Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Authors’ Introduction

• In folk theology, it is sometimes claimed that non-human animals will join humans in heaven for eternity. Others claim that animals could not possibly join humans in heaven, for they lack souls and are therefore incapable of surviving their deaths. The status of animal eschatology in academic theology is not significantly different. Some, like John Wesley, have implied that animals will be ushered into heaven at some future time and remain there for eternity. Others, like St Thomas Aquinas, have argued that animals are not made of the right metaphysical stuff such that they can get to heaven. A few contemporary philosophers have argued that animals will enter heaven as compensation for their suffering on earth, and another has argued that heaven, by nature, is no place for animals.
• We think that there is good reason to believe that all animals shall be ushered into heaven and remain there for eternity. We therefore defend Animal Universalism: All sentient animals will be brought into heaven and remain there for eternity.
• By “all sentient animals” we mean all animals who have ever existed or will exist who have the capacity for subjective experience while lacking the capacity for propositional agency (or the capacity to act on judgments about reasons). We focus on propositional agency as our exclusion criterion because we believe such agency is necessary for the moral responsibility and autonomy that many Christian philosophers believe excludes some humans from heaven. By “heaven,” we mean the location or state of being described in traditional Christian theism as being constitutive of a good afterlife.