Do Animals Have Souls?

I must admit I used to believe animals had no souls.  After all, there is no outward evidence that they are self-aware or self-reflective, and that was my criteria for having a soul.  I equated personhood with having a soul and thought if animals were persons, how would it be moral to kill and eat them?

Dr. Hugh Ross in his article on soulish animals points out that the word, “create” is only used three times in Genesis chapter 1: for the creation of the earth (vs.1), for the creation of animals (vs. 21), and for the creation of man (vs. 27). 

Ross poses that this indicates the word for “create” (bara Heb.) may mean something special about the creation of these creatures.  He thinks it means they/we all have souls. 

C.S. Lewis in his book The Problem of Pain says while we may think of dogs, for instance, as persons, it is only because we use pronouns indicating gender.  We say he and she to describe our pets.  Lewis says this is misleading.  He says while we may see an animal in pain, it would be a mistake to say, “He is feeling pain” since there is no one in there to feel the pain.  He says it would be more accurate to say, “There is pain going on in the animal but it is not being felt by a person.” 

I tend to agree with Lewis to a point.  I still don’t believe the vast majority of animals are self-aware or that any except humans are self-reflective.  Animals don’t think about what they think about or understand abstract thought as humans do.  But, is that what qualifies one as having a soul? 

Over the years since reading The Problem of Pain I’ve studied my dog, Gus, to see if he displayed soulish traits.  He was handy and easy to examine.  It seemed only natural to use him as the subject of my research.  What I noticed was quite striking, to me, at least.  Dogs learn, they love and hate.  They are sad and happy.  They dream indicating they can remember things without the need of repetitive conditioning.  I’ve even seen Gus make decisions and communicate his wishes.  He used to stand in the bedroom doorway and stare at us every night to tell us it was time for us all to go to bed. 

One of the pre-Socratic philosophers tells of sitting in the woods one day and seeing a rabbit run up a nearby path.  The rabbit turned down one of the forks in the path.  Shortly after, a dog appeared obviously chasing the rabbit.  The dog stopped and sniffed one fork in the path then took off up the other fork, the one the rabbit had taken.  Was the dog following the scent of the rabbit? No, he only sniffed the fork the rabbit did not go down.  “The dog made a logical deduction without testing the second fork”, observes the philosopher.

Aristotle believed souls exist in all living things including plants, though they were of various qualities and getting more complex as the organism becomes more complex.  The soul of a petunia, for instance, would be a very simple one compared to the complexity of Koko the gorilla who could sign more than 1000 words in a modified form of American Sign Language.  She could use those signs to share ideas with her trainer.  Koko even seemed self-aware.  That was a gorilla. The human soul is even more complex.

To get back to Doctor Ross and his interpretation of Genesis chapter 1, it does seem animals have souls of some sort.  Like Aristotle, I believe Man’s soul is special and unique.  We can think abstractly and self-reflect because we are made in God’s image.  I also believe “soulishness” may apply to animals like Gus. 

The human soul is a marvelous immaterial thing, a gift from God.  With it, we share much of our Creator’s attributes to a lesser degree.  We love, are saddened, are self-aware, and think abstractly.

Do animals go to heaven, then?  Well, there will be horses there (Rev. 6), so maybe they do.  Gus is gone now.  I miss him. If animals do have souls, maybe I’ll still get to see my buddy Gus again.