MORE ON INNOCENCE
“Let everything that
hath breath praise the Lord.” (Psalm 150)
Actors are advised that
they should never work with children or animals so perhaps I'm asking for
trouble by turning from last week's look at the place of children in the Orthodox
Church to those other innocents – the animals? Do dogs have souls? Will there
be cats in Heaven? The theological, philosophical and even psychological
arguments about this could fill a library and whatever I have to say on the
subject is bound to upset someone or other!However, it could be argued that
such questions are largely irrelevant to the true place of animals in Orthodox
thought.
The question of whether or
not animals have souls is largely a matter of how one defines a 'soul'.
Certainly, there is no doubt in my own mind that at least the 'higher' mammals
have some extra spark of life which, if it is not a soul, is something very
like it. However, what is far more important is that the animals are, like us,
the creatures and creation of God. It is for this reason that St. John
Chrysostom, in the very early days of the Church reminded us that “Surely we
ought to show kindness and gentleness to animals for many reasons and chiefly
because they are of the same origins as ourselves” Another great Father of the
Church, St. Basil the Great, put it unequivocally in a lovely prayer: “The
earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. 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
even as we, and serve Thee better in their place than we in ours.”
