Youtube Video, Session 40, Vegan Theology: Hunting from a Christly Perspective. Dr Chapman Chen

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/DJ702-Fpdr4 

Summary:  In his article titled “Hunting: What Scripture Says” (1991), evangelical priest Richard Dunkerly from California identifies four hunters mentioned in the Bible—three in the book of Genesis and one in Revelation (click this video to see who they are). He contends that the biblical image of the hunter is closely associated with Satan, while its antithesis is the good shepherd, most fully embodied in Jesus Christ. Dunkerly concludes that Christians are called to be “healers and reconcilers” rather than “destroyers."

There is a chapter entitled "Hunting as the Anti-Gospel of Predation" in Rev. Prof. Andrew Linzey's (1995) book Animal Theology (pp. 114-123). Linzey’s central thesis therein is that recreational hunting is not merely an ethically questionable pastime but a theological contradiction of the Gospel. Linzey's reductio ad absurdum: The Jesus depicted by the Gospels overwhelmingly represents healing, liberation, reconciliation, service, self-giving and life, not the sanctification of predatory power. Thus, for Linzey, a theology that makes predation God's ideal effectively turns the Gospel upside down.

Linzey points out that Nature is not necessarily God's moral norm. Nature contains cooperation, mutual aid and perhaps altruism as well as violence and predation. More importantly, even if predation is presently intrinsic to biological nature, Christianity understands creation as unfinished, fallen or awaiting redemption.

Linzey also rejects Matthew Fox's attempt to interpret the Eucharist as evidence of a universal pattern in which everything eats and is eaten. His crucial distinction is voluntary self-sacrifice versus involuntary sacrifice. Christ gives himself. The animal killed by humans does not give itself. Hence Christ's self-offering cannot legitimately be used to sanctify the killing of unwilling victims.

The OT itself contains passages against Hunting. For example, Exodus 20:13 (KJV) — The Sixth Commandment Thou shalt not kill. לֹא תִּרְצָח Lo tirtzakh, the original Hebrew phrase for “Thou shalt not kill”, means "any kind of killing whatsoever" (Alcalay 1981, Rosen 2004:87).

Hosea 4:1–3 condemns human violence that causes animals to perish:  “There is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.l By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing… they break out, and blood toucheth blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away.” Jeremiah 12:4 describes how human wickedness makes animals n birds disappear “How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein? the beasts are consumed, and the birds…”

As the Hong Kong saying goes, “You won’t feel the pain until you are pricked by the needle.”