Introduction

What follows is a theological reflection about hard-to-love animals that exhibit behaviors so disturbing or “offensive” that their mere existence may seem incompatible with the existence of an all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful Creator-God. By “offensive” behaviors, I do not mean ordinary predation, as in wolves, sharks, or “lions [roaring] for their prey, seeking their food from God” (Psalms 104:21 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition), but rather behaviors that seem to be gratuitously cruel. For example, on May 22, 1860, six months after the publication of On the Origin of Species, English naturalist Charles Darwin (1860a) wrote a letter to his friend and advocate, American botanist Asa Gray:

I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.

Gray, a devout Christian, eagerly promoted Darwin’s theory of evolution in the United States, defending Origin from the mounting religious opposition led by fellow Harvard professor Louis Agassiz. In the nineteenth century, religious opposition to Darwin’s theories did not stem from a literal reading of Genesis but rather the natural theology popularized by William Paley ([1802] 1818, 22) with his rendition of the watchmaker analogy: “Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.” Paley argued that the natural world, in all its complexity and apparent design, revealed the Creator, an intelligent designer. At issue was the fortuitous randomness implied by Darwinism, including the appearance of new species by chance, thereby undercutting popular notions of divine purpose and design. Nevertheless, Gray maintained that natural selection was not inconsistent with natural theology, owing to the apparent perfection in the design and adaptations of organisms. However, it was this teleological argument that Darwin refused to accept, owing to his observations of incessant suffering in nature and the particularly elegant viciousness of the parasitoid wasps of the taxonomic family Ichneumonidae.

I shall return to the biology of the ichneumonid wasps shortly, but, contrary to Darwin’s objection, I argue that the existence of these wasps and other “offensive” creatures is perfectly compatible with said God. I do not, however, intend to wade into the murky water of theodicy and formulate a defense for why God created such animals, or even why God created a world that could give rise to them. Rather, I will only consider how these animals became so “offensive” and what the response to them should be. There may indeed be much to learn about God’s love and how God creates from these hardest-to-love, most “offensive” creatures.

Darwin’s May 22 letter captures two apparent conflicts. The first is the general problem of natural evil, that is, reconciling the overall “misery” or suffering endemic to the natural world with an all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful Creator-God. As David Bentley Hart (2005, 50) observes, “all the splendid loveliness of the natural world is everywhere attended —and, indeed, preserved—by death. All life feeds on life, each creature must yield its place in time to another, and at the heart of nature is a perpetual struggle to survive and increase at the expense of other beings.” The second conflict is more specific: reconciling the “offensive” creatures themselves with said God. While many authors have wrestled with the problem of natural evil, the latter conflict has been largely overlooked and is the focus of this article.

Inspired by the Eastern Christian ascetic tradition of contemplating nature (theoria physike), I am interested in what these “offensive” animals reveal about the Creator. As Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia (Ware [1979] 1986, 156–61) explains, when contemplating nature, the Christian is to discover the Creator in all things, that all things are essentially sacred, and how each thing points to the Creator. This practice has strong biblical roots, with the Psalmist proclaiming, “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth” (Psalms 8:1 NRSVUE), “[t]he heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (Psalms 19:1 NRSVUE), and “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalms 104:24 NRSVUE). Moreover, the Apostle Paul stated, “Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things he has made” (Romans 1:20 NRSVUE). Thus, what can be understood about the Creator in and through these “offensive” creatures?

First, let us explore the biology of the parasitoid wasps to understand why they so troubled Darwin. These wasps, belonging to various taxonomic families, including Ichneumonidae, lay eggs on or in their hosts, which are often other insects, including caterpillars. Then, the eggs hatch and the larvae slowly eat their host alive, eventually killing it, which is why these wasps are parasitoids and not parasites, which do not usually kill their host. One example is the emerald cockroach wasp (Ampulex compressa), whose reproductive behavior was first described in detail by Francis Williams (1942). The female wasp first finds and stings its cockroach host in the brain, injecting a paralyzing venom that disables its escape response. Next, she chews off half of each antenna from the incapacitated cockroach’s head and sips the exuding blood. The wasp then walks its victim to an underground burrow she excavated earlier, using what remains of one of the cockroach’s antennae as a leash; the cockroach, unable to resist, marches along willingly. The wasp then lays a single egg on the cockroach’s cuticle, carefully oviposited so as to not be dislodged by the host’s leg movement, and seals the cockroach and her offspring inside the burrow with pebbles. After three days, the egg hatches and the larvae spend five days feeding on the cockroach’s external anatomy while it is still alive. The larvae then chew into the cockroach’s abdomen and spend another week consuming its internal organs, which eventually kills the host. Finally, the larvae pupate inside the host and at last emerge from the cockroach as fully developed wasps. What troubled Darwin was the sophisticated viciousness of this process, which seemed utterly gratuitous, given that most insects do not reproduce in this way.

