs.” Ibid. 13.9 (FOTC 74:173). 89 Under a different term, this is stated when the author of Ecclesiastes 3:19 complains that humans and animals share the same fate of death, given that they have the same breath (πνεῦμα). 90 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 12.16 (FOTC 74:166).

87 Such a clear distinction is difficult to find in the text itself, which applies the same term to the animals molded by God and brought to Adam to be named—ψυχὴν ζῶσαν—that it applies to Adam himself after God molds him and breathes into him (Gen 2:7, 18-19). So even though there is no narrative of God breathing into the animals, they are called the same kind of being that Adam is called after he receives God’s πνοή ζωῆς. Especially considering that Chrysostom does not strictly separate the two creation accounts, the first indicating that animals have a ψυχή ζωῆς (Gen 1:30), Chrysostom’s human exceptionalist interpretation seems to be grounded more in his moral and metaphysical paradigms than in a strictly textual exegesis.91 He likely inherited these paradigms from Philo, who also cites that “man became a living soul” to prove God’s breath of life differentiated the human soul from an earthly and corruptible soul, while passing over the fact that Genesis 2 also calls animals “living souls.”92 The upshot is that Chrysostom indicates no human-animal community owing to the attribution of a breath of life (ψυχή ζωῆς) to animals in Genesis 1:30, or to their designation as “living souls” (ψυχή ζῶσα) in Genesis 2:19. As before, any commonality between humans and animals is viewed in terms of lowliness rather than in terms of honor. Ambrose similarly passes over this strong indicator of kinship.93

91

Given his uncritical approach to the two creation accounts, Chrysostom’s neglect of Genesis 1:30 when discussing the creation account of Genesis 2 is better explained in terms of his theological emphases than in terms of modern source criticism. It is based on the standards of Chrysostom’s own exegesis that I note a problem with his ignoring the statement that animals have the breath of life in Genesis 1. If he did not fuse the two creation accounts but kept them distinct, it would be understandable that he would not import the first account’s mention of the breath of life in animals when discussing the second account’s mention of the breath of life in Adam. But because he blends the narratives so easily, overlooking a detail from the first account when discussing the same kind of detail in the second seems to miss important themes for the sake of stressing different ones. 92 Legum allegoriae, I 12.32. See also Philo’s connection between the divine breath in humanity and humanity’s creation in God’s image. De plantatione 5.19. 93 For Ambrose, God’s breath in Adam is not only a force for moving the limbs of the body, but the seed of virtue and sets his spiritual development in motion: “Note, now, the person who was

88 Gregory of Nyssa presents the most complex interpretation of humanity’s status as creature with his theory of a dual-aspect creation: the human being as noetic image of God, and men and women as sexually differentiated bodily beings.94 Thus, unlike our other three patristic thinkers (and Philo95), who posit an interplay between human “ethereality” and human “earthliness” through engagement with Genesis 1 and 2, Gregory is able to reach this dichotomy just by focusing on Genesis 1:26-27. The earthly aspect of humanity found by the other fathers in the molding of Adam from the earth in Genesis 2, is seen by Gregory in the statement of Genesis

taken and the land where he was formed. The virtue of God, therefore, took man and breathed (inspirans) into him, so that man’s virtue will advance and increase. God set him apart in Paradise that you may know that man was taken up, that is to say, was breathed upon (afflatum) by the power (virtute) of God.” Paradise 4.24 (FOTC 42:301). The equivalence between the concepts of power and virtue in the Latin virtute reinforces that the only valid dominion is that exercised in virtue. And while this point places limits on human control, it is made within an exegesis that stresses human uniqueness. It is possible that the uniqueness of God’s breath in humanity is reflected in the term πνοή ζωῆς in Genesis 2:7, applied only to God’s breath in Adam, but Ambrose himself uses the Latin inspirans and does not distinguish between the Greek terms indicating the breath of life (cf. ψυχή ζωῆς in Genesis 1:30), so it is likely that metaphysical notions, more than the language of the text, are guiding his exegesis as well. 94 Bouteneff explains, “For Gregory, the bringing of things from nonexistence into being is first a matter of the instantaneous realization of God’s ideas in an invisible, spiritual, intelligible manner and, subsequently (over a period of ‘diastemic’ or chronological time) the endowment of that invisible creation with sensible attributes and materiality.” Beginnings, 155-56. Behr, on the other hand, argues, “This duality (διπλῆ) pertains not so much to two separated acts of creation (first a ‘virtual’ creation of humankind in the image, and then of an actual human being), but to two aspects of the same creative activity.” “Rational Animal,” 234 n.26. Along the same lines, Morwenna Ludlow suggests that these may not be stages, but only conceptual distinctions (although her reason is that Gregory does not identify the second stage with the fall and the first with a primal state of preexistent souls, and Bouteneff shows there are other ways of conceptualizing the stages). Gregory of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)modern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 172. If Behr and Ludlow are correct, then Gregory departs from Philo, who uses more obviously temporal language. De opificio mundi 4.19-20. However, the question of whether or not these two aspects are to be considered temporal phases of creation need not be resolved here. 95 Philo sees the first human (of Genesis 1) as pure intellect, modeled after the archetypal Word, and thus self-taught and self-governing, while the second (of Genesis 2) is a mixture of the incorruptible divine breath and the corruptible earth, and thus in need of instruction. Questions and Answers on Genesis, I 4, 8.

89 1:27 that God created humanity “male and female.” He remarks, “I presume that every one knows that this is a departure from the Prototype: for ‘in Christ Jesus,’ as the apostle says, ‘there is neither male nor female.’ Yet the phrase declares that man is thus divided.”96 Humans are in God’s image with respect to the rational mind, but because God is not sexually differentiated, “male and female” pertains to something else: humanity’s natural kinship with the animals. Gregory considers it a “great and lofty doctrine” of Scripture that humanity has a compound nature that is the “mean” (μέσον) between the divine, bodiless, rational nature, undifferentiated by sex, and the embodied irrational nature, divided into male and female. The intellectual aspect has priority, while the kinship with the irrational (τὴν πρὸς τὸ ἄλογον κοινωνίαν τε καὶ συγγένειαν) is for procreation, and this ordering is shown in the sequence whereby it is first said that God created humanity in the divine image, after which “the peculiar attributes of human nature” (τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης φύσεως τὰ ἰδιώματα), male and female, are added.97 Although Gregory rejects an understanding of the human as a microcosm of material elements,98 he promotes a “microcosmic” view when the intellectual aspect expressing kinship with God is included together with the sexually differentiated physical aspect expressing kinship with the animals.99 This unique character allows humanity to serve as mediator between Creator and creation, imaging God and manifesting His presence to creation through virtue, when the 96

Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 16.7 (NPNF2 5:405). Gregory does not explore the significance of Jesus’ incarnate existence as a male. 97 Ibid. 16.9 (NPNF2 5:405). Compare Philo, who says God gave the best of the opposite corruptible and incorruptible natures to humanity as the end of creation, as well as to heaven as the beginning. De opificio mundi 27.82. 98 Gregory says the proponents of this doctrine “are dignifying man with the attributes of the gnat and the mouse: for they too are composed of these four elements.” Making of Man 16.1 (NPNF2 5:404). 99 Wallace-Haddrill notes that, although Gregory does not favor the idea of the human as microcosm of the universe, he allows it so long as it is understood that the soul is in God’s image. Greek Patristic View, 77.

90 mind is in the proper relationship with the body. As Behr states, “This addition [of sex distinction] is a necessary part of humankind’s medial position, essential to their divinely ordained function, and therefore, unquestionably prelapsarian.”100 Gregory says God provided for sex distinction, “which has no reference to the Divine Archetype, but . . . is an approximation to the less rational nature,” in “foreknowledge of what, in a state of independence and freedom, is the tendency of the motion of man’s will.”101 The first creation, that according to the divine image, includes all humanity, from the first human to the last, in that all humans have the power of understanding and deliberating owing to their common gift of mind.102 But God knew humans would misuse their freedom and so added the male-female

100

Behr, “Rational Animal,” 236, speaking about section 16.9. Since the publication of this article, Behr has stepped back from “prelapsarian” language, but the main point here is that sex distinction was always part of God’s intent and design for human nature. Contrast this view with the understanding of Harrison: “In its literal sense, he [Gregory] regards gender as a secondary and temporary feature of the human condition, which will ultimately be transcended in the age to come.” “Allegory and Asceticism in Gregory of Nyssa,” Semeia 57 (SBL, 1992), 113-30 [under name Verna E. F. Harrison], at 119. While Harrison’s interpretation finds support in certain passages, I believe Behr’s view is better able to encompass the complexities of Gregory’s work as a whole. Behr’s article explores its many nuances, particularly regarding the divine image and human sexuality, more thoroughly than I am able to do here. 101 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 16.14 (NPNF2 5:406). Behr remarks on this passage, “What is new in HO 16.14 is that Gregory suggests that the distinction between male and female was added in view of what would happen. But it is important to note that this distinction is now described as humankind’s appropriation to the more irrational nature (τῇ ἀλογωτέρᾳ προσῳκείωται φύσει); we are now presented with a descending, or catabatic, anthropology. This is, as Gregory has made clear, an epistrophe, an overturning of the proper directedness of creation, in which the image (the rational human being) is appropriated to the irrational nature.” “Rational Animal,” 238. Philo similarly mentions God’s foreknowledge of humanity’s “downward,” material inclinations. De opificio mundi 14.45. Nonetheless, Gregory’s view of sex distinction in humanity is not so negative as that of Philo, who sees sex distinction as leading to desire, desire to pleasure, and pleasure to sin. De opificio mundi 53.151-52; Legum allegoriae, I 32.103; Legum allegoriae, II 7.19—8.30, 14.49. While Gregory sees sex distinction as placed in humanity due to God’s foreknowledge of sin, Philo seems to attribute sin itself to this creative decision of God. 102 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 16.16-18 (NPNF2 5:406). What Gregory would say about mentally handicapped individuals is unclear.

91 distinction as an “animal and irrational mode” of procreation after they lost the angelic means by which they would have been able to multiply had they remained in the angelic state.103 This mode became a fitting means for generation when humans lowered themselves to the level of animals by failing to govern themselves by reason. Gregory says this condition is pitiable, for man did not know his honor of equality with the angels and so became like the beasts, without understanding, and “received in his nature the present mode of transient generation, on account of his inclination to material things.”104 Gregory is speaking here not of likeness to the beasts in terms of sexually differentiated bodily structure, which was willed by God, but of likeness involving the choice to live like the beasts.105 He is not saying it is material or sexual nature that makes humans pitiable, but their elevation of it above what is higher: their likeness to God.106 God was not taken by surprise by

103

Ibid. 17.4 (NPNF2 5:407). 104 Ibid. 17.5 (NPNF2 5:407). Philo is a source for this contrast between earthly and heavenly modes of existence: the earthly mode ending in the death of decay in the earth, the heavenly mode ending in the life of heavenly inheritance. Questions and Answers on Genesis, I 51. 105 This distinction is corroborated by Behr: “While previously in HO 16 Gregory referred, in a nonpejorative manner, to the addition of the irrational and bestial (τῆς ἀλόγου καὶ κτηνώδους: 181b) aspects to the rational creature, to indicate thereby the fact that the bodily and irrational does not have a divine archetype, he is now using the same terms to describe the overturning of the divine order by the human appropriation to the irrational. The ‘irrational and bestial’ aspect of the ‘human composition’ (181c) is being used to play two distinct roles: one natural, the other ‘passionate.’” “Rational Animal,” 238. 106 Regarding 17.4-5, Behr explains: “Although humankind was created in a state equal to the angels, God foresaw that human beings would not keep their will directed to the good. Such a fall from this angelic state, and the mode of increase appropriate to it, to the level of animals, would have curtailed the completion of the human race, for human(kind) (at this stage of Gregory’s explanation) would have had no essential kinship with the animals. So God implanted the bestial mode of succession in human nature, a mode which is suited to the state of those in sin, those who no longer look to the good, even though human(kind) has not yet fallen. But God’s own providential act, implanting ‘the bestial and irrational mode of succession’ in human nature, does not make human beings bestial. Rather it is their own inclination to the merely material that renders human beings truly bestial. Here Gregory is clearly playing upon the two senses of the category ‘irrational’ noted earlier. The transfer of the ‘animal and irrational mode

92 the fall, but even foreseeing it, saw fit to create humanity in the manner He did.107 Despite Gregory’s prior suggestion that humans would have multiplied as the angels had they not fallen from the angelic state, God in fact never contemplated such a counterfactual situation. Because humanity would voluntarily appropriate itself to the irrational nature of the beasts in a descending or catabatic epistrophe (to use Behr’s language),108 God included in the creation of humans a biological likeness to them, and we never had any other mode of procreation.109 It is no use, then, to attempt a conception of a prelapsarian human multiplying like angels rather than animals.110 Universal human nature is the first creation, made in God’s image, but to be

of succession’ to the rational creation, as we have seen, is part of God’s original design for the human being as the midpoint of all creation, uniting the extremities of creation in themselves and raising the irrational to the rational. The one who has become ‘truly bestial’ is not the one who has received the ‘mode of generation subject to flux’ in his or her nature, but the one who has inclined towards the material. It is the human epistrophe, the fall to the merely material, that renders human beings ‘truly bestial,’ subjecting the mind to the irrational urges.” Behr, “Rational Animal,” 239-40. 107 “But as He perceived in our created nature the bias towards evil, and the fact that after its voluntary fall from equality with the angels it would acquire a fellowship with the lower nature, He mingled, for this reason, with His own image, an element of the irrational (for the distinction of male and female does not exist in the Divine and blessed nature);—transferring, I say, to man the special attribute of the irrational formation, He bestowed increase upon our race not according to the lofty character of our creation; for it was not when He made that which was in His own image that He bestowed on man the power of increasing and multiplying; but when He divided it by sexual distinctions, then He said, “Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 22.4 (NPNF2 5:411-12). 108 Behr, “Rational Animal,” 238. 109 “[W]e may be sure that, if He had bestowed on man, before imprinting on our nature the distinction of male and female, the power for increase conveyed by this utterance, we should not have needed this form of generation by which the brutes are generated. . . . Now seeing that the full number of men pre-conceived by the operation of foreknowledge will come into life by means of this animal generation, God, Who governs all things in a certain order and sequence— since the inclination of our nature to what was beneath it (which He Who beholds the future equally with the present saw before it existed) made some such form of generation absolutely necessary for mankind. . . .” Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 22.4-5 (NPNF2 5:412). 110 This is the conclusion I have come to based on a reading of Gregory’s work in its totality. I am hesitant, although not wholly unwilling, to subscribe to Bouteneff’s statement that Gregory “never suggests that there ever was a ‘time’ when humans did or would reproduce in any other

93 instantiated in a concrete subject, it must be in a human being.111 This twofold creation can be compared to Basil’s juxtaposition of humanity being made according to God’s image, and Adam being molded from dust; one is our glory, and the other keeps us humble. For Gregory, creation in God’s image is our great honor, and kinship with the irrational brutes links us to the earth and is “pitiable” only in the sense in which it indicates our “epistrophic” turning away from God toward material things. As Ambrose explains, Adam originally conformed to a celestial image

(‘angelic’) manner, as sexless spirits.” Beginnings, 159. As seen above, section 17.4, taken on its own, seems at least to suggest this possibility. Behr explains the reference to an “angelic mode” of human generation by saying that Gregory “is not suggesting that human beings could have multiplied in paradise by means of an asexual, angelic reproduction. Rather, he is hinting at the possibility, once the mind is free from passion and vice, for a restored use of human sexuality, an exercise of sexuality under the full autonomy of reason, in an angelic mode, in which the human being fulfills its purpose in creation of uplifting and integrating the life of the body and the senses with reason and the divine.” Behr, “Rational Animal,” 224. I believe Behr’s conclusion is the best interpretation based on an intra-textual analysis of Making of Man in its entirety, and it is in this way that I can agree to an attenuated version of Bouteneff’s statement. 111 “God says, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and God created man, in the image of God created He him.’ Accordingly, the Image of God, which we behold in universal humanity, had its consummation then; but Adam as yet was not; for the thing formed from the earth is called Adam.” Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 22.3 (NPNF2 5:411). Similarly, Gregory says later that “in the power of God’s foreknowledge . . . all the fullness of human nature had pre-existence,” and in the creation of individuals, soul and body came into being together, according to God’s will and at the time of generation. Ibid. 29.1, 3 (NPNF2 5:420-21). Bouteneff emphasizes Gregory’s distinction “between an essential image-bearing human nature conceived by God outside diastemic time and the existential humanity we experience in the world,” and he distinguishes this notion from a Philonic or Platonic “double creation” by saying Gregory posits two stages or aspects of the same creation, rather than two created realms, one copying the other: “The image-bearing humanity of God’s conception is immortal. It is free from passions. It is even, probably, without gender distinction. But in God’s dispensation for humanity and for creation, he sees fit to add all these characteristics to human nature, thus arriving at the human person, who is genuinely image-bearing as well as a microcosmic summation of spiritual, animal, and material creation.” Beginnings, 157-58. Bouteneff specifies that Gregory’s “distinction between the image-bearing hypothetical humanity and the gendered existential humanity is purely conceptual. The humanity that we know as male and female is humanity as God intended it.” Gregory sees humanity’s status as microcosm of the spiritual and the material—the human person being the “mean” or “midpoint” [μέσον] between the two—as a “great and lofty dogma of Scripture.” Ibid., 160, quoting Making of Man 16.9.

94 but exchanged it for a terrestrial one.112 This exchange did not mark the beginning of his existence in the body, but a new mode of existence, focused on attending to the things of the body rather than the things of the spirit. Chrysostom concurs in saying that, through sin, humans fell from their spiritual condition and lost their spiritual sight, seeing no longer the glory in which they had been clad, but instead, their nakedness. Physical requirements for the sustenance of life then became a necessary priority, as humans became subject to death.113 Accordingly, by subverting the order of divine reason and animal passion, humans fell to the level of lower creation; however, our kinship with the beasts is actually an opportunity for a reverse movement elevating this lower creation. To cite Ambrose again, when we direct the mind toward God, we conform to the same celestial image to which Adam conformed before his sin.114

III.

The composite human with a mediatorial vocation The central theme running through these patristic reflections is that humans are

composite creatures whose higher element is the rational soul, linking us to the Creator, and whose lower element is the physical body, linking us to the material creation. The proper order is for the higher element, oriented toward the Creator, to rule the lower element and direct it also to the Creator. In the outer world, this order is seen in human rule of animals, but in the inner world, it is seen in the properly governed human being, whose mind governs the passions. According to these fathers, although humanity is made according to God’s image by virtue of reason and rule, these qualities are evident even in the structure of the human body—the very human feature that, considered in itself, is irrational and thus fit to be ruled rather than to rule. 112

Ambrose, Hexameron 6.7.42 (FOTC 42:255). Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 16.16 (FOTC 74:218). 114 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.7.42 (FOTC 42:255). 113

95 Perhaps the most common example is the unique upright stature of humans, noted by Basil, Gregory, and Ambrose.115 Basil sees in this a reflection of humanity’s uniquely intended activity: grazing animals’ bodies are structured so that their heads incline downward, toward their stomachs, because their natural telos is fulfilled by eating. But man’s head and eyes look upward, “that he may look up to what is akin (συγγένειαν) to him.”116 Gregory makes a similar observation and notes that the human body’s needs are such as can be satisfied on two feet.117 And Ambrose asserts that two-legged man “has kinship with the winged flock in that with his vision he aims at what is high. He flies as if ‘on the oarage of wings’ by reason of the sagacity of his sublime senses.”118 The natural human telos is union with God; therefore, to focus on earthly rather than heavenly things is to go against human nature by turning toward the lower nature of animals.119 The way the human body has been molded teaches us that the purpose of humanity is to see God, “not that you might have the pleasure of beasts (κτηνώδη), but that you might

115

Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2,” 15, in Human Condition, 61-62; Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 8.1-2 (NPNF2 5:393); Ambrose, Hexameron 6.9.54, 6.9.74 (FOTC 42:268, 281). Here they follow Philo, who contrasts the downward-looking animals and the plants with their heads underground with the upward-looking humans who can comprehend the invisible through the visible. De plantatione 4.16-17; Concerning the World 5, in Yonge, app. 1. 116 Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2,” 15, in Human Condition, 61-62; see also Basil, Hexaemeron 9.2 (NPNF2 8:102), for the same message. This interpretation of the upright human stature goes back at least to Clement of Alexandria. See Wallace-Hadrill, Greek Patristic View, 74. 117 The reason, presumably, is either that the stomach occupies a lesser place in the purpose of human life relative to spiritual ends, or that the mind gives humans the means to obtain food without bending toward the ground. 118 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.9.74 (FOTC 42:281). Along the same lines, compare Philo, De plantatione 5.22. 119 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.3.10 (FOTC 42:233). Ambrose says that for erect-standing people to bend over and eat constantly, like crawling and four-footed animals, is a gluttonous violation of nature, a voluntary deprivation of intelligence and descent to the level of beasts. Citing Psalm 31:9, he says God wills otherwise for humans: “Do not become like the horse and the mule who have no understanding.”

96 achieve heavenly citizenship.”120 Another feature of the human body indicating its unique nobility is its size. Chrysostom sees in its relative smallness an ascetic vocation, in that it can be satisfied with little, thus showing that humans are made for another life.121 Ambrose says that, although weak compared to other animals, the human body is supreme in grace and beauty and of a golden mean in size.122 So the human body, though not the specific locus of God’s image, is evidence of it. Of the four authorities examined in this chapter, the one who says most about humanity’s composite nature and vocation as mediator is Gregory. Because human rule is patterned after divine rule, God prepared human nature for ruling by the “superior advantages” of the selfgoverning soul,” together with “the very form of the body.”123 The use of hands is adapted to rational nature, and not only by communicating reasoning through writing.124 Because hands allow humans to eat in a manner more refined than that of quadrupeds, the contours of the face and mouth can be refined to a more sophisticated capability: that of speech, the vocalizing of thoughts. In both writing and speech, the incorporeal mind communicates itself to the outside world.125 And so the human physical structure reflects and supports rational nature, revealing the

120

Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2,” 15, in Human Condition, 61-62. Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians 19 (PG 62:127-36, at 62:129; NPNF1 13:138). 122 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.9.54 (FOTC 42:268). 123 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 4.1 (NPNF2 5:390-91). 124 Ibid. 8.1-2 (NPNF2 5:393). Meyer, who prefers to translate λογικός as “discursive” for its capacity to embrace ideas related to both reasoning and speaking, notes that “the distinction between discursive and nondiscursive animals is not merely intellectual; it is inscribed in the anatomical differences between human and animal flesh. In human beings the shape and placement of limbs and organs have been altered to facilitate discourse.” Meyer, “Nyssa on Language,” 106. 125 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 8.8, 9:1-2 (NPNF2 5:394-95). 121

97 divine image.126 Just as the mind is a mirror of the divine nature and its archetypal beauty, so the body is a recipient of the mind’s beauty and a material “mirror of the mirror.”127 Gregory understands our higher, divine component as enabling enjoyment of the Creator directly, and our lower, earthly one enabling the enjoyment of His creation, or “the good things of the earth” that are akin (ὁμογενοῦς) to us.128 But the relationship between the two is not quite so static as that. If rightly directed by reason, animal nature in humanity becomes the vehicle of approach to God: [U]ne sagesse supérieure a fait que se produise un mélange de l’intelligible avec la création sensible, de façon à ce que rien dans la création ne soit rejeté, comme le dit l’apôtre, ni privé de la communion avec la divinité. Pour cette raison l’homme apparaît comme un mélange de l’intelligible et du sensible opéré par la nature divine, comme l’enseigne le récit de la création du monde : « Dieu, ayant pris une motte de terre, en forma l’homme et, de son propre souffle, il implanta la vie dans son ouvrage », afin que ce qui est terrestre fût élevé par son union avec ce qui est divin et que par le mélange de la nature d’en bas avec celle qui est au126

Myroslaw Tartaryn notes, “Matter and spirit for Gregory are not opposed, instead they work together to reflect the wisdom of the Creator. . . . Although Gregory locates the image of God in the mind (nous) he recognises that humanity functions through the body. The body is clearly the instrument of the mind. . . . The human body finds its proper place in its instrumentality. It is in the material within the human that all creation tends towards spirit, towards the uncreated. For this reason Gregory speaks of humanity as the culmination of the created order.” “The Eastern Tradition and the Cosmos,” Sobornost/ECR 11.1-2 (1989): 41-52, at 46. 127 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 12.9 (NPNF2 5:398-99). Ludlow remarks, “[I]t seems to be the case that Gregory thinks that the whole nature of humanity, body and soul, is made so as to act ‘in the divine image’; or, to put it in another way, the body is closely allied with and appropriately constructed so as to be filled with the image-bearing soul.” Ancient and (Post)modern, 174. If Gregory sees an image-bearing nexus in the human body, Philo sees it in the whole sense-perceptible world, which he says is “greater than any human image.” For Philo, the intelligible world is the very reason of God, the archetype for the sensible world, as a blueprint is the architect’s model for a physical city. De opificio mundi 6.24-25 (Colson and Whitaker, LCL). This Philonic view of the world as macrocosmic image, containing humanity as microcosmic image, is not emphasized by these fathers, who have a more “anthropocentric” focus in their exegesis of Genesis 1:26, staying closer to the textual language and not following the implications of Platonic speculation quite so far as does Philo. 128 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 2.2 (NPNF2 5:390). The Greek ὁμογενοῦς is a word with concrete imagery, denoting “of the same race or family.” LSJ, ὁμογενής. Greek words cited for this text are from Migne, De hominis opificio (PG 44:123-256).

98 dessus du monde, une seule et même grâce pût s’étendre également à travers toute la création.129 A common English translation of this quotation has been cited by Andrew Linzey to show that Gregory is one of many saints who “celebrate and rejoice in the close affinity of humans with animals.”130 It is unlikely Gregory would state it the same way, but he would be more likely to agree with Linzey’s interpretation of his statement as indicating that, “by making humans of the dust of the earth, God raised up all creation to new heights.”131 This understanding is echoed in Elizabeth Theokritoff’s view that in the making of humanity, matter “is organised for the first time theologically,” not to be set apart from the rest of creation, but so that “the whole of material creation must be in some way affected by the dignity of this one portion of it.”132 The concept of the human as mediator, more fully explored by Maximus the Confessor,133 is present in a less developed form in the patristic anthropology examined here.134

129

Grégoire de Nysse, Discours Catéchétique 6 (ed. and trans. Raymond Winling; SC 453; Paris: Cerf, 2000), 172-75. (This French translation is selected due to its inclusion with the critical edition.) It is in this positive view of materiality that Gregory’s difference from Philo can be so clearly seen. The latter sees sensation as morally neutral insofar as both good and bad people have it, but he describes the body in its nature as evil. Philo, Legum allegoriae, III 21.67-68, 24.77, 37.113. He even goes so far as to say there are two natures created and molded by God’s hands, “the one essentially hurtful, blameworthy, and accursed, the other beneficial and praiseworthy,” and that God “stamped the one with a counterfeit, the other with a genuine impression.” Legum allegoriae, III 34.104 (Colson and Whitaker, LCL). 130 Andrew Linzey and Dan Cohn-Sherbok, After Noah: Animals and the Liberation of Theology (London: Mowbray, 1997), 72-73, and Andrew Linzey, Animal Theology (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 183, citing the translation in NPNF2 5:480. 131 Linzey and Cohn-Sherbok, After Noah, 72. 132 Briere, “Material Creation,” 33. 133 See Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), and Lars Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos: The Vision of St Maximus the Confessor (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985). 134 Tartaryn observes, “It is an outgrowth of the work of Basil and Gregory that the Eastern tradition begins to say firstly, that humanity is mediator between the animal world and the divine; and secondly, that the proper order of the relationship between humanity and the rest of creation is one of creation being offered in thanksgiving to the Creator. It is here that we can find

99 But as we have seen, Gregory notes that this double likeness linking the lower to the higher has provided the occasion for the higher to fall to the lower. And interestingly, it is here that he provides the most elaborate vision for the human mediatorial function. The passions of the body often pull the mind toward the irrational, effecting an alteration of the image so that reason, rather than controlling the passions, begins to nurture and multiply them.135 So the double likeness resulting from God’s two-phased creation provides the occasion for another kind of double likeness: one resulting from both creation and fall.136 The animal likeness resulting from the fall (unlike that resulting from creation as “male and female”) is a distortion of human nature—“a sort of conversion of the good stamp in him into the irrational image, his whole nature being traced anew after that design”—that happens because of reason’s voluntary enslavement to the passions.137 The “evil husbandry of the mind” converts brute anger into “malignity, envy, deceit, conspiracy, hypocrisy,” the swine’s greed into covetousness, and the horse’s high spirit into pride, so that by the mind’s cooperation, impulses existing in irrational animals become vices in humans by the cooperation of the rational mind.138 This happens as the

the foundation for regarding humanity as the king and queen of creation.” “Eastern Tradition,” 46. 135 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 18.3 (NPNF2 5:408). 136 This is the conclusion of Seraphim Rose, who says in his discussion of chapter 18, “The beast-like passions are within us owing to our kinship with the animal creation through our fall.” Seraphim Rose, Genesis, Creation and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision (Platina, Cal.: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2000), 154. This interpretation seems to be corroborated by Gregory’s statement in On Virginity: “[T]his creature, I say, did not in the course of his first production have united to the very essence of his nature the liability to passion and to death. Indeed, the truth about the image could never have been maintained if the beauty reflected in that image had been in the slightest degree opposed to the Archetypal Beauty. Passion was introduced afterwards, subsequent to man’s first organization.” On Virginity 12 (NPNF2 5:357). 137 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 18.3 (NPNF2 5:408); Behr, “Rational Animal,” 238. 138 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 18.4 (NPNF2 5:408). Compare Chrysostom’s statement that “it is the role of the eye to see, though malicious sight is due to reason, which directs from within.” Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 22.9 (FOTC 74:75).

100 result of our “being made like to the irrational creation,”139 in the sense of Behr’s “catabatic” or “epistrophic” turning downward, as humans appropriate themselves to irrational nature.140 The mind’s natural virtue is abandoned, but its capabilities remain intact, to be used for evil ends. Only in humans does this “evil husbandry of the mind” exist to transform morally blameless animal impulses into culpable passions, turning them toward an animal orientation and— precisely because it is a departure from the divine orientation for which they were created and given the capacity—adding a diabolic element to the animal nature. In fact, animal impulses can only properly be called “passions” at all when the human mind is involved.141 In a homily on almsgiving, Gregory gives an example of this passionate mode of living when he denounces the exploitation of the natural world for our own enjoyment and material security.142 In a remarkably “ecological” passage, he notes that our quest for the delicacies of the sea disturbs it to its depths, while never satisfying our greedy appetites.143 Of course, although the involvement of the mind with the passions can result in evil, it is not destined to do so. On the contrary, Gregory notes that if reason assumes control over the impulses, it transforms them into virtues: “for anger produces courage, terror caution, fear obedience, hatred aversion from vice, the power of love the desire for what is truly beautiful; 139

Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 18.4 (NPNF2 5:408). 140 Behr, “Rational Animal,” 238. 141 Chrysostom makes a similar point when he says that unlike the beasts, who have no moral culpability because they do not have the gift of reason, humans who swap rationality for irrationality will be punished for their ingratitude. Hom. on Genesis 7.18 (FOTC 74:102). Compare Philo’s statement that the human, having been granted reason and set free from the necessities of nature, “will most justly in such a case suffer the punishment which has been inexorably pronounced against ungrateful people who do not deserve freedom.” Concerning the World 5, in Yonge, app. 1. 142 Gregory of Nyssa, De Pauperibus Amandis I, in Migne (PG 46:464c). 143 Ibid., in Migne (PG 46:465d, 468a). If Gregory saw this result in his own day, one can only wonder how strongly he would respond to modern fishing practices that more “efficiently” empty the sea of its inhabitants to satisfy ever-growing consumer demand.

101 high spirit in our character raises our thought above the passions, and keeps it from bondage to what is base.”144 The mind takes the animal impulses and orders them properly, just as Plato’s rational charioteer steers the desiring and irascible faculties of the soul.145 The presence of the passions in the human soul, then, becomes an opportunity for virtue, with anger directed against sin and desire directed toward God. When the rational mind assumes its rightful place as ruler of the human being, it tames these animal impulses, and we function rightly, with the disposition to govern the external world in a God-like fashion as well. So our uniquely composite nature allows us to attain to God’s likeness precisely by means of the animal aspect: “Thus our community in that generation which is subject to passion and of animal nature, brings it about that the Divine image does not at once shine forth at our formation, but brings man to perfection by a certain method and sequence, through those attributes of the soul which are material, and belong rather to the animal creation.”146 It is little wonder, then, that so much patristic literature uses animals as imagery for the passions, and that the authors and characters appear more concerned with these “inner beasts” than with the outer ones.

144

Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 18.5 (NPNF2 5:408). By contrast, Philo sees the passions, as owing their existence to naturally accursed pleasure, to be likewise accursed. Legum allegoriae, III 37.113, 88.246. 145 See Wallace-Hadrill, Greek Patristic View, 67, discussing Plato’s Timaeus; see also Philo, Legum allegoriae, III 38-39. 146 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 30.30 (NPNF2 5:426). It is not due to kinship with the animals that humans are in God’s image, but it is through this kinship that God’s image becomes manifest in the human presence in the world. Accordingly, Bouteneff aptly concludes, “Sex distinction is nonessential (from the point of view of the divine image) and yet essential (from the point of view of the human vocation in and for the world).” Beginnings, 160.

102 IV.

Paradise and its recovery Perhaps the greatest divergence we see in these thinkers is in the ways they express their

visions of the truly “natural,” or unfallen, state of humans and animals—the kind of existence for which they were created. Basil avers that animals were not created to serve as food, either for humans or for other animals: the original diet in paradise was vegetarian.147 Humans, even having been given dominion over the beasts, were to eat plants, because they were still worthy of paradise, where predation and death were absent.148 Gregory, on the other hand, seems to posit a less pristine view of the prelapsarian state. Ruling out the divine likeness as the aspect of our constitution responsible for our susceptibility to passion (as divinity has nothing to do with anger, pleasure, cowardice, boldness, desire for gain, aversion to loss, etc.), he says that “as brute life first entered into the world, and man . . . took something of their nature (I mean the mode of generation), he accordingly took at the same time a share of the other attributes contemplated in that nature.”149 That animals already had “passionate” qualities to which humans could appropriate themselves suggests a need for survival. Thus, attributes of animals that would have aided their self-preservation entered human nature and became passions.150 This idea contrasts with Basil’s idyllic paradise. By adopting the animals’ materially focused mode of existence, humans became nourished by the same kind of food, thus needing to incorporate animal qualities

147

Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2,” 6, in Human Condition, 52-53. Ibid., 7, in Human Condition, 54. 149 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 18.1 (NPNF2 5:407-08). This quotation appears in chapter 18, titled, “that our irrational passions have their rise from kindred with irrational nature.” The negative tone of this passage makes it worth repeating Behr’s statement that “[t]he ‘irrational and bestial’ aspect of the ‘human composition’ (181c) is being used to play two distinct roles: one natural, the other ‘passionate.’” “Rational Animal,” 238. Here, Gregory is speaking of the “passionate” role: the voluntary appropriation of the rational human being to the irrational nature, rather than the creation of humans with sex distinction in their nature from the beginning. 150 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 18.2 (NPNF2 5:408). 148

103 into their own nature for the same survival purposes. Their intended food, by contrast, was the fruit in Eden, “something worthy of God’s planting,” for it was not “transitory and perishable nutriment,” but something befitting the mode of life in paradise.151 For Gregory, then, life in paradise had a certain mode of existence over and above the animal, passionate mode that seems to have existed alongside it. Ambrose employs an allegorical reading of paradise, with the animals signifying the irrational senses and passions to be ruled by reason, represented by humanity. This is why “the untamed beasts and the birds of the air were brought to man by divine power, while man himself held power over the beasts that were tame and domesticated. The former lay within the province of God’s activity, while the latter were due to the diligence of man.”152 Animals were thus in paradise, representing the human soul, which humanity (reason) tended and guarded for the sake of cultivating seeds of virtue.153 The true meaning of dominion is that reason allows humans to

151

Ibid. 19.2 (NPNF2 5:409). 152 Ambrose, Paradise 11.49 (FOTC 42:328). Ramsey says Paradise is “is possibly the first of all of Ambrose’s writings,” and he refers (with a slight tone of dismissal) to his having produced it when he was “not yet an experienced bishop.” Ambrose, 56, citing Letter 45.1. 153 “What else are we to consider the birds of the air if not as representations of our idle thoughts which, like winged creatures, flit around our souls and frequently lead us by their varied motions now in one direction, now in another? Wherefore our faculty of perception, which in Greek is represented by the word αἴσθησις, constitutes the most congenial aid to the work of our minds. Except for our intellect [νοῦς], the mind has been unable to find another faculty so like itself.” Ambrose, Paradise 11.51 (FOTC 42:329-30). It seems as if Ambrose is ignoring the literal meaning of the animals in paradise in favor of the spiritualized metaphor. But this reading would overlook his statement that the garden of paradise was a physical locale into which God placed man bodily, not with respect to the image of God, as the incorporeal does not exist in a place. He put Adam there as a ruler to reveal God to the creatures under his rule. Ibid. 1.5 (FOTC 42:289). The physicality of Ambrose’s interpretation must not be forgotten because of his allegorical understanding, so it is safest to avoid sweeping statements such as the following: “Ambrose begins this work by identifying the Garden of Eden with the paradise of which Paul speaks in 2 Cor. 12:4, and he then proceeds to allegorize the scriptural account of the former.” Ramsey, Ambrose, 56. Ambrose’s spiritual reading does not negate his physical reading, and this point is important for the ethical application of texts such as this. The less “physical” the garden and its

104 recognize the passions so as to judge them by the mind’s superiority.154 Reason’s role is to assist humans in being good rulers: of the internal beasts first and, thereby, also of the external ones. On the literal level, dominion is presented as having extended over all animals, wild and tame, by God’s providence. So Ambrose sees animals as having partaken of the harmonious life in paradise, but only because of the rational rule of humans. Apparently by contrast, Chrysostom says the enjoyments of the garden were for humans alone, not for animals: Adam’s honor was so great that he had “a table set apart for him to suit his tastes, in case you might think the same food was supplied for him as for the brute beasts,” and, like a king, “he had no occasion to mix with those ministering to him but had a life all to himself.”155 Chrysostom does not seem to be denying the presence of animals in the garden,156 because they minster to Adam. It is likely, given the immediate context and other spiritualizing statements Chrysostom has made about humans in contrast to animals, that the “food” to which he is referring here is of a spiritual nature: contemplation of God, beyond the capacity of

attendant characters and commands, the less direct value the Genesis creation accounts and the patristic commentaries on them have for ecological ethics. Typically for a patristic writer, however, he emphasizes the spiritual more strongly. And this makes sense, given the patristic view that the exercise of rule over flesh-and-blood animals holds no merit if a person cannot even rule over internal passions; on the contrary, such rule over animals could easily degenerate into exploitation and abuse. Ambrose likely inherited his allegorical view from Philo. See Legum allegoriae, I 14.43-47, 16.53-55, 28.88-89. 154 Ambrose, Paradise 11.52 (FOTC 42:330). 155 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 14.12 (FOTC 74:187). Interestingly, the two creation accounts are neatly separated here. In the second account, God gives Adam permission to eat of any tree of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:16-17); nothing is said about food for the animals. In the first account, however, animals are given the same food as humans (Gen 1:29-30). 156 In the eighth century, John of Damascus does make such a denial. On the Orthodox Faith 2.11.

105 animals.157 Their function is to serve humans, as seen in Adam’s fearlessly naming even the fiercest of them, thus demonstrating his “great intelligence,” “unrivaled authority,” and “lordly dominance” as their master, just as slave masters show their dominion by changing the names of the slaves they buy.158 Chrysostom says the imposition of names shows that all animals, both wild and tame, acknowledged their own servitude and human dominion, which was terminated only due to sin.159 But “when through disobedience human beings forfeited their position of trust, their control was also lost,”160 reversing the intended order so that now humans fear animals, whereas animals used to fear humans.161 So the “natural” ferocity of beasts did not prevent them from being subject to human dominion at the outset.162 Accordingly, animal nature, considered in itself, is wild and savage, but considered in its intended relationship with human nature, it is

157

Regarding Eve’s yielding to the serpent’s temptation, Chrysostom asks, “Wasn’t it sufficient for you to pass your life without care or concern, clad in a body yet free of any bodily needs? . . . to have all visible things under your own authority and to exercise control over them all?” Hom. on Genesis 16.12 (FOTC 74:215). Here he appears to confirm that the food of which humans but not animals partook was spiritual. Similarly, he says that before sin, their clothing was heavenly glory. Ibid. 16.14-15 (FOTC 74:217). 158 Ibid. 14.19 (FOTC 74:190-91). 159 Ibid. 14.20 (FOTC 74:191). 160 Ibid. 9.8 (FOTC 74:121-22). 161 Ibid. 9.10 (FOTC 74:122-23). This statement stands in tension with Chrysostom’s earlier example that dominion can be seen in the flight of animals from the presence of humans. What changed, if animals formerly feared humans, and they still do? The answer has to do with the kind of fear involved. The current fear causing flight from humans suggests animals’ instinctual knowledge that humans are potential predators, whereas the fear in the beginning evokes an analogy to the fear humans are instructed to have for God in Ecclesiastes 12:13: “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone” (NRSV). This kind of reverential awe would be fitting for creatures under the dominion of a being who is entrusted by the Creator to manifest His image by ruling. When humans departed from obedience to God, no longer ruling as He rules, they obscured His image in them and thus lost the obedience of the animals, which no longer recognized their Creator in them. Chrysostom sees this as a pedagogical mercy, however, so that the fear arising from the knowledge of their weakness and vulnerability will lead humans back to God. Ibid. 162 Chrysostom sees Eve’s comfort in conversing with the serpent as evidence that humans were not originally frightened by animals. Ibid. 9.9 (FOTC 74:122).

106 under control—in other words, tamed by the rational beings whose vocation it is to have dominion. Chrysostom, then, is not so far from Ambrose after all, as both posit naturally wild and tame animals in obedience to prelapsarian humanity in paradise. Together with Gregory, these fathers stress that animals are irrational, even savage, in their natures, controlled only by obedience to the rational human. In this, they follow Philo, who is even more explicit: “and so on beholding him they were all tamed through all their kinds, those who were most savage in their natures at the first sight of him becoming at once most manageable, displaying their untamed pugnacity one against another, but to man and man alone showing gentleness and docility.”163 Basil’s emphasis, by contrast, falls on the harmony in paradise resulting from human rule under rightly directed reason, so that animals in paradise appear to have different natures altogether from what we know—herbivorous lions, for example.164 In this, he is much further from Philo than are the other three. Basil asserts that the restoration after this age will be a return to paradise, in which humans will be in intimate communion with God, not enslaved to the flesh’s passions. Asceticism reaches out toward this state of paradise, access to which has been reopened by Christ. Basil clarifies that in promoting a simple, mainly vegetarian diet, he is not banning foods now permitted by God, but praising the prior condition, in which life required little. The cause of the human variety in diet was sin, which cut us off from the joys of paradise so that we invented “comfort foods” for ourselves.165 But now we should imitate life in paradise by “fleeing this excessively material enjoyment of foods,” disregarding most nourishment beyond fruits and seeds as unnecessary for sustenance, “[f]or they are not abominable on account of the One having created them, but they are not to be chosen for the sake of the enjoyment of 163

Philo, De opificio mundi 28.83 (Colson and Whitaker, LCL). Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2,” 6-7 in Human Condition, 52-54. 165 Ibid., 7, in Human Condition, 54. 164

107 the flesh.166 So while not morally condemning the eating of meat, Basil exhorts his hearers to the renunciation of worldly pleasures, thus opening up the possibility for participation in the eschatological state inaugurated by Christ. Therefore, his concern is with the restoration of the image of God in humans, and their growth into God’s likeness. Although he is not claiming that eating meat is sinful, he is inviting his listeners to examine their reasons for doing so, thus focusing on cultivating a virtuous internal disposition. Having described ascetic discipline as an example of the life directed toward God’s original purpose, Basil challenges his audience to follow this example so far as possible. If Christian ethics were merely a set of rules, Basil’s declining to forbid the eating of meat might be considered determinative. But he is approaching the question not deontologically, but in terms of the transfigured life.167 The harmony and integrity Basil describes, without predation and death, represent God’s essential will for creation. He also mentions animals as beneficiaries of fasting: No living being (ζῶον) laments death, nowhere is there blood, nowhere is there a sentence by the unmerciful (ἀπαραιτήτου) belly being carried out against the animals (ζώων). The cook’s knife has stopped; the table is sufficient with things growing naturally (αὐτομάτοις). The Sabbath was given to the Jews, in order that one might rest, it says, “your beast of burden (ὑποζύγιόν), and your child.”168

166

Ibid. (SC 160:244-47). Philo offers similar praise of the ascetic life, with reason checking the passions in order that “we shall comply only with demands which are urgent, but from all that goes beyond this we shall abstain.” Legum allegoriae, III 52.154 (Colson and Whitaker, LCL). 167 Theokritoff puts it well in saying, “Asceticism can be described as an attitude to the material world, our bodies and their needs included, which does not seek to possess or even to direct, but lives by relationship with God. Far from rejecting the material, or the body in particular, it rejects the autonomous use of material things, affirming them as God’s creation and his gifts to mankind. . . . In our use of material resources, asceticism in general and fasting in particular are at the opposite pole from ‘consumerism.’ The ascetic attitude denies that these things are the legitimate prey of our appetites, however inflated, while affirming that they are given not just for our consumption, but for our enjoyment and delight.” Briere, “Material Creation,” 38. 168 Basil, “On Fasting, Discourse 1,” 7 (PG 31:176a), quoting Exod 20:10.

