Thoughts on catholic/worldwide

This is from packer's great little book
Affirming the Apostles' Creed.

In the intro he writes:
Created and animated by the Holy Spirit,
the church is the community of believers living through God
and to God, the Father and the Son, in a sustained pattern
of worship, work, and witness. (This is why the church is
called “holy,” which means set apart for God.) It is the worldwide
people of God and body of Christ, in whose faith and
fellowship social, racial, gender, age, educational, professional,
and political distinctions cease to count; all are “one
in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). (This is why the church is
called “catholic,” which means comprehensive, or inclusive,
in both extent and quality.) Knowing and uniting with the
Lord Jesus Christ according to the gospel is the dynamic basis
of the church’s inner unity and togetherness.

(to see more from Packer, go to bottom of this post)

So, here's the line of thought:
1.) To say "i believe in the holy catholic church" is confusing to some (many?) in the congregation of CCC because it may mean that we are giving a shout-out only to the ROMAN catholic church.
2.) The word catholic, when the creed started, meant something far different to the average Joe than it does today.
Insert dangerous illustration here:
Imagine the creed were written back when "gay" tended to mean "happy or joyful".  And the writers said, "We believe in the gay church."
That would connote something very different to the average person in 2010.

I'm only saying something about the way words can change in their common usage.  Nothing more.

So, we'll say, "I believe in the worldwide church."  At least on Sunday.  And hope to experience together the joy of being a part of God's worldwide mission.


More from Packer:
�IIt is by strict theological logic that the Creed confesses faith
in the Holy Spirit before proceeding to the church and that
it speaks of the church before mentioning personal salvation
(forgiveness, resurrection, everlasting life). For though Father
and Son have loved the church and the Son has redeemed it,
it is the Holy Spirit who actually creates it, by inducing faith;
and it is in the church, through its ministry and fellowship,
that personal salvation ordinarily comes to be enjoyed.
Unhappily, there is at this point a parting of the ways.
Roman Catholics and Protestants both say the Creed, yet they
are divided. Why? Basically, because of divergent understandings
of “I believe in the holy catholic church”—”one holy
catholic and apostolic church,” as the true text of the Nicene
Creed has it.


􀁓􀁐􀁎􀁂􀁏􀀡􀁗􀁆􀁓􀁔􀁖􀁔􀀡􀁑􀁓􀁐􀁕􀁆􀁔􀁕􀁂􀁏􀁕
Official Roman Catholic teaching presents the church of
Christ as the one organized body of baptized persons who
are in communion with the Pope and acknowledge the
teaching and ruling authority of the episcopal hierarchy. It is
holy because it produces saintly folk and is kept from radical
sin, catholic because in its worldwide spread it holds the full
faith in trust for everyone, and apostolic because its ministerial
orders stem from the apostles, and its faith (including
such non-biblical items as the assumption of Mary and her
immaculate conception, the Mass-sacrifice, and papal infallibility)
is a sound growth from apostolic roots. Non-Roman
bodies, however church-like, are not strictly part of the
church at all.
Protestants challenge this from the Bible. In Scripture
(they say) the church is the one worldwide fellowship of
believing people whose Head is Christ. It is holy because it
is consecrated to God (though it is capable nonetheless of
grievous sin); it is catholic because it embraces all Christians
everywhere; and it is apostolic because it seeks to maintain
the apostles’ doctrine unmixed. Pope, hierarchy, and extrabiblical
doctrines are not merely nonessential but actually
deforming; if Rome is a church (which some Reformers
doubted) she is so despite the extras, not because of them. In particular, infallibility belongs to God speaking in the Bible,
not to the church or to any of its officers, and any teaching
given in or by the church must be open to correction by
“God’s word written.”1
Some Protestants have taken the clause “the communion
of saints,” which follows “the holy catholic church,” as
the Creed’s own elucidation of what the church is; namely,
Christians in fellowship with each other—just that, without
regard for any particular hierarchical structure. But it is usual
to treat this phrase as affirming the real union in Christ of
the church “militant here on earth” with the church triumphant,
as is indicated in Hebrews 12:22–24; and it may be
that the clause was originally meant to signify communion in
holy things (Word, sacrament, worship, prayers) and to make
the true but distinct point that in the church there is a real
sharing in the life of God. The “spiritual” view of the church
as being a fellowship before it is an institution can, however,
be confirmed from Scripture without appeal to this phrase,
whatever its sense, being needed.

