Abstract
Christian attention to nonhuman animals has now expanded well beyond animal rights, into the particulars of Christian theological ethics. Kris Hiuser focuses on a specific point of doctrine, the incarnation, that serves as a sticking point for those considering the incorporation of nonhuman animals into the centre of Christian teaching and practice. Some accounts of the incarnation prioritise human uniqueness to the extent that Christ’s efficacy does not pertain to nonhuman animals. Some emphasise incarnational fleshliness over humanness, in order to demonstrate the relevance of the incarnation for all creatures. Still others focus on the non-transcendent, fully-human nature of Jesus, and his attention to the neediest, to underscore the importance of care for nonhuman animals. Hiuser provides a book-length treatment of the incarnation’s relationship to human and nonhuman animals in which the fully human/fully divine uniqueness of the incarnation accomplishes the salvation of all creatures, through the ethical responsibility of humans as representatives and mediators of that salvation.
Hiuser proposes three theses. First, the motivation for God’s incarnation includes the redemption of nonhuman as well as human animals. Second, through the incarnation, humans have a unique calling to represent God to nonhuman animals. Third, the implications of that calling direct humans to take up ethical responsibilities for nonhuman animals, for the benefit of human and nonhuman animals. Hiuser draws on Anselm of Canterbury, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and Karl Barth for resources to support his theses by asking two questions of each: why is the incarnation human, and what are the implications for human relationships with nonhuman animals? He finds useful material in each theologian, which he combines and develops constructively.
In the first chapter, Hiuser reports that Anselm explains salvation through the fully human/fully divine incarnation because humans need redemption from sin and do not, on their own, have the capacity to redeem themselves. Human sin disrupts and disorders God’s aesthetics of beauty, fittingness, and truth: life as God created it. Humans have free will, but lack the capacity to remedy original or personal sin. According to Anselm, nonhuman animals lack rational will (they can only select from amongst predetermined options), cannot sin, and do not need redemption. Hiuser stretches Anselm’s observation that human sin disrupts the beauty, fittingness, and truth of creation to argue that human sin damages the rest of creation to the extent that it needs redemption. Hiuser pairs this extension of sin’s effects with an extension of the salvific effects of the incarnation, so that human and nonhuman animals are saved through the incarnation.
The second chapter moves from eleventh-century Italy to fourth-century Cappadocia to explore Gregory’s description of humans as rational souls, with freedom of will and a calling to rule. As they are rational, humans are the mirror of God, and their bodies are a mirror of a mirror. Humans also share with other animals irrational passions and sexuality. Humans can enjoy the goods of both divine and earthly realms, and they can sin and lose those goods. The incarnation restores humans to God’s will for humans, as the image of God and as earthly creatures. Nonhuman animals are not rational souls, do not have freedom of will, do not sin, and therefore do not need to be redeemed, but they have access to reflections of divine rationality in their relationships with humans. Gregory writes that humans are called to be a microcosm ‘in order that all things may equally have a share in the beautiful, and no single one of existing things be without its share in that superior world’ (p. 91). Hiuser builds on Gregory’s description of humans as microcosmic of creation, to propose that creation does need redemption (because it suffers the effects of human sin), and that God’s rationale for the human incarnation is to redeem all of creation. Humans, as redeemed, are called to play a sanctifying role in creation, and this call helps set the foundation for Hiuser’s incarnation ethics.
In the third chapter, Hiuser continues along an Eastern trajectory to consider Maximus’s seventh-century theology of logoi and deification. The logoi are the ideas, the will of God, for the cosmos and for each member of creation. Deification is the will of God for the whole of creation and for each creature. Humans are to mediate the healing of division for all of creation, but humans misuse their free will and their natures, and they can no longer mediate. Christ reconciles the cosmic hierarchy of creation’s divisions and the microcosm of those divisions that each human possesses. Christ, as the human and divine incarnation, enables the restoration of humanity’s logoi, deification, which humans, in turn, share with creation. Hiuser finds in Maximus an affirmation that the incarnation is human so that the human/divine Christ can restore humans who can then follow their calling to draw all of creation to God. Hiuser interprets this as ethical obligation: ‘[s]ince … it is through the human creature that God enables deification, humans have a responsibility as part of their very nature and calling to work towards sanctifying creation such that it can reach its varied logoi’ (p. 128, emphasis original).
