Do Animals Have Souls?

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Dedicated readers of this blog (and might the plural, let alone the “dedicated”, be rather optimistic?) will note that the question in the title is a follow-up to a previous post involving the question of human “souls” – and more importantly, the question of how words work. This present piece springs from close observation of my dog at work and play…or more precisely, at rest and play, with the occasional duty of barking at people who pass by the house, and enthusiastically greeting those who enter it.

Now, with respect to humans, I argued that while we cannot expect to isolate an entity called “the soul” somewhere in a Platonic heaven, the word “soul” does mighty good work addressing the interior dimension of our existence. Right from the start, then, we recognize that since humans don’t “have” souls in the same sense that they have bus tokens or a mole on their cheek, we would assume that animals don’t have them, either. This is a crucial point, since without it we can find ourselves split in two by a putative decision tree:

Do animals have souls?

No> Wantonly ridicule, kill and eat them

Yes> Refuse to make any use of them whatsoever, and set up animal focus groups with a view towards creating greater inter-species cooperation.

It doesn’t work that way.

The question about animals “having souls” is really a question as to whether they have an “interior dimension of their existence” that warrants the use of the word “soul”. And here the evidence is a bit mixed. The crucial element in determining the presence and nature of such an interior dimension is, generally speaking, speaking. I use “generally speaking” not only for the delight of having “speaking” appear twice in a sentence, but also because we can assume the presence of the interior dimension of a person who is unable to communicate with words. But generally we know what is in a person’s “soul” because they tell us about it.

Animals do not do this, Doctor Doolittle aside. They can’t tell us whether Eli Manning is an “elite” quarterback, or whether a beautiful sunset can reasonably be termed “sublime”. If the proverbial roomful of monkeys ever did bang out Shakespeare’s works on their monkey-friendly word-processors, it would only be by accident, not intent.

Even as I write this, I can sense the growing wrath of animal lovers. So I hasten to add that even if animals don’t communicate with language which reveals an interior dimension of life perfectly analogous with that of humans, they surely communicate in all sorts of other ways. Pain, fear, anger – a growl or a whine or a nip can get that dimension of their “inner” experience across quite clearly. And while dogged materialists will strive to tell us canines can’t really be sad, as a dog-owner and recent viewer of Benji the Hunted, I feel comfortable in affirming that they can…at least in some sense.

And it is with precisely such equivocation that I want to conclude this brief exploration of the animal soul. We can know quite a bit about what humans are like on the inside. We simply can’t know what is going on with animals with the same level of precision. So using the language of “soul” is probably not the most helpful thing to do. But that hardly establishes an unbridgeable chasm between the animals and us. The Scripture is quite clear that whatever unique qualities humans bring to the table, we are all of us, human and animal alike, part of God’s creation, distinct from the creator himself (Revelation 4, where humans are mixed in with the beasts in the persons of the “living creatures”, is a particularly vivid illustration of this fact). The Scripture also warrants using animals in labor and for food, so I eat my cheeseburgers with a clean conscience.

And if my dog ever questions me about that, I’ll just point out to her that she eats the hamburger, too.

De-centered

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

There is no gravitational pull quite so strong as that exerted by the human imagination.

And I don’t mean that in a good way.

The sun may hold eight planets in its sway (or nine, depending on what they are saying about poor Pluto this week), but my mind can bring the entire cosmos into its orbit. The universe swirl around Me, and each thing in it grows or shrinks in significance depending on how it shapes my town and my job and my family. It’s an absurdity, of course, but it is an absurdity that plays itself out each day of our lives.

I was reminded of this recently when I made my first trip to Hong Kong. The city was a wonder, with buildings stacked upon buildings like the playroom of a Lego-mad millionaire. The biggest building in town, the recently completed International Commerce Center (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Commerce_Centre), stands at the edge of Victoria Harbour and virtually cries out, “Yes, we’re going to build. We’re going to build big buildings, and we’re going to build one after another after another and dare anybody to stop us.” As if the scope and scale were not enough, every night a dozen or so of these skyscrapers on Hong Kong Island light up with a soundtrack booming in the background. You can see it all from the Avenue of the Stars, Hong Kong’s answer to the sidewalk outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater. (I got my picture by Jackie Chan’s handprints, though the Bruce Lee statue is the more popular venue.)

But the buildings weren’t the only impressive thing about the city. The subway was clean and efficient, the streets safe, the opportunities for shopping and eating endless. More surprising was the natural beauty of the place. The crowded and touristy Peak Tram on Hong Kong island quickly gives way to a stunning walk around the Peak for the moderately adventurous, and I had the Sunset Peak trail on Lantau all to myself the last day of my trip. The volcanoes may have stopped spewing fire long ago, but they are still in the business of providing spectacular views.

