Isn’t Animal Exploitation a Sin Against God? By Dr. Chapman Chen
In September 2026, the Vatican’s International Theological Commission published a 29,000-word document entitled Caring for Our Common Home: A Responsible and Fraternal Response to the Triune God. Authorized under Pope Leo XIV, it expands upon Pope Francis’s concept of “ecological sin” by proposing that serious harm to our common home be understood as a “sin against creation and against the Creator”.
1. Respect for Animal Life
Although the Vatican does not define eating animal flesh as sinful, the document advances principles with profound implications for veganism. It affirms respect for animal life, “the duty to respect and have compassion towards all beings”, and the obligation “to avoid or at least reduce to the minimum possible direct attacks upon life”.
It also calls in §117 for “a healthy diet that is responsible towards the environment”, urges people to renounce environmentally harmful products and practices, and stresses that “every act of purchasing is a moral act”.
These principles challenge factory farming and other forms of animal exploitation, even though the Commission does not explicitly draw that conclusion.
2. Predatory Anthropocentrism
The document also rejects “predatory anthropocentrism”—the belief that the earth is mere property available for ruthless human exploitation. Instead, it defines humanity as a “steward and servant of creation”.
3. Steward vs. Servant
Yet these two roles are not necessarily equivalent. A steward may claim to exercise the Master’s delegated authority and abuse animals in His name, whereas a servant is not supposed to imprison, torture, exploit, kill and eat those whom they serve. Stewardship entails both responsibility and power—and, as Lord Acton warned in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
4. “Dominion” as Stewardship
Indeed, “dominion” in Genesis 1:26 and 1:28, when interpreted as stewardship, has often remained hierarchical and has been used to legitimate animal exploitation.
Karl Barth, for example, interpreted humanity’s “dominion” over animals as “lordship”, whose “primary meaning” includes “requisitioning, disciplining, taming, harnessing, exploiting and making profitable use of” them (Barth 1961: 351). He even invested the killing of animals in slaughterhouses, hunting fields and laboratories with sacred significance, associating the “good hunter, honourable butcher and conscientious vivisectionist” with Abel, Noah and the Old Testament High Priest. For Barth, such killing becomes an “act of eschatological character” when performed “in recollection of the reconciliation of man by the Man [Jesus Christ] who intercedes for him and for all creation” (Barth 1961: 355).
5. “Dominion” as Servanthood
By contrast, I interpret dominion in Genesis 1:26 and 1:28 not as human authority over animals but as servanthood in the compassionate spirit of Jesus Christ.
The ancient, pre-Masoretic Hebrew consonantal form ירדו (yirdu) can be read in relation either to רָדָה (rādāh, “to subjugate”) or to יָרַד (yārad, “to lower oneself”) (cf. Ehrenfeld and Bentley 1985: 301). I maintain that yārad expresses the proper theological meaning for two major reasons.
First, Jesus declares that he “came to serve, not to be served” (Matt. 20:28) and teaches that “anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35). Human dominion should therefore imitate Christ’s self-lowering service rather than worldly domination.
Second, the command to “have dominion” in Genesis 1:28 is immediately followed by God’s prescription of a plant-based diet for humanity in Genesis 1:29 (cf. Linzey 1995: 34). On this basis, Andrew Linzey argues that dominion means stewardship rather than despotism and that humanity has the unique potential to become the “servant species”, working with God for the liberation of animals (Linzey 1995: 34, 45, 57).
6. Are Humans Servants of Animals or Vice Versa?
The Vatican document takes a significant theological step forward by defining humanity as a servant of creation, affirming respect for animal life, recognizing the Edenic plant-based diet and requiring direct attacks upon life to be reduced to the minimum possible.
Yet it stops short of applying these principles consistently to humanity’s treatment of animals. It retains a hierarchical theology in which some living beings are placed “at the service of others” (§123) and accepts the post-Flood permission in Genesis 9:3–4 to eat animals.
Therein lies a profound tension: humans are servants of creation, yet animals may remain servants of humans.
7. “Minimum Possible Attack Upon Life”
The same contradiction appears in the document’s principle of minimum harm. If harming or killing an animal is unnecessary because non-animal alternatives are available, such harm cannot constitute the minimum possible attack upon life.
Likewise, although the Commission recognizes “the duty to respect and have compassion towards all beings”, it does not ask what that duty requires when humans exploit sentient animals for food, labour, clothing, transport, entertainment or experimentation—or hunt them for sport.
8. Animal Exploitation is Anti God
The Vatican should therefore take servanthood to its logical conclusion and unabashedly recognize animal exploitation—especially the unnecessary killing of animals for food—as a sin against the God who “is love” (1 John 4:8), against God’s creation, and against humanity’s vocation to serve our fellow creatures.
As Jeremiah asks amid ecological devastation caused by human wickedness:
“How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and birds have perished.”—Jeremiah 12:4
Comments