It must be noted that parasitoid wasps are hardly alone among “offensive” animals that are seemingly irreconcilable with a beneficent Creator. For example, male lions (Panthera leo) routinely engage in hostile takeovers of other prides, ousting the alpha males and systematically killing all the nursing cubs in the pride. This infanticide brings the nursing mothers back into estrous, so they become receptive to mating with and bearing the offspring of the new males (Packer 2000). Infanticide of this sort is a widespread phenomenon in animals (Hrdy 1979) and can function as a means of sexual coercion. Other forms of sexual coercion in animals include forced copulation (mating), sexual harassment, intimidation, and punishment, which are almost invariably inflicted by males on females and occasionally result in serious female injury or death (Clutton-Brock and Parker 1995).

Next, Nazca boobies (Sula granti) exhibit obligate siblicide, which begins with a clutch of two eggs laid four days apart. As soon as the younger chick has hatched, the older sibling begins pecking it to death while the mother watches and does nothing. The younger sibling is always killed and serves only as an insurance policy to the mother if the older chick is somehow defective (Anderson 1990). Another form of siblicide takes the form of intrauterine cannibalism within the bifurcated uterus of the sand tiger shark (Carcharias taurus). Dozens of embryos are reduced to two, as the largest and most aggressive individuals eat their brothers and sisters in utero until only one shark remains in each horn of the uterus (Gilmore, Putz, and Dodrill 2005). Lastly, the common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) is an obligate brood parasite. The mother cuckoo will sneakily lay an egg in a host species’ nest that is a convincing mimic of the host’s egg color and spotting pattern. The cuckoo chick hatches first and pushes the host’s other eggs out of the nest. The host parents feed the cuckoo chick as if it were their own, motivated by the cuckoo’s incessant cheeps that mimic a nest full of host chicks. Even once the cuckoo chick has reached adult size, much larger than the host parents, they continue to feed it (Payne 1977).

Central to the arguments that follow is that these “offensive” behaviors are not merely facultative, performed only by desperate individuals struggling to survive in the throes of unusually intense competition and resource limitation. Nor do these behaviors result from non-adaptive psychopathologies. Rather, these behaviors are adaptive and obligate, intrinsic to these species—intrinsic to their design. Yet, these behaviors are not necessary; most insect species are not parasitoids, most shark species do not exhibit intrauterine cannibalism, and most bird species are not brood parasites. These behaviors appear to exhibit a form of extreme selfishness that is downright cruel. For the materialist scientist, these selfish behaviors are exactly what should be expected in a world of merciless competition and resource limitation that, through differential survival and reproductive success, selects for increasingly adaptive and self-interested qualities. However, for the Christian, scientist or otherwise, this seemingly cruel world, driven by competition for limited resources, is hardly recognizable as the harmonious world proclaimed by the Psalmist, in which the Creator makes “springs gush forth in the valleys,” “giving drink to every wild animal” and “their food in due season” (Psalms 104:10–11, 27 NRSVUE).

The bottom line is that when contemplating nature, one must also contemplate these “offensive” animals. Their “offensive” behaviors cannot simply be shrugged off with platitudes like “wow, that’s nature.” But how, then, are Christians to make sense of these creatures? What do they reveal about the Creator? Are they “good,” or indeed “very good,” as proclaimed in the Hexaemeron Creation narrative (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31 NRSVUE)? Lastly, what should the response to them be? To answer these questions, it is helpful to understand how these animals became so “offensive.” Explanatory models can be broadly classified as alteristic, meaning Creation was drastically altered by the Fall of humankind, and non-alteristic, which Alexander Khramov (2017, 84) calls “perseveristic.”

Alteristic Models

Many Christians attribute the general suffering and death in the world, and by extension the “offensive” behaviors of humans and nonhuman animals, to Creation being somehow broken, corrupted, or fallen. “We live in a fallen world” is a common refrain. In the Genesis account of the Fall, the first humans, Adam and Eve, disobey God’s commandment not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The consequences for this sinful, selfish exercising of human freedom include hostility between humans and nature, increased childbearing pangs, and a curse on the ground thereafter requiring hard labor to work it. To Adam, God says, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:17 NRSVUE). Thus, many Christians have interpreted human sin to have cursed the entire cosmos (a so-called “cosmic Fall”), thereby introducing decay and death into the primordial “very good” (Genesis 1:31 NRSVUE) and paradisiacal Creation. This generally follows the assertion of the Apostle Paul that “the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor” (Romans 8:20–22 NRSVUE).

Many Christians also believe the Fall of humankind was a historical (temporal) event, before which Creation existed in a paradisiacal state free of suffering and death. For example, John Wesley (1872) preached that before the Fall, all creatures were “perfectly happy,” “endued with a degree of understanding,” and universally beautiful. They showed only “benevolence to each other” and even a “loving obedience to man.” They experienced “pleasure unmixed with pain” and were immortal. However, after the Fall, according to Wesley, these creatures became “utterly enslaved to irrational appetites,” “savage fierceness,” and “unrelenting cruelty.” Now, they “tear the flesh, suck the blood, and crush the bones of their helpless fellow creatures.” Their “primeval beauty” was overcome by “terrible and grisly” dispositions. They lost much of their “understanding” and became subject to pain and death.

