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“God said, 'Behold! I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed. To you it shall be for meat.”
— Genesis l:29
“'Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.' So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food.”
— Daniel 1:12-15
“He [God] causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the labor of man, So that he may bring forth food from the earth.”
— God, Psalm 104:14
“It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.”
— God, Romans 14:21
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
— God, Matthew 5:7
“Flesh shall ye not eat.”
— Genesis 9: 4-5
“He that slays an ox is as he that slays a man.”
— Isaiah 66: 3:
“Do not eat the flesh of strangled animals.”
— Acts 15
“In that day the wolf and the lamb will lie down together, and the leopard and goats will be at peace. Calves and fat cattle will be safe among lions, and the little child shall lead them all. The cows will graze among bears; cubs and calves will lie down together, and lions will eat grass like the cows. . . Nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for as the waters fill the sea, so shall the earth be full of the knowledge of the Lord.”
— Isaiah 11:6-10
“It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumble, or is offended, or made weak.”
— God, Romans 14:21
“The righteous one regards the life of his animal but the heart of the wicked is without mercy.”
— Proverbs 12:10
“I decided that God is testing us, to show us that we are no better than animals. After all, the same fate awaits man and animals alike. One dies just like the other. They are the same kind of creature. A human being is no better off than an animal … How can anyone be sure that a man's spirit goes upward while an animal's spirit goes down into the ground?”
— Ecclesiastes 3:19
“Be not among the winebibbers nor the riotous eaters of animal flesh.”
— Proverbs 20: 23
“The Bible's emphasis is on the good treatment of animals, and not just the forbidding of cruel treatment.”
— Rev. Billy Graham
“[The apostle St.] Peter said, ‘I live on olives and bread to which I rarely only add vegetables.' … [For] the unnatural eating of meats is as polluting as the heathen worship of devils, with its sacrifices and its impure feasts, through participation in it a man becomes a fellow eater with devils.”
— Pseudo-Clementine Homolies
“It is far better to be happy than to have your bodies act as graveyards for animals. Accordingly, the apostle [St.] Matthew partook of seeds, nuts and vegetables, without meat.”
— St. Clement of Alexandria
“James, the brother of the Lord ... was holy from his mother's womb; and he drank no wine nor strong drink, nor did he eat meat.”
— Hegesippus
“The eating of meat was unknown up to the big flood, but since the flood they have put the strings and stinking juices of animal meat into our mouths, just as they threw in front of the grumbling sensual people in the desert. Jesus Christ, who appeared when the time had been fulfilled, has again joined the end with the beginning, so that it is no longer allowed for us to eat animal meat.”
— St. Jerome
“The saints are exceedingly loving and gentle to mankind, and even to brute beasts ... Surely we ought to show them [animals] great kindness and gentleness for many reasons, but, above all, because they are of the same origin as ourselves.”
— St. John Chrysostom
“Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight. ... Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.”
— Rev. Andrew Linzey
“Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals ) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission - to be of service to them whenever they require it... If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”
— St Francis of Assisi
“Now what is it that moves our very heart, and sickens us so much as the cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this; first, that they have one us no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which make their sufferings so especially touching... there is something so very dreadful, so Satanic in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.”
— Cardnial Newman
“Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God."
— Cardinal John Henry Newman
“To shut your mind, heart, imagination to the sufferings of others is to begin slowly but inexorably to die. It is to cease by inches from being human, to become in the end capable of nothing, generous or unselfish – or sometimes capable of anything, however terrible.”
— John Austin Baker
“It is in the battery shed that we find the parallel with Auschwitz....To shut your mind, heart and imagination from the sufferings of others is to begin slowly, but inexorably, to die. Those Christians who close their minds and hearts to the cause of animal welfare, and the evils it seeks to combat, are ignoring the Fundamental spiritual teachings of Christ himself.” “Yet saddest of all fates, surely, is to have lost that sense of the holiness of life altogether; that we commit the blasphemy of bringing thousands of lives to a cruel and terrifying death or of making those lives a living death -- and feel nothing.”
— Rt. Rev. Dr. John Baker
“Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight.... Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.” “Christian theology provides some of the best arguments for respecting animal life and for taking seriously animals as partners with us within God's creation. It may be ironical that this tradition, once thought of as the bastion of human moral exclusivity, should now be seen as the seed-bed for a creative understanding of animal liberation.”
— Rev. Dr. Andrew Linzey
“God intends our care of the creation to reflect our love for the Creator.”
— Dr. John R. W. Stott
“As far as whether we are allowed to kill and to eat animals, there is a remarkable ordering of matters in Holy Scripture. We can read how, at first, only plants are mentioned as providing food for man. Only after the flood, that is to say, after a new breach has been opened between God and man, are we told that man eats flesh...Nonetheless...we should not proceed from this to a kind of sectarian cult of animals. For this, too, is permitted to man. He should always maintain his respect for these creatures, but he knows at the same time that he is not forbidden to take food from them. Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.”
— Pope Benedict XVI |
