A Liberation Christology in Light of 1 Enoch. By Dr Chapman Chen

1 Enoch, or the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, is a collection of ancient Jewish Enochic writings dating substantially from the last few centuries BCE and perhaps into the early first century CE. It survives completely in Geʿez, while substantial portions have also been discovered in Aramaic among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This article develops Craig Wescoe’s reading of 1 Enoch in The Book of Enoch: Study Edition (2025) and his 5 Sept. 2026 Youtube presentation, “Did Demons Invent Animal Sacrifice?”, and then goes beyond it toward what I call a Liberation Christology from predatory violence.

1. A Genealogy of Violence

Wescoe constructs a striking genealogy of violence. God’s original Edenic order is vegan and peaceful, but the Watchers’ (fallen angels’) rebellion produces the giants or Nephilim, whose corruption introduces flesh-eating, blood-drinking and violence against animals. After the giants die, their spirits become demons, which perpetuate this predatory order by leading humanity into animal sacrifice. Against this economy of bloodshed arise the prophets’ (e.g., Jeremiah, Isaiah, Hosea…) calls for obedience and mercy rather than sacrifice, culminating in Jesus’ declaration of “mercy, not sacrifice” and his confrontation with the sacrificial economy in the Temple. Finally, the fallen angels responsible for the primordial corruption remain bound for the Great Day of Judgment.

The crucial Enochic turning point occurs when the giants’ carnivorous appetite becomes violence against creation — “sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish” (1 Enoch 7:3–5). Their violence therefore crosses the species boundary: animals are not morally insignificant objects but creatures against whom sin can be committed.

2. Jesus vs. the Nephilim

This prepares the way for a striking contrast with Jesus. Wescoe’s central insight is that Jesus stands on the opposite side of the Enochic economy of killing: whereas the spirits of the giants “afflict, oppress, destroy, attack” and “work destruction on the earth” (1 Enoch 15:11), Jesus contrasts the thief who comes “to steal, and to kill, and to destroy” with himself, the Good Shepherd who comes that others “might have life” and lays down his own life for the sheep (John 10:10–11); whereas the Enochic giants inaugurate flesh-eating, blood-drinking and violence against animals (1 Enoch 7:3–5), Jesus twice proclaims Hosea’s “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice” (Hos. 6:6; Matt. 9:13; 12:7), making mercy rather than sacrificial violence a governing principle of his Kingdom.

3. A Fuller Christology of Liberation from Predatory Violence

Vegan Theology develops these connections into a full Christology of liberation from predatory violence: Jesus does not merely reject sacrifice but embodies its opposite principle—the giants take the bodies and lives of vulnerable creatures to sustain themselves, whereas Christ gives his own body and life for others (cf. John 10:11). Hosea provides an even deeper bridge between Enoch and Jesus: just as 1 Enoch depicts violence extending to “birds… beasts… reptiles… and fish” until the earth itself accuses the violent (1 Enoch 7:5–6), Hosea describes “bloodshed” following bloodshed until the land mourns and “the beasts of the field,” “the fowls of heaven,” and “the fishes of the sea” suffer (Hos. 4:2–3), before declaring that God desires “mercy, and not sacrifice” (Hos. 6:6)—the very principle Jesus repeatedly appropriates.

4. Jesus’ Temple Raid as Direct Action

Jesus then dramatically enacts this principle in his Assault on the Temple (Matt. 21:12–13). He does not merely propose reforms to the sacrificial marketplace: he drives out its buyers and sellers (Matt. 21:12–13), liberates the sacrificial animals (John 2:15–16), and invokes Jeremiah 7:11 by proclaiming, “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves/shredders [parits]!” (Matt. 21:12-13). This comes from the same prophetic discourse in which obedience to God is set against burnt offerings and sacrifices (Jer. 7:22–23). Read in conjunction with Jesus’ repeated proclamation of “mercy, not sacrifice,” the conventional “Cleansing of the Temple” can therefore be understood more radically as a prophetic sign-act confronting a religious economy involving innocent animal bloodshed.

5. From the “Days of Noah” to Christian Discipleship

Jesus’ reference to the “days of Noah” (Matt. 24:37–39) further illuminates this opposition.

"But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be." (Matt. 24:37–39 NKJV)

Without needing Wescoe’s more speculative identification of Jesus’ “eating and drinking” specifically with the giants’ flesh-eating and blood-drinking, the Enochic background illuminates the world of Noah as one in which appetite becomes predation, violence engulfs humans and animals, and the earth is corrupted (Gen. 6:11–13; 1 Enoch 7:3–6), while Jesus embodies the opposite order of compassion, service, self-giving and abundant life. Vegan Theology therefore moves from Jesus’ Temple action to Christian discipleship: if Christ reverses rather than perpetuates the Enochic logic of predation, his followers are called to participate in that reversal now. The decisive question is consequently not merely whether Jesus opposed animal sacrifice two thousand years ago, but which mode of existence resembles Christ today—the taking of vulnerable lives for the satisfaction of our appetites, or the relinquishing of our appetites for the sake of vulnerable lives?

6. An Eschatological Conclusion

This Christological reversal also has an eschatological conclusion. Wescoe quotes 1 Enoch 19:1, according to which the fallen angels who led humanity into “sacrificing to demons as gods” remain until “the day of the great judgment in which they shall be judged till they are made an end of.” He also invokes Jude 1:6, where rebellious angels are kept “in eternal chains in darkness, bound for judgment on that great day.” Wescoe thus carries the Enochic genealogy of violence forward to judgment.

Vegan Theology can extend this into a larger eschatological trajectory:

Azazel’s final destruction → Satan’s final destruction → cleansing of the earth from sin and torment → abolition of death, pain and tears → restoration of creation.

If animal violence belongs to the primordial corruption of creation in 1 Enoch 7:3–6, the final cleansing of creation cannot coherently be understood as the eternal preservation of that corruption. Enoch’s eschatology moves in the opposite direction: Azazel and the powers responsible for corrupting the earth are removed and judged (1 Enoch 10:4–8; 54:5–6), while the earth is healed and cleansed “from all oppression,” “all defilement,” and “all torment” (1 Enoch 10:7, 20–22). Read alongside Isaiah’s promise that God “will swallow up death in victory” and “wipe away tears from off all faces” (Isa. 25:8), and Revelation’s New Creation, where “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Rev. 21:1–4), the biblical–Enochic trajectory moves from a creation invaded by predatory violence toward a creation finally liberated from it.

7. An Immediate Question

This leaves us with an immediate question: Why wait until the Second Coming for every tear to be wiped from the animals’ eyes? If the spirits of the carnivorous giants represent the predatory order of killing, devouring and bloodshed, while Jesus the Vegan Christ represents mercy, abundant life and the Good Shepherd who lays down his own life rather than taking the lives of his sheep, Christian discipleship demands that we choose between these two spirits now. We need not wait for the New Creation before ceasing to abuse animals for food, clothing, labour and entertainment. For most of us, much of that suffering can be ended immediately simply by refusing to participate in it. To follow Christ is therefore to begin making the eschatological future present—to anticipate the peaceable Kingdom here and now, restoring, insofar as it lies within our power, the Edenic relationship between humanity, animals and the earth.  #VeganChrist #VeganGod #VeganTheology

Full Text: https://www.vegantheology.net/post/a-liberation-christology-in-light-of-1-enoch-by-dr-chapman-chen