Ch. 4— Ethical Considerations • 73 
Aside from this figurative guide, the New Testa- 
ment is spare in its references to handling animals. 
Saint Paul’s discussion of the proscription against 
muzzling the ox suggests a human benefit: "Is it 
for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not speak 
entirely for our sake? It was written for our sake, 
because the plowman should plow in hope and 
the thresher thresh in hope of a share in the crop” 
(I Corinthians 9:9-10). Thus, the thresher was to 
let the ox feed from the corn being worked, not 
so much for the good of the ox, but because a well- 
fed animal would yield a larger return. 
This passage suggests a shift in sentiment from 
the Old to the New Testament. For Christians, the 
paramount practical concern is the condition and 
future of the immortal soul possessed by human 
beings. Animals are not believed to have immor- 
tal souls, nor be repositories for human souls. In 
the Christian world view, then, animals are left 
without the one thing that has special value in 
itself— a soul. An animal’s welfare is a good thing 
only as it is good for the human being. 
The letter containing Paul’s reading of the Old 
Testament rule was written only a generation af- 
ter Christ's death, when Christianity was still a new 
faith. The distinction between humans and other 
animals hardened as the creed acquired the trap- 
pings of theory, but in such a way as to raise new 
questions about its real source. The legacy of Greek 
philosophy exercised such a pervasive influence 
over Christian theology in its formative years that 
the distinction could be traced to Athens as easily 
as to Jerusalem. 
It might be said that in theology all roads lead 
back to Augustine or Aquinas. On the subject of 
animals, the Augustinian position finds expression 
in his critique of a competing doctrine, which, on 
the premise that animals also had souls, would not 
allow killing them. Augustine cited the conduct 
of Christ as a lesson to the contrary (7): 
Christ himself shows that to refrain from the 
killing of animals and the destroying of plants is 
the height of superstition, for judging that there 
are no common rights between us and the beasts 
and trees, he sent the devils into a herd of swine 
and with a curse withered the tree on which he 
found no fruit. 
If Christ could use animals for his own purposes, 
then so apparently could we. Augustine's view, 
however, was tempered in two respects. First, he 
denied that animals were mere instruments of hu- 
mans. As creatures made by God, they also pos- 
sessed a good of their own (7,8). Second, animals' 
utility was the use to which human intelligence 
might put them, not the convenience or incon- 
venience that they might present. Augustine did 
not hold that humans were to treat animals accord- 
ing to their own pleasure or displeasure (8). 
Aquinas’ view of animals was more sophisticated 
and less sympathetic. Every natural being that 
underwent development had an end or perfected 
state that God had created it to achieve. God made 
humans, however, as free and rational agents, with 
control over their actions. People’s lives took their 
objectives from their designs. Being neither free 
nor rational, an animal was merely a means to an 
end existing outside it (in the form of some pur- 
pose that a rational individual might have for it). 
Thus, the nonhuman animal was ordered, by na- 
ture and providence, to the use of humans (1). 
From Aquinas’ perspective, the Old Testament 
concern for animals had been appropriately char- 
acterized by Saint Paul. People should avoid mis- 
treating animals not because this would be best 
for the animals, but because cruelty could be harm- 
ful to humans. Strictly understood, disinterested 
charity towards animals was impossible, since there 
was no common fellowship between humans and 
them (2). 
In its essentials, this view prevails within the 
Catholic Church today . Its implications for research 
in the life sciences have not gone unnoticed .Writ- 
ing at the turn of this century, Father Joseph Rick- 
aby, the English Catholic moral theorist, denied 
that the suffering of animals was an obstacle to 
biological inquiry (42): 
Brutes are as things in our regard : so far as they 
are useful to us, they exist for us, not for them- 
selves; and we do right in using them unsparingly 
for our need and convenience, though not for our 
wantonness. If then any special case of pain to 
a brute creature be a fact of considerable value 
for observation in biological science or the medi- 
cal art, no reasoned considerations of morality 