108 Basil recognizes a divinely sanctioned change in the dietary regimen owing to the broken state of creation, but he still holds out the original state as an ideal that even now is to be pursued through ascetic efforts.169 Accordingly, for him, stewardship is bound up with an ascetic ethos. The original pristine state was lost with sin and will be restored by Christ in the eschaton, and the only way to participate in it now is to learn to be content with less, reducing the needs of the body while expanding our appreciation for the higher beauty of the things of God. Asceticism is not an add-on to morality, but integral to it. Our other three patristic authorities present a comparable ethical perspective, seeing creation as made for humans, but to be used in a particular way: to form them for communion with the Creator. Chrysostom shares Basil’s ascetic emphasis, saying we should not eat beyond what is necessary to live healthily (ὑγιῶς) and honorably (εὐσχημόνως), the addition of more being superfluous (περριτόν).170 He explains God’s charge to till and keep the garden in Genesis 2:15 as not arising from any necessity in the garden, but so that Adam would have painless work to avoid laziness.171 The task of watching over the garden would also give him an appreciation of God’s generosity and solicitude, reminding him that his rule was subject to a greater rule and Ruler.172 As for the transgressed commandment, it had been in place for the purpose of

169

This ascetic emphasis also surfaces in Basil’s preaching on fasting, wherein he again stresses the disparity between present existence and the life for which humans were created, saying that neither meat nor wine was in paradise, but that after the flood, “when perfection (τελείωσις) was despaired, then [their] enjoyment was conceded.” Ibid., 5 (PG 31:169b), citing Gen 9:3, 20-21. 170 Chrysostom, Homilies on 2 Corinthians 19 (PG 61:529-36, at 61:534). 171 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 14.7-8 (FOTC 74:184-85). 172 Ibid. 14.9 (FOTC 74:185). Theokritoff says God’s commands should not be seen as restrictions on our use of the world, or even a charter for “stewardship” instead of “ownership.” Their main purpose is to teach us that creation is primarily for the constant remembrance of God. Accordingly, the “work” of humans in paradise must have involved something “more profound than a charter for sustainable agriculture, useful though the latter might be.” Living in God’s

109 instructing our first parents that they were not owners of creation, but owed their enjoyment of it to the beneficence of the Creator, from whose supreme dominion their own dominion derived. In this way, they would avoid the errors of thinking visible things were self-sufficient and of overestimating their own importance.173 Gregory likewise states that all the world is our lodging, and everything in it is our wealth, but the enjoyment of these gifts is for the purpose of conveying knowledge and understanding of the Giver and His power.174 A similar doctrine is found in Ambrose, who explains that tilling refers to the exercise of virtue, while keeping refers to the protection of the completed work, both acts being required. He notes that Philo’s interpretation was exclusively moral, rather than spiritual, and that he understood these two acts as tilling the fields and protecting the home, for although field labor was not necessary in paradise, Adam worked to set a precedent for posterity. Ambrose affirms, “Both these points of view, the moral and the spiritual, are exacted of you.”175 So the more spiritual reading of Scripture builds on but does not negate the more literal one, and the two can be synthesized by understanding Adam’s task to have been the cultivation of physical creation in a virtuous manner: again, bodily existence in a spiritual mode. A final point worth noting is Chrysostom’s interpretation of God’s provision of plants to the animals for food in Genesis 1:30: for him, this passage is about God’s allaying of Adam’s anticipated anxiety about how to provide for the animals.176 Thus, even a dispensation that

Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009), 82-83. 173 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 16.18 (FOTC 74:219-20). 174 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 2.1-2 (NPNF2 5:390). 175 Ambrose, Paradise 4.25 (FOTC 42:302-03). Ambrose is likely referring to Philo’s Questions and Answers on Genesis, I 14. He does not note Philo’s discussion elsewhere of cultivating and guarding the virtues. See Legum allegoriae, I 28.88-89. 176 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 10.11 (FOTC 74:135).

110 plainly seems to show God’s concern for animals is seen primarily in terms of His concern for humans. The temptation of the reader concerned for animals is to balk at Chrysostom’s apparent neglect of this theme, but to stop there would be to miss the underlying assumption he holds regarding dominion: humans are expected to care for God’s animal creatures. If not for God’s generous provision of food for the animals directly, feeding them would have been a responsibility falling to humans. Thus, to fixate on Chrysostom’s failure to mention God’s care for animals explicitly would be to miss an important supposition operating in the background, even if it does remain that God “exhibits greater care of human beings than of other visible things.”177 As we have seen already, Chrysostom is not alone in highlighting mercy and kindness as exemplary Christian virtues. Moreover, he makes it plain that humans are not the only proper recipients of compassion: For the souls of the Saints are very gentle and, loving unto man, both in regard to their own, and to strangers. And even to the unreasoning creatures they extend their gentleness. Wherefore also a certain wise man said, “The righteous pitieth the souls of his cattle.” But if he doth those of cattle, how much more those of men. But since I have mentioned cattle, let us just consider the shepherds of the sheep who are in the Cappadocian land, and what they suffer in kind and degree in their guardianship of unreasoning creatures.178 Chrysostom cites Scripture to show that righteousness entails mercy toward animals, thus demonstrating that virtuous rule considers all those ruled, even unreasoning creatures. Thus, despite his apparent disregard for animals in his exegesis of Genesis 1:30, he stands with Basil in seeing harmony among humans and animals as the ideal. To their number we might add Ambrose, who says this about thrushes returning at the end of autumn: “We contrive snares for 177

Ibid. 13.3 (FOTC 74:170). Chrysostom, Hom. on Romans 29 (PG 60:653-62, at 660; NPNF1 11:546-47), quoting Prov 12:10, LXX. That Chrysostom follows up with a statement that humans are even more deserving of kindness does not negate his point about animals, but rather shows that his human exceptionalism is not antithetical to it.

178

111 them, acting as cruel hosts.”179 Conscious of the eschatological tension,180 the prevailing patristic current includes a promotion of asceticism, which reduces the needs of the body and thus makes fewer demands on creation, opening the way for greater kindness, while they still recognize the limits of postlapsarian realities and make no rules canceling the permission God has given.

V.

Human dominion revisited after the flood In particular, this permission consists of the leave to kill and eat non-human animals

given to Noah and his surviving family after the flood. It will be instructive to preface the patristic understandings of this passage by a contrast with Philo, who sees a parallel between Noah and the incorporeal, intellectual human of Genesis 1, noting the similar blessings given to each as to fecundity (Gen 1:28 and 9:1).181 As “the beginning of a second genesis of man,” Noah receives “equal honor”: representing the virtuous man, the dread he strikes into the beasts points to his subduing of evil, which is “untamed and savage.”182 But Genesis 9:3 grants Noah the moving things for food, which were not granted to the noetic human in Genesis 1.183 On a literal

179

Ambrose, Hexameron 5.14.48 (FOTC 42:199). Hans Urs Von Balthasar comments on this eschatological tension when he says, “Il y a derrière tout cela un seul mystère fondamental, celui de la source divine qui à chaque moment est autre et qu’on ne peut jamais voir tout entière. C’est le mystère de la Présence qui n’a jamais fini de venir.” Présence et Pensée: Essai sur la philosophie religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Beauchesne, 1943), 131-32. 181 Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin, II 56 (Marcus, LCL). Not long later, however, Philo compares Noah to the man formed from the earth in Genesis 2, in that “both then and now there took place a first beginning of the cultivation of the land.” Questions and Answers on Genesis, II 66. 182 Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin, II 56 (Marcus, LCL). 183 Philo explains that there are two kinds of moving things: venomous serpents that move on their bellies, and domestic animals that have legs and feet. The former represent foul vices, but the latter represent joy. “For alongside sensual pleasures there is the passion of joy. And alongside the desire for sensual pleasure there is reflection. And alongside grief there is remorse and constraint. And alongside desire there is caution.” Ibid. 57. 180

112 level, God did intend to give permission to eat meat—indeed, “it is impossible to keep [all men] from eating meat”—but Philo believes that “the legislation indicates that above all the use of herbs is necessary.”184 From the fact that not all plants and animals are safe for food, Philo quickly (and enigmatically) surmises that perhaps the expression “[a]s the herbs of fodder I have given you all things” (Gen 9:3) “is not about food but about authority”: as humans sow herbs and cultivate the land, irrational animals are subject to human power.185 Philo is less than enthusiastic in seeing meat eating as a hallmark of human dominion, but he concedes—partially on pragmatic grounds—that it cannot be excluded from its scope. Basil’s and Chrysostom’s angle is quite different. Rather than comparing the dominion granted to Noah with that granted in Genesis 1, Basil contrasts them, saying that “when the human being changed his habits and went outside the limit given him, after the flood, the Lord, knowing the humans to be profligate, granted them the enjoyment of all foods.”186 So while Noah represents a new beginning for humanity, it is clearly a new beginning for fallen humanity, Noah’s personal righteousness notwithstanding. Chrysostom connects the new dietary dispensation to the human inclination to offer sacrifices: because humans began inventing gods and sacrificing to them, God, although having no needs, accepted sacrifices to redirect idolatrous tendencies and encourage gratitude.187 This, says Chrysostom, is the origin of meat eating: God granted humans authority to eat, so as to relieve their anxieties about abstaining from food they had sacrificed. But humans are to abstain from flesh with the lifeblood in it (i.e., strangled animals), because the animal’s soul is in its blood (Lev 17:11); therefore, the blood is reserved

184

Ibid. 58 (Marcus, LCL). Ibid. 186 Basil, “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 2,” 6, in Human Condition, 52-53. 187 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 27.6-7 (FOTC 82:166-68). 185

113 for God, who has ultimate dominion over all life.188 Together with this divine ratification of a carnivorous diet, then, there exists a prohibition to remind humans that their dominion is both derivative and limited. Elsewhere, Chrysostom explains the old sacrificial system as a dispensation for human imperfection, whereby God accepted sacrifices of animals (τῶν ἀλόγων) to separate His people from the idols to which they were already accustomed to sacrificing. Christ has shown, however, that the only sacrifice truly fit to be offered to God is that of God Himself.189 Animal sacrifices and meat eating, then, are not integral to human dominion, but only incidental to it, for particular times and cultural contexts. But despite their differences, neither Philo nor Chrysostom nor Basil notes that Genesis 9 actually replaces the command to rule (ἄρχετε, Gen 1:28) with the animals’ trembling and fear (ὁ τρόμος καὶ ὁ φόβος, Gen 9:2), thus precluding what is often assumed to be a link between meat eating and dominion. In a religious tradition that does not sacrifice animals to God because Christ has made the once-for-all sacrifice (in which the Church regularly participates through the bloodless sacrifice of the Eucharist), one may legitimately question whether the citation to Genesis 9 in support of a continued carnivorous diet is anachronistic.190 This is not, of course, to say there are no other parts of Scripture that

188

Ibid. 27.13 (FOTC 82:172). Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Corinthians 24 (PG 61:197-206, at 61:200; NPNF1 12:139). 190 Ingvild Saelid Gilhus raises this question by noting that, “[b]ecause the traditional justification for killing animals had been built on the divine sanction of sacrificial killing, it was no longer valid. When sacrifices were forbidden, while slaughtering was continued in a secular context, a new justification for killing animals was required.” Animals, Gods and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 267. One option was the irrationality of animals, and Gilhus cites Richard Sorabji for the propositions that “in the Latin West it was above all Augustine who made the Stoic notion of the irrationality of animals decisive for their treatment,” and that “before Augustine, the link between animals, reason and immortality was not established within Christian thinking.” Ibid., citing Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins 189

114 might support the practice (not to mention patristic writings and practical considerations), but only to point out that the occasion Chrysostom cites as giving rise to the permission for humans to eat meat—the offering of animal sacrifices—is not a reality for the vast majority of the world’s Christians.191

VI.

Christ as archetype of human dominion, and the saints as His imitators Although we have just seen Chrysostom’s Christocentric explanation of true sacrifice, it

is Ambrose who is the most explicit in his articulation of a Christocentric dimension to the question of human dominion. At the end of the sixth day, after having created everything else, God was finally able to find rest “in the deep recesses of man, in man’s mind and purpose, for He had made man with the power of reasoning, an imitator of Himself, a striver after virtue, and one eager for heavenly grace.”192 The human in whom God rests is a humble and peaceful ruler who is obedient to a higher Ruler.193 Such a person has been made to God’s image and likeness,

of the Western Debate (London: Duckworth, 1993), 201-02. It is my hope that this chapter will challenge Sorabji’s latter assertion regarding pre-Augustinian Christianity, without undermining the question whether the abolition of animal sacrifice ought to prompt a reexamination of the ethics of killing animals. Although the fathers examined in this chapter do not tire of stressing the irrationality of animals and their corresponding ontological inferiority to humans, there is no systematic attempt to make that quality “decisive for their treatment.” By contrast, Gilhus cites Augustine’s appeal to the irrationality of animals as grounds for dismissing the need for compassion. Ibid., 267-68, citing The Morals of the Manichaeans 2.17.59 (“For we see and appreciate from their cries that animals die with pain. But man discards this in a beast, with which, as having no rational soul, he is linked by no community of law [societas legis].”). Through an examination of saints’ lives, the next chapter of this dissertation will challenge the assumption that compassion requires a community of law founded on mutual rationality. 191 The sacrificial practices of the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Christians are beyond the scope of this study. 192 Ambrose, Hexameron 6.10.75-76 (FOTC 42:282-83). 193 Ibid.

115 unlike those who are wild and bestial of heart.194 But despite this ideal human in whom God rests, Ambrose also says God “made man and then found rest in one whose sins He would remit.”195 He explains this as a foreshadowing of Christ’s Passion, connecting God’s rest to the three-day repose of Christ in the mortal body assumed for our redemption.196 In Christ, God reposed in man and was Himself that perfect man in whom He could find perfect repose. Of the authors we have read, Ambrose says the most to make an explicit connection between Adam and Christ, suggesting that God’s creation of and rest in humanity is not fulfilled except in Christ. The prelapsarian Adam is based on protological speculation, but Christ’s fulfillment of humanity’s telos is grounded in the gospel message itself. The truly normative human is Christ. And just as it is in virtue and wisdom that the Son is the image of the Father, it is in virtue and wisdom that humans image Christ.197 The saints are examples of humans imaging Christ through virtue and wisdom. As Gregory notes, the “downward” impulse toward irrational nature is greater than the opposite movement toward the intellect, so it is more common for the divine image to be obscured by the passions, than for it to be manifested in the virtuous person whose passions are subject to reason.198 The saints are those rare persons in the latter category, and their lives often involve

194

Ambrose, Hexameron 6.8.46, 49 (FOTC 42:261-62). To revisit a theme discussed above, Ambrose supposes animals are wild by nature, while humans are gentle by nature. This understanding applies to their original creation, but it is not to imply a static view of the potentialities within each kind of nature. Certain animals become tame and gentle by appropriation to rational nature, and certain humans become wild and bestial by appropriation to irrational nature, again in the manner of Gregory’s epistrophe. 195 Ibid. 6.10.75-76 (FOTC 42:282-83). 196 Ibid. 197 Ibid. 6.7.41 (FOTC 42:254). 198 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 18.6-7 (NPNF2 5:408).

116 extraordinary interactions with animals.199 Having placed the internal beasts under control, they are recognizable to the external ones as their masters. It is of these people that Gregory writes, “Now where the beauty of the form has not been obscured, there is made plain the faithfulness of the saying that man is an image of God.”200 Chrysostom also speaks of the saints as exhibiting those God-like qualities that should be present in a good ruler. Earlier we saw that he mentions gentleness and mildness in connection with the divine likeness, and command in connection with the divine image, implying that gentleness and mildness naturally go together with command in human nature, just as they do in God. Command relates to the rational control of the wild savagery of certain thoughts, which are replaced by merciful ones.201 It is not uncommon today to place rationality and kindness (the “head” and the “heart”) in opposition to each other, as if they are two ends of the same spectrum.202 But far from being at odds, reason and kindness are inseparable for Chrysostom, as both are rooted in God’s nature, and both are necessary for the proper exercise of dominion. Related to this point is Chrysostom’s view of ferocity as natural to the beasts but unnatural to

199

Theokritoff explains, “The holy person is man as he is meant to be, the most truly himself, the most faithful reflection of his archetype—one in whom the image of God shines out and the likeness is preserved. . . . Around the saint, nature resumes its proper order: wild animals become tame, water sources appear when they are needed, food is provided for those who have given everything away with no thought for themselves. Some of the stories surrounding the saints will be embroidered, but they are far too many, and often too well-attested, to be without a basis of truth. We need to reflect that what we call miracles are not instances of tampering with the laws of nature by an omipotent magician, but glimpses of a more authentic and original order of nature.” Briere, “Material Creation,” 36. 200 Gregory of Nyssa, Making of Man 18.8 (NPNF2 5:408). 201 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 9.7 (FOTC 74:120-21). 202 For example, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, one of the most popular psychological profiling tests, opposes the logical and reasonable Thinking preference (concerned with objective “truth”) to the empathic and compassionate Feeling preference (concerned with subjective “values”). Such a division would be nonsensical to Chrysostom, who sees reason functioning to subdue ferocious thoughts and replace them with kindness.

117 humans, and mildness as unnatural to the beasts but natural to humans.203 But Chrysostom’s identification of what is natural and unnatural to humans and animals reinforces his alignment of reason and mildness: where reason is naturally present, mildness is naturally present, and where reason is naturally absent, mildness is naturally absent. Chrysostom challenges those who would tame animals, instilling a mildness contrary to their nature, while leaving their own unnatural ferocity unchanged.204 He directly connects the power of reason (λογισμὸν) with the practice of virtue, their meeting point being in the taming of the passions, as seen in the lives of saints.205 The exercise of reason is identified with such people, “who happened to have the same nature as ourselves, subject to the same necessities of the body,” and yet pursued virtue.206

VII.

Conclusion The review in this chapter and the last of one Latin and three Greek and patristic thinkers

reveals that popular twentieth-century East-West contrasts, such as the following by Myroslaw Tartaryn, are facile at best: In the Western tradition much has been made of the distinction between rational and non-rational. As a result the difference between humanity and animals or plants is greatly emphasized. Reason was the characteristic which demonstrated 203

Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 9.7 (FOTC 74:120-21). Again, we see an apparent difference from Basil, who would likely consider the peaceful primordial condition even of beasts to be what is truly natural to them. 204 Ibid. Basil issues a strikingly similar challenge: “Have you truly become ruler of beasts if you rule those outside but leave those within ungoverned? Will you rule truly in ruling the lion by your reason (τῷ λογισμῷ) and despising its roar, but gnashing your teeth and emitting inarticulate sounds as the anger within all at once strives to attack?” “Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1,” 19, in Human Condition, 47-48. For Chrysostom, Cain is the archetype of the naturally mild and rational human that has turned animal; but owing to the rational nature he still has but now abuses, this human living in a bestial mode becomes even more savage than the beasts. Hom. on Genesis 19.2 (FOTC 74:22). 205 Chrysostom, Hom. on Genesis 11.12 (FOTC 74:150). The Greek is from Migne (PG 53). 206 Ibid. 12.18 (FOTC 74:167-68).

118 humanity’s creation in the image and likeness of the Trinity. This approach was not dominant in the East. Rather the distinction was made between the uncreated and created: God and not God. Humanity appears as the ‘royal’ pinnacle of the created order: it is creation yearning for the divine. As ‘monarch’ humanity has the responsibility to bring with it the entire created order as offering to God. The king and queen of creation are redeemed together with that from which they arise, not in opposition to it.207 Notwithstanding the helpful insights otherwise present in Tartaryn’s article, it is simply not true that the emphasis on the rational-irrational distinction was not dominant in the East.208 These Greek fathers moderate Philo’s more dualistic rhetoric, but they put their Christian stamp on his identification of reason as the quality setting the human above all other creatures. It is correct, of course, that the primary ontological distinction in the East is between the uncreated and the created—God and not God—but one would be hard pressed to argue that this is not true of the Nicene West as well. Within the created order, however, our sampling of patristic thinkers, both Greek and Latin, shows great importance attached to the unique rational character of human nature as the capacity allowing humans to approach the Creator. Nor should this apparent “anthropocentrism” disturb those who hope to find in Christianity resources for an ethic of compassion toward animals. As Richard Young argues, to focus on the human is to focus on the being responsible for causing damage to the world and for repairing it. God’s salvific plan includes the restoration of “all the relations broken at the fall, including the human-nature relation, and that restoration has to begin with humanity’s relation to God. To criticize the human emphasis in Scripture is to misapprehend the true cause of the

207

Tartaryn, “Eastern Tradition,” 41. To be fair, Tartaryn’s article in its entirety is more nuanced, and his statement is apparently drawn from the Eastern tradition as developed especially by Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus. Tartaryn, “Eastern Tradition,” 47-49. However, the stark contrast of East and West and the seeming denial of importance attached to rationality in the East are misleading.

208

119 environmental crisis.”209 Despite what appears to be anthropocentrism on the surface, the patristic views, following Scripture, are at root theocentric. To quote Young again, “The idea of being God’s delegated caretaker is the antithesis of anthropocentrism. It is God who is the center of all meaning and purpose. Humans are called to serve God’s interests, not their own interests.”210 Borrowing Kallistos Ware’s analogy, human rule is more in the nature of a constitutional monarchy than an absolute monarchy.211 Even within the created order, the focus on humans is not to the exclusion of the rest of creation, and Tartaryn is correct that humanity is the royal pinnacle of the created order with the vocation of offering it to God. As Theokritoff explains with respect to Gregory’s theology, the Orthodox view of creation is “anthropocentric” in the sense—and only in the sense—that “[w]e believe that the human being is ‘central’ to God’s purposes for creation; but this is rather different from saying that everything revolves around man’s interests.” There is a difference between the human mediator and the human consumer.212 Given the moral focus of patristic homilies, we might expect these authorities to emphasize human difference from animals as a motivator for higher aspirations. Therefore, their 209

Richard Young, “The Biblical Perspective: Anthropocentric, Biocentric, or Theocentric?” Epiphany 14.2 (1994): 3-17, at 7-8. 210 Young, “Biblical Perspective,” 8. 211 Kallistos Ware, “The Value of the Material Creation,” Sobornost/ECR 6.3 (1971): 154-65, at 157. In a discussion of Gregory of Nyssa, Theokritoff concurs, saying the limiting “constitution” is humanity’s own nature, which provides an internal measure of the proper use of creation: mainly to enjoy the world so as to know its Creator. So the king does not have a “right” to use creation in any way, but is to use it as God provides. Living in God’s Creation, 69-70. 212 Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 66-67. I suspect that at the root of many negative reactions to any approach that hints of anthropocentrism, in any form, is a suspicion of hierarchy. Theokritoff addresses this suspicion, saying that hierarchy is part of the patristic vision of creation but serves as a guarantor of interdependence, rather than self-sufficiency. Therefore, for these fathers, “dominion” signifies not only superiority, but also dependency. The fact that humans must make use of other creatures for survival does not necessitate reducing them to units of production, as in modern factory farming. There can also be a tender relationship between humans and animals, as is seen in the popular imagery of the shepherd caring for the sheep. Ibid., 77-78.

120 “human exceptionalism” is aimed at making humans realize their dignified calling by drawing attention to their dignified status. Tartaryn rightly notes that “to be the king and queen of creation is a great honour. It is an even greater responsibility.”213 But regarding Basil and Gregory, Tartaryn asserts, “In both these authors we see a transition from a Platonic [e.g., Origen and even Athanasius to some extent] to a Biblical cosmology, from an emphasis on rationality to the distinction between the uncreated and created.”214 It is not disputed that for these writers—as for Athanasius—the difference between the uncreated and the created is the supreme ontological distinction, but Basil and Gregory maintain an emphasis on human rationality nonetheless. They, together with Chrysostom and Ambrose, see reason as the hallmark of the divine image, by which humans may know their Creator. In this way, their view differs little from that of Athanasius, who says the image concerns the unique gift of a share in the power of the Word, distinguishing humans, who are impermanent according to the law of their own origin (κατὰ τὸν τῆς ἰδίας γενέσεως λόγον), from irrational animals (ἄλογα ζῷα) by allowing them to become reasonable (λογικοί) and so to persist in the blessed life of paradise with the saints.215 Isaac of Nineveh describes the effect of this blessed human life on creation, saying the humble person, though held in contempt by certain people, is recognized and honored by “ravening beasts,” which are tamed in his presence

213

Tartaryn, “Eastern Tradition,” 52. Vincent Rossi draws out the practical implications of this point: “It is impossible to reform society without reforming ourselves. It is delusion to expect industry to exercise self-restraint if we, the people, show no self-restraint. It is vain to wait for government to pass the necessary laws, when we have not demonstrated an ability or inclination to govern ourselves.” “Excerpts from The Eleventh Commandment: Toward an Ethic of Ecology,” Epiphany 3.3 (1983), 3-6, at 6. 214 Tartaryn, “Eastern Tradition,” 44. He is speaking specifically of Basil’s Hexaemeron and Gregory’s Making of Man. 215 Athanase d’Alexandrie, Sur l’incarnation du Verbe 3.3 (ed. and trans. Charles Kannengiesser; SC 199; Paris: Cerf, 1973), 270-73.

121 and acknowledge him as their master, “for they smell coming from him that same scent that exhaled from Adam before the fall, when they were gathered together before him and he gave them names in Paradise. This was taken away from us, but Jesus has renewed it, and given it back to us through His Coming.”216 For all the “human exceptionalism” of the patristic authors, here we see “ravening beasts” more faithfully witnessing to the truth of creation and the presence of the Creator than do certain humans. We are reminded of Chrysostom’s rebuke to people who tame animals, instilling in them a docility beyond their natures, but who allow themselves to act with a savagery against their own natures. Whereas acting brutish is a debasement of human nature,217 the taming of animals by the saint is not a violation of their natures, but rather an elevation of it—an impartation of the peace of God reaching through humanity to the lower created orders. It is the difference between the rational appropriation to the irrational in the former case, and the irrational appropriation to the rational in the latter. The former is an image of the Fall and the resulting disorder, but the latter is an image of redemption and the harmony resulting from dominion exercised in the highest way.218

216

Isaac of Nineveh, Ascetical Homilies, Hom. 77, quoted in Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I, Orthodoxy and the Ecological Crisis (Gland, Switzerland: World Wide Fund for Nature International, 1990), 8-9. 217 Throughout our examination of the fathers in this chapter, we have seen animals often referred to negatively. Hopefully it has been made clear that such references are not statements about the value of animals as creatures, but rather about the animal mode of existence when preferred by humans to the higher mode for which they were created. As animals lack the rational capacity with which God gifted humans so that they might look and move upward toward Him, a human preference for an animal mode of existence amounts to a refusal of a divine invitation. Animals, then, are not “bad” in themselves; on the contrary, they are part of creation that God saw to be good. But it is “bad” for humans to despise God’s gift of reason by preferring a strictly material mode of existence to life according to the image and likeness of their Creator. 218 The asymmetrical relationship between body and spirit is well explained by Wallace-Haddrill in his discussion of Nemesius of Emesa: Man “cannot lose his body by inclining towards the rational, but he can lose his spiritual status by inclining too far towards the phenomenal, thus

122 Rationality gives humans the ability to discern the good and the freedom to seek divine help in transcending a merely biological existence.219 Ware says that as God’s image, we can do two things animals are unable to do: (1) “reshape and alter the world, giving to it fresh significance and purpose,” and (2) “bless and praise God for the world.”220 As creation’s king and high priest, our vocation is to use, develop, and transfigure the world, receiving it as God’s gift and offering it back to Him in thanksgiving.221 Putting together the patristic teachings

breaking the unity which it is his function to preserve and forfeiting his position as its bond.” Greek Patristic View, 78. 219 Terence Penelhum makes this point when he says, “The Christian tradition sees human beings as called to a mode of life for which their biological provenance is not a sufficient preparation; a mode of life that transcends anything that the rough-and-tumble of natural selection can make possible. In Christian terms, the biological human being is not yet fully and completely human. The classic expression of this vision of possible humanity is the doctrine that we were made in the image of God himself. Once we recognize the biological source of humanity, we have to see this doctrine not as a statement of what human beings originally were, but as a statement of what human beings have the capacity to be. To have this capacity they need the power of moral discrimination: the power to know their own natures, to choose good over evil in what they find within them, and to reach out towards the transcendent source of help that they need to enforce that choice. To have this capacity, they require a higher intelligence than the beasts, and they require freedom. The doctrine of the imago dei is a declaration that human beings, though finite, are also free beings who are not just biologically programmed but have the capacity to choose what is good, and of course (unfortunately) what is evil.” Penelhum, Christian Ethics and Human Nature (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1999), 89-90. 220 Ware, “Value of Material Creation,” 155-56. 221 Ibid., 156. The connection between Christ’s, and thus humanity’s, kingly and priestly roles is also discussed by Theokritoff, who says that to be in the image of the sovereign God implies a kingship of service, involving a mediating role of leading creation toward God. By contrast, if we assume a tyrannical posture with respect to the world, we betray our place in creation. Briere, “Material Creation,” 33-35. In the same spirit, Dale Aukerman states, “Human beings were originally given dominion to mediate the rule of a Lord whose tender care embraces all His creatures. Human dominion over the earth derived from man’s having received God’s likeness. . . . In the proper care of a garden or of animals the master is also servant to plants and beasts. But rule as servant-masters who are accountable to the one Master has so often given way to lording it over lesser creatures. Through the millennia much of the destructive callousness that goes with overindulgence has taken God’s nonhuman creatures as its victims.” “Forfeited Dominion,” Epiphany 3.3 (1983), 18-20, at 19. See also Rossi’s argument that we most resemble God in creative desire, and an artist can only master a creative work by abandoning the idea of mastery and cooperating with it—a corollary of the principle that those who would rule must serve. “To

123 regarding the relationships between God and humanity in Christ, between the human mind and body, and between humans and animals, we arrive at a chain of “images”: (1) Christ is the hypostatic Image of God, the divine archetypal Image of the divine prototype; (2) humanity, created in accordance with God’s image, is made looking toward Christ, so that the divine image is seen in the person who has become like Christ through virtue; (3) this “imaging” God by being like Christ is initiated in the human mind, which may be said to be in God’s image because it is the human aspect resembling the rational, self-governing, and immaterial divine nature222; (4) the human body is structured in such a way so as to be an image of the rationality of the human being (“a mirror of the mirror,” as Gregory says)223; (5) through the body, in which lies humanity’s kinship with irrational creatures, humans living in a divine and rational mode image God to them. Christ’s centrality in linking humanity to God suggests that stewardship should be interpreted to include the notion of being co-workers with Christ in transfiguring creation, rather than independent operators for an absentee lord.224

‘have dominion’ over all the earth must not be misunderstood to mean to ‘dominate’ or to ‘overcome’ nature. Just as the work will revenge itself on the domineering artist so will nature take revenge on all attempts to overcome her.” “Eleventh Commandment,” 4-5. 222 Philo says the mind, patterned after “the Mind of the Universe as an archetype,” is “in a fashion a god to him who carries and enshrines it as an object of reverence; for the human mind evidently occupies a position in men precisely answering to that which the great Ruler occupies in the world.” De opificio mundi 23.69. 223 Compare Philo’s point that God directly breathes into the mind as the dominant portion of the soul, but the other portions (e.g., sensations, speech, generation) are inspired not directly by God, but through the mind. Legum allegoriae, I 13.39-42. 224 Issa J. Khalil, “For the Transfiguration of Nature: Ecology and Theology,” Epiphany 10.3 (1990), 19-36, at 33. Khalil notes that Colossians 1:16-20 does not say that the world was made for our pleasure, but for Christ, and in Him the reconciliation of all things takes place. Therefore, in place of models of human dominion over nature, unity with nature, or stewardship of nature, Khalil proposes a model of transfiguration, effected by synergy with Christ. Ibid., 22-34. He explains, in a way that embraces the “chain of images” described above: “To the theologians of the East, Christ is the archetype of man. Man’s fulfillment can be found only in Christ. It follows that nature’s fulfillment can be found in man. This last point of view is granted even by secular

124 The integration of the links in this chain is expressed by D.S. Wallace-Haddrill, who says humanity is the bridge between two worlds and has the ability “to estimate the phenomenal from the standpoint of the rational”; however, we gave up our divine vantage point, and only Christ has been able to occupy “the link-position vacated by man in consequence of his sin. To the extent to which man is assimilated to the mind of Christ, he can interpret nature in the light of God’s purpose, and can understand it correctly.”225 Through Christ’s eyes, we see nature in doxological, not utilitarian, terms. All creation praises God, but it does so through the praise offered by the human as priest,226 whose priesthood is derivative of that of Christ the High Priest. In fulfilling this function, humanity leads all creation in the salvific movement back to God, as expressed by Dumitru Staniloae when he says that the direct object of salvation and deification is humanity not separated from nature, but “ontologically united with it. For nature depends on man or makes him whole, and man cannot reach perfection if he does not reflect nature and is not at

scientists, who see man as the highest point of evolution. But this point of view leaves man and nature as far apart, even when they are described as being so close. In Christian theology, since man is in the image of the Incarnate Logos Who came to redeem His creation, and since He is the crown of creation (and being intimately connected with it), and yet is a type of the sufferingservant, then, by definition, man is to relate to nature in love and in compassion. In his role as a priest-king man is to bring nature to God as a wholesome, living offering.” Ibid., 35. Ware concurs in an ethic of transfiguration when he says that our “vocation is not to dominate and exploit nature, but to transfigure and hallow it.” The Orthodox Way (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 54. I see these positions as helpful syntheses of the patristic sources but do not view an ethic of transfiguration as at odds with one of stewardship. The two perspectives together help to capture the “already, but not yet” balance of Christian eschatology. Nor can I so easily dismiss “dominion” language, given its explicit appearance in Genesis 1. If terms like “stewardship” and “dominion” have been misinterpreted in the past to harmful effect, it is preferable to interpret them rightly rather than to discard the portions of Christian tradition in which they appear. 225 Wallace-Haddrill, Greek Patristic View, 79. 226 Ware, “Value of Material Creation,” 156-57.

125 work upon it.”227 Along the same lines, Vladimir Lossky writes, “Man is not a being isolated from the rest of creation; by his very nature he is bound up with the whole of the universe, and St. Paul bears witness that the whole creation awaits the future glory which will be revealed in the sons of God.”228 Accordingly, “[i]n his way to union with God, man in no way leaves creatures aside, but gathers together in his love the whole cosmos disordered by sin, that it may at last be transfigured by grace.”229 These modern theologians articulate a theocentric ethic of transfiguration born out of the patristic teachings we have examined: an ethic in which the ruler of the external world first gains mastery over the passions of the internal world, so that dominion is exercised in line with Jesus’ teaching and example of servanthood, the kingly role of ordering the world being united to the priestly role of mediation between it and God. As noted above, this kind of dominion is most evident in the lives of saints, and so it is to this topic that the next chapter is devoted.

227

Dumitru Staniloae, The World: Creation and Deification (vol. 2 of The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology; ed. and trans. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer; Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000), 1. 228 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (trans. Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius; Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 111, citing Rom 8:18-22. 229 Lossky, Mystical Theology, 111.

Chapter Three

Christ-Like Dominion in the Lives of the Saints

If Christ is the exemplar of human dominion as God intended, and if the Church holds out the saints as exemplars of a Christ-like mode of being, then an examination of hagiographic texts ought to shed light on premodern Christian understandings of Christ-like dominion. As noted by William Short, “God’s care for all creatures finds its reflection in the care the Creator’s servants show toward them.”1 Likewise, Elizabeth Theokritoff explains that “[i]n the lives of holy people we may see a restoration—albeit highly localized—of the setting in which man was originally given ‘dominion’ over other creatures.”2 The lives of the saints testify to the possibility of a divine mode of existence even in the midst of the fallen conditions that persist in the world.

1

William J. Short, “Restoring Eden: Medieval Legends of Saints and Animals” (Continuum 2:1; Chicago: St. Xavier College, 1992), 43-57, at 46. 2 Elizabeth Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Yonkers, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009), 119. Theokritoff says saints’ lives show us the proper place of humans in creation, including “the extent of human authority over other creatures, and the way in which that authority relates to our creation in God’s image.” We see that while creation is for human benefit, the saints also benefit other creatures. Ibid., 118 Likewise, Benedicta Ward describes these stories as illustrating the restoration of human nature as redeemed in Christ, the new Adam. So-called “natural” miracles show God’s presence in the saint as so powerful that it extends to animals: through Christ the second Adam, humanity is restored to the state of the first Adam in paradise, purified by obedience and thus at home with all creation. Introduction to Norman Russell, trans., The Lives of the Desert Fathers (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980), 43. So William Harmless is right to assert that such stories “are not really nature miracles; they are stories of paradise regained.” Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 293. 126

127 Accordingly, this chapter will seek to identify principles for the proper exercise of human dominion over animals by recourse to stories of various saints of the first millennium.3 These texts do not present a single perspective that neatly corresponds with contemporary ethical questions about animal treatment. Rather, they present a montage of diverse narratives that convey, intentionally or not, the thoughts of premodern Christian communities on saints and saintliness, humans and humanity, animals and animality, and the interplay between them. There are many texts in which saints are gentle toward animals, but we must not paint a facile picture from them that fails to account for other texts in which saints relate to animals harshly or instrumentally. In analyzing and synthesizing the texts, it is helpful to remember Benedicta Ward’s explanation that the ancient mind prioritizes the questions “why?” and “what for?” over the questions “how?” and “what are the mechanics of this?”4 The stories may well involve animals as animals (that is, not merely as symbols of something else), but animals are not the primary concern.5 She provides a concise summary of the overarching theme in this genre: “The

3

This period is selected by virtue of its rough correspondence to the time when the Eastern and Western churches remained (for the most part) in communion. In both East and West, the amount of material that can be used for this purpose is beyond extensive. Because this chapter aims to engage with a wide range of examples, a balance had to be reached between depth and breadth, and many stories are inevitably not included. Texts are limited to those in Greek or Latin, although they may involve saints who are neither, such as the many Coptic desert fathers of the Apophthegmata Patrum, Historia Lausiaca, and Historia Monachorum in Aegypto. Despite the fact that this chapter makes no claim to complete inclusivity, its numerous examples go beyond the range presented in academic treatments of humans and animals in the hagiographic genre by leading authors on animal theology such as Andrew Linzey, and they form a fair representation of situations, actions, and theological principles one might expect to encounter in these genres. 4 Ward, Introduction to Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 42. 5 On a related note, Ward explains that these authors are concerned primarily with describing “a situation of temptation and fall, of evil, sin, despair, and the narrow ways of repentance and return,” and they use the imagery of demons to that end. This does not imply a naïveté on their part; “on the contrary, they were the experts of the ancient world in the psychology of the spiritual life” and “were probably well aware of immediate cause and effect.” For instance, a

128 emphasis . . . in these stories is not on a sentimental attachment to animals but upon the true control and obedience of man and the beasts. . . . The holy man is at one again with restored creation, but in a right order, in which man is in control and is the crown.”6 It is assumed that the material world contains an inherent hierarchy with humans at the top, but themselves subject to divine authority. Christ is the connecting point of humanity as apex of material creation and God as transcendent Creator, and this position means that human willing separated from divine willing cannot pretend to legitimate dominion. This chapter thus complements the previous one regarding patristic understandings of dominion, showing a common understanding of the place of humanity in creation, but more strongly emphasizing (through narrative) that Christ-like authority is exercised in compassion and that animals are fitting recipients of it. This point, in turn, connects to the next chapter, especially to Andrew Linzey’s theme of Christ’s lordship as costly service of the “higher” to the “lower.” But this chapter also bolsters the theme in the prior one that by proper exercise of their rationality, humans have discretion in ruling not only kindly but also justly, considering what is owed to each sort of being in accordance with its nature. This idea is in tension with Linzey’s model, for while Christ shows the sacrifice of the “higher” incarnate God for the sake of the “lower” creation, it goes against ethical intuitions both in the Christian tradition and more universally to demand the sacrifice of a human life for the sake of the life of a dolphin, chimpanzee, or dog. We might approve (or even praise) the voluntary risk of one’s own life to save an animal’s, but we would not calculate an exchange in which the

woman representing demonic temptation in a story is a real woman. But their concern is not with the mechanics (the “how”), so the story is about the temptation, rather than the woman. Ward, Introduction to Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 32. The same principle applies to reading animals in these stories, and the fact that the stories are not about animals does not mean they do not involve animals. 6 Ibid., 44.

129 human life were forfeited. The hierarchical view present in this chapter, as in the first two and in some of our own intuitions, is in tension with aspects of Linzey’s project. In contrast to Ward’s hierarchical synthesis of the various strands of human relating to animals in these texts, Laura Hobgood-Oster makes an explicit effort to challenge the hierarchical perspective through rereadings. She adopts a methodology rejecting anthropocentric allegorizing tendencies, which rob animals of their agency by reducing them to the “powerful but disempowering category of symbol,” and employs an alternative reading in which animals are subjects in their own right.7 I am not unsympathetic to Hobgood-Oster here, although an alternative reading is often unnecessary for understanding animals as having some kind of agency and subjectivity, in view of the many texts that so present them through a literal reading. It is also clear that when animals function only on the level of symbol, the text is rendered ineffective as an ethical guide or example of how to relate to actual animals in a Christ-like way. Noting that the ascetic writings use animals as symbols, Ingvild Saelid Gilhus supports Hobgood-Oster’s point by characterizing the “hermeneutic movement from literal to figurative meaning that is typical of Christianity” as creating a relationship with animals that is indirect.8

7

“Central to my thesis is the idea that reading animals as only and always symbol is escapist and serves to reinforce human superiority and domination. Animals, as real in history and in body, can be denied reality as fully living beings because they can be relegated to the powerful but disempowering category of symbol.” Laura Hobgood-Oster, Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 15. 8 Making a point that is also true of the hagiographic and ascetic writings, Gilhus observes, “The presentation of animals in the New Testament imposes burdens of human significance on them, which detaches their meaning from the actual way of life of these animals. In the animal world of the Gospels, centre stage is dominated by metaphorical sheep and miraculous fish. . . . [T]here is a gap in the New Testament texts between the abundant use of animal metaphors and these texts’ lack of focus on real animals.” Ingvild Saelid Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 181-82. It is this “gap” that this dissertation aims to fill in by making implicit premodern Christian assumptions about animals more explicit.

130 That granted, Hobgood-Oster’s goal of dismantling the hierarchical view of the texts by focusing on aspects showing animals as having agency but disregarding aspects showing that agency being activated by contact with human saints presents problems of selective engagement. It ought not to be taken for granted that human dominion (rightly understood) is at odds with animal welfare. As Ward would likely agree, to begin with that assumption flies in the face of the worldview from which these stories arose, and which is embodied in them. Thus, this chapter follows Hobgood-Oster to the extent she desires to read the animals in the stories as concrete, acting subjects, but not to the extent she desires to do so with the particular goal of dismantling hierarchies. The project, rather, is to read the animal characters as themselves, and thereby to determine what the texts say about the place of animals vis-à-vis humans, and vice versa. My aim does not go unchallenged in the field of research on animals in the Middle Ages. Dominic Alexander appears to dismiss the project altogether, saying these animals are not to be seen as “straightforward representations of the natural world” but are more likely metaphoric, so that historians are wrong to use these stories as evidence of medieval understandings of a “nature” already framed in our terms. He wryly concludes, “Nonetheless, perhaps only in England would a noted historian write a pamphlet for an animal rights interest group noting ‘the early saints repeatedly laid stress on the fact that animals have their own rights, which should be respected.’”9 He is correct to criticize the “animal rights” conclusion, but not for the reasons he advances. Rather, this conclusion, stated as it is in “rights” language, does not accurately represent the attitudes the holy figures are depicted as showing toward animals.10 But the

9

Dominic Alexander, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell Press, 2008), 14-15, quoting Rosalind Hill, Both Small and Great Beasts (London 1953), 6. 10 Elizabeth Theokritoff articulates the problem of importing modern “rights” categories into a conversation about hagiography: “When we consider the holy person’s relationship with other

131 problem is not that the animal-rights pamphleteer appeals to saints’ lives as guides for the ethical treatment of animals by Christians. Alexander is not wrong in arguing that these stories are not “in any primary sense records of medieval attitudes towards nature,” but instead comprise “a highly versatile genre capable of expressing theological and spiritual concerns, while perhaps being usefully employed for immediate political purposes, and also on occasion being influenced by the popular imagination.”11 But to see symbolism only and to rule out a reading of animals as actual subjects assumes they were only ever meant to stand for something else. Surely that is too strong of an assumption, even if hagiography as a genre “developed its own rules, not necessarily having any regard to issues of factual verifiability or historical reliability.”12 A symbolic interpretation may deepen a literal one, but it should not be presumed to nullify it.13

creatures, it would be anachronistic and misleading to think in terms of ‘animal rights’—just as Christian love cannot be reduced to ‘human rights.’ People, let alone other creatures, are not invited to exercise direct claims over each other: the imperatives come from the Lord. Rather than a recognition of rights in the modern sense, what we see in the saints is freely-given compassion, in the image of God’s compassion and mercy towards all in his creation.” Living in God’s Creation, 136. 11 Alexander, Saints and Animals, 19. 12 Ibid., 9. 13 This is not to deny that there may be some stories whose details beg for an exclusively symbolic interpretation. Alexander provides such an example in the story of an Egyptian hermit who loses grace because of lust, which loss is depicted by a dove flying out of his mouth. After three weeks of penance, his restored grace is seen in the dove landing on his head, then perching in his hand, and finally flying back into his mouth. Ibid., 18, citing Verba Seniorum, ch. 38, cols. 884-5. Few readers would be inclined to think of a literal bird flying into a person’s mouth as a sign of divine favor, so it is easy to see this particular bird as either an allegorical representation of grace or a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, but in neither event a flesh-and-blood dove. Another example involves a voyage of Brendan the Navigator, in which he encounters white birds, one of which explains that they are angels who were partially disobedient to God during Satan’s rebellion and so are being punished by being excluded from the fellowship of God and His servants. They take the bodies of birds on solemn feasts and Sabbaths and praise God in vespers, matins, and the hours. Helen Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1970), 115-19, 151, citing Charles Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae (Oxford, 1910). This tale is mentioned by Hobgood-Oster as one involving birds. Holy Dogs and

132 Even if the assumption is granted, moreover, it does not follow that the stories say nothing of premodern Christian attitudes toward nature. It would be scandalous in our own society even for a story plainly understood as allegorical fiction to present the hero or heroine mistreating an animal. The animal may indeed be of a kind typically symbolizing evil (a snake, for instance); but within the world created by the narrative, the animal is what it is, even if it also represents something else, and a fictitious protagonist would be seen as having a deep character flaw for abusing it. Additionally, if the goal, as in this dissertation, is to posit an Orthodox understanding of human dominion over animals based on a synthesis of sources, the best sources to consult are those from the Orthodox tradition, and to eliminate them as authorities would be to place ourselves in a position of ethical agnosticism with respect to the tradition. I proceed under the supposition that it is legitimate to see how a story presents a saint treating animals, and to conclude that the treatment is to be understood as “saintly” in that particular narrative context. In other words, assuming the texts do not intend to depict a lapse in holiness, the kinds of behaviors in which a saint is shown to engage are to be considered as falling within the range of actions befitting a Christian under those circumstances. The key words here are “range” and “circumstances.” It is not implied that a particular saint’s behavior is the only way to act in those circumstances; indeed, there are examples of holy figures acting differently under similar circumstances. Nor is it implied that the saint’s behavior would necessarily be the same under other circumstances. Ethical principles may, therefore, be drawn from these examples (and they must, if this chapter is to have any contribution toward my project), but these principles are context-specific rather than universalized in Kantian fashion.

Asses, 66. But because the narrative states that these are angels in bird form, I do not treat it as involving “real” animal subjects.

