‘Whether or not there be any difference between men and beasts …?’: Animals, Dominion and Natural Law in Post-Reformation Scotland

Questions on the human condition, and the fragility of the boundary between human and animal, occupied the minds of early modern theologians. After 1560, when Scotland officially adopted the Reformed faith, early modern Scots were taught that Genesis recorded historical events and that Creation, and the subsequent Fall, had fixed and determined their place in the world. Understandings of what it meant to be human, and of the perceived distinction from, and relationship to, animals, were shaped by discussions of the Old Testament. The Biblical account of Creation and the Fall were by no means a unique concern amongst Reformed theologians but the renewed emphasis on the Old Testament and the concern with sin, understood through an infralapsarian lens, brought such debates into focus in the period. Through discussions of sin and corruption, humans were often portrayed as more beastly than the animals themselves, creating an apparent juxtaposition of human nature as simultaneously superior to but worse than animals. This article will examine these ideas, and their dissemination, considering the role of the Old Testament, the account of Creation and the Fall, and the belief in dominion and the natural law in post-Reformation Scotland.