A Theological Reflection on Hunting - By Dr. Don J. Payne

A Theological Reflection on HUNTING


by Dr. Don J. Payne

Hunting magazines commonly feature articles that offer some sort of apologetic for hunting. While
these articles may seem to “preach to the choir,” many of them seek to assist hunters who find
themselves on the defensive with those who consider hunting offensive. Suggesting tactics for
discussion and debate, this journalistic strategy intends to strengthen the confidence of hunters
against naysayers who claim or assume the moral, intellectual, and cultural high ground while
making hunters look (and maybe feel?) like unlettered holdovers from a barbaric era.

Numerous sociological, cultural, and intellectual patterns suggest that hunters may have to defend
their practice for some time to come. Yet, the day will not be won by simply rehashing or
intensifying current (and, too often, dismissive or pejorative) rhetorical approaches. Vitriolic
apologetics1 only serve to galvanize the self-congratulatory superiority of hunters in their own
minds, avoid thoughtful engagement with complex issues, and deepen the chasm. In a slightly
different vein, while defenses of hunting that demonstrate the economic and environmental benefits of hunting2 are important, they will ultimately fail to win the day for those whose reservations are rooted more theologically.

This reflection on hunting is offered not merely for those who find themselves on the defensive with anti-hunters who find hunting offensive or unnecessary, but for those, hunters and non-hunters alike, who struggle to reconcile some aspect of the practice with a well-developed theology of creation (a discussion only recently getting the attention of many evangelicals). Though I consider these concerns historically novel and theologically porous, I do take them and their proponents seriously. I hope not to occupy neither the adversarial posture nor the attitude so prevalent in hunters whose only resort is a sort of bumper sticker dismissal of anti-hunters. As Thomas McIntyre reflects in his own meditations on hunting, “Finding a way of dealing with the inescapable conundrum of death has no minor relevance to the lives of all conscious beings.”3 I will suggest, however, that what seems like a highly informed theological resistance is actually a set of sensibilities that have been shaped by factors other than the text of Scripture.

No particular Christian group or tradition stands in my crosshairs. Thus, my argument should find its path along the contours of the particular questions and reservations that may exist in each reader.

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I have in general view, however, those who take the Bible seriously and consent that it has some
type of God-given authority over faith and life. Hermeneutical (interpretive) assumptions are
unavoidably involved in my own position but I will assume, rather than identify and defend, those assumptions in this essay.

I will attempt to articulate as even-handedly as possible some of the biblical or theological objections frequently raised against hunting. Depending on who states these objections, they sometimes appear to be more visceral than reasoned, though I'm sure my own biases are also reflected in how I hear these claims. Still, I wish to represent them as honestly and respectfully as possible. My intent is to offer hunters a theological framework in which to think about what it means to hunt and to hunt ethically. In so doing, I hope for greater mutual respect and appreciation between hunters and anti-hunters (or even simply non-hunters), not more antipathy.

Hunting advocate Ted Nugent, an ally whom some hunters would welcome with ambivalence,
contends that hunters need not even bother to apologize to those who oppose hunting. He argues
that hunting is the most basic condition of human beings and needs no defense against the
artificiality of contemporary urbanized sensibilities.4 Indeed, to Nugent, a defense of hunting feels strange and superfluous against immeasurable human history in which it was customary to sustain one's life by killing and eating "lower" life forms. Whatever grain(s) of truth Nugent may have grasped, his is neither the only nor the strongest approach to the defense of hunting, especially for those whose priority is that every aspect of their lives be aligned with God’s will as revealed in Jesus Christ and Scripture.

Ted Nugent may think that a defense of hunting is unnecessary (interesting, though, that he still
offers one) because it simply defends what needs no defense and make hunters feel as if they need to justify themselves. However, we now occupy a world in which hunting is often considered morally repulsive or, at best, unenlightened. We hunters may not appreciate having to defend this time-honored practice, but our continued freedom to do so is most definitely at stake. Opportunity follows legality and legality follows credibility. As anti-hunting sentiments gain credibility through a variety of social forces, hunters may well find that this time-honored opportunity has slipped through their fingers while they were asleep.

