To experience family bereavement, to be consumed by guilt and remorse, to verge on the abyss of despair -- surely these are terrible things. Even more terrible when one is violently attacked -- without provocation -- to boot. And yet such is the way of life that as terrible things are happening to us, even more terrible things are just round the corner. In the case of Louis, he woke up, not only battered and bruised, but bled -- almost to death. The assailant was not just an ordinary eighteenth-century New Orleans mugger, but a vampire, and what is more, a vampire-making vampire. Louis regains consciousness not as an ordinary mortal but as a member of an immortal species. Some of you of a more inquiring disposition may be curious as to how one vampire propagates its species. Alas, I cannot claim any expertise in vampirology, but I am led to believe that the process happens like this: the propagating vampire sucks the blood from his or her would-be progeny almost to the point of death, but then instead of letting him or her actually die, fills the person with blood mingled from his own. Looked at purely dispassionately, we could liken the process to a blood transfusion with a certain extra factor supplied. For ease I will refer to this in due course as the "X" factor.Doubtless you will be aware that one salient feature of a vampire's existence is the need to kill for food, or, to be more precise, to suck blood. It is important to understand that this is no optional gastronomic extra but essential for vampire life. Indeed, technically, I was wrong to describe Louis as a vampire made so simply by the process of transfusion. Louis became a vampire only as he recognized the deep hungering thirst for blood and in particular learned how to kill. Lestat, his propagator, had to teach him. As the deep hungering thirst grew within Louis, he finally consented to drink human blood. A victim was selected, Lestat completed the preparatory work, and Louis was invited to drink from the victim's wrist. This is how Louis relates this first experience: 
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Imagine that you are a twenty-five-year-old living in New Orleans, called Louis. The date is 1791. You suffer a terrible bereavement due to the untimely death of your brother -- a death for which you blame yourself. You spend nights drinking in New Orleans in a state of near despair. One night, just a few steps from your door, you are attacked by an unknown assailant.
As Louis drew blood, he heard sound: A dull roar at first and then the pounding like the pounding of a drum, growing louder and louder, as if some enormous creature were coming up on one slowly through a dark and alien forest, pounding as he came, a huge drum. And then there came the pounding of another drum, as if another giant were coming yards behind him, and each giant, intent on his own drum, gave no notice to the rhythm of the other. The sound grew louder and louder until it seemed to fill not just my hearing but all my senses, to be throbbing in my lips and fingers, in the flesh of my temples, in my veins. Above all in my veins, drum and then the other drum... I realized that the drum was my heart, and the second drum had been his.1 I venture to relate this first experience, not in any way for ghoulish purposes, but in order that we may understand Louis's predicament correctly. Those who are apt to be rather superior in their attitude to vampires frequently forget that sucking blood was no mere satisfaction of the appetite, rather it was a profound life-engaging experience involving not inconsiderable ecstasy. <!--pagebreak--> Now I have called this paper "The Vampire's Dilemma." But some of you may legitimately query whether Louis's predicament should be classed in these terms. After all, a vampire is a vampire. He or she does what he or she does, notwithstanding mystical ecstasy, because of necessity. No food, no vampire. And yet Louis's experience is rather unusual in this regard. He certainly needs blood, indeed, without it he would die. He even craves for it, and, like all vampires, is physically distraught without at least one such bloodsucking encounter every day. And yet through some fortuity of circumstance, Louis is not happy about being a vampire. Not that he feels nostalgic for his mortal origins; after all, he was desperately unhappy, at least immediately prior to his vampirehood. Neither is Louis's unhappiness principally because of his lack of vampire colleagues. It is certainly true that his one close vampire acquaintance, even would-be friend, Lestat, is not always charming company, and yet solitude for a vampire may not be the grievous blow it is for us simple mortals. Vampire life, and especially its increased powers of movement, perception, sensibility -- not to mention flight -- does have some compensating factors. It would be wrong, as some high-minded vampire commentators have suggested, to suppose that immortality under such conditions is necessarily disagreeable.Nevertheless, Louis is unhappy. We should allow him to describe his sorry predicament in his own words:
Am I damned? Am I from the devil? Is my very nature that of a devil? I was asking myself over and over. And if it is why then do I revolt against it ... turn away in disgust when Lestat kills? What have I become in becoming a vampire? Where am I to go? And all the while, as the death wish caused me to neglect my thirst, my thirst grew hotter: my veins were veritable threads of pain in my flesh: my temples throbbed and finally I could stand it no longer. Torn apart by the wish to take no action -- to starve, to wither in thought on the one hand; and driven to kill on the other -- I stood in an empty, desolate street and heard the sound of a child crying.2 For those who are already wondering what happened to the child and what Louis decided to do, I should report that Louis bled the mother of the child and made the child a vampire. Together they travel the world, ostensibly in search of other vampires who will help them to understand why they are as they are. By now the point to which this elaborate metaphor is leading must be becoming increasingly obvious. But before I state the point or dilemma, I must acknowledge my debt to Louis and in particular his literary creator, Anne Rice. For it is from her book, Interview with the Vampire, that I have taken the basic plot. This book, I understand, is only the first of three volumes which explore the nature of contemporary vampirehood. 3 I cannot claim to have read the other volumes, but it is clear from what I have read that the human species is in debt to Anne Rice's imagination. If, as Charles Morgan once remarked, there is no failure except failure of the imagination, Rice's work richly deserves both her reputation and her readership, the latter of which I am assured runs into tens of thousands.The full extent of Louis's dilemma should now become clear. Should he go on living at the expense of other mortal creatures? Does it matter that he kills to live, and if it doesn't matter, why should he feel so stricken about it? Likewise we may ask: does it matter that the human species exists today only by the mass slaughter of billions of other creatures as food? Six to nine billion nonhuman animals are slaughtered in the United States every year; approximately 500 million in the United Kingdom. In comparison with this annual carnage, consumption even by the most rapacious of all vampires is rather slight. The average American eats more than the average vampire.If we return to Louis's story for a while, we find that some features of his predicament show uncanny similarity to our own. In the first place, almost all Louis's fellow vampires do not see that there is a moral problem at all. When he raises with his propagator, Lestat, whether there might be something less than desirable about sucking blood, Louis is chided for his emotional immaturity. He was simply chasing the "phantoms of [his] former self." "You are in love with your mortal nature," argues Lestat. In other words, Louis had not yet grown up. He didn't yet see that the issue of killing was no moral issue at all.
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As Lestat puts it:
Vampires are killers ... Predators whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment. The ability to see human life in its entirety not with any mawkish sorrow but with a thrilling satisfaction in being the end of that life, in having a hand in the divine plan.4 Although Lestat here seems to suggest that killing is actually to be commended theologically, I think it is fairest to characterize Lestat's overall view of killing as amoral. Since death for each mortal individual is inevitable, the process of hastening that inevitability is as devoid of moral significance as is the blowing of the wind or the pouring of the rain.And it is this idea that brings us to the second, and by far the most significant, similarity between almost all vampires and almost all humans. Eating animals by humans is thought to be as natural as sucking blood is for vampires. The argument is quite explicit: "Do what it is your nature to do," argues Lestat. "This is but a taste of it. Do what it is your nature to do." 5 This claim seems to sum up the dilemma of both vampires like Louis and mortal vegetarians like myself who would rather live without killing. Are we not simply opposing the nature of things as given, or indeed our own natures? Aren't non-bloodsucking vampires and non-meat-eating humans similarly anomalous in the history of our respective species? Is it not true that both are seemingly incapable of facing the world as it is without emotion or moral squint?Considerations such as these lead Louis and his child colleague to a series of journeyings, one might even say pilgrimages, in search of knowledge -- both of how they came to be -- and more decisively still to the Creator of all things which be. In the middle of his European voyage by ship, Louis nurtures the hope that somewhere in this new continent he might find "the answer to why under God this suffering was allowed to exist -- why under God it was allowed to begin, and how under God it might be ended." 