133 The aim in this chapter, then, is to engage a range of sources to discern a right understanding of dominion in the examples of the saints, examples to which many Christians writing on this topic appeal at least sometimes, but not always with an eye to the full sweep of possibilities. To this end, it is well to bear in mind Hobgood-Oster’s caution that the texts must be reread against the background of cultures less distanced from nature and thus more able to appreciate animals as such, rather than only as symbols.14 Short provides helpful direction when he says that, as “religious didactic literature,” these stories “take the isolated, static animal figures of allegory and employ them dynamically in narrative,” so that the animals’ meaning arises from their instructive interactions with the saints.15 This chapter will attend not to “the isolated, static animal figures of allegory,” but how the authors “employ them dynamically in narrative,” or to the animals’ subjectivity as manifested by their interactions with holy persons. The objective here is not to get behind the texts and attempt to discover whether the stories “really happened” as told, but to appreciate them as presented, understanding the ways in which they reveal understandings about animals as God’s creatures with the potential to be in communion with Him through the saints. But even this objective does not capture the full scope of this chapter, as some stories represent the “not yet” more than the “already” of the eschatological formula.16 These different facets must be integrated for a fair understanding of Christ-like dominion as presented in the saints’ lives.

14

Hobgood-Oster, Holy Dogs and Asses, 15. Short, “Restoring Eden,” 56. 16 Theokritoff captures this tension when she states, “In the environs of a holy person we catch glimpses of paradise, of the created order restored to its intended state. But there is also plenty of evidence of a work in progress: a transformed human being is living in a world that has yet to be transformed. Instances of the latter sort are often easier for us to relate to; they give us more practical clues as to how to act in a world afflicted by the fall.” Living in God’s Creation, 123. 15

134 This chapter’s survey of texts showing saints relating to animals reveals a diversity of particular actions but also a basic unity of vision regarding Christ-like dominion. There is compassion but not irrational sentimentality, use but not selfish abuse, and command but not arbitrary tyranny. The obedience of animals to the saint reflects and results from the obedience of the saint to God. And although we often see a recovery of the harmony of paradise, we are frequently shown that even the saints have not fully escaped from the fallen condition of the world in which they live, notwithstanding their being in the vanguard of its restoration.17

I.

The texts: genre, audience, and purpose The time range for the texts examined in this chapter is broader than that for the patristic

sources from the past two chapters. Rather than limiting the investigation to a few sources with substantial material that can be examined in depth, this chapter takes a broader view and surveys the diverse (and usually rather brief) stories from Greek and Latin hagiographic texts from the first millennium, before the onset of the schism between the two halves of Christendom. The aim is to see what kind of consensus can be discerned across the sources. All of these texts may be considered as falling broadly within the genre of hagiography, although subgenres can be identified, and distinctions appear with respect to audience and purpose. In the East, the main texts covered are “desert” literature written about great ascetics, predominantly in Egypt. One which may be considered foundational for many narrative elements 17

Theokritoff reaches a similar conclusion: “We are certainly to conclude that the intended state of creation is one of harmony, where creatures cooperate in love and without fear. But we must also recognize that the route towards that state involves compassion, indeed, but no sentimentality. The saints’ relationship with other creatures is one in which the human has authority, and even, in extreme cases, power of life and death. On the other hand, the stories of the saints constantly remind us how far this ‘authority’ is from being arbitrary.” Living in God’s Creation, 128.

135 of hagiography up through the Middle Ages is Athanasius’ Life of Antony, though its genre classification overlaps with ancient (not modern) biography.18 William Harmless describes ancient biographies (“lives,” βίοι or vitae) as between the genres of history and oratory, incorporating elements of the former’s recounting of events with the latter’s rhetorical objectives: in this case, the praise of a person’s character and deeds, as in an encomium. The focus is not a chronology of large-scale events, but a depiction of personal character.19 Although Athanasius writes in response to the requests of monks for information about Antony, he does not lose sight of his moral purpose of portraying Antony as a teacher of virtue and his mimetic purpose of exhorting his readers to imitate him.20 The work also resembles the life of a philosopher, a biographical subgenre written by loyal disciples and serving, “in part, [as] propaganda pieces that extolled the superiority of their school of philosophy by extolling its

18

Regarding its foundational character, Harmless says, “Elements of the Athanasian narrative— the dramatic initial conversion, the ascetical feats, the battles with demons, the miracles—would become standard props in medieval hagiography, so standard that it is hard for us to appreciate the novelty of what Athanasius created. Its folktale surface should not lead the modern reader to underestimate its literary sophistication.” Desert Christians, 69. Regarding its status as a biography, he says, “The Life of Antony purports to be a biography but is not one in any modern sense. Its fantastical worldview and anecdotal flavor are too far removed from modern biography’s concern with sober facts, strict chronology, and critical evaluation of sources. On the other hand, this should not lead one to underestimate the verifiable history that can be gleaned from its pages. The Life is much closer to a biography in the ancient sense of the genre. Even then, it has contours and shadings unlike its classical counterparts.” Ibid. As an example of this difference from classical models, Harmless cites Gregory of Nazianzus’ statement in his panegyric on Athanasius’ life (Or. 21.5) that in the Life of Antony, Athanasius had “composed a rule for the monastic life in the form of a narrative.” Ibid. & n. 48. 19 Harmless, Desert Christians, 72-73. Harmless cites Plutarch’s explanation of his own biographical work on Alexander the Great: “It is not histories that I am writing, but lives; and in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice, nay, a slight thing like a phrase or jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles where thousands fall.” Ibid. & n. 71, citing Plutarch, Alexander 1.1-2, quoted in Patricia Cox, Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 12. 20 Harmless, Desert Christians, 69, 73.

136 founder.”21 In this case, the “philosophy” is monastic Christianity, and “the reason, or logos, that guides Antony is Christ, the Logos of God.”22 The advancement of a philosophical school by writing one of its founders or adherents in such as way as to be its icon evidences the genre’s “twin aims: polemic and apology, attack and defense.”23 With these aims, Athanasius naturally desires that his work circulate beyond the circles of the monks who have requested it: he tells his monastic audience to read it to pagans if need be.24 But in “correcting” other views of Antony so as to present him as a champion of Nicene orthodoxy and a loyalist to the ecclesial hierarchy, Athanasius “combines harangue, ideology, and narrative” to write an Antony whose degree of correspondence with the Antony of the past is hard to determine.25 Another “desert” source is the Sayings of the Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum), focusing on ascetics who were active in the fourth and fifth centuries, although the text comes from the late fifth or early sixth century.26 Preserving a mainly oral Coptic tradition rooted in the “semianchoritic” monastic settlement of Scetis in Lower Egypt, the compilers wrote in Greek (though versions exist in other ancient languages).27 Unlike the Life of Antony, this collection of short passages is not in the genre of biography; instead, Peter Brown describes them as having “provided a remarkable new literary genre, close to the world of parable and folk-wisdom. . . . In 21

Ibid., 73. Ibid., 71. 23 Ibid., 73. Antony’s portrayal serves as a rhetorical rebuttal not only to pagan philosophers, but also to Melitian schismatics and Arian heretics, both longstanding opponents of Athanasius, and both whom Antony is shown to shun and instruct his disciples to shun. Ibid., 70, 73-74, 94; Averil Cameron, “Form and Meaning: The Vita Constantini and the Vita Antonii,” Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity (eds. Thomas Hägg and Philip Rousseau; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 72-88, at 79; Philip Rousseau, “Antony as Teacher in the Greek Life,” Greek Biography and Panegyric, 89-109, at 102. 24 Harmless, Desert Christians, 70 & n. 63, citing VA 94 (SC 400:376). 25 Cameron, “Form and Meaning,” 84, 86; see also Harmless, Desert Christians, 93-94. 26 Harmless, Desert Christians, 19. 27 Ibid., 19, 173-75, 250. Scetis was founded around 330 by Macarius of Egypt. Ibid., 173. 22

137 these Sayings, the peasantry of Egypt spoke for the first time to the civilized world.”28 Perhaps this is the reason the theological polemics so important to the Life are absent in the Sayings, where “Antony teaches a simpler, blunter faith,” fulfilling the literary purpose of offering practical guidance.29 In addition to reflecting the simplicity of desert life, the literary form of “an anthology of anecdotes, proverbs, and snappy dialogues . . . reflects how oral wisdom typically passed from teacher to disciple, from generation to generation: through easy-to-remember narratives and easy-to-remember proverbs.”30 In these communities, accurate memory and transmission were important, again not so much for the factual precision that might interest the modern historian, but for the spiritual authenticity linking the readers with the sages of a wiser age.31 The result was a new genre enabling ascetic aspirants to receive a “word of salvation” through a text, without having to travel to Egypt to visit a living sage.32 Similar in some ways to the Apophthegmata, but different in others, are two somewhat overlapping Greek histories: the anonymous History of the Monks in Egypt (HMA), written around 400 and describing a journey of seven Palestinian monks through Egypt in 394-95; and the Lausiac History, written in the early 420s by the bishop Palladius as a memoir of his years in Egypt in the 390s, but also including figures from the wider Christian world.33 Both highly popular works are important sources of information about the monastic settlements of Nitria and

28

Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150-750 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), 100, quoted in Harmless, Desert Christians, 169 & n. 17. This genre includes, but is not limited to, the “word of salvation” spoken by an experienced ascetic to those seeking spiritual direction. Ibid., 173. 29 Harmless, Desert Christians, 167-69 & n. 11, 250. 30 Ibid., 250. 31 Ibid., 210-11, 249-50. 32 Ibid., 210-11, 251. 33 Ibid., 19, 276-77, 281-84. The abbreviation HMA refers to its Latin title, Historia monachorum in Aegypto.

138 Kellia.34 The texts consist of “miniatures,” short descriptions of ascetics encountered by the authors, either personally or through stories.35 These people are the objects of interest for the authors and their audiences: for the HMA, the monastic community on the Mount of Olives, and for the Lausiac History, the emperor’s chamberlain, Lausus.36 Both audiences wanted stories to enable them to have the experience of pilgrimage from home, so the authors oblige with “tourist literature,” making holiness visible in their portraits.37 The Lausiac History presents “miniature morality plays” focusing on asceticism, prayer, and virtue for the purpose of serving as spiritual medicine, while the HMA presents “deeds of power, wonders, and signs” (cf. Acts 2:22) for the purpose of showing continuity between contemporary monks and the prophets and apostles of old in displaying God’s miraculous works. Harmless argues this difference in accent is responsible for the Lausiac History containing more individual variety and the HMA miniatures having the more stylized character of icons, showing the divine presence manifested in the saints.38 He observes that while these texts are “histories,” they do not fit the modern criteria for that genre, because they do not share the modern aversion to the fantastic in genres other than those specifically labeled fiction.39 His admonition that we not allow questions of historical verifiability to distract us from the spiritual messages is well applied not only to these two texts, but to all those under consideration in this chapter that contain fantastical elements. A later but similar work in style and purpose is the Spiritual Meadow (Pratum Spirituale), written in Greek by the Byzantine monk John Moschus, who lived near Jerusalem in

34

Ibid., 278. Ibid., 19, 276-77, 283-84. 36 Ibid., 276, 284. 37 Ibid., 277, 284, 298. 38 Ibid., 286, 290-92, 297-99. 39 Ibid., 291. 35

139 the late sixth and early seventh centuries. In 602, he went on pilgrimage to Egypt and then Rome, where he died. His work includes a collection of stories about the great ascetics he met, and it often features animals, especially lions, in a favorable light.40 We will also examine two sources with different forms and objectives. One is the correspondence between the sixth-century monks in Palestine, Barsanuphis and John, written for spiritual guidance and edification. This is perhaps the only source not written as hagiography, although for us it serves the same purpose of illuminating the lives of people since deemed saints. The other is Gregory of Nazianzus’ Funeral Oration for Basil of Caesarea, which is likewise hagiographical (and considered a better biographical source than is the Life of Antony), but which, as a ceremonial speech by a master orator trained in the classical tradition of rhetoric, also falls within the epideictic genre and has been identified as an encomium and an epitaphios.41 He most likely gave the oration before Basil’s family members and monastic followers, and a large part of his goal was to rehabilitate his own credibility after not having ingratiated himself with them by his earlier falling out with Basil and his absence from the funeral. Although he recounts events in his own way, he is aware that his audience likely has a different memory, or at

40

Helen Waddell, trans., The Desert Fathers (New York: Random House, 1998), 173. See Jostein Børtnes, “Eros Transformed: Same-Sex Love and Divine Desire. Reflections on the Erotic Vocabulary in St. Gregory of Nazianzus’s Speech on St. Basil the Great,” Greek Biography and Panegyric, 180-93, at 183; Frederick W. Norris, “Your Honor, My Reputation: St. Gregory of Nazianzus’s Funeral Oration on St. Basil the Great,” Greek Biography and Panegyric, 140-59, at 143; John A. McGuckin, St Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 170. McGuckin describes it as “one of the standard sources for Basil’s life” and “the single greatest exemplar of Christian hagiographic writing, excelling even Athanasios’ Vita Antonii and setting a standard, based on classical models of panegyric, that would be followed in the subsequent creation of the Byzantine genre of hagiography.” St Gregory of Nazianzus, 373.

41

140 least might have the means of double-checking his account.42 This oration is often considered Gregory’s masterpiece,43 and the fact that much of his objective was apologetic in nature, casting Basil in the staunch homoousian mold (with respect to the Holy Spirit) in which Gregory wanted him remembered,44 is not necessarily an indictment of his sincerity.45 Frederick Norris judges that the oration “is a fairly reliable source for Basil’s life. Gregory’s rhetorical flourish does not disqualify his work. Its silences are acute, but its statements are helpful.”46 Gregory’s broad purpose is to praise Basil,47 and we will examine a story geared to that end and concerning Basil’s grandparents later in this chapter. Norris says it “smacks suspiciously of hagiography, but Nazianzen avoids the less believable devices of that genre. He may have heard such stories talking with members of the family in Pontus.”48 The inclusion of ancestors was a standard rhetorical device in the classical pagan tradition of eulogies, and in contrast to Basil and his 42

McGuckin, St Gregory of Nazianzus, 170, 174, 188-89, 373; Neil McLynn, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Basil: The Literary Construction of a Christian Friendship,” Studia Patristica 37 (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 2001), 178-93, at 179. However, owing to the length of the oration, there is much speculation that it was never actually read aloud, or if read aloud, was substantially reworked. See McGuckin, St Gregory of Nazianzus, 373; Norris, “Your Honor, My Reputation,” 145; Anthony Meredith, “Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa on Basil,” Studia Patristica 32 (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 1998), 163-69, at 163. 43 McLynn, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Basil,” 179. 44 McGuckin, St Gregory of Nazianzus, 373-74. McGuckin makes the point that Gregory effectively sets the hagiographical precedent that “the saint’s doctrine was polished to contemporary standards.” Ibid. 45 McLynn says, “The work succeeds because it soars beyond all selfish concerns, so that even critically alert scholars continue to find it ‘vibrant with sincerity.’” “Gregory Nazianzen’s Basil,” 182-83, quoting G. A. Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors (Princeton, 1983), 237, and noting endorsement by Avril Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991), 144. 46 Norris, “Your Honor, My Reputation,” 155. 47 Norris describes Basil’s honor as the “text” of the speech, the “subtext” being Gregory’s rehabilitation of his own reputation. Ibid., 140. 48 Ibid., 147. He adds, “We do not know if the tales of the Caesarean’s forebears in the forests of Cappadocia also had a wide and knowledgeable enough audience to keep Nazianzen’s rhetorical powers in check. But we do know that his reputation might well have been sullied had he included stories that Basil’s own family could refute.” Ibid.

141 brother Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus demonstrates his appreciation for that tradition by not scrupling to employ it.49 My selection of hagiographic tales from the West is both more focused and more scattered. It is more focused in the sense that, owing to the diversity of source material present across various vitae, I have relied mainly on the work of Helen Waddell, who has gathered stories relevant to my purposes in her book, Beasts and Saints. The spirit and sense of these narratives very much resembles those of the narratives of the East, though translated into a different language and environment.50 Themes shared with the East include Palladius’ emphasis on asceticism, prayer, and virtue, and the HMA’s emphasis on “deeds of power, wonders, and signs”; moreover, Harmless’s comments regarding ancient vitae (included above in connection with the Life of Antony) are equally applicable here. As no Western equivalent to Gregory of Nazianzus’ Funeral Oration for Basil (which is an outlier in both form and content) is covered here, there is no reason to believe variations in subgenre, audience, or purpose in the Western sources would have a substantial impact on the way these stories are to be read for understanding premodern Christian views of animals and of human saintliness in the context of human-animal interactions. Even without controlling for variations in genre, audience, and purpose, these texts are quite consistent in their presentations of the interactions between saints and animals. We repeatedly see similar kinds of interactions even across these literary zones, as well as different

49

David Konstan, “How to Praise a Friend: St. Gregory of Nazianzus’s Funeral Oration for St. Basil the Great,” Greek Biography and Panegyric, at 164-66, 176; Norris, “Your Honor, My Reputation,” 146; Meredith, “Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa on Basil,” 164, 166. 50 Alexander notes that the saint and animal story finds its origin in the desert fathers of fourthand fifth-century Egypt, from where it was taken into the hagiographic tradition of Western Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries. Saints and Animals, 3, 19.

142 behaviors within them. The main exception is Gregory’s Funeral Oration for Basil. In this instance and the few others in which considerations related to genre might impact the questions with which we are concerned, they will be analyzed. Otherwise, the operating assumption is that, as hagiographies, these works aim to present models of holiness for the whole Church, according to the differing capacities of each person to emulate them. Although polemical aims affect the depiction of holiness to varying degrees depending on the work,51 and polemics may have a role in framing the occasions for certain human-animal interactions, they do not significantly bear on the ethical or ontological implications of the content of those interactions.

II.

Asceticism revisited These texts demonstrate an alignment with the ascetic views of the fourth-century

patristic authorities examined in the last chapter: asceticism is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, namely, sanctity and communion with God. To the extent an ascetic way of life reduces the demand for natural resources and thereby relieves animals of being eaten, such a result is a consequence of the ascetic life, rather than its primary end.52 But this consequence is not insignificant; rather, it is a blessed fruit of the blessed life. As Theokritoff explains, “The 51

For example, the portrayal of Antony as a firm homoousian and hierarchical loyalist in the Life, or the portrayal of Basil as a firm homoousian of the Spirit in the Funeral Oration. 52 Gilhus observes, with respect to the vegetarian sects of antiquity, that the motivation for their diet was sometimes sympathy for animals, but more often a desire for purity by avoiding the pollution that accompanies the eating of animals. Animals, Gods and Humans, 63, 76. This statement both applies and does not apply to the Christian monks. Their motive for abstaining from meat is purity, but a purity that comes from controlling their appetites, not from avoiding inherently polluting categories of food. To view meat as polluting in its nature would place them too close to heretical groups such as the Manichaeans. Thus, the dietary relationship of the early Christian ascetics to animals is indirect: “That Christians neither kept the Jewish dietary laws nor ate meat from animals that had been sacrificed has less to do with their attitudes towards animals than with their need to mark out the distance between themselves and other people who used animals in certain ways.” Ibid., 181.

143 relationship between man and other creatures is mutual, but it all depends on the human being’s relationship with God. Other creatures’ reactions depend on the person growing into Christ, in whom the fall is undone and the proper balance in creation restored.”53 A right relationship with God must be cultivated as the end (telos) for which the human was made, but that end encompasses the harmony of the rest of creation, flowing from God through humanity. Abba Theon’s example shows the question for the ascetic to be not whether to eat an animal-based or a plant-based diet, but whether to eat superfluously or merely sufficiently. He eats with his monks only on Sundays, the rest of the time eating only plants springing from the soil, and not even bread, legumes, fruit, or anything cooked.54 His abstention from meat is encompassed in his stricter rule to avoid superfluity, which includes not only the quantity and kind of food, but even the time spent preparing it. Asceticism is an exercise of radical faith in God’s provision, and this point is seen also in a story of Cuthbert, whose observance of the Friday fast leads him to refuse his hostess’s food, despite her warnings that he will not reach the next stop on his journey until after sunset.55 Near twilight, he takes shelter in a deserted hut, where his horse pulls down a linen cloth containing a hot loaf and meat. It is enough for one person’s meal, but Cuthbert shares half the loaf with the horse.56 The experience leads him to value fasting even more, seeing how God provided for him as for Elijah in the wilderness

53

Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 120. Historia Monachorum in Aegypto (HMA) 8.9, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 71. Harmless mentions that a similar diet, but one in which the monk routinely eats salted bread instead of vegetables, seems austere to us but was fairly typical for a poor Egyptian peasant of the time. Desert Christians, 176, 182 & n. 52, citing Apophthegmata Patrum (AP) Abba of Rome I (PG 65:388; CS 59:209), “where a poor herdsman who became a monk and visited Scetis says that his previous diet had been dry bread, and, on occasion, green herbs and water.” 55 Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 56-58, 150, citing St. Cuthbert: Bede, De Vita et Miraculis S. Cudberti, c. 5; 9, 10; 17, 19, 20 (Pat. Ecc. Ang. Bede, IV). 56 Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 58. 54

144 through the birds. Cuthbert’s self-denial is a complete, risk-assuming reliance on God. Unlike Theon, he eats meat, but only after having received it directly from God. Like Theon—and consistent with Basil and Chrysostom—Cuthbert’s focus is on remaining within the bounds of sufficiency. Here we see the distinction between the oft-confused concepts of legalism and strictness, or rigor. These saints follow an ascetic way of life that is rigorous and strict, but their focus is diametrically opposed to the spirit of legalism. They approach fasting as a means for communion with God. The particular “rule” followed by each saint exists not as a set of deontological prohibitions founded on abstract principles regarding what foods are moral or immoral to eat, or utilitarian prohibitions calculated to attain this-worldly ends, but as a disciplinary regimen for strengthening faith by reliance on God. A similar perspective is evident in the letters of Barsanuphius and John, which express the elder’s desire that his disciple be under grace, not the law.57 The rule of fasting is not fixed but dependent on personal capacities, so it requires discernment based on knowing the individual. Reducing consumption is a means of combating temptation.58 Care for the body is allowed if sensual pleasure is not a motive, and eating and drinking are permissible if not done indulgently or wastefully.59 God made food to be naturally pleasant, and there is no spiritual harm in eating thankfully and without attachment.60 The outer work of fasting is for the inner purification of the heart, but food is holy in itself and so cannot be blamed for evil.61 Fasting means ceasing from eating and drinking before satiety, because the mind focused on heaven

57

John Chryssavgis, trans., Barsanuphius and John: Letters from the Desert: A Selection of Questions and Responses (Yonkers, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), § 23. 58 Ibid. § 160. 59 Ibid. § 79 (citing Matt 15:11 and Mark 7:15 that these “do not defile the human person”). 60 Ibid. § 773. 61 Ibid. § 119.

145 forgets bodily food.62 However, since the rejection of bodily concerns is a means, not an end, perfection is not reached simply by abstinence.63 The effects of one’s fast must be examined. If it results neither in vainglory nor in negligence from weakness, it is helpful.64 The tenor of these letters is one of moderation: eating past sufficiency is to be avoided as distracting from worship, but excessive strictness carries the danger of illness, so a middle way is prescribed.65 The pattern in these sources is that asceticism fosters self-control in order to direct the human to God. Thus, it is for better internal governance, which can only be observed by the way in which it is manifested externally. But this external manifestation, insofar as it relates to how the ascetics are presented in these texts as treating animals, turns out to be fairly flexible, and not lending itself to systematization. Therefore, we will turn to an examination of the range of ways the hagiographical literature shows the ascetics relating to animals.

III.

Use of animals for skins and food Consistent with the patristic sources, it becomes evident fairly quickly that the ascetic

subjects of the hagiographies have no rigidly principled objection to the use of animals for human benefit. In other words, any intrinsic value animals may have does not preclude their also having instrumental value. A recurring detail in the narratives of saints’ lives is their use of

62

Ibid. § 154 (citing the Psalmist’s statement that he “forgets to eat [his] bread,” Ps 101:5 [102:4]). Elsewhere, it is said that eating to the point of satiety, even of beneficial foods, is harmful. Ibid., § 530. 63 Ibid. § 529. 64 Ibid. § 838. 65 Ibid. § 212. This “middle way” will be perceived as being on the ascetic end of the spectrum from the point of view of contemporary Western society.

146 sheepskins as cloaks, carrying containers, or sleeping mats.66 Gilhus notes that although Antony does not eat meat, his possession of a sheepskin shows he is not concerned about “bothering” the sheep (as was, for example, the Neo-Pythagorean Apollonius of Tyana); rather, his abstinence from meat is about curbing the passions.67 Gilhus infers from this difference that “[f]rom a religious point of view, the battle within the human soul and body was seen as more important than what went on in the external world; internal animals and bestial demons were more interesting than creatures of flesh and blood.”68 This suggests that saints’ lives may not so easily be appropriated to support Linzey’s argument that “the challenge of so many saints in their love and concern for even the most hated of all animals, was in almost all cases against the spirit of their times.”69 In their opposition to the Zeitgeist, the saints focus on internal over external dominion. Accordingly, we can no more assume that a story of a saint’s kindness toward an animal prescribes universal kindness toward animals, than we can assume that a story of harshness relegates animals to moral insignificance.70 In both cases, the spiritual message must

66

See, for example, AP Arsenius 32, Poemen 44 (regarding Abba Isidore), and Silvanus 8, in Benedicta Ward, trans., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection (rev. ed.; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 15, 173, 224. See also AP Anonymous (N) 207, N 215, N 394, N 348, in John Wortley, trans., The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The Systematic Collection (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2012), 90 (§ 6.5), 115 (§ 7.48), 120 (§ 7.57), 184 (§ 10.171), 304 (§ 17.21). Finally, see the example of Abba Ammon and his three thousand monks, who wear sheepskin cloaks. HMA 3.1, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 65. 67 Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 223-24. 68 Ibid., 224. 69 Andrew Linzey, Animal Theology (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 66-67. Commenting on this quotation by Linzey, Hobgood-Oster says, “Interestingly, these stories of animals are connected to the stories of the most pious, the holiest of all—the saints.” Holy Dogs and Asses, 80. This is well observed, but an appeal to the hagiographies as authorities must be prepared to take the bitter with the sweet. As we will see, “the holiest of all” are not always depicted as being gentle with animals. 70 Hobgood-Oster is right about the disempowering effects on the animal of reducing it to a symbol, and this chapter aims to attend to animals’ literal roles in these narratives. However, as

147 be attended to in order to contextualize the treatment of the animal. If this is done across a range of similar and different narratives, patterns will be observed that will aid in the clarification of principles as to animal treatment. A pattern in this section is that even the ascetic saints do not categorically condemn the use of animals, and they even engage in such use themselves, albeit to a more limited degree than those in the world. This limited degree has the result of lightening the burden on animals of being used frequently for human needs, but from the ascetic standpoint, there seems to be little qualitative difference in this regard between using animals and using plants. Use of anything is to be restrained in order to cultivate detachment; but this detachment, in turn, provides the freedom to focus on compassion for others rather than on one’s own desires. And our survey of this literature shows that the ascetics see animals as proper objects of their compassion, though not in a way that overrides genuine human needs.71 Returning to the sheepskin, in most narratives it is mentioned in passing, as if it has no particular ethical significance. Two versions of a story that goes further highlight the tension in the ascetic attitude regarding the use of animals versus the granting of mercy to them. In the version from the HMA, a hyena comes to Macarius of Egypt and licks his feet while he is praying in a desert cave. She leads him toward her cave, where he finds her blind cubs, prays over them, and returns them to her with their sight. The mother thanks him by bringing him the with so many methodological choices, the results can cut both ways. Reading animals literally will likely favor animal value in stories of saintly tenderness, but may disfavor it in stories of saintly harshness. The converse is true for reading animals symbolically, which has the tendency to disfavor animal value in stories of saintly tenderness, but to favor it in stories of saintly harshness. In each case, a symbolic reading neutralizes the meaning, for real animals, of the saint’s actions. Nonetheless, other factors bolster animal value, even in stories of saintly harshness in which the animal is read literally. 71 Part of the detachment cultivated consists of the awareness that what are commonly perceived as needs are, in truth, desires. It is only by going without something usually regarded as essential that the ascetic comes to this understanding. But even the ascetics do not neglect their own genuine needs, as shown in the stories in which saints receive the assistance of animals.

148 skin of a large ram and laying it at his feet. He “smile[s] at her as if at a kind and sensitive person, and taking the skin, spread[s] it under him.”72 Here, he shows sensitivity toward the hyena but no concern about the dead animal whose skin he receives. The version from the Lausiac History involves Macarius of Alexandria, who condemns the violence of killing the animal.73 When the hyena brings her cub to Macarius’ cell and the saint heals it, the grateful hyena thanks him by returning the next day with a skin from a newly killed sheep. The monk refuses it three times, finally acceding to her pleas to accept it only on the condition she not kill in the future or eat the sheep of the poor, and if she cannot find prey already dead, she come to him for bread. The hyena indicates her agreement, and in response, the saint glorifies God, “who gives understanding to the beasts” and has also revealed His ordering to him. Thus satisfied, he accepts the hyena’s gift and sleeps on it for the rest of his life. The hyena keeps her promise and often comes to him for bread if she cannot find an animal already dead.74 The differences between the two accounts can be seen in terms of the variation in style between the two sources as discussed above. The Macarius of the HMA is a more stylized kind of saint, in keeping with Harmless’s comparison of the HMA miniatures to icons; in contrast, the Macarius of the Lausiac History engages in an ethical conversation of sorts with the hyena, adding a more individual dimension and a structure more like a morality play.75 But the two texts

72

HMA 21.15-16, in Norman Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 110. This version of the story is recounted by the monk Paphnute, Macarius’ disciple. It must be noted, however, that the condemnation does not appear in the critical Greek text, which apparently explains why Waddell resorts to the Coptic text for the story. See Beasts and Saints, 13-15, 149, citing “a French translation of the Coptic text by Amélineau, Monastères de la Basse-Égypte, 233 ff.” Regarding the differences in the HMA and HL stories, see Harmless, Desert Christians, 293, 301 & n. 66-67. 74 Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 13-15; see also Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 258. 75 Harmless, Desert Christians, 298-99. Harmless explains the theological meaning of the HMA story precisely in terms of iconography: “For an ancient audience, this was not just a charming 73

149 can also be read in terms of the different theological perspectives they offer. While Macarius’ response in the HMA version is to accept the hyena’s display of gratitude according to the standards of her animal nature, his response in Palladius’ version is to call her above that nature. Palladius’ Macarius condemns the violence of killing the sheep for its skin but apparently endorses the reliance of the poor on sheep for their own sustenance. It would lead to absurd conclusions to extrapolate from his reaction categorical principles allowing the use of animals by humans but not by other animals (as if the latter had more stringent moral accountability than the former). Rather, what is happening is that Macarius’ likeness to Christ creates a space of heavenly peace and understanding that extends to the hyena, heightening her accountability. In relation to Macarius, she partakes of capacities beyond the natural limits of her animality, so that she is not excused for behavior that would be considered natural for her kind in “ordinary” situations. Accordingly, when she offers Macarius a gift suited only to the limits of her animal nature, he calls her higher. Once she accepts the calling, Macarius does not reject the skin “out of principle”; the deed has been done, and he accepts the hyena’s offering for the gratitude in which it was intended.76 This reading is possible against a backdrop of theological reflection regarding

tale. It was a story about holiness. Macarius’s holiness was such that the fissure between the human and animal world, a fissure wrought by Adam’s sin, had been healed. The author makes Macarius an icon of what unfallen humanity should have looked like—or, better, of what humanity now fully restored in Christ should look like.” Ibid., 293. 76 Theokritoff has a different, albeit perhaps complementary, interpretation on this version. She analyzes the accountability of Macarius rather than that of the hyena, saying his restrictions on her behavior are owing to the likelihood that “the gift of the skin threatened to implicate him in the cycle of predation. Behavior that might be acceptable for a wild animal on its own is unacceptable for a human who is struggling to restore in himself the image of God.” Living in God’s Creation, 123-24. Theokritoff is certainly right to focus on Macarius’ own efforts, but her placement of this story in a section titled “Paradise glimpsed” hints that the restoration of God’s image in Macarius is the necessary first step of a process in which Paradise spreads outward from him. She argues that “[t]he part played by predators illustrates well the ‘work in progress’

150 the exercise of human dominion effecting the deification of creation, as discussed in the prior chapter. The disparities in the two narratives highlight the broader tension in the eschatological formula: Palladius’ story stressing the “already” in the saint’s upward calling to non-human creation, and the HMA account stressing the “not yet” in his acceptance of the present operation of nature in the empirical world. In this sense, Harmless’s descriptions of the differences in the two texts may be partially inverted: the Lausiac History may also be seen as an “iconographic” account, showing the restoration of all creation in Christ present in the saint, thus providing the basis for the “morality play” and the possibility of the tale serving as spiritual medicine.77 More in line with the HMA account rather than that of Palladius, stories also exist in which the saints endorse and even participate in the use of animals as human food. Monks make fishing nets, and they cook and eat fish.78 Antony commands a would-be monk to buy meat and put it on his naked body. When dogs and birds come to tear at his flesh for the meat, Antony instructs him, “They who have renounced the world and want to have money are cut up like this by the demons who are making war on them.”79 His aim is to teach the novice a lesson on the spiritual life and the importance of detachment, and he does not scruple to give financial support to the butcher in furtherance of that aim. Other saints caution their disciples that abstention from

aspect” of the restoration of Paradise. Ibid., 123. Part of this progress is precisely the obedience of the animal to the saint, as detailed in this narrative. 77 Harmless, Desert Christians, 290, 298-99. 78 See, for example, AP Achilles 1, Gelasius 3, and Pistus 1 (regarding Abbas Or and Athre), in Ward, trans., Sayings: Alphabetical Collection, 28, 47, 198. As discussed in chapter 1 with reference to the taxonomy of the era, aquatic animals are seen as occupying a lower ontological plane than terrestrial and aerial animals, so that eating fish is not considered eating “meat” in the same way that eating beef or fowl is. 79 AP Antony 20, in Wortley, trans., Sayings, Systematic Collection, 89 (§ 6.1); also in Ward, trans., Sayings: Alphabetical Collection, 5.

151 meat is spiritually inferior to peace,80 charity,81 and humility.82 But even here, discernment is at play and defies neat systematization. Poemen refuses to eat meat when it is served at the home of a Christian friend. While not condemning his brethren for eating nor his host for serving it, he abstains lest his example of eating confuse or scandalize those who look to him for guidance.83 With more bluntness, monastic guests of Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria who accidentally begin eating his veal refuse to continue when they realize it is meat.84 But again, there is no condemnation of the hierarch for serving it, only an insistence on following their own rule. This insistence, however, comes at the risk of appearing to reject his hospitality, thus potentially causing offense. In each of these scenarios, different values are being balanced with phronesis: whether fostering charitable and harmonious human relationships, or giving spiritual instruction, or avoiding scandal, or simply keeping the monastic rule. But one consideration that is not expressed is a valuation of the lives of the animals on the plates. This issue appears more explicitly, and somewhat surprisingly, in Gregory of Nazianzus’ funeral oration for Basil. Praising the saintly pedigree of Basil’s family, he tells a story about Basil’s paternal grandparents (Basil and Macrina the Elder) while they were in the wilderness, fleeing the persecution of Maximinus for at least seven years: “delicately nurtured as they were,”

80

See Abba Hilarion’s agreement with Bishop Epiphanius of Cyprus that prompt reconciliation is superior to fasting. AP Epiphanius 4, in Ward, trans., Sayings: Alphabetical Collection, 57. 81 See Abba Hyperechios’ statement, “It is better to eat meat and drink wine and not to eat the flesh of one’s brethren through slander.” AP Hyperechios 4, in Ward, trans., Sayings: Alphabetical Collection, 238. 82 Abba Isidore says, “If you fast regularly, do not be inflated with pride, but if you think highly of yourself because of it, then you had better eat meat. It is better for a man to eat meat than to be inflated with pride and to glorify himself.” AP Isidore the Priest 4, in Ward, trans., Sayings: Alphabetical Collection, 106-07. 83 AP Poemen 170, in Ward, trans., Sayings: Alphabetical Collection, 190. 84 AP N 162, in Wortley, trans., Sayings, Systematic Collection, 52-53 (§ 4.76); AP Theophilus the Archbishop 3, in Ward, trans., Sayings: Alphabetical Collection, 81.

152 they felt “a distaste for ordinary food” and “a longing for something more appetising.” They asked why the God who fed the Israelites in the wilderness, “not only with necessaries, but even with luxuries,” should not also “feed us champions of piety with dainties to-day,” including “animals which have escaped the tables of the rich” and “birds [that] fly over our longing heads, any of which can surely be caught at the mere fiat of Thy will!” In answer to their prayer, animals willingly presented themselves as food offerings, “a complete banquet prepared without effort. . . . It might almost be imagined that they were annoyed at not having been summoned earlier.” Rather than having been hunted, “[t]hey were the prisoners of prayer and righteous petition.” Those they did not eat, “they sent away to the thickets, for another meal.”85 Needless to say, this is a different ethos from that of Macarius, Poemen, and the monastic guests of Archbishop Theophilus. Having familiarized ourselves with the stringent ascetic spirit of the desert fathers, as well as of Basil himself, we must make a significant paradigm shift to incorporate Gregory’s narrative of Basil’s own grandparents into the picture assembled so far. We have noted that praise of ancestors was a standard feature of classical eulogies, and that Gregory’s purpose was to praise Basil and thereby also rehabilitate his own standing with Basil’s family and disciples. His Funeral Oration spares no expense to this end.86 As with most of our other texts, a valuation of animals is not a priority for the author. But unlike most of the other texts, here Gregory is not setting out to extol the monastic life or offer guidance or inspiration to those who have chosen it. Not that he is uninterested; after all, Basil’s monastic disciples would have been in his audience, and just as importantly, the greater part of his rupture with Basil involved his feelings that the latter’s choice to pursue the episcopacy was an option 85

Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 43, Funeral Oration for St Basil 5-8 (NPNF2 7:396-97). 86 It may have taken over two and a half hours to preach in its final form. McGuckin, St Gregory of Nazianzus, 373.

153 for the world and an abandonment of their shared pursuit of the contemplative life. This being the case, how could Gregory make the ascetic life the centerpiece of his oration, when his main purpose is to honor Basil? Instead, he allows the persecution to serve as a proxy for asceticism here. Just as Christianity’s entry into the social mainstream prompted the ascetic flight to the desert to preserve the radical demands of the gospel, the relationship might be conceived in reverse: when Christianity is under persecution, the hostile society is serving the disciplinary function for the Christian that asceticism would serve in comfortable socio-political conditions. Seen in this light, Basil’s grandparents have been performing a long fast in the wilderness while fleeing the pagan imperial authorities, and their desire to satisfy their palates is understandable given the rigors they have endured. The voluntariness of the animals in the story has precedent in the traditional idea in agricultural societies of the “sacrificial contract”: that animals were willing victims, where sacrifices presupposed common interests between humans and animals in securing the bounty of the land and all its inhabitants.87 While pre-Christian in origin, there is no

87

Gilhus cites an unsympathetic explanation of this tradition: “James Serpell stresses how in relation to animals, we construct ‘a defensive screen of lies, myths, distortions and evasions, the sole purpose of which has been to reconcile or nullify the conflict between economic selfinterest, on the one hand, and sympathy and affection on the other[.’] In the Greco-Roman world, his point is illustrated by the way an animal about to be sacrificed had water or flour sprinkled on its head in order to make it nod and thus seemingly consent to its own slaughter.” Animals, Gods and Humans, 135, citing Serpell, In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 210. Theokritoff more charitably cites an explanation based not on “economic self-interest,” but survival itself in subsistence hunting cultures: “[T]he food on which your life depends, you harvest successfully only because that animal has sacrificed itself to feed you.” Living in God’s Creation, 133, quoting Fr Michael Oleksa, “The Confluence of Church and Culture,” in Constance J. Tarasar, ed., Perspectives on Orthodox Education (Syosset, N.Y.: Syndesmos/Department of Religious Education of the Orthodox Church in America, 1983), 11, referring to the Yup’ik whale hunt. To consider this understanding of animals sacrificing themselves to be “lies, myths, distortions and evasions” is to miss the point. Empirically, these cultures have to know that animals do not fancy being killed. The understanding of self-sacrifice serves to create solidarity between human and nonhuman creatures. Theokritoff explains that “[t]he ultimate service rendered by animals to man is

154 reason to believe the sensibilities rooted in this understanding would have vanished by Gregory’s time, even among Christians. In all, Gregory manages to fulfill his main purpose of praising Basil while not offending against the ascetic ideals he shares with much of his audience. But given his highly particularized situation and goal, it should not be surprising that this text departs from the more standard treatment of asceticism in most hagiographical sources. In terms of application, we might concede that if a Christian fleeing persecution today were to pray for meat and God were to respond by sending animals to offer themselves, that person may kill to eat. Other applications run the risk of crafting a general rule from a marginal exception, and that would be convenient indeed for those of us who enjoy meat but do not have the spiritual standing to secure live prey by our prayers, nor the stomach for killing it ourselves.

IV.

Tenderness and cooperation between saints and animals By now, we have seen several examples of restraint in eating, but not primarily for the

benefit that accrues to animals, and we have also seen varying degrees of usage of animals— mostly practical, but in Gregory’s example for the purpose of enjoyment. So far, only Palladius’ account of Macarius of Alexandria admonishing the hyena has depicted a saint explicitly condemning violence against animals. This section will survey many examples of saints who

to become food for him; and the saints seem to accept the eating of meat as a fact of the fallen world, even though many of them, as monks, do not participate in it. . . . Even in the world of the fall, animals serve the Lord by giving their lives for humans at his bidding.” Living in God’s Creation, 132-33. To see this view simply as a self-serving way to mollify the conscience is to overlook the appreciation of premodern cultures both for God’s providence for human life and for the animals whose lives are taken for the sake of human life—an appreciation that modern cultures would do well to regain. It is harder to regard flippantly a being that has sacrificed itself for the benefit of another, than a being that is a mere unit of production. Seeing how our own culture treats “food animals” as if they fit the latter category, it is a credit to premodern cultures that they understood them in the former manner.

155 relate to animals tenderly. Gilhus argues that “[p]art of the process of creating new boundaries [between humans and animals] was allowing humans to distance themselves from animals in order to approach closer to the divine,”88 and we have seen this assertion substantiated in the rationality-based division stressed by the patristic sources in the prior chapter. The saints discussed in this chapter provide few signs of viewing things differently, but their compassion toward animals shows that ontological distancing does not correspond to ethical disengagement or lack of sympathy. Some of these saints show animals hospitality as if they are human guests. Others heal animals or raise them from the dead. In some stories, animals are presented as having moral awareness and agency arising from their connection to a saintly figure, transcending the “mere” animality of their natures and sometimes even worshiping God or at least honoring Him in the person of the saint. They often render some service to the saint, seeming to do so freely and out of respect and affection. Finally, they also mourn the saint during or after his passing from the world. Short explains the importance of the theme of harmony in the saints’ lives: “Medieval authors looked back toward the original harmony of Eden as a model for their descriptions of holy persons dwelling in a new Paradise. . . . And they presented their heroes and heroines as participants in a new creation to be revealed fully only at the end of the ages.”89 The saints are able to regain Eden’s harmony as their own characters are transformed by the love of God and, in turn, transform the world around them: owing to their own gentleness and innocence, “[f]erocious animals become gentle in their presence, and wild creatures become tame. Such 88

Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 92. Short, “Restoring Eden,” 44. Short goes on to elaborate: “Such ‘tales of Paradise’ need not be considered mere religious nostalgia for a Golden Age lost forever in the past. Rather, medieval stories of saints living peacefully among wild creatures anticipate that ‘new earth’ to come. They speak of sharing now in the Kingdom of Peace lyrically described in Isaiah.” Ibid.

89

156 narratives depict the saint as the person who experiences in the present both the past innocence of the unfallen and the future glory of the redeemed.”90 In fulfillment of Psalm 37:11, harmony is regained through gentleness.91 The holy figure “overcomes those effects of sin which are fear, enmity among creatures, and the power to inflict death. Because of their intimate union with the Creator, the saints can live in harmony with all creatures.”92 Short’s summary is corroborated by Gilhus, who notes with respect to the desert narratives that animals often understand humans and behave in pious ways, being tamed, even to the point of becoming human-like, by their contact with the saints.93 But this recurring theme has different manifestations. A.

Saintly service to animals: mercy and hospitality

There are, first, stories telling of saints’ mercy, even hospitality, toward animals. We have seen that Theon’s asceticism goes beyond abstinence from meat and cannot be understood sufficiently in terms of concern for animals. This is not to say, however, that animals are of no concern to him. On the contrary, the HMA depicts him leaving his cell at night to visit and share his water with wild animals such as antelopes, gazelles, and wild asses, and it concludes, “These creatures delighted him always.”94 John Moschus writes of an old hermit who welcomes lions to his cave and feeds them from his lap.95 Similarly, another hermit, with an ox’s help, uses well water to create a desert garden for their sustenance. Once, a lion deferentially withdraws from

90

Ibid. Ibid., 48 (quoting Ps 37:11, “The gentle shall inherit the earth and shall delight in abundant peace”). 92 Ibid., 55-56. 93 Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 257. 94 HMA 6.4, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 68. 95 John Moschus, Pratum Spirituale 2 (PG 87:2851a-3116b, at 2853c). English quotations are from The Spiritual Meadow (trans. John Wortley; Cistercian Studies Series 139; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2008). 91

157 him but returns to eat dates from his hand.96 The Irish monk Columba goes out of his way to make provisions for a fatigued and wind-tossed crane flying to Iona, because she comes from his homeland of northern Ireland. He tells a brother to go to the shore at dawn and wait for her to fall on the beach at his feet, and to carry her to a nearby farm and take care of her for three days and nights so she will be strengthened for her return. Columba later blesses the brother for his “tending of this pilgrim guest.”97 These tales show animals in the role of guests as beneficiaries of the saints’ hospitality. In one of the earliest examples of what Alexander calls the “hermit and hunter” topos, the fourth-century saint Martin of Tours saves a hare fleeing hunting dogs, compelling the dogs by command to turn back from the chase. Alexander notes that an unusual feature of this particular story is that the benefit accrues strictly to the animal, which remains untamed and does not subsequently serve the saint.98 A contrast in this regard is the tenth-century story of Giles, a seventh- and eighth-century Greek hermit in France, who shelters a doe in his cave from the king’s huntsmen. The dogs refuse to approach, but a hunter shoots an arrow into the cave and accidentally wounds Giles, who declines the king’s offers of medical help and trusts God instead. Unlike Martin’s hare, the doe in this story has important instrumental value for the saint, as God

96

Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 3-5, 149, citing The Hermit’s Garden: Sulpicius Severus, Dialogus, I c. 13 (Corp. Script. Eccl. Lat.). 97 Ibid., 44-45, 150, citing St. Columba and the Crane: Adamnan, Vita S. Columbae (ed. J. T. Fowler), I. c. 48. 98 Alexander, Saints and Animals, 16, 118, citing Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi, PL 20, cols. 183222, at Dialogue 2, ch. 9, col. 208, in F. R. Hoare, trans., The Western Fathers (Longo 1954), 115. Alexander says that besides this story, Martin’s interactions with nature show him to be “exercising power over nature, not sympathy with it.” Ibid., n. 63, quoting Clare Stancliffe, St Martin and His Hagiographer (Oxford 1983), 156. Alexander and Stancliffe make an implicit assumption that exercising authority and showing sympathy are opposites. But this assumption is just that, and only that, without a demonstration that Martin is somehow acting out of character when he saves the hare.

