C.S. Lewis's theology of animals

Anglican Theological Review, Winter 1998 by Linzey, Andrew

When introducing the subject of vivisection, for example, Lewis insists that the evil of pain is a pre-requisite for discussion: 'A rational discussion . . . begins by inquiring whether pain is, or is not, an evil. If it is not, the case against vivisection falls. But then so does the case for vivisection. If it is not defended on the ground that it reduces human suffering, on what ground can it be defended? And if pain is not an evil, why should human suffering be reduced? We must therefore assume as a basis for the whole discussion that pain is an evil, otherwise there is nothing to be discussed.'5

How then does Lewis account theologically for the existence of animal pain? In one sense, of course, he cannot-at least in a straightforward way-and hence its continuing problematical character. But he is adamant that we cannot excuse animal suffering by some of the usual theological routes, the `easy speeches of cruel men'. These fall into three categories: the first denies that animals suffer. Following Descartes, animals are viewed as machines with insufficient self-consciousness to undergo suffering, a view current in Lewis's day and which counted among its supporters no less a theologian than Charles E. Raven. '(I)t may be doubted whether there is any real pain without a frontal cortex, a foreplan in mind, and a love which can put itself in the place of another; and these are the attributes of humanity' wrote Raven in 1927.6

The second route is that while some suffering may be ascribed to animals, God is not actually concerned about their suffering. This line also has not lacked its theological proponents. `The Creator's mind * . .', wrote Peter Geach, `seems to be characterised by mere indifference to the pain that the interlocking teleologies of life involve. . .'.7 Lewis would have recoiled from such a view entailing as it does a Creator impossibly unjust. Neither does Lewis adopt the third conventional option that all suffering is the direct result of man's fall from grace. Lewis does not rule out some kind of link between human sinfulness and creaturely corruption but, post-Darwin and the discovery of dinosaurs, it cannot serve as a complete explanation. As Lewis's disputant, C.E.M. Joad, states: `The hypothesis that the animals were corrupted by man does not account for animal pain during the hundreds of millions of years (probably about nine hundred million) when the earth contained living creatures, but did not contain man.'8

Lewis then takes up what some might say is the most logical but also the most hazardous explanation, namely that '(s)ome mighty created power had already been at work for ill on the material universe, or the solar system, or, at least the planet earth, before ever man came upon the scene.'9 Because Lewis cannot resign himself to predation, carnivorousness and pain as the result of God's direct will, he has no choice but to affirm that such things are due to `Satanic corruption' or, as he later postulates, Satanic 'distortion'.10 One consequence of this view is that humanity has a redemptive role or might have had one. `It may have been one of man's functions to restore peace to the animal world, and if he had not joined the enemy he might have succeeded in doing so to an extent now hardly imaginable.'11 This is a view, incidentally, taken up and developed at length by T. F. Torrance who holds firmly to the link between human and creaturely corruption and who postulates that it is `man's task to save the natural order through remedial and integrative activity, bringing back order where there is disorder and restoring peace where there is disharmony.'12