6 In the same way that Louis was led to God in order to explain and understand the "X"factor that makes vampires bloodsucking, so too have many previouslywrestled with the morality of carnivorousness in the sight of God.Louis is by no means alone in the history of moral deliberation.Plato seems to have envisaged a world, almost a Golden Age, in whichall creatures lived harmoniously, and only after humans had beengiven God-like power over animals, did those harmonious relationshipsdegenerate into strife and violence. 7 Genesis 1 similarly depicts a state of perfect Sabbath harmony within creation where humans andanimals are both prescribed a vegetarian diet. 8 This fundamental insight that parasitical existence is incompatible with the originalwill of God has to be grasped if we are to understand the subsequentattempts in Genesis both to limit and accommodate killing. The Falland the Flood are the great symbols of why humanity can no longerlive at peace either with itself or with other creatures. And yet the insight that parasitical existence is incompatiblewith the designs of the Creator still does not answer the problem ofhow vampires or carnivores must live today. If God can tolerate sucha system, are we not in the end to resign ourselves to it, or abandonthe notion of a holy, loving Creator altogether? Most humans havefollowed the reasoning of Samuel Pufendorf, who argued in 1688 that
At first sight, religious people would appear to be impaled onthe horns of a dilemma. Either they accept that God did not ordain ajust state of affairs, in which case we can no longer postulate aloving, just deity, or otherwise they have to accept that God is not-- as claimed -- the sovereign Creator of all things. But areChristians obliged to take either of these two options? I think not.There is a third and theologically much more satisfying option. Itbegins by asking us to consider that the world really is creation.It is the work of a loving and holy God, yes, but it is alsocreation, and not Creator. Because the world is creation and notCreator, it cannot be anything other than less than divine. To be acreature is necessarily to be incomplete, unfinished, imperfect. Ifcreation was wholly perfect, it would have to be, like God,perfection itself. From this standpoint the very nature of creationis always ambiguous; it points both ways; it both affirms and deniesGod at one and the same time. Creation affirms God because God lovesand cares for it, but it also necessarily denies God because it isnot divine. It follows that there can be no straightforward moral ortheological appeal to the way nature is. Note the way in whichPufendorf deliberately takes the state of nature as a yardstick ormeasure of what God wills or plans for creation. I argue rather thatthe state of nature can in no way be an unambiguous referent to whatGod wills or plans for creation. The issue may be clarified by reference to the traditionaltheological notion of natural law. We turn to what has been one ofthe most enlightened of attempts to rehabilitate natural law theory.In his essay, "Rethinking Natural Law," John Macquarrie argues thatit is essential to distinguish natural law as an ethical concept fromany scientific law of nature: "The expression 'natural law' refers toa norm of responsible conduct, and suggests a kind of fundamentalguideline or criterion that comes before all rules or particularformulations of law." 10 Now at first sight such a redefinition would seem to supportLouis's position. After all, does not Louis experience a prerational,intuitive conception of what is right? Something parallel to whatMacquarrie calls a "norm of responsible conduct" -- a "criterion"that comes before all formulations of law? The problem is, however,that Macquarrie -- like so many ethicists before him -- is unable todevelop and justify such a notion of natural law without reference towhat he calls the way things are. "Natural Law too claims to befounded in 'the way things are,' in ultimate structures that areexplicitly contrasted with the human conventions that find expressionin our ordinary rules and customs." 11 Again: "[Natural law] safeguards against moral subjectivism andencourages moral seriousness by locating the demand of moralobligation in the very way things are." 12 <!--pagebreak--> In contrast, I suggest that if we can use the term "natural law" at all in this context, itcan properly, perhaps only, be discovered not in the way things arebut in the sense of what should be. In short, so much natural lawtheory rests upon an unqualified "naturalism." What we have witnessedalmost by sleight of hand is a developing "naturalism" within moraltheology which fundamentally limits the redeeming capacities of Godto what humans perceive to be "the way things are" in nature itself.The result has been an almost total failure to grasp the possibilityof redemption outside the human sphere.
