Blood, Fire, and Fangs: Hearing God’s Voice in Nature’s Violence

The following is a roughly faithful manuscript of my presentation at the American Scientific Affiliation conference, in July 2015, held at Oral Roberts University. The following is not

meant to be a formal scholarly paper, but a talk for a general audience. If you have questions about the sources used or are interested to hear more along these lines, feel free to get in

touch. The audio/video of this presentation is available at: http://resources.asa3.org/FMPro?-db=asadb49.fm4&-format=/asadb/detail3.html&-lay=layout1&-sortfield=first+author&-op=cn&combo_tag=sollereder&-lop=or&-

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INTRODUCTION

“Great are the works of the LORD; They are pondered by all who delight in them” I was

delighted when I heard that the theme of this year’s conference was “Hearing the voice of

God in nature.” What could be more appropriate and more important to a discussion of

science and faith than that central desire of the Christian life, to hear God’s voice?

Yet when we listen for God’s voice in nature, we find (if we are honest) that the

witness to God is deeply ambiguous. You might not notice the ambiguity if your full

exposure to nature was the sort of thing that is put up on powerpoints at church, or brought

out in Christian hymnody. “All things bright and beautiful” is fine, but look beyond calendar

pictures and urban gardens, and what you find amongst the works of the Lord can be deeply

disturbing. I want to take you to three moments where the ambiguity of nature was especially

evident to me:

Three Stories

In the first moment, I woke up suddenly, and this is what I saw: It is completely black. It

takes me a moment to remember where I am: that I am in a tent in the middle of the Rocky

Mountains, in the middle of the night. Just as I get oriented, I realise what it was that woke

me up: outside my tent, some large and unknown creature is meeting its end. Shrieks ring out

through the night… and then stop with intimidating finality. The silence is only broken by

the sound of tearing skin and snapping bones. While I hope that my all-too-thin tent walls

will mask the smell of fear no doubt emanating from me, I am struck by the thought that this

event is no exception, no special horror: this is the regular course of nature, now brought

uncomfortably close. Every wild carnivore I have ever rejoiced to see has survived by

making this a daily reality.

The second moment happens several years later, on the shores of paradise. On a small island

off the coast of Vancouver, my friends have the world’s best home. Every wall is lined with

obscure and fascinating books, the overstocked kitchen is always moments away from a feast,

and it is just a short walk down to the stunning beach. But one spring when I visited, a

particular phenomena overshadowed the usually glorious experience. The orchard trees,

usually covered with fresh growth, were covered with something else. It is hard to see in this

picture, so lets zoom in on one of those clumps.

Tent caterpillars, in their millions, had emerged to devour every leaf in sight. They

decimated all greenery, reducing the rich landscape to something that belongs in a horror film.

So numerous were the caterpillars that they devoured everything faster than the new growth

could emerge. The trees, severely damaged, produced no fruit that year. The farmers were

left without. Nearly every species suffered because of this explosion of population, including

the caterpillars themselves who, by and large, starved to death.

One species, however, did quite well. If you looked closely at the caterpillars, nearly

every second one had a white dot somewhere on their forehead. This was an egg, laid by an

ichneumonidae wasp. The wasps lay their eggs on the living caterpillars. When they hatch

the larvae burrow into the body and thereby have a large supply of fresh food, waiting

defencelessly to be devoured. In case you ever wondered where the creators of Alien got

their ideas from … it came from nature, and not from something alien at all.

The third story is from a ranch I used to work on in Alberta. The horse farther away is

named Jiggs, and the closer Jessie: two wonderfully powerful and beautiful Belgians who

pulled our wagons and sleighs for many years.

One summer evening, however, there was a terrible windstorm. This was tornado

country, so the winds could be serious business. When, the next morning, we went to check

on the horses in pasture, we found to our great dismay that part of a tree had fallen on Jessie

and severely broken one of her legs. The marks on the ground around her showed that she

had thrashed around in agony for hours before we found her, lying exhausted, and were able

to put her out of her pain.

Three stories, three examples of nature’s ambiguity: Predation, parasitism, and

horrific accident. These are, as often as not, what we hear when we listen to the voice of

nature. It is in these precise complexities that we will listen tonight for the voice of God.