158 previously sent her to nourish him, and he even prays “the Lord to save the nurse he had provided.”99 Although this is not a denial of intrinsic value in the doe as a creature of God, the emphasis here does fall on the doe’s function of sustaining the saint. The stories run both ways: some involving mercy to the animal because of concern for a human, and some involving mercy to the animal for its own sake or the sake of its animal companions. The sixth-century Briton saint Malo, out of pity for a distressed swineherd who accidentally killed a sow that had been destroying the crops and who now feared his master’s anger, prays to God and lays his staff on the sow’s ear, raising her.100 If the benefit to the sow comes through Malo’s concern for a human, another story shows his concern for animals in their own right. While pruning vines, he removes his cloak, and a wren lays an egg on it. “And knowing that God’s care is not far from the birds, since not one of them falls on the ground without the Father,” he leaves his cloak there until the eggs hatch.101 The entire time the cloak is there, no rain falls on it. The story goes on to say that those who hear of the wonder glorify God’s mercy.102 Malo sees his care for the birds as reflecting God’s mercy, and others understand it the same way. Like Malo, the Mercian princess saint Werburga [Werburgh] of Chester raises an animal from the dead, but unlike Malo, she does so out of pity for its animal companions, rather than for the human responsible for its death. The corn at her farm is being ravaged by wild geese, so she instructs the steward to tell them to follow him and then to shut them inside the

99

Jacobus de Voragine, ed., The Golden Legend 130 (trans. William Granger Ryan; Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012), 533-34. See also Alexander, Saints and Animals, 118-19, citing Vita Sancti Aegidii, AASS 1 September, pp. 284-304, at ch. 2, nos. 11-17, p. 301. 100 Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 53-54, 150, citing St. Malo and the Sow: Sigebert of Gembloux, Vita S. Maclovii, c. 14 (Migne, P.L. CLX. c. 738 ff.). 101 Ibid., 55, 150, citing St. Malo and the Wren: Sigebert of Gembloux, Vita S. Maclovii, c. 15 (Migne, P.L. CLX. c. 738 ff.). 102 Ibid.

159 house. Thinking she is joking, he goes to the field, and they follow him with their necks bent down. Undeterred by this wonder, the steward eats one of them. At dawn, Werburga comes to chastise the geese, but when she dismisses them, they circle her feet in distress. God reveals her steward’s theft, and she orders him to bring her the goose’s bones. When she makes a gesture, the skin, flesh, and feathers return to the bones, and the bird flies into the air, the others following after making “obeisance to their lady and deliverer.”103 Another healing story is told of Ciaran, an early Irish saint, who, when only a boy, prays for a small bird taken by a hawk. As a result, the hawk returns with its marred prey half dead, but it is completely healed by Ciaran’s pitying gaze.104 These tales portray saints recognizing the affection and pain experienced by animals as genuine opportunities for extending God’s mercy. B.

Animal moral or spiritual agency

In line with the geese honoring Werburga as their rescuer, some stories of mercy or hospitality involve moral or spiritual agency on the animal’s part, but this agency is always connected to recognition of its Creator in a saint.105 One hermit feeds a she-wolf from his leftover bread every day at mealtime. When he is absent one day at the regular time, she arrives and steals a loaf. On his return, he notices the torn basket and crumbs and knows the culprit. The guilty wolf stays away for six days, but the hermit prays, and she returns on the seventh but stands away, looking down with shame. The hermit calls her and strokes her head, then gives her 103

Ibid., 68-69, 150, citing St. Werburga and the Wild Geese: William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, IV. 172 (Chronicles and Memorials). 104 Ibid., 99-100, 151, citing Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae. 105 The observation of animal agency is also made by Hobgood-Oster, as already noted, but she sees an apparently irreconcilable opposition between animal agency and a hierarchy with humans in the higher position, the former being present in the hagiographies, and the latter being present in the bestiaries. Holy Dogs and Asses, 79-80. As observed here and elsewhere in this chapter, however, the hagiographies themselves do not present animal agency in an egalitarian context, but in a hierarchical one, the agency always appearing as a response to the human saint.

160 two loaves. Having received forgiveness, the she-wolf returns regularly.106 What is remarkable in this story is that the wolf is aware of her act as a theft. She is depicted as conscious, in her own way, of receiving the bread as a gift rather than an entitlement she may take for herself. A particularly involved narrative concerns a magnanimous lion and Jerome (apparently in his gentler moments). The lion comes limping to Jerome and his monks one evening. Although many monks flee out of fear, Jerome goes to meet him as if greeting a guest. The lion shows him his wounded paw, and the monks follow Jerome’s instructions to bathe and heal it.107 The grateful lion stays at the monastery and behaves like a domestic animal. Believing God sent the lion to show the brethren His care, Jerome tells the monks to find it fitting work. The lion is assigned to guard a wood-carrying donkey from predators, but when he falls asleep one day, merchants steal the donkey. On waking, the distressed lion roams around roaring for the rest of the day, trying to find the donkey. He returns to the monastery and waits at the gate, but Jerome and the monks think he has eaten the donkey, so they withhold his ration and scathingly tell him to go finish off the donkey and satisfy his greed. But the brothers go to the pasture and find no evidence of violence. Jerome therefore tells them to treat the lion as before, but to have him perform the donkey’s task of carrying the wood. When the lion has finished his work one day, he goes to the field to try to discover something about the donkey. There, he sees men approaching with camels led by the donkey. The lion roars and charges at them without hurting anyone, but he makes the people flee and then drives the camels to the monastery. Jerome instructs his monks to take the burdens off the camels and the donkey, to wash their feet and feed them as 106

Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 6-7, 149, citing The Penitent Wolf: Sulpicius Severus, Dialogus, I. c. 14 (Corp. Script. Eccl. Lat.). 107 Theokritoff notes that in stories in which saints heal animals, “the remarkable element in the story is the animal’s trust. Intuitively it recognizes that here the ‘fear and dread’ of man (see Gen 9.2), which came in the wake of the fall, no longer applies.” Living in God’s Creation, 135.

161 guests, and to wait and see what God reveals. To the astonishment of the monks, the lion prostrates before them, seemingly asking forgiveness for a crime he did not commit.108 The lion goes beyond justice and demonstrates charity and humility, taking responsibility for a sin he did not commit, and thus shows himself to be a model of monastic virtue. Throughout the story, Jerome treats him as a morally accountable human being, very much like one of his monks. A story of the Irish saint Ciaran of Saigir says explicitly what the story of Jerome says implicitly. Ciaran’s first “monks” are the animals of the forest: first a fierce boar that flees from Ciaran but returns after having been tamed by God and gathers twigs and grass to build a cell; then a fox, badger, wolf, and deer. When the fox, “abandoning his vow” and returning to his animal nature, steals Ciaran’s shoes to chew on them, Ciaran sends the badger to bring him back. Going to the fox’s den, he finds the fox about to chew the abbot’s slippers, so he bites his ears and tail and makes him return to the monastery to do penance. There, Ciaran asks the fox why he did a deed unbecoming for a monk, especially when there is enough food for everyone. He says, moreover, “[I]f thou hadst a longing, as is thy nature, to eat flesh, Almighty God would have made it for thee from the roots of these trees, if we had asked Him.” This rebuke by Ciaran contains a fascinating treatment of nature: the fox’s “natural” desire to eat flesh is not condemned; rather, by noting that God would have made flesh miraculously from tree roots to satisfy the fox’s “natural” appetite, Ciaran indicates both that God blesses the fox’s nature and that He is calling the fox to live out his nature in a new Christ-like mode, relying on God rather than on amoral instincts to satisfy natural inclinations. The fox accepts the lesson, doing penance by fasting until Ciaran lets him eat, and he lives well with the others from then on. Ciaran’s

108

Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 30-38, 149, citing St. Jerome and the Lion and the Donkey: Vita Divi Hieronymi (Migne, P.L. XXII. c. 209 ff.).

162 monastery grows with disciples from all around, but the tamed animals remain there, to the saint’s delight.109 They are presented as rising above their merely sentient natures, through contact with Ciaran, and partaking in the activities of rational human nature, much as humans partake in the activities of the divine nature through the experience of God. Another anecdote with the same theological feature is that of Bishop Moling, who keeps wild and tame animals “in honour of their Maker” and lets them eat out of his hand. Among them is another fox, which steals the monks’ hen and eats it. They tell Moling, who accuses the fox of being more treacherous than the rest of the animals. Attempting to do right by the standards of his own nature, the fox steals a hen from a nuns’ convent under Moling’s care and brings her safe to Moling, who smiles and notes that he has “offered rapine to atone for theft.” He commands him to return the hen unharmed and to follow the other animals’ example and not steal again. The fox obeys, but another fox steals a book from the monks and hides it in a cave to chew later. On his return to the monastery, he is caught eating stolen honeycomb. The brethren accuse him to Moling of stealing the book, and the bishop says to free him. Then he calls the fox “wise and crafty” and orders him to return the book quickly. The fox puts it on the ground before Moling, bending down as if seeking forgiveness, which is granted with a command never to touch a book again. Grateful for his forgiveness, the fox remains obedient, even to the point of running away if anyone shows him a book in jest.110 This kind of story, like that of Ciaran’s animal “monks,” presents animals in a light similar to humans: having predispositions connected to the modes in which they currently exist in their natures under the world’s fallen conditions, but which are destined to be transformed as they acquire a Christ-like mode of existence.

109 110

Ibid., 101-06, 151, citing Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae. Ibid., 107-09, citing Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae.

163 Another story involving animal moral agency is that of the fifth-century Syrian saint Simeon the Stylite (the Elder) healing a dragon that lives near his pillar in a place no grass can grow. The dragon is blinded by a tree branch in his right eye, and he approaches Simeon and forms himself into a circle, bowing his head as if asking pardon. When Simeon looks at him, the branch falls out of his eye. People glorify God but still flee out of fright. The dragon coils himself up in one place until the people leave, and then worships at the monastery gate for two hours, returning home without hurting anyone.111 He is able not only to recognize whatever evil he has done and to repent to gain Simeon’s mercy, but even worships in gratitude.112 Thus, related to the theme of moral agency, but going a step beyond it, is the theme of animals engaged in worship of God or veneration of a saint. One tale involves Cuthbert of Lindisfarne being spied on by a brother from his monastery as he holds vigil in the sea at night. Near dawn, he kneels on the beach to pray, and two otters come from the sea and prostrate before him, breathing on his feet to warm them, and drying them with their fur. They go back to the sea 111

Ibid., 22-23, 149, citing St. Simeon Stylites: Vita by Antonius his disciple, c. X. (Migne, P.L. LXXIII. c. 1003). 112 Alexander reads the dragon in this story in an exclusively symbolic sense, going so far as to suggest that its repentance carries “the slight whiff of Origenist optimism over the possible redemption of even the most evil of creation.” Saints and Animals, 3-5. While the dragon’s symbolic association with evil surely informs the background of the story, Alexander’s reading is an example of Gilhus’ point that the narrow traits symbolically associated with animals circle back to inform our understanding of the real animal. For Alexander, the dragon symbolizes evil to such an extent that it is assumed to be a diabolical force. He does allow for the alternative symbolism of the dragon as a human being, but its role as strictly symbolic remains. Ibid. While these symbolic readings are not illegitimate, it is also legitimate to see it simply as a reptilian creature of God that has harmed people, as its kind is wont to do, but comes to its own kind of understanding and repents of its actions through Simeon’s influence. Ruling out “Origenist” assumptions, this reading would see the dragon as more like a human than a demon, but it is still a dragon doing the repenting. No doubt, dragons or serpents are more “loaded” with symbolic baggage than are herbivorous mammals, so the tendency to jump to a symbolic reading is understandable. It should not, however, rule out the possibility of interpreting the stories as involving real reptile subjects. In other words, there should be no double standard in which herbivorous mammals are seen as mammals, but fierce reptiles are seen as demons.

164 after receiving Cuthbert’s blessing.113 An account of Brendan the Navigator tells of him and his monks celebrating the feast of St Paul while on a ship. Brendan sings loudly, but the monks ask him not to disturb the fierce fishes below, which they can see because of the clarity of the water. The abbot chastises and mocks them for letting fear overcome faith, saying only God should be feared. Brendan continues celebrating the Mass, and the sea monsters begin to come up and follow the ship, making merry for the feast and leaving only after the service is over.114

113

Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 59-61, 150, citing St. Cuthbert. Animals departing after receiving a saint’s blessing is not an uncommon trope in these stories, but it is subject to varying interpretations. For example, Hobgood-Oster discusses Francis of Assisi preaching to birds, which do not leave until they receive his blessing, and then fly in four directions to signify the preaching of the Cross throughout all the world. She comments, “Of course, the Christian imperialistic implications and difficulties of this passage are apparent, but the amazing indication of birds as committing their lives to God shifts anthropocentric paradigms significantly. St. Francis was neither the first nor the last to recognize that birds and other creatures comprise a congregation worthy of preaching. They not only hear the word but also are capable of response to it. This active response to the word of God is an important concept in Christianity. The birds are infinitely capable of worship and, apparently, of belief in God.” Holy Dogs and Asses, 68. While Hobgood-Oster is right to note that Francis’ preaching indicates an inherent value in the birds as creatures of God, she neglects the significance of the birds waiting for their blessing and dismissal from the saint. The fact that the birds respond does not negate “anthropocentric” hierarchy, but can legitimately be understood as confirming it. The birds are indeed presented as having agency, but it is manifested, even actualized, through their contact with the saint. To say they are “infinitely capable of worship and, apparently, of belief in God” puts enthusiasm before caution, as the story does not justify such an unrestrained conclusion. A second way in which Hobgood-Oster misses the mark on this question is her assumption that a saint’s blessing of animals is “an action that indicates [the saint] understood the animals worthy of blessing and the animals understood the significance of the ritual.” (Here she is discussing St Blaise, who as a hermit is visited in his cave by wild animals seeking his blessing.) Ibid., 75. But there exist liturgical blessings for inanimate objects as well. Moreover, whether the animals understand the significance of the blessing is unclear, and perhaps irrelevant. Animals, like human infants, can take action without understanding its significance in a discursive sense. In the Orthodox tradition, the fact that children receive the Eucharist before “the age of reason” puts in question the legitimacy of the criterion of “underst[anding] the significance of the ritual.” So HobgoodOster may be trying to prove too much here, setting a hurdle that she tries unsuccessfully to clear, but that need not be there in the first place. 114 Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 111-12, 151, citing Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae.

165 One saint often recounted as receiving honor and affection from animals, and as reciprocating with care and affection, is Kevin, of sixth- and early seventh-century Ireland. While a hermit in a secluded glen, he is visited daily by a cow, which licks his clothes and is thereby granted abundant milk. God sends her in order to manifest the saint, despite Kevin’s desire for solitude and anonymity. When the herdsman finds her licking Kevin’s coat, he verbally abuses both the cow and Kevin. But after he drives the cows back to the farm, they go mad, the mothers not knowing their own calves and nearly killing them. The master tells the herdsman to return to Kevin, and he does so and begs his forgiveness. Kevin secures a (moot) promise of secrecy and grants his forgiveness, sprinkling holy water on the cows and returning them to normal. But his fame spreads, and he eventually founds a monastery in the glen. Once he has enough monks to run it, he returns to his hermit’s life, and wild animals come and drink from his hands. Years later, a hunted boar takes refuge in his place of prayer. The hounds refuse to enter and lie down outside. Seeing Kevin praying with birds perched on his hands and shoulders and flying around him, and in response to receiving his blessing, the huntsman lets the boar go.115

115

Ibid., 123-30, 151, citing Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae. The tale continues that “there were times that the boughs and the leaves of the trees would sing sweet songs to St. Kevin, that the melody of heaven might lighten his sore travail.” Ibid., 130. This attribution of apparently sentient and even intelligent activities to plants seems to demand a spiritual reading and thus to call into question whether the things said in these stories about animals should be understood in a similarly spiritual sense. Taken literally according our way of thinking of trees singing, the activity is not only intellectual but biological, requiring certain parts (e.g., vocal cords) that plants do not have. For plants to have these parts and engage in this activity would involve a change of nature. Thus, there is no way to make sense of the statement other than to understand it spiritually—as God revealing His glory through the trees, thereby moving Kevin to praise. It is the same with Jesus’ statement to the Pharisees that if His disciples’ praise were silenced, immediately the stones would cry out (Luke 19:37-40). But a spiritual understanding is not something standing for something else, as in a metaphor. Theokritoff expresses the proper interpretation in a discussion of anthropomorphic features in the icon: “Man’s engagement with the environment in which he lives is expressed in the icon when elements of nature—a river, the sun or moon—are given as it were animate features or depicted with a face. This should not be

166 Kevin’s concern for animals is so great that, when an angel tells him God will level the mountains into meadows at his request, he replies boldly that God can benefit the place some other way, and that he does not want to disturb God’s creatures—and his own companions— which “would be sad of this that thou hast said.”116 Finally, there is the literally “iconic” legend of Kevin, reminiscent of the story of the wren laying an egg on Malo’s cloak: while Kevin is kneeling in prayer with his hand outstretched through the window, a blackbird lays an egg in his taken to mean that other creatures are swallowed up in human identity, deprived of their own reality. Rather it indicates, in a visual language accessible to humans, that the elements of this world are not forever inert and impersonal. They too bear the stamp of the divine Word, in whose image we ourselves are created. In some way, mysterious to us, they too participate in relationship, serving God and praising him.” Living in God’s Creation, 150. So to portray the sun and moon with human faces is not to say they are like humans, but it is to point to a reality beyond the material one we see. Elsewhere, she speaks of places, including the rocks and plants in them, as being transformed and sanctified by the saint who receives them as God’s gift. Ibid., 142. These instances involve the saint perceiving the logoi of created things, and how they point to God. Theokritoff argues that scriptural, patristic, and liturgical speech regarding creation praising God is not a mere metaphor for a theological truth, but a reality for those with the ability to perceive it, the “reality of a world created to praise God simply by being.” Ibid., 144-46. While it is important that the created things we customarily consider inert praise God in a mystical way that is real and not merely metaphorical, this understanding by itself may not solve the problem for how to understand the role of animals in similar stories. If their actions are viewed the same way, we may understand the general value of animals as part of God’s creation, but we will not reach an understanding of their value in their particular natures. To reach such an understanding, we must attend to the ways that the animals in these stories are acting within their natural sentient capacities: ways that are extraordinary not because they are beyond the capacities of their natures, but because they go beyond the customary ways they express them. To revisit a theme from the last chapter, we are dealing not with a change of nature, but a change of the mode of expressing one’s nature. Just as through communion with Christ, humans can live in a divine mode without themselves having a divine nature, so also through communion with humans, the animals in these stories often live in a human mode without themselves having a human nature, made possible by the fact that their natural sentient capacities place them ontologically closer to humans than are vegetables or minerals. Stories of plants or rocks being heard praising God should lead us to an appreciation of all created things as having value beyond the instrumental. Ibid., 143. But they should not lead us to assume all kinds of creatures have the same value, no more than they should lead us to assume all kinds of creatures have the same capacities. Theokritoff acknowledges that “[o]bviously in the case of inanimate nature, there is no question of direct communication.” Ibid., 127. Creatures must be considered both in their generic nature as creatures of God, and in their specific natures as distinct kinds of creatures. 116 Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 136, 151, citing Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae.

167 palm. He is moved by such tenderness toward the creature that he holds his position until the egg is hatched. Therefore, he is commemorated in icons with a blackbird in his outstretched hand.117 C.

Animal service to saints 1.

Animals cooperating with saints

John Moschus’ Spiritual Meadow includes stories of animals, both wild and tame, serving saints in various ways. Poemen sleeps in a cave during a cold night and is kept warm by a lion that comes to sleep beside him.118 A couple of stories regarding tame animals suggest not just affection or acquiescence, but incredible intelligence. One abbot sends his dog to guide a brother to a monastery he has never visited before, the abbot specifying to the dog the name of the monastery where he is to go.119 Similarly, other hermits saddle a donkey and send him to a specific gardener to get vegetables. The donkey goes alone and knocks on the gate with his head, the gardener comes out and loads him with vegetables, and the donkey returns with the load. He makes the trip daily for the monks but will not serve anyone else.120 Similarly, a story from the Lausiac History tells of Macarius of Alexandria running out of water and bread in the desert and miraculously encountering an antelope herd that provides him with milk for the rest of his journey, one neglecting even her own calf for Macarius’ sake.121

117

Ibid., 137, 151, citing St. Kevin and the Blackbird: Giraldus Cambrensis, Topographia Hibernica, II. 28 (Opera, ed. Brewer, v. 116). 118 Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 167. But there is a twist: Poemen knows that because of a prior occasion of mercilessness, when he did not save a stranger who was eaten by his dogs, he also will be eaten by wild animals, and it comes to pass as he predicts. So this is not an example of sentimentality, but of animals serving God’s will. 119 Ibid. 157. 120 Ibid. 158. 121 Palladius, Lausiac History 18.9. The critical edition of the Greek text is in Cuthbert Butler, ed., The Lausiac History of Palladius: A Critical Discussion, together with Notes on Early Egyptian Monachism (Texts and Studies 6.2; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1967), at 50:17-51:4. The section

168 The common thread in all of these stories is that the animals serve the saint through what appears to be natural inclination, but not “natural” as we are accustomed to observing animal nature in the fallen world. The wild animals spontaneously render service, and the tame ones are trained to do so, but they show a nearly human ability to communicate and follow complex instructions. For both kinds, the relationship to the saint is the critical factor triggering the service. The wild animals instinctively know the saint’s needs and accommodate them, and the tame ones receive instructions that, while extraordinary in their content, are ordinary in their context (the relationship between master and tame animal). All of these stories have more of a flavor of cooperation than of unilateral command. This is not always the case, however, and “command” stories will be examined in the next major section, after we have reviewed other kinds of “cooperation” stories. 2.

Animals honoring departing or departed saints

Another recurring motif in this genre is that animals mourn the death of a saint or serve him in his departure. When Columba is aware that his time of passing is at hand, a horse that used to carry his milk pails comes and leans his head on the saint’s breast in mourning, “knowing as I believe from God Himself—for to God every animal is wise in the instinct his Maker hath given him—that his master was soon to go from him, and that he would see his face no more: and his tears ran down as a man’s might into the lap of the Saint, and he foamed as he wept.”122 When a monk wants to drive the horse away, Columba responds in a manner somewhat number (.9) is not in the Greek text but in the English translation, which can be found in The Lausiac History (trans. Robert T. Meyer; ACW 34; Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1965), 61. For a discussion of this incident, see also Tim Vivian, “The Peaceable Kingdom: Animals as Parables in the Virtues of Saint Macarius,” Anglican Theological Review 85:3 (2003): 477-91, at 487, citing Life of Macarius of Alexandria (Coptic Palladiana) 1. 122 Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 49, 150, citing St. Columba and the White Horse: op. cit. III. c. 23.

169 reminiscent of Christ’s words to the disciples regarding the little children (Matt 19:14, Luke 18:16), saying to allow the horse to stay because of his love, and noting that God revealed the saint’s coming death to “this dumb and irrational beast,” not to the monk with a “reasonable soul.”123 Columba blesses the horse, which then departs.124 Some may consider his observation to be backhanded praise for the animal at best, but behind his language is a declaration of God’s provision of knowledge to animals in a unique way, giving them their own kind of agency. The horse, despite its “irrational” status,125 has a sense of Columba’s imminent departure, whereas no monks aside from Columba himself are granted this knowledge directly from God.126 Moschus’ Spiritual Meadow contains another moving story of an animal mourning a saint. The tale is substantially similar to that of Jerome and the lion, but the elder is Gerasimos, who names the lion Jordanes. For five years after a donkey incident similar to the one recounted above, Jordanes never leaves the elder. But the lion is finally away when Gerasimos dies, and he looks for him on his return. The new abbot tells Jordanes that his master has passed to the Lord. The lion refuses to eat, but keeps searching and roaring inconsolably. The abbot leads him to the

123

Ibid. Ibid. 125 It is interesting to note that in modern Greek, the word άλογο means “horse,” reflecting a later Greek development. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (9th ed.; rev. Henry Stuart Jones; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), “ἄλογος,” definition II, 72. 126 Indeed, the analogy to Christ and the children may leave us something to consider beyond rhetorical similarity. Though members of a “rational” species, children’s rationality is not fully developed (which we may presume to be the reason for the disciples’ annoyance), yet Christ says we must become like them to enter heaven. Though the rational faculty is seen to set humans above other animals, the mode in which fallen adults exercise it (calling to mind Hume’s characterization of reason as a slave to the passions) would appear to be often a hindrance to their ascent to God, rather than an asset. This is fundamentally a point about the effects of the fall, however, not a point about ontology. The problem lies in the exercise of reason, not in the rational faculty itself. An analogy might be drawn to Maximus the Confessor’s concept of the natural will (assumed by Christ as a faculty proper to human nature) versus the “gnomic” will (unassumed by Christ as a fallen mode of using the natural faculty). 124

170 elder’s grave and keels there, then stretches out on the grave and weeps. Seeing this, Jordanes lies down, beating his head on the earth and roaring, and stays until he dies. The story ends by specifying: “This did not take place because the lion had a rational soul, but because it is the will of God to glorify those who glorify him—and to show how the beasts were in subjection to Adam before he disobeyed the commandment and fell from the comfort of paradise.”127 Animals not only mourn the saint, but also serve him near the time of his departure. A tale of a saintly king of the Britons, Teudiric, involves two stags sent by God to carry him on a bier while he is dying from a Saxon spear. Finally, they rest in a meadow near the sea, and a spring comes up and sweeps the bier away. The stags depart on Teudiric’s command, and he commends his soul to God and dies there.128 Again, the animals are given special knowledge by God for the sake of honoring the saint while he departs this life. In Jerome’s Life of St Paul of Thebes, Antony intends to bury the Christ-like hermit, Paul, in the desert but has no spade. But two lions appear and stop by Paul’s body, wagging their tails, lying at his feet, and roaring. Then they dig a grave with their paws, after which they approach Antony with bowed heads, “as though to ask the reward of their work,” and lick his hands and feet. He sees they are asking a blessing, so he praises Christ that even the dumb beasts can feel God, and he asks Him to give unto them as He knows. Then they depart on his signal, and he buries Paul.129 Gilhus notes that in many tales like this one, it is important that animals, while displaying a human-like understanding, do not externalize it through the unique capacity of speech. These lions, for example, seem to understand human language without themselves talking, and thus, 127

Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 107; Wortley, 88. Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 41-43, 150, citing The Death of King Teudiric: Book of Llan Dâv (edited by J. G. Evans and J. Rhys), p. 141. 129 Jerome, Vita S. Pauli (VP), in Waddell, trans., Desert Fathers, 42-43. This story is set during the persecutions of the mid-third century. Ibid., 35. 128

171 “[n]o breach of theological decorum takes place,” as animals are still not presented as having the rationality that would allow them to participate in salvation.130 Conversely, the Acts of Paul and Thekla seems to effect such a breach, and is consequently seen by Jerome as apocryphal.131 In this story, a she-lion that is supposed to kill Thekla in the arena licks her feet,132 and another falls at her feet and then defends her to the death against other beasts.133 At other times, no beasts will touch Thekla because she is a Christian,134 and ultimately a talking lion is baptized.135

130

Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 258. It is debatable to what extent speech itself is the hallmark of a creature’s inclusion in God’s ultimate scheme of salvation. Gilhus makes an unfounded assumption in automatically connecting the two. 131 Ibid., citing Jerome’s Lives of Illustrious Men, 7. Moreover, Pope Gelasius inserted the Acts of Paul and Thekla into his decree against apocryphal books. See William Hone, Introductory Note to The Life of the Holy Martyr Thecla of Iconium, Equal to the Apostles (ed. William Hone; trans. Jeremiah Jones, 1693-1724) [cited 29 September 2014]. Online: http://www.fordham.edu /halsall/basis/thecla.asp. However, this prescription has not prevented many details of the story of Thekla from having been received into the wider tradition, nor Thekla from being venerated as a saint. 132 Acts of Paul and Thecla 8:3-4 (trans. Jeremiah Jones), n.p. [cited 29 September 2014]. Online: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/thecla.asp. 133 Ibid. 9:1-4 (trans. Jeremiah Jones), n.p. [cited 29 September 2014]. Online: http://www .fordham.edu/halsall/basis/thecla.asp. 134 Ibid. 9:10, 9:17-18 (trans. Jeremiah Jones), n.p. [cited 29 September 2014]. Online: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/thecla.asp. But this is not uniformly the case for martyrdom stories. For example, an account of martyrdoms in Carthage in 203 presents a mixed picture of animals’ reaction to Christians. In the main, the animals in the arena behave in the indiscriminately violent fashion one might expect. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 19 (ed. and trans. Thomas J. Heffernan; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 133-34. (This source also includes the Latin text. Both the Latin and Greek can be found in Cornelius Ioannes Maria Ioseph Van Beek, ed., Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis 1 (Noviomagi: Dekker & Van de Vegt S.A., 1936).) A martyr is eventually killed with one bite of a leopard, but this is just as he would have it. Passion 21; Heffernan, 134-35. Perpetua herself is mauled by a wild cow (said to have been prepared by the devil), but only dies by the sword, and willingly. Passion, 20-21; Heffernan, 134-35. In this case, the animals are unwittingly serving the glory of God through the making of martyrs, but there seems to be no question of animal agency. 135 See Tamás Adamik, “The baptized lion in the Acts of Paul,” The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (ed. Jan N. Bremmer; Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1996), 6074, at 61, quoting Ethiopic text (trans. E.J. Goodspeed). If lack of speech does not per se exclude an animal from salvation, participation in baptism does per se include it. It is no happenstance that baptism and the rare speaking ability on the animal’s part go together. Perhaps it is the

172 3.

Animals showing mercy toward saints

The ferocious beasts’ aversion to harming Thekla introduces a final sub-theme for this section: mercy shown by the animal to the saint, rather than the reverse configuration we have treated thus far. Moschus tells of an elder, Paul of Rome, whose mule strikes a boy with its hoof and kills him. On finding out, he considers himself a murderer and becomes a hermit grieving for his sin. He goes to a lion’s den and provokes it daily so it will eat him, but it leaves him alone. He becomes convinced of God’s forgiveness and returns to his monastery after lying across the lion’s path to the river in a failed attempt to have it eat him on its way to get a drink: “as though it were a human, it very carefully stepped over the elder without even touching him.”136 The lion shows something like reason, not so much the discursive ability commonly associated with the word today, as a sharing in the will of the divine Logos: because God does not want Paul to die, the lion does not kill him. A monk named Pachon, struggling with the logismos of porneia, would rather die like a beast than live like one because of bodily passion, so he lies in a hyena’s cave so he will be eaten. The hyenas smell and lick him but then leave. After being tempted further, he seeks out death another way by going to the desert, finding an asp, and applying it to his genitals as being the cause of his temptation, but the asp does not bite him. His attempts to find death by means of dangerous beasts having failed, God reveals to him that He allowed the temptations so he would not become boastful, but would rely on divine help.137 In these narratives, the “dumb beasts” sometimes prove to be more aware of God and His will than are humans, and regardless of whether they are able to speak or whether they are explicitness of such an inclusion, removing all tolerable ambiguity, that is too much for Jerome to accept. 136 Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 101; Wortley, 81. 137 Palladius, Lausiac History 23.3-6. In addition to the Meyer translation, an English translation of this story can also be found in Wortley, trans., Sayings, Systematic Collection, 87-88 (§ 5.54).

173 included in salvation as individuals, they are able to recognize their Creator in the saints and are proper recipients of God’s mercy and kindness through them. In like manner, they sometimes serve as vessels of God’s mercy and kindness toward the saints. It is another question, however, whether anything in this section mandates they are entitled to mercy and kindness from humans, and if so, what the scope of such an entitlement might be.

V.

Saintly command and animal obedience As we have seen, the texts present the saints showing not only kindness to animals, but

also a willingness to use them: sheepskins for clothing, sleeping pads, and carrying sacks; fish for food; a dog for a guide; and a donkey for delivery service. The first two examples are within the range or ordinary human use. The last two indicate uncommonly heightened intelligence on the part of the animal, combined with a unique relationship with their masters. Short names three elements in stories of the twelfth-century saint William of Malavalle, which also apply to the stories in this chapter: “the saint’s familiarity and care toward creatures; his power of command over them; and their reverence toward him.”138 While all three are often interrelated, they are not necessarily so. Animal affection for a saint is commonplace, but obedience to a saint covers a wider range of situations, often not explicable in terms of affection. The most important quality is the obedience of the saint to the Creator, which results in the obedience of creatures to the saint.139 Gilhus observes that a typical mark of the saint is that his power is manifested both by

138

Short, “Restoring Eden,” 46. “The harmony existing between saint and wild creatures has a special characteristic: it is based on a relationship of obedience. . . . The saint, because of obedience to the Creator, receives obedience and respect from other creatures.” Ibid., 56. But it is not only the animals that obey the saint; the elements may as well. As Theokritoff says, “Obviously in the case of inanimate nature, there is no question of direct communication. So this authority above all reminds us that in the

139

174 killing or driving away harmful animals and by taming or being served by wild animals.140 It is to these two manifestations that this section and the next are devoted.141 One narrative tells of Helle who, tired from carrying a heavy load, calls to a nearby herd of wild donkeys in Jesus’ name, ordering that one of them help him. In response, one goes to him and carries both him and his pack the rest of the way.142 Along similar lines, one of the clearest (and most amusing) examples of a saint exacting miraculous obedience is the tale of a hermit near the Jordan who goes into a cave and finds a lion that roars and gnashes its teeth at him. The hermit says, “What is annoying thee? There is room enough here to hold both me and thee. And if thou likest it not, arise and go hence.” The lion gets up at once and leaves.143 Though lacking in affection, it is still compelled to obey the saint. Unlike stories in which animals seem to want to

saint, we are not looking at certain natural human qualities that other creatures appreciate, but at a relationship with God through which the entire order is restored.” Living in God’s Creation, 127. Affection may be an attendant phenomenon of the animals’ response to holiness, but Theokritoff’s analysis of the obedience of inanimate elements explains why affection is not necessary for the saints to secure obedience from animals. 140 Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 258. 141 But it is worth noting that even holy monks do not invariably display this power, and they are not above resorting to more ordinary means of controlling animals: one John, for example, weaves animal harnesses from palm leaves, in accordance with local custom.” HMA, Additions of Rufinus (interpolations to Greek text), 8.8, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 147. 142 HMA 12.5, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 90; see also Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 19, 149, citing The Abbot Helenus and the Wild Ass: Rufinus, op. cit. c. II. 143 Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 24, 149, citing The Unsociable Lion: Verba Seniorum (translated from the Greek of an unknown author by John the Subdeacon in the sixth century), II. c. 15 (Migne, P.L. LXXIII. c. 1003). Theokritoff discusses a version involving St Savas the Sanctified, in which he says, “[W]e both have one Creator; I myself was fashioned by the hand of God and privileged to receive his image.” She concludes: “The starting point for coexistence is a basic equivalence between earth-dwellers, precisely as creatures. The privileged status of the human being justifies him in resisting the other creature’s wishes; but it does not mean that he can simply order the previous occupant out when it is possible for the needs of both to be accommodated.” Living in God’s Creation, 130, citing Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 33, in Richard M. Price, trans., Lives of the Monks of Palestine (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1991), 128. So we have a priority on the human as made in God’s image, but a corresponding responsibility to other creatures.

175 obey saints because of relationships of care, at least some of the animals here are compelled to obey. This feature pertains to particular narratives, and although Hobgood-Oster is correct to demand that animal agency be recognized where it is present in the texts, it will not be imputed where there is insufficient evidence of it. Several events in the Life of St Columban show animal obedience as well as affection. When twelve wolves surround him, he prays to God for help, and they touch his clothes with their muzzles and then leave. In this case, Columban does not command the animals directly, but petitions God, so the animals’ harmlessness is a response to God’s honoring his prayer. But another time, he goes into the wilderness and finds a cave with a bear inside, and he commands the bear to go away and not to return to that area, compelling the bear’s obedience. This event was said to have been witnessed by Chamnoald, bishop of Lyons, who was once Columban’s disciple and who testified that he often saw Columban call wild birds and beasts. Columban would pet them, and they happily frolicked around him, “as young dogs jump on their masters.”144 So Columban commands obedience from some animals and wins affection from others, but the two do not necessarily coincide: even animals without affection for him still obey his commands or respond to God’s granting of his prayers. Some saints use their authority to protect populations from harmful or obnoxious animals, or at least to control the annoyance. At the request of some farmers, Bes puts an end to 144

Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 50-52, 150, citing St. Columban in the Vosges: Jonas, Vita S. Columbani, c. 15, 30 (Migne, P.L. LXXXVII. c. 1020, 1028). This saint is not Columba of Iona, but rather, the sixth- and seventh-century Irish saint who did missionary work on the Continent. See Introduction to Jonas, The Life of St Columban [cited 2 February 2015]. Online: http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/columban.asp. A story similar to that of Columban and the wolves involves monks who pass by three large crocodiles that appear dead. The monks go to look at them, and the crocodiles suddenly attack. When the monks call aloud to Christ for help, the crocodiles turn aside into the water. HMA Epil. 11-13, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 119.

176 the destruction caused by a huge hippopotamus. With a gentle voice, he commands it in the name of Christ not to ravage the countryside any more, thereby driving it away. On another occasion, he rids an area of a crocodile the same way.145 Similarly, the stylite Julian sends his disciple to invoke his own name with that of Christ in telling a lion that has killed many people to withdraw from the land. When the brother repeats the words, the lion’s response is to leave immediately.146 Likewise, in response to Antony’s prayer, crocodiles allow him and his followers to cross a canal unharmed.147 Columba blesses an island and thus rids it of harm from vipers.148 The saints insulate not only local populations, but also themselves personally, from certain annoying animal behaviors. Cainnic, rather harshly one might think, curses mice and permanently expels them from an island after they gnaw on his shoes. They all enter the sea, not to be seen again.149 Finding the birds on another island (En inish, the “Isle of Birds”) talkative and obnoxious, he rebukes them, and they put their breasts on the ground and stay quietly in that position until he verbally releases them at matins the next morning.150 When birds come for the barley Cuthbert is growing on an island, he tells them to leave if they do not have God’s permission to take the crops he sows, and they cease from disturbing the crops. More recalcitrant are a pair of ravens tearing at the thatch on the monastic dwelling for their nest: they respond not to the personal authority of the saint, but only once he invokes Christ’s name, at which point they fly away as ordered. One returns three days later, trailing its

145

HMA 4.3, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 66. Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 58; Wortley, 45-46. 147 Harmless, Desert Christians, 66, 75 & n. 34, citing Athanasius, Vita Antonii 15 (Sources chrétiennes 400:176; trans. Robert C. Gregg, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1980)), 43). 148 Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 47, 150, citing St. Columba and White Horse. 149 Ibid., 120, 151, citing Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae. 150 Ibid., 121, 151, citing Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae. 146

177 wings and bowing its head. Cuthbert permits it to return, and it leaves to get its mate. Both come back with a gift offering of hog’s lard. Cuthbert allows brothers to grease their shoes with it, and points to the birds as examples of repentance. The ravens continue to live on the island and build nests, but without bothering anyone.151 These “command” stories are not so much images of paradise restored in the saint’s environment, as of the saint working in a God-like way within the fallen order. Some saints, rather than suppressing the unpleasant traits of animals, channel them into constructive uses. Theokritoff notes that we are often presented with an intermediate state between the fallen order and paradise, one in which the saint regains dominion and acts as “an outpost of the restored creation,” protecting others from “fallen” conditions. Predators, therefore, do not harm animals under the saint’s protection, but they keep their instincts and may even use them on the saint’s behalf.152 Theokritoff offers the example of Kyriacos, a hermit in Palestine, who has a lion protect his vegetable patch from wild goats and human raiders. The lion knows to withdraw, even during its meal, when its presence is unsettling the hermit’s visitors.153 Similarly, the austere sixth- and seventh-century Irish saint Colman (mac Duagh) lives in poverty and has only three creatures—a rooster, a mouse, and a fly—each of whose nature he appropriates for his service. The rooster’s crowing wakes him up at night for Lauds. The mouse serves by gnawing at his clothes or nibbling at his ear, disturbing his rest when it would otherwise extend beyond the time allowed by his discipline, so that Colman is “provoked by a dumb creature to the service of God.” The fly serves as a bookmark in the codex, sitting on the line commanded by Colman so

151

Ibid., 62-67, 150, citing St. Cuthbert. Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 124. 153 Ibid., citing Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 15-16, in Price, trans., Lives of Monks of Palestine, 255-56. 152

178 he can resume where he left off when called away. When these three animals die, he writes to Columba of Iona, telling of his sorrow.154 Using the fearsome nature of two large serpents, Amoun orders them to guard the door to his hermitage. When robbers see them, they fall on their faces. Finding them speechless and nearly unconscious, Amoun lifts them up and chastises them, saying, “Do you see how much more ferocious you are than the wild beasts? These, thanks to God, obey our wishes. But you have neither feared God nor respected the piety of Christians.”155 We are reminded of the patristic theme of contrasting appropriated natures: animals being savage by nature but becoming docile by appropriation to the higher nature of humans, and humans being peaceable by nature but becoming savage by appropriation to the lower nature of animals. Commenting on the contrast between the human and animal responses to the saint in this story, Theokritoff notes that animals often have a more “intuitive and immediate” response to the “restored image” than do humans, because “animals are ‘unfallen,’ part of the creation ‘subjected to futility not of its own will,’” whereas humans have free will, the abuse of which clouds their ability to perceive the restored image.156 It is worth noting, however, that Amoun’s chiding of and subsequent

154

Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 145-47, citing “St. Colman and the Cock, the Mouse, and the Fly,” from John Colgan, Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae (folio, 1645), I. 244a, in Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, 144. Columba replies, “at once in jest and in wisdom, that ‘there is neither lack nor loss where neither substance nor property is found’: as though to question why a man of God, consecrated to supreme renunciation and to poverty, should set that heart on small things, which had renounced and spurned great things and high.” Waddell, Beasts and Saints, 147. It may seem as though Columba is denigrating the value of the animals, but the point of his reply is the ascetic exhortation to detachment. 155 HMA 9.5-7, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 80-81. 156 Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 124, quoting Rom 8:20. It is this “intuitive and immediate” response that allows Abba Paul of Rome to gauge his spiritual state based on a lion’s response to him, as discussed above.

179 hospitality to the robbers brings them to repentance and, ultimately, saintliness.157 So while the animals respond to Amoun’s holiness more immediately, the humans are able to go further in their response once they direct their wills in accordance with reason and its proper object. Antony also secures animal obedience, but as Gilhus notes, his purpose is to be left alone.158 He makes reptiles leave the well where he lives, crocodiles let him go unharmed over a channel, and wild animals move away from his well after they destroy some of his vegetables.159 In the last case, Antony makes them leave by talking in a friendly way to them, but Gilhus argues that his apparent friendliness is belied by the fact that he is preventing them from drinking water in the only place in the desert where it is available.160 So even if “the wild animals made their peace with him,” Antony is not interested in peaceful cohabitation, even if they show readiness to obey them as they did Adam. Gilhus argues that the message is that there is no place for animals in the new paradise Antony has made in the desert. The reason could be either that the monks are making the desert into a city, and cities are cleaner without vermin, or that the animals represent the bestial nature that the saints are trying to conquer in themselves.161 Either way,

157

HMA 9.7, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 81. Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 222. 159 Athanasius, VA 12.3-4, 15.1, 50.8-9, 51.5, cited in Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 222. 160 Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 222. Gilhus’ interpretation here may be unduly cynical; there is no way to know for sure whether there is any other place nearby where the animals can graze, but Antony himself suggests there is by the fact that he tells the animals to graze elsewhere. It is ultimately up to the reader to decide how to assess Antony’s motives, but I prefer not to assume he is being disingenuous, absent clear evidence. Theokritoff does not impeach Antony’s sincerity when she discusses this passage. The lesson she takes from it is that “[t]he human appeals to the animal on the basis of the fact that he is impinging only minimally on its territory; the aim is to find a solution that will give access to the necessities of life to all concerned.” Living in God’s Creation, 130-31, citing VA 50. Gilhus’ main point stands, however, regarding Antony’s desire not to have the animals in the “city” he is building in the desert. 161 Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 222, citing VA 51.5; cf. John 5:23. 158

180 Antony’s example highlights the non-sentimental nature of human dominion.162 But his is not the only example, as those of Cainnic and Cuthbert, mentioned above, also serve as reminders that the focus of the monk is first and foremost on spiritual perfection through internal control. One story shows that it is not only the saint who may command animals, but others may even command them in the saint’s name—and even for selfish purposes, but not without consequences. When some men order a pregnant doe to stop in the name of Simeon the Stylite, she obeys, and they kill her for food. Instantly, they are unable to speak and begin to “bleat like dumb animals.” They pray at Simeon’s pillar until they are healed after having done penance.163 It is not specified whether their primary sin was to kill the animal, or to use the saint’s name for that purpose. Unless Simeon puts all hunters and butchers who visit him under penance, however, it must be the latter. So even if killing the doe would not have been a sin in itself, it was a sin to manipulate it by invoking the saint’s name so that it could be killed. Alexander persuasively argues that they have associated the saint with both violence and sexuality (because the doe is pregnant), so the pollution rebounds to them. Accordingly, “[t]his story concerns the boundaries of the sacred and profane, not the miracle of a militant vegetarian saint, and demonstrates the dangers of attempting to sort saints’ miracles into those kindly towards ‘nature’ and those not.”164 It is questionable whether the authors would have seen such a neat separation of “sacred” and “profane,” but nonetheless, Alexander’s point hearkens back to Macarius’ refusal to be implicated in the hyena’s killing of a ram for its skin: even if the killing is permissible within the realm of the fallen order, it is wrong to try to drag the redeemed realm

162

Theokritoff stresses this point. See, for example, Living in God’s Creation, 137-38. Alexander, Saints and Animals, 16-17, citing Antonius’ Life, ch. 15, in Robert Doran, The Life of Saint Simeon Stylites (Spencer, Mass., 1992), 93. 164 Alexander, Saints and Animals, 17. 163

181 back to the fallen state. The saints exist in this world to direct fallen creatures toward what is higher, not to be used by fallen creatures for lower ends.165 Alexander is correct to caution against sorting the miracles based on whether they are “kind” toward nature, as one would be hard pressed not to import contemporary notions of what constitutes “kindness”—perhaps incorporating the sentimentality shunned by the saints, who are presented as serving the natural order in its God-intended purpose even through their harsher actions. To cover the range of narratives on this topic, we will close this section with stories featuring animal insubordination. The first, from the Life of Antony, is a plot foil to what we have seen so far: the animal violently rebels, but the master is not a saint, but a heretic. Here, the horse of a Roman commander in Egypt kills its master by tearing his thigh with its teeth. The commander, however, was a friend of the Arians.166 This event features the refusal of an animal to submit to the dominion of a human who forfeits the privilege by refusing to submit to God. Although the central purpose here is the advancement of Athanasius’ pro-Nicene polemic, the story is consistent with the patristic notion that animals resent Adam once his fall causes all nature to descend into misery. A couple of other stories illustrate the same principle. In the first, from Palestine, a novice commands a leopard in Christ’s name to get out of his way, and it obeys. But then he throws stones at it, at which point the leopard approaches him by a different path and scratches him but still does not bite him. Theokritoff sums up the message by saying that “[t]he ambivalence of the animal’s response mirrors the inconsistency of the man’s behavior: he had invoked the authority of Christ, but then failed to act according to Christ’s

165

It is in this sense that I can agree with Alexander’s statement regarding the separation of sacred and profane. 166 Gilhus says God acts through the horse to promote orthodoxy. Animals, Gods and Humans, 222, citing VA 86.