For those operating from a vantage point of Christian commitment, it is also true that the more we take things for granted and assume the integrity of any practice, the more susceptible we are being culturally hijacked; the “frog in the kettle” syndrome. So, I would disagree with Nugent and suggest that indeed we need a fresh theological framework for hunting, even if it has history on its side.

First, I point to a bit of socio-historical background. A wide variety of factors has shaped the
sensibilities that motivate hunting opponents. The twentieth-century saw massive demographic
shifts from agricultural to urban and suburban settings. In 1942, Spanish philosopher Josè Ortega y Gasset considered the impact of these forces on the public perception of hunting in Europe, stating, “Only in the contemporary period and, within that, only in the most demoralized regions of Europe has an affinity for hunting been held in disesteem.”5 New Age spiritualities and related philosophical systems have sought to deify the created order with its own ontological and moral character. Forces of social democratization have come to define intellectual fashion. Among vast numbers of people these are among the factors that have contributed to an ironic and historically novel repulsion at the practice of hunting.

Some hunting opponents appeal to unethical hunting practices, extrapolating a caricature of the

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broader hunting populace. Nugent points out that the vast majority of hunters practice good ethics and that responding to this accusation actually compromises the credibility of hunting.6 While Nugent has a point, I suspect that his argument relates to a limited number of the situations and relationships in which hunters find themselves on the defensive. Not all who oppose hunting do so with reference to unethical hunting practices. Increasingly, hunting is opposed for moral and spiritual reasons. For hunters not to address these arguments only lends tacit support to the impression that hunting is morally and spiritually indefensible, practiced and perpetuated only by those who have neither the interest nor the ability to live morally informed and reflective lives. Thus, Nugent’s protest falls short.

Thus, I offer the following reflections on some of the common objections I have seen or heard,
objections that are to some degree propelled by theological concerns. As the substance and nature of the objections vary, so do the length of my responses. Some of the arguments overlap but each is sufficiently distinctive to warrant discrete attention. I will offer a response after some of the contentions. At the end I will offer a number of overall responses and reasons why I am convinced that hunting is not only justified but is also commendable within a Christian theological framework.

Objection #1

The first objection is that hunting and consuming other creatures for food is unethical (or at least
inappropriate) because it resulted (directly or indirectly) from sin. It is seen as a symptom of the Fall (see Genesis 3 and 9:2-3), that willful entry of our original human parents into rebellion against God. The Fall not only introduced personal corruption and moral culpability into the human race. It jarred all of the created order with brokenness and alienation as implied in Genesis 3:17, “Cursed is the ground because of you . . .” Consequently, according to Romans 8, “the creation was subjected to frustration” (v. 20) and “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth” (v. 22).7 The tragedy of creation’s brokenness is seen in the backlight of God’s repeated blessing of creation in Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, and 25; then in the eschatological light of the promise in Colossians 1:19 to reconcile all creation.

The practice of hunting, then, was evidently not part of God's original intent in creation and will not be the eschatological situation when God's Kingdom comes in its full expression and all things in Heaven and on earth are reconciled (cf. Isaiah 11:6-9 with Colossians 1:19). Since harmony between humankind and creation (including other creatures) appears to have been our original state and is the promised horizon toward which our present hope and obedience are pointed, we should embody those conditions in every way possible during the present, penultimate age. The eschaton should echo its way "backward" into the present order as a moral structure.

This argument may be especially cogent for Christians who hold to what theologians call an
"inaugurated" or "realized eschatology," and even more so for those whose Christian ethics are
shaped by the integration (collapse) of the concepts of penultimate and ultimate. In that case the
Christian life is to be a contemporaneous embodiment of the coming Kingdom.

