Man's Stewardship Position (# 8 in a series)

At this point, #8, I am about halfway through my notes on the subject of Pets in Heaven. I cannot be sure that I am halfway through writing the series because God may show me more, or I may decide that something I thought was relevant before really isn't. Unlike a college term paper, I never know exactly where I am ending when I write for my blog—I simply start out in a general direction to an end point, and that may be at the end of a circuitous trail, or it may be a straight shot down a highway. For this series, the end point is that ultimately your pets will be in Heaven because you love them. But first... 

In today's blog, we are going to look at the God-ordained stewardship that God placed on Adam, and how this affected the relationship between animals and humans. Hopefully we can find some evidence that our stewardship position over our pets gives us the authority to "love them into Heaven."

Our steward assignment is initially and clearly stated in Genesis 1:26 when God is speaking as His triune-Self and making an announcement to the witnesses around the Throne. That would almost certainly include the four living creatures described later in Ezekiel and Revelation, and most probably quite a few other high-ranking eternal beings. And unless you are ready to argue that the first chapter of Job is allegory only,  Lucifer would have been there. The two points that are important for the Pets-in-Heaven quest are these:  1. God spoke a purposeful Declaration of Intent to Create, and 2. there were witnesses.  

Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, to rule the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all wild animals on earth, and all reptiles that crawl upon the earth (the creatures that move along the ground)."

He made man to rule. In many of the classic translations, the phrase "to rule" is rendered "let them have dominion."

As a kid, I thought this was fairly straightforward; humans are in charge over animals. When I researched it for this blog, however, 👀!  Let's just say the debate was fairly eye-opening.
For example, Gill's Exposition says that having dominion means "to make use of it (the animals) as should seem convenient for them (humans)." I'm thinking that Gill, who wrote his commentary between 1746 and 1763, would probably want to phrase that differently if he were writing today because the common usage for the word "convenient" has changed over time. In that era, it meant suitable. For Gill, if a food was convenient, it would be suitable for his body, having the right mix of nutrients to make him strong and give him energy, whereas today, convenient would mean suitable for our schedule and ready-to-eat in just minutes. I don't want to get too far off-topic about our pets-in-heaven quest, but if we are going to keep a well-rounded perspective, I probably need to interject this:
→  Having dominion includes the foundational authority for making animal sacrifice. We know that God has a respect for animal blood because he accepted it as a covering for sin. Far spread in both time and geography, this dominion over animals has been abused in pagan sacrifices and luciferian rituals to fallen spiritual entities. We can deduce some good news/bad news conclusions here. The bad news is that dominion has been misused to further corruption. The good news is that God valued animal blood highly enough to accept it; the purpose may seem grisly to contemporary sensibilities, but blood from clean animals was valued nevertheless.    

The "them" in "let them have dominion" is sometime disputed as meaning either Adam and Eve specifically, or as humankind in general. I do not know Greek grammar and have no opinion in that respect, but most scholars whose views I have read are on the side of "them" being all humankind. I don't see why it could not be both.
It makes sense to me that conferring dominion over animals was first a decision by God, then a directive given to Adam, and that eventually Adam would commission all his heirs with that authority. By Genesis 4, first-generation Abel is caring for flocks.

The herdsman is the first and probably the most obvious biblical example of man's rule over animals, but a web-search will turn up quite a lot of interesting-in-a-nerdy-way speculation over what is meant by "having dominion."¹  For the purpose of out Pets in Heaven question, we can simplify this to say, despite what may be going on in those little animal brains (and those of cats in particular), it is the human that has authority over his or her pet, not the other way around.

Two verses after His Declaration of Intent to Create Man, in Genesis 1:28, God speaks to the now fully-formed Adam and his wife. The "Man's Dominion Plan" is expanded upon with five verbs in three sets.
A. pertaining to human beings
   1. be fruitful
   2. multiply
B. pertaining to the earth
   3. fill
   4. subdue
C. pertaining to every living thing that moves
   5. rule over

And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

Scripture establishes that animals are under human dominion on Earth. It is also significant that God said this before the fall. That makes it more of a job description than a direct order.  The precise boundary between those may seem blurred, but a job description has more personal discretion about how to get the job done, while a direct order will have strict consequences for non-compliance. Before the fall, Adam had only one direct order, "Do not eat that." But when it came to being fruitful, multiplying, filling, subduing, and ruling, Adam was being appointed to fill those positions in creation. They are not one-man jobs. They are the positions humanity was created to fill on Earth.

Things Get Complicated

In Eden, the five "job assignments" listed above would have been toil-free. The work would have been delightfully fulfilling to man and joyously pleasing to God. Adam's disobedience and the subsequent fall of mankind changed many things in the environment, and after the Flood in the days of Noah radical changes would take place again.

Some theologians teach that man lost his "dominion mandate" over animals. Some give very persuasive speeches. I have several reasons for believing they are wrong, which I will cover in the rest of this blog post. If they are correct and man did lose his authority over animals, we have very little standing when we ask God to keep our specific pet in Heaven just for us.  On the other hand, if mankind retained this authority after Eden, then we have not only legal standing, but also a duty of stewardship over out pets.

The typical "Our dominion was relinquished by the fall" argument goes something like this:

 Snakes and wasps bite and sting. Some dogs maul their owners. Tiger tamers have been killed and orca trainers have been drowned. Most wild animals flee in fear from man, and those that don't will savagely attack. Why, God Himself says that man cannot even put a nose-ring in behemoth (Job 40:24)! Man has never been able to make the lion lie down with the lamb.  Clearly, mankind has no rule, control, right, or power over these creatures—therefore, his dominion must have been revoked.

To counter an argument like that, we need to decide if God's declaration, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over (animals)," is physical-realm decree only, or if it pertained to spirit and soul as well. I think that as we work our way through the counter-argument, it will become clear that the connection with animals is beyond the physical body only, and that our dominion was not permanently revoked, only radically changed by the fall.

Some of my readers are going to find this first point to be either too flakey or too mystic to suit them. That's okay; our Western culture has trained us to think in terms of the scientific and the concrete.  The pet-in-heaven question does not stand or fall on this first part, and I will be adding more scripture-based content later, but an awareness of the spiritual happenings in the Garden of Eden can increase our understanding and may even offer an additional layer of comfort.

We know that by the end of the sixth day of creation, God saw all that He had made and judged that it was "very good," Genesis 1:31.  The "very good" status would include not only Adam's body, but also his purpose, his abilities, and his communication skills. The animals were also part of the creation judged as very good, and they were given skills and abilities commensurate with their purpose. When anthropologists study ancient civilizations, they find that one common thread among the legends is that at the beginning of the world animals once talked. I am not going to claim that animals in Eden had the muscular structure and nervous system control to form spoken words, but I do think this points to a universal support that man and animals once had communication skills that were greatly enhanced from what we experience today. I am not comfortable calling it "mental telepathy" either, but I do believe that in some measure, Adam was able to "tune in" to the needs and desires of the animals that he was to rule over. It is against the nature of God to give him an assignment without equipping him for the task. This would indicate that the authority to rule over animals was more than simply physical. 

There is little doubt that the animal kingdom was altered by the fall, but Genesis 3:14 provides this information indirectly. God, speaking to the serpent, says, "Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field."  With the logic of the Mad Hatter tea party, when Alice is asked if she'd like more tea, and she replies, "Well, I haven't had any yet, so I can't very well take more," we work out that if the serpent was more cursed, the cattle and the beasts were somewhat cursed. 

Some of the stronger evidence of  the fall's effect on animals in early Genesis is actually found in the parallel effect on the plant kingdom.   Thistles and thorns sprang up from the direct curse of the ground, but because plants were the food source for all creation, we would expect collateral damage for animals. Genesis 3:17-18 reads, "Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;" Life became harder and full of struggle, but the original mandate was not revoked.  Adam was not relieved of his duty, but was transferred out of the home office in Eden to go colonize the wilderness. And now that the animals were getting a substandard diet, they lost some of their ability to communicate and became irritable. When it rains, it pours,

The Woodpecker on the Ark

...which happens to be a perfect segue to talk about the the flood of Noah's day.  God has decided that it is time to hit the reset button. He proceeds with His plan to wipe out all humanity except for eight persons on an ark. And what is Noah's main job when cataclysmic catastrophe hits? Steward over animal life!  He is ruling, exercising dominion over the land animals. It is hard to imagine a more dramatic confirmation than this to show that God still expected His original declaration of man's rule over living beings to remain in effect. At least Noah caught a break with the aquatic animals being able to fend for themselves. 