182 image.”167 The second story involves a lion that Sava of Palestine (much like Jerome) heals by pulling a splinter out of its paw. His disciple Flavius customarily takes the lion with him to guard his donkey while he is on errands. But one day, Flavius goes into the city and falls into sin, and the lion then eats the donkey. This story illustrates the dependence of animals on humans for the restoration of harmony, just as they depended on humans to preserve it in the first place.168 Another story involves animal disobedience to a saint but represents the animal as like a morally failing human who knows better but chooses sin out of weakness. For seven months, a lion visits Paul the Greek twice a day in his cave, and Paul brings him bread and peas. He does this to help the lion obey his command to do no harm. But one day, Paul notices that the lion’s muzzle is stained with blood, and he says, “What is this? You have disobeyed me and eaten flesh. Blessed Lord! Never again will I feed you the food of the fathers, carnivore! Get away from here.” But the lion does not leave until Paul strikes him three times with a rope.169 This story contrasts with those in which animals are compelled to obey a saint. Here, the lion freely enters a relationship with Paul, who makes the terms clear, and for months, the lion shows his ability to comply. His reversion to predatorial habits, then, is seen by Paul as a willful choice for a lower mode of existence to a higher one. Paul’s harshness is intended to hold the lion to the consequences of having breached their agreement and is thus an acknowledgement of the lion’s agency. The lion is choosing freely, as a human, rather than being compelled (either toward the higher by divine force or toward the lower by earthly nature). Additionally, the duration of the

167

Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 122, citing Life of St George of Choziba, V.21, in Tim Vivian, trans., Journeying into God: Seven Early Monastic Lives (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1996), 87-88. 168 Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 122, citing Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 49, in Price, trans., Lives of Monks of Palestine, 148-49. 169 Moschus, Spiritual Meadow 163; Wortley, 134.

183 lion’s compliance with the agreement may explain this tale’s difference from those we saw earlier, in which animals are given time and tolerance in the process of overcoming their dispositions. The lion seems already to have more understanding of the saint’s expectations than do Macarius’ hyena and Ciaran’s and Moling’s foxes, all of whose repentance coincides with their emerging understanding of the higher mode of existence to which the saints are calling them.170 The she-wolf who steals the hermit’s bread, by contrast, is immediately conscious of her guilt, but she stays away of her own accord, taking upon herself the consequences of violating the saint’s trust. But this lion attempts to deceive Paul and to continue receiving the benefits of their agreement despite having violated it, and therefore he receives no forbearance from the saint. Here we reach a turning point in our discussion: despite the many examples of tenderness between saints and animals, or at least benign command and obedience, this is an example of stern punishment for abusing the gift of freedom by choosing disobedience. The next section will examine examples of greater severity, even aggressive hostility, by saints toward animals whose vicious behaviors evidence a persistent malice and thus emblematize demonic forces.

VI.

Saintly hostility to harmful animals Despite the many examples of harmony between saints and animals, the ascetic and

hagiographical literature also contains significant examples of hostility. Gilhus sees this feature as owing to the cultural and religious shift from pagan Rome’s focus on domesticated beasts as sacrificial victims, to an urban Christian focus on the desert as the place of spiritual combat, and 170

Theokritoff discusses this story in the same paragraph that she discusses Macarius and the hyena, using both to support her point that animal predators’ behavior shows that Paradise is a “work in progress.” Living in God’s Creation, 123. The difference is that the story of Macarius ends with the hyena’s promise to obey, whereas the story of Paul ends with the lion’s breaking of its promise. Together, they show the unevenness of this “work in progress.”

184 the wild beasts there as envoys of the enemy.171 This led to a demonizing effect on animals, especially wild ones, and Christianity inherited this attitude from Judaism, which also “thought about evil spirits in theriomorphic categories.”172 Consistency of interpretation and application being a goal, it will not do to write off these stories as merely symbolic presentations of animals. Symbolic readings may usually be admissible, but it would be disingenuous to employ them selectively and to the exclusion of literal readings in order to evade unwanted implications. Part of the interpretive scheme of this chapter is to take the “bitter with the sweet,” and if literary animals are read as literal animals when they are treated tenderly by the saints, a literal reading should not be excluded when they are treated harshly, absent a particular reason indicating they serve only a symbolic function. For purposes of this project, it makes no difference whether a “literal” reading is taken to mean an understanding of a narrative as actually having happened, or simply to mean that animals are read as animals rather than as stand-ins for something else. But as Harmless says, “To move behind a literary text to the historical fact is difficult even with a well-documented modern event.”173 Fortunately, the second kind of “literal” reading is sufficient for our purposes, and because I do not care to assume the unnecessary burden of historical verification, it is the second that is assumed here, as elsewhere in this chapter. It seems likely that the understanding of certain animals as having “naturally” evil qualities in some ascetic circles led to corresponding portrayals of behaviors by certain saints

171

Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 224. Gilhus mentions that wild animals may also be divine agents but are more often diabolical ones, attacking the saint to thwart him in his struggle for salvation. 172 Ibid., 225. Another observation by Gilhus is that, when used as a metaphor, the animal manifests a narrowed range of human characteristics, but the effect is to circle back to simplify our view of that animal. Ibid., 91. Perhaps of no animal is this more true than of the reptile, especially the serpent or “dragon.” 173 Harmless, Desert Christians, 291.

185 toward those kinds of animals. Perhaps the most obvious example involves Macarius of Alexandria—the same saint who refuses the hyena’s ram skin gift because it was procured by violence. While he is digging among some vegetation, he is bitten by an asp, prompting him to grab its jaws and rip it apart, saying, “If God did not send you, how did you dare come?”174 Commenting on the Coptic version of this story,175 Tim Vivian attempts to minimize its overall significance, saying this kind of violence between humans and animals is “very rare in early monastic literature.”176 Indeed, such instances are much rarer than those of animal obedience to a saint, or of tenderness and cooperation between saints and animals. But occurrences of violence

174

Palladius, Lausiac History 18.10, in Meyer, trans., 61. The Coptic version is more specific, presenting Macarius as saying, “What harm have I done to you that you attempt to eat me? God has not given you authority to do this; therefore it’s your evil nature to do so. I will do to you according to your own evil nature.” Life of Macarius of Alexandria (Coptic Palladiana) 3, in Vivian, “Peaceable Kingdom,” 478. The text goes on to tell that Macarius suffered no more than one stuck by the point of a reed. Short says, “The saints can dwell unafraid among wolves and snakes, even among wild beasts and dragons, because God protects them. Echoing the legends of the martyrs, the medieval texts describe animals that ‘lay aside their natural ferocity’ because ‘divinely instructed.’” Short, “Restoring Eden,” 56. In this case, God’s protection is seen in Macarius’ remaining unharmed. The asp, however, does not lay aside its “natural ferocity,” and is therefore punished by the saint for continuing in its “evil nature,” thus demonstrating the rebellious spirit of the devil with which it is associated. Indeed, Vivian observes that, for Macarius, the snake represents the devil. “Peaceable Kingdom,” 47879. It may seem we are in the realm of animal-as-symbol and thus limited, as Hobgood-Oster would argue, in drawing conclusions about the value of the actual animal. But the asp’s signification of Satan is made possible by its very real action: assaulting a saint whom other creatures obey. Understood in this light, Macarius’ harshness can be seen as punishment for the creature’s refusal to rise above the evil inclinations of its nature, even in the presence of its Creator in the saint. This interpretation, of course, also requires a reading of moral agency: the asp is punished for choosing evil when it could have chosen good. Viewed symbolically or literally, then, Macarius’ killing of the asp reflects God’s judgment of the devil, because it has acted like the devil. 176 Vivian, “Peaceable Kingdom,” 479. Vivian also says, “As a child of the fall, Macarius lives yet in a violent world. But other early monastic texts hold out the hope of a different, nonviolent, world, one that restores the prelapsarian harmony between human beings and animals.” Ibid. Short is consistent with Vivian in his noting both the variety of perspectives in these stories and the need for appreciating what he calls the “harmonious ideal” encapsulated in so many of them. “Restoring Eden,” 44. 175

186 by saints against harmful animals are more frequent in this genre than Vivian estimates, and certainly frequent enough to require consideration as to how their lessons may be incorporated into the emerging ethical picture. Many of these “hostility” stories involve reptiles, and an observation by Short notes that these are rarely objects of sympathy for medieval authors. That these creatures, too, obey the saint “emphasizes not only his reacquired, Edenic dominion over creatures, but further specifies it as a dominion over those creatures most closely associated with the Evil One.”177 Unlike the saints whom we have seen gently commanding violent beasts to leave an area, Helle is lethal in his discipline of a huge, man-eating crocodile. When he learns that some people have not been celebrating the liturgy because the priest on the other side of the river cannot cross due to the beast, he goes to the river and instantly uses the crocodile’s back as a ferry to the other side. After returning on the crocodile’s back, Helle hauls it out of the water and says, “It is better for you to die and make restitution for all the lives you have taken,” at which point the crocodile falls dead.178 Until now, we have seen saints command, or ask in Christ’s name, homicidal beasts to depart and no longer trouble areas. It is interesting that Helle’s command for the crocodile to die occurs after the crocodile has shuttled him twice across the river. Perhaps he issues his fatal command precisely because the act was not truly gracious, as arising from penitence or virtue, but actually arising from compulsion owing to the saint’s power.179

177

Short, “Restoring Eden,” 46. HMA 12.6-9, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 90-91. 179 This interpretation is supported by Theokritoff, who says of Helle: “Presumably he decided that it was unrepentant, and could not be trusted with humans who lacked his own charismatic authority.” Living in God’s Creation, 125. She uses this example to show that animals terrorizing humans might be deemed morally culpable. But while the saints will do what is necessary to protect people, they tend to opt for minimum force, as we have seen in other examples. Ibid. Her observations coincide with the relatively flexible traditional Christian attitude toward the death 178

187 Amoun, the same saint who uses serpents as guards, also eliminates a large one that has been killing the neighbors’ animals. He becomes determined to destroy it when a shepherd boy falls into a coma from the terror of having seen it. When his family takes him to Amoun, the saint prays and anoints him, and the boy recovers and tells Amoun what he saw.180 Amoun goes to the snake’s place and prays, and it comes out and attacks him. But Amoun is unafraid and says, “Christ the Son of the living God, who is destined to destroy the great sea-monster, will destroy you too.” The snake immediately bursts and vomits poison and blood.181 Whereas the crocodile shows no hostility to Helle, but rather serves him, this serpent attacks Amoun and more clearly represents a demonic force.182 Theokritoff cites this story as an example of a beast having a choice but choosing wrongly, “remain[ing] unregenerate and take[ing] the consequences,” and notes that “snakes (or dragons) seem more likely than other animals to end up being killed as thoroughly incorrigible.”183 This points leads us to next: that some saints are spoken of as being in the habit of routinely crushing certain kinds of noxious beasts.

penalty for humans, when necessary to protect society, as opposed to its inflexible prohibition on taking innocent human life. Accordingly, we should not be hasty to extract from stories in which saints kill homicidal animals a negative judgment on the moral value of those species. The question is more difficult, of course, when there is no evidence that an individual animal has killed people, but it is destroyed merely for being part of a species that is known for doing so. 180 HMA 9.11, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 81. 181 HMA 9.8-10, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 81. 182 The serpent is literally “a large dragon” (cf. Rev 12:3-9). Before the rise of monasticism, “dragon” was a name for the devil. In the Life of Antony, Athanasius calls the devil who fights Antony in various forms, “the dragon.” But here, the dragon is a physical snake. Cf. Theodoret, Philotheos III.7, where the dragon also bursts. Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 132, n. IX.1. See also Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 220-21, noting the devil’s scriptural description as the serpent (drakhon). 183 Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 126.

188 The Egyptian father of cenobitic monasticism, Pachomius, is another saint who uses crocodiles to cross rivers, and he also treads unhurt on snakes and scorpions.184 Didymus, an elder described as having a “charming countenance,” kills scorpions, vipers, and asps with his bare feet.185 In another story, when monks see the tracks of a huge serpent in the sand, they enthusiastically tell the authors, whom they are guiding through the desert, of their having killed many poisonous snakes with their bare hands in accordance with Scripture (cf. Luke 10:19), and they are eager to follow the tracks and fight this one as well. The brother who is eager to fight the serpent finally agrees to return but chides the rest for their lack of faith.186 In their embodiment of the demonic, these reptiles, scorpions, and other beasts become the chief animal characters in the desert literature, prompting Theokritoff to raise the question 184

Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 17-18, 149, citing St. Pachome and the Crocodiles: Vita S. Pachomii (translated by Dionysius Exiguus), c. 17, 19 (Migne, P.L. LXXIII. c. 240 ff.). Dionysius translated this text into Latin in the early sixth century, basing it on the Second Greek Life of Pachomius. In all, there are eight surviving Greek recensions. Harmless, Desert Christians, 116-17. However, all the other Greek sources derive from the First Greek Life. Ibid., 151. 185 HMA 20.12, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 106; Ward introduction, 35. Gilhus notes that the motif of saints trampling evil in the form of harmful animals has a scriptural basis that can be traced back from Luke 10:19 (Jesus authorizing His disciples to trample serpents and scorpions, which are associated with the enemy’s power), through Psalm 90[91]:13 (treading on the viper and the basilisk and trampling lion and dragon) and Deuteronomy 8:15 (God leading Israel through the dangerous wilderness containing serpents and scorpions), to its source in Genesis 3:15 (prophesying the serpent’s head being bruised by Eve’s Seed). He concludes that this trampling is about hierarchy and dominance, presupposing a polarization between human and animal. Animals, Gods and Humans, 223. Hierarchy and dominance have their place—even an integral one—in the ascetic understanding, but care must taken that they not be reduced to twenty-first-century socio-political categories. As is repeatedly seen, external governance is secondary to internal governance, both deriving from it and imaging it. Gilhus himself recognizes this: “It is not astonishing either that asceticism was one area in which the Christian fight against animals took place or that animals were interpreted negatively within an ascetic context. The ascetic discourse had the training of the body as its subject. The ascetic was an athlete, the battlefield was the body, and the forces to be conquered were bodily desires. These desires could be conceptualized as animals. Ascetic life and its struggles are made easier to grasp by using concrete examples of animals.” Ibid., 225. 186 HMA 9.1-4, in Russell, trans., Lives of Desert Fathers, 80.

189 that Hobgood-Oster finds so problematic: “It makes us wonder whether these stories are actually about authority over natural animals, or about ‘serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy.’”187 As noted by Gilhus in his analysis of Antony’s spiritual combat, wild animals symbolize demons but in turn lend their bodies and traits to demons, so that Antony meets both animals with demonic temperaments and demons with animal forms (or composite forms bearing the most fearsome parts of various animals).188 This relationship becomes an occasion of scorn for Antony when he chides the demons for their weakness in imitating irrational (aloga) beings.189 Demons are shape-shifters, but their favorite guises are those of wild animals (theria, including lions, bears, leopards, bulls, and wolves) and reptiles (herpeta, including serpents, vipers, and scorpions).190 Animals also function as agents for demonic authorities, as when the devil sends desert hyenas and his own dogs against Antony.191 That the devil would have authority over these creatures suggests either that they are demons in animal form, or that certain animal natures have qualities making them particularly susceptible to demonic association and control.192 Macarius of Alexandria’s interaction with the asp demonstrates the latter view.

187

Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 126, quoting Luke 10:19. Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 220-21, 223. Gilhus notes that the ancient worldview admitted the reality of human interaction with both animals and demons. 189 Ibid., 221, citing VA 9.9; Harmless, Desert Christians, 86, 100 & n. 4, citing Vita Antonii 9 (Sources chrétiennes 400:162; trans. Robert C. Gregg, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1980), 39). Antony’s insult employs an ironic logic: the demons in their angelic natures are logikoi, but having turned away from the archetypal divine Logos, they leave themselves nowhere to go but to associate with irrational creatures. And unlike humans, whose composite natures provide the occasion for a catabatic epistrophe, the demons cannot even pretend at an excuse for their self-degradation. 190 Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans, 221, citing VA 9.6, 24.5, and Luke 10:19. 191 Ibid., citing Life of Antony at 9.4, 42.1, 52.2-3. 192 Gilhus speculates that the devil’s dogs could either be real animals or indicate a sliding scale between demons and certain kinds of animals. Animals, Gods and Humans, 221. It is unclear how this “sliding scale” might be conceptualized, except in terms of demonic possession made possible by certain qualities intrinsic to certain bestial natures. This may well be what Gilhus 188

190 Understanding that this feature of the ancient ascetic literature puts literal reptiles in an insecure position, Theokritoff notes that recent ascetics, such as Elder Theoktistos of Patmos (d. 1917), “have often taken pains to counter the idea that actual snakes are accursed and automatically deserve destruction.” He lived in a cave with about a dozen vipers, daily put out milk to feed a particular snake, and tried to teach boys not to kill them.193 She concludes, “The saints show us that an individual animal may sometimes need to be destroyed, but there is no warrant for stereotyping an entire species as evil. Symbolism is one thing; God’s living creature, even a serpent or scorpion, is another.”194 Here she puts her finger on the crux of HobgoodOster’s concern (also noted by Gilhus): that reading animal natures symbolically does not help us to know how to think of animal hypostases. But the hermeneutical problem remains in the ancient literature, where it is precisely because certain species symbolize evil, and thus are stereotyped as such, that monks make a habit (even a sport) of killing them. We come, then, to a tension within the tradition: either the texts presenting reptiles and scorpions as evil must be read on an exclusively symbolic level, thus risking a selective and inconsistent interpretation of

means, as he posits a clear connection between demons that appear as animals, animals that obey the devil’s command, and animals of flesh and blood that are evil because of their inherent natures. Ibid., 223. He also cites Origen’s opinion that certain wild beasts bear an affinity with demons by their natural behaviors: “All this business of designing demons in the shape of animals and making animals into vehicles of demons rebounded on real animals, and especially on wild animals. According to Origen, demons had greater power over wild beasts than over milder animals, because the wild animals ‘have something about them resembling evil, and although it is not evil, yet it is like it’ (Against Celsus, 4.92.21-2). Origen makes a further connection between unclean animals and demons: ‘There seems, therefore, to be some sort of kinship between the form of each species of demon and the form of each species of animal’ (ibid., 4.93.14-15). When Athanasius surrounded his hero Antony with destructive animals and demons that took on the shape of animals, his audience, pagans as well as Christians, were familiar with such creatures.” Ibid., 226. 193 Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 126, citing Irina Gorainoff, “Holy Men of Patmos,” Sobornost 6:5 (Spring 1972): 337-44, at 341. 194 Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 126.

191 animals across the range of texts if animals are not always to be read symbolically, or certain animals must be seen as having natures that are inherently evil (or at least incline that way), thus making holy men such as Theoktistos appear unnecessarily sentimental. There does not seem to be a way out by trying to synthesize the texts. Some ascetics are depicted crushing certain kinds of animals simply because they represent evil to them, primarily due to the threats they or their kinds pose to humans. But an ethos like that of Theoktistos is informed not by a focus on the implications of the traits of certain animal natures, but a broader view on the role of the restored image of God in creation. The “adversarial” texts, then, can be seen as exceptions to the rule. These menacing beasts are not the only ones that play the role of the accursed, as we see in one last story that is quite different from what we have encountered so far. In this tale, Kevin, the same saint who goes out of his way to provide his hand as a blackbird hatchery, treats a crow with surprising harshness. Unsure how to find milk for an Irish prince left in his protection, Kevin petitions God, who sends him a doe to be milked. A crow tries to drink the milk and overturns the pail with its beak, and Kevin curses it, saying it and its race will “do penance for this crime” by being forbidden from sharing in the beef that will be part of the feast on the day of Kevin’s departure to heaven, on pain of immediate death.195 This story of a greedy crow may seem to fit awkwardly into this section of theria and herpeta, but there is a subtle connection. The crow, while not terrifying, also represents an opposition to God’s will for human welfare, in this case, the welfare of the child prince for whom Kevin is responsible. The crow is trying to take the milk God sent in answer to Kevin’s prayers. The saint’s response to the crow shows not only his attribution of agency to it, but also that his own acts of kindness toward animals do not arise out of sentimentality. Instead, he uses his dominion to bless or curse as he judges proper for 195

Waddell, trans., Beasts and Saints, 131-33, 151, citing Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae.

192 the situation, one time taking pains to care for the animal as God’s creature, and another time punishing the animal for presuming to take nourishment meant for a human child. Kevin’s compassion toward animals, then, is best seen in terms of mercy rather than observance of “rights.” But precisely as fitting beneficiaries of mercy due to their creation by God and His continuing care for them, animals are shown to have value beyond the merely instrumental.196

VII.

Conclusion In her review of hagiographic examples, Theokritoff reaches a conclusion that is a fair

representation of the consensus of these texts: “If we can discern a principle, it would be that human needs prevail—but not human whims or human greed.”197 Even if the saints abstain from meat as part of their own ascetic program, they allow that many people, including the poor, depend on animals for their livelihoods. There are many examples of saints using animals. Some are shown eating fish or using sheepskins, and some are shown not begrudging the poor their own use of sheep, for either food or clothing. And if animals may sometimes be killed to sustain human life, it only stands to reason that they may be killed if they affirmatively threaten it (this latter point easily coinciding with the traditional “prudential” approach to the death penalty even for humans). Theokritoff rightly argues the texts show that “an all-embracing love does not exclude the possibility that animals may need to be deliberately killed if they threaten human

196

In addition, even Kevin’s severe punishment of the crow may be seen as acknowledgement of its value by treating it with the dignity of moral accountability, as one does when punishing humans for culpable wrongs, whether intentional or negligent. Granted, the cursing of its entire species hearkens back to an archaic understanding of justice, even for that time: one revised as early as Ezekiel 18:20 (“The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own.” (NRSV)). 197 Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 152.

193 life,” but at the same time, “the life of even an insect should not be taken thoughtlessly, and [] our power over other creatures gives us a responsibility for their welfare.”198 So this is the other side of the story: while animals may be killed under the proper conditions and for the right reasons, they should not be killed heedlessly. The many examples of compassion show us that saints are presented as instruments of God’s grace to animals. And if animals are proper recipients of God’s grace, they have legitimate interests as His creatures—interests that require just cause for humans to impose upon. Life and health often appear to be such just causes. But for Gregory of Nazianzus’ funeral oration for Basil, one might think the ascetic spirit would deem taste to be a superfluous luxury rather than just cause. Even if Gregory is the outlier, his stature in the tradition is high enough to call into question whether one of Theokritoff’s conclusions might be overly broad: that the saints “consider they have no right to disrupt other creatures’ lives—let alone harm them—more than absolutely necessary for human survival. There is a measure of ‘moral equivalency’ between the needs of humans and those of other creatures, and all parties are expected to play fair.”199 Theokritoff’s appeal to “moral equivalency” calls to mind Peter Singer’s concept of “equal consideration of interests,”200 and in general her synthesis appears sound. With respect to Gregory’s oration in particular, her concern about fairness is resolved by his use of the “willing sacrifice” trope. But the willingness of Basil’s saintly grandparents to kill these animals because they missed the taste of meat (with the implication that they were accustomed to the taste before the persecution) undermines the idea of “moral equivalency” between human and animal needs. Satisfaction of the human palette, in Gregory’s praise of Basil, trumps animal lives. But again, Gregory’s funeral homily is the 198

Ibid. Ibid., 130. 200 Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 19-23. 199

194 unusual exception in genre, purpose, and content, while many other saints model through their actions, even if they do not articulate through their words, an attitude much like “moral equivalency.” Even so, this is part of their own ascetic discipline, and it is unlikely they would bind Christians “in the world” to its stringency. Despite the variety in the hagiographical sources, the broad consensus in their presentations of the relationships of saints with animals is that these relations may involve use but not abuse.201 But this general, abstract principle begs a more specific, concrete question: what behaviors, in what circumstances, constitute “abuse”? It is easy to offer an apophatic answer that it is not abuse to kill an animal to protect or sustain human life. Beyond this, the question becomes more difficult. The authors of these hagiographies would not have expected their texts to be garnered for examples to construct a deontological rule or outline of behaviors to determine when animal interests are violated, and such a category as “animal interests” would not even have been cognizable to them. At the same time, their latent understandings about the relative value of humans and animals forms a backdrop for the narratives, which proceed according to inchoate evaluations of their respective interests. The sources offer many examples of saints showing compassion to animals, healing them and even raising them from the dead for their own sake or for the sake of their mothers or companions. We have also seen that God often gives animals special intuitive knowledge that even humans lack, and this knowledge sometimes triggers what appears to be a kind of moral agency on the part of the animal. Finally, we have seen the capacity of animals to enter affectionate relationships of loyalty and service to saints, 201

“These examples suggest that humans should be able to call on animals to serve their needs; there is no implication that domestication is illegitimate. On the other hand, it is clear that animals, whether domestic or wild, have their own legitimate needs, which humans must respect. Domestication does not reduce the animal to chattel, to be used or abused at will.” Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 132.

195 who recognize them as creatures loved by God and so love them as God does. Theokritoff infers from these patterns that saints recognize in all creatures legitimate interests that might be summed up by saying they have, not “rights,” but a “rightful place” in the created order as “determined by God’s purposes, not our preferences. The recognition of their rightful place goes hand in hand with the absence of sentimentality. There is no attempt to engulf another creature in possessive love, to anthropomorphize it, to violate its otherness.”202 As she notes, the landscape in modern Western societies is an incongruous blend of extremes: either animals are pushed to the margins of our consciousness, so that we do not have to confront what they have to suffer for us, or they are integrated into our families or imaginations as if they are humans. In both cases, animals are treated according to our preferences—either as units of production because we want cheap meat and dairy, or much like human beings because it gratifies our sentiments—rather than being seen for what they are.203 For our purposes, the principal value of the saints’ lives is to show the importance of detachment in rightly relating to creation, including animals.204 The saints foster virtue through the ascetic cultivation of detachment, which frees them from the tyranny of the passions and thereby opens up options for relating to other creatures according to their natures rather than 202

Ibid., 138. We will revisit the idea that roles are “determined by God’s purposes, not our preferences” in connection with Andrew Linzey’s theological ethics in the next chapter. 203 Ibid. See also Matthew Scully, Dominion, x. 204 “Most of us actually have very little sense of coexisting with other creatures: they are either engulfed in our world, or out of sight and out of mind. The dog is treated as a member of the family, and the cartoon cow or pig makes a cheery kitchen decoration; but the unseen cow, pig, or chicken that supplies our food is treated as a machine. With the detachment that comes through ascetic discipline, the saints give us an example of distance from other creatures, and of responsibility for them. Other creatures have their own unique place in God’s creation, and are not to be re-created in our image. But this places a burden of responsibility on us, because in many ways—and today more than ever—other creatures are in our power. The saints set us an example of how to exercise that ‘power’ in the image of our Master who came to serve.” Ibid., 140.

196 human appetites. The lives in these hagiographies are illustrations of an observation from the prior chapter: that the exercise of reason goes with the development of compassion. We can see here the foundations of a virtue ethic. The final chapter will revisit the ethos of the sources from the past three chapters, and place their perspectives in conversation with modern perspectives concerning the value of animals and the ethical treatment of them.

Chapter Four

Contemporary Animal Ethics in Dialogue with Traditional Sources

The growing interest in moral questions surrounding the treatment of animals has given rise to a substantial body of literature, both theological and secular, in the last few decades. Within the former, the field that lends itself most readily to engagement with these ethical questions is systematic theology. One major purpose of this dissertation is to complement the broad view of that discipline with the narrower focus of historical theology and patristics. As such, my intent has been to supply in-depth analyses of selected sources (without pretending to comprehensiveness) important in the late antique and early medieval Eastern and Western Christian traditions. Beyond this goal, the dissertation aims at a synthesis of its own, so as to offer not only raw, pre-normative material, but analyses applied in dialogue with modern philosophers and theologians who are directly addressing these ethical questions. Because the contemporary literature is too wide ranging to be engaged thoroughly in this chapter, I have chosen three thinkers, each of whom has written at least one book specifically about animal ethics: David Clough and Andrew Linzey, who ground their ethics in Christian systematic theology, and Roger Scruton, a philosopher aiming to argue from secular (largely Kantian and virtue-ethics) foundations. Of course, the texts examined in the last three chapters will not apply with equal weight in conversation with each of these thinkers. Scruton may appreciate the substantive common ground between his thought and the theological sources but ultimately judge them unhelpful to his project of answering ethical questions with recourse only to religiously neutral foundations. Linzey and Clough, who between them have written the most

197

198 important works of animal theology today, will not accept all of these sources as equally authoritative, but will assess them with respect to their own hermeneutical keys developed from their reflection regarding the meaning of the gospel message. Although my own method is closer to theirs than to that of Scruton, it is closer still to that of Elizabeth Theokritoff (who has been copiously cited in the prior chapters and thus will not receive separate treatment in this one): analyzing the sources while trying to be as substantively neutral as possible, at least in the first instance. This approach involves identifying their perspectives on questions concerning animals and human dominion, and critiquing them not from any external vantage point reached on the basis of a predetermined ethical conclusion, but only insofar as they themselves seem either to have problems of internal consistency or to import external assumptions (e.g., Platonic-Philonic) into their exegeses or narratives, thus leading them to emphasize certain theological points at the expense of others that may also be legitimate given their scriptural sources. This analytical task has hopefully been accomplished in the prior chapters. The principal goal now is to bring these resources into conversation with modern ethical thought on animals, being attentive both to the limitations of their particular contexts and to the contributions they have to offer to the present discussion. We will see that our three modern ethicists share more common ground, both with each other and with the traditional sources, than might be expected. They agree that animal pain is a moral problem and that sympathy toward animals is a moral good. Likewise, they agree in rejecting an exclusively instrumentalist understanding of animals, and thus in opposing the modern abuses of experimentation and factory farming. They also concur in seeing humans as having a uniquely high position that confers responsibilities for creation, though they differ as to the specific contents of those responsibilities, how much discretion humans have in fulfilling them, and whether they are bound by individual rights held

199 by certain kinds of animals. All find common ground as well in holding that animals should not be treated in ways that disrespect their natures; but again, differences appear as to what kinds actions constitute disrespect, and also as to the contents of those natures and whether they should be determined from the standpoint of the world as we now experience it or the prelapsarian paradise of Genesis 1-2. When these divergences occur, it is usually the non-theological Scruton who takes a substantive position more in line with the traditional Christian sources, but by providing philosophical reasons based on the contemporary realities of animal natures, for human discretion in the management of the environment and the animals in it. But when he applies this same standard to human nature, he is further from the Christian sources than is Linzey, who cites their ascetic emphasis as aimed at restoring human nature to its originally intended role and thus enabling more selfless care for other creatures. It will be helpful to begin our discussion with Clough, given his detailed and methodical attention to the foundational value of some of the same sources explored in the prior chapters, after which we may compare and contrast Linzey’s theological approach. Finally, Scruton will offer a contrast in his philosophical approach that, as noted, has the most in common substantively with our theological sources.

I.

David Clough: critiquing and reappropriating theological sources The priority Clough gives to the theological foundations of practical ethics is evident at

once in his choice to divide his work into two volumes, the first on systematic theology, and the second (as yet unpublished) on ethics.1 Clough organizes his systematic theology into three parts,

1

In his introduction to his first volume, Clough identifies, or at least alludes to, the other thinkers we will consider here: the theological reflection of Linzey, whom Clough names as the exception

200 attending specifically to the place of animals in each: creation, reconciliation, and redemption. An important principle throughout his book is that these three theological areas ought not to be separated, so that God does not create what He does not reconcile, nor reconcile what He does not redeem.2 Clough describes his aim as “to engage constructively with the heart of biblical and focal theological traditions on the question of where animals belong in our theology,” intending not to break with orthodoxy, but rather to draw out implications of traditional doctrines that have so far gone unrecognized.3 While showing acute awareness of the many possible meanings of “anthropocentrism,”4 his rejection of it targets its teleological sense (regardless of whether it asserts humans are God’s exclusive concern in creation or allows room for other creatures on the periphery of humans). Opting for theocentrism, he argues that any kind of teleological anthropocentrism is a projection of our limited perspective (which is by definition anthropocentric) into the realm of divine valuation.5 This critique is, of course, consistent with our sources. Despite their anthropocentric rhetoric (and even content, in certain senses of anthropocentrism), the understanding is that humanity exists not self-referentially, but in reference to the Creator, so that even if patristic creation theology appears anthropocentric from certain vantage points, it is always theocentric when the perspective is widened.

to the general paucity of efforts to establish theological bases for animal ethics; and the insistence of the Kantian tradition (represented by Scruton) that moral duties can only be owed to beings that can reciprocally be bound by them. He also mentions the calculation-based consequentialism of Singer’s utilitarian tradition, which has been so influential in the contemporary discussion. David L. Clough, On Animals I: Systematic Theology (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), xiv. 2 See ibid., x, 144. 3 Ibid., xv. 4 Clough identifies epistemological, perspectival, metaethical, and ethical senses of anthropocentrism, but names the teleological sense as the key concern: does the world exist for the sake of humanity? Ibid., xvii-xviii. 5 Ibid., xix-xx.

201 A.

Creation

In examining the doctrine of creation, Clough asserts that from its early years, the Christian tradition has abounded in anthropocentric opinions, but without the corresponding support of theological argumentation.6 In this respect, he emphasizes the legacy of Platonic anthropocentrism that passed to fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa and Chrysostom through Philo.7 For example, the “double” creation in Nyssa’s On the Making of Humanity is traced back through Philo to Plato’s Timaeus.8 Philo works to reconcile Genesis 1, in which humans appear last, with the account in the Timaeus, in which the rest of earthly creation is made as an environment to support the fragile human body. His solution, which we also saw in several patristic sources in chapter 2, is that the human appears last as commander or banquet guest.9 Consistently with my assessment of the patristic exegeses of the same passage, Clough comments that Philo’s “answer that they were created last in order to demonstrate that everything else was made for their sake is without basis in the text,” and “the doctrine that human beings are the aim, centre and goal of creation is being read into the Genesis text in order to make it congruent with a view of the place of the human in creation derived from other sources.”10 Consistent with his express purpose of seeing new implications in orthodoxy rather than overturning it, Clough does not see the Philonic anthropocentrism present in patristic exegesis as a reason for discarding patristic formulas; rather, he prefers to situate the truths they capture in a 6

Ibid., 12. The earliest thinkers he cites are Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, both of whom say God creates for the sake of humans. 7 Ibid., 6-9. It must be noted, however, that Clough is ambiguous regarding the anthropocentric character of the Platonist tradition, given that he also aligns it with Celsus’ anti-anthropocentric critique of Christianity, to which Origen responds with anthropocentric arguments drawn from Stoicism. Ibid., 10-11. 8 Ibid., 6-7. 9 Ibid., 7-8. 10 Ibid., 9.

202 larger context,11 not abandoning their concern for the human, but expanding the scope of concern beyond a focus on the human to greater attention to animals, with the understanding that the scope may then expand further to plants and inanimate creation.12 A good case study is Clough’s treatment of Basil’s theology which, though less than thorough, provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses of his method of appropriating patristic sources. He begins with Basil’s affirmation, consistent with the wider orthodox Christian tradition, that the principal ontological divide is between the Creator and creation, thus rejecting the Neoplatonic scheme of degrees of being among creatures in favor of “ontological homogeneity,” whereby all creatures have the same ontological status in relation to their Creator.13 Clough considers this “a radical and distinctively Christian insight that the affirmation of God as creator of all things means the subversion of all human attempts to create hierarchy among creatures,” such that “many of the attempts to distinguish between creatures treated in the next chapter are rejections of Basil’s position.”14 In his next chapter, Clough does not identify which attempts are rejections of Basil’s position, but the striking aspect of his assessment is how broad it is. From a particular ontological affirmation, Clough reads an implied corollary so general that it runs up against not only the ideas of other thinkers, but ideas expressed elsewhere, and with greater specificity, by Basil himself. Clough is right that there is a “basic creaturely solidarity” on account of the common creaturely origin and destiny in dust, as opposed to the

11

Ibid., 23. Ibid., xxii-xxiii, 44. Clough sees this sequential expansion as responsible reflection, as opposed to a swing from the extreme of teleological anthropocentrism to the extreme of the egalitarian holism of Deep Ecology. He is right, but this preference for a sequence already belies some of his own more unguarded assertions about hierarchy that will be considered below. 13 Ibid., 26-27, citing Colin E. Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 71-72, 77. 14 Clough, On Animals, 27. 12

203 Creator’s eternity and omnipotence.15 What is problematic is the ease with which he moves from Basil’s denial of hierarchy in the emanationist sense of Neoplatonic metaphysics, to the assertion that “all human attempts to create hierarchy among creatures” are inconsistent with Basil’s theology. Clough rightly sees the Hexaemeron as an expression of Basil’s appreciation for creaturely diversity and particularity,16 but he also notes the latter’s judgment of fish as inferior on the basis of lack of memory,17 and thus implicitly admits that Basil’s thought allows for hierarchy in some sense. We have seen that Basil’s reflections on creation, including his understanding of dominion and his points of contact with Philo on rational human nature as opposed to irrational nature, allow room for a hierarchy of authority, even if not an ontological hierarchy in which irrational creatures have less “being” than do rational ones. Certain hierarchical distinctions in creation are consistent with his thought, if not required by it. But to be fair to Clough, he is not advocating radical biocentric or ecocentric egalitarianism, which would deny all distinctions of value within creation or at least among living beings, nor is he projecting this view onto Basil. The wider context of his reflections indicates that, when he refers to “hierarchy” as a concept to be discarded, he means the monolithic sort, in which those at the top are superior to those below them in all respects (and thus have more “being”). Clough does not reject all criteria of value, but a single criterion that

15

Ibid. Ibid., 45-48, 77. Clough says that Basil’s classification “is clearly indebted to Aristotle’s Historia animalium and other zoological works, as indeed is almost every biological account since the fourth century BC.” Ibid., 52. Unlike Plato and his successors in the Neoplatonist school, with their “Great Chain of Being” gradations, Aristotle recognizes the complexity involved in doing justice to the classification of creatures in their diversity. Ibid., 56-57. 17 Ibid., 48, 55-56 n.34. Incidentally, Clough mentions that Basil’s view of fish as lacking in memory is rejected by both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. 16

204 would apply universally and uniformly.18 There are many such “unilateral ordering” schemes, all of them proving unsatisfactory once we truly attend to creatures in their particularity and complexity.19 This attention is one of Clough’s main priorities, and one of his strongest contributions to theological reflection on animals. On the one hand, he draws out the characteristics of animals that mark both their commonality with each other and their difference from other creatures: namely, dependence on other organisms, and independence of action that enables unique responses to their Creator.20 On the other, he insists on an appreciation of the

18

See ibid., 45-46. Ibid., 57-63, 174. For instance, he names the Neoplatonic “Great Chain of Being,” which he says lends itself to exploitation and is incompatible with the direct creation and sustenance of all creatures by God in Genesis 1-2. Ibid., 58-59. He also includes the Aristotelian-Thomist system based on the distinction between act and potentiality, assuming something “lacks actuality because it is missing features present in supposedly higher beings” or “is a potential creature of a different kind.” Rather, Clough endorses John Duns Scotus’ position that a thing is “pure act, the realization of itself” (represented by the Scotist term haecceity, or “thisness”), as more representative of the doctrine of creation in Genesis. Ibid., 60. He says that Adam’s naming of the animals in Genesis 2 “suggests his attention to their particularity rather than a concern to order them.” Ibid., 63-64. Clough’s focus in this respect does indeed harmonize with Basil’s appreciation of creaturely diversity in the Hexaemeron. 20 Ibid., 34, 43. We have seen examples of these responses in animal interactions with saints in chapter 3. Clough astutely sees that the “animal place before God needs securing on two sides. On one side it is vulnerable to humans seeking to absent themselves from it, denying that they belong with other fleshy creatures with the breath of life. This has resulted in a radical impoverishment of our vision of the place of animals before God, because what is animal has come to be understood as the opposite to all that is characteristically human: animals on this account are irrational, driven by instinct, unintelligent, amoral, unsophisticated, uncreative, poor in relationality and lacking in the ability to transform their environment. . . . [S]uch characterizations of animals result not from carefully attending to their particularity, but from using them collectively as a rhetorical trope in order to prop up particular understandings of human nature. If instead we are prepared to acknowledge what humans have in common with other animal creatures, we are freed to see other animals for what they are, in all their particularity and diversity.” Ibid., 43-44. We have seen in chapter 2 that the patristic exegeses of Genesis, largely following Philo, has exhibited some of these “absenting” tendencies, even while they also discuss with appreciation particular attributes of various species. The fathers’ attention to particularity does not override the metaphysical barrier of rationality, as understood in a way that always keeps humans on one side and other animals on the other, despite certain examples already hinting that certain animals may have some share in the rational capacity. Clough 19

205 particularizing qualities of each kind of creature, and here he is glad to appropriate Basil’s Hexaemeron. To this end, and in the spirit of Basil, he engages with our increasingly developed and nuanced scientific knowledge of the capacities of different species, recognizing that this is the only fair way to reflect on the place of each in creation. In general, Clough sees this knowledge as pointing toward our greater commonality with other animals than we have been prepared to recognize.21 Nonetheless, we are not obliged to ignore what is unique about humanity.22 He says:

continues: “On the other side, the place of animals needs securing against the rush to the totality of living things or creatures.” Ibid., 44. This caution is aimed against the idea that if we break the boundary sequestering humanity, we must be obliged to value all creation in an undifferentiated manner: “it desires that the board be swept clean of the limitations represented by these circles, so that we can replace anthropocentrism with an ecocentrism that has an absolute regard for ecosystems and the multitudinous species of life they support with no attention to the locus of the human – or the animal – within them.” As examples, he names the “Land Ethic” of Aldo Leopold and the Deep Ecology of Arne Naess. Ibid., xxii & n.24. Both of these cautions are aimed at maintaining a balance in our understanding of creation and the place of humans and animals within it, and this balance harmonizes well with an integrated Christian understanding of creation, even if the patristic exegesis of Genesis leans toward the former side. 21 “We now have reason to believe that sheep are capable of recognizing hundreds of faces; crows are able to fashion tools in order to solve problems; chimpanzees exhibit empathy, morality and politics, and can outdo human subjects in numerically based memory tests; dolphins are capable of processing grammar; parrots can differentiate between objects in relation to abstract concepts such as colour and shape; and sperm whales have developed culturally specific modes of life and communication. We cannot read a theological account of our relatedness to other living creatures from our genome or a comparison of capacities, but these two new areas of knowledge constitute a remarkable scientific illustration of the theological affirmation of the commonality of living things.” Ibid., 30 (citations omitted). 22 Ibid., 44. Clough references Jesus’ words about our value being greater than that of the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, sparrows, and sheep as “provid[ing] a clear and consistent basis in the teaching of Jesus both for an emphasis on God’s universal providential care for every animal but also for believing that God values human life more highly than that of birds and that humans should value human life more highly than that of sheep. The passages do not suggest a rationale for such judgements: in this sense they parallel the undetermined content of the image of God noted above.” This is a revelation of divine valuation with ethical implications, but without metaphysical rationale regarding what attributes might make humans more valuable. Ibid., 7576.

206 [A]nthropocetric classifications are only problematic if we fail to appreciate that they are a tactical solution to a particular human project rather than a universal and authoritative insight into the essence of things. This does not mean that classification is arbitrary or fails to correspond to reality, so that we are set adrift in a sea of postmodern uncertainty.23 Opting for a multivalent approach, Clough endorses the view that “different overlapping schemes can each refer to the characteristics of things without being able to identify their place in a grand and monolithic hierarchy.”24 In contrast to these overarching hierarchical systems, Clough argues the only kind of creaturely hierarchy with a biblical basis is a simpler and flatter one, with humans above the rest of creation, for which the main scriptural support is the imago Dei passage of Genesis 1:26-28.25 But the Philonic and patristic understanding of the divine image as pertaining to rationality, or any capacity or attribute for that matter, is problematic in terms of textual evidence.26 Clough rightly argues that the trouble with identifying a capacity to distinguish qualitatively humans from other animals is that it never works for that end; rather, it merely reinforces standing assumptions.27 In addition, as Jacques Derrida has noted, an exclusive focus on the contrast between human and non-human masks differences among different kinds of non-human

23

Ibid., 63. Ibid., citing with approval John Dupré, Humans and Other Animals (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 4, 33. 25 Ibid., 64. 26 Ibid., 65. 27 “The astonishing range of these attempts to identify the key difference between humans and other animals is sufficient evidence that no such account can succeed: instead, we must recognize that human/animal difference is being used as a trope for discussion of the authors’ preferred features of human beings.” Ibid., 72. Clough is careful to note that he is not denying human distinctiveness but simply aiming to be fair and accurate, so as not to deny capacities to creatures that have them in some measure or to establish human uniqueness on shaky foundations. Ibid., 72-73. 24

207 animals.28 As for rationality in particular, it seems to exist in a continuum across species, rather than as a binary divide of which only humans are on the side possessing it: Any substantive definition of rationality will either fail to identify a difference of kind rather than degree between humans and other animals – e.g. ‘capacity for abstract thought’ – or will not plausibly identify an attribute sufficiently weighty to unite the earthly and heavenly realms – e.g. (despite my respect for mathematicians) ‘capacity to perform abstract calculus’. For this reason, among others, the attempt to identify human beings as unique on the basis that they play a pivotal role between earth and heaven must fail.29 Clough’s observation concerning the problem of defining rationality is sound, given accrued empirical observation of species, but it is not clear that it must lead to the abandonment of the idea that humanity is critical in the uniting of heaven and earth. In fact, other aspects of his thought seem to leave space for quite a different conclusion. He rejects a substantialist understanding of the divine image in favor of a functionalist or vocational one, consistent with the ancient understanding of the king representing God on earth.30 Such a perspective would mean that “God has called human beings to be creatures in a particular way and take responsibility for the lives of other creatures.”31 This might remind us of a theme from chapter 2: dominion involving living a bodily existence in a spiritual mode, illustrated in Adam’s task of cultivating material creation in a virtuous manner. Clough notes that Gregory of Nyssa supports a vocational interpretation,32 and we have seen that he is not the only one, although we have also

28

Ibid., 74. Ibid., 70. This problematic is not limited to rationality but extends to any effort to identify an attribute that might serve as a definitive and qualitative separator between humans and other animals: “If our aim is to characterize the difference between humans and other animals in order to understand what it is to be human, it seems that the more accurate and detailed our list becomes, the less likely it is that we can claim it to be universally true of human beings, and the harder it is to attribute significance to the differences we find.” Ibid., 74. 30 Ibid., 65-66. 31 Ibid., 76. 32 Ibid., 67 n.71. 29

208 seen that he and other patristic sources also support the Philonic substantialist interpretation based in rationality as well. Clough makes a strong argument, however, that this substantialist interpretation is neither empirically strong nor ethically necessary. Moreover, he notes that the New Testament identifies Christ as the Image of God. Clough argues that if a Christian understanding of the divine image is to have a Christological foundation, then we must ground it in the incarnation, rather than in a freestanding interpretation of creation.33 It is hardly novel for Christian theologians to be aware of the need for a Christological basis in reflecting on the divine image. Even the approach of seeing God’s image located also in the flesh, stressing Adam as a type of the incarnate Christ, can be seen in Tertullian and Irenaeus,34 although our fourth-century patristic sources focus instead on the immaterial aspect of human nature as logikos and thus able to know and imitate the divine Logos. The two are not necessarily incompatible but may simply emphasize different aspects of human nature. But this is precisely Clough’s critique: that the latter assumes a binary in which humans have a divinelike, immaterial “rationality” that places them on one side of the divide and all other species, deprived of this attribute, on the other. He is right that the more narrowly we tailor our definition of “rationality” so as to apply only to the human, the less significant it becomes. Yet our failure to come up with a satisfactory articulation does not mean there is no reality that qualitatively distinguishes humans from other animals; it may point, rather, to the inadequacy of our conceptual categories for expressing it.