Can this really be the “very good” world of a loving God? Our biological sciences only make

the problem worse. While William Paley could confidently assert in 1802 that “it is a happy

world after all” Evolutionary theory makes hearing the voice of God even more difficult

because it points to the disvalues, death, predation, and violence as the very source of

evolutionary development.

NOT EVERYTHING IS PROBLEMATIC

Before delving into the various theological accounts of violence in nature, it is helpful

to refine the picture a little bit. Not everything that causes pain is bad, for example. First of

all, pain itself is a great and necessary good for mobile creatures. The horror of leprosy is that

it eliminates the ability to feel pain. Those with Hansen’s disease then unintentionally destroy

their own bodies because they cannot feel the effect their actions have. Or sometimes, they

cannot protect themselves, as was the case in one African clinic where rats came and ate off

patient’s fingers while they slept. Without pain, we would live diminished lives, and if what

some of the people that Jesus interacted had was real leprosy, and not just a skin disease, then

his healing was actually an act of restoring pain. When we look more closely, we find that

many of the things we would initially object to, pain, predation, natural disasters and so on,

are actually necessary for a good flourishing world. So our concern in this talk is not with the

fact that there is pain or that natural disasters occur, but with the competitive, violent and

seemingly useless suffering and waste that pervades the process of evolutionary development.

Why have a system that relies upon the predation of the weak and vulnerable? Why develop

life through a process that means countless animals fall victim to accident, as Jessie did? The

values inherent in the natural world seem totally at odds with the God of Scripture, the God

who chooses mercy and love, and advocates that others do likewise.

I am going to try to persuade you this evening that when we listen to nature’s violence,

when we observe the painful and competitive evolutionary processes, full of contingence, we

can hear God’s affirmation that the world is “tov meod” – very good.

HUMAN FALLENNESS

Since the time of the Reformation the usual way to account for the violence and

suffering of the non-human world was simply to chalk it up to the effects of the human fall.

Calvin could say “For it appears that all the evils of the present life, which experience proves

to be innumerable, have proceeded from the same fountain. The inclemency of the air, frost,

thunders, unseasonable rains, drought, hail, and whatever is disorderly in the world, are the

fruits of sin. Nor is there any other primary cause of diseases.”1 Centuries later in 1868,

Charles Spurgeon said “Creation glows with a thousand beauties, even in its present fallen

condition; yet clearly enough it is not as when it came from the Maker’s hand–the slime of

the serpent is on it all–this is not the world which God pronounced to be “very good.”... It is

a sad, sad world. The curse has fallen on it since the fall, and thorns and thistles it bringeth

forth, not from its soil alone, but from all that comes of it.”

                                                                                                               1 John Calvin, Commentaries upon the First Book of Moses called Genesis (1554) in Calvin’s Bible Commentaries: Genesis, Part I, trans. J. King (Forgotten Books, 1847, 2007), 113.

For the English speaking world, shaped as much by the poetry of Milton as by the

Biblical text or the theological tradition, associating the human fall with non-human violence

has become an integrated part of the Christian story, traced through creation, fall, and

redemption.

Yet discoveries in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries cast

a shadow on this simple approach. Discoveries showed that extinction and violence have

been intrinsic to the living world, long before humans existed. Darwin added to the

increasingly grim picture by showing that the competitive and ruthless elimination of life was

a primary mechanism in developing “endless forms most beautiful.” The familiar story that

everything was perfect until sin in the garden marred all does not stand, either

chronologically or biologically. Some attempts to preserve human fault have been made,

most notably William Dembski and his retroactive application of the effects of the fall.

However, such attempts are riddled with theological difficulty. Not only are they sweepingly

anthropocentric, but also biblically problematic. God’s report of a “very good” creation

becomes wholly fictional, for, by their account, God created the world in corruption.

SATANIC CORRUPTION VIEW

Where else can we look for an explanation? Since humans come too late to the story,

a growing group of theologians have opted for a Satanic origin for evolution’s ambiguity.

Michael Lloyd, Paul Griffiths, Nathan O’Halloran, and Gregory Boyd are some of those

advocating this view. The most famous defender of this position, CS Lewis, speculated that

perhaps it was only the planet earth that was fallen, and not the whole cosmos, but either way

the evolutionary process was deeply marred. Parasites should never have threatened the

flourishing of other creatures, and predation and accidents should not cut short the life of

animals in their prime. Nonetheless, the Christian who takes this view is faced with serious

questions biblically and theologically.

