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Hello! I was wondering what anyone thinks about this article, claiming that animals go to heaven. Here it is:
So, my pressing question this morning is: Do “All Dogs (Really) Go to Heaven”? I ask that not to be cute or flippant, but because on a few occasions one of our church members, Glenn Mauro, has dedicated flowers on the altar in celebration of the anniversary of his beloved dog “Teacup” having gone to heaven. So, I pose this as a serious question: Do all dogs actually go to heaven, or is that just a Disney sentiment from a cartoon movie? What about cats? What about gerbils, pet turtles, bunny rabbits? Are all of the animals depicted on the big wall-hanging in the back of the church going to be in heaven?
In my conversations with other pastors over the years I’ve noticed that this subject almost never comes up, And when it does it just draws bemused smiles, or blank stares or in most cases a flat out rejection of the idea. The latter sentiment is most often based on the belief that animals don’t possess a soul, and since only souls go to heaven, so the thinking goes, the animals can’t possibly be included.
I remember back in the 1980s, when serving at another Lutheran church, I had the temerity one Sunday, based on the lessons of the day, to proclaim that the animals, God’s creation, do indeed go to heaven. The senior pastor at the church was not amused and reprimanded me for exactly that reason — that animals don’t have souls and therefore cannot go to heaven. “Do you really think that a bird has a soul?” he asked indignantly.
When I offered Jesus’ famous words from Matthew 10:29, that “Not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your heavenly Father knowing it,” he replied that that doesn’t mean the sparrow has a soul. “What about a mosquito? Does IT have a soul?” he asked. “Are you telling me there will be mosquitos in heaven?” he laughed and added, “For your sake and mine I hope you’re wrong.” He then advised me never to preach that sermon again, and so I didn’t . . . until I had my own congregation.
The key for having such a discussion is, of course, the need for people to agree on a definition of the soul as well as an explanation for why some in the church have arrived at the curious idea that humans have souls, but animals don’t. So the first question that needs to be answered is: What is a soul?
When raising the subject with fellow clergy over the years, it quickly became clear to me that many of them, perhaps unbeknownst to them, were actually just offering an ancient Greek philosophical notion of the soul that had far more in common with Plato than it did with Jesus. They, like many people, believed that when we die, that a part of us that we call the soul goes to heaven. But none of them could tell me exactly what the soul is.
It’s easy to say, “The soul goes to heaven.” But tell me what that is, tell me what you mean by that. A few of them would try to justify their separation of body and soul by reciting Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:28, “Be not afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but fear rather him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” That’s a great quote, but again, what does it actually mean?
So, here’s the bottom line: Saying “When we die our soul goes to heaven” as if it were somehow separate from us is a Greek idea, not a Christian confession. Plato, who lived 400 years before Jesus, believed that the soul consists of three parts, known as the Tripartite soul. He taught it is made up of one’s desires, one’s emotions, and one’s mind. By employing all three, the purpose of the soul was to attain the same perfect knowledge as the gods for discerning matters of truth, justice, beauty and rational thinking. He believed in a form of reincarnation and that with each successive reincarnation of the individual the soul was thought to advance to a higher level of wisdom until perfection was eventually achieved, that is to say, one became god-like.
Animals, of course, don’t care about any of these things, so according to Plato, they don’t have souls. The ancient Israelites who were contemporaries of Plato though, had an entirely different idea about the soul. Being different from their neighbors has always been a defining characteristic of the Jews and it is a key reason why throughout their history they were often despised, especially when it came to their faith, because they refused to assimilate with other people’s beliefs.
They set themselves apart from their neighbors, beginning with the fact that while all cultures in the Middle East, indeed in the world at the time, were polytheistic, meaning they believed in multiple gods, the Israelites alone were monotheistic, believing only in one God as we hear in the recitation of the Shema, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is One.” This Jewish “otherness” is highly intentional. If you have any doubts you need travel no further than Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Jewish “otherness” has historically proved annoying to the host countries to which Jews migrated.
So it is little wonder that while the Greek speaking world spread far and wide by Alexander the Great subscribed to Plato’s idea of the soul being exclusive to humans, the Jews had an entirely different idea from which they have never deviated. This is made clear in a few lines from Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, published in 1996 concerning the Judeo-Christian definition of the soul:
________________________________________________________________________
The Hebrew word so rendered is “nephesh.” It appears 755 times in the Old Testament. The King James Version uses 42 different English terms to translate it. The two most common renderings are "soul" (428 times) and "life" (117 times).