As I reflected on all this, it struck me how even on my most “selfless” days, I still assume that the world essentially revolves if not around me, at least around eastern Massachusetts where I live…or at least the Eastern Corridor from Boston to DC. Yet a visitor from Hong Kong must find Boston a quaint little city, or maybe even a provincial village – a few good schools, yes; at least one very nice modern building (the Hancock Tower), a pleasant river, with some nice scenery around if you have a car and a few hours to spare. But the Hub of the Universe? Not hardly.

It was a blessing to be de-centered in this way. The practical implications for thinking about the mission of the church in the modern world are obvious: you don’t need Philip Jenkins to tell you the church is no longer a Western cultural phenomenon (if it ever really was one to begin with). A bit of vacation time and a plane ticket can open your eyes soon enough. And the theological implications are equally clear. We are not at the center of things, whatever our addled brains might tell us. The center does not lie in me, or in Boston, or even in splendid Hong Kong. The center is ever and only the throne of God: “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’” (Rev. 5:13).

Now, about 1 Corinthians…. Did you know …?

Having recently completed the one of the longest commentaries on 1 Corinthians in history, and being in the midst of a short adult class on the letter at church, I’m thinking about some things that many people don’t know about the letter or its interpretation. For example, did you know …

1 Corinthians has much to say to the modern world. No book in the New Testament, even Paul’s letter to the Romans, does more to explain the grace of God, the lordship of Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit. The contribution of the letter to the practical knowledge of God is immense. Not only is its ethics searching and rigorous, but its theology, especially of the cross, announces the end of the world as we know it. In addition to supplying concrete answers to many problems which have comparable manifestations today, on subjects as diverse as leadership, preaching, pluralism, sexuality, and worship, 1 Corinthians models how to approach the complexity of Christian living with the resources of the Old Testament and the example and teaching of Jesus. Above all, it shows the importance of asking, How does the gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which envelop the letter in chapters 1 and 15, teach us to live? [Ciampa and Rosner, First Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 1]

Did you know that Paul’s repeated phrase “do you not know” (1 Cor. 6:2-3, 9, 15-16, 19; 9:24) usually communicates an implied rebuke (indicating that they should have already known and not needed Paul’s reminder), unlike my following list of “did you know” questions (which raise issues that I expect many readers may not have already known)? Did you know that the vices listed in 5:11 share an OT background with the quote from Deuteronomy in 5:13? Did you know (re: 1 Cor. 6:19) that in the Roman world sexual immorality only counted as “adultery” if it entailed sex with a married woman (married men engaging in relations with unmarried women were not legally considered adulterers)? Did you know that Paul is not talking about “homosexuals” in 6:19 (that most of same-sex acts would have been done by married men who were having sex with their wives [and perhaps other women as well])? Did you know, regarding the euphemism of “touching” which shows up in 7:1 (translated “marry” by an older version of the NIV and “have sexual relations” by most recent English translations), that men and women didn’t “touch” each other, but that “touching” was a unilateral act – what a man did to the object of his sexual desire (contrast the mutuality repeatedly reinforced in Paul’s teaching in 7:2-5) and that the euphemism was not used of normal sex within marriage, but of various other kinds of sexual relations?

Did you know that the issue discussed in 1 Corinthians 8-10 is not the same as that in Acts 10:11-11:9 (in 1 Corinthians Paul is dealing with food that has been offered to idols [where association with idolatry is the key issue] while Acts 10 discusses the issue of “clean” and “unclean” foods [categories of animals expounded in Leviticus 11 and presupposed in Genesis 7])? Did you know that in 11:2-16, despite an introduction that seems to imply a gender heirarchy, no distinction is made in the passage between the ministries of men and of women (the conclusion is that both men and women will pray and prophesy as long as they are properly attired)? Did you know that Paul considers the gift of prophesy essential to the wellbeing of the church (and that the gift is present and operating even in churches that do not believe in it)? Did you know that the spiritual/natural dichotomy found in 15:44-46 is not the same as a material/immaterial or physical/non-physical dichotomy (the later is a modern conception foreign to Paul’s thought)?

Did you know that Rosner and I argue that 1 Corinthians is “Paul’s attempt to tell the church of God in Corinth that they are part of the fulfillment of the Old Testament expectation of worldwide worship of the God of Israel, and as God’s eschatological temple they must act in a manner appropriate to their pure and holy status by becoming unified, shunning pagan vices, and glorifying God in obedience to the lordship of Jesus Christ” (page 52)? Did you know you could learn more about all these and many other issues in the recently published Pillar New Testament Commentary?

May God lead us, through a growing understanding and assimilation of the message of 1 Corinthians, ever more deeply into the wisdom and power of God in Christ (1:24) that we might flee sexual immorality (6:18) and idolatry (10:14) and glorify God with our bodies (6:20) and in all that we do (10:31), until that day when all things are fully renewed and He is all in all (15:28)!