PROBLEMS WITH SATANIC VIEW

Biblically, if the world is fallen before humans evolve, where is the Scriptural

evidence of Satanic corruption, in earth or sky or sea? Gregory Boyd would protest that

corruption is mentioned, that the struggle between God and oppositional forces is reflected in

the Old Testament passages where God rebukes the hostile waters of the deep or fights sea

monsters, such as Psalm 89:9-102 “You rule over the surging sea; when its waves mount up,

you still them. You crushed Rahab like one of the slain; with your strong arm you scattered

your enemies.” Boyd claims “A very real battle took place when God created the world, and

is still taking place as Yahweh (not Baal or Marduk) preserves the world from chaos.” The

problem is that the sea, the dragons in the waters, and the Leviathan appear only as already

defeated enemies in the Bible. They are not only defeated, but they even fail to put up any

kind of resistance to God’s attack. Rebecca Watson notes “it appears that although Leviathan

and Rahab are sometimes portrayed as recipients of Yahweh’s antagonism, the lack of

resistance (or even acknowledged provocation or hostility) precludes speaking of a ‘combat’

proper.” There is no indication that there is any sort of an ongoing struggle with them.

Similarly, Boyd’s claim that “these hymns express the authors’ perception that the cosmos is

besieged at a structural level with forces of evil that God himself must battle”—is simply not

borne out by the biblical content. Everywhere the total victory of God over chaotic forces

and creatures is announced, proclaimed, and celebrated. Where the chaotic forces or sea

creatures do appear as currently existing, they are universally seen as one of God’s good

created creatures or well within the boundaries of God’s current control. Though these

Leviathan or tannanim were enemies of the order of creation in Ancient Near Eastern

mythology, in Genesis they make up a part of a very good world. In Genesis 1:21, the great

                                                                                                               2 See also Psalm 29:3-4; 18:15; 74:10-13; 89:9-10; 104:3-9; 106:9; Proverbs 8:27-29; Job 9:13; 38:6-11; Habakkuk 3:8-15.

sea creatures are simply named along with the rest as those whom Elohim creates. In Psalm

104:26 the Leviathan that God formed frolics in the sea. The character of Satan is noticeably

absent in the creation stories. God, and God alone, is the Creator. To take Psalm 89, which

Boyd uses, in context: we read after the story of the battle that “the heavens are yours, and

yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it.”3 The whole of the divine

dialogues in Job are an eloquent attribution of all the most problematic parts of creation to

God’s handiwork, from carnivorous birds and giant sea monsters to hail and whirlwinds.

If there are biblical questions about a Satanic corruption of the earth, there are also

important theological objections. Maintaining God as the creator is an important aspect of

Christian belief. But if the evolutionary process was not God’s intention, if God never

intended violence, to what do we attribute the beauties that emerge out of that violence?

Holmes Rolston has poetically written, “The cougar’s fang has carved the limbs of the fleet-

footed deer, and vice versa.”4 If God did not intend the fang, if it is the result of Satanic

corruption, can we meaningfully attribute the beauty of the deer to God?... It would seem that

Satan is the origin of both. Throughout the natural world we can find countless examples of

the renewal and innovation brought about by the realities that these theologians would

attribute to Satan. Forest fires, predators, and even parasites, contribute to the integrated

flourishing of ecosystems. Too much of nature’s creativity would be attributed to Satan

through this approach, so let us lay it aside.

MYSTERIOUS FALLENNESS

There are other explanations for creation’s violence as well, most of which revolve

around denying the ability of God to rightly order creation. Thomas Oord takes the radical

option of denying creatio ex nihilo or “creation out of nothing” because he prefers “creation

out of chaos”. Celia Deane-Drummond advocates a shadow Sophia, or anti-wisdom, that is

                                                                                                               3 Psalms 89:11. 4  Rolston, Science and Religion, 134.  

like a shadow cast by creation’s light. Neil Messer defends a Barthian pre-history fallenness.

Nicola Hoggard Creegan simply asserts that the world is mysteriously and ubiquitously

touched by evil. Each of these, in one way or another, deny God’s achievement in creation.

God wanted one thing–straw eating lions or venom-less adders, perhaps–but could only

achieve carnivorous lions and fanged snakes. These mysterious fallenness models do not

help us in our quest to hear the voice of God in creation. They simply state that the voice of

God is hopelessly muddled. Evil happens and there is no explanation that will satisfy.

An admission of mystery is, of course, the final step that every theodicy takes. But I

wonder if there is not still a little more listening to do at this point.

Where shall we go with this troublesome problem of violence in nature? We cannot

look to human sin. We cannot look to angelic fault. We do not yet want to turn to mystery.

THE CONCEPT OF LOVE

I suggest we look back at our question: Can this world of blood, fire, and fang really

be the “very good” creation of a loving God? The sticking point is not the concept of God.

Human cultures have constructed many gods with whom the often vicious character of nature

would rest at ease. The problem is that Christianity describes God both as the Creator and as

a God of infinite love. The violence of the world is only a surprise in light of the second of

these: if God were uncaring we would find little wrong with the world. Wesley Wildman, a

notable voice in this conversation, takes just such an approach. God, according to Wildman

is: “the fecund source of all events regardless of whether human standards in play at a

particular time would classify them as good, bad, or indifferent….God,” he continues, “is not

in the caring business.”

But if we are going to talk of a God of love, it is worth investigating what we mean by

the term. Love is easily one of the most abused words in the English vocabulary. We can love

our family, and love our favourite TV show. Love can be an expression of the highest

aspirations of the human soul, or an advertising slogan for hamburgers. What do we mean by

it?

Most people mean something along the lines of a strong emotion in response to

something valued. “I love him because he makes me laugh.” But if our love is entirely

responsive, what happens when accident impairs or when someone funnier comes along? If

love is solely the response to value, it would lack faithfulness in light of change. We would

not want to be loved by someone who abandoned us the moment we lost the valued qualities.

Responding to this difficulty, a different approach has been taken that says love exists

entirely within the volition of the lover. We might value her because she is funny, but I love

her because I choose to, and choose to act accordingly. While this explains the faithfulness of

love, it does still leave a problem. As Eleonore Stump points out, if the beloved ever asked

“Why do you love me?” the person who loves by choosing would have to reply “Oh, well it

has nothing to do with you…” …Maybe it is not such a great definition after all.

Stump instead develops a definition of love based on Thomas Aquinas’s work: love as

the outcome of two desires, the desire for the good of the beloved and desire for union with

the beloved. If we desire the good of an individual, it has to be responsive to the particular

needs of that individual, and their own capacity for flourishing. Likewise, the type of union

will be dependent on the relationship we hold with him or her. Love’s union will be different

depending on whether I love a parent, a spouse, a child, or a friend. Exploring someone’s

body might be one expression of love, while playing a game of ball might be another. Skilled

musicians can share a particular relationship that is closed to the non-musical. So love has to

do with particular people, in response to their particular skills and identity. What is

interesting about this definition of love is that anything that has a good, and anything that can

exist in relationship, can be a proper object of love. So I could legitimately love my dog, but

less legitimately love my cheeseburger.

Applied to God, this notion of love is really interesting. First, since it is responsive to

the particular good of the beloved and the appropriate relationship of union, it will always be

particular, and never a sort of universal blanket love. So if God loves the world, God loves

individuals within the world. Second, since the two desires of love reside in the lover, love

can be unilateral or unrequited. The objects of love do not have to be creatures who can

return God’s love, they just need to have a good that God can desire. God can love worms, as

well as humans, by this definition, by desiring the good of worms and by desiring the

appropriate relationship with the worm. It will, no doubt be a “wormish” sort of love, and

perhaps not open to human investigation. But the concept gives new meaning to the idea that

“God so loved the cosmos, the whole world, that he gave his only begotten son.” Humans are

not the only beneficiaries of God’s love, and are not the sole arbiters of the purpose of

creation, an important message in itself in our time of ecological crisis.

What else can we say about this love of God for creation?

W. H. Vanstone, in his short masterpiece Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense, defines

the boundaries of love through three phenomenological markers. If limitation, control, and

detachment are present, he argues, then love is not present.

First: limitation. If God loves the world, then regardless of the outcomes or cost, God

must commit to the project of creation without hesitation and without calculation.

Limitlessness means that God will never turn away from creation. No amount of disvalue,

pain, or even of rebellion will turn God away from desiring the good of creatures and the

fulfilment of creation in union with God. God does not simply create the world and leave it

to its own devices, but accompanies creation, suffering with those who suffer and rejoicing

with those who rejoice. God’s love is limitless: “it bears all things, believes all things, hopes

all things, endures all things.”

Rather like being a parent, one would think.

We might think accompanying the creation is a weak response to the suffering of

countless creatures. What does it help if God suffers with those who suffer, if God does not

prevent their suffering in the first place? Well, first of all, it avoids one of the most profound

mistakes we can make about God. Many imagine God to be a little like Lord Farquaad from

the movie Shrek. Do you remember him? When he wanted to send knights to rescue the

Princess Fiona, he stood high above them in a balcony and said “Some of you may die… but

that is a risk I am willing to take.” Without some sense that God suffers alongside creation,

we risk seeing God as one who makes others simple means to an end. But that is not the way

of love. That is not the way of the God who is most fully revealed in the crucified Christ!

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Vanstone’s second mark of inauthentic love is the mark of control. Vanstone writes

“When one who professes to love is wholly in control of the object of his love, then the

falsity of love is exposed.” We cannot both love and control because love necessarily

involves respect for the will and being of the other, since these are intrinsic goods.

Think of a parent and child. If you notice a child who is never allowed to make

decisions, never allowed to take risks, never allowed to make mistakes… do you really come

to the conclusion that the child is deeply loved? Or do you think, as I do, that the priorities of

love have been misplaced?

The principles for God and the non-human world are no different than parent and

child: for God to control the creation entirely would be to determine and therefore destroy its

capacity to develop self-being in so far as it possesses that capacity. It is good for the creation

to be itself. If God loves the creation, God will not control and thereby diminish its being. For

Australian theologian Denis Edwards, God’s respect for creaturely autonomy is most fully

expressed in the event of the cross, where God chooses to suffer the rejection of God’s own

creation, and so reveal the full extent of divine love. Instead of overwhelming or coercing,

Jesus accepts the limited understanding and love of people, even when they crucify him.

Through the cross, God’s nature is revealed. “This nature,” writes Edwards, “is revealed in

the Christ-event as radical self-giving love. This is a divine and transcendent love, a love that

has an unimaginable capacity to respect the autonomy and independence of creatures, to

work with them patiently, and to bring all things to their fulfillment.”

God’s way of dealing with sin was not to arrive in overwhelming triumph and slay all

evildoers. God’s way was to lay crucified while slain by evildoers. But here is the difference:

while the first way would have brought an end to those who do evil, the second way redeems

them. It is the same with the whole of creation: God’s methods are slow, precariousness, and

unpredictable. They work with rather than against the beloved, even when that is costly. In

this sense, the precarious journey of evolutionary wanderings fit well with our view of how

divine love would create. Life emerges slowly, fragile yet robust. Mass extinction events

threaten the possibility of life over and over again, yet each time, life responds with more

creative diversity than before. And through it all, God does not overwhelm or interrupt, but

lovingly accompanies creation, even as it develops methods of survival that do not yet reflect

God’s character.

The final mark of inauthentic love according to Vanstone is that of detachment. A

lover who is untouched by the trials of the beloved does not actually love. In our definition of

love, God’s vulnerability is seen in the desire for certain outcomes for the beloved. If God

has desires for creatures, which love implies, and creatures can resist those desires, then God

cannot be unaffected by creation. For many Christians, the conclusion of vulnerability has

been troublesome since it challenges the notion of God’s aseity and God’s immutability, that

is, God’s ability to be totally self-existent, self-reliant, and unchanging. If God responds to

the world, then the world has the power to affect God, beyond God’s own choice. This is

problematic: after all, it appears as if there is nothing to prevent God from being

overwhelmed by suffering just as people often are. Paul Fiddes, along with Denis Edwards

and Walter Kasper, find a middle way between refusing God the ability to suffer altogether

and refusing the uncontrollable nature of suffering by suggesting instead that God “chooses

that suffering should befall him.” God chooses to be vulnerable, and chooses to be open to

the suffering that love brings. Fiddes’s conclusion coheres well with Vanstone’s observation

that, “Where love is authentic, the lover gives to the object of his love a certain power over

himself –– a power which would not otherwise be there.” Of itself, the creation has no power

to affect God: in this sense God is immutable and impassible. As an object of love, however,

the creation gains that power because God gives God’s self to it. Yet, since the ability to

suffer is freely chosen by God, God is not ruled or overwhelmed by it. Suffering remains

both uncaused by God and voluntary.

The second and third marks of love, those of precariousness and vulnerability, mean

something very important when we are trying to listen to the voice of God: they tell us that

we can know the whole cosmos is loved precisely because the creation does not look like

God.

Let me unpack that a little bit. A facile notion of love would assume that a good

creation would be one that perfectly reflects God in every aspect. If God is perfect and

peaceable, then a beloved creation should be perfect and peaceable too. We see this all the

time, right? After all, if a parent is perfectly tidy then a profoundly loved teenager’s room

will obviously be tidy as well… Right?... Hmm… Maybe not.

The paradox of the loving parent is that they allow the teen to eat junk food and keep

an untidy room (or conversely to become a vegetarian or––as mine had to do––allow one to

take up sword fighting as a hobby), because the young-adult’s self-development, their

“selving” to borrow a term from Christopher Southgate, is more important than the gains that

could be had through close control. The paradox of the loving God is that God allows

creation to grow up on its own terms: sometimes beautiful and peaceable and cooperative;

sometimes violent and full of suffering. Vanstone puts the paradox this way: “The external

restraint which love practices is often a mark of its freedom from internal limit.”

So, when we listen for the voice of God’s love in nature, we may find that God’s

voice is clearest in the places that initially seem most at odds with God’s love. An omnipotent

God could create a nature that perfectly expressed the Trinitarian interpersonal peace. But it

would only be a mirror or a photograph: a static reflection of God’s own being. An

omnipotent God could do that. But only a loving God would create a self-developing world

marked by radical freedom. That freedom is not an end in itself, mind you. It is not free just

to be free. It is free so that it can develop into something that does resemble God, but by

dynamic imitation rather than static reflection.

The intuition we have that a creation made by the God of peace should be peaceable

is not wrong. It is only that we are meeting the world in mid-development, in its adolescence,

so to speak. When we listen to the voice of God in nature, we don’t hear the clarion call of

perfection achieved. We hear the whispered promise of what is yet to come. There is

abundant evidence of the struggle of growth: the competition and violence. There is also

evidence reflecting peace and altruism. Sarah Coakley and Martin Nowak have highlighted in

their recent work the importance of cooperation and symbiosis in evolutionary development.

Still, we can’t rely on this cooperation too far though, since cooperation in nature is usually

always for the survival of the newly formed alliance against other alliances. It would be a

little like portraying human cooperation in gangs as an example of human altruism. Yes, it is

cooperation, but only for greater strength. Still, it is helpful to see that violence and death are

not the only creative forces in nature.

The most profound reflection of God in the world is seen, paradoxically, also in the

one place in creation where the world truly is fallen, truly is not as it should be: in human

beings.

And here we run into yet another problem. If I am saying that the world, apart from

humans, is as it should be, if the evolutionary process is not corrupted even in its violence,

competition, and accident, how can I say that when it occurs with humans it is any different?

What makes it not sinful for a chimpanzee to kill another, as they often do, but the same

action in humans is sinful?

It comes down to what the purpose of each part of creation is. I would suggest that

God’s ultimate purpose in creation is to form autonomous beings who can be loved by God

and who have the capacity to learn to love. My thinking in this area has been profoundly

shaped by Andrew Elphinstone and his book Freedom, Suffering and Love. In it, Elphinstone

suggests that while evolution can produce the raw ingredients needed for love, evolution

cannot produce love in beings. If that is the case, then the evolutionary process is suitable for

producing all sorts of creatures who can be loved by God and it can produce all sorts of

desires in those creatures. If we link up Elphinstone’s insight with Stump and Aquinas’s

definition of love as a composite desire we begin to see a coherent picture.

Evolution can produce desire. In fact, it produces all sorts of desires, whether for

security, or self-sustenance, or reproduction: evolution’s desires are like wheat in the field.

