Book Review: Animal Theology by Andrew Linzey
Andrew Linzey. Animal Theology. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995. 224 pages. $19.95.
At the end of the book of Jonah, God asks his prophet “should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” It’s an unusual question, at least in relation to God’s other scriptural proclamations. It’s also one that suggests a parity of divine justice across creation for all God’s creatures. British theologian Andrew Linzey has devoted his career to just these intersections of the divine, the creaturely, and the theological. His editorial and authorial contributions to close to thirty books in the field of animal theology (most recently the 2019 Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics, co-edited with his daughter, Clair) form the cornerstone of an area of theological study that he has almost single-handedly nurtured. It would be a mistake to view this work as naively sentimental or frighteningly radical. (Linzey himself anticipates this kind of skepticism). Any twenty-first century theology that puts on blinders to the fragility of God’s creation also denies a looming eschatological problem. Humans and all of our fellow creatures live under the shadow of an Anthropocene era climate collapse and a mass extinction event that threatens the existence of most life on the planet in coming decades. To dismiss animal theology as a niche issue would not only be a missed opportunity, it would also be a sin. The degradation of the earth’s ecosystems and the suffering of its creatures are intrinsically tied to western philosophical and theological presumptions. The work of future theologians (and humans in general) is to come to terms with an anthropocentrism that has led us to an ugly place. Yet in the midst of these bleak facts, Christianity still offers the hope that as servant-stewards we can emulate God’s loving kindness as it was shown to the people and animals of Nineveh.
Animal Theology, while not Linzey’s most recent book, is an essential part of his corpus and continues to be an illuminating primer. Culled from lectures Linzey gave at Oxford University in 1993 (where he also teaches), the book is arranged in two main parts. The first section is theoretical, setting terms for a theological discussion of the place of creatures within creation. The second section is practical, exploring contemporary issues around the biped-quadruped contract. Individual chapters within these two sections delve into a thorough range of topics from the Thomist legacy that disregards “irrational creatures” to a discussion of genetic engineering through a lens of scripture. While one can point to ethicist Peter Singer’s work (Animal Liberation, 1975 and The Ethics of What We Eat, 2007) as touchstones for deep thinking about human responsibility in relation to animals, Linzey’s work adds a spiritual dimension to the conversation around animal rights. The Christian tradition intersects with the greatest hopes for justice and the greatest travesties of justice via an imperial church. But what does Christianity at its roots and through its development tell us about the obligations of humans to other species? What does a Christian God expect of Christians in their contracts with non-human parts of the creation? As Linzey says in the introduction to the book, “Theology provides a way in which animal rights theory can be released from its current philosophical straight jacket.” Linzey strives to throw off that heady straight jacket with an embodied understanding of cross-species relationships— a deep ecology of sorts—one that centers the idea of reverence in any discussion of creation. (In this he borrows from Albert Schweitzer’s thoughts in Civilization and Ethics.) Linzey also exercises a clear hermeneutical suspicion about the legacy of liberation theology, examining the shortcomings of humanocentric soteriologies and proposing that just as whiteness must be decentered so too must humanness.
One of the compelling things about Linzey’s thinking is his ability to engage with systematic theology panoramically. There’s a deftness with which he understands and explains the concern (or lack of it) for creatures and creation in scriptural record, through the writings of the church fathers and onward through the history of Christian thinking. In reading Animal Theology, one is quickly brought up to speed on the place held for animals and concepts of dominion in the writings of a constellation of theologians from Athanasius to Aquinas to Schweitzer to Barth to Bonhoeffer to Boff and Gutierrez. Linzey is systematic in his approach. There’s nothing loose in his thinking. He seamlessly makes connections between scripture, interpretations of scripture, and historical and cultural realities of the plight of animals. (Observe for example some of the practical topic headings of the second section of the book: “Hunting as the Anti-Gospel of Predation,” “Vegetarianism as a Biblical Ideal,” and “Genetic Engineering as Animal Slavery.”)
In its combined theological wisdom, challenging ethical and spiritual propositions, and interesting anecdotes, it is a book that can be referred back to over and over again. It could be argued that any reading of Liberation, Process, or Eco-theologies would be incomplete without a concern for an intersectionality with animal theology. Any scholar reckoning with the Doctrine of Discovery and the legacies of colonialism and slavery would also do well to take into consideration how the treatment of so-called “lower” creatures is a vital part of the conversation of liberation as a universal concept. In this, Animal Theology is a great starting point for seminarians, students of theology, and pastors and congregations seeking to deepen their understanding of Christianity’s push and pull towards and away from the sanctity of creaturely life. At the same time it is more than a starter book. Linzey makes abstract theological ideas more available for the lay reader at the same time that he proposes very serious theological questions that are necessarily uncompromising. He asks that we reassess all of our “constricted and exclusive theology” for the sake of the survival of (and fulfillment) God’s creatures and subsequently for ourselves. My only disappointment in writing this review is that I can’t point to a much larger community of theologians publishing in this area. Linzey’s daughter Clair is one. She co-writes and co-edits with him often. David Clough’s two-volume work On Animals: Systematic Theology (2012) and Theological Ethics (T&T Clark, 2019) is another resource, as is a book Clough co-authored with Celia Deane-Drummond, Creaturely Theology: God, Humans and Other Animals (SCM Press, 2009). Thankfully the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics (directed by the Linzeys) supports the work of a growing community of theologians and scholarswho begin with the belief that “the rational case for animals is frequently understated within academia and misrepresented in the media” and strive “to create a world-wide association of academics from all disciplines who want to pioneer ethical perspectives on animals.”
It’s painful to think about animal suffering (let alone to make the connection between that suffering and what appears on our dinner plates), but it’s also the case that our survival is intertwined with the survival of the creatures we have long exploited. Much as we continue to come to Christian reckonings around race, gender, and sexuality, we must come to long overdue reckoning about our speciesism. Andrew Linzey’s work opens a door to begin that discussion. Animal Theology and his subsequent books are infused with the hope that humans have the strength to bear witness to the exploitation of creation, to realize a cosmic Christ that redeems all, and to embody divine justice in our ministry in the temporal world.