That the New Testament presents the Protestant view is
hardly open to dispute (the dispute is over whether the New
Testament is final!). The church appears in Trinitarian relationships as the family of God the Father, the body of Christ
the Son, and the temple (dwelling-place) of the Holy Spirit,
and so long as the dominical sacraments are administered
and ministerial oversight is exercised, no organizational
norms are insisted on at all. The church is the supernatural
society of God’s redeemed and baptized people, looking back
to Christ’s first coming with gratitude and on to his second
coming with hope. “Your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will
appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:3–4)—such is the
church’s present state and future prospect. To this hope both
sacraments point, baptism prefiguring final resurrection, the
Lord’s Supper anticipating “the marriage supper of the Lamb”
(Revelation 19:9).


For the present, however, all churches (like those in
Corinth, Colosse, Galatia, and Thessalonica, to look no further)
are prone to err in both faith and morals and need constant correction
and re-formation at all levels (intellectual, devotional,
structural, liturgical) by the Spirit through God’s Word.
The evangelical theology of revival, first spelled out in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the present-day emergence
of “charismatic renewal” on a worldwide scale remind us
of something that Roman Catholic and Protestant disputers, in
their concentration on doctrinal truth, tended to miss—namely,
that the church must always be open to the immediacy of the
Spirit’s Lordship and that disorderly vigor in a congregation is
infinitely preferable to a correct and tidy deadness.
􀁕􀁉􀁆􀀡􀁍􀁐􀁄􀁂􀁍􀀡􀁄􀁉􀁖􀁓􀁄􀁉
The acid test of the church’s state is what happens in the
local congregation. Each congregation is a visible outcrop
of the one church universal, called to serve God and men in
humility and, perhaps, humiliation while living in prospect of
glory. Spirit-filled for worship and witness, active in love and
care for insiders and outsiders alike, self-supporting and selfpropagating,
each congregation is to be a spearhead of divine
counterattack for the recapture of a rebel world.
Here is a question for you: how is your congregation
getting on?

---Packer

From tedium to Te Deum

Incredible:
From tedium to Te Deum

the tedium of slavery, to Pharoah or to ourselves/sin

Found this in a footnote on Tremper's book "How to read Exodus".  (CANNOT BELIEVE it was relegated to footnote, this should be a title or subtitle to a book on exodus!!)

What is the Te Deum?  Good overview here at wikipedia

Basically it is a hymn of praise, ascribing all glory and affection to our Triune God.  Which, by the way, is WHY God saved Israel from Egypt and you and me from our sin!!  Our lives a Te Deum of praise to God as we love Him and our neighbor.

Here is the text, from the book of common prayer
(Note: In the Book of Common Prayer, verse is written in half-lines, at which reading pauses, indicated by colons in the text.)


We praise thee, O God :
    we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee :
    the Father everlasting.
To thee all Angels cry aloud :
    the Heavens, and all the Powers therein.
To thee Cherubin and Seraphin :
    continually do cry,
Holy, Holy, Holy :
    Lord God of Sabaoth;
Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty :
    of thy glory.
The glorious company of the Apostles : praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the Prophets : praise thee.
The noble army of Martyrs : praise thee.
The holy Church throughout all the world :
    doth acknowledge thee;
The Father : of an infinite Majesty;
Thine honourable, true : and only Son;
Also the Holy Ghost : the Comforter.
Thou art the King of Glory : O Christ.
Thou art the everlasting Son : of the Father.
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man :
    thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb.
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death :
    thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.
Thou sittest at the right hand of God : in the glory of the Father.
We believe that thou shalt come : to be our Judge.
We therefore pray thee, help thy servants :
    whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy Saints : in glory everlasting.
O Lord, save thy people :
    and bless thine heritage.
Govern them : and lift them up for ever.
Day by day : we magnify thee;
And we worship thy Name : ever world without end.
Vouchsafe, O Lord : to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us : have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us :
    as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have I trusted :
    let me never be confounded.




and then, i think you could go on and on that tedium from tedium to Te Deum involves the removal of "i"
you don't have to get all watchman nee-ish (and unbiblical) that I cease to exist and I'm not important et al
but you can say that sin, in many ways is pride (Lewis called this the "greatest sin", see Mere Xnity) is a focus on ourselves, a being bent in on ourselves; SELFishness; and to be free is to "lose your life"
So, from tedium to Te Deum---by a blow to the "i"

(Andrew, Olivia, Joppa---- I hope one day this kind of post is helpful to you.  By the way, see Jerram Barrs and McCauley book BEING HUMAN to show the beauty of bible's teaching against Nee and idea that you cease to exist when you follow Christ)

wrong soaked all through me, take 2

A scene from one of

George MacDonald's children's books — called The Princess and Curdie—

illustrates this point. 

Early in the novel the young boy Curdie thoughtlessly

shoots an arrow into a white pigeon. Suddenly overcome by remorse, he

carries the wounded bird to an old, old princess to see if anything can be done

to save it. But the woman is even more concerned about the boy than she is

about the bird. Gently she tries to help Curdie recognize that his evil deed

sprang from the all-pervasive wickedness of his heart. When finally he confesses

his sinful condition, he says, "I see now that I have been doing wrong

the whole day, and such a many days besides! Indeed, I don't know when I

ever did right. . . . 

When I killed your bird I did not know I was doing wrong,

just because I was always doing wrong, and the wrong had soaked all

through me."

The problem, however, is not simply that we keep committing this or

that sin; the problem is that we are sinners to the very core. Until we surrender

to Jesus Christ, our entire orientation is sinful.

--Phil Ryken

wrong soaked all through me

A scene from one of

George MacDonald's children's books — called The Princess and Curdie—

illustrates this point. Early in the novel the young boy Curdie thoughtlessly

shoots an arrow into a white pigeon. Suddenly overcome by remorse, he

carries the wounded bird to an old, old princess to see if anything can be done

to save it. But the woman is even more concerned about the boy than she is

about the bird. Gently she tries to help Curdie recognize that his evil deed

sprang from the all-pervasive wickedness of his heart. When finally he confesses

his sinful condition, he says, "I see now that I have been doing wrong

the whole day, and such a many days besides! Indeed, I don't know when I

ever did right. . . . When I killed your bird I did not know I was doing wrong,

just because I was always doing wrong, and the wrong had soaked all

through me."

Egyptian Slaves

They worked out in the hot Egyptian sun all day (often in temperatures over

100°), driven to optimum production by their taskmasters. They had no hats

to protect their heads and wore nothing but a brief kilt or apron on their

bodies. . . . A wealthy Egyptian father talked with his son about the condition

of their bricklayers. He observed that their “kidneys suffer because

they are out in the sun . . . with no clothes on.” Their hands are “torn to

ribbons by the cruel work.” And they have to “knead all sorts of muck.”

Certainly no one stood by to give the workers a drink every few minutes.

It does not take much imagination to conclude that the severe “rigor”

imposed on the Hebrews resulted in many of them dying of dehydration,

heat prostration, heatstroke and the like.

Howard F. Vos, Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Manners and Customs: How the People
of the Bible Really Lived (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999), p. 61.

the 3 day festival request

An ancient manuscript at the
Louvre, dating to the time of Rameses II, indicates that Egyptian slaves
were sometimes given time off to worship their gods.* There is also a limestone
tablet from the same period listing the names of slaves, together with
reasons for their absence from work, including the phrase, “has sacrificed
to the god.”*^ 

What this proves is that the Pharaohs sometimes honored the
kind of request that Moses and Aaron were making. Asking for three days
of religious freedom was a reasonable demand that God used to expose the
unbelief in Pharaoh’s heart.

* James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1999),
p. 115.
*^J. Cerny and A. H. Gardiner, Hieratic Ostraca I (Oxford, England: Printed for the Griffith
Institute at the University Press by Charles Batey, 1957), pp. 22, 23, plates 83, 84.

Sonship of Israel, Jesus, and us

Sonship has its origins in the Old Testament, where God reveals himself
as a father who desires a son to serve him. However, his son always
proved a disappointment. This was true during the exodus, when Israel grumbled
against Moses and complained about God’s fatherly care. The Old
Testament people of God never lived up to the demands of their sonship.
This is why God sent his only Son to be our Savior. The New Testament
presents Jesus Christ as God’s perfect Son, the one who served his Father
with absolute devotion. Jesus was everything God had ever wanted in a
Son, on one level accomplishing what Israel was supposed to accomplish.
The Gospels make this connection explicit by describing the life of Christ
as a new exodus. Not long after he was born, Jesus was sent down to Egypt,

where he remained until the death of King Herod. His subsequent return to
Israel reminded Matthew of the Old Testament promise: “Out of Egypt I
called my son” (Matt. 2:15, quoting Hos. 11:1). It was Matthew’s way of saying
that Jesus is the true Israel, God’s firstborn Son. This was confirmed when
Jesus was baptized, and the Father said, “This is my Son, whom I love”
(Matt. 3:17). The promise of sonship was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
The amazing thing is that everyone who comes to Christ in faith
becomes a true child of God. The work of Christ is to bring the slaves of sin
into the liberty of sonship. Charles Spurgeon writes, “The Lord Jesus comes,
identifies himself with the enslaved family, bears the curse, fulfils the law,
and then on the ground of simple justice demands for them full and perfect
liberty, having for them fulfilled the precept, and for them endured the
penalty.”* The Bible thus calls Jesus “the firstborn among many brothers”
(Rom. 8:29) — “many brothers” because every believer is a child of God. As
the Bible also says, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus”
(Gal. 3:26). To know Jesus as Savior is to know God as Father, and the exodus
teaches us what kind of Father he is. He is not like human fathers, with
all their failings. Rather, he is a good Father, always faithful to his children.
In his tender compassion he cares for them and rescues them from every danger.

--Phil Ryken

*from Spurgeon's sermon, The Great Emancipator

God's Firstborn Son

The sovereignty of God’s will is such a great mystery that it causes some people
to fear God — not simply to revere him, but actually to be afraid of
him. However, God’s people should never be afraid, because God’s sovereignty
includes our sonship. The reason God hardened Pharaoh’s heart was
to prove his love for his own children. God said to Moses, “Then say to
Pharaoh, ‘This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told
you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him
go; so I will kill your firstborn son’” (Exod. 4:22, 23).
These two verses disclose the very heart of the exodus. They explain
why God cared what happened to the Israelites, why out of all the nations
in the world he went to the trouble of rescuing them from slavery. They had
little to be proud of from a worldly point of view, and thus God seemingly
had little reason to save them. But Israel was the son of God’s choice. At
the very deepest spiritual level, the exodus is a story about sonship, about a
Father’s love for his only son. Israel’s deliverance is the true history of a
loving Father who rescued his children so they could be together as a family. Thus it is not simply a story of emancipation — the release of a slave
— but also of repatriation, the return of an only son to his father’s loving
care.4 Later, when God reminisced about the exodus, he said, “When Israel
was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hos. 11:1).
Israel’s status as God’s firstborn son explains why God had a quarrel
with Pharaoh. To Pharaoh the Hebrews were lowly slaves, but to God they
were beloved sons. Thus the problem with Pharaoh was not simply that he
was a slaveholder (although that was bad enough), but that he was preventing
God’s children from serving their Father. Instead of being free to call God
“Father,” the Israelites were forced to call Pharaoh “Master.” So in order to
reassert his claim on Israel, God said to Pharaoh, “Let my son go, so he
may worship [or serve] me” (Exod. 4:23a). God demanded that Israel be
released from Pharaoh’s bondage so that his son would be free to serve him
once again. More specifically, he wanted the worship of his firstborn son.
This is the grand theme of the exodus: God saving his sons from slavery so
that they could serve him.

Pharoah's Hard Heart

from Phil Ryken's great commentary on Exodus

The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is an important theme in the book of
Exodus, and it has much to teach us about the sovereignty of God’s will.
We will encounter this theme again, because Exodus mentions Pharaoh’s
hardness of heart some twenty times, describing it in one of three different
ways. Sometimes the Bible says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart:
“When Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would
not listen to Moses” (Exod. 8:15). Other times the Bible says that Pharaoh’s
heart was hardened, without specifying who did the hardening: “Pharaoh’s
heart became hard and he would not listen” (Exod. 7:13). There are also
instances — like the one here in Exodus 4 — where God identifies himself
as the one who hardens Pharaoh’s heart.
Taken together, what these statements show is that Pharaoh’s heart was
doubly hard. He hardened his own heart; nevertheless, God hardened his
heart for him. Both of these statements are true, and there is no contradiction
between them. Pharaoh’s will was also God’s will. God not only knew
that Pharaoh would refuse to let his people go, but he actually ordained it.
This is the paradox of divine sovereignty and human responsibility, which
is not a puzzle to be solved but a mystery to be adored. As human beings
made in the image of God, we make a real choice to accept or reject God,
but even the choice we make is governed by God’s sovereign and eternal
will. The Old Testament scholar S. R. Driver rightly observed, “The means
by which God hardens a man is not necessarily by any extraordinary intervention
on His part; it may be by the ordinary experiences of life, operating
through the principles and character of human nature, which are of His
appointment.”
The writer of Exodus understood this, which is why he
described the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart as both the will of Pharaoh and
the will of God.
 
From beginning to end, the entire exodus was the result of God’s sovereign
decree. The whole agonizing and then exhilarating experience of slavery
and freedom was part of his perfect will. It was God’s will to bring his
people out of Egypt. It was also his good pleasure to keep them there as
long as he did, which is proved by his hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. Peter
Enns writes, “The deliverance of Israel from Egypt is entirely God’s doing
and under his complete control. The impending Exodus is a play in which
God is author, producer, director, and principal actor.” Even when Pharaoh
took his turn on stage, God received all the applause. Like everything else
that God has ever done, the exodus was all for his glory.

Psalter Hymnal 464: Father, long before creation | Hymnary.org

I love this song:

This anonymous Chinese text was initially used as a theme song by Chinese Christians who kept the faith while the Cultural Revolution was in full swing. The hymn was sung in a Bible-study center in Peking during the winter of 1952-53. In 1953, Bliss Wyant, scholar of Chinese music and culture, gave the text to Francis P. Jones (b. Wisconsin [?] 1890; d. Claremont, CA, 1965 [?]), a missionary to China from 1915 to 1 1950. Jones translated the text into English and published it in the China Bulletin of the National Council of Churches (1953). After it appeared in The Hymnbook in 1955, the text was published in a number of other hymnals.

Psalter Hymnal 464: Father, long before creation | Hymnary.org

The Chief End of Animals, Part 1

The Chief End of Animals, Part 1

Ron Lutjens, Issue Number 16, August 2007

In this article Ron Lutjens has looked at the need for a theology of animals. In the article here, Covenant Seminary professor Michael Williams discusses what, precisely, that theology should be.

O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us.

We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to thee in song, has been a groan of travail. May we realize that they live not for us alone but for themselves and for thee, and that they love the sweetness of life.

--Basil the Great, c. 330-379 A.D.

What a wonderfully high view of animals does the ancient church father, Basil, reflect in this prayer! But just how high are animals—the “beasts,” as C.S. Lewis insisted on calling them—in God’s economy of created things? For what did their Creator make them? How were human beings originally supposed to relate to them—and how did the fall into sin affect that? And—well, what is an animal, really?

These are important questions for Christians in modern democracies, societies that are paying increased attention to the welfare of animals and whose citizens are showing themselves more and more willing to think not only in terms of the legal rights of animals, but also, in some circles at least, of their equality with people. The debate is well under way—which is why hammering out a biblical theology of animals is important in the opening decade of the 21st century.

At one end of the spectrum is the new manipulation of animals, as agribusinesses develop ever more utilitarian—and often inhumane—ways of increasing livestock productivity. At the other end is a new sensitivity to animals as our fellow creatures. Two bumper stickers I saw reflect this new sensitivity in our culture: “STOP! Eating Animals” and “I Care About Animals—And I Vote.”

The elevation of animals is widespread. In casual conversation one increasingly hears the opinion that hunting is, by definition, immoral; and vegetarianism is on the rise, especially among the young—sometimes as a health therapy but often as a moral conviction that it is wrong to kill animals for food, or as a personal protest against their inhumane treatment. Andy Rooney, commentator on the TV show 60 Minutes, reflected current mainstream misgivings when he wondered out loud on a show aired in October 2006, whether 50 years from now civilized people everywhere will regard the killing of animals for food as barbaric and morally repugnant.

WeddingChannel.com offers advice on how to incorporate pets as attendants at weddings; and animal rights organizations are growing and becoming radicalized as they take their stand against “specieism,” a label for the view that human beings are superior to animals and everything else in the order of nature.

If we are Christians steeped in a biblical worldview, we may be inclined to shrug off this view of animals as bizarre—and go on eating our steak. For us it is axiomatic that from the beginning there was a proper hierarchical order of creation in which human beings were charged to rule over creation justly and wisely under God as his vice-regents. And until recently this has been the prevailing view of man and animals in the West, a legacy of the profound Judeo-Christian influence at work for some 2,000 years. But all that has radically changed, and we had better wake up. There is now a growing rejection of this “anthropocentric” view of the world. For instance, philosopher Paul Taylor defends the doctrine of moral equality among species in “Are Humans Superior to Animals and Plants?” a 1984 article in the journal, Environmental Ethics. And feminist Jana Thompson wrote in a 1990 issue of the same journal: “There is no reason in nature why we should regard the qualities that human beings happen to have as making them more valuable than living creatures that do not have these qualities—no reason why creatures who can think or feel should be regarded as more valuable than plants and other nonsentient creatures.”

And if such a philosophical sea change touching the relationship of people to animals only makes you yawn, consider this: One of the most prestigious bioethicists of our time, Dr. Peter Singer, an Australian who teaches at Princeton University, has lent credibility to the idea that animals born healthy have more of a right to life than children born with certain kinds of diseases and deformities.

And all of this gets personal, too. I would like to think I’m not alone as a Christian who struggles to find the balance between having a high view of animals, as God does, and yet having an even higher view of human beings, as God also clearly does, if Scripture is to be taken seriously. On one side, I grew up hunting and have always found it fairly easy to justify the practice from a Judeo-Christian view of man and nature. But as I get older I am finding within myself a greater sympathy for living things and would rather enjoy the rabbit and pheasant in the field than kill and eat them. And yet sometimes that bothers me: am I just getting soft in the head in my old age? On the other side: a few years ago we didn’t hesitate to bring in our dear family pet, our young dog, Honey, for surgery when she got hit by a car. But to this day I have an uneasy conscience about how much money we paid for that operation when there are so many human beings in the world in such terrible need.

Still, for serious Christians, the shaping of a biblical theology of animals will begin with our supreme authority, written divine revelation—because that is the road map to reality, since God spoke it and through it speaks to us now. As it teaches, so we should think.
.
Patrolling the Border Between Interpretation and Speculation

A proper biblical theology of animals will keep one eye on the all-important distinction between interpretation and speculation. What is explicit or clearly implicit in the biblical text, and what conclusions are really no more than educated guesswork? When can a proposition be said to die the death not of a thousand qualifications but of a thousand inferences? Caution is in order.

Francis Schaeffer, of L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, was heard on occasion to say that he didn’t really know what an animal was. He was heeding a warning C.S. Lewis gave in 1940 in his book The Problem of Pain. When it comes to a theology of animals, the Bible is not clear enough to warrant dogmatic confidence. As Lewis writes, “God has given us data which enable us, in some degree, to understand our own suffering: He has given us no such data about beasts. We know neither why they were made nor what they are, and everything we say about them is speculative.”

I think Lewis goes too far in saying that everything we might say about animals from Scripture is speculative, but his caution is salutary, and his chapter there, “Animal Pain,” is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in these questions.

Schaeffer and Solidarity

Schaeffer, in his 1971 book Pollution and the Death of Man, showed a profound grasp of the Bible’s theology of man and nature. Schaeffer argued that at one level, people and animals (and all nature) are on one side of a great divide and God is on the other: God alone is uncreated, infinite, and a pure spirit; people and animals are finite, flesh and blood creatures. But at another level, God and man are on one side and the rest of creation, including animals, are on the other. Only man, among living things, is personal, having been made in God’s image; all other creatures are less than that.

What was so remarkable about Schaeffer was that before it was common for orthodox Christians to show sensitivity to environmental things, he was insisting that we should practice the discipline of feeling some kind of solidarity with created things—and not just with our pets. Listen to what he said about even non-sentient things like trees: “I can say, ‘Yes, the tree is a creature like myself.’ But that is not all that is involved. There ought to be a psychological insight, too. Psychologically I ought to ‘feel’ a relationship to the tree as my fellow creature. It is not simply that we ought to feel a relationship intellectually to the tree, and then turn this into just another argument for apologetics, but that we should realize, and train people in our churches to realize, that on the side of creation and on the side of God’s infinity and our finiteness—we really are one with the tree!”

Francis Schaeffer, the first evangelical “tree hugger”! And I say, praise the Lord for that man and his insight; for his courage to say what only theological liberals and flaming pantheists were saying at the time.

It’s worth noting here that Schaeffer’s contention that human beings and animals stand in solidarity in their finiteness (and on this side of Eden in their mortality, too) is rooted in the wisdom penned by the ancient preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes (3:18-21) some 3,000 years ago: “I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity [vapor]. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?”

So as we go to the Scriptures we also need to go back and look at how those who came before us understood what the Bible has to say about animals. We gain insight from theirs; we are not the first to whom the Word of God has come.

Outlining the Story of Animals in Scripture

Redemptive history is one grand story of God’s grace and judgment. So it’s proper to ask: in the overarching story—or, to use the phrase popular now, in the meta-narrative—of God’s redemption of the world chronicled and prophesied in the Bible, what role do animals play? And what is their part in the various acts and scenes in this great unfolding cosmic drama?

Reformed Christians have been taught to think of redemptive history as a drama in four acts: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration (sometimes called consummation). So it would be helpful for a biblical theology of animals to reflect on how these four historical movements of God’s grace and judgment affect the lives, the purpose, and the destiny of animals.

For instance, are the passages about animals in Isaiah 11 and 65 to be taken literally or figuratively? There we find beautiful descriptions of an all-pervading shalom, a harmony, in the final restoration or consummation of all things when Jesus Christ returns. Are we to look for the lion and the lamb literally to lie down together? Traditionally, commentators have thought, yes.

Listen to what the Reformation pastor and teacher John Calvin said about the apostle Paul’s great prophecy in Romans 8:18-25, touching the future glory of the animal kingdom under the rule of redeemed humanity in the life of the world to come: “Paul does not mean that all creatures will be partakers of the same glory with the sons of God, but that they will share in their own manner in the better state, because God will restore the present fallen world to perfect condition at the same time as the human race. It is neither expedient nor right for us to inquire with greater curiosity into the perfection which will be evidenced by beasts, plants, and metals, because the main part of corruption is decay. Some … commentators ask whether all kinds of animals will be immortal. If we give free rein to these speculations, where will they finally carry us? Let us, therefore, be content with this simple doctrine: Their [the animals’] constitution will be such, and their order so complete, that no appearance either of deformity or of impermanence will be seen.”

Scripture and Science

A biblical theology of animals will commend good scientific study of animals and will weave that into the larger picture of Scriptural teaching. God reveals truth about the nature of reality in His world as well as in His Word. Here’s an issue that begs further examination: Last year there was a remarkable article about what we might call “personality” in animals in the New York Times Magazine (January 22, 2006). Researchers are claiming to find predictable personality traits not only in creatures like primates, but in the giant Pacific octopus and even in lower life forms. While we should always be cautious about scientific claims and shouldn’t rush to embrace the latest one, we must also be careful not to claim more for the Bible than it intends to affirm. The great divide between man and animals, according to Scripture, is that human beings are made in the image of God, while animals—all the way up and down the scale of complexity and similarity to us—are not.

Graciousness in Disagreement

If Lewis was right and there is danger in being too dogmatic in putting together a theology of animals, then we should take great pains to be charitable and gracious to other believers if we disagree about this or that part of the total picture. One area where there is disagreement is on the question of whether animal and human predation (that is, humans killing animals and animals killing each other for food) was part of the original glory of God’s creation or whether it is the result of the intrusion of sin into God’s world. Many earlier theologians believed the latter. For instance, the effects of the catastrophe in Eden upon the world of nature is summed up sadly by Kentigern (circa 518-603 A.D.), a missionary to Scotland and the first bishop of Glasgow: “Before human beings rebelled against their Creator, not only the animals but the elements obeyed them. But now, after the fall, because everything has taken to enmity, it is usual that the lion should tear, the wolf devour, snakes bite, the water swallow up, the fire turn to ashes, the air rot, the earth—often hard as iron—starve, and—the height of everyday evil—humans not only rise up in anger against other humans but ravage themselves through sin.”

But this view that lions only learned to tear flesh after the fall into sin—which is my view as well—is not held by all. Notable commentators have rejected it, as do professors Michael Williams [see his article on a theology of animals] and Jack Collins, both at Covenant Theological Seminary, and both friends of mine. But these are the kinds of questions that need to be argued out, and we should do that disputing with humility, charity, and goodwill toward each other, anxious most of all to understand the Scriptures, zealous not to go beyond them, and sensitive to the degree of doctrinal importance they themselves attach to different matters.

So let us study with both enthusiasm and carefulness what the Word of God teaches us about animals. Then the pastors among us can expound better when they preach, our poets write better verse about nature, the vegetarians among us abstain, and the hunters hunt with more insight, and then all of God’s people can appreciate more, and exercise a wiser stewardship of, those mysterious creatures that come from His divine imagination—those creatures we call animals. And God Himself will be praised in that.

Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them. (Psalm 111:2)

Suggested Reading:

Anyone who doubts the urgency of the question about animals and the moral order should read The Unnatural Idea of Animal Rights, an excellent overview of the debate by Michael Pollan. This was the cover article in the November 10, 2002 New York Times Magazine.

Next, I would suggest reading the Bible with an eye open to the many places animals are mentioned. And to begin to see what others are thinking, you might read Westmont College theology professor Robert Wennberg’s book, God, Humans, and Animals: An Invitation to Enlarge Our Moral Universe (2003).

A caveat here: even though I have been thinking and writing on this theme since 2001, I feel like I’ve just gotten started. Through increased dialogue on this topic I hope to persuade better minds than my own to see the gaping hole of need in this area of Reformed ethics, and then start to fill it.

Ron Lutjens holds a M.A. in New Testament studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a M. Div. from Covenant Seminary. In 1981 he was the founding pastor of Old Orchard Church (PCA) in St. Louis and continues to serve there.

In this article Ron Lutjens has looked at the need for a theology of animals. In the article here, Covenant Seminary professor Michael Williams discusses what, precisely, that theology should be.