16 June 2024
I realize that the Hebrew terms translated as "soul" (nephesh) and "spirit" (ru'ach) are used interchangeably. Animals are said to have both in the Old Testament, and whether it's literal or figurative at this point doesn't matter. However, they aren't used that way in English, at least in the circles I've encountered. When I wrote academic papers in New Testament theology, those two terms meant different things.
I believe you could make the case that the New Testament usage also differentiates. But the larger point is this: Dogs don't go to Heaven (in answer to a question).
Let me qualify that. To say that Adam was made in God's image has nothing to do with any attribute. Heiser noted in one of his videos that the preposition "in" can be used in several ways in English, and it's the same for the Hebrew. If I say that I work in computer technology, that's a figure of speech that would mean I work as a computer technician of some sort. Adam was made "as" the image of God, to reflect the nature of God in some way as the nature of his mission.
In Hebrew traditions, that means his mission in life is to make God's purpose and character clear to all observers. And since the Bible uses that "image of God" language in more than one place, we know that it's not something built up from a single reference. I'll grant that Scripture doesn't exclude other creatures from this high privilege, but that it certainly is ours.
There is one thing that most surely is exclusive to humans: Nobody else had the management of God's Garden. It's pretty clear that the Garden was built as a place to put Adam and Eve, to give them a purpose in life.
Do you suppose there were dogs in the Garden of Eden? There's no reason to think not. The problem here is that dogs we see in our world today are part of a larger context, about which the Bible is pretty clear on some things. They are not fallen. The natural world as a whole is unfallen. There are "fallen" spirits confined to this world along with us, but they never had the mission of caring for the Garden. Only God's caretakers will ever see it again.
It's not as if those fallen beings cannot manipulate the natural world and defile things; they do. Pharoah's magicians did some nasty stuff with natural resources, and their power/knowledge came from those dark forces. But those spirits do that stuff only because we are not currently on duty exercising God's power over His Garden.
Worse, even within the full powers of the Covenant, our authority over nature is still somewhat limited to things God says we can do for specific reasons. I won't chase rabbits, but we are limited by the lack of a fully compliant community over several generations (to include embracing biblical thinking). Even then, we would still have to get a Word from God on anything He wanted to change. Miraculous powers are limited to His agenda within the fallen realm. And He has already said that redeeming nature in full is not on the agenda until after His Son returns.
When Christ returns, He will restore the Garden. In typical Hebrew fuzzy symbolism, all the things humans and others have done to the natural world will be reset back to their pristine original state. That's beyond our imagination. Still, everything done to defile the natural world will be destroyed when all of nature is burned up with the intense heat we were told about in 2 Peter 3. Then it will be started anew, a new Heaven and Earth -- a restoration of the Garden of Eden.
All fleshly bodies will be destroyed, and the fallen spirits will face judgment. Only eternal spiritual bodies of the Elect will remain to inhabit the Garden, once again as managers. All the dogs and other natural life will have evaporated, and new creatures unspoiled by moral failure will be around.
Do you not understand that our domestication of them will be forgotten, because it constitutes a form of defilement? It is not their natural state to be domesticated; we have made them slaves to our human vanity. Any dogs running around the Garden will be obedient in the sense that all natural life will, but there is no purpose in having them sacrifice their natural instincts to serve some fallen human purpose. We won't need pets, won't want them.
Whatever you think of as a domesticated canine will have no purpose in the Garden.
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