One example must suffice. John Armstrong, in a sensitive andperceptive discussion of Hebrew attitudes to animals, neverthelesscastigates the Isaianic vision of the lion lying down with the lambas an attempt "to get rid of the beasts of prey or change their naturebeyond recognition." 13He does not see the point of Isaiah's vision, which is not that animality will be destroyed by divine lovebut rather that animal nature is in bondage to violence and predation.The vision of Isaiah is directly relevant here: It invites us to theimaginative recognition that God's transforming love is notdetermined even by what we think we know of elementary biology. If there can be any rehabilitation of natural law, we mustreiterate that we are speaking neither of "law" nor "nature" in anyrecognizable sense. There is nothing in creation which of itself cangive us an unambiguous understanding of the moral purposes of God.To return to Louis's dilemma for a moment, I am suggesting that he isright to be vexed and troubled. He is right to rail and thunderagainst a kind of nature which forecloses on the moral option. Louisis right to seek a way out; even against all appearances of necessity,he is right to go on searching, and not least of all, he is right toplace the question mark at God itself. Louis's deep, prerational,intuitive sense that sucking blood is not right is what we shouldcall not "natural law" but rather "transnatural moral imperative."To have grasped such an insight is an implicitly theological act.The world does not explain itself; either there is explanationoutside creation or creation remains enigmatic and inexplicable. But if it is right that Louis should strive, even against allodds, to realize this moral imperative, even more should the humanspecies seek to live without killing to eat. This is the obviouspoint of this paper. The vampire has a dilemma because it seems -- atleast at present -- that he cannot choose to live without recourse toblood, but we humans do now have such a choice. Whether humans havealways been so free is something which at worst I am doubtful about,at best I have an open mind. When theologian Dean Inge, deeplycommitted to animal rights as he was, argued as recently as 1926 thatwe could not give up flesh because "we must eat something,"14 I do not believe that he was being disingenuous. Inge really believed, asdid many of his compassionate forebears, that one could not livewithout eating animals. Rumors of vegetarians existed, but like therumors themselves did not -- it was thought -- persist. Most peopleuntil comparatively recently were incredulous that real vegetariansboth existed and prospered. Despite all the vegetarian literatureproduced by George Bernard Shaw, popular commentators still claimedthat only secret consumption of liver kept him alive. Again onlycomparatively recently have dietitians accepted that vegetableprotein is, like meat, "first-class protein," and even now it seemsthere are some nutritionists determined to expose what they see asthe dangers of veganism. For the first time in the history of thehuman race, vegetarianism has become a publicly viable option -- atleast for those who live in the Western world. This is not of courseto overlook all the many pioneers and prophets, but all of these havebeen just that: pioneers, protesters and prophets against the stream.But that mainstream has now to contend -- in the United Kingdom atleast -- with something approximating four million vegetarians,demi-vegetarians and vegans. For humans there is now no dilemmacompounded through ignorance. We can live free of meat; there arenow numerous examples of people who do so and who are alive and well.When we know that we are free to do otherwise, eating meat constituteswhat Stephen Clark calls "empty gluttony."15 To this conclusion, I anticipate four objections. The firstargues that my insistence upon the "fallen" nature of creation, andits inherent ambiguity, mitigates against contemporary environmentalethics and with it an increased respect for animals in particular.After years in which nature and materiality have been devalued withinChristian theology, do we not need a new theology of the inherentgoodness of all creatures? Was Gerard Manley Hopkins wrong when heclaimed that the "world is charged with the grandeur of God"?16 It is certainly true that in recent years observers of thetheological scene have witnessed the growth of a body of writingconcerned to reestablish what is called the"sacralization of nature."Such writing must be construed as a valuable protest against the kindof unqualified appeal to human supremacy articulated by, for example,Charles Davis, in 1966. Davis argues that nature is no longerregarded by "scientific man" as "sacred and untouchable," and heproclaims that such a view of nature is in full harmony with theChristian faith, indeed required by it. "Any other view of natureis, in the light of Christian teaching, idolatrous, superstitious ormagical." 17 Davis may well have reason to regret his utterances ata time when it is precisely unremitting human domination of the earththat seems to threaten even human survival. It is not difficult tosee how, in the light of contemporary environmental destruction,individuals want to posit a relocation of value which includes allnatural objects. Slogans such as "the world is all good" or"theearth knows best" are quite understandable as protests to the massivecontemporary devaluing of creaturely life. <!--pagebreak--> And yet, understandable as this protest is, when it is combinedwith a view that all "natural" structures of life are themselves goodor perfect in every way, the whole possibility of a theological ethicis eclipsed. Certainly we need to recover a sense of the originalblessing of creation, but if we suppose that all in creation isindiscriminately good, then we have no room left to establish thebest. One may be forgiven for thinking that the task left to humanityis -- on some ecological accounts -- simply to emulate the structuresof parasitical existence. We are supposed to glory in the economyof existence whereby one species devours another with consummateefficiency. It may not be surprising then that some recentcommentators have seen a potentially sinister relationship betweenfar right philosophy and some forms of green political theory.Whether such a connection can be responsibly made is a matter Icannot pursue here, but it cannot be doubted that an appeal to pure"naturalism" opens up a pathway to a rebirth of brutalism in whichhumans are invited not to morally transform the cosmos but to imitateits worst manifestations. If the legacy of Genesis is sometimesthought to be disadvantageous to animals, even more so thecontemporary legacy of Darwinism.
