In my last essay, A Lacuna in Christian Animal Ethics ~ Part 1, I argued that most Christian animal rights advocates face considerable exegetical difficulties. This is nothing new to such theorists. Many may follow Clare Palmer [1] in arguing that there is no one environmental ethical position advocated in the Bible, and so many may simply eschew attempts to develop a Biblically based environmental ethic. Of course, it would always be better for a Christian to advocate a responsible environmental ethic and be able to claim that it is Biblically based, but perhaps that is just not possible. After all, one might simply argue that people in the Biblical period were mistaken about some things. One need not embrace epistemic progressivism to advocate such a position. There is a difference between saying that some folks in the historic past were mistaken about some things and saying that history inevitably marches toward the truth. However, the bigger (and I think more interesting) problem I discussed in Part I concerned the motivation for such a position. There, I argued that the problem with most animal rights positions, not just Christian positions, is that such theorists conflate arguments for sentientism with arguments for egalitarianism and fail to perceive that they need arguments for both positions.
In a footnote to that essay, I added the following point:
[I]t will not help for such theorists to follow Peter Singer in assuming that a principle of equal consideration is morally axiomatic before deploying the argument cited above. Such a position would only presume an egalitarian position, rather than argue for one. This would leave the lacuna I have emphasized here unaddressed.
I think this is an important point, but appreciating this point actually leaves the Christian animal ethicist in a better position than this suggests. To see this, consider the view developed by Andrew Linzey [2]. In Linzey’s view, the “special value of humankind consists in the generosity of God.” For Linzey, this is best exemplified in the “paradigm of costly, generous service…at the heart of…the work and person of Jesus Christ” [3]. Here, Linzey has an advantage over Singer with respect to my concern above. In that comment, I was concerned about the way Singer takes a principle of equal consideration to be axiomatic. However, Linzey does not make this same move. In fact, Linzey does not adopt a principle of equal consideration. He adopts a principle of generosity that suggests human beings should have greater than equal concern for nonhuman animals, but he does not take this principle as a moral axiom. He motivates it by appeal to the example of Christ. So, Linzey possesses a potential way to address the lacuna I am concerned about.
However, there are still some internal problems with this view. In “Which God Should Environmentalists Believe In?” [4] I wrote the following about Linzey’s view:
Asking everyone to follow the example of Christ is asking everyone to do some really serious moral work, and it's not clear that much can be demanded from us ordinary folk.
This might seem to contradict what I suggested in Lacuna ~ Part 1, which is that it is difficult to argue that the practice of animal ethics is too demanding. To see why this is not a contradiction, we need to consider Linzey’s view in more detail. In Linzey’s view, there is in fact a hierarchy in nature. However, Linzey endeavors to cast this hierarchical view of creation as a hierarchy of service. He suggests that in a Christian hierarchy, “[t]he obligation is always and everywhere on the ‘higher’ to sacrifice for the ‘lower’; for the strong, powerful and rich to give to those who are vulnerable, poor, or powerless” [5]. Thus, he contends that the “sheer vulnerability and powerless of animals…strengthens and compels the response of moral generosity” on behalf of human stewards [6]. Thus, Linzey concludes that “[t]here can be no lordship without service and no service without lordship” and that the special value of human beings “consists in being of special value to others” [7].
There is a serious problem with this view. If Linzey accepts a hierarchy of beings, and generosity requires sacrificial love towards those beings lower in the hierarchy than oneself, then, it seems that Linzey’s view could require an even greater concern for nonhumans other than animals, such as plant life, the land, and ecosystems. This view could actually threaten protections for nonhuman animals and generate the extreme moral demands I mentioned in “Which God?” To block this possibility, Linzey might want to evoke his notion of circles of intimacy with God, but this seems to militate against a sacrificial loving concern for nonhumans insofar as it is plausible to think human beings share a greater degree of intimacy with God insofar as they are both moral agents. So, it seems Linzey faces a dilemma. He can either give up his generosity principles or he can give up and/or significantly revise his conception of circles of intimacy with God. The former seems to require an abandonment of his unique Christological contribution to animal ethics, and the latter seems to involve abandoning his unique formulation of Christian hierarchy. Both options seem unattractive. Abandoning the Christological contribution to animal ethics collapses his view into the egalitarianism he rejects and abandoning his conception of Christian hierarchy places him at odds with the orthodoxy he wants to accept as far as possible.
In this present discussion, the latter option might seem more the wiser route to take, but this is mistaken. To fall back on egalitarianism, Linzey would lose the Christological orientation he appeals to in defense of his principle of generosity. So, this route would leave the lacuna I have emphasized unaddressed. Can the Christian animal ethicists do better? Perhaps they can, but should they? That is up to readers to decide. However, it is important to entertain other ethical positions that involve significant concern for nonhuman animals and the environmental more generally. Perhaps the most stringent animal rights position is ultimately indefensible, but even if that is the case, there is still significant work to be done to reform our treatment of nonhuman animals and all ecosystems so that we might better live up to our Christian ideals.
Notes
[1] Palmer, Clare. 1992. Stewardship: A Case Study in Environmental Ethics. In Ian Ball, Margaret Goodall, Clare Palmer, and John Reader, editors. The Earth Beneath: A Critical Guide to Green Theology. London: SPCK; 67-86.
[2] Linzey, Andrew. 1994. Animal Theology. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 31.
[3] Linzey, Andrew. 1994. Animal Theology. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 32.
[4] Stepanenko, Walter Scott. Which God Should Environmentalists Believe In? Mother Pelican, October 2020.
[5] Linzey, Andrew. 1994. Animal Theology. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 32.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Linzey, Andrew. 1994. Animal Theology. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 33.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Walter Scott Stepanenko is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. His current research focuses on issues that emerge at the intersection of science and theology in philosophy of religion. He received his PhD from the University of Cincinnati where he completed a dissertation on the limits of moral demandingness with attention to the demandingness of the obligations of individual human actors with respect to climate change. He is a former Research Associate at the Center for Religious Understanding at the University of Toledo (Ohio).
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