On God and Dogs A Christian Theology of Compassion for Animals

by Webb, Stephen H.; Linzey, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780195116502
• ISBN10: 019511650X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-01-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Many of us keep pet animals; we rely on them for companionship andunconditional love. For some people their closest relationships may be withtheir pets. In the wake of the animal rights movement, some ethicists havestarted to re-examine this relationship, and to question the rights of humans to"own" other sentient beings in this way.In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Stephen Webb brings a Christianperspective to bear on the subject of our responsibility to animals, looked atthrough the lens of our relations with pets--especially dogs. Webb argues thatthe emotional bond with companion animals should play a central role in the waywe think about animals in general, and--against the more extreme animalliberationists--defends the intermingling of the human and animal worlds. Hetries to imagine what it would be like to treat animals as a gift from God, andindeed argues that not only are animals a gift for us, but they give to us; weneed to attend to their giving and return their gifts appropriately. Throughoutthe book he insists that what Christians call grace is present in our relationswith animals just as it is with other humans. Grace is the inclusive andexpansive power of God's love to create and sustain relationships of realmutuality and reciprocity, and Webb unfolds the implications of the recognitionthat animals too participate in God's abundant grace.Webb's thesis affirms and persuasively defends many of the things that petlovers feel instinctively--that their relationships with their companion animalsare meaningful and important, and that their pets have value and worth inthemselves in the eyes of God. His book will appeal to a broad audience ofthoughtful Christians and animal lovers.

Author Biography

Stephen H. Webb is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Wabash College. He is the author of The Gifting God: A Trinitarian Ethics of Excess (OUP 1996).

Table of Contents

Foreword: Voyage to the Animal World	ix
Andrew Linzey
Introduction: Pet Theories	3	(14)
I Surveying the Options	17	(52)
1 God and the Giving of Animals	17	(27)
Theological Method	17	(3)
The Biblical Record	20	(8)
The Christian Tradition	28	(7)
Hauerwas and Berkman on a Biblical Foundation for Animal Welfare	35	(3)
Andrew Linzey and the Theology of Animal Rights	38	(6)
2 Ecology versus the Peaceable Kingdom	44	(25)
Process Thought and the Luring of Animals	44	(7)
Environmental Theology and the Reclamation of Nature	51	(4)
Ecofeminism and Animal Compassion	55	(2)
The Rhetoric of Rights and the Demands of Care	57	(12)
II Thinking about Pets	69	(40)
3 What Are Dogs For?	69	(16)
The Other as More of the Same?	69	(3)
The Other as Social Self	72	(6)
The Other as Personal Self	78	(7)
4 The Difference That Dogs Make	85	(24)
Pets, Women, Meat, and Rhetoric	85	(6)
Vicki Hearne on the Language of Training	91	(4)
Keeping the Other Other	95	(3)
Reading Excess	98	(4)
Excess as More Than Other	102	(7)
III A Theology for the Dogs	109	(72)
5 Theology and Dogtalk	109	(19)
The Sensibility of Sentiment	109	(6)
Evolution and the Problem of Animal Pain	115	(8)
God as a Lover of Dogs	123	(5)
6 The Sacrificial Economy of Christian Theology	128	(27)
Economics and Sacrifice	128	(2)
Karl Barth's Sacrificial Economy of Animals	130	(4)
Hebrew Sacrifice and the Covenant	134	(10)
The End of Sacrifice	144	(11)
7 Jesus Christ and the Future of Animals	155	(26)
A Vegetarian Eucharist	155	(12)
The Cosmic Christ and the Church for All Creatures	167	(7)
Animal Afterlife	174	(7)
Epilogue: God's Nature as the Future of the World	181	(4)
Notes	185	(20)
Bibliography	205	(14)
Index	219