The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil

by Southgate, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780664230906
• ISBN10: 0664230903
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-06-19
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Pr

Summary

Pain, suffering, and extinction are intrinsic to the evolutionary process. In this book Christopher Southgate shows how the world that is "very good" is also groaning in travail and subjected by God to that travail. Southgate then evaluates several attempts at evolutionary theodicy and argues for his own approach-an approach that takes full account of God's self-emptying and human beings' special responsibilities as created co-creators. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Christopher Southgate is Research Fellow in Theology at the University of Exeter, England

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
The "Good" and the "Groaning"	p. 1
Evolutionary Theory	p. 2
Objections: Perhaps There Isn't a Problem After All	p. 3
Seeing the Creation Truly	p. 6
Refining the Problem	p. 7
Responses to the Problem from Darwin Onward	p. 10
A Key Move in Evolutionary Theodicy	p. 12
My Own Approach: A Compound Evolutionary Theodicy	p. 15
Roads Not Taken	p. 18
Introduction	p. 18
Creationism and Intelligent Design	p. 18
God Not the Creator, or Not Benevolent?	p. 20
The God of Process Theology	p. 22
Teilhard de Chardin	p. 25
Doing without a Fall from Paradise	p. 28
Freedom, Suffering, and Love	p. 35
Strategies in Evolutionary Theodicy	p. 40
Introduction	p. 40
Good-Harm Analyses	p. 41
The Centrality of a Developmental Approach to the Goods and Harms of Evolution	p. 47
A Focus on the Suffering of the Individual Creature	p. 48
God's Co-Suffering with the Creature	p. 50
An Adventure in the Theology of Creation	p. 55
Introduction	p. 55
The Suffering of God	p. 56
Divine Self-Emptying	p. 57
Developing a Theology of Evolutionary Creation	p. 60
The Human Animal and Its "Selving"	p. 71
God's Providential Action in the World	p. 73
The Significance of the Cross and Resurrection	p. 75
Heaven for Pelicans? Eschatological Considerations	p. 78
Introduction	p. 78
Eschatology and Cosmology	p. 79
Motives for Postulating the Existence of Nonhuman Creatures in a Redeemed Creation	p. 82
Does an Evolutionary Theodicy Require Redemption of Individual Creatures?	p. 82
Exploring a Redeemed Existence for Creatures at the Eschaton	p. 85
Why Did God Not Just Create Heaven?	p. 90
The Call of Humanity	p. 92
Creation Groaning in Travail	p. 92
The Freedom of the Glory of the Children of God	p. 96
Humans as Contemplatives of Creation	p. 97
Human Nature-Scientific and Theological Understandings	p. 99
Ethical Kenosis	p. 101
A Cautionary Word	p. 103
Possible Callings for Human Beings in Respect of the Rest of Creation	p. 104
Preisthood of Creation Reconsidered	p. 110
Conclusion	p. 113
Ethical Proposals and Conclusion	p. 116
Introduction	p. 116
Eschatological Vegetarianism	p. 116
Global Justice, Global Warming, and the Glass Abbatoir	p. 122
The Ethics of Extinction	p. 124
Conclusion	p. 132
Notes	p. 134
Index	p. 185
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