By the Reverend Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.

Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light! Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. And once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly more and more every day. And you will at last come to love the whole world with an abiding, universal love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy. Do not, therefore, trouble [them], do not torture them, do not deprive them of their joy, do not go against God’s intent. Man, do not exalt yourself above the animals: they are without sin, while you with your majesty defile the earth by your appearance on it and you leave the traces of your defilement behind you – alas, this it true of almost every one of us!1

Dostoevsky’s fine and powerful words go to the very heart of the Gospel. For the divine mystery is nothing less than the love of God which sustains and energises the whole universe. This inexhaustible source, deep and fathomless, encompasses all created beings. ‘All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made,’ writes St John.2

Every creature is a loved creature — or it is no creature at all. The self-giving, sacrificial love of Christ is nothing less than the showing forth, the making flesh of this sheer, incomprehensible generosity which is the indestructible grace of God.

And yet this is not a truth simply to be wondered at, as we may wonder at the myriads of stars or the breathtaking beauty of a sunset. It is, as Dostoevsky explains, something that must be lived. We have to love in order to perceive, and in perceiving come close to comprehension. For ‘once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly more and more every day’. Only a loving, forgiving, generous heart can put us right with God; everything else is of no avail. No systems, dogmas, creeds, priests, institutions or structures can save us if we are mean, unloving, unfeeling people. And this compassion must extend, if it is to be real, to the whole world of fellow creatures. Christian love cannot exclude animals, “God’, writes Dostoevsky, ‘has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy.’ Moreover animals, despite the fallenness of Creation, are innocent in ways which we cannot know: ‘they are without sin, while you with you majesty defile the earth by your appearance on it’.3

It is easy to mock (as doubtless we have all done on one or more occasions in our lives) at the figure of ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’; but in reality there is great strength in gentleness, heroism in forbearance, and power in humility. If Jesus can wash the dirty feet of our world, then surely his followers should heal the wounds of those suffering non-human creatures with whom we are to share this good earth. ‘What is a charitable heart?’ asks St Isaac the Syrian. ‘It is a heart’, he replies

...which is burning with love for the whole creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons — for all creatures. He who has such a heart cannot see or call to mind a creature without his eyes being filled with tears by reason of the immense compassion which seizes his heart; a heart which is softened and can no longer bear to see or learn from others of any suffering, even the smallest pain, being inflicted upon a creature.’4

This compassionate, sensitive heart for animals is inseparable from the proclamation of the Christian Gospel. We have lived so long with the Gospel stories of Jesus that we frequently fail to see how his life and ministry identified with animals at almost every point. His birth, if tradition is to be believed, takes place in the home of sheep and oxen. His ministry begins, according to St Mark, in the wilderness ‘with the wild beasts’ (1.13). His triumphal entry into Jerusalem involves riding on a ‘humble’ ass (see Matthew 21.1b-5). According to Jesus it is lawful to ‘do good’ on the Sabbath, which includes the rescuing of an animal fallen into a pit (see Matthew 12.10b-12). Even the sparrows, literally sold for a few pennies in his day, are not ‘forgotten before God.’ God’s providence extends to the entire created order, and the glory of Solomon and all his works cannot be compared to that of the lilies of the field (Luke 12.27). God so cares for creation that even ‘foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head’ (Luke 9.58). It is ‘the merciful’ who are ‘blessed’ in God’s sight and what we do to ‘the least’ of all we do to Christ himself (Matthew 5.7 and 25.45-6).

Moreover, what many commentators have failed to realise is that Jesus literally overturns the already questioned practice of animal sacrifice. Those who sell pigeons have their tables overturned and are put out of the Temple (Mark 11.15-16). It is the scribe who sees the spiritual bankruptcy of the animal sacrifice and the supremacy of sacrificial love that Jesus commends as being ‘not far from the Kingdom of God’ (see Mark 12.32-4). It is a loving heart which is required by God, and not the needless bloodletting of God’s creatures. We can see the same prophetic and radical challenge to tradition in Jesus’ remarks about the ‘good shepherd’ who, unlike many in his day, ‘lays down his life for the sheep’ (John 10.11, emphases added). A line which, according to Robin Attfield, ‘must have influenced its readers’ attitudes to actual flocks as well as to the pastoral care of Christ for his followers’.5

Even in the gnostic Gospel of Thomas, there is the striking saying about the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea preceding us in the Kingdom.6 Whatever the authenticity of the saying, it seems strangely in keeping with the Spirit of Jesus.

