C.S. Lewis's theology of animals

Anglican Theological Review, Winter 1998 by Linzey, Andrew

But, if Lewis can be charged with solving one problem by creating another, Horne even more so. We may fail to recognise the face of Christ in a theory of a world created by God in which hundreds, thousands, even millions of years of sickness and death are experienced by animal creatures, and latterly by human creatures, simply to facilitate `fresh opportunities for loving'. What can we conclude about a kind of love which wants to perpetuate opportunities for itself, the whole possibility of which is itself predicated on the existence of a created world of gross unloveliness? For myself, I would rather embrace the myth of Satan, than worship a god whose love was so plainly callous and unjust.

The second difficulty concerns Lewis's speculations about animal resurrection. We need to recall Lewis's thesis that `The tame animal is in the deepest sense the only natural animal...'. At one level the thesis appears absurd. Why should animals need taming, let alone be more 'natural' for it? Why cannot animals be seen as natural in the state in which they appear in creation? Evelyn Underhill accuses Lewis of advancing an `intolerable doctrine' comprising 'a frightful exaggeration of what is involved in the primacy of man'. Her protest deserves a hearing:

Is the cow which we have turned into a milk machine or the hen we have turned into an egg machine really nearer the mind of God than its wild ancestor? This seems like saying that the black slave is the only natural negro. You surely can't mean that, or think that the robin redbreast in a cage doesn't put heaven in a rage . . . And if we ever get a sideways glimpse of the animal-in-itself, the animal existing for God's glory and pleasure and lit by His light . . . we don't owe it to the Pekinese, the Persian cat or the canary, but to some wild creature living in completeness of adjustment to Nature, a life that is utterly independent of man . . . Of course I agree that animals too are involved in the Fall and await redemption and transfiguration . . . And man is no doubt offered the chance of being the mediator of that redemption. But not by taming, surely? Rather by loving and reverencing the creatures enough to leave them free . . . your concept of God would be improved by just a touch of wildness.31

In the absence of an extant reply from Lewis, two things should perhaps be said by way of explanation and defence. The first is that Lewis, and Joy especially, always kept animals and had a clear fondness for them. Indeed the reference to the Great Lady in The Great Divorce who kept a menagerie of animals could have been a reference to Mrs. Moore (Lewis's long-standing female companion) and latterly to his wife, Joy, both of whom enjoyed a variety of animal friends.32 The root of Lewis's conviction about companion animals is therefore not difficult to discern. Almost all those who live in close proximity to animals quickly discover their innate capacities to relate and respond to the presence of their human companion. It is this discovery, I think, that fuels Lewis's sense that human relationship with animals can be an ennobling, fulfilling experience-and not just for the human beings concerned. It is not surprising that Lewis should interpret such a relationship in theological terms sensing that human/animal interaction brings out latent potential in animals so that individual animals become 'part' of the life of the human partner and are therefore, in that sense, liberated to be more than what they once were. We see this idea played out, again and again, in Lewis's fictional writings. In Perelandra-to take only one example-nonhuman terrestrial creatures are docile and kind, exhibit rationality, and are perfectly ordered to their human companions with whom they share a natural, joyful communion.33 (Incidentally, it is very doubtful that Lewis would ever have approved of caging wild birds or genetically manipulating dogs for their aesthetic appeal.34)