Response

Admittedly, the Fall led to alienation between humanity and the entire created order. However, the exact nature of this alienation is more ambiguous than is the extent of that alienation. Hunters can freely recognize these antepeccator conditions of harmony between humans and beasts without

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Conceding the claim that hunting is immoral or unethical. For example, Keil and Delitzsch suggest that prior to the Fall animals were still at the mercy or disposal of humankind and that
sin with its consequences had loosened the bond of voluntary subjection on the part of
the animals to the will of man, - man, on the one hand, having lost the power of the spirit
over nature, and nature, on the other hand, having become estranged from man, or
rather having rebelled against him, through the curse pronounced upon over it, by that
“fear and dread” which God instilled into the animal creation.

They go on to suggest that when God granted permission to eat animals, this may not have
inaugurated the eating of animals by humans, but that God at this point permitted what they may have been doing up to this point against God’s will.9 Thus, we may even concede that prior to the Fall humans did not kill and eat animals. Yet, that fact remains that in the aftermath of the Fall we inhabit conditions in which God saw fit to sanction it. The theological significance of this should not be overlooked.

To extend the analysis of this argument, it must stretch and speculate to suggest that prior to the Fall animals did not kill and eat each other; an argument from silence. Are we to believe that the carnivorous and omnivorous digestive systems of so many creatures developed after the Fall? It may well be that the focal point of God’s sanction in Genesis 9:3-4 was the prohibition against eating the blood of the animals, a practice which some scholars consider to be an expression of pagan barbarism10 or a disregard for the giver of life. Gordon J. Wenham asserts that God’s provision of animal life to sustain human life is paradoxical. To preserve man’s
respect for life, he is forbidden to eat ‘flesh with its life, i.e., its blood.’ . . . Respect for life,
and beyond that, respect for the giver of life, means abstaining from blood. Indeed, in
the sacrificial law animal blood is given by God for the atonement of human sin (cf. Lev
17:11).11

Gerhard von Rad makes a similar point when he states, “Even when man slaughters and kills, he is to know that he is touching something, which, because it is life, is in a special manner God’s
property; and as a sign of this he is to keep his hands off the blood.”12 Without doubt, God’s gift of animals as food represents an intensification of the conditions under which humanity is to survive and relate to the created order after the Fall. Yet, it must not be overlooked that this dispensation was a gift from God in which, as von Rad observes, “[t]he right of dominion over the animals is also reconfirmed,”13 and boundaries are set to keep humanity’s focus on the authority of the Giver through the sanctity of the gift.

Second, this objection is based on over-literalized assumptions about what is depicted in the
prophecy of Isaiah 11. It is not universally recognized among Old Testament scholars that the
imagery of the lion lying down with the lamb is a literal prediction of conditions that will exist in the Kingdom between animals or between humans and animals. Though this type of future condition may unfold, the main point of the prophecy relates to conditions among people. John Goldingay observes regarding this text,

Context suggests that the talk of harmony in the animal world is a metaphor for
harmony in the human world. The strong and powerful live together with the weak and
powerless because the latter can believe that the former are no longer seeking to devour
them. The end to which verses 6-9 lead thus belongs in the same world of thought as

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verses 1-5 and fits with other themes from earlier chapters (e.g., 2:2-4). Indeed, the book
opened by using animals to stand for human beings (1:3) . . .14 Brevard S. Childs sees Isaiah’s prophecy as involving more literal conditions of peace between humans and animals, yet admits that What Isaiah envisioned was not a return to a mythical age of primordial innocence, but

the sovereign execution of a new act of creation in which the righteous will of God is
embraced and the whole earth now reflects a reverent devotion “as the water covers the
sea.”15

Indeed, the conditions of peace and harmony promised in God’s new creation capture our deepest longings and invite our faithful, risky trust in God. Even if we were to recognize Isaiah’s prophecy as a portrayal of literal conditions of peace between human and beast, beast and beast, those conditions do not exist now. At best, such as promised state should beckon to us as a benefit of the resurrected order rather than a moral obligation that overshadows our current participation in an order where such conditions do not exist.

In conclusion hunting reflects neither inherent hostility toward nor disregard for the beasts of the field. To the contrary, hunters are most nobly involved with animals when they have a genuine appreciation and respect for the animals they hunt and when they are grateful to God Who has given them. This gratitude accompanies a sober minded stewardship of God’s creation in the context of the current order. Certainly, this is not the case with all hunters. It is possible to hunt unethically, disrespectfully, and ungratefully just as it is possible to distort any other aspect of human life that God has blessed.