Similarly, various articles published by Answers in Genesis, an apologetics organization that advocates young-Earth creationism and a literal-historical interpretation of Genesis, affirm that all animals were vegetarians before the Fall. For example, Liberty University professor Marcus Ross (2011) wrote of Tyrannosaurus rex that “when first created, all the land animals, including dinosaurs, ate only plants. The Bible does not spell out the specifics of T. rex’s transformation, but this once-peaceful king became a terror to all who dared to venture into his domain.” In the same vein, Saint Basil the Great (1888, 43–46) believed predators and scavengers were herbivorous before the Fall and subsequently turned carnivorous. Paul Ladouceur (2013) also summarizes many Orthodox Christian liturgical passages concerning the Fall that interpret this as a historical event. So, within the alteristic framework, in which the Fall is understood as a historical event with cosmic import, “offensive” behaviors such as predation, parasitoidism, infanticide, sexual coercion, siblicide, brood parasitism, and the like would have transpired in their respective creatures after and as a direct consequence of the human Fall.

There are of course serious scientific conflicts with this model, namely that pain, death, and “offensive” behaviors existed long before humans appeared on Earth. Recognizing this, other theologians have developed a more nuanced view of the timing and historicity of the Fall, such as C. S. Lewis ([1940] 2016, 87), who suggested that an angelic Fall may have occurred even before the material universe existed. Similarly, Hart (2005, 102) writes that “the fall of rational creation and the subjection of the cosmos to death is something that appears to us nowhere within the unbroken time of nature or history; we cannot search it out within the closed continuum of the wounded world; it belongs to another frame of time, another kind of time, one more real than the time of death.” This follows Sergius Bulgakov’s ([1945] 2002, 170–71) assertion that the Fall was not a temporal event in empirical history but rather a supratemporal (atemporal) event in “meta-history,” “beyond the limits of this world.” Alexander Khramov (2017) expands on this idea to construct an alteristic framework of evolution, affirming that “the basic properties of matter that made evolution possible are in fact no other than corruption brought by sin to the ‘very good’ world which preceded our observable universe.” For Khramov (2017), it is as if the Fall caused the prelapsarian world to implode, in a sense, resulting in the Big Bang (the “first cognizable manifestation of the human Fall”) and all the subsequent chaos, randomness, and selfishness of the empirical or postlapsarian world. Philip Sherrard (1976, 26) puts it similarly, saying the Fall was a lapse “into a materialized space-time universe.” Thus, aside from the speculative meta-historical Fall, these narratives embrace virtually all mainstream aspects of modern cosmology and evolutionary biology.

Although Khramov’s alterism is an admirable, compelling attempt to reconcile evolution with traditional Christian Fall and Redemption theologies, it and other alteristic models are not entirely satisfactory and leave many questions unanswered. First, alterism is often touted as an effective solution to the problem of natural evil because it blames the suffering and death in the world on human sin, not God. However, by saying God is not responsible for or did not intend (directly or indirectly) for the competition, predation, pain, suffering, death, disease, and resource limitation creatures experience, which are of course the very selection pressures that drive evolution and speciation, can it be said that any of the species arising from natural selection were God’s intention? What exactly then is God’s current role in Creation? Khramov’s alterism would seem to suggest that the “offensive” animals evolved from a sort of runaway selfishness that pervades the postlapsarian world, but what of the beautiful and wonderful animals that resulted from the very same selection pressures? Do we not admire the agility of cheetahs, the basketry of weaverbirds, the camouflage of octopuses, the dedicated parental care of emperor penguins, and the delightful courtship dances and plumage of birds of paradise? It seems we cannot praise God for the good bits of nature but write off the nasty bits as symptoms of a fallen world. They are a package deal.

Another concern about adopting an alteristic model of Creation is that, if the Creation we see today is not as God intended, basically amounting to damaged goods that will eventually be redeemed, why should anyone care about, love, or want to protect Creation? For example, Khramov (2017) repeatedly uses catastrophic language to characterize the empirical (postlapsarian) Creation, calling it “ruined,” “destroyed,” and “reduced to chaos,” compared to the “original,” “perfect,” and “very good” primordial (prelapsarian) Creation. He suggests the “very good” of Genesis 1:31 (NRSVUE) applies only to prelapsarian Creation and not the empirical world we experience now. Such pessimism about the empirical world, which Christopher Knight (2007) observes is particularly common in the Eastern Christian tradition, reminds me of the hymn popularized by Jim Reeves in 1962: “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.” There seems to be little motivation to cultivate any serious environmental ethic that is faithfully Christian if we are “just passing through” a sort of plan b of Creation. On the other hand, if the Creation we see today is as God intended, including all the particular creatures that have and continue to arise by Darwinian evolution, then Creation truly is a theophany worth contemplating and loving, including, and perhaps even especially, the “offensive” animals like the parasitoid wasps. Of course, such non-alteristic models of Creation necessarily require a deemphasis of the Fall’s cosmic import, which may not exactly be patristic but is nonetheless supported by various Christian theologians, including Eastern Orthodox (Bimson 2006; Fretheim 2010; Ladouceur 2013, 2018). Such interpretations of the Fall imply that biological death, for instance, is not evil but rather, being endemic to creation, a force underlying the ongoing creative process. Let us now explore in more detail these non-alteristic models.

