Do All Dogs Go To Heaven? New Books Seem To Think So

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Animals do not have souls but they do have spirits.

God is a God of justice.

The real question is --Is it just for God to create finite spirits.

Is it just for animals to die because of man sinning and falling in the Garden of Eden?

The real answer is that we don’t know.

If you don’t believe me then read Ecclesiastes 3:21.

The Holy Spirit which inspired that scripture to be written says “Who knows?”

I don’t know where it has been revealed to us after that scripture was written that we do know the fate of the spirits of animals.

I know Catholic theologians claim to know that they just die but I don’t think the Catholic Church has definitely taught that.

If they have please tell me.

Whatever the Catholic Church teaches I believe.

If the Catholic Church hasn’t taught on the matter and if it is permissable for me to have the opinion that animals MIGHT be in heaven then I will have that opinion because I think that God’s justice and mercy extends to everything He created.

Whatever God chooses to do with animals and their spirits–not their souls because they do not have souls is good.

I do believe that LITERALLY the lion will lie down with the lamb.

I could see Balaam’s donkey even talking in heaven praising God!

I believe that the dog in the book of Tobith might be wagging his tail at the sight of Jesus!

ALL creatures on this earth will one day be praising God in the New Jerusalem!

Jesus will drink his cup with us in the New Jerusalem.

We will have mansions in heaven–the streets will be made of gold!

If you believe all the rest of the bible–why not believe what it tells us about heaven?

Will animals be there? Why not?
 
Jerry,

Actually, what you raise was discussed early on in this thread.

All living things possess souls. Souls are what animates living things. Humans, animals, and even plants, have souls, if we properly understand and define “souls” as that which animates a body.

Spirits, however, are different than souls. Pure spirits are represented by Angels, the Paraclete, and God.

The difference between man and pure spirits are that man has a soul that is spiritual AND man has a body (the corporeal). Spirits have no body. They are immortal - the angels, the Paraclete, God - just as man’s soul is immortal.

All of what I just said above is just a tip of the theology of these things. It can become quite “deep” and detailed. But the above is also Holy Writ and has been definitively taught by our Church as dogma at the 4th Lateran Council, the 8th Council of Constantinople, the Council of Vienne, and the Vatican Councils I and II.

P.S. Jerry - you made a statement that seems to have no connection to the main point of the thread. You said that God is a God of Justice, and that a more proper question might be, was it just for God to have made finite “spirits”?

As I pointed out above, spirits and souls are different, but not in the infinite/finite sense. Spirits, like human souls, are both immortal, and thus “infinite” in the sense that they do not die.

But your question about whether God is just because he made something that is finite, actually begs another question: Was God just in creating anything, whether finite or infinite? The answer is that the determination of whether God was/is just has nothing to do with how and what he created. God wanted for nothing when nothing but God existed. Keep in mind that creation, which is unique only to God, is the power to make something from nothing. Only God can do such a thing. As Catholic theology teaches, God made man to have supernatural life, both body and soul. Man’s body lost its supernatural quality the moment he sinned. If man had not sinned, he would have enjoyed supernatural joy in both body and soul, for all eternity. But as part of God’s punishment for man’s sin, God took away man’s body’s ability to live forever. Man’s soul would live on forever - but not his body.

As to the reason WHY God made man, the answer is simple: out of love. God and love are inseperable. God is pure love, and out of that love, God made man to share that love with man. Simply because God allowed man’s body to grow old and die does not detract from God’s infinite love nor does it detract from God’s (as you refer to it) “justice”.

As man had no right to exist, man also has no right to question the “limitations” put on him by God.
 
First, I firmly believe that if Jesus Christ himself came down and told you personally that animals do NOT have immortal souls and thus do not continue to live after the death of their mortal bodies, you would argue with him and say he is wrong.
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First, I firmly believe that if Jesus Christ himself came down and told you personally that your exclusion of all God’s creatures from the New Creation was without warrant, you would argue with him and say he is wrong.
Second, I don’t see how your questions of me in any way answers the questions I posed. I surmise that answering my questions may lead one to an “unpleasant” conclusion - one that might lead one to conclude that one’s pets do not follow them into hell or purgatory or heaven.
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Second, I suspect that trying to justify your belief might lead you to the “unpleasant” conclusion - that God’s graciousness is infinitely bigger than yours!
Third, I will nevertheless answer your SOLE question using the bible as a reference:
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Bible verses are your only answer? No philosophical reasoning? No science? No recent scholarship on the evolutionary continuity between humans and their ancestors? If so, we may simply have to agree to disagree on this one!