Nephesh in the Old Testament is never the "immortal soul" (a popular idea today) but is simply the life principle or living being. Such is observable in Genesis 1:20, 21, 24, where the qualified (living) nephesh refers to animals and is rendered "living creatures." The same Hebrew term is then applied to the creation of humankind in Genesis 2:7, where dust is vitalized by the breath of God and becomes a "living being." Thus, the human being shares soul with the animals. It is the breath of God that makes the lifeless dust a "living being."
Nephesh is also used to designate parts of the body, primarily to stress their characteristics and functions. It may even focus on a single part of the body, but the whole person is nevertheless represented.
Nephesh is often used to express physical needs such as thirst. It can be used of excessive desires and of unfulfilled desires. Volitional/spiritual yearning is also assigned to nephesh, such as the desire for God, justice, evil, and political power. Emotions are expressed by nephesh so that it feels hate, grief, joy and exultation, unsettledness, and unhappiness.
From this it is clear, then, in the Old Testament a mortal is a living soul rather than having a soul. Instead of splitting a person into two or three parts, Hebrew thought sees a unified being, one that is profoundly complex, a psychophysical being.
The equivalent to nephesh in the New Testament is “psyche,” (meaning: “soul” or “personality”). All living things are a soul and have a personality. Yet St. Paul often uses the word “pneuma” (spirit) to distinguish it from the word psyche or soul. While all living things are a soul, only the pneuma (or spirit) is able to make sense of God.
Conclusion: The soul is common to humans and animals alike ( 1 Cor 15:42-50 ) but it is the spirit (pneuma) that allows people to have a dynamic relationship with God.
___________________________________________________________________
And there we have it: According to the Old and New Testament, animals, like people, are souls. The key line there is “a mortal is a living soul rather than having a soul”. In Plato’s day the Jews were clearly on to something radically different from the Greek philosophers when it came to the definition of the soul. Paul, who was a highly educated Jew, “chief among them” as he liked to say, totally agrees. To have a soul is simply to have life, l’chaim! And as we heard, nephesh can also just be translated “I am,” or “I exist” or as Shakespeare put it, “to be.” To have a soul is simply to be.
How fitting it is then that the name of God in Hebrew is YHWH, also meaning “I am” or “I exist” or “to be.” God just IS.There is no better definition of God. Where God is — life is. Where God is not, there is no life. Or to borrow Shakespeare one more time, the whole point of the bible is: “To be or not to be, that is the question.” To be with God is to be. To be without God is to not be.
And as the gospel tells us, God gave his Son for the life of the world (John 3:16), saying in John 1:4, “In him was life and that life was the light of the world.” That means ALL life, man and beast alike, because as Paul says this morning in his letter to the Romans in Ch. 8, the creation, which includes animals, dies not through any fault of its own, but because of the sins of mankind. He writes in verse 18:
18 “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; 21 because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as heirs, the redemption of our bodies.”
So all life is redeemed and whatever has life is a soul. Paul does not agree with Plato, that the soul is our spiritual connection to God, which is a popular belief today, even among Christians. Instead, Paul argues that all living things are automatically souls, and every soul has a sarx (a body, the root word for “sarcophagus”), but among the living souls are human beings who have something extra — they have pneuma — the God-given spirit of discernment for detecting the things of God, what my dad used to call “an antenna to God,” something that animals don’t have and don’t need. Thus, while the animal world is simply saved by God’s good pleasure, human beings are saved by God’s gift of the Spirit or pneuma of faith.
Thus when Jesus says in Matthew 10:18 “Do not fear those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell,” he is saying do not be afraid of those who can kill the biological part of you, but cannot kill the metaphysical part of you, your true life, but be afraid instead of the one who can kill both, a power that belongs only to God. The soul is the entire individual, the body is one part of the individual.
For this reason, all of the church’s creeds confess that “we believe in the resurrection of the body AND life (nephesh) everlasting,” because the body is part of the soul, a part of the larger whole that makes you, you. Think of it this way, ham hocks are a part of soul food, but they’re not all there is to soul food. In short, we ARE a soul, we don’t HAVE a soul.
So while many people around the world have been influenced by Greek philosophy in one form or another, the Christian, like the Jew, should be confident that the word “soul” is just another way of saying “life,” the life of an animal being saved outright by God, the life of a human being, being saved by God’s pneuma, God’s Spirit received by faith alone. Or to put it theologically: The nephesh (soul) as a human being is saved by the pneuma (Spirit) of God — in whom alone we have our being.
For that reason, Glenn Mauro’s flower dedication celebrating his dog Teacup’s continued life in heaven is totally spot on.