Non-Alteristic Models

In non-alteristic models of Creation, the “offensive” animals and behaviors we have discussed are as God intended; they have not been altered by human sin. In one version of non-alterism, all of Creation as we experience it, including the “offensive” creatures and general misery in nature, is exactly or expressly as God intended, here and now. In this model, God controls every single eventuality (in a sort of micromanaging way) via direct divine sovereignty and total determinism; thus, there is universal teleology in Creation. Proponents of this model would affirm God has a purpose or plan in creating all creatures as they are, “offensive” behaviors and all, even though that purpose may not be plain to us. However, this is precisely what Charles Darwin refused to embrace. In a follow-up letter to Asa Gray on July 3, 1860, he asked, “Do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant?” (Darwin 1860b). Hart (2005, 29) also takes issue with this model, writing it seems to imply that “there is a divine plan in all the seeming randomness of nature’s violence that accounts for every instance of suffering, privation, and loss in a sort of total sum. This is an understandable impulse . . . but providence is not simply a ‘total sum’ or ‘infinite equation’ that leaves nothing behind . . . [and] to assert that every finite contingency is solely and unambiguously the effect of a single will working all things—without any deeper mystery of created freedom—is to assert nothing but that the world is what it is.”

Interestingly, if this deterministic “exactly-as-God-intended” model incorporates the effects of the Fall, it might actually be alteristic. For example, in his Hexaemeron homilies, Saint Basil the Great (1895) says “thus in nature all has been foreseen, all is the object of continual care. If you examine the members even of animals, you will find that the Creator has given them nothing superfluous, that He has omitted nothing that is necessary. To carnivorous animals He has given pointed teeth . . . all bear the marks of the wisdom of the Creator.” The phrase “all has been foreseen” seems to channel the theology of Basil the Great’s younger brother, Saint Gregory of Nyssa (1892, 467), who believed that because the Creator foresaw the Fall, God implanted in animals, including humans, the adaptations and bodily functions needed for survival in the corrupted world, which are the “garments of skin” (Genesis 3:21 NRSVUE): “sexual intercourse, conception, parturition, impurities, suckling, feeding, evacuation, gradual growth to full size.” So, although this sounds like the non-alterist narrative insofar as God intended the creatures to be as they are, because these intentions were altered to accommodate the anticipated corruption of the world due to the Fall, this ultimately reduces to alterism. However, this flavor of alterism tends to be less pessimistic about the empirical world, a point I shall return to shortly.

There is, however, another version of non-alterism that shows more promise because it can be reconciled with the mainstream scientific understanding of evolution by natural selection. This version is that Creation, including the “offensive” animals and selection pressures, is as God intended, insofar as God voluntarily created the universe in all its potential ex nihilo and empowered Creation to unfold (i.e., actualize the potentialities) according to natural laws (see Knight 2007; Southgate 2008; Peters 2021). However, the current (unfinished) state of Creation, a “divine work in progress” (Theokritoff 2017), does not reflect God’s ultimate intentions, which will only be revealed in the eschaton. In the empirical world, this model would be indistinguishable from Khramov’s alteristic model, however the hardships (selection pressures) would not be a consequence of the human Fall, meta-historical or otherwise, but rather a product of the freedom God gave to Creation. Hart (2005, 91) wrote the following in support of alterism, but it also applies here: “Unless the world is truly set apart from God and possesses a dependent but real liberty of its own analogous to the freedom of God, everything is merely a fragment of divine volition, and God is simply the totality of all that is and all that happens; there is no creation, but only an oddly pantheistic expression of God’s unadulterated power.”

This model might very well have been agreeable to Darwin (1860a), who, in his May 22 letter to Asa Gray wrote, “On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.” After all, God says, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures” and “[l]et the Earth bring forth creatures of every kind” (Genesis 1:20; 24 NRSVUE), but God does not dictate when, how, or all the exact forms that will come into existence.