In all this Jesus represents the best of the Jewish tradition expressed in that rabbinical saying that ‘the way a person treats an animal is an index to his soul.’ For it is a ‘righteous man’ who ‘has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel’ (Proverbs 12.10). Hence all the various humane prescriptions in the law of Moses about caring for animals and even the story of Balaam’s ass, however extraordinary it may appear to us today, is early testimony to the spiritual capacities of beasts (see Numbers 22.21-33). Indeed the Old Testament is unequivocal about the spiritual status of animals, for they too possess, according to Genesis, the ‘breath of life’ (see 1.30-1) so that ‘when thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust’ (see Psalm 104.27-31). Perhaps it is for this reason that Psalm 36 can confidently proclaim that ‘man and beast thou savest, O Lord’ (36.6b) which is surely a sign of that fundamental closeness between man and animals expressed in the important notion of covenant. For it is not only with Noah and his descendants but also with ‘every living creature’ that the covenant is made (see Genesis 9.8-17).

If we ask why it is that so many Old Testament writers had this sense of the value and worth of creation, the answer must lie in the emerging doctrine of God the loving Creator of all. For the land animals are made with human beings on the same day in the order of creation, and are also similarly blessed (see Genesis 1.24-8). God the Creator puts Adam in the garden of Eden specifically ‘to till it and keep it’ (Genesis 2.15); that is, to exercise care over creation just as God cares. Alas, man does not live up to God’s expectations and it is not long before the Lord ‘was sorry that he had made man’ because of all the violence upon the earth (see Genesis 6.5-13). It is simply not true that God gave humans a free hand to do what they liked with creation. On the contrary, made in the image of God humanity has a duty to reflect, if not actualise, the divine love for all creatures.

Perhaps it is for this reason that we find so many biblical passages speaking of the hope of a better, more peaceful world in which humans live in harmony with other creatures. Despite their sense of being involved in and responsible for the violence and carnivorousness of the world, the Hebrews never gave up their hope of cosmic redemption. ‘I will make for you a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land,’ says the Lord (see Hosea 2.18). The vision of Isaiah, where the wolf lies down with the lamb and the lion with the calf, and where ‘they shall not hurt or destroy in all my hope mountain’ (see Isaiah 11.6-9) haunted their moral consciences, aware as they were that the world, though created good, is not yet as it should be.

Christians too, as they came to reflect upon the nature of the love of God expressed in his Son Jesus Christ, began to see that the will of God was inclusive of all things. ‘For he has made know to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time,’ writes St Paul, ‘to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth’ (Ephesians 1.9-10). Christ the supreme example of God’s love was also seen to be the agent of cosmic peace and reconciliation. ‘For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross’ (see Colossians 1.19-20). This staggering conception of the cosmic Christ, healing the pain of creation and overcoming all divisions, is surely one of the most profound theological ideas in the New Testament. It finds further confirmation in St Paul’s graphic portrayal of creation as groaning in childbirth, awaiting ‘the glorious liberty of the children of God’ (see Romans 8.18-23). Although the creation now suffers, and suffers abundantly, it shall not always be so. As humans are themselves renewed by the Spirit of Christ, so shall creation itself be renewed, indeed it will find a new freedom as God originally intended.

When we turn to the saints we find, almost without exception, a prefiguring of this lost world of cosmic peace. Again, we know so well the picturesque stories of St Francis preaching to the birds, St Giles’ rescuing of the deer, or St Columba’s saving of the crane that we simply overlook their theological significance. Many of the stories may appear sentimental, but none of them in fact are simply concerned with sentiment. Their purpose is deeply serious, and it is perhaps a sign of our lost innocence that we fail to see their cardinal relevance today. The key to understanding the example of the saints is surely found in this telling line from St Bonaventure. Speaking of St Francis he writes, "When he considered the primordial source of all things, he was filled will even more abundant piety, calling creatures, no matter how small, by the name of brother or sister, because he knew that they had the same source as himself.’7

It is precisely because all living creatures have the same common Father that we can embrace each and every one as ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’ If Christ is the Logos through whom all things come to be, and if this Logos, as St Athanasius explains, permeates the universe ‘illuminating all things visible and invisible, containing and enclosing them in himself,’ then it must follow that we are related christologically to all living things.8 Nothing in creation can therefore be really alien to us, and however fallen creation may be it still reflects the glory of God. In this way the saints continue and develop the deeply christological view of creation found in the New Testament. For what God does in Christ is not to be seen as an isolated act of love for humankind; rather, all creation is involved in the acts of incarnation and resurrection. 'And thus, St John of the Cross writes, "thus in this lifting up of the Incarnation of His Son, and in the glory of his resurrection according to the flesh‘ not only did the Father beautify the creatures in part, but we can say that He left them all clothed with beauty and dignity.'9