And yet some may surely question whether we now have gone too faron the other side. Are we not to celebrate the life of creation withall its beauty, magnificence and complexity and therein with Hopkinsto perceive signs of the grandeur of God? Is not the biblicalmaterial right to point us to the ways in which some animals at leastappear to provide moral examples for our own behavior? Isn't thestory of Balaam's ass a sign of how morally advanced are the beastscompared to the mindless Balaams of our world? I have no desire todeny the force of any of these arguments. Theologian Karl Barth isright to speak eloquently of how creation should be construed as"justification," that is, as divine beneficence, benefit, grace. 18 That there is beauty, value, goodness in the created order isjudicious Christian doctrine; that the whole creation is right as itis, or in the way it is -- that it is in no way incomplete orunfinished -- is not. To maintain that creation is all alright is tomake God the Redeemer redundant. In short: "the earth is all good"slogan fails to recognize the X factor. The second objection is that Jesus was -- as far as we know -- nocrusading vegetarian. While there are no precise biblical accountsof him eating meat, the canonical Gospels leave us in no doubt thathe ate fish. And if this is true, on what grounds can we claim himas the revelation of an alternative nonparasitical existence? At first sight this appears a pretty cast-iron objection. AsStephen Clark asks: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth doright?" 19 There seem, however, to be two principal grounds onwhich this argument founders. The first is in its implicitassumption that the demands of contemporary Christian discipleshipcan be met simply by the imitation of the Jesus of first-centuryPalestine. If this is really taken to its limit, there would behardly any scope for moral theology at all. The purpose of ethicalreflection would be invalid. Ethical striving would simply centerupon the need to imitate Jesus as he then was in that situation. Incontrast, what Christian discipleship requires is summed up well byJohn Macquarrie:
The second way in which this argument founders is in failing tograsp the necessary particularity of the incarnation. To be Godincarnate as a human being does not mean being some kind of Superman.The traditional affirmation about Jesus is not that he is God, butthat he is God and human. The point is no mere technicality. Godincarnates himself or herself into the limits and constraints of theworld as we know it. It is true that one of the purposes of theincarnation was to manifest something of the transnaturalpossibilities of existence, but no one human life can demonstrate,let alone exhaust, all the possibilities of self-giving love. Tothose who argue that Jesus was deficient or limited either in hislack of crusading power for feminism, for the abolition of slavery,or for veganism -- not to mention home rule -- miss the central pointthat to confess Christ crucified is to confess a Christ inevitablyand profoundly limited by the fact of incarnation. To be in oneplace at one time means that one cannot be everywhere. In the light of this, it is all the more significant that earlyreflection upon the work and person of Christ is determined to spellout its eventual cosmic dimension and meaning. The line fromEphesians expresses it well: "[God] has made known to us his secretpurpose, in accordance with the plan which he determined beforehandin Christ, to be put into effect when the time was ripe: namely thatthe universe, everything in heaven and on earth, might be broughtinto a unity in Christ." 21 And likewise in Colossians, where God chose Christ "and throughhim to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through theshedding of his blood on the cross -- all things, whether on earthor in heaven." 22 This concept of cosmic reconciliation provides the framework inwhich we may grasp the transnatural moral imperative glimpsed in theactual historical life of Jesus. For the revelation of God in Jesusis such as to intensify rather than diminish the puzzle of thecreated order. For Jesus stands against as much as for the order ofnature as we now know it. The natural processes of sickness anddeath and disease, even indeed the vagaries of the weather, aresubject to the power of God in Jesus Christ. If we follow Jesus, weare set upon a course of transnatural transformation whereby the sickdo not suffer and die but are healed and restored; the poor are notdowntrodden but become the first among equals; and even the windswhich blow us to the four corners are gathered together. Theso-called "nature miracles" of Jesus are signs among many that inJesus is a birth of new possibilities for all creation. I suggestthat what we have in Jesus is a model not of the accommodation ofnature but rather of the beginning of its transformation. Not thatall things were transformed by Jesus, nor that all of his life inevery aspect was so transforming, nor that every part has even yetbeen transformed, but that to follow Jesus is to affirm, and seek toactualize, the fundamental possibility of world transformation. <!