Jesus And Pigs And Dogs

Peter Williams' recent book, The Surprising Genius Of Jesus (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2023), discusses some agreements that are often overlooked among the gospels. For example, Jesus' parables in the gospel of Luke bring up some "proverbially unclean" animals, pigs (15:16) and dogs (16:21). The surrounding context of both parables suggests that the association with those animals is something negative. Similarly, Matthew 7:6 refers to dogs and pigs in that sort of negative manner. Another point that could be made, which I don't recall Williams making in his book, is how easily such a pairing of dogs and pigs could have been avoided in early Christian circles. Paul makes a negative reference to dogs (Philippians 3:2), but not pigs. The same is true of John (Revelation 22:15). And John brought up a wide variety of animals and other beasts in Revelation, which increases the potential for him to have included pigs and dogs as often as Jesus did, which John didn't. Peter combined the two animals (2 Peter 2:22), but most New Testament authors didn't, including ones who wrote as extensively as Paul and John did. Another point that I don't recall seeing in Williams' book is the episode with the Gerasene demoniac, which involved casting the demons into pigs. The demons asked to be cast into the pigs, so they're the ones who initiated it. But Jesus' willingness to go along with the request suggests that he found it fitting. And that account is found in Mark's gospel, which means that Jesus' expression of that sort of view of pigs is found in three of the gospels. I'm not suggesting that such a view of pigs is something highly unusual. But the expression of such a view seems unusual enough to be significant. Given how seldom pigs come up in that sort of way in the rest of the New Testament, it's notable that the gospels have Jesus expressing that sort of view of pigs a few times, in a few different contexts that are so diverse (in material found in only one gospel, in material found in multiple gospels, both in parables and elsewhere, etc.). Jesus also seems to refer to dogs in that sort of way more often than we see in other early Christian sources. In addition to the passages cited above, see Matthew 15:26 and the parallel passage in Mark. These are more examples of agreements among the gospels that are of a more subtle nature, and therefore are often overlooked, and which are best explained as coming from the historical Jesus.

(See here for a discussion of how one of these passages involving pigs is significant in another context.)

Vegetarians or carnivores?

Young earth creationists (YECs) typically argue there was no animal death either before the Fall or before the Flood. Moreover YECs typically argue animals were vegetarians either before the Fall or before the Flood, but became carnivorous either in the postlapsarian or postdiluvian period. The basis for their arguments is exegetical.

By contrast, OT scholar Iain Provan offers a different exegetical argument about animal death and animal feeding behavior in Seriously Dangerous Religion (pp 226-234).

Trumpets

Critical care physician Dr. Laurin Bellg writes in her book Near Death in the ICU: Stories from Patients Near Death and Why We Should Listen to Them:

I had my own strange experience of observing what seemed to be a bedside visitation when my grandmother was dying. She’d had a gradual descent into vascular dementia over the years leading up to her passing, and was nearly totally withdrawn toward the end. She wouldn’t interact, she wouldn’t eat, and with her increasing failure to thrive, she was clearly dying.

A few weeks before my grandmother’s death at age ninety-one, hospice became involved and spent a great deal of time in her home, both caring for her and comforting my grandfather. When her decline accelerated, I flew in from my home in the upper Midwest to spend whatever time I could with her. I remember my grandfather, knowing I was a physician, sitting at her bedside when I arrived at the house, looking at me helplessly and saying through thick tears, “Is there anything you can do to save her?”

Animals In The Enfield Case

A dog doesn't have a human's capacity to be biased or carry out a hoax. For that and other reasons, the involvement of animals in paranormal cases deserves more attention than the subject typically gets. That's true of the Enfield Poltergeist. I want to address several incidents in that case that involved animals. Some of those incidents are ones I've never seen discussed publicly.

It could be argued that the animals were manipulated by humans. But that would come at the cost of further complicating a fraud hypothesis. In addition to arguing that the Hodgson children were unusually skilled at magic, ventriloquism, acting, etc., you'd have to maintain that they also had such skill at manipulating animals, that some highly unusual coincidences occurred, or that there was some other such factor or combination of factors involved.

When I cite the Enfield tapes below, I'll be using "MG" to designate a tape from Maurice Grosse's collection and "GP" to designate one from Guy Playfair's. So, MG32B is tape 32B in Grosse's collection, and GP85A is tape 85A in Playfair's.

