The Groaning of Creation

A review of Christopher Southgate, The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008)

In this short work, Christopher Southgate sets out to tackle the perennial problem of pain and suffering. What sets this volume apart from most other exercises in theodicy is that he focuses on the relatively neglected issue of animal suffering.

The first three chapters are essentially introductory. In chapter 1, he sets the scene by defining the nature and extent of the problem assuming as his starting point the evolutionary picture painted by modern science. Chapter 2 is a survey of various approaches that in his view hinder our efforts to address the problem of evolutionary theodicy. He quickly dismisses creationism and intelligent design, both of which question the evolutionary picture of the world from which he is starting. Equally short shrift is given to those who suggest the physical world is in some sense evil, or that its creator is evil, or that sheer creativity somehow takes precedence over the will of God; all these approaches require too great a departure from orthodox Christian theology for his taste. But his real target in this chapter is the notion of a cosmic fall. He simply cannot reconcile the notion of a historical fall of humankind that somehow has cosmic consequences with the scientific record. From there, he turns in Chapter 3 to a survey of the other evolutionary theodicies currently on offer, looking particularly at the work of Rolston, Peacocke, Haught, and McDaniel.

Southgate’s own proposal for an evolutionary theodicy is to be found largely in chapters 4 and 5. Like the authors surveyed in chapter 3, he accepts that the evolutionary process was the only way (or at least the best way) for God to bring a variety of finite selves into existence, given the constraints imposed by a law-like universe. However, the beauty, diversity, and sophistication that have arisen as a result do not cancel out the very real suffering that has occurred as a by-product. On the contrary, the responsibility for such suffering lies firmly with God. Thus, in Chapter 4 he paints a Trinitarian picture of a God who ‘suffers in the suffering of every creature’ (p. 56) and who creates by self-giving. He envisages a creation in which creatures are called to be themselves (to express their ‘thisness’) in accordance with the triune God’s creative will. However, their response to that call is always ambiguous because expressed by self-assertion at the expense of others rather than by self-giving; thus many (perhaps most) individual creatures never achieve the fulfilment to which God has called them. In his view, it is not enough to say that the overall process or God’s final purpose somehow justifies the messy evolutionary means. Thus, at the end of chapter 4 he affirms that the Cross and Resurrection have an objective redemptive effect on the non-human creation. This leads in chapter 5 into a brief discussion of the place of eschatology in evolutionary theodicy. Here he affirms the orthodox Christian view that there is no redemption apart from creation: we are saved as embodied creatures not disembodied spirits. This clearly implies that the non-human is implicated in the eschaton, but does evolutionary theodicy require the redemption of individual non-human creatures? Southgate argues that the answer is ‘yes’ at least in the case of more complex organisms.

He concludes his book with two chapters exploring our calling to care for creation in light of this theodicy. While rightly warning against the hubris that thinks human action can somehow bring about the eschaton, he argues that we are called to have some part in the redemption of creation. Negatively, he calls us to a self-sacrificial care for our fellow creatures, an ethical kenosis. Positively, he develops our role in terms of contemplation, priesthood and stewardship. And, in the final chapter, he examines two specific proposals, giving a cautious welcome to Andrew Linzey’s notion of vegetarianism as a sign of the eschaton and calling us to work for the preservation of other species.

Inevitably such a brief account of such a large topic has its weaknesses. In particular, I would highlight the lack of development of God’s action in relation to the non-human (especially in view of the fact that Denis Edwards, one of the key influences on Southgate’s own position, takes a strictly non-interventionist approach) and the extreme brevity of his account of the role of Christ’s atoning work (in spite of assertion that this is central to his thesis, p. 76). Nevertheless, this is a thought-provoking and at times moving work, which deserves to be widely read and debated.

Adam’s Ancestors

A review of David N. Livingstone, Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion and the Politics of Human Origins (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)

In this volume, the historian David Livingstone offers us a fascinating history of an obscure view of human origins: pre-adamism. Now confined to the margins of religious conservatism, it was once part of mainstream intellectual thought, and before that it had its roots in a sceptical perspective on the biblical account of human origins.

In eight chapters, Livingstone traces the idea from obscure roots, through its hey day in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and back into obscurity. This structure is at once both chronological and thematic as he traces the transformation of the idea through its historical trajectory.

Although he sees tantalizing glimpses of the idea in writings prior to the seventeenth century, he identifies its first clear exposition in the work of the seventeenth-century author Isaac La Peyrère. Impressed by the diversity of humankind revealed by early ethnology, and particularly his own studies of Greenland, La Peyrère sought to explain this by postulating the existence of human beings long before the time of Adam. His inevitable denunciation as a heretic doubtless played a part in his pre-adamism becoming part of the armoury of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scepticism in its assault on biblical orthodoxy.

By Chapter 3 Livingstone is ready to trace the first of the transformations in the fortunes of pre-adamism: the politicization of human origins in the eighteenth century. If as early pre-adamism suggested, there are distinct human races only one of which is adamic and therefore blessed by God, it is but a short step to using it as a justification of imperialism in general and the institution of slavery in particular (since the dominion of the adamic race clearly extends to a paternalistic position vis-à-vis the ‘lesser’ races).

Move on another century and the idea has undergone further transformations. It saw increasing use as a strategy for reconciling science and religion. But at the very same time that it was becoming established in orthodox Christian apologetics, a more secular version was playing an important role in the emerging sciences of anthropology and ethnology.

With the advent of Darwinism, the idea underwent yet another transformation. This time it was pressed into service as a theological device for reconciling the new science of evolutionary biology with the biblical view of human origins. In the process it cast off its polygenist roots and embraced a staunch monogenism – the human race is one in origin but that origin is now pushed back into the deep past of evolutionary prehistory.

But even as pre-adamism was evolving from polygenism to monogenism, a parallel development was exploiting its racist potential to the full. Chapter 7 explores the role of pre-adamism in the developing politics of racial supremacy.

In Chapter 8, Livingstone explores continuing traces of pre-adamism in twentieth-century thought. Specifically, he identifies three contrasting uses of the idea. It plays a part in some anti-evolutionary apologetics. More importantly, it is still used by both evangelicals and Catholics as a device for harmonizing evolutionary biology with a (relatively) conservative reading of the Bible. But, as he points out in his conclusion, such harmonizing strategies have a tendency to transform the very things they seek to unite. On a more disturbing note, the third contemporary use of pre-adamism is its continued deployment to justify the vicious racism of extremist groups like Christian Identity and Aryan Nation. However, Livingstone reminds us that this racism results from a rereading of pre-adamism in a particular social setting rather than being inherent in the idea itself.

In conclusion, this is a well-written and thought-provoking study of an interesting and unjustly neglected strand in the history of the relationship between science and religion.

(This review originally appeared in Science & Christian Belief 22, no. 1 (2010), pp. 99–100.)