Animals in After Life

I am currently going through a horrible time with my beloved dog of 13 years, Chessie.  She was diagnosed this week with bone cancer.  I have several treatment options but I believe I will probably put her to sleep after easing her pain for as long as possible.  I am devastated about this.  I spoke to my priest about my grief and sorrow and the hope that I will again see Chessie again in the afterlife.  He told me, with great concern, that Orthodoxy does not believe that animals continue on in the afterlife and that, once she is released from her pain, she will basically be gone forever.  He provided me with quotes from the ancient spiritual fathers which seems to corroborate his statement.  This has shaken my Orthodox faith to the core.  I was born and raised in this faith and had never heard of this doctrine before.  I am having great difficulty coming to terms with this and am truly having a spiritual crisis about it.  I am a huge animal lover;  I rescue unwanted dogs and cats and live on a farm with horses.  Each animal is a special creation of God.....I cannot imagine that they are not part of His greater plan for us believers.

What are your thoughts?  Thank you.

Answers: 

Very Rev. Ihor Kutash kutash@unicorne.org 

I would tend to differ with this opinion.  There is no formal doctrine on this in the Orthodox Church.  Holy Fathers who have expressed themselves on this are - just as your priest and I - expressing their theological opinion.  This is called a "theologoumena".  Sometimes such opinions become doctrinal statements.  Usually they remain theological opinions.
 
The Orthodox Church is wisely reticent in pronouncing herself conclusively on matters only God truly knows - how could we who are yet on earth although we may also be in communion with Paradise know exactly what lies beyond this earthly life?  Only God  knows this.  We are not reticent in proclaiming all that is in the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Creed ("I believe in One God the Father Almighty....").  The matter of which we speak is not there, except indirectly in: "I look for....the life of the world to come."
 
The reason I would expect animals to be there is that they, too, are creatures of God and God does not create death.  They die because death has come into the cosmos as a result of the fall of humans.  St. Paul says that all creations groans in travail as it "awaits with eager longing the revealing of the sons of God" (Romans 8: 22, 19).  When all has come to be as it ought, I am convinced that there will be animals there.
 
And if we, by God's grace and our co-operation with this grace, are also there, why then I believe that all beings who have been a part of our lives - except those who choose not to so receive and co-operate with His Grace - will also be there.
 
C.S. Lewis (not an Orthodox theologian, but, I am convince an orthodox one) describes something like this in his book "The Great Divorce" in which a sanctified lady in paradise is accompanied by a myriad of animals as she walks in glory through the fields of Paradise.
 
That is my opinion.  I do not insist that it is completely correct - and I hope I am willing to be corrected in what is lacking in it.  But, as do you, I look forward to meeting with the beloved dogs and cats whose lives I have shared, should I be blessed to make it to those delightful fields!

Ukrainian Orthodoxy