The love of the saints for animals is not, then, some sentimental gloss which may obscure their real teachings. On the contrary, the example of the saints is in many cases their teaching to us. It is precisely because of their closeness to God that they were able to feel a loving reverence for God’s creatures. ‘Hast thou never learned in Holy Writ that he who led his life after God’s will, the wild beasts and the wild birds have become more intimate with him?’ asks St Guthlac.10 Or, as St Catherine of Sienna puts it: ‘The reason why God’s servants love His creatures so deeply is that they realise how deeply Christ loves them.’ ‘And’, she continues, ‘this is the very character of love to love what is loved by those we love.’11

In the articulation of this vision the theologian has a special role. ‘It is good to realise’, writes that great sage Francis Hugh Maycock, contemplating the beauty of nature, ‘that God has other interests besides men!’12 For it is vital to remember that the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus Christ is not simply the God of human beings. ‘It must never be forgotten’, writes Austin Farrer, ‘that God is the God of hawks no less than sparrows, or microbes no less than of men.’13 Animals, in particular, have what E. F. Schumacher calls a ‘meta-economic’ value.14 They are not simply commodities or resources for human beings, but alive, sensitive beings endowed by God’s Spirit. Because of this, cruelty must be anathematised. ‘Think of your feelings at cruelty practised upon brute animals, says Cardinal Newman, ‘and you will gain the sort of feeling which the history of Christ’s Cross and Passion ought to excite within you.’15

Cruelty cannot co-exist with Christian love. ‘Cruelty is Atheism’, writes Humphry Primatt, an eighteenth-century divine. ‘Cruelty’, he argues, is ‘Infidelity’ and ‘the worst of heresies’.16 How can it be otherwise if we believe in a loving, generous God? It must be the task of the theologian to call us back to some of those basics without which we can lose that proper sense of ourselves as creatures in God’s world. The AuSable Institute in Michigan, USA, dedicated to a systematic theological study of creation, has as its philosophy the following statement:

God is the owner of all. Humankind is not the owner of that over which he has authority. Human authority is more that of trustee than owner. The scope of this trust is global. Since all creatures depend on the earth for life, health and fulfilment, stewardship is the responsible use and care of creation. This is the clear and repeated testimony of scripture.’17

When we think of ourselves as owning or possessing creation for our own ends, we lapse into error. If we are to regain that sense of our moral dominion over animals, and avoid what W. H. Vanstone calls the ‘anthropocentric theology of the last fifteen or twenty years’ which is ‘degenerating towards triviality,’18 then we must have a renewed vision of ourselves as global peacemakers.

But if we are to be renewed in vision, then we need the inspiration of poets as much as the example of saints and the teaching of sensitive theologians. For poets often have that intuitive grasp of the unity of creation and the universal claim of compassion. ‘He bears in his heart all wounds’, writes Edith Sitwell of the suffering Christ, who still suffers in our world because of the ‘wounds of the baited bear … whom the keepers beat on his helpless flesh … the tears of the hunted hare.’19 For ‘other eyes than ours,’ writes Christina Rossetti, ‘were made to look on flowers,’ and each good creature has ‘just as good a right to its appointed portion of delight as any King.’20 Poets are one with the saints in bringing hope to our world, of stressing the need to hope in order to be fully human. As Tennyson wrote:

Oh yet we trust that somehow good,
will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.21

Few people have grasped the spiritual significance of Christ’s experience in the wilderness more acutely, or offered more penetrating exegesis of Mark 1.12, that Robert Graves in his poem depicting Christ’s solidarity with the ‘poor, blind broken things, foul in their miseries.’