33

Ibid., 67. See Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 6 (ANF 3:549); Irenaeus of Lyons, On the Apostolic Preaching 32 (trans. John Behr; Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 61; Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies 5.6.1-2 (ANF 1:531-33).

34

209 The pervasive lamentations of humanity’s detrimental impact on the environment are admissions of a unique capacity to rule, sadly seen in its abuse. It is in this capacity, identified most specifically by Chrysostom as pertaining to the imago Dei, that a qualitative difference can be seen, regardless of how precisely it can be defined in words. Even if we have found, for example, that elephants have excellent memories and mourn their dead, chimpanzees show aspects of morality, and tigers take revenge, there is no suggestion that any of these species could usurp the human place of rule (whether humans occupy this position for better or for worse). In fact, our patristic sources have already acknowledged similar capacities in certain species, such as Basil’s comments on the stork’s demonstration of filial piety, the vulture’s semi-rational pursuit of armies going to battle, and the camel’s patient calculation of the right time to pay back an offense. “Rationality,” in the sense in which it marks off human distinctiveness, would be the inexpressible attribute, or combination of attributes, that puts humans in the unique position of rule, notwithstanding other animals’ similarities to humans in various respects. But if I have succeeded in defending these fourth-century fathers’ use of the term, I have done so in a way that speaks of rationality just as Clough speaks of the imago Dei: in vocational, rather than substantialist, terms. Regarding how we are to live (which was the main concern of the patristic homilies anyway), the definition of rationality matters less than the fact of rule, and the responsibility that comes with it. While Clough may take exception to the form of certain patristic assertions, they do not seem to be so far apart in substance as they may seem on the surface. B.

Reconciliation

Clough begins his discussion of reconciliation with the incarnational starting point he advocates. His central argument is that the incarnation of the Word is no more specific to the

210 human species in its reconciling effects than it is to any other trait (male, Jewish, Palestinian, first-century) particularizing Jesus of Nazareth. Rather, that “the Word became flesh” indicates a scope that is cosmic, not limited to the human.35 Instead of reflecting on the incarnation as God becoming human, Clough would shift the emphasis to God becoming creature. It is unclear to what extent he would write off the significance of Christ’s humanity altogether, as if it would have made no difference whether the Word were to have become incarnate as a cat, a spider, an oak, or a rock. There are indications, however, that the extent is relatively great. He says, “I am suggesting that the creatureliness of Christ is an appropriate gloss on traditional affirmations of his humanity, so that the humanity of Christ can be recognized as a synecdoche for his taking on creatureliness.”36 Humanity as mere synecdoche does not appear to allow it much significance. If there is anything meaningful about the divine choice to become creature specifically as human, Clough does not appear interested in it. Perhaps this is only because he thinks it has been overemphasized in the historical tradition, but the way in which he offers this broader context for appreciating the incarnation seems oddly scrupulous in its anticipation of protests: To describe the event of the incarnation as God taking on creatureliness seems in the first instance a radical departure from the creedal confessions of the church, but my argument in this chapter is that this interpretation of the incarnation is a supplement to rather than a contradiction of the affirmation that God became human.37 The fact that his affirmation is not a radical departure in the least, but an obvious and undisputed implication of God becoming human (nobody denies humans are creatures), begs the question as to whether the shift he has in mind really is a mere supplement to the traditional view rather than

35

Clough, On Animals, 81-87 (citing Col 1:15-20, Eph 1:9-10, Heb 1:2-3, 1 Cor 8:6, Jn 1:3, Rev 3:14), 91. 36 Ibid., 88 n.15. 37 Ibid., 102-03.

211 a neutralization of it. He also says, “The doctrine of the incarnation does not therefore establish a theological boundary between humans and other animals; instead, it is best understood as God stepping over the boundary between creator and creation and taking on creatureliness.”38 While the latter implication is, of course, granted, Clough seems to see the failure of unilinear creaturely hierarchies, as seen in the fruitlessness of the effort to define rationality in such a way that only humans have it,39 as allowing no room for the traditional understanding of the human as a microcosm bridging spiritual and material creation. But it is not clear this doctrine must be abandoned simply because we recognize that there is no single scale that can capture the range of differences among creatures, or because rationality escapes any clear definition that would apply exclusively to humans. The nexus identified above between rationality and rule – rationality as that quality or cluster of qualities enabling human rule – provides for a unique human connection to God even under a vocational, rather than a substantialist, understanding of the imago Dei. Clough soundly argues that if humanity is unique, it is only owing to Christ’s humanity, rather than to a stand-alone doctrine of creation,40 but he may be too hasty in assuming Christ’s humanity must be treated the same way as other particularizing features. Women can rule, as can Gentiles, and inhabitants of lands other than Palestine, and people of eras other than the first century – and all of these people have the potential to rule as God rules in Christ. But Clough would have a heavy burden in demonstrating 38

Ibid., 103. Ibid., 68-70. Citing Karl Barth as support, Clough restates his rejection of all attempts to argue human superiority based on values selected by humans, given the problems of self-interested motives and limited perspectives. Abstract rational nature, for example, is not an object of interest in Scripture, and we cannot come to credible judgments regarding the rationality of other creatures from our external vantage point. Ibid., 91. 40 Ibid. I admit his argument as sound based on the need for Christian theology to proceed from Christocentric starting points, not because the first two chapters of Genesis do not support human uniqueness on their own. 39

212 the same of non-human species, as he would have to do in order to support a marginalizing of God-as-human in favor of God-as-creature. The latter is necessarily implied in the former, but the former is not necessarily implied in the latter, so Clough’s move deemphasizes the significance of Christ’s humanity, risking the loss of an important theological point for the sake of stressing another point that can still be stressed without this risk.41 Notwithstanding that there will always be people who will want to use human uniqueness as an excuse to exploit the rest of creation, the answer is not to abandon or even deemphasize the idea that the incarnation shows humanity to have a special dignity. The better answer to the problem is offered elsewhere by

41

Clough argues that if it were the humanness of Christ in itself that revealed God, any human being could serve the same function. Instead, Christ reveals God by being God incarnate. Accordingly, our capacity to image God depends on being in Christ and so is a dynamic process rather than a static given. Ibid., 101. This interpretation depends on an identification of image and likeness, as made by Gregory of Nyssa, in contrast to the wider tradition. Although it has a place, there does not appear to be any reason to rule out the perspective distinguishing between image and likeness, with the former being the given capacity, and the latter being the dynamic process – unless that reason is to eliminate the possibility of humans having a special connection to God. Whether or not this be the motive, Clough identifies it as the result. Accepting functional and relational understandings of the image, he says that “human beings are called to image God and in Christ they are being transformed into creatures that may image God more fully. There is no difficulty in acknowledging a particular mode of imaging God that is unique to the particular assemblage of capacities that are characteristic of human beings: only human beings can serve God in human-specific ways. What is made problematic by the New Testament discussions of the image of God is the idea that humanness as such – as distinct from other forms of creatureliness – reveals God in a unique way or that human beings have a superior standing in relation to other creatures because they represent or even resemble God.” Ibid., 101-02. I disagree that the New Testament texts’ re-centering of image reflection on Christological grounds creates this result. Humanness “as such” provides the capacity not only for rule, but for Christ-like rule, including the voluntary embrace of one’s cross in faith, obedience, and love. No animal other than the human has this potential. Clough is right that humanness “as such” provides only the potential, but that potential is itself grounds for refusing to abandon the correspondence between the image and the human. If Clough’s revision (and he calls it a revision) is applied, traditional Christian admonitions to treat every person, no matter how high or low, as if s/he were Christ would have to be brushed aside, replaced by the much narrower (and foggier) admonition to treat the saints as Christ. The result is more likely to be a devaluation of the human, and a spiritual elitism, rather than a higher valuation of the rest of creation.

213 Clough, as well as by the patristic and hagiographical sources: the unique status enjoyed by humans imposes on them responsibilities, not license. To further his aim of showing that the extent of reconciliation must match that of creation, Clough’s chapter on atonement expands the scope of moral agency beyond humanity. The connection between sin and reconciliation in his analysis is complex.42 His argument is twotiered: first, sin is not unique to humans; and second, even if it is, it does not follow that other creatures are not in need of reconciliation.43 To support the first, Clough provides chilling evidence of infanticide and cannibalism among chimpanzees in a certain family, and the horror and disgust displayed by others.44 These behaviors show moral awareness beyond any examples in the patristic sources from our first two chapters. Although many animals in the hagiographical sources do show something like moral awareness, it is a response to their Creator encountered in the saint, rather than a manifestation through interactions in their own social groups. But this evidence, at most, shows only that chimpanzees can sin and thus need reconciliation,45 and the scope of Clough’s argument is broader than that.

42

Clough says that if “the motivation of the incarnation is a response to human sinfulness, other creatures are mere bystanders.” Ibid., 104. This seems to overstate (and oversimplify) the case, even by his own standards. 43 Ibid., 105, 120. 44 Ibid., 112-14. 45 Clough makes a compelling argument that even if these behaviors are considered “natural” by the standards of evolutionary biology, in securing one’s own reproductive success, such an evaluation cannot be considered morally normative, unless we impose different moral standards on human and non-human animals for no reason other than species difference. Ibid., 114-15. To the objection that the chimpanzees may not have acted deliberately or understood their acts as wrong, Clough responds with Augustine’s answer to Pelagius that the same can be true of sinful human action. Ibid., 117-18. It is a good theological argument, but it raises the question why the example is presented at all. The presence of moral awareness in chimpanzees seems to be the point of the example, but if an objection that perhaps they were not truly aware can be rebutted with an appeal to the complex effects of original sin on nature (human or otherwise), then it

214 To support his second argument, then, he cites scriptural texts implying animal guilt.46 Animals are parties to God’s covenant with Noah in Genesis 9, and “[s]in characterized as covenant-breaking, therefore, seems applicable to other animals.” He argues there is no need to inquire into varying cognitive capacities, because the covenant is an expression of God’s will that each kind of creature live within the boundaries God has set for it.47 Accordingly, the chimpanzee example may serve to alert us to the possibility that certain other species may be able to sin under our conventional definition requiring knowledge and intent, but the definition need not be that narrow. Nonetheless, because of the controversial nature of the claim that animals can sin, Clough retreats from the term “sin” and offers the alternative of suffering from sin as a basis for needing reconciliation. Not all such suffering will suffice, however: an innocent victim may need redemption (in the form of liberation), but not reconciliation. But Clough sees relationships of predation and competition as fitting the category that might be described as either sin (in its broader sense) or suffering from sin (in its not-quite-innocent sense), requiring reconciliation either way, as they do not reflect God’s original purposes for creation.48

seems moral awareness is not such an issue after all, and the example’s value lies mainly in the shock it elicits. 46 Ibid., 108-09, citing Gen 3:14-15 (serpent cursed), 9:5 (blood reckoning required of every beast that kills a human), 9:8-17 (God’s covenant extended to humans and all living creatures of flesh), Exod 19:13 (death required of any human or animal touching mountain), Lev 15-16 (bestiality punished by death of both human and animal parties), Jon 3:7-10 (humans and animals of Nineveh do penance). 47 Clough, On Animals, 116. 48 Ibid., 120-21. Clough says, “[P]redatory relations between creatures seem to be one of the consequences of the fall and the creation is promised liberation from the present time of groaning in which lives are subject to suffering and cut short by death. Whether or not it makes sense to say that non-human creatures are capable of sin, this reading of the fall suggests that many or most creatures are caught up in structures of predation and competition for resources that mean they are in need of reconciliation with God in an analogous way to humans caught up in situations of structural sin.” Ibid., 121. He elaborates that “Genesis 1-2 reveal a God who has ordered a good creation in which diverse creatures live in harmony with one another; Genesis 3

215 Clough’s discussion of atonement includes fascinating new evidence regarding the potential for animal sin – evidence most likely unknown in antiquity. Here is a serious point for conversation, but in the end, he discounts its importance for the sake of broadening the reach of reconciliation to all creation laboring under the results of the fall. The effect is to make the definition of sin a moving target geared to the end of overturning anthropocentrism in whatever way is expedient. But the positive aspect of this move is to confront the question of the current state of non-human creation vis-à-vis its Creator. The reader will recall the idea from chapter 1 that non-human creation has not departed from God’s will (and that if it seems so to us, our intellects need ascetic purification to see the ways in which other creatures still serve God). This is a point supported by Theokritoff, who also supports the countervailing notion that the predatory state is contrary to God’s original will. Clough forces a recognition of the tension between these two ideas, noting the same tension is present in the thought of Martin Luther.49 But where Clough proposes to make Luther consistent by rejecting his opinion that non-human creatures have not changed with the fall, it is the Philonic “anthropocentrism” of the fathers that provides a chance to harmonize the two views.50 In chapter 2, we noted Philo’s understanding

makes clear that something happened which means we can no longer read off God’s purposes by observation of the world in its current state. To insist against this that the life of the world we see around us is a reliable indication of God’s creative purposes is to privilege our own independent observation of the world over basic affirmations concerning the doctrine of God that are biblically rooted and defended throughout the Christian tradition. Attempting to solve the problem of the relationship between the fall and evolution by denying the fall, therefore, is by no means an attractive option for Christian theology.” Ibid., 124. Clough addresses the problem presented by evolution with reference to the trans-temporal effects of sin, analogous to the transtemporal effects of reconciliation in the Cross. Ibid., 124-26. 49 Ibid., 107. 50 Clough disapproves of Philo’s view that God kills birds and beasts in the flood, though they committed no sin, because they were made to serve humanity, so their reason for existing was destroyed with humanity. Ibid., 106, citing Loeb, Philo Suppl. I, I.94, II.9, Questions and Answers on Genesis. In my reckoning, the more immediate problem with Philo’s opinion is that

216 that even before the fall, animals were fierce to each other and tame only before humanity. This idea is reworked in my synthesis of the patristic perspectives, differing as they appeared to be, stating that it is the proper exercise of human dominion that ensures peace in creation. Accordingly, both opinions of Luther (and Theokritoff) can be true, the difference explained by the quality of the dominion exercised by humans, depending on the state of their own relationship with God. This understanding need not be seen as an arrogant anthropocentrism, but rather an application of the vocational understanding of the imago Dei favored by Clough. Both the traditional sources and Clough have valuable insights to offer regarding the status of animals in relation to humans and to God, and these insights may be reconciled to a great degree. C.

Redemption

Clough himself is not so quick to accept my attempt to harmonize the views, however. For him, humanity is not essential to the ability of animals to relate to God.51 This is a strong premise on his part, although the theological argument with which he supports it is less strong than the force with which he relies on it, paralleling in reverse his criticism of anthropocentric statements in patristic sources. Despite appreciating John Wesley’s view that redemption extends to all sentient creatures, Clough’s opinion that animals have the independent capacity to obey God leads him to reject Wesley’s view (along with that of the wider patristic tradition) that blessings and curses on animals flow from God through humanity, and that human perfection in

humanity was not actually destroyed, but continued through Noah’s family. Yet the answer to this problem lies in the survival only of the animals that were in the ark, as a type of the Church. Thus, the survival of any animals at all depends on Noah’s response of faith to God. But the “anthropocentrism” of this point differs from the idea that animals exist only for humans, and it might fit comfortably with Clough’s vocational interpretation of the divine image. 51 Clough, On Animals, 136, 146.

217 paradise was in obeying God, while animal perfection was in obeying humanity.52 For the same reason, he rejects C.S. Lewis’ speculation that if a particular animal hypostasis is to have a resurrected life, it will only be as the result of a “selfhood” acquired through a relationship with a human.53 He also takes issue with the ground of theodicy on which Wesley, Lewis, and others rely in hoping for animal resurrection. For Clough, it is problematic to attempt to justify animals’ pain in terms of the happy future God “owes” them in the afterlife.54 He prefers to approach the question of animal resurrection with reference to the general scheme he follows throughout: redemption necessarily coincides with creation and reconciliation in scope.55 God does not create what He does not reconcile and redeem, and the reason for an animal’s existence in the resurrection is the same as the reason for its existence in the first place: God wills that it exist.56 It is hard to deny the intuitive appeal of this idea, but universal redemption in some form has been argued since the early centuries of Christianity, and this dissertation is not so ambitious as to try to answer the question, nor can it accept any proposal to include the theologoumenon as a solid basis for ethical imperatives. Clough does well, however, to bring reflection back to the basic Christian affirmation of the place of the body in the new creation, as against the Gnostic opposition of good spirit to evil matter.57 In this way, he supplements patristic statements such as that of Basil that animal souls are of the earth’s substance and thus do not survive bodily decomposition. Holding to the resurrection of the body, Christians may also hold to Basil’s 52

Ibid., 133-36. Ibid., 145-46 (citing C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 138-42), 166. 54 Ibid., 146-48. 55 Ibid., 144, 171-72. 56 Ibid., 146. As patristic support, he cites Irenaeus’ doctrine of recapitulation, as well as the apokatastasis of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, arguing that it did not get condemned per se at the Fifth Ecumenical Council, and that it is not necessary anyway to defend universal human redemption in order to apply the doctrine to the redemption of animals. Ibid., 149-51. 57 Ibid., 154. 53

218 assertion and yet not be bound to presume it precludes a resurrected existence for animals.58 In connection with his anti-Gnostic affirmation of the material world, however, Clough makes a puzzling statement: “This means in turn that the religious task cannot be construed as attempted escape from the world through ascetic practice, the mortification of the body or denying God’s good work of creation.”59 It is odd that he so simply associates asceticism with a Gnostic renunciation of the goodness of the material world. If he believes ascetic practice always represents Gnostic influence, even in an officially orthodox context, he must demonstrate this, rather than resting on the supposition. Additionally, unlike Theokritoff and (as we will see) Linzey, he seems not to recognize the fundamental importance of an ascetic attitude in confronting the main reason for the abuse of animals: a consumerist mentality that must have as much of what it wants, when it wants it. Arguing that “[a] Christian vision of redeemed creaturely life must be one in which predation is no longer a possibility for human or non-human creatures,”60 Clough cites Helen Waddell’s Beasts and Saints, from which we read examples in the last chapter, as a model of what restored animal life in harmony with humanity might look like. He says: Such stories of the saints echo the biblical visions of harmony between creatures: the lives of saints recall an original harmony between creatures in the biblical narrative and anticipate the final peace between creatures proclaimed in biblical prophecy. Saints such as Kevin are unusually attuned to what it would mean to 58

Christians may hope, then, “that the bodies of other-than-human animals are not disposable parts of the current world order, but will be resurrected with human bodies in the new creation.” Ibid., 172. The discoveries of modern science regarding the total replacement of molecules over time within the same enduring individual subject raises questions as to whether any being with consciousness (not only self-consciousness) and long-term memory can be considered to have an exclusively material nature. Even if non-human animals do not have the same kind of souls as humans, there is no reason to believe this fact would constitute an impediment to the omnipotent Creator’s ability to restore the individualized subjectivity they had while their bodies lived. 59 Ibid., 154. 60 Ibid., 160.

219 live in accordance with God’s desire for peace between creatures; creatures such as St Macarius’s hyena demonstrate an awareness of the sanctity of the lives of the saints they encounter.61 His choice of models could not be more appropriate, but the problem lies in what he passes over. From his point that the end of creation is not the human, Clough argues that the restoration will not involve “creaturely relations where all other animals are made subservient to the human animal.” From his point that “the theologically distinctive human characteristic of bearing the image of God is best understood as a vocation to image God to the rest of creation,” he argues that God’s unmediated presence in the new creation will obviate the need for this vocation (prompting the obvious question why it is mentioned in Genesis 1, in connection with God’s original purposes in creation). Thus, he posits that the redemption of the wilderness creates a place where wild animals can keep being themselves even in the presence of humans, and he suggests that “[p]erhaps the stories of saints living in the wilderness in harmony with the wild animals there can be taken as some kind of foreshadowing of this mode of redemption.”62 There are a couple of difficulties with Clough’s treatment of this subject. The first is that he identifies the ability of wild animals to “be themselves” with the absence of human dominion, thus ontologizing a particular mode of life so as to project it into the eschaton. This is just what he correctly refuses to do in reflecting on the state of presently carnivorous animals in the resurrection,63 for which he rejects the proposition that “creatures can only remain themselves insofar as they continue in the creaturely practices they exhibited in the created order as we know it, so that they can play no part in a peaceable kingdom.”64 Having problematized what it means

61

Ibid., 158. Ibid., 166. 63 Ibid., 159-61. 64 Ibid., 161. 62

220 for a creature to “be itself” insofar as this can be known from present behaviors, he slips back into an empirically-based view of the question when it is more congenial to his preferred vision. This tendency ties into the second and more overarching problem with Clough’s book on systematic theology: there is little engagement with the question of human dominion, so that its integration with the divine image in Genesis 1:26 is passed over.65 This marginalizing of such a critical concept is not necessitated by his shift from a “substantialist” to a functionalist understanding of the divine image, nor even by his rejection of unilinear hierarchies. It seems driven mainly by the priority of avoiding any “anthropocentric” or “speciesist” label.66 In this respect, his theological approach is as dependent on current philosophical trends, in both their strengths and their weaknesses, as is the largely “Philonian” approach of the fathers from our first two chapters. This observation is no more a rejection of Clough’s method than it is a rejection of the patristic one, only a caution that we not discard what is helpful in the fathers when embracing contemporary correctives. One of Clough’s aims in this volume is to set up his

65

It bears noting that I am speaking here only of his book on systematic theology. In a presentation at Oxford University, Clough indicates that the textual proximity between the two theological ideas suggests a conceptual relationship. See http://mcdonaldcentre.org.uk/resources /peter-singer-conference/ at 17:00 [cited 8 September 2015]. 66 The same priority can be seen in his statement, “It seems to me that a diplodocus or pterodactyl might have just as much to gain from a life set free from bondage to decay as I do.” Clough, On Animals, 170. If we truly delve into animal particularities, as Clough rightly demands, we might find that the kind of creature with the cluster of capacities enabling dominion – including selfconsciousness, reflection on the meaning of existence, and the ability to recognize God as Creator and Redeemer – would have more to gain from a redeemed life than the kind of creature whose enjoyment of life is primarily (if not exclusively) at the sensory and emotional level. This is not to posit a unilateral hierarchy; these dinosaur species may be higher in any number of hierarchies than are humans (e.g., size, strength, speed, keenness of vision or hearing, the capacity for flight). If Clough’s only point is to say that the end of every creature is to flourish in its own way according to its own kind, as he says elsewhere, there is no problem. But we must not forget his admission that Jesus’ statements about human value being greater than the value of other species has normative force for us.

221 second volume, regarding ethics.67 Although a patristic-based ethic may not take us as far as Clough would like in reforming the way in which humans relate to animals, an appreciation for the reach of its vision of dominion – in its ascetic contours and adjusted for the realities of the modern developed world – would take us much further in reform than is supposed by those who cite “dominion” to justify an instrumentalist relationship. Nonetheless, Clough’s reflection serves as a valuable supplement, and sometimes counterpoint, to the patristic sources, especially in highlighting points of human-animal communion, both as expressed in Scripture and as discovered by modern science.

II.

Andrew Linzey: the radical demands of the perennial gospel Just as they do for Clough, theology and ethics go hand in hand for Linzey.68 He shares

significant points of contact with Clough, including one discussion organized in terms of creation, reconciliation, and redemption.69 Like Clough, he says God’s creation is good and so has value, but because of the fall, we cannot read divine intent from it as it is now.70 God values creation to the extent of binding Himself to it in the Incarnation to save it, and reconciling it

67

“Clough, On Animals, 175-76. Andrew Linzey, Animal Gospel (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 16; Animal Theology (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 59. Although Linzey has written (and edited) other books, some more recent than these, I have chosen to focus on these two because they provide the most comprehensive expression of his theological thought as it relates to his ethics. Some of his more recent books are Why Animal Suffering Matters: Philosophy, Theology, and Practical Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), and Creatures of the Same God: Explorations in Animal Theology (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Lantern Books, 2009). 69 Linzey, Animal Theology, 96-100. 70 Ibid., 96-97. In other words, the current state of nature is not ethically normative. If we speak about “natural law” at all, it should be based on how things should be, not on how they are. This is the “trans-natural moral imperative.” Ibid., 81-83. 68

222 through the Cross.71 Finally, all that has been created will be redeemed and made new.72 Linzey’s key principle is that dominion means humans are to rule as God rules, as seen in Christ’s exercise of divine authority as service.73 The traditional teaching of human uniqueness is not wrong, but it needs to be balanced by an emphasis on human responsibility to creation.74 Merely by stressing this principle, simple to grasp but not easy to follow, Linzey makes a valuable contribution to animal ethics. His moves from general principle to specific application, however, can present problems that undermine his ethical vision. A.

Christ-like dominion as service to sentient creatures

Foundationally, Linzey cites with approval Albert Schweitzer’s view that reverence for life as sacred is the sole moral principle, comprehending in itself love and compassion.75 Reverence is not just a matter of moral law, and certainly not of utilitarian calculation.76 The idea of humans forming an exclusive “moral community” has a formidable pedigree, going back to Aristotle, then adopted by Augustine and Aquinas,77 but Linzey aptly observes that this idea does

71

Ibid., 98-99; see also 70. Ibid., 99-100. 73 Ibid., ix. Linzey says most scholars now agree that the real meaning of dominion is “that humans have a divine-like responsibility to look after the world and to care for its creatures.” Ibid., 147; see also 144-45 (dominion means active management of the planet, but it is limited by God’s will and designs, not ours); Animal Gospel, 102 (dominion means the responsibility of caring for the earth). As applied to the particular issue of animal experimentation, he quotes C.S. Lewis: “Our superiority ought to consist at least in part in not behaving like a vivisector.” Ibid., 97, quoting Vivisection, 3. 74 Linzey, Animal Theology, 112. 75 Ibid., 4-5. 76 Ibid., 6. This view shares common ground with Scruton’s ethics, in which compassion is an aspect of morality but not to be absolutized at the expense of other aspects, such as piety. The application, however, is very different, and Scruton also separates piety and sympathy as separate moral sources, rather than the latter being subsumed in the former. 77 Ibid., 13-15. Linzey critiques this “contractual” idea of rights by saying that if only those who can hold duties can hold rights, this excludes infants and many disabled. Animal Gospel, 43. Scruton, who supports the model, will respond with reference to natures: infants and disabled 72

223 not represent God’s way of dealing with us. It is Jesus’ costly love that is our moral example, and “[t]he inner logic of Christ’s lordship is the sacrifice of the higher for the lower, not the reverse.”78 This is a compelling argument: after all, we do not see Jesus in Gethsemane arguing to the Father that charity is not owed to humans because we are not properly in the divine “community” of love. Linzey claims Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom as sources that understand Christ’s divine generosity inclusively. Certainly this is true in a general sense, but Linzey does not engage with the specifics of these sources.79 He argues the New Testament does not make the same accommodations for human weakness that the Old Testament does, and if Christ is truly our moral exemplar, it is not clear that humans have the same rights of use as before.80 Rather, “the concept of generosity, of the higher sacrificing itself for the lower, is at the heart even of highly anthropocentric doctrine” and “must also be the paradigm for the exercise of

humans are the kind of being that has the capacity for duties and thus rights. Infants will develop these capacities in time, but even the mentally disabled share the human form, and it would be a violation of virtue and piety to destroy it. Animal Rights and Wrongs (3d ed.; London: Metro Books, 2000), 53-54. The moral criteria of virtue and piety will be discussed in Scruton’s section. 78 Linzey, Animal Theology, 71-72, quotation at 71. 79 Ibid., 35-36. Basil’s inclusion by Linzey is with reference to the liturgical prayer speaking of animals as “our brothers,” which has been shown to be spurious. Chrysostom interprets even the Genesis 9 covenant anthropocentrically, understanding the inclusion of animals to be instructive for humans as to their importance to God. Interestingly, it is precisely Nyssa and Chrysostom that Clough cites as heavily influenced by Philonic anthropocentrism. On Animals, 6-9. 80 Linzey, Animal Theology, 106. When dealing with Old Testament animal sacrifice, Linzey argues the practice can be justified in retrospect on the strict understanding that it was “the freeing of animal life to be with God, an acknowledgment that it (as with all creatures) belongs not to humans but to God and that God is able to accept and transform its life.” It must therefore be seen as revealing animal value; but even so, the tradition is fulfilled in Christ, whose sacrifice, continually renewed in the Eucharist, has abolished the sacrifice of animals. Ibid., 105, 111, 122.

224 human dominion over the animal world.”81 In Christ, lordship and service necessarily go together.82 It is this “generosity paradigm,” as he calls it, that he offers as a replacement for Peter Singer’s “equality paradigm,” which Linzey sees as insufficient for expressing the vocation of dominion. Singer’s utilitarian “equal consideration of interests”83 can justify and even require animal experimentation based on the results, whereas Linzey’s standard “insists that humans must bear for themselves whatever ills may flow from not experimenting upon animals rather than sanction a system of institutionalized abuse.”84 Linzey’s ethic is grounded in the moral priority of the weak and the renunciation of “ill-gotten gains,” even if human interests must at times be subordinate.85 Seen one way, Linzey could be seen to argue that animal interests trump human ones. But he contextualizes his argument by discussing the power and duties of parents with respect to their children, saying that in both instances, when we exercise power, it should be

81

Ibid., 32. Ibid., 33. Linzey states elsewhere, “No appeal to the power of God can be sufficient without reference to the revelation of that power exemplified in Jesus Christ. . . . The power of God in Jesus is expressed in katabasis, humility, self-sacrifice, powerlessness. The power of God is redefined in Jesus as practical costly service extending to those who are beyond the normal boundaries of human concern: the diseased, the poor, the oppressed, the outcast. If humans are to claim a lordship over creation, it can only be a lordship of service. There can be no lordship without service.” Animal Gospel, 39. 83 See Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 19-23. 84 Linzey, Animal Theology, 38-40. 85 Ibid., 88-89; Animal Theology, 28, 41, 44. Even when Linzey insists he is not arguing moral equality between humans and animals, he then turns the tables and surprises the reader by saying what he is arguing is moral priority of animals, because they are the weaker beings. Animal Gospel, 39. Once we get past the initial rhetorical appeal, we can see serious problems. Should we starve to avoid eating “weaker” plants? Linzey would say plants do not have the same interests because they are not sentient, but this begs the question whether sentience is the only moral criterion. If not, and there is another that distinguishes humans from other animals, then the plant example applies by analogy. 82

225 for the interests of those in our charge.86 Just as parents owe their children more than their “rights” in order to be loving and generous, the same is true for our dominion over animals.87 While the analogy illustrates power exercised in service, it fails to account for the vastly differing kinds of “service” in these two relationships: the goal of parents is (hopefully) to form strong characters in their children in addition to providing for their material and emotional needs, whereas the goal in “serving” animals can only be to provide for their material and (perhaps) emotional needs (bracketing the question of morality in certain species such as chimpanzees). If animals are disciplined, it is to modify their external behavior to make them more fit to live with humans, rather than to instill certain internal virtues of character. Thus, Linzey’s analogy, intending to highlight similarities between humans and animals, actually highlights differences consistent with the patristic understanding that humans are animals that are logikoi. With respect to animal rights, Linzey says only God can properly and absolutely claim “rights,” but we have to respect His rights in creation by showing reverence.88 God is for creation, so we must be as well.89 In a derivative sense, animals have rights, but this is only to say they can be wronged, because “their Creator can be wronged in his creation.”90 On the other

86

Linzey, Animal Theology, 36-38. Ibid., 41-42. 88 Ibid., 22-23. 89 Ibid., 24-25. 90 Ibid., 27; see also Animal Gospel, 40 (arguing that “[a]nimal rights language conceptualizes what is objectively owed the Creator of animals,” that “rights are not something awarded, granted, won, or lost but something recognized,” and that “[t]o recognize animal rights is to recognize the intrinsic value of God-given life”). For Linzey, animal rights and human rights are both based on the criterion of sentience, which makes the holder a “subject of a life.” Animal Gospel, 45. He defines a right as “a fundamental moral limit—a limit to be exceeded, if at all, only under the most extreme circumstances or, most usually in animal-rights theory, only when the individual concerned may be improved by it.” Ibid., 87-88. Linzey’s limited allowance for abrogating a right is at variance with the understanding of Scruton, who says it is in the nature of a right that it may never be abrogated; accordingly, in cases of irreconcilable conflict, an excuse 87

226 hand, animals’ “rights” do not exhaust our responsibilities to them.91 Linzey’s thought contains a tension: if “rights” is such a modest concept as simply to mean its holders can be wronged, then are they not wronged so long as their “rights” are not violated, even though additional responsibilities to them are neglected? And if the answer is that they are indeed wronged, then why is the concept of “rights” necessary to secure the idea that a certain kind of being can be wronged? The problem receives another layer when Linzey extracts an awkward “right to generous treatment” from his analogy between parenthood and human dominion over animals.92 So despite his protestation that rights are not everything, in the end he uses rights language to cover the remainder. The confusion here is representative of Linzey’s thinking overall. He brings to his subject a passion on behalf of mistreated animals, which is commendable in itself and helps to raise awareness and upend complacency, especially among Christians. His argumentation, however, is more intense than orderly, and his blurring of categories leaves him open to challenge by more exacting thinkers such as Scruton. It seems his basic point, though, is that there should be an ethical “floor” below which we may not sink in our treatment of animals. Otherwise, talk of animal “welfare” is meaningless, because such good intentions will be abandoned as soon as they conflict with human interests. Thus, Linzey suggests that “animal rightists are animal welfarists who mean it.”93

may be present for failure to respect the right, but the right still exists, thus making the situation tragic. See Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 31, 77. 91 Linzey, Animal Theology, 3. 92 Ibid., 41-42. 93 Linzey, Animal Gospel, 46. In his critique of the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, he targets the word “needless” (in the context of its saying it is against human dignity to make animals suffer or die needlessly) as the key for the justification of nearly all our present abuses of animals, because the word is understood according to human advantage. Ibid., 59. He continues, “It is illogical to acknowledge that animals have some independent worth to God and then

227 For Linzey, a creature’s worth is determined by God, not by our standards of beauty or utility.94 God gives value to all creation, but there can still be morally relevant distinctions in value for the kind of creature.95 He agrees with Barth (and most people) that plants are not to be equated with animals, but he sides with Clough over Barth in holding that the Incarnation dignifies all creation rather than singularly privileging human nature.96 Accordingly, Linzey would neither draw the moral line to include only humans as creatures owed duties, nor dispose of a line altogether on the premise that all creation matters to God and so cannot be differentiated, but draws the line to include humans and animals.97 Linzey’s three principles undergirding this decision are: (1) common creation, shown in Genesis 1 by circles of intimacy with God, land animals being included with humans in the inmost circle of the sixth day; (2) dominion, presented in Genesis 1 together with a vegetarian diet and implying that “what we owe animals is more than what we owe vegetables or arguably even ecosystems”; and (3) the

practically subscribe to a wholly instrumentalist understanding of their status as resources for human use.” Ibid., 61. 94 Linzey, Animal Gospel, 37, 44; Animal Theology, 67, 101-02. Linzey agrees with Clough that the anthropocentrism to be rejected is the teleological kind that sees humanity as the end of creation, with its ethical implication that humanity is the sole criterion of good. See Animal Theology, 72. 95 Linzey, Animal Theology, 23, 101-02. 96 Ibid., 8-11, 69, 98. “In addition to the nature appropriate to each individual species, there is a nature which is common to all human and non-human animals.” Ibid., 154. Insofar as plants are concerned, Linzey properly says the Christian tradition distinguishes them from humans and other animals, in that the latter have the “breath of life” and are included in the covenant. Animal Gospel, 38. 97 Ibid., 33-34. Even within the broad category of “animals,” however, Linzey admits some kinds may not be “subjects of a life,” or “beings capable of knowing that they are being harmed and suffering because of it.” But although the question is open for some animals, others indisputably fall within this category. Ibid., 74. Linzey’s label and definition of the term “subjects of a life” come from Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley, Cal.: Univ. of Cal. Press, 2004), 232-65.

228 covenant of Genesis 9, to which God includes animals as parties.98 All three are strong theological supports, and (with the exception of Basil’s discussion of the vegetarian diet in Eden) they represent significant lacunae in patristic thinking on animals. Linzey’s interpretation of God’s covenant with Noah in Genesis 9 contains a mixture of helpful insights and surprisingly unsupported thoughts. He says the point of the passage is that the world is corrupted, but God is gracious and so now allows killing for food despite its former prohibition; nonetheless, humans must remember the life they kill belongs to God.99 This is nothing controversial, but then his reading becomes oddly forced: “The radical message of the Noah story (often overlooked by commentators) is that God would rather not have us be at all if we must be violent. It is violence itself within every part of creation that is the preeminent mark of corruption and sinfulness.”100 He makes this bold and broad claim notwithstanding the fact that God has just permitted the killing of animals, because He would rather have us be. Linzey goes on, regarding the prohibition in Genesis 9:4 of eating meat containing the lifeblood: “For the early Hebrews life was symbolized by, even constituted by, blood itself. To kill was to take blood. And yet it is precisely this permission which is denied.”101 But the text does not deny permission to take blood, only to eat flesh with its blood, and the following two verses expressly distinguish humans, whose blood it is forbidden to take because they are made in the image of

98

Linzey, Animal Theology, 33-34, 69-70. Barth also notes the importance of the first principle, but it raises the question whether worms are to be privileged over dolphins. Our moral intuitions more closely parallel our scientific understandings of animal capacities than the divisions of the Genesis narrative. Regarding the second principle, Linzey, like Scruton, admits an opposition between an “ecological ethic” and a “creation-based liberation theology” of animal rights. Ibid., 76. For the most part, the two thinkers take opposite sides, and Scruton would likely reject Linzey’s characterization of animal rights as “creation-based” theology. 99 Ibid., 128. 100 Ibid., 127. 101 Ibid., 128.

229 God. But Linzey says Genesis 9:5 “posits divine reckoning for the life of every beast taken under this new dispensation,”102 when it actually requires a reckoning only for human life. This is explicit both in verse 9:5 and in the next verse, referring specifically to the divine image in humanity. This is not to deny that animal life belongs to God, which is surely the point of the prohibition of eating blood. But it is to say that Linzey’s reading has serious credibility problems, and that Genesis 9 maintains a distinction he strains not to see between the value of human life and of other animal life. Clough’s approach to this passage is more consistent with the text, so it may not be surprising that Clough is also readier than Linzey to admit that humans have moral priority over other animals—not for any metaphysical reasons we can identify, but simply because Scripture (Jesus in particular) says so. Placing humans and animals together as beings with rights does not lead Linzey to disregard human uniqueness, although he interprets it consistently with the principles already articulated. Like Clough, he notes that most claims for human uniqueness have been grounded in natural capacities rather than theology.103 A proper understanding is, in fact, critical to animal rights: self-sacrifice in costly love models Christ’s priesthood, as seen in an inclusive sense of love for all creation.104 Linzey directly challenges prevailing instrumentalist assumptions about dominion by holding that “[t]he uniqueness of humanity consists in its ability to become the 102

Ibid., 130. Ibid., 48. If Linzey does name a capacity that characterizes the divine image in humanity, it is that “[w]e are the species that can dream divine-like dreams and by divine grace actualize them. Humans are the one species capable of continuing the story of God incarnate.” Animal Gospel, 32. 104 Linzey, Animal Theology, 45, 52-56; see also Animal Gospel, 38-39. God suffers, so “human uniqueness can be defined as the capacity for service and self-sacrifice. From this perspective, humans are the species uniquely commissioned to exercise a self-sacrificial priesthood, after the one High Priest, not just for members of their own species, but for all sentient creatures. The groaning and travailing of fellow creatures requires a species capable of co-operating with God in the healing and liberating of creation.” Animal Theology, 45. 103

230 servant species.”105 His understanding has much in common with Clough’s “vocational” definition of dominion. Critical for Linzey is the manner of rule: “Sensitivity to suffering (and with it compassion, empathy, mercy, loving forgiveness) are the hall-marks of priesthood.”106 By contrast, our practices too often do the opposite: “So much of our activity toward animals consists in divide and rule. . . . It is we who maximize and intensify the natural antipathy between creatures. Not only do we do this, but we compound it by enjoying it.”107 Linzey insists that “[t]o make animals suffer for human purposes is not just morally wrong, it is an act of the gravest faithlessness.”108 He understands that we cannot go back to Eden, but this is why the love required is costly.109 Although his intent is not to weaken concern for humans, he asserts it is not clear that human suffering is always more important than the suffering of other creatures.110 In fact, though moral duties to humans and animals are not identical, “they are in essence the same sort of obligation.”111 He rejects a hierarchical prioritization of human well-being over the well-

105

Linzey, Animal Theology, 57. Related to this point is Linzey’s advocacy for a new “liberation theology” that transcends its traditionally anthropocentric limits of beneficence, while continuing to rely on human agency for its realization: “It is humans who are capable, indeed I would say commissioned, to liberate God’s creation.” Ibid., 71. 106 Ibid., 56. On the other hand, Scruton will say that, while the alleviation of suffering is an integral part of morality, an exclusive focus on it yields an impoverished moral view and even repugnant consequences. 107 Linzey, Animal Gospel, 148-49. 108 Linzey, Animal Theology, 57. 109 Ibid., 58. Elsewhere, he advocates for a gradualist view out of pragmatism, criticizing some vegan ideologues by saying that “the purism which some of them want the human race to enjoin presupposes the very stuff of heaven,” and arguing there is no “pure” land and no “pure” people. Animal Gospel, 89-90. 110 Linzey, Animal Theology, 58-59. 111 Linzey, Animal Gospel, 49. This is true (arguably) only if our sole moral obligation is to minimize pain (and perhaps maximize pleasure). As already noted regarding Linzey’s human parenting analogy, his statement here leaves out uniquely human obligations, particularly the cultivation of virtue. Even if we consider training animals to be an aspect of this activity, the end is shaping behavior rather than inner character, the latter requiring internal understanding. A

231 being of other species, as if the former always has more intrinsic value.112 In one sense, animals have a greater interest in not being subjected to pain, as they cannot deserve it, consent to it, understand it, or be improved by it.113 He labels it a mistake, moreover, to oppose human and animal welfare, as if we can only care for one by neglecting the other.114 In sum, human uniqueness is affirmed, but to the end that duties are heightened (because of the imago Dei and dominion) and rights are shared (because of sentience).

B.

Ethical case: meat eating versus vegetarianism

Linzey defends Christian vegetarianism by way of addressing common objections. He argues that to say “creation” is not fallen, and thus carnivorousness can be seen as normative, misses the point. The effects of the fall are present in creation, and Genesis is more environmentally friendly than Darwinism by showing us a different divine will for creation than the existing order of violence.115 Of the four objections he counters, his argument is strongest

closely related omission is spiritual formation: guidance in prayer, worship, the examination of conscience, and acts of charity. 112 Ibid., 49-50. Citing John Henry Cardinal Newman and C.S. Lewis, Linzey argues that children and animals are similar in terms of moral innocence, so that the infliction of pain on either is intrinsically evil if not done for the individual’s own benefit. Thus, no appeal to beneficial consequences or good intentions can justify such an action. Ibid., 66-67, 95; see also 109-10 (arguing that there are no morally relevant differences between a newborn child and a sentient animal, as both are vulnerable and morally innocent). 113 Ibid., 66 (citing C.S. Lewis); Animal Theology, 146. 114 Linzey, Animal Gospel, 60, 65 (discussing as an example the Catechism of the Catholic Church), 92 (arguing that the prevention of human and animal suffering go together). 115 Linzey, Animal Theology, 84-85. He notes that Genesis 1-2 was written by carnivores about an herbivorous ideal, and he asks how they came to see it as an ideal if they did not understand that violence was not God’s original will for creation, despite their own practices. Ibid., 125-26. The practical point Linzey minimizes is that the authors were, in fact, reconciled to the disparity between this original ideal and their own practices. Nonetheless, the ideal should never be discarded, and Linzey’s appreciation of it informs his contrast with Scruton on the issue of hunting. Scruton praises hunting as cooperation between humans and animals, in which animals

232 here, although he still must show why the original ideal is incumbent on people living in very different circumstances. Perhaps a more formidable objection concerns the Gospel accounts of Jesus eating fish and the Passover meal.116 Linzey replies that the imitation of Jesus in His particular cultural context is not enough for moral theology, which takes as its basis Jesus’ overarching ethic of self-giving love. Christ is an eschatological, not a static, figure, and the historical Jesus may not have manifested all aspects of Christhood to the disciples.117 Even if his point is conceded, we may not say the historical Jesus contradicted any aspects of Christhood, which is the implication of his argument. Elsewhere, Linzey says killing fish for food may be justifiable when necessary, and protein was likely scarce in Jesus’ cultural context; but if our situation is substantially different, Jesus’ example does not justify our eating animals.118 He argues not that it has never been justifiable to kill animals, but that it is no longer necessary, and killing is always a grave matter even when God has given permission.119 Linzey’s argument is stronger where, as here, it takes reality into account rather than taking the Edenic ideal and making it compulsory. Moral necessity requires that an action “is essential, unavoidable, or,

are able to exercise their natural capacities, whereas Linzey characterizes it as a sinful practice in which humans cultivate and intensify the violence present in nature as a result of the fall. Ibid., 123-24. The two have a different baseline for determining what is “natural” to animals. It is not coincidental that, for the sake of making his argument theologically neutral, Scruton assumes only a Darwinian view. 116 Linzey calls this the argument of Jesus modeling “parasitism.” Ibid., 86. The provocative language hardly makes his case more sympathetic, as the Gospel accounts present Jesus as, indeed, engaging in the behavior Linzey decries as “parasitism.” 117 Ibid. Similarly, the particularity of the Incarnation means it is an act of self-limitation, and “no one human life can demonstrate, let alone exhaust, all the possibilities of self-giving love.” Ibid. 118 Ibid., 134-35. The ambiguous, or at least medial, status of fish in Church fasting tradition and popular perception is shared by Linzey, who says that although they “undoubtedly experience pain, the case that all fish suffer (bearing in mind that there is an important distinction between pain and suffering) is less strong than in the case of mammals.” Animal Gospel, 134. 119 Linzey, Animal Theology, 131.

