Abstract
New findings in biology and evolutionary theory have proven to be both good and bad news for theologians wrestling with theodicy. On the good side, it has now become clear that symbiosis, cooperation, and compassion may be as deeply rooted as are competition and predation in “nature red in tooth and claw” (4). On the bad side, new understandings of how animals share with us not just the experience of pain but also the capacity for suffering vastly multiply the scope of the classic question of how a good God can permit such horror. In this splendidly interdisciplinary work, C. brings together synopses of many of the biologists and theologians currently reframing and reengaging related questions. Topics range from consideration of the theological implications of human evolution, to explorations of animal sentience, to a tour through philosophical and theological approaches to animal suffering, to epigenetics and emergence, to what a notion of “fall” might be in light of contemporary knowledge of the natural world.
C. posits a “wheat and tares” understanding of the biosphere: “nature is indeed shot through with beauty. . . . [At the same time] if we dig deeper we will find disease and suffering and predation and precarious lives lived on the edge of survival” (6). While we are called to collaborate with the good, we cannot always distinguish between wheat and tares; indeed some tares are necessary for wheat to grow. The concluding ethical considerations are accordingly tentative, but still a good start for conversation.
This is an extraordinarily thought-provoking book, remarkable for its intellectual scope and lucid style. Few writers engage both scientific and theological literatures as well as C. does here. She candidly dismisses facile solutions, ultimately concluding that God is both revealed and obscured, and we are not “compelled to affirm the mixed picture as good” (137). Wheat and tares veer close to the mystery response to theodicy, but C.’s aim is to offer that parable as a worldview, a reading of nature, not a proof, inviting believers to affirm the rationality of belief in the biblical God of love in the face of a clear-eyed recognition of darkness as well as light at work in the natural world.