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What about the problem of natural evil, i.e., the presence
of biological disease, physical disaster and evolutionary wastefulness in
nature and the suffering, death of organisms and extinction of species which
result? Is it merely to be understood as a precondition both for the evolution
of life and consciousness, and for the possibility of genuine freedom and moral
capacity in humanity --- even if that leads to the problem of human sin? Or does the vast domain of natural evil, now written into the billion year
history of life on earth, undercut the goodness and power of God as immanent
Creator, and thereby exacerbate the problem of theodicy beyond response?
In exploring a non-interventionist account of objective
divine action in the context of evolution, Thomas Tracy first defines
pointless instances of natural evil as those which do not appear to generate
particular goods but are mere by-products of preserving moral freedom and the
integrity of nature. They will seem to be unnecessary, but a world that
includes the possibility of a personal relationship with God must apparently
include them as well. In addition, we profoundly lack a view of the overall
course of cosmic history; the limits of human comprehension force us to accept
epistemic humility, as the Book of Job teaches. We simply cannot expect to
solve the problem of evil, but instead we must proclaim that God suffers with
and redeems the world.
The struggle and pain of evolution leads Edwards to face the
challenge of theodicy.
Following Tracy, he first suggests that natural selection
needs to be considered in non-anthropomorphic and non-moral terms as an
objective process in nature, like nucleosynthesis in stars. Theodicy is no more
intense a problem for natural selection than it is to all such processes,
including death when understood as essential to evolution and life. The
Trinitarian God who creates through natural selection is both relational freely
accepting of the limitations found in loving relationships with creatures. The
incarnation and cross point to a conception of God related to natural selection
through unthinkable vulnerability and self-limitation. The God of natural
selection is thus the liberating, healing, and inclusive God of Jesus. This God
is engaged with and suffers with creation; at the same time, creatures
participate in Gods being and trinitarian relationships.
Peacockes treatment of theodicy is directly correlated with
his response to the problem of suffering and thus to his christology. As
suggested already, Peacocke adopts a kenotic theology, seeing God through
Christ as suffering in, with and under these (natural processes) with their
costly, open-ended unfolding in time.He then responds to the challenge of theodicy by extending Moltmanns concept
of the crucified God to include the suffering of all creation. Barbour, too,
begins with Gods self-limitation as voluntary, given for the sake of our moral
growth, as developed by John Hick out of the Irenaean tradition. Still
following the lead of David Griffinand other process scholars, he goes further in seeing Gods self-limitations as
metaphysically necessary, though a necessity belonging to Gods divine nature
and not external to God.
John Polkinghorne has developed a free-process defense in
response to the problem of natural evil. Traditionally the free-will defense
was deployed to address the problem of moral evil: the cost of creating
genuinely free creatures in terms of human sinfulness outweighs the cost of
creating a unilaterally deterministic world of blindly obedient automata. By
analogy, Polkinghorne argues that the anthropic conditions required for the
evolution of creatures capable of free agency lead, in turn, hinge on there
being genuine chance in nature. God does not intervene to overrule the
consequences, but grants the world independence, Loves gift of freedom to the
one beloved. Through Christ God is a fellow-sufferer with the world. The
cross is the fundamental basis of Christian theodicy.
In my own writingsI have explored the complex role entropy plays in nature. It fuels those
physical, chemical and biological processes which drive biological evolution,
and yet it ultimately leads to the dissipation, decay and death that pervades
these same processes. The production of entropy is thus associated with both
those aspects of nature which we would call good and beautiful, and those which
fall within the category of natural evil. This ambiguous and unavoidable role
of entropy in physics and biology, in turn, seems to prefigure what, in the
full context of moral evil, we understand as sin.
More recently I have suggested that the generation of
entropy plays a key role in the conditions of nature which are encompassed in
Polkinghornes free-process argument.This argument fits nicely with the recent work by Nancey Murphy and George
Ellis on what they call the moral universe.Murphy and Ellis claim that what we should seek to explain by an expanded
version of the Anthropic Principle is not only consciousness, intelligent life
and free agency, but life capable of moral agency. A kenotic doctrine of God is
key to their argument. My suggestion is that entropy is then part of what God
bequeaths to the universe in its design. In essence, if God is to create an
Anthropic universe, it must also be a thermodynamic one.
Finally, I have stressed how the problem of natural evil and
thus theodicy is radically escalated by the claim that God acts in the whole
sweep of biological evolution, particularly when this is discussed (as I do) in
terms of non-interventionist, objective, special providence. My proposed
response is to relocate theodicy from the context of a theology of creation to
that of a theology of redemption, stressing the cruciform character of nature
and Gods suffering with nature, and more importantly, the eschatological
consummation of the universe by the coming of God. But this, in turn, serves to
underscore the centrality and essential importance of eschatology to the
Christian message, and it is here, in the confrontation between eschatology and
scientific cosmology, that we will find the project of theology and science
facing its greatest challenge.
Contributed by: Dr. Robert Russell
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