Objection #2

Hunting is antithetical to the ethos of God's Kingdom and inappropriate for its citizens because it is intrinsically violent and, as such, results from the Fall.

Response

Though related to the previous objection, the protest of “violence” warrants a brief, separate
comment. Os Guiness makes an important distinction between violence and force.16 (The Dust of Death). Violence as an act of hatred or disregard has definite moral connotations. We cannot survive in this world without force, however. This objection operates from a rather unexamined and unsophisticated view of violence, shaped more by an artificially sanitized world in which
technology insulates us from the sources and processes of our sustenance. Among thoughtful
hunters, religious or not, one of Gasset’s most recognized and respected claims is that “one does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted.”17 Ironically, and
inconsistently, many who resist hunting as a form of violence will still engage in fishing, which
(even in its fashionable “catch and release” form) is at root a form of what they find objectionable.
The inconsistency goes even further when, if direct and forceful involvement with nature is still too violent for them, they will simply enjoy the local sushi bar where the fruits of someone else’s
“violence” are anesthetized by distance from the act and by the delicacy of an artfully prepared and presented dish. I point out this inconsistency not to inflame antagonism (and hope that it will not do so), but to plead for greater honesty and consistency so that the conversation can be more
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Objection #3

Hunting may be practiced, but as a last resort and as a means of survival. Even under these
conditions it is morally regrettable and should be avoided if at all possible. Should the slaughter of animals be necessary for food, it should never be done for sport. Hunting for sport is immoral, in part because it encourages a love for killing and destruction that is incompatible with an appropriate respect for God and His creation.

Response

This contention is based on a false and superficial understanding of “sport” as it applies to hunting. The pleasure that hunters derive from this endeavor is not simply a love for killing, some type of barbaric blood-lust. McIntyre exposes the inconsistency of this objection.

There is almost no way for one form of life to exist except at the expense of another. An
impala involved in seemingly peaceful grazing is as much a predator on a living blade of
grass as the leopard who bellies silently toward him.

Even when some people can accept the universality of the killing that goes on
ceaselessly around them, they want, to begin with, to disavow any responsibility for it
themselves (an outrageous impossibility), or to insist that below the human level (below
being a very operative preposition) it is conducted out of mindless need alone, that no
enjoyment is ever taken in it. For this reason they will claim to tolerate killing carried out
by native “subsistence” hunters by consigning their hunting to rude necessity, and
relegating such hunters not so subtly to a human status that should be considered not so
enlightened as their own, in effect assuming these benighted creatures to be lacking in
the full register of sincere feelings they themselves possess, and therefore unable to
experience real happiness from any occupation, not just from hunting.18

Gasset observes, Hunting, like all human occupations, has its different levels, and how little of the real work of hunting is suggested in words like diversion, relaxation, and entertainment! A
good hunter’s way of hunting is a hard job which demands much from man . . . So, in
my presentation of it as what it is, as a form of happiness, I have avoided calling it
pleasure. Doubtless in all happiness there is pleasure, but pleasure is the least of
happiness. . . . The truth is that the important and appealing aspect of hunting is neither
pleasure nor annoyance, but rather the very activity that comprises hunting. Happy
occupations, it is clear, are not merely pleasures; they are efforts, and real sports are
effort.19

He goes on to observe that “when an activity becomes a sport, whatever that activity may be, the hierarchy of its values becomes inverted. In utilitarian hunting the true purpose of the hunter, what he seeks and values, is the death of the animal.”20 By that standard, those who think that it is less ethically questionable to eat meat that comes from the industrial slaughter of animals (meat processing plants, then food stores) actually hold the more ironic ethical position. A strictly utilitarian justification of animal slaughter is the greatest failure to appreciate the life of animals 6 through utter disregard or refusal to reflect on the process involved.