--pagebreak--> The third objection to my thesis is that even if eventual peaceand harmony is God's will in Christ for all creation, we can'tachieve it now. Humans do face a dilemma. Even if there is nonatural law requiring us to eat flesh, there is a psychological one,humans cannot be expected to forego the enormous pleasures ofconsuming flesh. Gluttony it may be, but we humans can do no better.As vampires need their mystical fix of blood, so we humans need ourfinger-licking good chicken or juicy steak. Some may think that I have already caricatured this objection, butI have put it in such a crass form because in this way it expresseswell a fundamental kind of despair about moral self-improvement whichis a great deal more widespread than is often supposed. There areall kinds of reasons why Christians should be wary of schemes formoral perfectionism. Grandiose moral and social hopes often createincapacitating disappointment when it is discovered that they cannotbe realized. In particular it follows from my overall argument thathumans are themselves simply creatures: limited, finite, incapable ofseeing things whole, incapable indeed by themselves of becoming whole.Moral burdens incapable of being relieved can create anger,frustration, even violence. We do well to realize what a frail andlimited vessel the human creature is. If we cannot prevent greed,stupidity, cruelty, deceit, violence, envy, hatred, culpable acts of wickedness performed by members of our own species against othermembers of our species, what chance can we have of behaving anybetter to other, nonhuman, creatures? It is worth noting that KarlBarth opposed vegetarianism on the grounds that it represents"awanton anticipation of ... the new aeon for which we hope." 23 Not that living nonviolently in peace with all creation was not God'swill -- rather that this vision of peaceableness could not be evenapproximated now. Those of us who may sometimes feel encouraged to an optimisticview of life need to take cognizance of the lyrical protest ofpolitical philosopher William Godwin:
Notwithstanding the beauty and goodness and magnificence of thecreated world, no sane person, it seems to me, could simply say "Allis well; there is no evil in the world." And I agree with Godwin thatthe "creed of optimism," as he puts it, "has done much harm in theworld." 25 But it seems precisely because one cannot say in truththat all is well with the world, and further that the creed ofoptimism speaks truthfully of how the world is, that the case forbelieving in world-transforming Christian theism is so strong. Thechoice is clear: Either there is at the heart of being unredeemed orunredeemable suffering and misery and death, or there is actually apattern of transformation, glimpsed in Christ, which is actuallycapable of bringing about a new world order. Now there can be little doubt that such a perception is demandingand burdensome and itself flies in the face of not inconsiderableevidence. But it should be clear that such a perception is consistentwith, even required by, Christian faith. To the objection that thisinvites otiose, even harmful, perfectionism, there can only be oneanswer. The God who demands is also The God who enables. Even bythe power of the Holy Spirit it may be that the world cannot be madewell at a stroke given the necessary self-limitations imposed by theCreator. Nevertheless, it is possible and credible to believe thatby the Power of the Spirit new ways of living without violence can beopened up for us, even within a world which is tragically dividedbetween the forces of life and the forces of death. We shouldcelebrate the possibility that through the Spirit we can today livein some way freer of the X factor with regard to animals than many ofour forebears. Optimism may well be facile; despair, however, is nota Christian option. <!