Science and Religion
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Having offered an account of why God permits the suffering and frustated lives of so many non-human animals, Southgate turns to the question of what role humans might play in alleviating their plight. Key to his understanding once again is the notion of creation in travail, or “groaning.” Creation is good, but it’s destined to Read more
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As we saw in the previous post, Southgate affirms some kind of afterlife as an eschatological recompense for non-human animals who were deprived of the opportunity to flourish in this life, a strategy taken by many theodicies that focus on human suffering. But, as Southgate recognizes (and as we’ve discussed here before), “if an altered Read more
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In Chapter 5, Southgate directly takes up the question of an afterlife for non-human animals. This is another main plank in his evolutionary theodicy, alongside the “only way” argument. Even given that the evolutionary process is necessary to give rise to the values of finite creatures, countless animals still lead lives best described in Hobbes’ Read more
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In Chapter 4, Southgate develops a trinitarian “theology of creation,” an admittedly speculative enterprise that seeks to shine some light on the relationship between the triune God and an evolutionary process that operates according to Darwinian principles. Taking up the theme of kenosis, Southgate suggests that God’s self-emptying love is foundational both to intra-trinitarian relationships Read more
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Before moving on, it’s worth spending a post on what Southgate calls the “only way” or the “best way” argument, which is, in his view, “the starting point for any evolutionary theodicy that does not allow itself to be lured down the blind alleys–such as a spurious appeal to fallenness–that I explored in Chapter 2” Read more
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I’ve been reading a very cool book by Christopher Southgate called The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil. This short book hits on several topics that I’ve discussed here: the relation between evolutionary and theological accounts of nature, the understanding of sin and redemption in the context of an evolutionary universe, Read more
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ATR favorite Keith Ward also has a new book out – The Big Questions in Science and Religion. You can read a lenghty excerpt here (I haven’t read the book or the excerpt yet). I’m guessing it will cover a lot of the same ground as his recent Pascal’s Fire, though it looks like this Read more
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The other day I asserted that Christian theology still hasn’t fully absorbed the insights of Darwinism, even where it claims to have accepted them. This Christian Century article provides a good overview of some attempts to do just that. I think there are two issues that stand out as particular challenges for theology here: the Read more
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(Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Reflection on the ultimate destiny of animals has not been a central feature of Christian thinking about the eschaton. Most theology in general has been relentlessly anthropocentric, and eschatology as a general rule is no different. This is perhaps especially true of post-Enlightenment theology which, influenced by Cartesian Read more
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At the end of the previous post I wrote that Polkinghorne sees embodiment as essential to what it means to be human, partly because of the interrelatedness that is an intrinsic feature of all things. A self existing in isolation is, if not a contradiction in terms, at least living an extremely diminished and attenuated Read more
A Thinking Reed 