Of course, this model must also not devolve into vapid deism. God must not be misunderstood to have withdrawn Himself from Creation but rather to be immanently present and actively engaged, permeating and sustaining the unfolding Creation. Such immanence may not be incompatible with creaturely freedom if we consider the logos (plural: logoi) cosmology of Saint Maximus the Confessor (Blowers 2016; Theokritoff 2017, Jackson 2023). Briefly, all created things are implanted with pre-existing logoi (divine ideas, principles, wills, or intentions), derived (phylogenetically, in a sense) from the archetype Christ the Logos (“In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word [Logos] was with God, and the Word [Logos] was God” (John 1:1 NRSVUE)), orienting and drawing created things toward their eschatological consummation in the uncreated logos, when God will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28 NSRVUE). However, Paul Blowers (2016) explains that “[Maximus] strictly distinguishes an individual creature’s logos, its ontological predisposition to fulfil its divinely intended end, and its tropos [hyparxeos] or ‘mode of existence,’ whereby it exercises its own freedom, its own proclivities and aversions.” Thus, we might say the logos describes what a creature is, whereas the tropos describes how a creature is. It seems Maximus only applied this logos-tropos distinction to rational creatures (i.e., humans), whose tropos could be aligned with their logos, or not. The extent to which this distinction should be extended to nonhuman creatures requires further study, however Andrew Jackson (2023) suggests that the tropos of nonhuman creatures is “fixed” in alignment with their logos. If true, this would indeed support the notion that even the “offensive” animals as we know them are how God intended.

Although Maximus was an alterist, expressing ideas similar (but perhaps more nuanced) to those of Gregory of Nyssa vis-à-vis “garments of skin” and a foreseen Fall, he does not dwell on prelapsarian Creation (“teleology trumps protology,” as Blowers (2016) puts it) and his vision of the empirical world is overwhelmingly positive. Elizabeth Theokritoff (2017) explains how his cosmic vision affirms the fundamental goodness of material Creation, that nothing created by God is intrinsically evil, that “the multiplicity and diversity of creatures is both intentional and real,” and that “we inhabit a meaning-filled world intended to serve as our teacher and guide.” Furthermore, according to Theokritoff (2017), Maximus emphasizes the “coherence of the whole” and a profound sense of “humanity with the rest of Creation,” with all creatures participating in the proverbial cosmic liturgy and ultimately intended for deification in their eschatological union with Christ. Unlike other alterists, Maximus does not view the postlapsarian history of Creation, nor even the incarnation and cross, as some sort of plan b. For Maximus, “the history of Creation is providentially pointed, not simply toward recovering a lost prelapsarian paradise, as if the beginning point of creation is to be reduplicated, but instead toward attaining an unprecedented transformation and deification” (Blowers 2016). To that end, Maximus sees the vocation of humans as mediators and microcosms of Creation, cooperating with God to transform Creation. This vision of human vocation forms the basis of the last part of this article on what might be the proper Christian response to “offensive” animals.

Responses to and Opportunities Provided by “Offensive” Animals

What should be our response to “offensive” animals, like the parasitoid wasps? In a word, love should be our response as Christians, especially the kind of all-embracing cosmic love that seems to permeate Eastern Christian theology. Andrew Louth (2021) describes how, unlike the stark dualism of Anders Nygren (1953), the church fathers assimilated both eros (desire, longing) and agape (selfless, sacrificial love) into their understanding of God’s love for Creation and, by extension, humankind’s proper love for Creation. The patristic understanding of love, often described as burning and ecstatic (self-transcending) in its fullness, clearly has metaphysical and cosmic dimensions. Such cosmic love is synergistic, aligning with God’s love to transfigure creation; eucharistic, embodying a sense of universal gratitude for and communion with Creation; and, ascetic (from askesis, meaning to exercise), embracing the ancient traditions of prayer, fasting, and acts of selflessness. However, Theokritoff (2013) explains that “the aim of the ascetic way is not to eat lower on the food chain, but to cut off our self-will and conquer our ‘self-love,’ our self-indulgence.” This process of self-denial “forms persons who are not hostage to their own desires but are capable of acting out of self-giving love” (Theokritoff 2013). Maximus the Confessor envisaged even the capacity to love in this way as an ascetic struggle (Louth (2021) translates askesis in this context as “disciplined training”). Thus, we might think of the capacity for cosmic love as a muscle needing exercise; disciplined training is required to build and strengthen this muscle. With that in mind, let us now examine why we should love the “offensive” animals, what that love might entail, and how “offensive” animals can be the heavyweights in our ascetic struggle to build our capacity for cosmic love.