--pagebreak--> The fourth and final objection questions the rational andtheological basis for obeying this prenatural intuition in what Ihave called the "transnatural moral imperative." Is it self-evidentthat we should live in peace, or that peace is itself better thanviolence? Can anything be self-evident in our confused andcontradictory creaturely world? I do not suppose that my owntentative answer will satisfy all, as explanations of moralimperatives seldom do. But I suggest that there may be one sense inwhich the notion of so-called natural law can help us. It is foundin the notion of Heraclitus that "all human laws are nourished by theone divine law; for this holds sway as far as it will, and sufficesfor all and prevails in everything." This law is identified byHeraclitus with the logos, "the primordial word or reason inaccordance with which everything occurs." Before it is protestedthat I am merely returning to a notion of natural law previouslyrejected, let it be clear, as one commentator makes explicit:
It will not be overlooked that the concept of logos, heredefined in a Greek context, has obvious affinities with Jewish andChristian ones. It is, I suggest, in the doctrine of Christ as theLogos that we are given the revelatory principle that peace isbetter than violence and that reconciliation is better thandisintegration. The Cosmic Christ through whom all things come to beis the source and destiny and well-being of all creatures. To affirmthe Cosmic Christ is to embrace a new possibility of existence withinour grasp now. It will be clear that this view gives a high place to humans in nature; not because they are so worthy in themselves but because they are -- as no other species, as far as we know, at least-- capable of focusing the forces of life and death, of being vampires or vegetarians. It is for this reason that I also want to conclude thatvegetarianism, far from being some kind of optional moral extra or some secondary moral consideration, is in fact an implicitly theological act of the greatest significance. By refusing to killand eat meat, we witness to a higher order of existence, implicit in the Logos, which is struggling to be born in us. By refusing to go the way of our "natural nature" or our "psychological nature," bystanding against the order of unredeemed nature, we become signs of the order of existence for which all creatures long. I end as I began, by asking you to consider the plight of ourmorally stricken vampire called Louis. I am sorry to say that I cannot report a happy ending. Despite his searches all over theworld and his encounter with fellow vampires older and wiser thanhimself, and despite all his moral strength, he is unable to freehimself from his own parasitical nature. There is one saving grace for Louis, however. His story will not have been told in vain if it has helped us to recover a sense of the responsibility of our own moral freedom. <!--pagebreak--> Notes
= Article Source = Reprinted from Good News for Animals? Christian Approaches to Animal Well-Being. Charles Pinches & Jay B. McDaniel, editors (Orbis Books, 1993. ISBN 0-88344-866-1) = About the Author: = Andrew Linzey is IFAW Senior Research Fellow, Mansfield College, Oxford, and also special Professor of Theology, University of Nottingham. Amongst his pioneering works on animals and theology are: Animal Rights: A Christian Assessment (SCM Press 1976), Christianity and the Rights of Animals (Crossroad & SPCK 1987), Animals and Christianity (Crossroad & SPCK 1989). = Acknowledgments = I am grateful to Marly Cornell for first bringing to my attention the theological significance of Anne Rice's work -- as well as formany hours of illuminating theological conversation. I also acknowledge my debts to Professor Daniel Hardy of Princeton Universityand Professor Colin Gunton of King's College, London, who have helped me, both by their conversation and writings, to understand somethingof the Christian doctrine of creation. I am especially grateful to Professor Stephen Clark of Liverpool University, whose paper "Is Nature God's Will?" helped me to think through this topic in a fundamental way. Original HTML source by Jonathan Esterhazy (Manitoba Animal Rights Coalition) This work is the copyright of the author. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, display, perform, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any such content, nor may you distribute any part of this content, sell or offer it for sale.
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