The love for hunting is not a love for destruction. There are subordinate loves involved: challenge, conquest, respite from the complexities and stresses of life, etc. None of these, of course, necessitate hunting, though they are involved in the act. At its most basic level, the love of hunting is a visceral love for the connectedness with that basic dimension of our human experience as it is expressed in relationships of risk and dependence with these creatures.

Objection #4

The creatures humans hunt are innocent and have done us no harm. They should be left alone.

Response

This rather sentimental argument assumes that hunting is a form of revenge, which it simply is not. Admittedly, revenge can become a motivation in the rare cases when an animal has done harm or we are in danger of harm. Still, this is a gross misunderstanding and misrepresentation of hunting.

Objection #5

Hunting is an artificial and inappropriate interference with the rhythms of the created order (some would say “nature”) which should be allowed to take its own course.

Response

In no other area of our lives do we use this standard. We divert rivers and build dams to provide
water for our population. We erect fences to keep intruders and even animals whose “natural”
propensities might do us harm. We apply heat to iron ore to eliminate impurities, then alter its
chemical properties to make steel and alloys that can be cut, drilled, and assembled into bridges that facilitate our transportation. The examples are endless. We manipulate our environment for our advantage. Theological conversations about stewardship of the earth are important, especially for those who do not recognize creation as God’s gift and would wantonly exploit it. Respecting the natural rhythms of the created order implies neither passivity nor idolatry in response to the inherent patterns of the world. Humans are part of the created order or “nature’s course,” with our abilities and impulses, and our divinely ordained place vis-à-vis other creatures. Of course, we bear responsibility for our management of and interaction with the rhythms of creations.

Objection #6

Hunting relies on an unfair advantage that humans have over other creatures based on the the
technology of our weaponry.

Response

So what? Hunting is not a board game in which both humans and animals are to play with no unfair advantage. 7



Furthermore, anyone who has genuinely hunted will question how much of an advantage humans really have. The wariness and elusive capabilities of animals send many a hunter home empty-handed (resorting to meat purchased at the local supermarket). This argument should be applied to the raising and slaughter of animals whose flesh is industrially processed and sold over the counter. In those conditions, animals truly have no chance for survival. Again, to quote Gasset, “To exterminate or to destroy animals by an invincible and automatic procedure is not hunting. Hunting is something else, something more delicate.”21

Positive Reasons for Hunting

To this point I have attempted to address some of the common theological or religious reasons
offered against hunting. However, this approach only goes part of the way toward establishing a
genuinely theological approach to the practice of hunting. In what follows I will not suggest that all people should hunt. Many people have perfectly understandable and legitimate reasons why they choose not to do so. I simply ask that non-hunters realize that we who do choose to hunt have equally legitimate grounds. Further, I ask that they think more carefully about their theological reasons for opposing hunting and realize the likelihood that those reasons may very well be less theological than they are simply matters of personal taste, sometimes conditioned by the artificiality of urbanized life.

So, why is hunting both theologically legitimate and even important, whether or not a person
chooses to participate personally?

1. It forces us to stay connected with the source of our physical sustenance, cultivating a greater
appreciation and sense of responsibility for what is involved in that sustenance and for the creatures that die in order for us to survive. Speaking personally, to participate not only in the taking of the life but in the field dressing and butchering of an animal forces me to be integrated with creation.
2. It reminds us that our lives are contingent on the rest of creation. This is true even for vegetarians and vegans, who still depend upon other life forms for their biological sustenance. Life can only be sustained by other living things. Whether those life forms are creatures in the categories of mammal, fish, fowl, or even plant life is irrelevant.
3. Taking the life of another creature can be an experiential, even visceral reminder of the atonement. For Christians, there is no more significant theme than that we are given our lives back by the sacrifice of Another. Hunting can have a sort of sacramental or symbolic quality for those who have come to know what the Bible calls “eternal life” through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
4. It affords the opportunity to gain a greater respect and awe for the creatures whose lives are taken. Photographers and passive observers of nature have no monopoly on stunned appreciation for the beauty, grace, and majesty of other creatures. To take the life of another creature should never be a glib and thoughtless experience, but an experience of gratitude and awe. Hunting is actually a response to creation as God’s gift, allowing and encouraging appreciation of creatures, not a disregard for them. It fosters a holistic ethic by placing hunting in the context of stewardship of creation as a whole.
5. It affords the opportunity for deeper appreciation of the nature of human stewardship over 8
creation. That stewardship is an awesome responsibility because it demands sometimes gruesome activities and decisions that always have a cost.

