Inner Animalities Theology and the End of the Human

…provides a number of fresh thoughts and new perspectives and will be a lasting contribution to the growing field of Human-Animal Studies. ― Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences

What does it mean to be a creature in the proximity of the realm of God? How might we think of Imago Dei, incarnation, sin, and redemption, relieved of the blinders of human exceptionalism? Eric Daryl Meyer makes an elegant case that the idea of human uniqueness is a sign of human fallenness. He sees and seizes Christian theology’s potential to widen how human beings understand ourselves. This book offers that rare gift: a theological way out of the protracted, defensive, and limited need to keep humanity from its God-given animality. In its important theological interventions and conceptualizations, in its vivid and visionary discussions, this book gives me hope.—Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat

Arguing that much theological anthropology contains a deeply anti-ecological impulse, this book draws creatively on historical and scriptural texts to imagine an account of human life centered in our creaturely commonality. ― Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

Meyer adds considerable nuance to the more widespread observation that Christian anthropology depends on a notion of animality in its understanding of the human. More clearly than any thinker I’ve read, Meyer shows that the moment Christian theologians disavow animals often betrays a trace of another way of thinking about animals, humans, and God. He has brought out internal inconsistencies in Christian theological articulations of the human/animal binary in a remarkably fruitful way.—Aaron Gross, University of San Diego

Meyer’s work represents a key challenge to, and constructive proposal for, Christian theology each of which merit very wide consideration. ― Modern Theology

Arguing that much theological anthropology contains a deeply anti-ecological impulse, this book draws creatively on historical and scriptural texts to imagine an account of human life centered in our creaturely commonality. ― Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

What does it mean to be a creature in the proximity of the realm of God? How might we think of Imago Dei, incarnation, sin, and redemption, relieved of the blinders of human exceptionalism? Eric Daryl Meyer makes an elegant case that the idea of human uniqueness is a sign of human fallenness. He sees and seizes Christian theology’s potential to widen how human beings understand ourselves. This book offers that rare gift: a theological way out of the protracted, defensive, and limited need to keep humanity from its God-given animality. In its important theological interventions and conceptualizations, in its vivid and visionary discussions, this book gives me hope.—Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat

Meyer adds considerable nuance to the more widespread observation that Christian anthropology depends on a notion of animality in its understanding of the human. More clearly than any thinker I’ve read, Meyer shows that the moment Christian theologians disavow animals often betrays a trace of another way of thinking about animals, humans, and God. He has brought out internal inconsistencies in Christian theological articulations of the human/animal binary in a remarkably fruitful way.—Aaron Gross, University of San Diego,

Meyer’s work represents a key challenge to, and constructive proposal for, Christian theology each of which merit very wide consideration. ― Modern Theology

…provides a number of fresh thoughts and new perspectives and will be a lasting contribution to the growing field of Human-Animal Studies. ― Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences