Nicola Hoggard Creegan offers a compelling examination of the problem of evil in the context of animal suffering, disease, and extinction and the violence of the evolutionary process. Using the parable of the wheat and the tares as a hermeneutical lens for understanding the tragedy and beauty of
evolutionary history, she shows how evolutionary theory has deconstructed the primary theodicy of historic Christianity - the Adamic fall - while scientific research on animals has increased appreciation of animal sentience and capacity for suffering.
Animal Suffering and the Problem of
Evil responds to this new theodic challenge. Hoggard Creegan argues that nature can be understood as an interrelated mix of the perfect and the corrupted: the wheat and the tares. At times the good is glimpsed, but never easily nor unequivocally. She then argues that humans are not to blame for all
evil because so much evil preceded human becoming. Finally, she demonstrates that faith requires a confidence in the visibility of the work of God in nature, regardless of how infinitely subtle and almost hidden it is, affirming that there are ways of perceiving the evolutionary process beyond that
"nature is red in tooth and claw."
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Animals in the Garden of Eden
2. Human, Animals and Death Revisited
3. Animal Suffering-philosophical responses
4. Animal Suffering-theological responses
5. The Best of all Possible Worlds?
6. The Wheat and the Tares: Re-Imagining
Nature
7. A Picture Held us Captive
8. New Dynamics in Evolutionary Theory
9. Dualism or Tares in Evolutionary History?
10. The Fall and Beyond
11. Concluding Animal Ethics
Epilogue
Notes
Index
There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.
Nicola Hoggard Creegan is Senior Lecturer in Theology, and Dean of Graduate School at Laidlaw College.
Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin
Animals and World Religions - Lisa Kemmerer
Why Animal Suffering Matters - Dr. Andrew Linzey