Specifically, it is a reminder that this stewardship is exercised in the context of the world as it is, not as we wish it was or imagine that it was. This context takes into account all the ways in which the world has actually developed and been developed. For example, the science and structures of game management exist to insure that wild game continues to exist and thrive in a world where the human population takes over and develops increasing amounts of inhabitable land. Whether or not one likes the amount of commercial and industrial development that has come with that population expansion, it is a fact that indeed affects the viability of wild game. Hunting is unarguably the most effective means of keeping various species of wild game at sustainable population levels, protected from either starvation due to over-population or from simply devouring each other. Theologically, the important lesson here is that stewardship of creation has an unavoidable and often overlooked contextual character, in contrast to the idealistic and Platonic notions of stewardship that derive from and foster romanticized views of creation.

6. Hunting reinforces the qualitative distinction between human beings as made in God's image and the rest of creation that is not made in God’s image. For all its wonders, the rest of creation is not qualitatively endowed with the same worth in that grand order.
7. Hunting reminds us that we, too, are part of the created order, including our capacities for
developing technologies that allow us to exercise dominion over the rest of creation and sustain our lives by it.
8. It is good and healthy that we experience ambivalence about taking a creature’s life. That
ambivalence is a sign of our tacit and powerful recognition of the goodness of life in all forms. That fact that all of creation bears God’s blessing and is sustained by God’s presence (Word) suggests that in all truly human acts where our dominion is exercised, that dominion is exercised at a cost to some other part of what God has blessed. This is true when we sacrifice a beautiful area for the sake of providing housing (though the ethics of wanton land development and profiteering is another, and valid, discussion). This is true when we burn wood to cook and provide heat. Only those (Gasset calls them “Cartesians”) who do not recognize the blessedness of all creation – who take a strictly mechanistic view of the universe – can engage in hunting with no twinges of dissonance. For the hunter, this should be a reminder that God’s gifts come at a cost; in this case, the cost of an animal’s life. Never again will that graceful creature roam the earth. Such knowledge should humble the hunter and give texture to (though not negate) the gratitude and pleasure of the experience. How do we understand hunting as sport and the pleasure it brings? It may be analogous to the pleasure involved in making a fine piece of furniture or artwork with a rare piece of wood from a tree that, at the same time, we want to help preserve. Preservation involves management and management involves clearing some growth to make room for new growth.
9. Hunting affords the opportunity to develop a healthier and richer theology of sanctification,
particularly, of God’s work in making holy and beautiful that which by itself is ordinary. That is,
only by God’s sanctifying and defining Word can any part of creation serve His purpose and His
glory. Nothing in all of creation can do that autonomously, as Paul suggests through his magnificent Christological framework for creation (Colossians).
1 Timothy 4:3-5 has bearing on the question in that we are enjoined to receive with gratitude what is provided for us from the created order (and Paul was talking about meat). The act of gratitude has 9 theological significance as the occasion for God to sanctify through His Word of blessing and provision what would otherwise be profane (perhaps even objectionable?) to us. Actually, what might be offensive to God would be the lack of recognition that God has provided and sanctioned our sustenance through the life of other creatures. This is theologically necessary because those creatures are His creatures, just as we are, even if they are in a different standing than humanity as made in God’s image. Those creatures bear God’s blessing in some sense, so only God can give them and declare His blessing on their lives given for ours. One has to be MORE rather than less theologically oriented in order to be able to hunt ethically. The rejection of God’s gift of meat on supposedly theological grounds may be tantamount to an attempt to sanctify ourselves through our own autonomous ethical pursuits, somewhat along the lines of Kant’s ethical program.