And ever with Him went,
Of all his wanderings …
Tears like a lover wept.22

In the light of all this united testimony it is not surprising that many church people this century have spoken about the need to care for animals and to eschew cruelty. It was after all an Anglican clergyman, Arthur Broome, who called the first meeting in 1824 which led to the founding of the then SPCA, the first animal protection society in the world. He was the Society’s first secretary, resigning his London living to work full-time for the cause, employing inspectors out of his own pocket and ending up in prison trying to pay for the debts of the Society. The first ‘Prospectus’ of the Society, published in June 1824, makes clear that the motivating force was nothing less than the ‘great moral and Christian obligation of kindness and compassion towards the brute creation’.23 The first Board of Managers included many notable Christians, in particular: William Wilberforce, Richard Martin, Dr Heslop, the Rector of Marylebone, and Fowell Buxton. The new Society dedicated itself, among other things, to the ‘establishment of periodical discourses, from the pulpit, in one more metropolitan churches’.24 A declaration in the first minute book maintained that the proceedings of the Society were ‘entirely based on the Christian faith, and on Christian Principles’.25

For the centenary of the Society, the poet Thomas Hardy wrote ‘An Ode’ entitled ‘Compassion’ to celebrate the advance of the pioneering work:

Much has been won – more, maybe, than we know
And on we labour hopeful. ‘Ailinon!’
A mighty voice calls: ‘But may the good prevail!’
And ‘Blessed are the merciful!’
Calls yet a mightier one.26

In 1977 the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Donald Coggan, on accepting the presidency of the Society issued this unequivocal statement:

I am happy to follow the lead given to the Church some 150 years ago by the London vicar who called the meeting in 1824 which led to the Society’s foundation... There have always been and still are many Churchmen, both lay and ordained, who have seen it as part of their Christian profession to work for animal welfare. I want to offer my support to the RSPCA because without their constant vigilance and the devoted work of their Officers and Inspectors the level of unnecessary suffering in this country would be so much higher... Animals, as part of God’s creation have rights which must be respected. It behoves us always to be sensitive to their needs and to the reality of their pain.27

Yet Christian compassion, if it is to be sustained and constant and real, needs the support and inspiration of Christian liturgy and worship. It was Laurens van der Post who insisted that "We must turn back to what we have left of the capacity for wonder... Only reverence for life can deliver us from our inhumanity, and from the cataclysm of violence awaiting us at the end of our present road.’28

By focusing our minds on God the Creator, and reminding us that we are all fellow creatures in his world, worship can invigorate and refresh our humanity. The Spirit of Christ can make all things new — even and especially the frequently dull sensitivities of modern men and women.

’In his way to union with God,’ writes Vladimir Lossky, that great exponent on the Eastern tradition, "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.’29

If we are to become loving people then we must celebrate God the Creator and praise him. For in so doing, Scripture reminds us, we do no less than the humblest of creation, ‘beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds’ all praise the Lord (see Psalm 148.7-10).

For this reason alone we should welcome the increasing number of prayers, litanies, meditations and benedictions concerned to celebrate our being-with-creation, and especially those which focus the need for healing of the animal creation. Humans, alone in creation, have a terrible capacity to make good or ill, to injure thoughtlessly or to live in peace. We need spiritual resources to fulfil what Edward Carpenter calls the ‘divine task of lifting up creation, redeeming those orders of which [we form] a part, and directing them towards their end.’30 By the power of God’s Spirit, we co-operate with the pattern of redemption by allowing ourselves to become redeemers.

According to the Christian reckoning of things, we ourselves are inextricably caught up with the plight of unredeemed creation. The misery of animals, their fate and suffering, is a sign to us of what life without compassion can produce, as much for fellow humans as for fellow creatures. There is an indivisibility, a unity of all life which we threaten by needless harm, and that harm adversely affects us all. ‘There are times,’ argues Bishop John Austin Baker:

...when we have to take the lives of the more developed sentient creatures, either in mercy or in self-defence... But how sad it is when … we violate genuine awareness, yes, we must say of the holiness of life, by needless killing... Yet saddest of all, most terrible of all fates surely is to have lost that sense of the holiness of life altogether, to be so unaware of the true nature of the creatures with which we are dealing that we commit the blasphemy, the sacrilege, of bringing thousands of lives to a cruel and terrifying death, or of making those lives a living death — and feel nothing.’31

What all these voices and witnesses show is that there is a tradition of compassion to be reclaimed as well as a Gospel to be proclaimed. It should concern all Christians that so many urgent voices representing some of the finest strands within Christendom have been silenced or ignored. Only if we attune our ears and hear them afresh can we become agents of the Gospel for which all creatures long.

Revised version of the Introduction to Compassion for Animals: Readings and Prayers (London: SPCK, 1988), pp. xiii-xxvi.

Notes

1. Fyodor Mikhail Dostoevsky (1821-1881). The Brothers Karamazov, trans by David Magarshack, vol. 1 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969; extract in Andrew Linzey and Tom Regan (eds) Compassion for Animals: Readings and Prayers [hereafter CFA] (London: SPCK, 1988), p. 12.

