Heavenly Creatures? Visions of Animal Afterlife in Seventeenth-Century England

Strickland, Lloyd ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2560-6909 (2022) Heavenly Creatures? Visions of Animal Afterlife in Seventeenth-Century England. The Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture, 8 (1). pp. 1-24. ISSN 2057-4517

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Abstract

This article offers an extensive study of the idea of an animal afterlife in seventeenth-century England. While some have argued that the idea of an animal afterlife became prevalent at the time due to increased awareness of animals’ mental abilities, others have suggested it was due to greater sensitivity to animal suffering and the perceived need to square this suffering with divine justice. I show that both views are incorrect, and that seventeenth-century thinking about an animal afterlife was first and foremost grounded in, and shaped by, speculations about end times and the restored creation based on a literal reading of a key passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:19–22), which thus served as the sedes doctrinae throughout the seventeenth century. Lastly, I show that those who entertained a future life for beasts also supposed that animals would have a functional role therein, considering animals as being present in the restored creation to serve some spiritual end rather than as being true beneficiaries in their own right.