C.S. Lewis's theology of animals

Anglican Theological Review, Winter 1998 by Linzey, Andrew

The second is that what underlies Lewis's view of tame animals is his repeated caution about animal consciousness. Although he thought it more than reasonable to ascribe sentiency at least to the higher animals, he was reticent about the precise character of their consciousness. He doubts whether most animals can be self-conscious in a way that is true of human subjects. And if they have no sense of 'self', how can their 'selves' be redeemed? Animals cannot be 'recompensed' in a future life if there is no enduring 'self' to be so 'recompensed'. He writes: `If the life of a newt is merely a succession of sensations, what should we mean by saying that God may recall to life the newt that died today?'35 Tame animals provide for Lewis an imaginative illustration of what could be meant by animal redemption, of how at least some animals acquire a sense of enduring 'self' through interacting with their human companions.

Although what Lewis wrote was probably bold and contentious, we can now see with hindsight that his speculations about animal consciousness were simply ahead of their time. So much work has been done over the last fifty years on the sentience and consciousness of the higher mammals that it is difficult to doubt that they are selfaware. Indeed one leader in this field, Donald R. Griffin, maintains that `The question of self-awareness (of mammals) is one of the few areas of cognitive ethology where we have some concrete evidence'.36 The case, therefore, for expanding the realm of self-consciousness in mammals makes Lewis's case for including animals, whether tame or not, within the sphere of resurrection immeasurably stronger.

One disappointment must however be registered. Time and again Lewis indicates that the suffering of animals is in a special category: they do not sin and therefore cannot deserve pain; their suffering can bear no moral fruit because they are innocent. But the logic of his argument is to make the existence of such suffering more, not less, in need of theological soul-searching. It is precisely because animals are (at human hands) so often unprotected, undefended, vulnerable, and morally innocent that their misery should be deserving of special moral solicitude. Once realised, the question of justice for animals which Lewis raises, in ways in which few theologians have done either before or after, acquires an even greater urgency. Lewis argues that there is `no question of immortality for animals that are merely sentient' that is, capable of feeling pain but not necessarily self-conscious at least in ways plainly analogous to human beings.37 But the issue of God's justice cannot, I think, be so easily dispensed with. It should follow that God's justice is such that each and every experience of innocent suffering, however incomprehensible to us, will ultimately be transfigured and redeemed.

The question is plainly stated and effectively answered by Keith Ward who maintains that if God is good it must follow that each and every sentient creature, human or animal, must have the possibility of `achieving an overwhelming good' in terms that compensate for their earthly suffering. For `if one supposes that every sentient being has an endless existence, which offers the prospect of endless happiness, it is surely true that the sorrows and troubles of this life will appear very small by comparison.' Ward concludes: `Immortality, for animals as well as humans, is a necessary condition of an acceptable theodicy: that necessity, together with all the other arguments for God, is one of the main reasons for believing in immortality.'38 Lewis, in my view, does not go far enough in defending systematically and theologically the imaginative vision of a re-created world which he envisages so clearly in his fictional works. "The beasts in your world seem almost rational", comments Ransom in Perelandra. "We make them older every day", answers the woman. "Is not that what it means to be a beast?"39