2. John. 1:3 (RSV).

3. Dostoevsky, ibid.

4. St Isaac the Syrian (c. 345-438). Cited in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1952), in CFA, p. 65.

5. Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1983), p. 29.

6. Robert M. Grant and David N. Freeman, The Secret Sayings of Jesus According to the Gospel of Thomas (London: Fontana, 1960), p. 115.

7. St Athanasius (c. 296-373). Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed and trans by R. W. Thompson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) in CFA, p. 8.

8. St Bonaventure (1221-1274). The Life of St Francis and The Soul’s Journey into God, ed, trans and intro by Ewert Cousins (London: SPCK, 1978), pp. 254-5.

9. St John of the Cross (1542-1591). The Complete Works of St John of the Cross, ed and trans by A. E. Peters, 3 vols in one edn., vol.II, v (Wheathamstead: Hertforshire: Anthony Clarke, 1974), in CFA, p. 82.

10. St Guthlac of Crowland (c. 673-714). Cited in La Marquise de Rambures, L’Eglise et la Pitie Envers les Animaux (Paris, 1908) and in Ambrose Agius, God’s Animals (London: Catholic Study Circle for Animal Welfare, 1970), in CFA, p. 26.

11. St Catherine of Sienna (c. 1347-1380) ‘Letters’ cited in Agius, ibid., and in CFA, p. 26.

12. Francis Hugh Maycock, ‘Borneo Diary’ in A. M. Allchin et al., Francis Hugh Maycock: A Tribute (Oxford, SLG Press, 1981), p. 4.

13. Austin Farrer (1906-1968). Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited (London: Fontana, 1966), in CFA, p. 12.

14. E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977). Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (London: Abacus, 1974), in CFA, p. 50.

15. Cardinal Newman (1801-1890). ‘The Crucifixion’ in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 8 vols, (London: Rivingtons, 1868), vol. II, p. 137.

16. Humphry Primatt (eighteenth-century). The Duty of Mercy and the Sin of Cruelty (Edinburgh: T. Constable, 1834), in CFA, p. 68.

17. Philosophy of the AuSable Institute, cited and discussed in Wesley Granberg-Michaelson (ed.), Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Erdmans, 1987), p. vii.

18. W. H. Vanstone, ‘On the Being of Nature’ in Theology (July 1977), p. 21.

19. Edith Sitwell (1887-1964). From ‘Still Falls the Rain’ in Peter Levi (ed), The Penguin Book of Christian Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), in CFA, p. 70.

20. Christina Rossetti (1803-1894). From ‘To What Purpose this Waste?’ Cited in Jon Wynne-Tyson, A Dictionary of Humane Thought (Fontwell, Sussex: Centaur Press, 1985), in CFA, p. 13.

21. Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). ‘In Memoriam’ in The Works (London: Macmillan, 1889), in CFA, p. 85.

22. Robert Graves (1895-1986). ‘In the Wilderness’ in A. Methuen (ed), An Anthology of Modern Verse, 4th edn., (London: Methuen, 1921), in CFA, p. 31.

23. ‘Prospectus of the SPCA’, in RSPCA Records, vol. II (1823-6), p. 201. I am grateful to the Librarian of the RSPCA for help in finding this document.

24. Ibid., p. 202.

25. RSPCA Minute Book, No. I, pp. 38-41, cited and discussed in James Turner, Reckoning with the Beast: Animals, Pain and Humanity in the Victorian Mind (New Jersey, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), p. 43.

26. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). ‘An Ode: composed in Celebration of the Centenary of the RSPCA, 22 January, 1924, in Andrew Linzey (ed), An Order of Service for Animal Welfare (booklet) (Horsham, Sussex: RSPCA, 1996, p. 9.

27. Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury (1909-1999), Presidential Message to the RSPCA in RSPCA Today, no. 22 (July 1977), in CFA, p. 52.

28. Laurens van der Post, cited on Poster 12 (London, USPG, 1985).

29. Vladimir Lossky (1903-1958), ibid., in CFA, 85.

30. Edward Carpenter, ‘Christian Faith and the Moral Aspect’ in Patrick Moore (ed), Against Hunting: A Symposium (London: Gollancz, 1965), p. 137.

31. John Austin Baker (Bishop of Salisbury) (1928- ). Sermon preached in York Minster, 28 September, 1986, printed in Animal Christian Concern Newsletter, 1986, in CFA, p. 52; his emphases.