Defender » Ok. If that is true, why has God allowed them to suffer?
The question, ultimately, must be that if humans have spirits, do animals likewise have spirits? Obviously this is only opinion as some people don't believe either humans or animals possess them.
Jehovah's Witnesses and other adventists believe even humans lack spirits. But if Jesus was put to death in the flesh, made alive in the spirit -- that is, departed his body as a spirit, and preached to the spirits in prison, it's a pretty good argument that man has a spirit. Peter writes:
“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.” (1 Peter 3:18-21)
He later writes: “For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.” (1 Peter 4:6)
“Until Christ came,” says the Pistis Sophia, “no soul had gone through the ordinances in their completeness. It was He who opened the gate and the way of life. Those who receive these ordinances are the dispensations of the Sons of Light. And they receive whatever they desire.”
My point is that man actually does have a spirit residing within him, animating him, and so it makes sense that animals also have animating spirits. As Jesus stated, “The body without the spirit is dead.” (James 2:26) Thus, when he was put to death in the flesh, his spirit departed and went to Paradise, as he promised the thief on the cross/stake. Thus, when Origen, the first and greatest of the non-apostolic scholars, attempted to recall what the earliest Christians believed, he wrote: “After death, I think the saints go to Paradise, a place of teaching, a school of the spirits in which everything they saw on earth will be made clear to them. Those who were pure in heart will progress more rapidly, reaching the kingdom of heaven by definite steps or degrees.” (Jean Danielou, Biblica 28 (1947), Origen (N.Y.: Sheed and Ward, 1955)
My point is that spirits are eternal. They are the animating force in both man and beasts and are characterized by both intelligence and awareness, and they progress as we do. Animals experience love, hate, they have a healthy sense of self preservation, but, too, they've been known to selflessly sacrifice themselves for others, both animals and humans. Does God create intelligence only to then snuff it out when it no longer suits Him? “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other...." (Ecclesiastes 3:19-21)
These animals serve us, die for us, serve as our companions and friends while others serve as food and beasts of burden. They were created with man and they differ in intelligence amongst themselves even as we differ amongst ourselves. And animals are provided to us as part of our stewardship to use as God dictates.
If we have spirits that animate us, and I think it's clear that the first century Christians believed this despite what adventist pundits claim, it stands to reason that animals must have some inner force that makes them go. If the body without the spirit is dead for humans, it stands to reason the same would be true for animals. The doctrine that the body goes back to the Earth and the core of what we are ceases to be at death may be fine for atheists, but it was never part of the Christian faith.
Now the reason God allows them to suffer is for the same reason He allows us to suffer. First, because both men and animals are eternal beings, suffering is our lot in life. It is because of the free agency of man and the limitations God has placed on Himself while we murder and enslave each other. Part of it's based on the fact that nothing on Earth can truly hurt us. We can suffer, die horrible deaths, but ultimately we're immortal beings that are incapable of being permanently scarred by what we suffer here. And according to Christian doctrine, Jesus, the manifestation of God in the flesh, suffered far worse in atoning for man's sins than anything He cold add us to suffer.
So these are my views. I hate to see animals or humans suffer and die, but I don't believe it's for naught.