StAnastasia
 
P.S. - St. Thomas Aquinas, acknowledged as probably the greatest Catholic theologian and Doctor of the Church of all time, taught that animal “souls” could not by their nature survive death. Unlike human souls, he said, they are perishable when separated from their proper bodies.
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Does he offer any cogent argumentation in support of this that reflects scholarship more recent that seven hundred years ago? Or is your answer fossilized in 1274?
 
Sad when someone avoids answering questions because she doesn’t like the answers she has to give . . .

And I have said it before and I will say it again: if you want to turn your face away from God - turn your back on the Beatific Vision - so that you can go play fetch with Rover, feed your guppies, or pet your pot-bellied pig, then I suppose that is between you and God, but it speaks volumes about what is really important to you after you die.

Regarding my alleged lack of “logic” and “reasoning”, by your own argument StAnastasia, we should also discount everything anyone had to say more than 1500 years ago because obviously, those “fossilized” people (the Apostles, the Early Church Fathers, St. Augustine - you know, those “old guys”) did not have the benefit of your learning, scholarship, and evolutionary science.

As for me quoting the Bible, I happen to think that its a pretty good source and starting point.
 
I read here:
“there is no clear dividing line between Homo sapiens and the species that were our forbears”.

I disagree. * Homo sapiens* has an immortal soul. The species that were its forbears did not have one.

Let us get it clear. Dogs, rats, snakes, bacteria etc. do not go to heaven.
 
I disagree. * Homo sapiens* has an immortal soul. The species that were its forbears did not have one.
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And you evidence for this claim is what?
Let us get it clear. Dogs, rats, snakes, bacteria etc. do not go to heaven.
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That’s an opinion, and one that perhaps not everyone on this forum agrees with. I’m away for the weekend, preparing a paper on ensoulment for a Catholic theology conference; back on line on Sunday.
 
StA,

Let us go back to basics.

What is evidence? What is opinion?

Is Church teaching evidence?

Is Church teaching opinion?

What is our evidence for the existence of heaven?

What is our evidence for the existence of God?

Are they all opinions?
 
Like most people, I get nostalgic about pets. And in a sense they become a part of us, particularly the higher animals like dogs and cats. They definitely have a personality.

However I’m not sure I’d want mosquitoes, sand flies, crocodiles, bacteria, viruses, and sharks in heaven.

So my hope is that dogs go to heaven. As to proof, I don’t have any, but oddly enough when I think about the 15 year old Silky Terrier we had put down a year ago due to chronic diabetes, I get this odd sense of a cocky attitude and a wagging tail Maybe it’s purely nostalgia, but then maybe not.

I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.
 
So you got all these celestial meadows, sparkling pools, glorious woods and they are full of… nothing? Just very amateur harp-players? Even the Greeks & Hindus knew better than that. Of course Heaven is teeming with all of Creation and probably creatures from other galaxies that in your wildest imaginings you wouldn’t have dreamed of.

It never ceases to amaze me how we arrogant humans define God’s attributes & power in our own image. At one stage Heaven was just above the cloud line, flat, no soulless slaves or heathens; no unbaptised babies or unchurched mothers; no Muslims and certainly no gays; in fact I doubt if the lower orders ever got in…except as celestial servants and coffe-makers.

Yes Heaven is full of God’s Creation including dogs so you better get used to it. A new fascinating book on the developing Catholic theology around animals by Deborah M. Jones, The School of Compassion claims that animal afterlife will partake in some form of the Beatific Vision.
 
According to Ecclesiastes 3:21 animals DO have spirits!

I have never said and would not say that they have souls.

How do we know that those spirits are FINITE when Ecclesiastes 3:21 says "Who knows??

Where in holy scipture is it later revealed for us TO KNOW?

Where in holy scripture is it revealed that ONLY the souls of angels and humans will be in heaven and nothing else will be allowed there?

Where in holy scripture does it contradict the scriptures that says “the lion will lie down with the lamb”?

On what basis should that scripture not be understood in its literal sense?

Read the verses in Job where when God SPEAKS how He extols the virtues of animals and ask yourself this question–God of course made creation for man but did He make creation ONLY for man?

God saw His creation and said that it was good.

Is it a stretch to say that God ONLY loved man and not the rest of His creation?

Is it possible for the New Jersualem spoken of in Revelation to contain ANY thing of today’s material creation?
 
Jerry-Jet said:
Animals do not have souls but they do have spirits.

God is a God of justice.

The real question is --Is it just for God to create finite spirits.

Is it just for animals to die because of man sinning and falling in the Garden of Eden?

The real answer is that we don’t know.

If you don’t believe me then read Ecclesiastes 3:21.

The Holy Spirit which inspired that scripture to be written says “Who knows?”

