If God Cares About Animals, Then What About Animal Sacrifices in the OT?
I am presently writing a book about animal suffering tentatively titled: The Darwinian Problem of Evil: Christianity and the Problem of Animal Suffering (four chapters so far!).
I think this particular problem of evil is the most serious one for believers. I'm also looking at what the Bible says about the treatment of animals and the various theistic responses to this issue. Think about just one thing. The Bible commands animal sacrifices in the OT, and for some national ceremonies we're told thousands of them were sacrificed, and done so gruesomely. But then we read in the book of Hebrews that these sacrifices never helped take away any sins. So God purportedly had his people slaughter animals for no good reason at all. Is this a God who cares for animals? No, not on your life, and that's just one thing we find about the treatment of animals in the Bible, and that's just one aspect to the whole problem of animal suffering.
I think this particular problem of evil is the most serious one for believers. I'm also looking at what the Bible says about the treatment of animals and the various theistic responses to this issue. Think about just one thing. The Bible commands animal sacrifices in the OT, and for some national ceremonies we're told thousands of them were sacrificed, and done so gruesomely. But then we read in the book of Hebrews that these sacrifices never helped take away any sins. So God purportedly had his people slaughter animals for no good reason at all. Is this a God who cares for animals? No, not on your life, and that's just one thing we find about the treatment of animals in the Bible, and that's just one aspect to the whole problem of animal suffering.
19 comments:
The animals were a type and shadow that pointed to Christ. The sins of the people were imputed to the animals as well as Christ.
And for those of you who don't think the Bible teaches Christ was an atoning sacrifice to God:
And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 5:2)
And are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. (Romans 3:24-25)
For this reason he had to be made like his brothers, in order that he might becom a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:17)
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:2)
Scriptures are taken from the N.I.V. and E.S.V.
Ray, that animals were a type of Christ doesn't change the fact that animals were slaughtered wholesale. If the animals were "just a symbol" then a sacrifice of plants or vegetables would have sufficed, provided it was done with the proper ceremonialism.
Furthermore, the sacrifice of Christ was also pointless. It is a mockery of justice to punish an innocent man--even if he willingly submits to it--for the crimes of another.
Tommy plants aren't concious life.
The Apostle Peter testifies that God judges justly and then in the very next verse affirms that Christ bore our sins. (1 Peter 2:23-24)
Again, the apostle Paul declares that putting forth Christ as a propitiation for our sins was a demonstration of God's justice, not a violation of it (Romans 3:25). Right at the outset, then we must say that it is unbiblical to charge penal substitution with injustice. Nonetheless it wll be fruitful to spend a little time considering why penal substitution is not unjust.
It is correct to assert that the willingness of Christ suffering is not a satisfactory explanation by itself. The reason is obvious. If an innocent person suffers the punishment for a crime for which he bears no guilt, then it makes no difference whether or not he does so willingly. It is a miscarriage of justice, pure and simple. The Bible condemns such a thing when it comes to human courts, and it would seem strange if Christ did not adhere to the same standard Himself.
To see why penal substitution is not a travesty of justice of exactly this kind, we need to recal the doctrine of union with Christ. The believer is not seperate from Christ. He is in us, and we are in Him, indwelt by His Spirit. It is easy to understate the significance of our union with Christ, for it is not visible but spiritual-it exists by faith. But this is not at all to imply that it is not real. The spiritual in spiritual union means it is God's Holy Spirit who creates the union between Christ and believers; it does not imply that this union has no real consequences. Our justification, our adoption as God's children, and our present reigning with Christ in heavenly places are all real although spiritual and invisible, being perceived in the present only by faith.
The doctrine of penal substitution thus does not propose a transfer of guilt between unrelated persons. It asserts that guilt is transferred to Christ from those uninted with Him. In fact transfer may not even be the best term, since it could imply a seperation between dstinct persons. It may be better to say our sins were imputed to Christ while His righteousness was impted to us. That Christ bore our sins willingly furthers the point: He was not forced or coerced into this union with us, but entered into it voluntarily.
Union with Christ eplains how the innocent could be justly punished-He is judged for others sins, which by virtue of their union with him, become His. Conversely, it explains also how the guilty can be justly aquitted-believers are one with innocent Lord Jesus Christ, and so His life of perfect righteousness is rightly imputed to us.
God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Sometimes people use the terminology of Christ dying as our representative in an attempt to give a coherent account of the atonement that incorperates the truth of faith union. Whatever Christ did as our representative, we also did by virtue of being in Him. Thus, in this sense, we died on the cross (2 corinthians 5:14)
John Owen:
God might punish the elect either in their own persons, or in their surety standing in their room and stead(as their substitute); and when He is punished, they also are punished (in their representative): for in this point of view the federal head and those representated by Him are not considered as distinct, but as one; for although they are not one in respect of personal unity, they are, however, one-that is, one body in mystical union, yea, one mystical Christ-namely, the surety is the head, those represented by Him the members; and when the head is punished, the members also are punished.
We are now in a position to answer the objection that penal substitution entails unjustly punishing an innocent person. This rests on the claim that our sins cannot be imputed to Christ, which in turn is grounded on the assumption that we are entirely seperate and distinct from Him. But the reality is that believers are united to Christ by His spirit. The imputation of ou guilt to Christ does not violate justice, because He willingly consents to real, spiritual identification with His people.
In short, this objection to penal substitution arises from a failure to understand the significance of union with Christ.
What a bizarre argument. Are you a vegetarian, John?
Jason do you have any pets?
If God cared so much about His own Son, then why did He give us Him for food?
lvka- are you talking about this?
Ray,
Thanks for the theology lesson, but we do not need it. Besides, your last post here isn't even written by you, except the first line, the rest of it comes comes "Pierced For Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution" by Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, Andrew Sach, and John Piper. One could say that you are guilty of plagiarism.
The doctrines of imputation, righteousness, and penal substitution are all things that I used to love and glory in. But not anymore. Ray, I don't think you will be convinced of the folly of substitution until you see the folly of Christianity. And you won't see the folly of Christianity until you are honest with the evidence of science and history. Science has established evolution, both cosmic and biological. History and archaeology have been undermining the Bible for decades but evangelicals and fundamentalists just refuse to take the time to understand these things and to be honest with it.
Anthony, good catch. Ray quotes without sourcing from here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ImpYBKRuwGMC
Ray, so what if plants aren't conscious? Why won't God offer forgiveness for sins unless a consciousness is snuffed? Is he constrained somehow to only accept sacrifices in which a consciousness is snuffed? By whom? Can we talk to that guy instead?
And does that mean that Jesus' consciousness was also snuffed? Was there a day and half when the omniscient God knew nothing? Wouldn't that essentially make him non-omniscient?
John,
No pets here.
Are you a vegetarian?
Jason, no but my wife is. What does that matter when it comes to what YOU believe about a perfectly good God who should care more deeply about his creation than any mere mortal? Why does your God not care about animals?
Don't you think eating meat is cruelty to animals?
The way they're raised, the way they live, the way they're killed...don't you care about animals?
Yes, Jason, in some ways. That's why I'm eating more and more with my wife.
But you totally and completely missed my point. My eating habits are not the issue when it comes to a perfectly good God who shows no care at all for animals. Do you seriously want to compare what I do with what your God does? Do you seriously think that because evolution puts human beings at the top of the food chain that by eating meat I'm doing anything wrong?
Get serious.
John- evolution put us near the top of the food chain. Evolution plus culture put us at the very top. Until we learned how to make fire and spears, we were still sabertooth catfood.
John,
No, I don't think you're doing anything wrong by eating meat. You justify this action because you're at the top of the food chain. You're entitled to eat them because this is the system evolution has given us. You're not saying you don't care for animals, you merely recognize where and what you are in comparison to them. In other words, people can care for animals and eat them without there being a conflict between the two (i.e. being an omnivore doesn't mean you beat kittens for laughs).
Would you agree?
I didn't realize that atheists were as overwrought over guilt and innocence as crazy Christians.
But then, I think we all are potentially consumed with issues of karmic justice and our jeopardy to it, or worse, to random fortune, good and bad, and the rage at realizing that fairness is but a fantasy.
And the ONE TRUE GOD (OTG) steps in and gives us some way to stop ruminating over what we've done, and begin paying attention to what we do. Our worship is not for His benefit, but for ours.
And what of MANY FALSE DEITIES (MFD)? Including numerous portrayals of OTG, biblical and historical. The self-appointed representatives of MFD tell us to be afraid, be very afraid.
I have no particular affection for the green spotted flying fungus grazer, though his shrinking habitat is a bellweather of the creeping hostility of climate to human occupation, at the same time exhaustion of fossil fuels and failure of 50 years of fusion research bring us to where artificial climate is no longer able to sustain the reclamation of harsh areas (the deep south, the desert west in America, certainly other new Lebenshaum elsewhere)
Bottom line is -- I think animals do what they do and suffer or prosper from a combination of the adequacy of what they do for where they live, and shear random circumstance. Innocent of human duplicity (we presume), they suffer for something other than offending God. What of it?
We suffer for many reasons that have nothing to do with offending God, but somehow thinking a big eyed puppy dog or graceful stallion is more deserving of outrage at their suffering than that cockroach I just squashed is anthropocentric sentimentalism, not a valid argument for cosmic justice.
Well said.
He was happy to let them die of hunger and thirst, too, in the Old Testament, to punish or warn humans.
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