233 arguably, that some higher good requires it which could not in any way be obtained without it,”120 and meat eating does not fulfill these criteria today. A third objection to vegetarianism is that people cannot be expected to do better, and Linzey characterizes this as moral despair, a failure to recognize that “[t]he God who demands is also the God who enables.”121 This is a fair point, but it also begs the question whether God actually does demand non-violence to non-humans, and this is the fourth objection. Linzey replies that because all things are reconciled in Christ, who is the Logos through which all has come into being and the principle of the real natural law, vegetarianism witnesses to Christ’s redemption of nature so that we may transcend our fallen natural impulses and “become signs of the order of existence for which all creatures long.”122 But must all Christians bear witness in this way? The tenor of his argument is that if it is possible—and it is—it is compulsory. This is persuasive on the surface, but it glosses over the question of the parameters of “possible.” If we must put the environment at risk through greater industrialization of agriculture to fully actualize this possibility, must we? Linzey throws in his lot with animal rights ethics over ecological ethics, so we may suppose the answer is yes. Scruton will expose the problems of this approach. C.

Ethical cases: animal experimentation and genetic engineering

Linzey strongly opposes animal experimentation on three grounds. First, “[a]nimals are not expendable for humans.”123 To harm animals denies their intrinsic value, and as creatures of

120

Linzey, Animal Gospel, 120. Linzey, Animal Theology, 89-89. 122 Ibid., 90-91; see also 68-69 (saying that Christ is the source and destiny of all creation, so commonalities among creatures are more important than distinctions). 123 Ibid., 107. 121

234 God, it is worse than destroying works of human art.124 Second, “[a]nimals are not instrumental to humans.”125 Animals do not belong to us, and we are accountable to God for how we use them.126 Moreover: There is an important distinction to be drawn between individual use of animals sometimes prompted by necessity and the subjugation of animals on a huge scale on the assumption that they can be used solely for human ends. . . . It is clear to me that the value of animals, as understood from the perspective of Christian doctrine, cannot be subordinated, as many scientists appear to believe, at each and every point to some human good, whether it is imagined, hypothetical, or real.127 But even in terms of these utilitarian good ends, experimentation does not meet the standards for moral necessity when it appeals, as it often does, to unknown and indirect benefits.128 Science is a good form of knowledge but not the only form, and it must not exclude spiritual knowledge.129 This opposition to humanity’s self-idolization embodied in modern science is a point on which Linzey and Scruton will find common ground.130 Third, and related, Linzey says we cannot

124

Ibid., 108. Linzey also says he is not prohibiting all human use of animals: “I do not conclude that animals may never be used in any way that betters humankind. There are a variety of ways in which humans can live in a symbiotic relationship with animals that benefits both parties.” Ibid., 107. This statement is emblematic of Linzey’s tendency to provide a specific prohibition with vague and general allowances, which has the flavor of a rhetorical strategy to soften the extreme character of his ethical imperatives. 125 Ibid., 108. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid., 109; see also Animal Gospel, 109 (distinguishing genetic engineering from the use of animals in farming: although both can be exploitative, the latter may be justified in cases of true need, whereas the former constitutes the concrete embodiment of the view that animals are mere instrumentalities for humans). 128 Linzey, Animal Gospel, 110. 129 Linzey, Animal Theology, 109. “It matters as much that we have knowledge of our ultimate life and destiny and indeed of our moral relationship with the natural world as it does that we have knowledge that will prevent death and alleviate pain. The scientific attempt to absolutize beneficial scientific knowledge over all other forms of knowledge may be regarded as no less excessive than previous theological attempts to fill that category.” 130 Linzey believes the problem with modern science is so great that “[n]othing less than the dismantling of this science as an institution can satisfy those who advocate moral justice for animals.” Ibid., 139.

235 “sacrifice” animals for human benefit. Sacrifices must be made to God and, on Christ’s model, be freely offered by the victim.131 Linzey notes that opponents of vivisection, including C.S. Lewis, warn of the continuum between experimentation on humans and on animals.132 Here, too, Linzey connects with arguments from piety that Scruton will make. For the same reason, he opposes the genetic engineering and patenting of animals as an arrogation of ownership rights held only by God, making animals human property with no duty of care.133 As with experimentation, he denies the feasibility of a “total dividing line morally between how we treat animals and how we treat humans.”134 Appealing to piety without using the word, Linzey says that “there are moral limits to what humans may do to change the intrinsic nature and integrity of other sentient beings—even in pursuit of apparently worthy ends.”135 He concludes regarding cloning that “Christians may legitimately disagree about how far we can and should use animals.

131

Ibid., 111. Ibid., 153; Animal Gospel, 95. Lewis argued, “Once the old Christian idea of a total difference in kind between man and beast has been abandoned, then no argument for experiments on animals can be found which is not also an argument for experiments on inferior men.” Animal Theology, 153, quoting C.S. Lewis, Vivisection, 9-10. Scruton will say the rejection of this distinction is the reason for animal rights activists’ equation of animal killing with human murder. 133 Linzey, Animal Theology, 144; Animal Gospel, 101-02, 109. Linzey says, “Genetic engineering represents the concretization of the absolute claim that animals belong to us and exist for us.” Animal Theology, 143. Moreover: “No human being can be justified in claiming absolute ownership of animals for the simple reason that God alone owns creation. Animals do not simply exist for us nor belong to us. They exist primarily for God and belong to God. The human patenting of animals is nothing less than idolatrous.” Ibid., 148 (emphasis in original). Accordingly, “Genetic engineering is simply the practical outworking of a worldview that has abandoned any notion of God the Creator.” Animal Gospel, 102. Enabling this view is the theological mistake, aided by scientific progress, exchanging human sinfulness for human perfectibility. Ibid. 134 Linzey, Animal Gospel, 112. 135 Ibid., 114. 132

236 But one thing should be clear: we cannot own them, we should not treat them as property, and we should not pervert their nature for the sole purpose of human consumption.”136 D.

Linzey as animal-rights theologian: critique and appreciation

One of the weaknesses of Linzey’s thought is the lack of more than a passing attention to the ontological status of various creatures, a deficiency related to his focus on sentience as the sole relevant moral criterion. With respect to practices involving killing or subjugation, he makes emotionally charged comparisons between animals and humans, assuming that similarity in the act conclusively proves similarity in moral import, but without giving attention to relevant distinctions. He labels the killing of animals “murder,” offering his own tailor-made definition of such a loaded term as “the involuntary, unsought death of any sentient creature,”137 assuming no other morally pertinent quality besides sentience exists that might counsel against the extension of a term traditionally reserved for killing humans. Along the same lines, he compares meat eating to vampirism.138 But as we have seen, he also endorses Jesus’ eating of fish (or excuses the “parasitism”) given that protein was likely scarce, and he does not address the conflict created among his own opinions: human and animal lives must be of equivalent value if the taking of both is “murder,” yet humans may kill animals for sustenance if no other source of

136

Linzey, Animal Theology, 149. Linzey’s conclusion is sound, so long as the nuances of the kinds of ownership are kept in mind, with Linzey prohibiting an attitude of absolute human ownership of animals. Spouses, for example, belong to each other in a derivative, relative sense, even though all creation belongs only to God in an absolute sense. We should remain guarded against language that might imply a Christian mandate for a utopia, lest we end up in a Brave New World, in which “everyone belongs to everyone else,” due to a wholesale rejection of any concept of private ownership. 137 Ibid., 121; see also 117. Linzey also asserts that it is “murder” because animals cannot sacrifice themselves, but this argument assumes that Christ’s death could not have been simultaneously murder and self-sacrifice, depending on the perspective from which it is viewed. 138 Ibid., 79-80.

237 protein exists.139 He likewise labels the buying and selling of animals as “slavery,” just as it was for humans, with no analysis of whether differences of capacity render the comparison deceptive.140 Linzey sees all such discussions as mere rationalizations for exploitation, which he understands univocally in the human and animal contexts.141 In dismissing such examinations, he cites similar historical arguments for the subjugation of different kinds of people (other races, women, children), relying on the vague but powerful idea of moral progress through history to lead the reader to draw the conclusion that those arguments are similarly baseless and selfserving as applied to animals.142 An alternative he does not entertain is the idea that perhaps the

139

Given that absence of necessity is not part of his definition of murder, and necessity is part and parcel of vampirism, was Jesus a murdering vampire “by necessity”? Linzey would not admit this, although his discussion of animal killing outside the context of Jesus’ practices would seem to indicate otherwise. 140 Linzey, Animal Theology, 142; see also 148 (stating that “[t]he reason why it is wrong to use human beings as slaves is also precisely the reason why we should now oppose the whole biotech endeavour with animals as theologically erroneous. We have no right to misappropriate God’s own.”). His implicit argument runs more or less as follows. Major premise: We have no right to enslave humans. Minor premise: Sentient animals are like humans in all morally relevant respects. Conclusion: We have no right to enslave sentient animals. The emotional associations of slavery mask the fact that he has slipped in his minor premise, which he has assumed without having proven, but which underpins his entire ethical view of animals. In the abstract, Linzey may disagree with the broad way I have stated his minor premise here (i.e., all morally relevant respects), but he provides no clear alternative, either in theory or (as here) in application. 141 Linzey acknowledges human uniqueness, but only insofar as it allows us, even requires us, to serve. Effectively, if we are special, it is only because we have higher ethical obligations (or ethical obligations at all). In the abstract, he occasionally nods to the idea of gradations of value among different kinds of life, but in practice, he applies the same standards to humans as to all sentient creatures. 142 Linzey notes that Aristotle identifies the nature of animals as slaves and extends the idea to justify human slavery, and he also places the nature of women between that of slaves and free men. Aquinas carries on Aristotle’s subordination of women into the Christian tradition. Christians later defended slavery as essential for Christian civilization, with slaves benefiting because they were Christianized and civilized. Linzey notes that Gregory of Nyssa opposed slavery on the basis that humans are beyond price and cannot be bought or sold as slaves, and that God gave humanity dominion over animals, not over other humans. Linzey laments that “[o]ne kind of slavery is therefore opposed on the grounds that another is self-evident.” Animal Theology, 140-42.

238 problem with the arguments he cites is precisely that they were applied to humans. The fact that so many of Linzey’s examples point in a single self-evident direction (which many intelligent and well-intentioned people have simply missed for centuries) illustrates the main drawback of his approach, which is to treat the force and sincerity of his commitments as sufficient support for them, obviating the need for careful parsing of the issues. This emotional foreclosing of questions is seen in other places as well. For example, Linzey says animals are “oppressed” when we “hunt, ride, shoot, fish, wear, eat, cage, trap, exhibit, factory farm and experiment upon billions of animals every year. Those who wish to deny that such treatment is oppressive have to deny that our treatment of animals is a moral issue at all.”143 Here, he assumes that just because we believe a moral issue exists, we have to accept only one view of it, and he preempts discussion of any possible moral difference between, for example, riding a horse and trapping a rabbit. Likewise, when he expresses his surprise that the moral implications of creation’s intrinsic value have been unseen,144 he assumes his interpretation is the only valid one, thus evidencing a low view of the Christian tradition, except for its instrumental value when it can be used to support his views. After listing actions that constitute “oppression,” he says he does not intend “to foreclose the issue as to whether or not the infliction of some forms of pain, suffering and deprivation may be justifiable, but the essential point in both the case of humans as well as animals is that such injury requires moral justification.”145 When Linzey attenuates his more extreme statements, it is often in this general and ambiguous kind of way, insulating his position from attack without conceding clear

143

Ibid., 73. But in another book, Linzey mentions with approval Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the back of a beast of burden to show His identification with animals. Animal Gospel, 13. 144 Linzey, Animal Theology, 95. 145 Ibid., 73.

239 exceptions to his own rules. He has conclusively defined as “oppression” the riding of animals— an activity critical to the survival of most traditional societies, arguably consistent with the nature of certain beasts of burden, and usually not producing signs of suffering—so one may well ask what precise moral justifications would suffice in Linzey’s mind. In pre-industrial societies, riding animals would have met the criteria of moral necessity outlined earlier, and yet Linzey labels it oppressive out of hand. In general, he seems unconcerned about the realities of human cultures existing before recent memory, or even present cultures that are not developed to Western levels, and unaware of background realities even in developed Western society. Expressing doubt as to whether killing animals was ever necessary in order to live, he asserts that now it is not, so meat eating is gluttony.146 While the conclusion may well be true in most instances, he takes it as self-evident that we can live without killing today. Here he ignores the role of industrial mass production in the proliferation of vegan products, and its concurrent impact on animal habitats, although elsewhere he decries “the powers of darkness represented, at least in part, by the destructiveness of human technology.”147 We cannot have it both ways. Yet a strength of Linzey is that he, like Theokritoff, observes that “[t]here has always been an ascetical strand within Christianity which has insisted that humans should live gently on the earth and avoid luxury food.”148 This acknowledgment distinguishes his thought from that of Clough, who identifies asceticism with Gnosticism and seems not to make the connection between ascetic practice and ecological care (not to mention orthodoxy). Along the same lines, Linzey challenges our moral complacency by reminding us:

146

Ibid., 83-84. Elsewhere, he says that we “can now approximate the peaceable kingdom by living without killing sentients.” Animal Gospel, 31. 147 Linzey, Animal Gospel, 15. 148 Linzey, Animal Theology, 136; see also Animal Gospel, 122.

240 Preaching the Gospel has always a subversive aspect to it no matter how establishment Christians try to camouflage or submerge it. It is subversive because it necessarily speaks of a different order of justice and mercy than the one currently prevailing. . . . The Gospel breaks through into our thinking when we become convicted that our own judgments about what is right or wrong are selfserving, egoistical, or unjust, when we suddenly glimpse that from God’s own perspective we stand condemned as mean and heartless.149 Because Christ challenges the status quo, eschatology should inform how we live.150 However, Linzey has difficulty moving from general principle to specific application, and the ascetic sources from the previous chapter can offer both him and Clough a more rounded understanding of how the eschatological tension between “already” and “not yet” is presented as lived out in the saints.151 These hagiographies do not proceed from an abstract ideal with a neat, uniform application among the messy realities of the fallen world, but from the concrete interactions of these holy people with these realities, producing varied portraits showing the saints relating to animals in a range of ways that complicate the moral picture. Linzey’s case could be made more persuasive by attending to these complexifying factors.

III.

Roger Scruton: traditional conclusions through modern methods Without relying on traditional Christian sources but coming to more traditional

conclusions than either Clough or Linzey, Roger Scruton offers a rigorous philosophical analysis of animal capacities, their moral implications, and the foundations of ethics in general. Although

149

Linzey, Animal Gospel, 151. Linzey, Animal Theology, 123. 151 He already recognizes the genre as a good resource: “Even within Christianity—in some ways the most humanocentric of all religions—dogmatic orthodoxy has had to coexist with the tradition of saints East and West who have befriended animals, showed compassion for them, and even engaged in heroic acts of protecting them from cruelty.” Animal Gospel, 53. The deficiency is that he engages only with that side of the genre, overlooking the side that contains behavior he labels oppressive. 150

241 sometimes appearing simply to ratify the aristocratic practices of an English golden age that are slipping away in the post-industrial era, his philosophical parsing gives voice to unstated assumptions operating in the background of the theological sources. Scruton says the public is confused about animal ethics because “[t]he old ideas of the soul, free-will and eternal judgment, which made the distinction between people and animals so important and so clear, have lost their authority, and nothing adequate has come in place of them.”152 While being a Christian who identifies secularization as part of the reason for the rise of the animal rights movement, owing to the decline in acceptance of these “old ideas” (including the imago Dei), Scruton aims to reach across theological divisions and thus argues from philosophical starting points.153 Nonetheless, his concerns, conclusions, and overall ethos have more in common with the theological sources from our prior chapters than do those of Clough and Linzey. His main criticism of animal rights advocates, whether secular or religious, is that they ignore a distinction foundational for traditional morality, that between moral beings and the rest of nature, in favor of a “singleminded emphasis on the features which humans share with other animals – notably, on the capacity for suffering.”154 If this distinction is retained, as for Scruton it must be, loving animals may be consistent with behaviors toward them that would be unacceptable, even criminal, if applied to humans.155

152

Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, ix. Ibid., 3-4. It is interesting that the same ethical movement is seen by Scruton as the result of a falling away from faith, and by Linzey as the working of the Holy Spirit. Cf. Linzey, Animal Gospel, 140. 154 Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 2. 155 Ibid., 3. 153

242 A.

Varying animal capacities and their moral implications

Like Clough and Linzey, Scruton notes the significance of the greater power humans exercise over nature today than in any prior era. He knows that animal protection depends on human willingness but laments the inconsistencies of contemporary approaches to the matter. Some animals are owed special human sympathy, such as in cases of longstanding relationships contributing to the welfare of both sides (domesticated animals such as dogs, cats, and horses)156, but our sympathies have become sentimental and arbitrary, based on the attractiveness of various species to our tastes.157 In this way, Scruton effectively accuses animal rights activists of falling into the anthropocentrism they rail against.158 He recognizes intrinsic value throughout nonhuman creation, but the concept in itself does not yield the straightforward ethical conclusions

156

Ibid., 5. “Creatures were once divided into those with a rational soul and those without one. Now the division is between pets and pests, distinguished not by their habits, but by their appearance. Pets are granted honorary status of the human community, itself Disneyfied to include them. Among pets, therefore, are counted the deer, the fox, the badger and the mink – four of the most destructive animals at large in our countryside. Among pests we find the toad, the water rat, the grass-snake and the spider – all four of them useful to mankind, vital to the ecological system, and in steady decline. In the eyes of many otherwise rational and decent people, rats may be used in medical experiments, but not cats; mice may be hunted by cats, but not foxes by hounds; chickens may be kept in cramped cages, but not calves; pigs may be raised for their meat, but not dogs.” Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, ix-x. Linzey addresses the charge of inconsistency by saying it is an ever-present reality in a political system that depends on popular consensus, which is inconsistent almost by nature, but that it is important to be moving in the right direction. Linzey, Animal Gospel, 134. Fairness to Linzey also demands recognition that he does not want rats used in medical experiments, nor chickens kept in cramped cages, nor pigs raised for their meat. As for mice being hunted by cats, it should go without saying that this is a completely different matter, as even today human control over nature does not extend so far as to prevent that natural practice without either extinguishing or completely domesticating all cats. Some animal rights activists may be as Scruton describes, but he paints with quite a broad brush here. Linzey himself stresses that a creature’s worth is determined by God and not by humans. 158 “At no time in human history have animals stood in greater need of our protection; and at no time has the protection been offered and withdrawn on such arbitrary and self-indulgent grounds. Clearly, therefore, there is a need for a scrupulous and moral approach to other species.” Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, x. 157

243 that it does for Linzey.159 Except when there is a specific duty of care owed to animals we have made dependent on us, Scruton prioritizes the ecological common good over the interests of individual animals.160 It is here that his distinction between moral and non-moral beings is

159

For a discussion of the complexities related to the concept of intrinsic value, see Roger Scruton, How to Think Seriously about the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 197-99. Scruton talks about the intrinsic value of wilderness precisely as a place not used by humans, but adds that it is only humans that can appreciate its claim to “useless” value. Ironically, love of the useless has its uses: “By respecting the intrinsic value of a wilderness we perpetuate its many instrumental values – its contribution to biodiversity, to the surrounding ecosystems, and to all who are downstream from its beneficence.” Ibid., 198. Nonetheless, we cannot explain why or how people recognize intrinsic value, or how this value is to be balanced against instrumental value when the two conflict. He raises the question whether the destruction of all intrinsically valuable things is morally equivalent: “I recognize . . . that it is not permissible to build a road through a precious habitat just because it would be more useful to human beings to have the road than to have the habitat; and I recognize that most human uses, in leisure as in commerce, are insufficient grounds for driving a noble species to extinction. Yet was it wrong to exterminate the wolves and lions in Europe – wrong in the same way that it was wrong of the Vikings to destroy the lives and property of the Anglo-Saxons, of the French revolutionaries to commit genocide in La Vendée or Stalin to liquidate the kulaks? Or was it just wrong in the way that it might be wrong to use a canvas by Rembrandt to put out a dangerous fire, when there is nothing else to hand?” Ibid., 199. 160 For example, he states that animal rights groups fight hunting and angling “while ignoring altogether the argument that these activities, properly conducted, do more to conserve habitats and species than any amount of sentimental concern for the individual victim. Such blindness to the fate of species may have been excusable in a world where man was a subordinate part of the natural order. But man is now in control. The result is a progressive destruction of the habitats of almost all wild animals apart from suburban scavengers.” Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, ix. Scruton goes into colorful detail about the conflict between ecology and animal rights, discussing the importance of local responsibility as against unaccountable bureaucracy: “[T]he most important observation to be made, in the light of the attempts to regulate activities that pose a risk to the environment, is that those who live with the environment will spontaneously respond to threats, regardless of the direction that the threats are coming from, while bureaucrats will be in the grip of an agenda on which only a limited number of pre-identified threats are registered. The contrast here is illustrated by that between the gamekeeper and the animal rights activist. The gamekeeper must protect an environment, and the creatures that flourish in it. He must control foxes and badgers if he is to protect ground-nesting birds; plant cover if he is to retain pheasants and partridge; ensure berries in winter and corn and kale in summer; take action against scavengers, dog-walkers and so on. If he eliminates the foxes he may be plagued by the moles and rats on which they feed, and if he alienates the neighbors who walk their dogs through his territory he will be without the support that he needs when the animal rights activists turn up to make his life hell. The animal rights activist, by contrast, has no need to balance risks or to

244 important. He does not subordinate the good of individual humans to the ecosystem, because as moral beings, humans have rights, which are by definition interests that are absolute and inviolable.161 Conversely, the indisputable fact that animals have interests is not sufficient to invest them with rights, as many animal rights advocates would have it.162 Rights are exclusive to those with membership in the moral community, which requires dialogue and compromise depending on the reciprocal recognition of rights (not just interests) and duties, both having an absolute character that cannot be set aside without the consent of the holder.163 From what we know of animals, only humans have the capacities that fit these qualifications, but Scruton

work out the long-term cost of his activities. He is there to stop the killing, and the fact that the result is a mismanaged habitat, from which the game birds have fled, and in which the scavengers are taking over, is none of his concern. And of course it is people like animal rights activists, with their non-negotiable agendas and their ‘passionate intensity,’ who are apt to put the most immediate and intelligible pressure on the regulatory process – either indirectly through lobbying of government, or directly through the bureaucratic machine. The gamekeeper, who is constantly assessing risks to one aspect of his managed environment, and balancing them against those to another, is unlikely to be well served by a regime of bureaucratic regulation. The animal rights activist, by contrast, can think of nothing better. And his preferred form of regulation will have an absolute character: an uncompromising ‘no,’ in the face of his opponent’s ‘yes and no.’ He is playing a zero-sum game; if he wins, his opponent loses, and compromise is out of the question.” How to Think, 113-14. The difference in attitude between Scruton and Linzey is apparent here. For Linzey, hunting for sport is gratuitous violence, whereas for Scruton, “[s]tewardship is second nature to the sportsman.” Ibid., 163. 161 “A right is an interest that is given special protection; it cannot be overridden or cancelled without the consent of the person who possesses it. By describing an interest as a right we lift it from the account of cost and benefit and place it in the sacred precinct of the self.” Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 31. Animals’ lack of rights does not mean they have no interests worthy of our consideration, only that these interests are not absolute and thus can be weighed and balanced, as they are in ecological considerations. See also Scruton, How to Think, 197-200. 162 Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 192-93. 163 Ibid., 28-32. Scruton emphasizes that “any attempt to deprive the concepts of right and duty of this absolute character would also deprive them of their utility.” Ibid., 32. This is in contrast to Linzey, who provides, within his definition of a right, the exception of extreme circumstances. Animal Gospel, 87-88.

245 admits that “[i]f sometimes we think we discern this pattern, as in the social behaviour of baboons and chimpanzees, our attitude changes radically: and for very good reasons.”164 Nonetheless, for Scruton, a refusal to recognize animal rights is not tantamount to a denial that humans have any moral responsibility toward individual animals, and he sees the suffering of non-human creatures as morally relevant.165 But because animals (tame and wild) now depend on us for their protection, he aims “both to respect our instinctive sympathies and to introduce into them such revisions as may be necessary to ensure that those species which do not attract us will nevertheless find a niche in our world.”166 Thus, like Clough, Scruton insists on attending to animals in their particularities to determine their different capacities and thus their interests which may be of moral concern, even if they do not bind us unconditionally as rights. Noting that modern philosophers agree with Aristotle, as against Descartes, that humans “are distinguished only by the level of their mental life and not by the fact of it,”167 he divides sentient capacities into four levels, arranged from lowest to highest: (1) sensory (feeling pain, irritation,

164

Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 18. Ibid., 1-2, 20-21, 48-49, 81-82. “All thinking people now recognize the gulf that exists between sentient and non-sentient beings and almost all recognize that we have no God-given right to ignore the suffering that we cause just because the victim belongs to some other species.” Ibid., 1. At the same time, he takes issue with the use of the term “speciesism” to suggest that, “like racism and sexism, our attitude to other animals is a form of unjust discrimination, lacking both rational basis and moral title.” Ibid., 1-2. He also rejects Jeremy Bentham’s opinion that the capacity to suffer is the only morally relevant factor, saying that an exclusive focus on suffering distorts moral thought by removing considerations related to the moral law, freedom, responsibility, blame, punishment, and justice. Ibid., 48-50, 58-60. “In other words, it ignores the most fundamental function of moral thinking, which is to establish a community founded on negotiation and consent.” Ibid., 48. Moreover, if avoidance of suffering were the only moral criterion, we would keep our pets “in a state of pampered somnolence,” rather than allowing them to flourish according to their natures by performing the activities to which they are suited, as modified to allow them to live in human society. Virtue requires pet owners to give the animals in their charge the opportunities for the latter. Ibid., 84-85. 166 Ibid., 7. 167 Ibid., 8-9. 165

246 heat, and cold); (2) perceptual (using the five senses not only to respond to the environment but also to assess it, and directing the sensory organs outwardly to gather information); (3) appetitive (searching for satiety in food, water, and sex, and fleeing from threats and discomforts); and (4) cognitive (involving beliefs).168 It is the last category that is of the most interest to Scruton. The capacity to form beliefs carries with it a host of other capacities: “recognition, expectation and surprise,” making intuitive connections to solve problems, and learning from mistakes, which entails a change of mind beyond the mechanical “conditioning” of lower animals, which change only their behaviors to adjust their responses to stimuli.169 This “intentionality” of the higher animals represents, for Scruton, the first basis for a claim to our sympathy and moral concern, because they have a view of the world that we can change, so there exists the possibility of a relationship in which they and we can appeal to each other: “This partly explains the great difference between our response to insects and our response to the higher mammals. Although insects perceive things, their perception funds no changing store of beliefs but simply forms part of the link between stimulus and response.”170 For animals such as these, Scruton’s interest is more in the species than in the individual.171 Likewise, although lower animals, including even worms and slugs, have appetites, only those with cognitive capacities have desires, which are founded on beliefs.172 In turn, desire combines with belief to produce emotion, which Scruton defines as “a motive which is also a feeling.”173 But because animals have a narrower range of beliefs than do humans, they also have

168

Ibid., 9-10. Ibid., 11. 170 Ibid., 12-13. 171 Ibid., 7. 172 Ibid., 10, 13-14. 173 Ibid., 14. 169

247 a narrower range of emotions: “A bull may feel rage but not indignation or contempt. A lion may feel sexual urges but not erotic love. This fact is all-important in deciding on the moral status of animals; for our relations with others depend largely on our assessment of their emotional character.”174 In so assessing, we must check our tendency to anthropomorphize animal motives.175 This identification of the importance of cognitive and emotional state is a key contribution of Scruton that is lacking in the thought of Clough and Linzey, at least explicitly. B.

Rationality, and the bases for duties of rational (moral) beings toward nonrational (non-moral) beings

The highest cognitive capacity, meriting its own category, is rationality, and Scruton adopts the traditional view that it qualitatively distinguishes humans from other animals, even if life is seen as an evolved continuum.176 Like Clough, he acknowledges the problems with its many attempts at definition, some of which are biased and self-serving and others which fail to distinguish humans from animals,177 but unlike Clough, he does not abandon the project. As I have done by identifying rationality as a cluster of capacities that enable rule, Scruton also identifies rationality by means of a cluster, but he is explicit concerning the capacities of which it consists: justification of beliefs; reasoned dialogue and choice; judgments about the past and future; long-term planning; relating in terms of rights and duties; imaginative speculation about 174

Ibid., 14-15. For example, “[t]he wasp is not angry at the violation of its nest and its sting is not an act of revenge or punishment. Nor is it anger that motivates the guard-dog or the running stag. For anger is founded on the thought that one has been wronged, and this is a thought which lies outside the intellectual repertoire of animals such as dogs and stags.” Ibid., 15. 176 Ibid., 51-52. 177 Ibid., 16. “Definitions of reason and rationality vary greatly; so greatly as to suggest that, while pretending to define the difference between humans and animals in terms of reason, philosophers are really defining reason in terms of the difference between humans and animals. On one understanding at least, many of the higher animals are rational. They solve problems, choose appropriate means to their ends and adjust their beliefs according to the evidence of their senses.” Ibid. 175

248 possibilities; aesthetic contemplation of the world; complex emotions depending on complex thoughts; humor; musicality; and language.178 He asserts that these capacities “do indeed belong together and define a new and higher level of consciousness, for which ‘reason’ is a convenient shorthand.”179 Because of the sophisticated and abstract forms of knowledge to which it provides access through symbolic representation, language is the basis for several of these other capacities, allowing for morality-related emotions (e.g., remorse, shame, gratitude) and social relations based in reasoned dialogue, which is foundational for inter-personal morality.180 Scruton says Hegel and Wittgenstein showed that “self-consciousness and language emerge together.”181 Self-consciousness itself seems to be a uniquely human trait, more specific than the consciousness of other animals that allows them to feel pain and other states. It allows subjects to differentiate themselves from their environment, enabling awareness of themselves as the subjects of their experiences.182 Scruton believes only humans have this capacity, although it is an empirical question, and he concedes that apes, dolphins, and elephants sometimes appear to

178

Ibid., 16-19. Ibid., 20. “[T]he distinguishing features of the moral being – including rationality and selfconsciousness – belong to another system of behaviour from that which characterises the merely cognitive animal. The transition from the one behavioural system to the other is as absolute a transition as that from vegetable to sentient life, or that from sentience to appetite.” It is a qualitative, and not merely a quantitative, transition. Ibid., 51-52. He also makes an important distinction between reason (or rationality) and reasoning: “Reason is the capacity to come to theoretical and practical conclusions. It is not the same as reasoning, which is a process, involving step-by-step moves from premise to conclusion. Reason may operate intuitively, as in the moral life, where we spontaneously make judgements without availing ourselves of the reasoning that would justify them, and perhaps without even knowing how that reasoning could be sought for.” Ibid., 185. The reasoning process is one of the abilities proper to the rational capacity (or the capacity of reason), but we should be clear that it is the broader capacity that is of interest in identifying moral beings. 180 Ibid., 23-24, 34-35. 181 Ibid., 24-25. Scruton says this finding is a rebuttal of Descartes’ attempt to locate the mind’s essence internally. 182 Ibid., 20-21. 179

249 have it—in which case we are inclined to attribute to them other elements of the rationality “cluster” as well: “It seems that self-consciousness is another aspect of the higher level of mental activity, for which the term ‘reason’ has traditionally been reserved.”183 In his philosophical parsing of the question of rationality, describing a cluster of specified capacities rather than a single dimension, Scruton avoids Clough’s criticism that any definition is either non-specific to humans or morally irrelevant, while also leaving open the possibility that other species may be included, subject to further empirical evidence. Rationality provides membership in the community of moral beings, that is, agents who can engage in reasoned dialogue and agreement regarding rights and duties.184 The inviolable nature of these rights and duties is the grounds for Scruton’s opposition to utilitarianism: it is a system that rejects moral absolutes and attempts to reduce morality to a simple calculus, when in fact no calculation of the “greater good” can justify the violation of genuine rights and duties.185 However, though this “moral law” is a necessary component to morality, and the ability to recognize it is necessary for a species to be counted among moral beings, it is not the only 183

Ibid., 22. I do not know why Scruton does not name dogs among animals that sometimes appear to have self-consciousness, given their ability to learn and respond to their names. 184 Ibid., 48, 61. An important discussion, but one that cannot be engaged in detail here, is Scruton’s treatment of those at the moral “margins”: humans at the beginning and end of life, or with mental disabilities, such that they do not possess the rational capacity intact. Scruton says infants are pre-moral beings with the potential to develop into moral beings. Piety and virtue prevent us from destroying the human form in the elderly and mentally disabled. By contrast, dogs and bears are not the kinds of beings that have the potential to be moral. Ibid, 53-56. Thus, his argument is a traditional one based on natures, and further, it depends on an established sense of virtue and piety, putting it in tension with his intent to reason non-theologically. He acknowledges certain difficulties at the “margins” but insists that using them as starting points (he names Peter Singer and Tom Regan as examples) is a poor way to determine moral norms. 185 Ibid., 61. This conclusion follows Scruton’s statement that the utilitarian’s “morality is really a species of economics, in which profit and loss have been replaced by pleasure and pain, and in which no moral problems occur which could not be solved by a competent accountant. It is nearer the truth, I maintain, to think of morality as setting the limits to economic reasoning, rather than being a species of it.” Ibid., 60.

250 component to morality.186 Scruton identifies three others, the first being sympathy, the only component concerned with suffering, and thus the source of our duties toward animals.187 The moral law recognizes the rule; sympathy recognizes the exception.188 Accordingly, “[m]any of our most troubling moral conflicts stem from the fact that, while sympathy provides the underlying motive to obey the moral law, it may also, in the individual case, prompt our disobedience.”189 Sympathy wants to maximize joy and minimize suffering, so its tendencies are utilitarian. A major problem comes when the effort would violate the rights of another, causing a degree of suffering in order to alleviate suffering to a greater degree elsewhere. Accordingly, the questions of moral law must be settled, and the applicable rights and duties must remain intact, before the point is reached at which a sympathetic-utilitarian calculus would be appropriate.190 A reduction of all ethics to utilitarian calculus is a vitiation of moral thinking.191 Utilitarian

186

Scruton believes the moral law is recognized intuitively by people in their concepts of moral equality in the same circumstances, rights, duties, the forfeiting of rights by disrespecting the rights of others, and the rational settlement of disputes. He says this is also the “natural law” that bestows legitimacy on our laws, but he characterizes it as procedural rather than substantive, not containing the content of rights and duties. Ibid., 69-70. This is quite a large omission for a law that gives legitimacy to positive law. In presenting the moral law as universally accessible, Scruton significantly curbs its normative value by emptying it of content. Rights and duties become absolute, not because of their intrinsic nature, but because of mutual consent in defining them. For Scruton, it is virtue and piety that serve to set limits to the substance of what may be defined by consent. There is an ingenious but uneasy blend of traditional and modern philosophical ethics at play here. 187 Ibid., 36-38, 49-50. 188 Ibid., 33, 61. 189 Ibid., 62. By way of example, Scruton says that “[t]he very same feelings that implant in me the absolute interdiction against killing an innocent human being may tempt me, when confronted by the unbearable suffering of a hopeless invalid who begs to be relieved of his torment, to disobey.” Ibid. 190 Ibid., 72-73. 191 “The attraction of utilitarianism lies in the promise to resolve all these conflicts by construing moral judgment as a kind of economic calculus. But the promise is illusory and the effect of believing it repulsive.” Ibid., 76. Scruton sees this problem in the argumentation of Peter Singer and his followers, of which he says, “I find much casuistry, little ethical philosophy and no

251 reasoning has its place, “which is not to replace or compare with the moral law, but to guide us when the moral law is silent and when only sympathy speaks.” Accordingly, it is a guide in our treatment of animals, which do not fall under the scope of the moral law.192 The next quality is virtue, which is fostered through ascetic practice, so that we can follow the moral law even when it is not expedient for our personal desires or interests.193 Thus, “[o]nly in the virtuous character – the character schooled in self-denial – does sympathy feed the moral sense.”194 It keeps sympathy from being biased and directs it toward those to which it is owed, including other kinds of creatures: [J]ustice that is selective towards its beneficiary is not justice but favouritism; kindness that specialises in the sufferings of a particular group, class or species, is not kindness. The concept of virtue, therefore, makes a substantial contribution to the question of how we should treat animals. It compels us to distinguish virtuous and vicious attitudes towards other creatures, regardless of whether those creatures are moral beings like us.195 The last moral component—piety—is foundational for moral feeling, and Scruton appeals to classical connotations as against specifically Christian ones, saying that in the context of late antiquity, it “expressed an idea of permanent validity in moral thinking” and involved respect for the sacred out of a humble recognition of our dependence and gratitude for life.196 Piety is “rational, but not amenable to reason.”197 He says that “[i]t is piety, and not reason, that implants

serious metaphysics. This explains the exhortatory simplicity of their conclusions. But it also suggests, to my way of thinking, the extent to which serious questions have been begged.” Ibid., 123. A single-minded focus on the avoidance of suffering “is to avoid life, to forgo risk and adventure, and to sink into a state of cringing morbidity.” Ibid., 81-82. 192 Ibid., 74. 193 Ibid., 63, 71. 194 Ibid., 63. 195 Ibid., 63-64. 196 Ibid., 64-65. 197 Ibid., 75. By this, he seems to mean that piety is consonant with the teleology of the created order that only rational beings can appreciate, but piety itself cannot be fully justified by recourse

252 in us the respect for the world, for its past and its future, and that impedes us from pillaging all we can before the light of consciousness fails in us.”198 There is a dialogical relation between piety and reason: reason’s role is not to build a moral system from scratch, but to clarify our moral intuitions rooted in piety and to extract from them principles that assist us in coming to agreement with others and either channeling or curbing our biases.199 Considering the importance of piety in Scruton’s moral vision, however, he handles the concept in a fairly blithe manner. Treating it as universal not only in a general sense but also in its content, he says it leads us to “exalt the human form in life and art,” preventing us from imputing the same moral status to marginal humans as to animals, though also supporting reverence for animal life.200 Thus, he passes over the practices of pre-Christian Rome (e.g., infant exposure, gladiatorial games, nobility of suicide in some instances) that cut against this characterization, as well as the religious imagery of non-Western cultures, in which deities often appear with animal features. This problem illustrates a deeper tension in Scruton’s project, which he tries to present as a religiously neutral classicism in contrast to modern Enlightenment ideas, but which is indebted to those very ideas in its effort to mount a non-theological defense of ethical practices rooted in theological assumptions.201 All antiquity, both pagan and Christian,

to the reasoning process. He continues by saying that “[p]eople who try to rationalise their pieties completely have in a sense already lost them.” Ibid. 198 Ibid., 67. 199 Ibid., 66, 75-76. 200 Ibid., 67-68. 201 He says that since the Enlightenment, moral thought has moved away from piety toward “abstract legal ideas associated with the respect for persons.” Ibid., 66. The context implies criticism of this modern move, although the arc of Scruton’s thought is grounded in this “respect for persons,” able to form a moral community of dialogue and consent, in which rights and duties are reciprocal. To the extent this modern component may be seen as only the rational defense of classical pieties, Scruton fails to acknowledge these are specifically Christian pieties, honoring the human form to the degree that they do—at any stage of development, whether or not

253 might agree with his valuation of animal life, but only Christian antiquity would agree with his valuation of human life. My critique is in no way meant to marginalize his inclusion of piety— quite the contrary. Scruton’s main purpose seems to be to use piety in a religiously neutral sense as a foil to the pretensions of modernity to mastery over nature,202 and to this extent, he is successful, even in presenting a basis for some kind of ethical consensus. But this consensus will not extend to an agreement as to the absolute value of all human life, especially at its margins, if divorced from its Christian context. That specific application of piety depends on the imago Dei as understood in our patristic sources, uniquely dignifying the human person.203 Thus, those sources can add more particularized content to piety. Scruton presents a fairly clear sequence for dealing with instances in which these moral sources conflict. The moral law has priority, because rights and duties must be absolute if they encumbered by disabilities. His project is much like an apology for Tory moral sensibilities, many of which are inherited from Christendom, using the tools of the Enlightenment. Thus, he fails to present a convincing picture of a religiously neutral classicism. This is not a problem in itself; the problem lies in his apparent lack of awareness of the tensions in his own system. For the sake of neutrality, he disclaims a dependence on Christian theology, and for the sake of tradition, he disclaims modernity. But his thought is much more a blend of the two than it is a neutral, classical, rational meeting-ground for all the different religious and non-religious perspectives of the world. That expectation itself owes more to the Enlightenment than Scruton admits. 202 “Industrialisation, spoliation, over-production and the destruction of the environment all spring from a single source, which is the loss of piety. In the face of this, the consciousness of animals and their welfare not only invokes our lost edenic innocence but also reminds us of another and more sacred order, more delicate and more beautiful than the one that we, with our cold rationality, have established.” Ibid., 66-67. As an example of a change attributable to the loss of piety, he mentions the Hebrew rule of not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk (Exod 23:19, 34:26), versus the modern industrial practice of feeding cows the remains of dead cows, the latter which has contributed to Mad Cow Disease. In connection with this example, he remarks, “It lies in the nature of piety that we can never know the costs of disobeying it: for pious feelings are a confession of ignorance. But the example is a sure proof of the reasonableness of these feelings which lie beyond the reach of reason.” Ibid., 139-40. 203 For a discussion of the role of the Christian tradition in shaping Western moral sensibilities, even into the modern era, see David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010).

254 are to serve as anchors for moral dialogue, in which case they cannot be sacrificed to other interests.204 After rights and duties comes virtue. Even if animals have no rights, there are ways of behaving toward them that only a vicious person would contemplate. For Scruton, virtue is “a primary source of moral thinking about animals.”205 Next is sympathy, allowing for a kind of utilitarian calculus.206 But we must be aware of cases in which sympathy conflicts with piety, such as in mercy killing, where piety does not present an obstacle for animals but does for humans, because it “forbids that we destroy the human frame. The conflict here is painful partly because the sources of our conflicting emotions are so far apart. . . . The dialectic of sympathy and piety provides a second major source of moral thinking about animals.”207 Scruton distills his argument into a series of principles that can be applied to specific questions of animal ethics. First, we must distinguish between moral and non-moral beings, with animals in the latter category, as it would be senseless to suppose they can enter relationships based on the rights and duties arising from moral dialogue. Thus, animals have no rights, and the moral law does not apply to them, but by making them dependent on us, we assume duties of care, such as the provision of a fulfilled life according to their natures, an easy death, and “the training required by their participation in the human world.”208 This is easiest for pets (the only dependent animals “granted honorary membership in the moral community,” if hunting dogs and the like are included as pets) and farm animals under non-industrial conditions; on the other hand, it is extremely difficult to be moral in the case of animals in factory farms and labs, and 204

Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 76-77. Cases of irreconcilable conflict do not alter the absolute character of rights and duties, but merely provide an excuse for why they cannot all be satisfied. Ibid., 77. 205 Ibid. 206 Ibid. 207 Ibid., 78. 208 Ibid., 123-25, quotation at 125.

255 experiments can only be justified by an “unmistakable contribution to the welfare of other creatures.”209 With or without these duties of care (wild animals being the latter case), moral concerns rooted in virtue, sympathy, and piety exist. Virtue, by definition, will condemn acts committed from vicious motives.210 The next consideration is sympathy, which is properly directed toward all creatures with intentionality, defined by Scruton as having “a view on the world and whose pains and pleasures can be understood as we understand our own.”211 Utilitarian calculations are proper here, so long as the concerns of the moral law (i.e., the integrity of rights and duties) and

209

Ibid., 126. This last statement implies a utilitarian calculus, but Scruton also analyzes experimentation and factory farming through virtue and piety, and he even says that sympathy itself will prohibit certain practices without regard to the calculation of comfort versus discomfort. These moral instincts and criteria (among which Scruton does not always neatly distinguish) object to the unnatural conditions in which animals are raised in industrial farming, sometimes treated more like plants than animals. Ibid., 101. For lab animals, they will prohibit certain kinds of experiments regardless of the benefits, for “that which can be done only by a callous person, ought not to be done.” Ibid., 107. The pursuit of knowledge does not grant carte blanche for the means: “Piety once set obstacles in the path of knowledge – and these obstacles had a function; for they prevented the present generation from seizing control of the earth’s resources, and bending them to the cause of its own longevity.” Ibid., 107-08. Like Linzey, Scruton compares the old animal sacrifices to the pagan gods with the modern animal sacrifices to the god of science, saying the difference is that the former at least accepted the cycle of life and death, whereas the latter is done in “the impious hope that they [the current generations] can prolong their tenancy forever.” Ibid., 108. Nonetheless, he does not judge all experiments to violate the duty of care owed to dependent animals, but rather defines the duty in this context so as to assume the basic legitimacy of experimentation in itself: “The duty of care owed to animals used in medical research is to ensure that their lives are worth living and their suffering minimized.” Ibid., 107. 210 Scruton’s use of the term “vicious” is broader than the conventional meaning of cruel and malicious. It encompasses all behaviors and motives rooted in vice, including callousness or thoughtlessness. For this reason, virtue forbids the neglect of pets for the sake of caring for strays or wild animals: “Even if they are calculating for the long-term good of all sentient creatures, we are critical of them precisely for the fact that they are calculating, in a situation where some other creature has a direct claim on their compassion. . . . Virtuous people are precisely those whose sympathies keep them alert and responsive to those who are near to them, dependent on their support and most nearly affected by their heartlessness.” Ibid., 84. 211 Ibid., 124-25, quotation at 124.

256 piety are not violated.212 We also owe wild animals a duty to protect their habitats and the balance of nature in general, and “to inflict no pain or fear that is not a necessary part of our legitimate dealings with them.”213 Although we may be concerned for them as individuals (especially those with intentionality, which are owed sympathy), we are primarily concerned with the species and the ecological balance; indeed, “[t]oo much concern for the individual may in fact harm the species, by promoting its diseased or degenerate members, or by preventing necessary measures of population control.” This principle applies with even greater force to creatures without intentionality (Scruton names insects and worms as examples), in which we may take little interest as individuals, thus both explaining and ratifying our emotional instincts regarding them.214 The effect of Scruton’s exclusion of animals from the moral community is not to make them morally irrelevant, but to relativize their interests, as opposed to the absoluteness of the rights and duties of moral beings. Although the other three bases of morality apply to animals, they do not present clear answers. Sympathy is often subject to the utilitarian calculus. Virtue and piety may appear to lend absolute limits to the treatment of animals, but their content is

212

By way of example, Scruton says it is against our moral intuition to kill a sick old human to feed many rats, or to refrain from killing a healthy bull to feed a sick old human. Ibid., 57-58. The priority of the human comes from both piety and status as a moral being with rights, but piety also extends to respect for animals in their own natures, precluding the more unnatural kinds of experiments and thus circumventing a utilitarian cost/benefit analysis in those instances. Ibid., 101, 107-08. 213 Ibid., 125. Scruton acknowledges that the question of legitimacy of dealings is itself complicated, but he gathers from the sum of his principles that torture for entertainment is obviously wrong, and placing animals in captivity to display in zoos is doubtful, but hunting wild animals may even be good. Ibid. 214 Ibid., 109.