Though not writing from a Christian perspective (as far as I know), Thomas McIntyre offers a fitting concluding response to the anti-hunting sentiment that derives from the social forces that incessantly threaten to dehumanize us.

It is the duty of the modern world to drive us every day further from all things natural
and wild, to make us feel increasingly lost and isolated from our true, primitive natures.

We need, desperately, to have a means of escaping such cold days as these and of
revisiting the sunnier past when we had not yet been subjected to the barbarisms of
civilization and were still genuinely human. We need to be able to do this, if only for
brief periods, or go mad.22

Hunting – the seeking, the chasing, the killing, the butchering, the “criminal suspicion”
aroused by the confronting of death, the celebratory resolving of it all in the sacramental
feast – which teaches us the total cost of meat, the price our lives and all lives exact from
the world, is inextricably tied to our humanness.23

McIntyre’s reflections make assumptions that many Christian theologians (including myself) would not accept regarding the original nature of humanity (“humanness”). Still, his words rightly highlight the effects of modern (often Western) culture on the shape and depth of the human experience.

Hunting is not for everyone. However, it should be for anyone. Amidst all the attention given to
ethical hunting (and, thankfully, considerable attention has been devoted to that issue), not much attention has been given to the theology of hunting. Those of Christian faith have at their disposal the most well-developed and integrated framework for the practice of hunting. Of all people, Christians should be able to place hunting within the context of a full-orbed human experience.

As a theologian, I do not know what life will be like in the Kingdom of God in relationship to some
of the issues that hunting raises. I don’t know whether I will be a vegetarian. Frankly, those
questions do not matter much to me. Yes, I want to be “Kingdom-minded” in my life here on earth. Personally, I hold to a “realized eschatology.” Yet, with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I have come to recognize that the penultimate is the only venue we currently live in which God can be known. God intends that the values of His Kingdom shape all that we do here and now. That does not keep me from hunting. It affects HOW I hunt and who I am in that endeavor. I like to think that the practice of hunting within this theological framework helps me be a better Christian rather than less of one.

As always, we must love each other, respect each other, hear each other, and pray for each other that through whatever path our consciences dictate, we may be increasingly transformed into the image of the One we love and Who died that we may live. 10

1 For obvious reasons I will not list specific articles, periodicals, or organizations that reflect this spirit, even though I may even subscribe to the periodicals or belong to the organizations. I have in mind, though, certain fashionable insults such as “greenies”.

2 For example of this apologetic genre, see Kurt Krueger, “Hunters: the nation’s first
environmentalists,” in Vilas County [Wisconsin] News-Review/The Three Lakes News (September 24, 2008), 8A.

3 Thomas McIntyre, The Way of the Hunter: The Art and Spirit of Modern Hunting (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1988), 98.

4 Ted Nugent, “No Excuses,” American Hunter 36:1 (January 2008): 46-49.

5 Josè Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting (Belgrade, Mont: Wilderness Adventures Press, 1995),

47.
6 He states, “If the guys who consistently talk about hunting ethics believe for a second they are
uplifting the image of hunting and attracting new hunters, they are dead wrong. I’m not falling into this ethical hunting morass, because the more we talk about it the more we become bogged down in the murky mud of suspicion. It immediately puts hunters on the defensive when we have nothing to be defensive about” (48-49).

7 TNIV.
8 C.F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. I (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 152.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, Tex: Word, 1987), 193.
12 Gerhard von Rad, Genesis, rev. ed., The Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961),
132.
13 Ibid., 133.
14 John Goldingay, Isaiah, New International Biblical Commentary series (Peabody, Mass:
Hendrickson, 2001), 85.
15 Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, The Old Testament Library (Louisville, Ky: Westminster/John Knox, 2001),

103-104.
16 Os Guinness, The Dust of Death (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1972).
17 Ortega y Gasset, 105.
18 McIntyre, 101.
19 Ortega y Gasset, 42.
20 Ibid., 105.
21 Ibid., 59.
22 McIntyre, 103.
23 Ibid., 104.

Don Payne, Ph.D.
Email

don.payne@denverseminary.edu

Blog

http://www.oilboytheology.faithweb.com

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