Simply put, we should love the “offensive” animals because God loves them (“For God so loved (apagao) the world (kosmos) that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16 NRSVUE)) and intends to redeem them (“in hope that the creation (ktisis) itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” [Romans 8:20–21 NRSVUE]). Furthermore, as Hart (2005, 55) explains, because “God is not only good but goodness itself,” everything that comes from God must be good and true and beautiful: “Everything that is, insofar as it is, is entirely worthy of love. And it is this love and goodness of God that the Christian is bidden to find in the entirety of the created order.” Even John Wesley (1872), believing the “offensive” animals to have been corrupted by the Fall, nevertheless encouraged his listeners to “imitate Him whose mercy is over all His works,” “soften our hearts towards the meaner creatures, knowing that the Lord careth for them,” and “enlarge our hearts towards those poor creatures, to reflect that, as vile as they appear in our eyes, not one of them is forgotten in the sight of our Father which is in heaven.” The synergistic nature of cosmic love means that human beings, as mediators and microcosms of Creation, have a role to play in cooperating with God to transfigure Creation, uniting Creation in love, and uniting Creation with God (Theokritoff 2017). In short, we humans are icons of God and should reflect God’s love for Creation, even the “offensive” animals.

Next, how might loving “offensive” animals manifest itself? For one, it means not casting moral judgments on them, or any creature. It is a wise and holy impulse to feel compassion for and even revere the sacrificial victimhood (see Rolston (2018) on “cruciform creation”) in the killed lion cubs, the gobbled shark embryos, the younger booby siblings, and the cuckoo chick’s overworked foster parents and evicted foster siblings, and even to feel bewildered by the actors’ “offensive” behaviors. However, remembering the log in our own eyes (Matthew 7:3–5 NRSVUE), and that only humans have eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and now having the capacity to rebel against our intrinsic selfishness, we must refrain from judging and condemning these animals, who cannot rebel against theirs. Therefore, I have consistently used the word “offensive” in quotes; these behaviors are only “offensive” when viewed through an anthropocentric lens. Casting away the anthropocentric lens through which humans view nature is an ascetic act that cultivates a cosmic love for Creation.

These ideas are developed rather richly by Fyodor Dostoyevsky ([1880] 2009) in The Brothers Karamazov through his characters Ivan Karamazov and the Elder Zosima. Ivan, in a conversation with his brother Alyosha, observes that “people speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel” (Dostoyevsky [1880] 2009, 298). Elsewhere, Zosima, speaking before Alyosha and other visitors just before his death, cautions, “[M]an, do not pride yourself on superiority to the animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the Earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you—alas, it is true of almost every one of us!” (Dostoyevsky [1880] 2009, 406). Earlier, Zosima tells his visitors that “in the forest wanders the dreadful bear, fierce and menacing, and yet innocent in it,” and, speaking of animals more generally, that “there’s no sin in them, for all, all except man, is sinless, and Christ has been with them before us” (Dostoyevsky [1880] 2009, 372).

Once we resolve not to judge or condemn any creature, we are better prepared to engage in the contemplation of nature (theoria physike), which, I would argue, is another way to exercise cosmic love for Creation. Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia (Ware [1979] 1986, 156–61) describes the contemplation of nature as recognizing the “thisness” of creatures and explains that we are to see each creature “for what it truly is, in all the distinctness and intensity of its specific being” and that “no existing thing is paltry or despicable, for as God’s handiwork each has its unique place in the created order.” He also explains that in and through each creature we are to discern the Creator because “all things are permeated and maintained in being by the uncreated energies of God, so all things are a theophany that mediates His presence. At the heart of each thing is its inner principle or logos, implanted within it by the Creator Logos.” Thus, we are to acknowledge that each creature exists only in itself and for its Creator, praising God by its very being.

However, do the “offensive” animals “praise the Lord” (Psalms 150:6 NRSVUE) by their very being alone or also by their “offensive” behaviors? Christina Gschwandtner (2013) explains that the “praise of creation suffuses the [Eastern Orthodox] liturgical texts,” which affirm “creation as sacred . . . and as a full participant in the worship of God.” In her examination of these texts, Gschwandtner (2013) finds that “creation is portrayed as praising, singing, leaping with joy, clapping hands, rejoicing exceedingly and raising its voice, keeping feast, blessing the Lord, being amazed, rejoicing greatly, [and] even dancing.” In response to those who might dismiss this language as purely metaphorical, Gschwandtner (2013) makes clear that “the participation of all of creation in praise of God is explicit” and should be taken more literally. She goes on to quote some specific examples of creaturely praise from a homily by Jacob of Serug: “new sounds were heard from all the birds,” “all the flowers . . . sent forth perfume like sweet spices sending forth fragrance,” and “all creatures silent or eloquent, according to their natures rendered praise which was due” (Gschwandtner 2013). Again, I ask, do the “offensive” animals offer praise also by their parasitoidism, infanticide, siblicide, and brood parasitism, which, intrinsic to these species, would indeed be “according to their natures”? At least with a non-alteristic premise, the answer must be a resounding yes. I realize some may construe this as bold and perhaps unnecessary speculation; however, it seems a logical necessity of my argument. Any hesitancy to affirm that even these “offensive” behaviors offer praise, just like the “nice” behaviors mentioned, would stem from anthropocentric prejudice. It is through asceticism that we come to the joyful and cosmic realization that Gschwandtner’s (2013) thesis that “all creatures join together in the liturgical chorus” is truly universal, with no exceptions.

