Throughout this series we’ve seen two intertwining themes. First, death and suffering are necessary parts of the process–perhaps the only possible process–by which finite selves are brought into existence. Second, however, this process involves the (seemingly) permanent thwarting of many of those selves as well as the disappearance of entire ways of being (species). And humanity, in partnership with God’s redemptive purposes, has an obligation where possible to alleviate these side-effects of the evolutionary process.

In the last post we saw how Southgate applies this insight to our practices of raising animals for food. Any system–like our current factory farming system–that permanently frustrates the abilities of billions of sentient creatures to live lives according to their kind perpetuates (and indeed exacerbates to a tremendous degree) the natural ills of creaturely frustration and suffering. As participants in God’s healing of creation, we should work to reform or abolish such systems.

Next Southgate turns to the ethics of extinction, considering what role human beings have in preventing the disappearance of entire species. Most non controversially he contends that we are obliged to prevent the extinction of species threatened by human activity (anthropogenic extinction). But he goes beyond this with a confessedly “bold” proposal: “a sign of our liberty as children of God starting to set free the whole creation would be that human beings, through a blend of prudential wisdom and scientific ingenuity, cut the rate of natural extinction” (pp. 124-5, emphasis in the original).

This intriguing suggestion is based on a heavily eschatological reading of natural history:

[…] the Resurrection of Christ inaugurates a new era of redemption, in which all creation is to be renewed. Extending this thought, I hold that the phase of evolution in which new possibilities are explored via competition and extinction is coming to an end, and it is to be superseded by the final phase in which new possibilities of reconciliation and self-transcendence among already existing species will be explored. The hymn in Colossians 1 stresses that this transformation is first and foremost the work of Christ. However, the enigmatic passage from Romans 8 that has informed this study implies that human beings have a key role in this phase; the labor pains of creation await our coming to live in freedom. And a sign of that freedom would be that we seek to prevent any species presently companioned by the Spirit from disappearing from the network of possibilities within creation. (p. 127)

In practice this requires an extremely ambitious project of conserving what E.O. Wilson calls the “hotspots” of biodiversity and the “frontier zones” of existing wilderness; a vast transfer of resources from rich nations to poor ones, enabling the latter to preserve the biodiversity where they live while escaping grinding poverty; and a determined scientific investigation to catalogue existing species in order to understand how best to preserve them.

My biggest worry here has to do with Southgate’s apparent optimism about what large-scale human management of the natural world can accomplish. Preserving species threatened by anthropogenic extinction makes perfect sense to me, as does preserving existing wilderness areas to the greatest extent possible. But can we rely on the comprehensiveness of our understanding and the purity of our intentions to micro-manage competition between species in the wild?

This may stem from a difference in theological opinion: I’m less confident than Southgate seems that we can unambiguously enact the possibilities for transformed ways of living made available by the death and resurrection of Jesus. We remain, in other words, simul justus et peccator, and I think our persistent fallibility and self-serving tendencies need to be taken into account when considering such ambitious schemes. That said, it’s clear we have a mandate to reduce our impact on the natural world to make room for the species that we threaten to crowd out. It may be that we can do far more good this way than by trying to bring to an end a fundamental process of natural selection.

I’ve probably got one, maybe two, more posts before I wrap up this series.

Index of posts in this series is here.