Did God Create Animals to Be Eaten as Food? Part 02

It's 6:20 AM on Saturday as I begin writing. Normally, I try to compose my Christian Earth Science entry on Saturday evening - after office organization and weekly planning - but this week I am starting here first. Craig Wescoe's study guide and expert instruction in the Vegan Christian Discipleship School on Tuesday gave me much to think about. This class was just the right intervention at just the right time, and now I am wrestling with my intellectual commitments to theistic evolution and a spiritual reading of Genesis (as opposed to a literal scientific reading). I am also still giving much attention to Catholic discernment and have been feeling called to dig into the evolutionary cosmology of Teilhard de Chardin, an influential 20th century scientist and Jesuit theologian. I think God is using Craig's clear and consistently high-quality instruction to help me stake out more of my vegan Christian position on evolution and Genesis - even if it means I end up in a different vegan Christian doctrinal camp than him.

This article from BioLogos (Is Animal Suffering Part of God’s Good Creation?) presents a fair logical breakdown of the alternative viewpoints that might be taken within the vegan Christian community regarding the question of God's design for predation in the Earth's food webs before and after the Fall. Craig's viewpoint is that God didn't create the natural world with predation in it. Predation only came about after the angelic and human Fall. My viewpoint is that God created the natural world with predation and other natural evils for a greater good. Within the greater good camp, I am presently inclined toward the "cruciform nature of creation" arguments. This said, I don't think there is any question that God created animals with inherent worth and dignity. Animals suffer, and they have souls - though maybe not the same kinds of souls as humans. I believe all animals, including prey animals, were created primarily or exclusively through theistic evolution as goods in themselves, and not essentially as food for other species.   

Craig's view that God didn't create the world with predation in it accords with rabbinic Jewish and orthodox Christian understandings of Eden and the Fall.

My commitment to build Christ-centered bridges with current and prospective vegans, vegetarians, and flexitarians who believe in evolution is taking me toward the more heterodox position of Teilhard de Chardin.    

Here is a link to a Google Gemini search result that shows exactly where I am now in my study of Teilhard. You will need to scroll to the top of the thread and read down from the beginning. I am sorry I cannot be briefer in explaining myself, but I am still very much a Teilhard beginner:

https://share.google/aimode/XQbdj4d8RpNUbT5GE

Teilhard may prove a wrong turn for me in the end, but I really feel called to grapple with his teaching. It makes a lot of sense to me, and I think it could be very helpful for bringing vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian ethics (in that order) to Christians who are committed to theistic evolution, like the folks at BioLogos and maybe some folks with influence at HHS and USDA. Of course, this only works if Genesis 1:29 and 1:30 are given full credit for pointing to God's original and ultimate design intention. The fact that we have to go through so much animal and human suffering to materialize this intention, including the death of the Lamb on the Cross, and things like the consumption of the fish by the bald eagle - which God must have foreknown - is what the cruciform nature of creation means to me. It's not an excuse for cruelty, but a call to compassion, including compassion for people who are at different stages of development in their understanding of Genesis, evolution, human nutrition, and balanced 21st century implementation of God's creation care decree.

On the question of whether Jesus was vegan, which came up in this class, I believe it's important to promote loving diversity and dialogue between vegan Christian theologians from different camps. I presently subscribe to the belief that the historical Jesus followed what we would describe today as a flexitarian or a pesco-vegetarian diet, and that the Holy Spirit did not call anyone to be vegan until after 1948, the same year that we first isolated Vitamin B12. I also currently believe that humans evolved to depend in part on animal products, though now we possess the cultural adaptations necessary to thrive without them, if we are genuinely blessed with this charism by the Holy Spirit and freely choose to do so. I see the synthesis of B12 in 1972 as a gift of science and God to the faithful of Spaceship Earth for our progress toward the Omega point. But from what I have read and learned directly from experts in contemporary vegan Christian theology, this combination of views may put me in the minority among vegan Christians.  

Video at top: Did God create animals to be eaten as food?