Love, however, is like bread: the result of careful cultivation, a work that uses what nature

provides and transforms it into something else. In humans, the free evolutionary process

provides us with desires that await a further work of God in our soul. In God’s work (work

that is beyond nature) our desires are formed into the likeness of Christ and his love. Our

society thinks that what is natural is good. We are encouraged to find our true selves by

uncovering our most basic nature. But the Christian calling is one to unnatural virtue, to

desires transformed by Christ. The natural is an intrinsic part of that, of course. Not even the

most skilled baker can make bread without flour! But to confuse the raw ingredients for the

finished product would be a very grave mistake indeed. Since the work of transforming

natural desires into the desires of love is something only humans have the capacity for, only

humans are accountable for resisting that work of God. When a chimpanzee attacks another,

it is following its natural desires, and in doing so, it is living as part of God’s good world.

When a human acts on those same instincts and desires, he or she is denying the love that

God would work in them.

We have been trying to tease out how a God of love could create a world of violence

and strife. So far, I have suggested several partial solutions: first, that the love God bears for

creation requires a certain level of freedom to be given so that creation can be itself, second,

that where that freedom causes suffering, God suffers with those creatures, bearing the tragic

cost of a risky endeavour. And finally, I suggested that as a method of creating beings who

hold strong desires that could provide the raw ingredients of the strong desires of love,

evolution is an effective method.

REDEMPTION

All this is well and good, but it is still not enough. There are still situations where the

benefits seem completely outweighed by the cost. Lives cut short by accident or neglect, lives

that carry little but suffering and pain, defy our attempts to justify them through greater good

arguments. We need to see some sort of redemption for those who suffer.

Jay McDaniel outlines four different types of redemption: first, freedom from the

consequences of sin, second, freedom from what distresses or harms, third, contribution to

the lives beyond one’s own, and lastly, transformation into a new type of being. Not all these

models of redemption are equally applicable to the non-human world. The first, freedom

from sin, applies almost exclusively to humans, though in our ecological crisis it may have

some wider implications as well. While freedom from distress or harm is surely a form of

redemption it is fairly weak on its own, since it might mean no more than the death of the

creature who suffers. Jessie, that magnificent horse, whose story I told you earlier, was freed

from her distressed when we found her but one can hardly call that redemption. But the third

meaning, contribution to the life of others, finally begins to gain some traction! At one level,

we know that the creatures who die are not wasted, rather, their bodies are eaten and the

substance of their lives pass into those around them. Every new life depends on the death of

those who came before. And the death of the individual is not just a help to those who

consume them but also to their own species. Deer are fleet-footed precisely because many

who were slow died. Many times in the history of life, the whole have benefited because of

the death of the individual. Life builds upon life and life upon death. Every creature is caught

up in the exchange. Every creature receives contributions from others, and every creature

contributes to others. More than that, every creature contributes to the life of God, and some

theologians have made much of the joy brought to God through the existence of being of

each creature, and how each creature is kept for eternity in the memory of God.

Still, this does not seem to be enough. For too many, life is truly “solitary, poor,

nasty, brutish, and short.” The classic example in the literature is McDaniel’s white Pelican

chick. White pelicans lay two eggs every year, with the strategy of only raising one chick. In

over 90% of the cases it is the first chick who lives. When the second and smaller chick is

hatched, the older sibling pushes it from the nest, where the parents ignore its plaintive cries

until its inevitable demise. In about 10% of the cases the first chick dies, and the second is

raised in its place. This ensures that in every reproductive cycle a chick is raised. While it

might be a viable species survival technique, the second chick’s life seems to be all tragedy

and no triumph. What is the response of love to this creature? How can a God of love allow

this? What would redemption look like?

Increasingly theologians are moving towards McDaniel’s fourth option, redemption

as the transformation into a new type of being. McDaniel himself calls the idea pelican

heaven. Pelican heaven, or horse heaven in Jessie’s case, is the theological hypothetical

postulated as love’s response to creatures whose lives have known the cost of evolution.

People have always wondered about the final end of nonhuman animals. Traditionally

in Christian thought, nonhuman animals were thought to lack rational souls. Since rational

souls were the only thing that could survive death, and only humans had rational souls, it

made sense to deny that other animals could experience the new creation. Increasingly,

however, people are turning towards the Hebrew of view of life, that creatures are nephesh,

living beings, ensouled bodies rather than embodied souls. It is a view of living creatures that

emphasises the unity of being, not dividing body and soul. In this case, there is no reason to

deny that other animals could exist beyond death. Biblically, both humans and other animals

are described as nephesh, and so there is no line to divide between them, no reason to exclude

other animals because of their composition.