257 somewhat indeterminate, as it may differ among traditions.215 The Western moral intuitions advanced by Scruton are those of a society shaped by Christian mores, even if it has entered a post-Christian phase; and when those intuitions are in transition, he defends the traditional, Christian-influenced ones over the modern, efficiency-oriented ones. The former include not only the sanctity of the human person (supported with Kantian language of rational agents able to enter dialogue and form a moral community of consent based on rights and duties, together with dubious reference to pre-Christian classical pieties), but also a certain kind of relation to animals. Like Scruton, patristic and hagiographical sources have shown themselves not indifferent to animal suffering, but they also relativize animal interests in a way they do not for humans. Animal interests are subordinate to human ones, provided these human interests are legitimate (e.g., not connected to vicious motives or offensive against piety), although sympathy can also lead us to sacrifice legitimate human interests for animals (as we see especially in stories of the saints such as Kevin and the blackbird). At the least, sometimes the harm to the animal may be so great compared to the benefit to the human, that sympathy demands an ascetic renunciation of the human will (which is generally urged anyway). Scruton also relativizes the interests of individual animals (to which we have not assumed a personal duty of care) vis-à-vis a broader solicitude for the environment, and this concern serves as one of the main bases for his defense of practices such as traditional farming, fox hunting, and angling.216

215

Scruton admits as much about piety, which, “because it is shaped by tradition, provides no final court of appeal.” For example, on the question of meat eating, the Judaeo-Hellenic tradition considered it pious to share in the meat sacrificed to the deity, whereas the Hindu tradition considers meat eating to be as impious as cannibalism. Ibid., 99. Noting that the Hindu reverence for animal life does not prevent animals from being badly treated in that society, Scruton declares his option for the Western view. Ibid., 100. 216 However, his discussion of these practices—as well as others such as pet-keeping, zoos, meat eating, and the use of animals for labor, sport, and experimentation–brings in many other

258 Scruton raises a host of considerations that surely never crossed the minds of the authors of our patristic and hagiographical sources. Despite his failure to synthesize convincingly his traditional and modern perspectives, he provides philosophical support for some of the presuppositions our patristic sources inherited from Philo, thus preventing that philosophical background from being written off as relevant neither to the gospel nor to contemporary thought. Conversely, the specificity of our Christian sources can give content to Scruton’s ambiguous but important moral criteria of virtue and piety.

IV.

Conclusion Although the similarities of these three modern thinkers may seem overshadowed by their

differences, it is worth exploring the common ground all share despite their disparate starting and ending points, and noting that this is also common ground shared with the logic and ethos of the patristic and hagiographical sources.217 Perhaps most importantly, all three agree that mental life is a continuum, not a binary, and that animals are not mere things or instruments.218 Because we

complex considerations, to which I am regrettably unable to do justice in this chapter, except with the sporadic reference where appropriate. His analyses are concentrated in the seventh chapter and in the appendices to his book. Ibid., 79-122, 139-72. Scruton does not try to conceal his disdain for some of the modern objections to these practices, which he says come largely from those who live in a comfortable suburban environment and have no idea how much more damaging their own lifestyle is to species and ecosystems than are the practices of the farmer, hunter, and fisher, all of which have an interest in conserving the species they kill and well as their environments. He characterizes many of the objections as rooted in sentimentality, a word he carefully opposes to genuine sympathy as subject-oriented rather than object-oriented and thus blinding people to the genuine needs of others. Ibid., 126-31. Traditional practices that inflict pain should not be hastily condemned for that fact alone, as they protect many animals from even harsher realities of nature. Ibid., 47-48. 217 It should be borne in mind that Clough has not yet published his second volume on ethics, and while we may surmise some of his ethical conclusions from his systematic theology, he has carefully separated the two subjects. 218 Linzey, Animal Gospel, 37, 40; Animal Theology, 107.

259 may not relate to animals in such a simple utilitarian fashion, Linzey and Scruton articulate a strong disapproval (which we may safely assume Clough shares) of the presumption of modern science to determine its own moral limits with reference to the end of knowledge acquisition, no matter how noble its intent for applying that knowledge. Likewise, they oppose the consumerist mentality that furnishes the demand for large quantities of animal products at low prices (although, in contrast to Linzey and Scruton, Clough does not seem to recognize the role of the ascetic facet of tradition in countering this mentality). A practical application of these views is opposition to the intensive “factory” farming of animals and many, if not all, kinds of animal experimentation. Linzey’s prolific writing offers a range of material for comparison and contrast with Clough in some instances and Scruton in others. Both Linzey and Clough reject attempts to read off God’s will for creation with reference to the current state of nature. While not denying biological Darwinism, they refuse to substitute it for Genesis as a foundation for ethics.219 Linzey engages with Genesis’ concept of dominion, whereas Clough does not, but Clough’s “vocational” interpretation of the imago Dei has very much in common with Linzey’s Christocentric “service” interpretation of dominion. Both Linzey and Clough reject teleological and ethical anthropocentrism on the one hand, and biocentric or ecocentric egalitarianism on the other. Therefore, they agree that moral duties run to humans and other sentient animals, but not to non-sentient species, and accordingly prioritize animal rights over holistic ecological 219

While Genesis provides a vision of harmony in nature that is appealing in contrast to the state of predation that we know, it still presents problems for distinguishing between species in terms of value. The argument that land animals are created on the same day as humans, cited as support for animal value despite its anthropocentric undercurrent, logically prioritizes all land animals over all water animals, and thus the worm over the dolphin. Intuitively, we prefer a biological account of animal capacities to a straightforward application of Genesis for determining relative value among species.

260 concerns. In this, they differ from Scruton, for although he does not fall at either extreme, anthropocentric or ecocentric, he is opposed to animal-rights thought, and his thinking contains a complex blend of concerns present in all three categories. Clough is clearer than Linzey that humans have moral priority over other animals—not for any metaphysical reasons that we can identify, but because Christ said so. Bracketing the religious authority reference, Scruton agrees with Clough and goes further regarding human moral priority, supporting his argument with detailed analysis of capacities. Linzey, on the other hand, appears to grant other sentient species moral priority, as being the weaker or “least of these,” and he avoids facing the specific, radical implications of this view. Strands of the perspectives of all three thinkers can be seen in the patristic and hagiographical sources, which understand Genesis as revealing God’s essential will for creation, but not divorced from the imago Dei as seen perfectly only in Christ and reflected in His saints. In general, the sources are closest to Scruton in a clear moral prioritizing of the human over other animals, together with an acknowledgement of human duties to the rest of creation. Scruton provides philosophical grounds in support of human moral priority, because the limits of capacity involve the limits of ability to benefit from duties. Clough, for his part, offers theological authority for human priority. All three modern thinkers, together with the traditional sources, take it for granted that moral priority does not equate to license for egoistic exploitation, but rather militates against it. While Linzey and Clough opt for Genesis over Darwin for discerning God’s original intent for creation, Scruton’s project does not allow for that theological starting point, and he thus appeals only to Darwin—a choice that explains his different baseline for what is “natural” to animals. Linzey laments the fact that certain human practices, such as hunting, cultivate the “natural” antipathy between species, whereas Scruton sees this fact as one of their justifications,

261 as his empirical baseline allows him to view them as giving animals the chance to act in accordance with their natures. This difference is also evident in the ways Linzey and Scruton understand these practices as they relate to humans themselves. For Linzey, it is moral despair to defend a practice because we cannot expect to do any better, but for Scruton, the community bonds and personal happiness produced by activities such as horse racing and fox hunting are factors that weigh in their favor.220 Despite Scruton’s traditionalism, here it is Linzey who is closer to the patristic sources, whose ascetic sympathies do not favor entertainment value or esprit de corps as justification for practices that distract from the pursuit of sanctity.221 While Linzey is a passionate advocate for animal rights, his concept of those rights and the need for them is unclear: on the one hand, rights simply means animals can be wronged, but on the other, we owe them additional duties, the violation of which would presumably also wrong them. Scruton is clear that animals have no rights but that we still have duties. So he arrives at the same general conclusion regarding duties, without the middle term, superfluous as it appears, of rights. Both Linzey and Scruton care about duties to animals, but Linzey (playing into Scruton’s criticism of animal rights activists’ uncompromising “passionate intensity”222) sees the implications in black and white, that we must prioritize the welfare of animal individuals over the ecological whole. Scruton sees this attitude as potentially disastrous and allows for more

220

See Linzey, Animal Theology, 89-89; Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 93, 117-18. A clear example may be seen in John Chrysostom’s upbraiding of those in his audience who skipped church for the horse races, saying they cause scandal and suggest Christian values are no different from those of world. Hom. on Genesis 7.1-2 (FOTC 74:91-92). Elsewhere, he decries the horse races and wild beast contests as “full of all senseless excitement” and cultivating a “merciless and savage and inhuman kind of temper.” Hom. on Corinthians 12.10 (NPNF1 12:69). The tone of these condemnations does not differ much from that of Linzey, and is far from Scruton’s cool-headed defense of cruel practices such as fox hunting as adequately balanced by other virtues. See, for example, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 93, 117-18, 147-64. 222 Scruton, How to Think, 114. 221

262 prudential judgment, because care for the whole helps more animals in long run. Scruton understands humans as the only species with rights: interests that may not be sacrificed for another good. Accordingly, humans may not be killed in the interest of ecological balance, but because other animals do not have rights, their interests may be weighed against other interests. Here, Scruton arrives at a point near to the patristic sources by a different route. Whereas he appeals only to the secular notion of moral community, they appeal to the image of God, and both understand human life as having intrinsic value that may not be compared with other kinds of life. The divergent views of Scruton and Linzey lead to divergent applications, but both thinkers agree in deeming putative future benefits as insufficient to justify animal experiments. Unlike Linzey, Scruton believes more concrete and direct benefits might at times provide sufficient justification, although because of their cruelty, certain experiments should be banned outright on grounds of sympathy, virtue, or piety, regardless of their benefits. Despite Scruton’s refusal to exclude animal experimentation categorically, we may identify a point of contact with Linzey’s objection to “ill-gotten gains.” In the end, putting the traditional and modern sources in conversation will not produce a seamless synthesis between them any more than the sources in each group can achieve such a synthesis with one another. The principal value of the conversation lies in the revelation of the strengths and weaknesses of each position in sharper contrast by comparison with the others. For many Christians, especially those of the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, the patristic and hagiographical sources have a kind of authority, not absolute, but owed respect. On the other hand, the modern thinkers more directly address the ethical issues at stake and more consciously formulate systems for conceptualizing the physical and moral loci of humans and other animals in creation. While not purporting to solve every problem of animal ethics, the conclusion to this

263 dissertation will identify principles that can be found in the consensus of these sources, as well as principles that may remain controversial but that have, in my judgment, the strongest claims to soundness based on the authority of the traditional sources and the arguments of the modern ones.

Conclusion

Our exploration and analysis of ancient Christian and modern ethical sources has uncovered a series of principles applying to a Christian ethic for the treatment of animals. In chapter 1, we explored various patristic perspectives on animals, grounded mostly in reflections on the creation and flood narratives in Genesis. It became evident that the question of intrinsic versus instrumental value, a common starting point of modern ethical conversations, is somewhat awkward in the patristic context. What we may be inclined to call the “intrinsic” value of a creature comes from its Creator, and thus from outside itself. The term “intrinsic value,” then, may be used only in an analogous sense, to indicate the creature’s divinely imparted value solely by virtue of its creation by God, and not its usefulness to us. But this recognition requires another: that the same God who imparts such “intrinsic” value also bestows on humans certain permissions for the use of animals, thus ratifying within limits the “instrumental” value human societies have recognized from experience. Despite these sources’ openness to engaging questions of both “intrinsic” and “instrumental” value, the sources themselves do not resolve these questions. In terms of “intrinsic” value, by definition all creatures have it to some degree simply as creatures of God, and even the irrationality of animals, while preventing them from reaching the heights to which humans are capable, allows them to reach their own divinely appointed tele merely by following their natural impulses. In support of their doxological goals, the homilies go into great detail regarding God’s provision for many kinds of creatures, and in support of their exhortative moral goals, they go into similar detail regarding creatures’ behaviors as analogies for virtuous and vicious human behaviors. These examples can be very powerful, and they ought

264

265 to lead us to avoid contempt for even the “least” of these creatures and to refuse to relate to nature in exclusively utilitarian terms. However, they furnish no means for distinguishing levels of value among species, as the wonder expressed at each varies in details but not degrees. A better place to look would be the discussion in Basil’s Hexaemeron of the different levels of life, each with its particular capacities. Basil presents a hierarchy of capacities, each higher level integrating more capacities that bring it closer to the crown of material creation: the human.1 Given that our patristic sources unambiguously indicate that the human has the most value of any material creature, it stands to reason that the value of other creatures is commensurate with their nearness to humans in terms of their capacities. In Basil, terrestrial animals are nearest, followed by flying creatures, aquatic creatures, and lastly, plants, tracking (in reverse order) the sequence of creation in Genesis 1. This ordering is problematic from a contemporary perspective, because environmental location and/or creation sequence can be, at best, a rough approximation for the range of capacities proper to species groups. There will be significant exceptions, such as dolphins and insects, which intuition tells us should have greater or lesser value, respectively, than other creatures occupying the same environment.2 The “quasi-rational” appearance of certain animals (dogs, sheep, camels, vultures, geese) based on their behaviors can contribute to an assessment of their capacities, but scientific investigation can be helpful in parsing out to what extent these behaviors demonstrate cognitive workings actually approaching reason. In any event, the 1

David Clough might view this hierarchy as a model of the Great Chain of Being he criticizes, but Basil is not attributing greater being to creatures at the top, as in emanationist systems such as Neoplatonism. Each creature has full being in its own way, by being the creature God created it to be. This is the way Clough contends we ought to view the diversity of creation, and he is right, but it does not exclude all hierarchical models. 2 Importantly, this intuition is based on the same criterion for which environment and creation sequence are only approximations: nearness to humans.

266 Cartesian view of all non-human animals as unconscious automata, whose apparent emotions and sensations are merely externalized mechanical reactions, is severely at odds with these patristic perspectives, which are much closer to Olivier Clément’s characterization of higher animals, at least, as logikoi alogikoi. In terms of “instrumental” value, these sources concur in seeing an expanded range of allowed uses owing to postlapsarian conditions. While Basil indicates that all animals had inherently peaceful natures before the fall, the others suggest that animal natures were inherently savage, and harmony was maintained only through the proper exercise of human dominion. Regardless, the changed order of nature after humans forfeited their authority is reflected in the new permission God grants Noah to kill animals for food. The normativity of this permission is assumed by Chrysostom in his anachronistic discussion of postlapsarian uses of animals for food and labor while preaching on the “prelapsarian” chapters of Genesis. Chapter 2 discussed patristic theologies of human dominion, where we approached the problem from the other direction, investigating human value and its accompanying responsibilities, rather than animal value. The primary (though not exclusive) textual marks of human value are creation in God’s image and the dominion expressed in Genesis 1:26-27. In our patristic sources from both East and West, the image of the immaterial and incorruptible God is seen in the immaterial and incorruptible mind. The divine image is related to rational rule, bound up with the reception of grace, growth in virtue, and the imitation of God. The telos of human reason is the acquisition of virtue, so that living according to the image of God leads to growth into the likeness to God. Specifically mentioned virtues are mildness, gentleness, kindness, compassion, and sympathy. Mildness is proper to human nature, while ferocity is proper to animal nature. But we appropriate ourselves to irrational nature and act ferocious when we

267 forego rational self-governance, becoming slaves to the “animal” passions rather than rulers of them. This happens in a movement inverse to the saint’s appropriation of animals to rational nature, making them mild and gentle. Thus, rule is both external and internal, with an causal and imaging relationship: the internal rule of the rational mind over the body is the cause of the proper exercise of the external rule of rational humans over animals, which in turn images the person’s internal governance. Patristic opinions prioritize human honor and distinctiveness over humility and relatedness to the rest of material creation, even though the latter also find support in Genesis 12. The imago Dei and dominion are marks of human honor, while origin from the earth is a mark of humility. But even the mark of humility has an honorific accompaniment: molding by God’s hands. Although this molding is also said of the animals, these fathers do not discuss it as a mark of honor for them, and they similarly pass over that both humans and animals are said to have the breath of life. But what appears on the surface to be a chauvinistic human exceptionalism is more in the nature of noblesse oblige, not license for exploitation by raw power. Humanity’s status as “microcosm,” positioned in both the intellectual and material realms, allows for mediation of the former to the latter. As just mentioned, the higher, intellectual element is to rule the lower, material one, and in turn, the lower images the higher. Humanity’s upward-looking physical structure indicates its telos is knowledge of God, in contrast to other animals’ downward-looking structures indicating their tele involve filling their stomachs. Although we may see this comparison as demeaning to animals, there is no indication these fathers intend to demean them, only to reflect the capacities and limits that exist in reality. Any demeaning tone ought to be understood as directed toward humans who would neglect their upward-looking telos in exchange for a downward-looking one that is not proper to their

268 particular God-given nature. The animals themselves, though, are simply being what they are, and as we have seen, glorifying God in doing so. As a component of human nature, however, animality when properly governed serves as a vehicle to God and is elevated to a higher level in this service. We see this theme not only in Gregory, but also in Chrysostom’s statement that only humans contemplated God in the garden, while animals were there for humanity’s service. But Chrysostom likewise indicates that it was humanity’s task to care for the animals, made lighter by God’s provision of the plants as food. In comparison with “serving” animals, “ruling” humans receive the upside and the downside of rationality: we have the potential to choose freely to become the kinds of people with a knowledge of God and a life of virtue, and while this potential brings a unique reward, it also brings accountability for choosing lower things in preference to God. Power, then, does not justify itself, but its exercise must be justified by fidelity to the purposes of the God who invested humanity with it. Gods’ permission for humanity to eat meat is bound up with the fallen state and with God’s strategy of lessening the appeal of idolatry by accepting animal sacrifices, thus directing the human inclination to sacrifice toward worship of the true God. But in a faith community that does not sacrifice animals because Christ has made the once-for-all sacrifice, meat eating persists by force of habit, seeing as the religious foundation for it is no longer a practical reality. Although patristic sources never indicate that the permission has been canceled—and indeed sometimes explicitly endorse the use of animals for food, clothing, and medicine—they contain allusions allowing us to discern three main kinds of limits to the ways in which we may exercise power over animals: asceticism, respect for the integrity of natures, and mercy. Asceticism is commended as a life that reduces the need for material food and thereby allows us to live in the

269 mode of humans in paradise, focusing on spiritual food. Moderation is strongly advocated by all of these authorities and is particularly vehement is Gregory of Nyssa’s condemnation of our greedy and gluttonous exploitation of the natural world. The unnatural mingling of species is specifically condemned by Ambrose (if hyperbolically) when done for the sake of efficiency or sensory pleasure. Basil highlights the virtues of kindness (ἡ χρηστότης), compassion (ὁ οἰκτιρμός), and sympathy (ἡ συμπάθεια). Chrysostom likewise speaks of mildness and gentleness, and his quotation of Proverbs 12:10, regarding the righteous person’s pity for animals, indicates animals are proper objects of mercy. Examples of humans showing mercy to animals abound in Chapter 3, whose broader purpose was to examine the nuances of hagiographic portrayals of dominion in human-animal relationships. Consistent with Theokritoff’s assessment, these stories show that animals have legitimate interests and a “rightful place” in creation as determined by God’s will, not ours.3 One of these purposes is to serve human needs, but these sources indicate that need is far removed from what is sometimes subjectively felt as need because of an undue attachment to the passions. The ascetic life enables the exercise of dominion in the truly rational, and therefore compassionate, manner originally intended, but we see that compassion is not applied uniformly in all situations. Although saints and ascetics abstain from meat, they do not enjoin abstention universally, and many make use of animals, though to a more limited degree than other people. Abstention for them is about the cultivation of detachment from the passions for the sake of Christian virtue, not about leaving animals alone. In fact, these powerful stories exist because the 3

Theokritoff characteristically understands the need to avoid extremes in our assessments of ourselves and other creatures: “Such an appreciation of other creatures and their rightful place is far removed from any morbid attachment to animals as a substitute for human relationships. It is also sharply distinguished from the notion that humanity is the blot on the pure natural world, and therefore less worthy of consideration than other species.” Living in God’s Creation, 139.

270 saints do not leave the animals alone. They share their food and water with them, heal them and raise them from the dead, protect them from hunters, and take other kinds of trouble for their benefit. But they also command them, whether for the benefit of the saints themselves or for the benefit of others. Animals obey these saints as a consequence of the saints’ obedience to God, the effect being the communication of peace from God through humanity to the rest of creation. Eden’s harmony is regained through the love of God in these saints, who manifest it in gentleness toward creatures. In addition, relationships with saints is often seen to activate agency in animals. Some obediently renounce their carnivorous or rapacious habits (and some lapse into recidivism, presented as disobedience), and some venerate or mourn saints, join them in the worship of God, intelligently serve them on errands, or even function as monks. The saint’s obedience to God effects the obedience of creatures to the saint and is essential for preserving it. However, this image of the prelapsarian human is placed not in Eden, but rather in the fallen world, engaged in the struggle to reclaim it. This tension explains why some of the saints’ actions are tough rather than tender. Some animals are depicted not only as threats to human life, but even as agents of the devil, and the harsher treatments toward such animals, even to the extent of killing them, serve to combat evil and to protect others. In most instances of a saint’s severe treatment of an animal, there is an implicit acknowledgement of the animal’s abuse of moral agency. In chapter 4, we connected insights from the sources in the Christian tradition to the ideas of modern thinkers on animal ethics. David Clough opposes teleological anthropocentrism with theocentrism and a functionalist understanding of the imago Dei, following the ancient Near Eastern model of the king as God’s representative on earth, in preference to the Greco-Roman substantialist understanding of the divine image as rationality. Both are present in patristic

271 thought, but Clough rightly problematizes rationality as a continuum rather than a binary, arguing also that any definition sufficiently narrow to apply only to humans would be insufficiently important to unite heaven and earth. Thus, he discards the traditional understanding of humanity as microcosm and mediator, asserting animals do not need humans in order to be able to relate to God. Connected to this “dethroning” of humanity—ironic given his acceptance of the kingly vocational model of the divine image—he deemphasizes the Incarnation as the Word becoming human, in favor of the broader scope of Word-as-creature. These commitments lead him to miss, when he positively alludes to stories of the saints, the critical role these people play in reestablishing the harmony of Eden among animals in their spheres of influence. The saints are examples not for their self-effacing abdication (even if from well-intentioned egalitarian motives), but for their proper exercise of the human vocation to rule. They serve as confirmation that the way we rule matters, that human dominion involves a responsibility met through an ascetic detachment assisting in the internal rule of the passions and thus allowing for a rational and compassionate external rule of animals. By marginalizing core concepts in the tradition—human dominion, hierarchy, rationality, and asceticism—Clough weakens the vocational model of the imago Dei he intends to maintain. This model is worthwhile, consistent with both the traditional Orthodox sources and the concerns of modern ethicists. Without dominion and rationality, we are not accountable for realizing our vocation to image God to creation. Without hierarchy, we are at a loss as to how to distinguish our moral duties to different kinds of creatures. And without asceticism, we continue to justify our inevitable failings that result from our consumerist attachments to material “resources.” Clough persuasively argues for the inspiring hope that animals may also share in redemption by virtue of their creation by God in the first place, and may share even in Christ’s reconciliation

272 given that they have departed from God’s will that creation be peaceful and not predatory. But consistent application of this latter principle should lead him to acknowledge the originally intended relationship between human and animals, as shown in Genesis and the hagiographies, instead of projecting the present aversion of wild animals to humans into the eschaton. It is we, not they, who are responsible both for their present state of travail and for their realization of their ideal state of harmony. Clough does well to call for attending to the unifying characteristics of animals as a group (dependence on other organisms for nutrition, and independence of action) as well as their particularities by species. Here, he is met both by the patristic sources and by modern scientific investigation. And his goal that we show animals kindness is not weakened, but strengthened, by attention to Adam’s role in naming them, indicating dominion in the context of a relationship in which their unique qualities are known and appreciated. Unlike Clough, Andrew Linzey does focus on dominion, and his main theme is that its legitimacy depends on its exercise in the manner of Christ. Humans must rule as God rules in Christ: by the service and self-sacrifice of the higher for the sake of the lower. Linzey’s “service” interpretation of dominion has much in common with Clough’s “vocational” interpretation of the imago Dei. This principle of service leads Linzey to oppose Peter Singer’s equality paradigm with a still more demanding “generosity paradigm,” under which not only do animals have rights by virtue of the value given them by their Creator, but humans have additional duties to them over and above identifiable rights, though the distinction is unclear. Linzey highlights the vegetarian diet in Eden and the inclusion of animals in God’s covenant with Noah as indicators that God values animal life—points the patristic sources could have recognized more directly. But he moves quickly from intrinsic value to an assumption of specific rights and duties, based more on his personal moral intuitions than on consistent principles. Just as he conflates the

273 concepts of rights and duties, so does he conflate the concepts of rights and interests, the basis of both being sentience: because animals feel pain, they have the same interests and rights in avoiding it as do humans. From the perspective of rights, then, Linzey is close to Singer’s equal consideration principle, but from the perspective of duties, he insists on the higher standard of generosity, grounded in the human uniqueness derived from the imago Dei. Accordingly, he uses this doctrine for the opposite purpose than has become conventional: to argue for more stringent duties of care by humans, rather than to argue for rights held by humans to the exclusion of other creatures. The main trouble with Linzey’s approach is not that it relies on sympathy, but that it too often seems to rely only on sympathy (together with indignation for the prevailing deficiency of sympathy). Awakening people to the Christian demand for compassionate self-sacrifice is a great service, but things get problematic when we begin asking about specific duties and circumstances. His “generosity paradigm” is grounded in the principle that the weakest are owed the greatest protection, but does this mean we should stay home and starve because driving to the grocery store will kill insects on our windshields? Linzey would say of course not, but the question is, why not? The same question can be asked of his grudging acceptance of Jesus’ “parasitic” fish-eating: why should Jesus not have instructed the disciples to choose starvation to save the fish? Linzey’s appreciation of asceticism gives support to his case, but in general, his eschatological focus on the “already” overshadows practical concessions to the “not yet,” so that when these concessions are made, it is unclear why. Like Clough, Linzey expands the circle of moral concern in a way consistent with the values of the traditional sources, which focus more on the compassionate character of the human than on the benefit to the recipient of that compassion. For their part, those sources, especially the hagiographies, can contribute to Linzey

274 a more specific sense of the range of behaviors and motivations consistent with a Christian character. Linzey’s advocacy of self-sacrificial service for animals, then, could be grounded in particular examples of ascetic saints who anticipated the eschaton by their way of life, and this grounding would strengthen his argument beyond its often tenuous assumptions regarding how general principles ought to apply in specific cases. Like Linzey, Roger Scruton believes in intrinsic animal value and the moral importance of sympathy, criticizing its often arbitrary and self-referential application. But Scruton attempts to provide conceptual categories for addressing the complexities involved in the application of these understandings. In so doing, he employs all three of the major normative ethical theories: virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism. Intrinsic value is the springboard, not the endpoint, of his analysis, and sympathy is one among several moral considerations. Scruton distinguishes rights as interests that are inviolable in principle and takes the deontological Kantian view that rights (as opposed to mere interests) may be held only by moral beings: those capable of entering moral dialogue and recognizing reciprocal rights and duties. While recognizing that attempts to define rationality are frequently either self-serving or overly broad, he declines to take an entirely cynical view of the effort and identifies a cluster of pertinent traits. Some of these provide the basis for morality-based emotions and dialogue, which in turn provide the basis for inclusion in the moral community, whose members recognize the moral law of inviolable rights and duties. But for Scruton, exclusion from this community in no way implies moral irrelevance. On the contrary, while the moral law must not be violated except in the case of irreconcilable conflict between two rights or duties, there are three other sources of moral duties. First, we assume special duties of care to animals we have made dependent on us. But even without such

275 duties (as in the case of wild animals), there are the moral sources of virtue, sympathy, and piety. Virtue precludes acting from vicious motives, as, for example, cultivating animals’ “natural” antipathy for entertainment in a dogfight. Sympathy runs to creatures with cognition, even if it does not reach the level of rationality: in other words, creatures able to form beliefs sufficient to ground emotions and desires. The possible range of emotions and desires depends on the range of beliefs, so certain harms require a certain level of cognition. For example, if an animal cannot hold the belief that a certain human is its devoted benefactor, it cannot feel betrayal by that human. It may feel shock and fear if the human changes from feeding it to trying to capture or kill it, because it is capable of forming the belief it is in danger, but it is incapable of feeling betrayal. The goal of sympathy is to minimize the feelings of pain that an animal is capable of experiencing, and it may rightfully be utilitarian in its calculations. Under either conventional or preference utilitarianism, an assessment of an animal’s capacity to feel certain emotions must be relevant in the calculation. The limit on this utilitarian approach is that there may be no violation of the moral law (i.e., established rights and duties), virtue, or piety. This last criterion, piety, recognizes our finitude in the face of larger forces and concerns in the world. Scruton tries to present the concept in a religiously neutral way by appealing to its classical Greco-Roman context, but he is unconvincing in his attempt to argue its content consists of respect for all aspects of the human form as well as a more relative respect for animals. Such an interpretation imports the Judeo-Christian perspectives he tries to exclude in an effort to be theologically neutral. Nonetheless, he rightly understands that piety, in any form, would militate against a merely instrumental relationship with other creatures, as if current human needs were the only measure of value.

276 The upshot of Scruton’s thought is that although animals have “intrinsic” value—and certain individuals may be owed particular solicitude, owing either to duties assumed or to sympathy for those with the cognitive capacity for emotions and desires—their interests are relativized in a way that rights (held by humans and any other putative moral beings) are not. For the vast majority of animals, our moral concern is for the species rather than the individual, and it consists first and foremost of protecting the ecological balance of habitats and biodiversity. This more holistic view conflicts with Clough and Linzey, but aligns more closely with the patristic and hagiographical ethos, which acknowledges the value of animals as creatures of God but does not attribute to them the same moral priority as human persons made in the imago Dei. These traditional sources can offer content to Scruton’s culture-specific criteria of virtue and piety, while Scruton can offer a philosophical articulation for some of the unexamined assumptions behind those theological sources. The broadest consensus among all these sources, ancient and modern, involves an affirmation of the “intrinsic” or God-given value of all creatures and a corresponding rejection of a purely instrumental approach to them. A special moral concern pertains to animals with sentience, as this capacity allows them not only to experience harm (as, for example, a tree might “experience harm” when cut down), but to feel it as pain.4 The virtuous person has sympathy and

4

Although rationality enables humans to experience pain as redemptive suffering, animals have no such capacity to transform something inherently evil into a vehicle of good by interpreting it through the lens of the Cross. To the extent we can speak from the perspective of animals, pain remains for them an unequivocal evil, something from which they have no capacity to benefit— except perhaps, for those with higher cognitive faculties, to appreciate their deliverer. Curiously, then, given our tendency to extend sympathy and attribute moral value to animals with higher cognitive capacities (humans most of all), it seems we are most appalled by the pain of those that have the greatest ability to redeem it. Perhaps this is because we suppose that if an animal cannot interpret its pain in a redemptive way, it also cannot raise the existential questions of why it is feeling that pain in the first place, of how a good God can allow it to experience this pain, of

277 seeks to minimize their pain, not to ignore or exploit it. The priority of the human (whether described in terms of the imago Dei, dominion, or rationality) is not a license to satisfy our appetites, but involves a charter of responsibility for the rest of creation. Opposition to the idolatry of human self-deification leads these sources to oppose the scientific presumption whereby knowledge is seen to be an end justifying any means of attaining it, as well as the consumerist mentality whereby the rest of nature is approached as mere instrumentality for our comfort and pleasure. Accordingly, they are united in condemning (either explicitly or by application of their principles) the factory farming of animals, which treats them according to amoral standards of efficiency—as units of production rather than sentient creatures—for the purpose of maximizing the quantitative output of animal products at minimal cost. Likewise, they stand against most, if not necessarily all, forms of animal experimentation; but even Scruton, who is less than absolute in his stance, would rule out some kinds of experiments merely for their cruelty, regardless of the potential benefits (“that which can be done only by a callous person, ought not to be done”5). And although more particular than Linzey and Clough in his distinction of rational from irrational beings and his moral prioritizing of the former (thus being closer to the traditional sources in this respect), Scruton concedes that non-human species, if they were to show the capacities he identifies as constituting rationality, would be owed a like moral solicitude.6 Conversely, although Clough and Linzey prefer not to emphasize the moral priority of humans over other sentient animals, they do concede the same: Clough, on the basis

whether it has been abandoned by its benefactor, and so forth. It is this existential pain that adds the dimension of suffering to the mere fact of physical pain. 5 Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 107. 6 C.S. Lewis provides an imaginative corollary of this principle when, in his Chronicles of Narnia, he includes a Narnian prohibition against killing and eating talking animals.

278 of Scripture and particularly Jesus’ words, and Linzey, through the admission that humans might legitimately kill animals for food if survival demanded it. To be sure, these sources do differ in substance on certain points, but these differences can appear magnified by their more thoroughgoing difference in emphasis. Notwithstanding the occasional concessions just mentioned, Clough and Linzey tend to filter out, from the Christian tradition to which they appeal, elements that are incompatible with their desire for greater egalitarianism among sentient creatures. These thinkers provide a great contribution in challenging complacency among Christians regarding the treatment of animals, but they gloss over aspects of the tradition that indicate a permissible range of human use of animals—not only in patristic statements and saint stories, but also in scriptural passages such as Genesis 9:2-6, permitting the killing of animals for food but prohibiting the killing of humans as a direct affront to God’s image. For their part, the patristic sources, following Philo, seem at pains to stress human superiority owing to dominion, rationality, and the imago Dei, and thus they overlook the implications of scriptural passages depicting human-animal communion.7 Certainly, their holding to the unique preeminence of human moral value is in accord with Genesis, as the imago Dei gives human life a value commensurate with its high calling and responsibility. Indeed, some of their statements may give comfort to those who would prefer to think only in terms of animal utility rather than animal value. But when we recall that these words are spoken to induce gratitude in the listeners for God’s providing for them, and also that these same orators condemn the greed and gluttony whereby humans exploit not only the poor but also the natural world, we 7

These passages include Genesis 1:30, indicating animals have a breath of life (ψυχή ζωῆς), and Genesis 2:7, 18-19, indicating similar human and animal origins by God’s molding (πλάσσω), and applying the same term (ψυχὴν ζῶσαν) to the animals molded by God and brought to Adam that it applies to Adam himself after God molds him and breathes into him a breath of life (πνοή ζωῆς).

279 see that they are far from endorsing the institutionalized exploitation on which we rely today for our “luxury” animal products. Their allowance of the killing of animals for sustenance does not ultimately place them in opposition to the “animal rights” advocates, Linzey and Clough, who would also allow it (no matter how grudgingly). A major divide is that in the case of necessity, Linzey and Clough would permit the killing of animals only with the understanding that it is a necessary evil, whereas the Christian sources and Scruton do not seem to take such a grave view, but rather appear to see it as a routine matter in the present conditions, imperfect though they be. This is mainly a difference of emphasis on the “already,” in the case of the former, versus “not yet,” in the case of the latter. It is important to keep these two emphases in a balanced tension, but this assertion itself would be more palatable to Scruton than to Clough and Linzey, whose projects aim at a more revolutionary way of understanding our relationship with animals. But as noted already, they have neither the theoretical structure nor the will to apply their “sentient egalitarianism” consistently. They focus on compassion for animals, but at the expense of thinking through consequences such as what it would mean, for example, to apply consistently Linzey’s “generosity paradigm” that the higher is to self-sacrificially serve the lower. If it meant everything it appears to mean, Linzey would not allow for meat eating when human survival depends on it. But he should not be ashamed of this concession; rather, he should see in it a push to deepen his theory with reference to other goods besides sympathy for those experiencing pain: goods such as those provided by Scruton in his concepts of moral law, virtue, and piety. Scruton’s theory does better in attending to the complexities of sometimes competing goods, but this is not to say his application is unassailable. For example, in his fascinating and

280 nuanced discussion of fox-hunting,8 he provides an ecological defense worth considering, including the benefit to the species itself, but his utilitarian balancing of the human community’s pleasure against the fox’s pain is less than persuasive, as if sympathy and virtue ought not to hold humans back from taking pleasure that comes through traumatizing another creature, even if it is not taken in the actual trauma.9 While his defense of the human duty of ecological management more broadly raises important questions that are too fact-intensive to be disposed of here, Scruton at least induces a proper caution about vesting animals with absolute individual rights that would limit our ability to preserve the balance of habitats and species. And it must be admitted that a good-faith recognition of the importance of ecological balance will also put in place certain checks on human developments, if not on human lives. Accordingly, more prudent than a theoretical overhaul with its unintended consequences would be piecemeal reform composed of progressive steps to curb abuses, starting with cases of obvious cruelty and weak justification—including the sacrificing of animals on the altars of the consumerist lifestyle and the scientific pursuit of knowledge, both of which are unquenchable appetites more evocative of the serpent’s offer to Eve and of Voldemort’s making of Horcruxes, than of the humble service of God’s steward of creation. As for measures more traditional in nature and more modest in scale, such as the hunting of animals for food and culling, and the local animal husbandry providing for a good life and a quick death, Linzey and Clough have not made the case for animal lives being on par with human lives so as to posit a blanket Christian ethical prohibition of the practices. Such an equation of life value would require one of two alternatives: either absolutizing the value of sentient animal life, in which case we court more 8

Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 116-22. This is not to mention the suggestion that the human spirit is so uncreative as to be unable to find a more benign alternative source of communal enjoyment and fellow-feeling.

9

281 ecological problems, or relativizing the value of human life, in which case we may well more efficiently solve those problems, but at the horrific cost of abandoning the dignity of the person that the past century has struggled so hard and painfully to recognize. Just as the Church has lived with the tension between pacificism and just war theory, refusing to condemn one or the other even while being unable to harmonize them, so should it live with the tension between the ethical views represented by Clough and Linzey on the one hand, and Scruton on the other. Both sides (to the extent we can speak of “sides,” given the common ground I have already shown) can claim support in the tradition, although its complexity tends to support Scruton’s own attention to complexity, over Clough’s and Linzey’s desire to simplify the questions. That having been said, “balance” and “complexity” themselves can have the effect of leading to a self-justifying and complacent inertia, and it is the voices of Clough and Linzey, in their “imbalanced simplicity,” that are so needed to challenge the Christian conscience. Calls to repentance are never “balanced” or “complex”; they are blunt and simple, if not easy. Even if Linzey’s ethics, and Clough’s ontological prelude to his own, do not fully stand up to scrutiny, they effectively challenge the institutional abuses of today’s society, which are unjustified by any Christian standard. We ought to follow their lead in examining our own consciences and asking how much of our routine contributes to the unjust suffering of animals for the sake of our convenience and pleasure. Of course, the spirit of such self-examination should be consistent with the ascetic spirit found in the patristic and hagiographical sources. We ought to ask ourselves why we feel we have to have meat at every meal, or why we might be able to give up meat but cannot go without dairy. For some people, the motive may truly arise from nutritional concerns (for example, justifiable discomfort at following a diet requiring them to supplement with vitamin B-12

282 capsules and perhaps plant protein isolates and other vitamins and minerals, rather than using food sources in their more natural forms). This is usually not the case, however. Most of the time it is expressed, the feeling of “having to have” or “not being able to go without” is instinctive and arises from taste and habit rather than from nutritional considerations. The feeling itself is reinforced in a positive feedback loop with the dietary offerings available in our society. Because most people have these tastes, and the market follows the laws of supply and demand, it is difficult for vegans to find suitable dishes when going out to eat with friends. This fact, in turn, likely dissuades many from pursuing a plant-based diet, as many do not want to be seen as the obnoxious crusader willing to inconvenience friends for what will likely be perceived as his or her own personal preferences. The number of individuals changing their diets for ethical reasons is growing, but to effect positive change on a larger scale, it will be helpful for Christian leaders in particular to reflect on these questions and challenge their people with them. It is time to stop agreeing about how terrible factory farming is, in between bites of a $4.99 cheeseburger. My primary suggestion for the immediate future is a return to the traditional fasting practice of no meat or dairy on Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year, together with the same abstinence during all days of the fasting seasons. Whether this discipline has been effectively abandoned by being downgraded de facto (as in many Orthodox churches) or de jure (as in the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches), the message sent is that the faithful cannot be expected to endure such restrictions. This perceived impotence is a “First-World problem” if ever there was one. We think we cannot go without something considered a luxury in the rest of the world, because we do not try, and so we know nothing else. It is this cycle of powerful but illusory needs and their fulfillment that the saints urge us to break through ascetic discipline. The clergy should lead the

283 way, showing the faithful that significantly less reliance on animal products is an attainable possibility, but they must be persuaded themselves before they can persuade others. Once disabused of the misperception of powerlessness before appetites, Christians will be more selfgoverning so as to decide more rationally whether they might push their abstinence further, even into days where it is not required by ecclesial law or tradition. This may well prompt new reflections on the meaning and “spirit” of fasting, and what forms its “letter” ought to take today in keeping with that meaning. Such reflection would be welcome, considering that Orthodox Christians can now “keep the fast” while treating ourselves to a shrimp and lobster feast.10 In addition, I would propose that churches ask their members to contribute only ethically sourced meat and dairy, if animal products are to be offered at all, to their common meals that do not fall on fast days. The concern that these foods are too expensive might be answered by recalling that a feast is a special time when we contribute our best. The Prodigal Son’s father did not “kill the fatted calf” just any day; it was an extravagance for a particularly special occasion. That level of eating, however, has become the baseline of normalcy for us. If we want to have meat and dairy, we should be prepared to pay what it takes to ensure the animals from which they came were able to live lives in accordance with their natures, rather than save money by contributing to their cruel treatment. The extra expense, in fact, can be considered an aspect of right stewardship of our money.11 And a final suggestion is that Christians, encouraged by their leaders, make efforts to buy products that have not been tested on animals. Lists of “cruelty free” companies and product lines are available to the conscientious consumer, and these should be preferred over those that do not scruple to test on animals.

10 11

Shellfish are permissible even on fasting days in the Orthodox Church. See Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation, 114.

284 The same laws of supply and demand that keep factory farming and animal experimentation operative are the laws that can bring them down if enough people are convicted enough to make changes in their lives. If every Christian did this, the effects on alleviating animal pain would be transformative. At some point in the process, the balance of public opinion would shift enough to enable the implementation of greater legal protections for animals. Plenty of questions would remain open to debate, but the vast majority of animal cruelty in our society would be eliminated. And this is a result that surely none of our sources—ancient or modern, theological or philosophical, “human exceptionalist” or “sentient egalitarian,” “ecologically holistic” or “animal-rights individualistic”—would find undesirable.

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290 Thunberg, Lars. Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor. Chicago: Open Court, 1995. ________. Man and the Cosmos: The Vision of St Maximus the Confessor. Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985. Vivian, Tim. “The Peaceable Kingdom: Animals as Parables in the Virtues of Saint Macarius.” Anglican Theological Review 85:3 (2003): 477-91. Waddell, Helen, ed. and trans. The Desert Fathers. New York: Random House, 1998. Wallace-Hadrill, D.S. The Greek Patristic View of Nature. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1968. Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Way. Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996. ________. “The Value of the Material Creation.” Sobornost/ECR 6.3 (1971): 154-65. Wennberg, Robert N. God, Humans, and Animals. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Young, Richard. “The Biblical Perspective: Anthropocentric, Biocentric, or Theocentric?” Epiphany 14.2 (1994): 3-17.

Ian Charles Jones BA, Baylor University JD, University of Virginia School of Law MA, St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary MPhil, Fordham University Dominion and Communion: Patristic Theology and the Ethics of Humanity’s Relationship with Animal Creation Dissertation directed by George E. Demacopoulos, PhD The aim of this dissertation is to read a range of ancient Christian sources in terms of their explicit and implicit theological understandings of animals and human dominion over them, and to put these sources in conversation with modern thought on animal ethics. The ancient texts selected are primarily fourth-century homilies and treatises on Genesis by the preeminent Greek and Latin patristic authorities of the era, together with pre-Schism hagiographies from East and West depicting interactions between saints and animals. The modern texts are works by theologians David Clough and Andrew Linzey, and by philosopher Roger Scruton. While the ancient texts reflect the traditional Christian affirmation of human uniqueness and superior creaturely value owing to creation in the imago Dei and reception of dominion, they do so in way that situates this privileged status in a matrix of other traditional Christian affirmations, including the moral imperative of compassion and mercy, and the related ascetic imperative of rational control of the passions. In this broader context, even the most “anthropocentric” assertions in the patristic sources do not lend support to the institutionalized cruelty upon which the modern industrial farm and research laboratory are founded. These two scenes are the most ethically significant today, because of both the magnitude of their effect on

animals and the character of human attitudes regarding the proper reach of our prerogatives. Broad consensus can be seen in the ancient and contemporary sources that such practices run contrary to the position and vocation with which God invested humanity. Greater divergence may be found with respect to older practices of a more agrarian and less industrial or technological character, such as traditional hunting, fishing, and farming. Interestingly, these cases show Scruton more frequently aligning with the substantive arc of the traditional sources than do Linzey and Clough, despite the use of ancient Christian sources by the latter two in support of their arguments. But the alignment is not clear-cut in every respect, and all of these sources have much to contribute to a Christian understanding of the proper exercise of human dominion in today’s world.

VITA

Ian Charles Jones, son of Ken and Anastasia Jones, was born on March 9, 1977, in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating in 1995 from Jackson Preparatory School, he entered Baylor University as a recipient of the National Merit Finalist Scholarship. In 1999, he received the Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. In 2002, he received his Juris Doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served on the managing board of the Journal of Law and Politics. From 2002 to 2003, he worked as a law clerk for the Honorable Clarence A. Brimmer of the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming, after which he practiced law with the firm of Adams and Reese LLP in his hometown of Jackson. He then entered St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in 2007 and earned his Master of Arts degree in Theology in 2009. He enrolled in the doctoral program in Theology at Fordham University that same year, as a recipient of the Richard A. Bennett Assistantship. While working toward his doctoral degree under the mentorship of Dr George E. Demacopoulos, he spent several semesters teaching an undergraduate course at Fordham and graduate courses at St Vladimir’s.