Book Details

THE GROANING OF CREATION: GOD, EVOLUTION AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
SOUTHGATE

ISBN: 9780664230906
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Subject: Theology; Ethics, Environment, Current Affairs; Religion and Science

Price in UK sterling: £13.99

Availability in UK and Europe: Available to buy now

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Christopher Southgate discusses how pain, suffering and extinction are intrinsic to the evolutionary process. He shows how the world that is “very good” is also “groaning in travail” and subjected by God to that travail. Southgate evaluates several attempts at evolutionary theodicy and argues for his own approach – one that takes full account of God’s self-emptying and human beings’ special responsibilities as co-creators.

Excerpt

One of the core assumptions of Christian thought is the affirmation that God’s creation is good. The beautiful rhythms of the first chapter of the Hebrew Bible culminate in the assertion that “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). However, humans have always known that the nonhuman creation contained violence and pain; the young lions, to quote the Psalmist, roar, seeking their food with God (Ps. 104:21)…

Though animal suffering was known before Darwin, the narrative of evolution that emerged in his work stretched the extent of that suffering over millions and millions of years and millions of species, most of them now extinct…

We can now see why pain and violence are endemic in nature. We can also see the beginnings of a possible theodicy; values arise in evolution along with the disvalues…

Reviews

“Christopher Southgate’s refined reflections on the suffering of sentient life are profound and moving. They are also scientifically informed and theologically sophisticated. This creative work shows how an openness to evolutionary science can considerably deepen and enliven Christian theology’s understanding of nature and nature’s God.”

-John F Haught, Senior Fellow, Woodstock Theological Centre, Georgetown University


“This is a badly needed book. Suffering is the hardest of all issues for Christian theology, and the suffering of nonhuman creatures is a neglected area of theology. Southgate offers a learned and moving contribution to this field. He writes with a passion for the creatures of Earth and for God.”

-Denis Edwards, School of Theology, Flinders University, Australia


“Southgate faces honestly the most challenging threat to a theistic evolutionist: how can we reconcile a creator God of love with a natural world bloodred in predation, violence, suffering, and extinction? In this lucid and eloquent treatment, Southgate offers us the most comprehensive analysis of evolutionary theodicy to date.”

-Ted Peters, Professor of Systematic Theology, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 – Introduction
1.1 The “Good” and the “Groaning”
1.2 Evolutionary Theory
1.3 Objections: Perhaps There Isn’t a Problem After All
1.4 Seeing the Creation Truly
1.5 Refining the Problem
1.6 Responses to the Problem from Darwin Onward
1.7 A Key Move in Evolutionary Theodicy
1.8 My Own Approach: A Compound Evolutionary Theodicy

Chapter 2 – Roads Not Taken
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Creationism and Intelligent Design
2.3 God Not the Creator, or Not Benevolent?
2.4 The God of Process Theology
2.5 Teilhard de Chardin
2.6 Doing without a Fall from Paradise
2.7 Freedom, Suffering, and Love

Chapter 3 – Strategies in Evolutionary Theodicy
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Good-Harm Analyses
3.3 The Centrality of a Developmental Approach to the Goods and Harms of Evolution
3.4 A Focus on the Suffering of the Individual Creature
3.5 God’s Co-Suffering with the Creature

Chapter 4 – An Adventure in the Theology of Creation
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Suffering of God
4.3 Divine Self-Emptying
4.4 Developing a Theology of Evolutionary Creation
4.5 The Human Animal and Its “Selving”
4.6 God’s Providential Action in the World
4.7 The Significance of the Cross and Resurrection

Chapter 5 – Heaven for Pelicans? Eschatological Considerations
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Eschatology and Cosmology
5.3 Motives for Postulating the Existence of Nonhuman Creatures in a Redeemed Creation
5.4 Does an Evolutionary Theodicy Require Redemption of Individual Creatures?
5.5 Exploring a Redeemed Existence for Creatures at the Eschaton
5.6 Why Did God Not Just Create Heaven?

Chapter 6 – The Call of Humanity
6.1 Creation Groaning in Travail
6.2 The Freedom of the Glory of the Children of God
6.3 Humans as Contemplatives of Creation
6.4 Human Nature – Scientific and Theological Understandings
6.5 Ethical Kenosis
6.6 A Cautionary Word
6.7 Possible Callings for Human Beings in Respect of the Rest of Creation
6.8 Priesthood of Creation Reconsidered
6.9 Conclusion

Chapter 7 – Ethical Proposals and Conclusion
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Eschatological Vegetarianism
7.3 Global Justice, Global Warming, and the Glass Abbatoir
7.4 The Ethics of Extinction
7.5 Conclusion

Notes
Index

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