Several theologians have suggested that nonhuman animals will only be present in the

new creation if they were connected somehow to humans. Pets, for example, would be

included in redemption because of their particular relationship to their owners. Dinosaurs,

however, would be few. This seems to me to be far too anthropocentric, far too human

focussed. Redemption is God’s idea. Other theologians have speculated that existence in the

new creation would be based on the capacity and actuality of suffering in the life of the

individual. So, creatures included would have to be sentient enough to suffer, and would have

to have drawn the short straw in their earthly life. Creatures who have flourished would not

need redemption. But this, I think, is to confuse redemption with compensation. Redemption

might involve compensation, but it should not be reducible to it.

Theologically speaking, I think that God’s love for all creatures is the very strongest

argument for the redemption of all creatures. The great Christological hymn in Colossians 1

says “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to

reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace

through his blood, shed on the cross.” All things, we are told, are reconciled to God through

Christ. So reconciliation and redemption cannot only extend to sinful humans, but must reach

beyond them.

PHOTO MOSAIC

We can, in fact, draw these last two pictures of redemption together: redemption as

the contribution to the lives of others and redemption as the transformation into a new type of

being. But to explain this, I’m going to need you to use your imagination.

I think in pictures. And in this case I am going to think in literal pictures. How many

of you have seen a photo mosaic? A photo mosaic is where each pixel of a larger picture is

made up of a small picture. The idea of redemption I wish to propose is sort of like a photo

mosaic. The story of each creature, both in its flourishing and in its suffering, creates a

photograph, and that is combined with all the photographs of other creatures. When this

happens, each creature contributes to the lives of the other. So far, this is a bit like the old

tapestry argument, where God weaves together various threads so that an eschatological

picture is created. The difference in this model is that each creature brings something unique

and irreducible in the meaning of their own photograph. Each individual remains themselves–

there is no disappearance of the self into the whole, yet the whole could not be what it is

without the contribution of the individual. God’s part is to arrange the stories one against

another in order to bring out larger redemptive patterns. Nor is the pattern of redemption

limited to two levels: you could have one level of individual stories, and these could link up

to form an ecological level, the ecological levels could combine into the world history, and

finally at the end of history, God could disassemble the entire thing and reassemble it into an

eschatological kingdom. There is a balance between difference and continuity, and

importantly, the glory of the whole is reflected back onto the individual because of each

one’s contribution.

We end up with what Eleonore Stump calls “nested fractal narratives”: a pattern

where each level contributes to the other levels, and where self-similar (or fractal) patterns

(of redemption) appear at each level.

The companionship of God with creatures will continue into the new life. And this

sort of approach to life, seeing each world event and each individual creature as a necessary

part that will be creatively integrated into our eschatological end means nothing is wasted.

Every instance of suffering, death, and extinction will find a new meaning, a meaning that the

creature itself will share in, a future reality where the promise of a creation made in love will

be fulfilled in union with God. The voice of God, whispered and muffled now through the

glories and tragedies of nature, will ring out clearly. Love, will be, and always has been, its

theme.

POSSIBLE ENDING IF TIME ALLOWS

The focus of this talk has been on the non-human world, on their suffering and their

redemption. But it might be worthwhile in the last few moments to reflect on what this all

might mean for us. I would draw out three major implications

First, that there is tremendous importance in our actions because of the freedom God

gives. If love is as vulnerable and precarious as I have portrayed it, then our choices are

incredibly potent. God has allowed the creation to pursue paths of horror including almost

universal extinctions, and while there is redemption, our choices can change the course of

world history.

Second, love in creation means that the future of redemption is wider than we expected.

Salvation is as universal as God’s love, and there is no reason to expect that other creatures

will not be there, which may have important implications for how we treat them now.

Third and finally, I would want to draw out the challenge that such a definition of love

has for our relationships. If God’s love is marked by radical freedom, by co-suffering, and by

creative redemption, what does this mean when we try to imitate God? What does it mean for

our desire to control others, to mould them into how we would have them act, or even just to

keep ourselves safe from the terrible vulnerability of love? What does it look like in our day-

to-day actions to respond in love and creative redemption rather than in controlling and

coercive ways? I don’t know exactly. But I would wager it involves costly forgiveness, being

willing to go to the cross, and being willing to listen to the voice of the Spirit, whether

through the voice of Scripture or of nature. Thank you.