I don’t know where it has been revealed to us after that scripture was written that we do know the fate of the spirits of animals.

I know Catholic theologians claim to know that they just die but I don’t think the Catholic Church has definitely taught that.

If they have please tell me.
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I don’t know if there’s an official church teaching on this but my pastor says that dogs don’t go to Heaven. Personally, my hope is that they do.
 
Faith,

You are correct - the Catholic Church has NEVER officially answered the specific question: do the souls of animals upon death go to heaven?

I have never questioned that animals MAY exist in heaven, simply because God wants them to be there. The reason why they might have animals in heaven? I have no idea.

I know that the Catholic teaching on heaven is that man’s soul enjoys the Beatific Vision - seeing God in the face. I also know that Catholicism taught that original sin closed heaven, Jesus’s death redeemed man, opened heaven, freed the captive souls in Purgatory, and that man could once again cooperate/participate in his own salvation in how he lived his life.

Given the basic teachings of redemption and salvation, my believe that the souls of animals do not go to heaven is based on my belief that Jesus’s work was not to benefit an animal or a plant that could not sin. What would have been the point in that? Christ died to save grass and grasshoppers?

Given all that the Catholic Church teaches, I, as well a several others on this thread, dismiss the sentimentality of “pets in heaven” - not because we don’t like pets - but because we feel that such a belief cheapens what Jesus did for man. I just can’t buy the argument that Jesus was ridiculed, beaten, whipped, and nailed to a cross so that a hamster could benefit and enter heaven upon his death.

So in the end, there is no clear-cut definitive answer to the question.

We have those who are so attached to their pets and animals that they sound as though they place them on the same “level” as mankind, and I believe that is sinful. If you read through this thread, you will see post after post of those who belief that pets go to heaven, and they are overwhelmingly written by those who have the “traditional” pets - dogs and cats. In every instance where I ask questions about where the line is drawn regarding animals in heaven - snakes, spiders, pigs, goats, etc. - people avoid answering the question and instead ridicule me for asking it. I think they do so because they realize that once you allow for one kind of animal, where does the slippery slope end? So they content themselves with a pet that “we all can love” - a dog or a cat.

Again - I just cannot wrap my mind around the idea of Jesus suffering so that an iguana might make it to heaven with his owner.

On the other hand, we have those (I am in this group) who look at Catholic teaching about redemption, salvation, hell, purgatory, and heaven, and reason that although animals have souls, those souls disappear because they are mortal, as are their bodies. Man’s soul, on the other hand, is immortal (and was his body before man’s fall).

I have pretty much given up arguing as no one’s mind is going to change on this issue because the Catholic Church has never definitively taught an answer to the question.

I can tell you one thing, though: every advanced, well-educated theologian that I have ever talked to or read about this issue, has, to a person, said that animals do not go to heaven in the sense that the souls of man who are worth to enter heaven.

Those who continue to argue how “bland” or “boring” heaven would be without their pet dog or parakeet or hamster or pig or python (pick your pet), to me, denigrates God and heaven.

But that is just personal opinion.

As I said above - in the end, we have no definitive answer.

So I end my participation in this thread - I don’t think anyone can add anything that has not already been covered over the past 6 or so months.
 
As in many forums like this one, there is a lot of uncharitable commentary that we should all think about before we post. We profess to be Christian and yet we certainly don’t always seem to treat one another as though we even remotely acknowledge, much less practice, Jesus teachings.

There is only one absolute truth regarding this subject. That truth is: it has not been revealed to us specifically what God’s plan is for animals. There are many valid and reasonable arguments on both sides. The Church herself does not take a position. For any one person to say animals absolutely are or absoultely are not admitted into heaven is to assume a knowledge of the will of God that has not been revealed. This is the ultimate display of arrogance and quite opposite to one of Jesus’ most consistent teachings of humility.

The bottom line is that if God wills animals to be in heaven they will be there and if he does not, they will not. God can do whatever he wishes, whether anyone of us like it or not.
 
Salvatore123 said:
First, I firmly believe that if Jesus Christ himself came down and told you personally that animals do NOT have immortal souls and thus do not continue to live after the death of their mortal bodies, you would argue with him and say he is wrong.
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the refererenced quote was quite long so I cut most of it out for easier discussion. The main point seemed to have been, if I understood, that man is greater than animals and he was given dominion over them. Genesis was heavily quoted to support this. Animals are just for man’s use and have no other significance or importance. (Never mind that when God created the animals “He saw that it was good”. Animals were “good” even before man was created.)

One problem I have with this logic of man’s superiority to animals is that angels are greater than man, both in inteligence and knowledge, yet there is room in heaven for both man and angels. The superiority of angels does not preclude the lowly human being from entry into heaven. So too, it could be possible that there is room for beings lower than man to enter heaven. It really all depends on God’s will, not our logic or reasoning.