Another example of cosmic love is praying for the wellbeing of the “offensive” animals and even asking for their forgiveness. Dostoyevsky’s ([1880] 2009, 407) Zosima recounts how his dying brother, Markel, asked the birds for forgiveness: “My brother asked the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the Earth.” Recalling his brother’s words, Markel says, “Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have sinned against you too” (Dostoyevsky [1880] 2009, 364). Asking forgiveness of fellow humans is already a humbling, ascetic act, but to bring oneself to ask forgiveness of animals is truly strange and especially humbling. Nevertheless, Bishop Kallistos (Ware 2019) explains that praying for and blessing animals is perfectly acceptable: “They are to be approached with gentleness and tenderness; and, more than that, with respect and reverence, for they are precious in God’s sight.” He also writes that we “need to kneel down before the animals and to ask for their forgiveness for the evils that we inflict upon them” (Ware 2019). Although most of his cited prayers concern desirable and useful animals, such as domesticated animals, bees, silkworms, and beasts of burden, Bishop Kallistos (Ware 2019) writes that “even rats, hornets, and spiders have their appointed place in God’s dispensation.” I imagine he would agree that the “offensive” animals discussed in this article should not be left off the prayer list.

Moving on, what unique ascetical opportunities might “offensive” animals provide us to soften our hearts and exercise cosmic love for Creation? We begin with Saint Isaac the Syrian (1923, 341), who, when asked, “What is a merciful heart?” answered the following in his Ascetical Homilies:

The burning of the heart unto the whole creation, man, fowls and beasts, demons and whatever exists; so that by the recollection and the sight of them the eyes shed tears on account of the force of mercy which moves the heart by great compassion. Then the heart becomes weak, and it is not able to bear hearing or examining injury or any insignificant suffering of anything in the creation. And therefore, even on behalf of the irrational beings and the enemies of truth and even on behalf of those who do harm to it, at all times he offers prayers with tears that they may be guarded and strengthened; even on behalf of the kinds of reptiles, on account of his great compassion, which is poured out in his heart without measure, after the example of God.

It is interesting that Saint Isaac does not encourage prayer “even” for demons (notice that demons are merely listed among the “whole creation, man, fowls and beasts, demons and whatever exists”) but rather “even” for reptiles, of all things. This is because reptiles, especially snakes, were among the most “offensive” creatures of that era, recalling the serpent who tempted Eve in Genesis (3:1 NRSVUE): “More crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.” Earlier in his Ascetical Homilies, Saint Isaac (1923, 248) calls out reptiles specifically among fears and anxieties plaguing humans: “Pusillanimity, grief, despondency, fear of demons, fear of men, rumors of robbers, tales about epidemies, anxiety before sicknesses, fear of scarcity of food, fear of death, reptiles and beasts and other things of this kind.” Later, when praising the virtues of humility, he says, “And when the humble approaches the deadly reptiles, as soon as the touch of his hands attains to their bodies, the virulence of their deadly poison is cooled and with his hands he crushes them as if they were locusts” (Saint Isaac 1923, 386). And yet, he calls on his followers to pray “even” for reptiles.

Reptiles being vilified was nothing new. Three centuries earlier, Saint Basil the Great (1895) also spoke ill of reptiles in his Hexaemeron homilies. At the beginning of Homily IX, he claims to “know the laws of allegory” and criticizes those who “change the nature of reptiles and of wild beasts to suit their allegories. For me grass is grass; plant, fish, wild beast, domestic animal, I take all in the literal sense” (Saint Basil the Great 1895). Then, in pondering what lessons animals can teach humans, Saint Basil (1895) shuns certain creatures, especially vipers, as the “cruelest of reptiles,” which he believes were “born by gnawing through the womb, inflicting a proper punishment on their mother” and mating with lampreys in an “adulterous violation of nature.” Although we know that vipers do not mate with lampreys or “gnaw through the womb” (although most members of the taxonomic family Viperidae do indeed give live birth, as opposed to laying eggs, which could have been mistaken for matricide or matriphagy), Saint Basil’s understanding certainly would have landed vipers on the list of “offensive” animals. And yet, Saint Isaac in his Ascetical Homilies singles out “even” reptiles as objects for prayer. Once again, I ask what unique ascetical opportunities might “offensive” animals provide us to exercise cosmic love for Creation? The answer requires just a bit more setup.

At the beginning of this article, I referred to the “offensive” animals as “hard to love.” By this I meant their “offensive” nature makes them undesirable to most humans; they have little to offer most humans (at least at first glance) in terms of instrumental, aesthetic, or cultural value. Creatures may be similarly hard to love due to their banality, fearful appearance, cultural vilification, or potential to be dangerous or pestilent. Such creatures might include spiders, mosquitos, cockroaches, snakes, sharks, poisonous or thorny plants, weeds, parasites, and pathogenic bacteria and fungi. On the other hand, research shows that humans’ most favored animals tend to be phylogenetically similar (i.e., other mammals), aesthetically pleasing (e.g., cute, furry, colorful, delicate, intricate), emotionally reciprocal (e.g., dogs), intelligent (e.g., dolphins), innocuous (i.e., not likely to bite, sting, poison, or pass disease), useful to humans or essential to the environment (e.g., livestock, honeybees, “keystone” species), culturally valuable (e.g., national emblems), or relatively large in size (e.g., elephants, whales, and other “charismatic megafauna”) (Batt 2009). Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with loving animals for these reasons, but these desirable qualities render such animals rather easy to love. Returning to our earlier analogy, their light weight may not be particularly helpful in our ascetic strength training to build our capacity for cosmic love.

Therefore, if we are striving to cultivate an all-embracing cosmic love for Creation, we might focus on the “offensive” creatures precisely because they are hard to love, undesirable to most, and yet are entirely worthy of our love. After all, Jesus went out of his way to love and minister to the outcasts of society, the least desirable, the overlooked, the hardest to love: the poor and downtrodden, prostitutes, tax collectors, the Samaritan woman, lepers. Through his love, Jesus created value in these people who had “offensive” appearances, professions, behaviors, and afflictions. Are the “offensive” animals not similarly outcasts? By giving attention to the “offensive” animals, by finding desirable qualities and creating value in them, we engage in that ascetic struggle to build our capacity to love Creation with an all-embracing cosmic love.

Conclusions

In summary, the lessons to be learned from the “offensive” animals as follows. First, they reveal God’s mysterious love and patience in creating and God’s empowering of the cosmos with a kind of freedom to unfold. This of course implies that Creation is not yet finished (a “divine work in progress,” as Theokritoff (2017) puts it) and therefore does not, in its current form, reflect God’s ultimate intentions. Next, the “offensive” animals challenge us to love all of Creation unconditionally and enthusiastically and recognize that these creatures present unique ascetical opportunities for us to exercise this kind of cosmic love. This is exemplified by Dostoyevsky’s character Zosima, who encourages his followers to throw themselves onto the Earth and kiss it and love it in ecstasy, to treat all creatures with measureless tenderness, and even to ask forgiveness of the birds. Zosima says not to be ashamed of this ecstasy but rather to treasure it as a gift from God:

Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble it, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. (Dostoyevsky [1880] 2009, 406)

Lastly, as a way forward, cosmic love for Creation could transform relatively recent constructions of environmental stewardship into an ascetic environmental ethic that is perhaps more faithfully Christian. The stewardship construct was developed primarily as a response to charges by Lynn White (1967) and others of exploitation and despotism associated with God telling humans in Genesis (1:28 NRSVUE) to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the Earth.” However, stewardship seems to have been largely ineffective at reducing demand for natural resources and quelling environmental destruction. As Christopher Vena (2009) sees it, the failure of most formulations of the stewardship paradigm is that they are fundamentally anthropocentric, affirming the supremacy of humans as separate from and above the rest of Creation. Stewardship generally implies that nature needs to be managed, tended, cared for, and protected by humans, thereby reinforcing our already largely instrumental engagement with nature and the notion that nature exists primarily for human usage, albeit sustainable usage with proper stewardship. Ironically, the tending and managing is necessary only because of humans’ destructive practices. Stewardship mostly ignores the interconnectedness between humans and the rest of Creation. An ascetic environmental ethic might mean not living above or even in nature, but perhaps with nature, as part of nature. We are animals. Besides our shared evolutionary kinship, we are united in fragility, dependence on God, and having been brought into being from nothing. Humans are, however, distinct in our capacity to rebel against our selfish animal instincts, which gives us a moral responsibility to live ascetically, make sacrifices, and be for and with Creation. We should perceive Creation in terms of and reflecting God’s love for it. We must become less concerned with how a creature is and simply focus on that it is. The humility that comes from asceticism should challenge us to discover the Godwardness in all creatures and to allow them to exist in relation to their Creator, praising God by their very being, regardless of any cultural value or service they may provide. This of course must include the “offensive” animals like the parasitoid wasps.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Gayle Woloschak, Elizabeth Theokritoff, and Deacon Perry Hamalis, for leading the Evolution and Environment working group of Project SOW (Science and Orthodoxy around the World), and for constructive feedback on early drafts of this paper. Additionally, I would also like to thank the other members of the Project SOW Evolution and Environment working group, as well as Michael Lodahl, Deacon Rico Paul Monge, Christopher Howell, and the members of the Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) Science and Theology Faculty Discussion Group, for constructive feedback and fruitful discussions that improved this paper. This work was made possible by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, which funded Project SOW, and a mini-grant awarded to me by the PLNU Science and Faith Engagement Program. Lastly, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for providing constructive feedback that greatly improved this paper.