Christology and animal rights
As I’ve grown more interested in religion, I’ve learned a bunch of new $10 words. One of those is Christology. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, Christology is the study of the nature and work of Jesus. It asks some important questions, like, who was this guy? What was his purpose? Was he God?
It’s been interesting for me to learn that Christians throughout history have had very different answers to these questions. Even in modern, mainstream churches which officially subscribe to, say, the Nicene Creed, one suspects there is quite a lot of theological diversity among the laity, if not the clergy themselves.
Christology is central to Christian belief. Anyone interested in a more animal-friendly Christianity needs to deal with it. Specifically, one needs a theory of Jesus that accounts for why he apparently ate meat and didn’t seem particularly concerned about nonhuman welfare. I can think of three categories of Christology that could explain this, but surely there are more.
The first is Unitarianism. In short, Unitarianism argues Jesus was human or something less than God. This seems like the most straightforward explanation to me. The second is Adoptionism. Adoptionism argues Jesus was born human, but was adopted by God at some point during his life or after his death.
The third is what Bart Ehrman calls Separationism. Separationism tries to separate Jesus and the Christ. It views the former as human and the latter as some kind of God force. I thought this view originated with theologians like Richard Rohr, but apparently its roots go back to Gnosticism.
While Unitarianism is easiest to explain, I have a soft spot for Separationism. I loved Rohr’s book, The Universal Christ. It reminded me of the work of my spiritual teacher, Eknath Easwaran. Easwaran talks about ‘the Christ within,’ a phrase he uses interchangeably with ‘Krishna’ and ‘the Atman.’
When Easwaran talks about Christ in this way, it seems clear he’s not talking about a first-century preacher subject to the prejudices of time and place, but, rather, something else. He’s talking about what Rohr would call the Universal Christ and what others term the Cosmic Christ.
As an aside, Rohr met Easwaran and appreciated his work. “I was personally introduced to him during a visit with Henri Nouwen in the late 1980s,” the Catholic mystic wrote on the Center for Action and Contemplation blog. “Nouwen, surely no light-weight Christian, told me about this wise man when most Christians were not yet free to see these very common threads within other faiths.”
My understanding is Unitarianism used to be a popular denomination, but has since been subsumed into Unitarian Universalism, which draws from increasingly broad religious and secular sources. More than anything else, I’m a perennialist, so I appreciate that. But for those seeking a Christian-focused animal rights view, it might be a little problematic.
My knowledge is limited, but I’m not aware of any modern Adoptionist sects. Similarly, I’m unsure if there are any contemporary Separationist groups. Rohr, who, at the time I’m writing this, remains a Catholic priest in good standing, would likely deny there was anything heretical about his perspective. I have a feeling, however, if the Catholic hierarchy examined his writing closely, they would disagree, which is unfortunate.