The Bible and Veganism: 14 Answers to 14 Objections
Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion

FROM Marcello Newall, SAGC ShepherdingAllGod'sCreatures.com
September 2019

The question of veganism, and one’s food choices more generally, have gained even more importance for the Christian in light of the enormous issues humanity currently faces, these range from world hunger and extreme environmental degradation to climate change, species extinction, severe drought, resource depletion, chronic disease and obesity, and extreme animal cruelty.

Veganism Bible

Read the ENTIRE BOOKLET HERE (PDF).

Introduction

In this short booklet I attempt to answer some of the most common objections to veganism from the Bible. I have tried to keep my answers concise but for certain objections longer explanations were necessary to clarify the points made.

Ultimately, I seek to show that the arguments made against veganism are based on erroneous readings of key scriptural texts and an abuse of their context together with a misunderstanding of the overarching message of the gospel. In this sense, while there may be debate over the specific interpretation of certain biblical texts — which are from thousands of years ago and are therefore culturally distant from us — the overall story of the Bible is in fact clear.

The message regarding Christ is the story of how God overcame sin, death, and the devil through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, his messiah. It is also the account of how God in his incarnation enters, and experiences, the suffering of his creation from the inside. The cross of Christ, then, is the bridge between the ruinous Fall of mankind in the opening chapters of Genesis and the final cosmic restoration of peace and justice at the end of Revelation.

It is, above all, the story of how the love of God in Jesus overcomes all evil, violence, and injustice and the triumph of goodness and truth in the coming kingdom of God. In the story of Jesus, as the restorer of what was lost through sin, animals and our treatment of them have their place both in the initial vegan ideal of a perfect world given in Genesis 1:29 but also in the hope a restored world of peace for all creation given in Isaiah 11:6-9, and which will be fully brought to completion at the return of Christ (Rom. 8:19-23, Rev. 21:1-27).

Finally, the question of veganism, and one’s food choices more generally, have gained even more importance for the Christian in light of the enormous issues humanity currently faces, these range from world hunger and extreme environmental degradation to climate change, species extinction, severe drought, resource depletion, chronic disease and obesity, and extreme animal cruelty.

In this day and age, then, perhaps more than ever before, it behoves the Church, in this area as in all others, to incarnate Jesus’ path of love, truth, and justice thereby pointing towards the coming kingdom of God.

Table of Contents

  1. Genesis 1:26: humans were given ‘dominion’ over animals
  2. Genesis 4:3-5: Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain
  3. Genesis 6-9: Noah was told to eat animals after the Flood
  4. Moses told the Israelites they could eat animals
  5. God commanded people to offer animal sacrifices
  6. Jesus said all foods are ‘clean’
  7. Jesus went fishing with his disciples
  8. Jesus sent the Gadarene demons into the herd of pigs
  9. In Acts 10 Peter is told to eat animals
  10. In Romans 14 Paul says vegetarians are ‘weak’
  11. 1 Timothy 4 says vegetarianism is ‘demonic’
  12. Christians should always eat what is ‘set before them’
  13. We will eat lamb in heaven
  14. God will restore the Jewish Temple in heaven and there will be animal sacrifices

Read the ENTIRE BOOKLET HERE (PDF).

Return to Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion