Lesson 6 Flashcards
Dominion and stewardship
-The belief that Christians have dominion over animals
-Beliefs about the role of Christians as stewards of animals and the natural environment
-How changing understandings of the effects of human activities on the environment have affected that role
Belief that christians have dominion over animals
-Dominion as virtually unrestricted power over animals / the environment
-Dominion means ‘power over’, and there are a number of reasons why many Christians believe that Christians do, and should have, power over animals.
Humans are described as having been made ‘little less than God’ and as having dominion over what God has made.
The Bible leaves us in no doubt about the status of humanity in the created world. Psalm 8, for example, is a hymn celebrating God’s glory in which the status of humans is clear: QUOTE
Psalm 8:3- 8 - little less than god
“Yet thou hast made him little less than God,
and dost crown him with glory and honour.
Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the sea.”
Humans as little less than god
-If humans are believed to have been made ‘little less than God’, it is little wonder that humanity has a high opinion of its own importance.
-Moreover, humans are said to have dominion over ‘the works of God’s hands’, which means the rest of creation.
2 Human power over creation is reinforced by the belief that humans were created Imago Dei - in the image of God - which means literally that they ‘look like God’.
Genesis quote
“’Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; “
Genesis 1:26-28
Humans are made in gods image
-The Hebrew word for ‘image’ here is tselem, and both Jewish and Christian writers have generally taken this to mean that humans have a God-given capacity to use reason and to be moral beings.
-however, is reading more into the text than really exists, since tselem is not used in the Old Testament with this meaning.
-Tselem really means ‘image’ in the sense of a physical copy, and is often used to refer to the images of various gods that should not be worshipped,
-for example, Numbers 33:52; 2 Kings 11:18; Psalm 73:20.
This is the kind of image that can be modelled, as for example in Amos 5:26, and probably represents a stage of belief when human beings were thought literally to look like God, so in both understandings of the word ‘image’,
-Genesis 1:26-28 reinforces the verdict of Psalm 8, that humans are ‘little less than God’.
3 Human dominion means that the Earth is to be subdued and that humans are to be feared by all other creatures.
-In the same text, (Genesis 1:28), the command that humans are to ‘subdue’ the Earth is from the verb cbsh, which literally means to ‘subjugate’ - ‘to bring into subjection’, for example, Jeremiah 34:11,16; Numbers 32:29.
-This word is followed immediately by the verb rah, meaning ‘to have dominion over’ - literally, ‘to rule over’.
After flood god speaks to Noah…
-Further, after the flood with which God destroys the world, God blesses Noah and his sons, and tells them:
“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you” (Genesis 9:1-3a)
-The passage ends with a repetition of the command to multiply the human race on Earth (9:7).
- What we have in the Bible, then, is a strong anthropocentric and anthropomorphic tradition which in several respects is detrimental to care of the environment
-status of humanity is only a little less than that of God, the Bible places no particular ‘intrinsic’ value on animal life or on the life of any other living thing.
-These have value only in so far as they serve human desires.
-say that the Bible has a strong anthropocentric view of the environment as a whole; humans see themselves as the pinnacle of creation against which everything else is measured and found to be of lesser value.
-‘Anthropocentric’, then, means centring the universe on humans; regarding humans as the central fact of the universe.
-Given the absolute minuteness of this galaxy (let alone this planet) in relation to the rest of the universe, this is a mind-set which can readily be understood from the perspective of ancient Israelite culture, but which has no relevance in relation to modern cosmology.
-Arguably, it encourages humans to be arrogant and uncaring about anything non-human.
Anthropomorphic
-means representing God as having human form, personality or attributes.
-looked at anthropomorphism and gender-specific language about God in the God module, so you have some knowledge of this already.
-Anthropomorphism also means ascribing human characteristics to what is not human, including animals.
-The fact that animals, and even God, are given human characteristics also shows the extent of human intellectual arrogance.
-Animals are not valued for what they are, but for how human they might be.
-Even God has a human likeness, which is simply another device which makes humans greater than they are.
Example of animals being judged for how human they are
An example of this might be seen by some to be the posters of smiling chickens, apparently delighted to be served up for human consumption, outside various chicken fast-food outlets.
what happens when the world is judged by anthropomorphic standards? problemssss
-When the environment is judged by anthropocentric and anthropomorphic values, you can see, therefore, that there are likely to be few checks on human behaviour that treats the world as a means to the end of human pleasure.
-Instead of being respected and maintained as an environment that is essential to our own well-being, the world is plundered for raw materials to help people get rich at the expense of everybody and everything else.
-If the Bible encourages anthropocentricity and anthropomorphism, then the Bible encourages environmental destruction.
- We can see the effects of this kind of thinking on Christian thought and action
-Christians who take the view that ‘dominion’ means ‘power over’ believe that humans are entitled to use the environment to satisfy their needs.
-This interpretation is often supported by referring to the ‘Fall’ of humanity, where the world was corrupted by Satan, and by the sin of Adam and Eve.
-Some Christians assume that after the Fall, the role of humans was to control an environment that had already been damaged by sin, and had to be kept in submission.
Philosophy of Thomas aquinas - showing this view dominion
-Something of this kind of view can be seen in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas,
-According to Aquinas, humans have only indirect duties to animals.
-Aquinas followed Aristotle’s view that animals are just part of the human food chain.
-Aquinas did object to cruelty to animals, but only because he believed that cruelty to animals bred cruelty in humans themselves.
-Mistreating animals was basically a kind of property damage.
