Classifying Humans as Animals

I’ve thought it interesting and a little frustrating that Christians so easily accept the classification of humans in the animal kingdom. Of course, we do share with the animals the fact that we are created from the dust and are therefore of the earth. But doesn’t the fact that we are made in the image of God and therefore distinguished from the animals carry more weight? Perhaps this sounds too religious to Christians who live in the constant, scathing objections of unbelievers.

The Teacher of Ecclesiastes highlights two radically opposed perspectives: life under the sun and life under God’s authority. Life under the sun is life without reference to God or the spiritual realm or the afterlife. From this perspective, meaning itself is meaningless. Why strive for more knowledge? Does it somehow benefit you in the end, or only make you more miserable? He follows this type of reasoning in several different directions, each time finding that nothing carries meaning—not pleasures, not wisdom, not wealth, not our labors.

In contrast to this he finds that life under God’s authority does offer meaning. Under God, we can be confident that those who oppress the poor will be brought to justice in the end. Under God, the very dust from which we were made has meaning ready and willing to be comprehended by humanity.

Knowing The Teacher’s purpose makes the following under-the-sun statements interesting: “I also thought, ‘As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?’”

So when The Teacher expresses his a-theist perspective, he makes the argument that man and animal are not really that different after all, that in fact man really is just an animal, that both are from the dust and will return to the dust. From this perspective, of course man should be classified in the animal kingdom.