God’s will on this subject has not been revealed. Not in Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition. For all those who adamately hold that animals do not go to heaven I ask this one question: If it is absolute and unequivocal Truth, why has the Church not made a pronouncement on this question? Clearly it is an age old question and one that is not just trivial. It speaks to not only our salvation but the nature of our life here after.

I submit that no one knows, nor is it something for us to know and to make an absolute pronouncement on this outside of divine revelation is the essence of arrogance.
 
So what do you make of this…???

**Heaven Is for Real **is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room.
Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how “reaaally big” God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit “shoots down power” from heaven to help us
 
rap,

I never said that heaven has no animals in it.

I said that based on Catholic teaching/theology, animals do not have an immortal soul and thus without one, their souls cannot exist beyond the life of their body. St. Thomas Aquinas taught this, and he, next to St. Augustine, was the smartest Catholic who ever lived when it came to theology. He was not made a Doctor of the Church because he was a Sicilian . . .

And if you read my posts on this thread, I always took the position that allowing for an animal’s soul to enter heaven as would a man’s, negates or denigrates Jesus’s suffering and redemptive death.

The bible was not written for animals - it was written for man. I know that for a fact because animals cannot read.

And I realize that God thought that animals were good after he made them. He thought everything he created was good, including Lucifer. Well, just because God thought all ofhis creation was good does not mean it makes it to heaven. Things didn’t turn out too well for Lucifer, yet he, too, was God’s creation.

I simply think that when man “elevates” animals to the level of a man, that denigrates God’s creation because WE were created in God’s image - not animals, not trees, not water, not grass, nothing else but man.

I readily admit the Church has never definitively taught on the issue. But keep one thing in mind about “definitive teaching” on certain issues.

The Church never teaches about ANYTHING definitively until it does - but that does not mean what is finally taught was not already a fact. Considering the Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. Neither of those were definitively taught until the Holy Father made his ex cathedra pronouncements to those effects. But again - they occurred long before the Church defined them as infallible teachings.
 
Is Melchizidek in heaven? The scriptures say that he had no father or mother and that his order of priesthood is the order of priesthood that Jesus exercises and that it endures forever.

Could it be possible that Melchizidek is different than the angels and humans that some here maintain are the only ones that God allows in heaven?

My understanding is that the New Jerusalem will be the perfection of the old Jerusalem that we currently have here on Earth.

And to be sure our glorified bodies in heaven are different than our current bodies–that does not mean that they’re not bodies though.

Wasn’t Jesus’ body after his resurerrection a glorified body? It was recognizable to the disciples.

My point is that man is not the only game in town when it comes to God’s infinitenesss or in what He chooses to create.

I too think it is wrong to suppose that our pets will be in heaven for sentimental reasons.

But if God chose to have the alabaster jar that the woman who annointed Jesus’ feet with her hair in heaven that would not surprise me.

Nor would it surprise me that one of the jars that held wine that Jesus created at Cana of Galilee when He started his public ministry–if that was in heaven that would not surprise me either.

It wouldn’t surprise me if maybe our pets weren’t there but that God would have other animals there.

The point isn’t that Jesus and the beatific vision of God isn’t the greatest and most wonderful thing in heaven–the point is that God could have anything He wanted in heaven.

And one last thing about St. Thomas Aquinas–he’s probably the greatest doctor of the Catholic faith. And I would guess that anybody who contradicted him on anything would roundly be criticized here but it’s also true that–

St. Thomas Aquinas for all his greatness as a theologian wasn’t granted the full insight of the Immaculate Conception that we have now–Dun Scotus figured that out when he couldn’t.

It is possible for St.Thomas Aquinas to not be 100% correct about everything he ever wrote.

Here’s one last challenge for all those who say that animals will not be in heaven–they may be right about that–just answer me this:

What was the Holy Spirit trying to say to us in Ecclesiastes 3:21?

How should we apply that verse to certaintude regarding what happens to animal’s spirits when they die?

I don’t know if pets or animals will be in heaven.

My only point is I don’t think all the theologians who think otherwise know either!
 
I read here:
“The point isn’t that Jesus and the beatific vision of God isn’t the greatest and most wonderful thing in heaven”

An interesting view, quite at variance with Catholic teaching.
 
Jerry-Jet,

I do not presume to tell you how to think, but I will beg pardon on this one:

I would SERIOUSLY reconsider your statement: "The point isn’t that Jesus and the beatific vision of God isn’t the greatest and most wonderful thing in heaven . . . "

If that is not the point of “aiming” for heaven, what is???
 
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