So, my pressing question this morning is: Do “All Dogs (Really) Go to Heaven”? I ask that not to be cute or flippant, but because on a few occasions one of our church members, Glenn Mauro, has dedicated flowers on the altar in celebration of the anniversary of his beloved dog “Teacup” having gone to heaven. So, I pose this as a serious question: Do all dogs actually go to heaven, or is that just a Disney sentiment from a cartoon movie? What about cats? What about gerbils, pet turtles, bunny rabbits? Are all of the animals depicted on the big wall-hanging in the back of the church going to be in heaven?
In my conversations with other pastors over the years I’ve noticed that this subject almost never comes up, And when it does it just draws bemused smiles, or blank stares or in most cases a flat out rejection of the idea. The latter sentiment is most often based on the belief that animals don’t possess a soul, and since only souls go to heaven, so the thinking goes, the animals can’t possibly be included.
I remember back in the 1980s, when serving at another Lutheran church, I had the temerity one Sunday, based on the lessons of the day, to proclaim that the animals, God’s creation, do indeed go to heaven. The senior pastor at the church was not amused and reprimanded me for exactly that reason — that animals don’t have souls and therefore cannot go to heaven. “Do you really think that a bird has a soul?” he asked indignantly.
When I offered Jesus’ famous words from Matthew 10:29, that “Not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your heavenly Father knowing it,” he replied that that doesn’t mean the sparrow has a soul. “What about a mosquito? Does IT have a soul?” he asked. “Are you telling me there will be mosquitos in heaven?” he laughed and added, “For your sake and mine I hope you’re wrong.” He then advised me never to preach that sermon again, and so I didn’t . . . until I had my own congregation.
The key for having such a discussion is, of course, the need for people to agree on a definition of the soul as well as an explanation for why some in the church have arrived at the curious idea that humans have souls, but animals don’t. So the first question that needs to be answered is: What is a soul?
When raising the subject with fellow clergy over the years, it quickly became clear to me that many of them, perhaps unbeknownst to them, were actually just offering an ancient Greek philosophical notion of the soul that had far more in common with Plato than it did with Jesus. They, like many people, believed that when we die, that a part of us that we call the soul goes to heaven. But none of them could tell me exactly what the soul is.
It’s easy to say, “The soul goes to heaven.” But tell me what that is, tell me what you mean by that. A few of them would try to justify their separation of body and soul by reciting Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:28, “Be not afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but fear rather him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” That’s a great quote, but again, what does it actually mean?
So, here’s the bottom line: Saying “When we die our soul goes to heaven” as if it were somehow separate from us is a Greek idea, not a Christian confession. Plato, who lived 400 years before Jesus, believed that the soul consists of three parts, known as the Tripartite soul. He taught it is made up of one’s desires, one’s emotions, and one’s mind. By employing all three, the purpose of the soul was to attain the same perfect knowledge as the gods for discerning matters of truth, justice, beauty and rational thinking. He believed in a form of reincarnation and that with each successive reincarnation of the individual the soul was thought to advance to a higher level of wisdom until perfection was eventually achieved, that is to say, one became god-like.
Animals, of course, don’t care about any of these things, so according to Plato, they don’t have souls. The ancient Israelites who were contemporaries of Plato though, had an entirely different idea about the soul. Being different from their neighbors has always been a defining characteristic of the Jews and it is a key reason why throughout their history they were often despised, especially when it came to their faith, because they refused to assimilate with other people’s beliefs.
They set themselves apart from their neighbors, beginning with the fact that while all cultures in the Middle East, indeed in the world at the time, were polytheistic, meaning they believed in multiple gods, the Israelites alone were monotheistic, believing only in one God as we hear in the recitation of the Shema, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is One.” This Jewish “otherness” is highly intentional. If you have any doubts you need travel no further than Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Jewish “otherness” has historically proved annoying to the host countries to which Jews migrated.
So it is little wonder that while the Greek speaking world spread far and wide by Alexander the Great subscribed to Plato’s idea of the soul being exclusive to humans, the Jews had an entirely different idea from which they have never deviated. This is made clear in a few lines from Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, published in 1996 concerning the Judeo-Christian definition of the soul:
________________________________________________________________________
The Hebrew word so rendered is “nephesh.” It appears 755 times in the Old Testament. The King James Version uses 42 different English terms to translate it. The two most common renderings are "soul" (428 times) and "life" (117 times).
Nephesh in the Old Testament is never the "immortal soul" (a popular idea today) but is simply the life principle or living being. Such is observable in Genesis 1:20, 21, 24, where the qualified (living) nephesh refers to animals and is rendered "living creatures." The same Hebrew term is then applied to the creation of humankind in Genesis 2:7, where dust is vitalized by the breath of God and becomes a "living being." Thus, the human being shares soul with the animals. It is the breath of God that makes the lifeless dust a "living being."
Nephesh is also used to designate parts of the body, primarily to stress their characteristics and functions. It may even focus on a single part of the body, but the whole person is nevertheless represented.
Nephesh is often used to express physical needs such as thirst. It can be used of excessive desires and of unfulfilled desires. Volitional/spiritual yearning is also assigned to nephesh, such as the desire for God, justice, evil, and political power. Emotions are expressed by nephesh so that it feels hate, grief, joy and exultation, unsettledness, and unhappiness.
From this it is clear, then, in the Old Testament a mortal is a living soul rather than having a soul. Instead of splitting a person into two or three parts, Hebrew thought sees a unified being, one that is profoundly complex, a psychophysical being.
The equivalent to nephesh in the New Testament is “psyche,” (meaning: “soul” or “personality”). All living things are a soul and have a personality. Yet St. Paul often uses the word “pneuma” (spirit) to distinguish it from the word psyche or soul. While all living things are a soul, only the pneuma (or spirit) is able to make sense of God.
Conclusion: The soul is common to humans and animals alike ( 1 Cor 15:42-50 ) but it is the spirit (pneuma) that allows people to have a dynamic relationship with God.
___________________________________________________________________
And there we have it: According to the Old and New Testament, animals, like people, are souls. The key line there is “a mortal is a living soul rather than having a soul”. In Plato’s day the Jews were clearly on to something radically different from the Greek philosophers when it came to the definition of the soul. Paul, who was a highly educated Jew, “chief among them” as he liked to say, totally agrees. To have a soul is simply to have life, l’chaim! And as we heard, nephesh can also just be translated “I am,” or “I exist” or as Shakespeare put it, “to be.” To have a soul is simply to be.
How fitting it is then that the name of God in Hebrew is YHWH, also meaning “I am” or “I exist” or “to be.” God just IS.There is no better definition of God. Where God is — life is. Where God is not, there is no life. Or to borrow Shakespeare one more time, the whole point of the bible is: “To be or not to be, that is the question.” To be with God is to be. To be without God is to not be.
And as the gospel tells us, God gave his Son for the life of the world (John 3:16), saying in John 1:4, “In him was life and that life was the light of the world.” That means ALL life, man and beast alike, because as Paul says this morning in his letter to the Romans in Ch. 8, the creation, which includes animals, dies not through any fault of its own, but because of the sins of mankind. He writes in verse 18:
18 “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; 21 because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as heirs, the redemption of our bodies.”
So all life is redeemed and whatever has life is a soul. Paul does not agree with Plato, that the soul is our spiritual connection to God, which is a popular belief today, even among Christians. Instead, Paul argues that all living things are automatically souls, and every soul has a sarx (a body, the root word for “sarcophagus”), but among the living souls are human beings who have something extra — they have pneuma — the God-given spirit of discernment for detecting the things of God, what my dad used to call “an antenna to God,” something that animals don’t have and don’t need. Thus, while the animal world is simply saved by God’s good pleasure, human beings are saved by God’s gift of the Spirit or pneuma of faith.
Thus when Jesus says in Matthew 10:18 “Do not fear those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell,” he is saying do not be afraid of those who can kill the biological part of you, but cannot kill the metaphysical part of you, your true life, but be afraid instead of the one who can kill both, a power that belongs only to God. The soul is the entire individual, the body is one part of the individual.
For this reason, all of the church’s creeds confess that “we believe in the resurrection of the body AND life (nephesh) everlasting,” because the body is part of the soul, a part of the larger whole that makes you, you. Think of it this way, ham hocks are a part of soul food, but they’re not all there is to soul food. In short, we ARE a soul, we don’t HAVE a soul.
So while many people around the world have been influenced by Greek philosophy in one form or another, the Christian, like the Jew, should be confident that the word “soul” is just another way of saying “life,” the life of an animal being saved outright by God, the life of a human being, being saved by God’s pneuma, God’s Spirit received by faith alone. Or to put it theologically: The nephesh (soul) as a human being is saved by the pneuma (Spirit) of God — in whom alone we have our being.
For that reason, Glenn Mauro’s flower dedication celebrating his dog Teacup’s continued life in heaven is totally spot on.