In his book on Enfield, Playfair writes about the behavior of a dog in the neighborhood at the time of Janet Hodgson's December 15, 1977 levitation and teleportation:

Emoting over animal pain

A Catholic reader of this blog is deeply troubled by the problem of animal suffering. He reports his painful recollection of a YouTube video that depicts

. . . the killing of a baby elephant by 13 lions. They first attacked the little elephant in the open, but he was saved when several water buffalo intervened and drove the lions off. The baby then ran to two large bull elephants nearby, but rather than protecting him from the lions, they were indifferent. The lions, seeing this, rushed the baby, which helplessly ran off into the bush, where the lions, 13 in all, caught him, and began to devour him. You probably know that because of an elephant’s trunk, a lion’s bite to the neck does not kill, so I assume that the baby was eaten alive.

I find the thought of this killing and the myriad other killings like it very hard to accept. How does a theist explain such acts in nature? I know something of the various theodicies and defenses of theistic philosophers, but when confronted with this scene of terror and horrendous death, I find them all unconvincing. Something in the depths of my being rejects them all as over-sophisticated attempts to mask what is truly terrible so as to defend at all costs the first of Hume’s four options, that of a perfectly good first cause. I am not saying that I am abandoning my theistic beliefs, but I think that for too long, theists have not taken the matter of animal pain and suffering seriously enough.

Leaving philosophic theism aside, there is glaring indifference to this matter in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, where the fixation on humanity’s fall, faults, and need for salvation. Without denying whatever truth may be found in this long theological reflection on human misery, what of the animals, those here millions of years before man walked on the earth, and all those who have shared and do share the earth with him? 

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/05/animal-suffering-and-the-problem-of-evil.html

i) I've often written about the so-called problem of animal suffering, so I won't repeat that here. Instead, I'll say some new things in addition to what I've said in the past.

ii) Some issues are artificially important. They're not intrinsically important, but they become important because some people make them more important than they are. 

iii) For most of their history, Christians and Jews have been overwhelmed by human death and suffering all around them. It's only in the age of affluence and modern medicine that that's retreated to some degree. At a time and place when many children were orphaned by disease and war, when many children who slept together with their siblings watched their young brothers and sisters buried due to death from famine or childhood illness, it would be morally obscene to fret over animal suffering. That's a luxury for spoiled people who don't have more serious and immediate evils to lament. 

iv) It's not coincidental that he cites the example of a mammal. He doesn't talk about fish eating other fish, or a bird eating an earthworm, or a hawk eating a snake, or snakes consuming other snakes, or adult crocodiles gobbling up young crocodiles. That shows you how subjective the reaction is. Like a lot of guys, I find certain reptiles impressive. I have a morbid fascination with crocodiles, Komodo dragons, anacondas, reticulating pythons, and venomous snakes. However, I have no affection for reptiles. I suspect that's because I'm too mammalian to have affection for reptiles. 

v) Most wild animals aren't nice. A few year ago there was a nature show about meerkats. They're cute and fun to watch. But they're not nice animals. They stage vicious raiding parties on rival meerkat communities. Otters are cute. They can be fun to watch. But they belong to these same family as wolverines, and otters have a vicious streak. 

vi) Apropos (v), some animals are evidently intelligent. Animal intelligence ranges along a continuum. I think it's fair to say there's such a thing as animal minds, at least among some higher animals. But if we could get inside an animal mind, we might well find that animal minds are quite alien to us. Many animals may well have minds like a psychopathic serial killer. There are science fiction movies about getting inside the mind of a psychopath. 

Suppose Ted Bundy picked the wrong coed. Suppose she had a couple of Dobermans who mauled him to death. Normally, it would be horrific to witness someone mauled to death by dogs. If, however, that was Ted Bundy, I wouldn't shed a tear. 

vi) It's striking that some animals seek out what appears to be painful behavior. Take a cat fight. To a human observer, that looks excruciating. Perhaps it is. But if it's that excruciating, shouldn't we expect the pain to be a deterrent to cat fights? Why do cats initiate fights if it's that painful? Maybe it's not as painful as it looks to us, from our human frame of reference.  

Adam, animals, and death

Young-earth creationists typically reject animal mortality before the Fall. One oddity with that position is that Adam and Eve were created naturally mortal. They had they opportunity to acquire immortality by eating from the tree of life. 

It would be incongruous if man, the apex of creation, was naturally mortal, while animals were naturally immortal. Or do young-earth creationists think every plant was a tree of life for herbivores? 

Animals In The Afterlife

Greg Koukl recently posted a video on the subject. He makes some good points, but I largely disagree with him. Some commenters there made some good points in response, and I added a reply of my own. I address the issue in more depth in the thread here.