Hiuser does not find in Anselm, Gregory or Maximus an adequate reason why only a human could serve as the divine/creation mediator. In the fourth chapter, he turns to Barth to resolve the question of human uniqueness and to establish human ethical responsibility for nonhuman animals. Hiuser appreciates that Barth’s theology places covenant at the heart of creation and Christ as the heart and fulfilment of both covenant and creation. The human and divine Jesus Christ is the elected covenant partner for humanity, and God selects humans to be the created covenant partners. Christ, the efficacious representative of the covenant, both stands in for humanity to reconcile for us, and communicates that reconciliation to us. Hiuser reads Barth’s broader theology to suggest that humans are representative covenant partners for creation; humans have been chosen by God, and the human nature of the incarnation has been elected by God. Hiuser finds this explanation for human uniqueness—chosen and therefore created with sufficient capacity—more satisfying than the claim that humans were created with superior capacity and therefore are necessarily the best covenant partners.
Although Barth only briefly mentions nonhuman animals in relation to the covenant, Hiuser finds enough to warrant their inclusion as attendant partners with human representative covenantal partners. Humans can represent God to creation by reflecting the image of God, and humans can represent creation to God through prayer. In fact, according to Hiuser, humanity’s covenantal responsibility as representative partners mandates human responsibility for all of creation. Hiuser flags Barth’s inconsistency in claiming, on the one hand, that humanity’s permission to kill animals is limited and akin to homicide, and on the other, that vegetarianism is inappropriate. Hiuser looks for more on human responsibility for nonhuman animals in Barth’s account of unified sanctification and justification. These are, according to Barth, entirely God’s work, for humans and the whole world; but Barth does not explain how sanctification might apply to the rest of creation. Hiuser suggests the addition of Maximus’s emphasis on cosmic sanctification in which Christ mends the divisions of creation, and then humans are to mend those divisions in themselves and in relation to the rest of creation. This addition would extend sanctification beyond humans, whose work would include addressing the conditions that nonhuman animals need in order to live a sanctified life.
Hiuser uses the fifth chapter to draw connections between human sanctification and human ethical responsibility for nonhuman animals. He considers the agency of humans who are sanctified in Christ: they are covenantally called to represent that sanctification to nonhuman creatures; but, as human creatures, they are unable to imitate Christ’s redemption. Hiuser casts human responsibility in terms of participatory response: humans are called to respond to their sanctification with recognition, acceptance and participation in that sanctification, for themselves and for the rest of creation. Christ saves humans from the sin that impedes their covenantal call to help creation to become its logoi. Humans are to help nonhuman animals by attending to their conditions and circumstances, thereby enabling them to praise God. Hiuser explains this responsibility in relation to animals as pets (reduce suffering, in order to further pets’ sanctification), as labour (attend to animals’ needs and treatment), and as food (resist factory farming because it contradicts the human representational call to assist sanctification).
Throughout, Hiuser emphasises the importance of learning more about animals, including what we can know about the lives God intends for them, beyond the limits of their lives constrained by human sin. (The apparently natural life of a dairy cow may not be the logoi of a cow.) Hiuser recommends Bible study and prayer as additional resources.
Hiuser concludes the book by restating its three theses: the fully human/fully divine incarnation saves all creatures; humans are called to mediate salvation for nonhuman animals; and that call establishes ethical responsibilities for humans to alleviate nonhuman animal suffering and facilitate their sanctification.
Hiuser tends to elide nonhuman animals and creation, leaving open questions about differences between animals (human and nonhuman) and the soil, the sea, and the atmosphere. He seems to have addressed his own questions about the human nature incarnation and the role of humans as mediating sanctification. Those looking to move beyond human uniqueness among animals will probably not be persuaded by Hiuser’s account. Those hewing more closely to traditional doctrines may wonder what is gained by asking why the incarnation is fully human and fully divine. Some readers may not find it as simple as the book suggests to combine Orthodox deification, Anselmian atonement and Barthian sanctification. Their ecclesial locations may require more creative and constructive negotiation between doctrines, hermeneutics and authority than the book’s selective, cross-tradition approach allows.
Animals, Theology and the Incarnation offers a relatively accessible introduction to four representative theologians, along with the author’s timely proposals. Readers who are considering the theological ramifications of Christian animal ethics or the ethical ramifications of Christian theology for the treatment of animals will appreciate the motivation for Hiuser’s project. Readers interested in the relationship between the human and divine natures of Christ and the salvation of human and nonhuman creatures will recognise Hiuser’s investment in examining seriously questions of human uniqueness and the cosmic reach of the incarnation. The book should provoke Christian scholars to explore additional theological concerns in relation to contemporary knowledge about the capacity and treatment of nonhuman animals. Hiuser suggests closer examinations of the biblical topic of dominion and more detailed considerations of human ethical responsibilities for nonhuman animals. Pneumatology, eschatology, the inspiration of Scripture, the sacraments, the preferential option for the poor, environmental theology, and bodily resurrection, might also be fruitful doctrines to consider as bases for directing Christian actions for animals. Hiuser’s offering to theological ethics marks—for students, scholars, clergy and lay people—the importance of incorporating nonhuman animals into the body of Christian theology.