After the waters receded, God reiterates to Noah the declaration that he had made at the time of creation of man:  

God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are placed under your authority.
But you, be fruitful and multiply; spread out over the earth and multiply on it." Then God said to Noah and his sons with him, "Understand that I am confirming My covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you—birds, livestock, and all wildlife of the earth that are with you—all the animals of the earth that came out of the ark.  
Genesis 9:1-2, 7-10  Holman Christian Standard Bible®

Some Bible teachers believe that this Noahic covenant replaces what God first declared in Genesis 1:28, and they teach that man's dominion over animals was either revoked or lost because the 1. be fruitful, 2. multiply, and 3. fill parts are still an exact match, but the 4. subdue and 5. rule-over parts are not.  I do not see it that way. It seems to me that this augments and adapts the original to fit a post-flood environment, but that it never changes God's original intent. The fear and terror of mankind will be in every living creature now, so God adapted the subduing and ruling to a more realistic level by saying "They are placed under your authority," or "into your hand are they delivered" in the King James version, Genesis 9:2.²

We have indications that Jesus' disciples understood and accepted man's dominion over animals. When Jesus used this precept in making a soul analogy, Peter clearly understood what was meant by "Feed my sheep." Not only was he being instructed to provide believers with the truth of the Word, but he was also being given a shepherd's authority—this is the paradox of ruling as a servant; it is stewardship authority. This particular authority, under God, was conferred to Peter by Jesus. Not any random person pulled off the street has the authority to feed Jesus' sheep; but my point here is that it is a picture of how God designed our designated dominion to work.  

Our dominion (רָדָה Strongs H7287) is a stewardship dominion, that is, we rule over animals to serve God's glory, not our own.   Do you remember the Westminster Shorter Catechism? 

Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. 

That is how our dominion over animals is to be used: to glorify God. We cannot fulfill it perfectly because we are not in an Edenic environment, but it is a skill that we will be called to use in our future home with God. There is coming a restoration of all things—
Peter, speaking at Solomon's colonnade, said, "Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped away, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus, the Christ, who has been appointed for you.  Heaven must take Him in until the time comes for the restoration of all things, which God announced long ago through His holy prophets," Acts 3:19-21.

A Two-Point Takeaway
Given all this information, I come to two conclusions that promote our Pets-in-Heaven investigation. 

First, God designed humanity with a complete array of attributes needed to exercise our stewardship over fish, birds, reptiles, wild animals, livestock, and all forms of animals in which there is the breath of life.  That "Complete Array" goes beyond tending to physical needs to include relating to animals at the level of their soul as well, whereby we can communicate approval, displeasure when necessary, and even love. God has designed us with an affinity for animals. These are skills that we do well to develop while we are here on Earth because they will be needed when we "reign with Christ."

Secondly, animals in general, and pets in particular, were given to help train us for our place in the age to come.  That gives animals value, because they glorify God by assisting us in reaching our eventual destiny that is sung about in Revelation 5:10, "And they sang a new song: 'Worthy are You (Jesus) to take the scroll and open its seals, because You were slain, and by Your blood You purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them into a kingdom, priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.'"

 Man's stewardship over animals is then a symbiotic relationship. We benefit from our relationship with animals and they benefit from their relationship with us.  Our pets are actually smack-dab in the center of God's design when they accept our benevolent rule over them.
 
There is a verse in the book of Ruth that, on the surface, seems to have nothing to do with pets in heaven.  But it does reveal the nature of God's character, and so in that regard it applies. 
 "May the LORD reward your work, and your wages be full from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge," Ruth 2:10.
It would not be out of character for God to reward a pet that has served a human by allowing it admission to Heaven.





Footnotes

¹ Remembering that since only plants had been "given for food" at this point in history, one of the debates is over dairy products. We assume Eve nursed her children, so Cain was not strictly vegan. Flocks have many non-food uses; one commonly overlooked is lanolin in sheep, which is used to keep skin soft and would have been valuable in the thorns & thistles environment outside the garden. 

 ²  Another school of thought claims that Adam lost his dominion over animals at the time of the fall, and that his dominion was transferred to Satan. I am skipping that in this post because (a) a full rebuttal would require a long, long explanation of what happened in the spiritual realm and its impact on our terrestrial realm, and (b) it is not really necessary since Genesis 9:2 says "every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are delivered." So even if that was the case, there was at least a modified restoration after the flood. Besides which, that view argues for an Adam-sourced dominion that I am not proposing here; I am building the case for stewardship dominion that is delegated to man, but fundamentally God-sourced.