Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil

by Nicola Hoggard Creegan

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 the wheat and the tares. At times the good is glimpsed, but never easily or 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."

Genres: Philosophy

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Nicola is a theologian based in Auckland. She specializes in the interface between evolutionary theory and systematic theology and has broad interests also in all issues of public and contextual theology and ecology. Her recent book, Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil, examined theodicy given the reality of long aeons of animal suffering before humans arrived.

Nicola has taught theology (and previously mathematics) in the US and NZ. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at Flinders University, South Australia; a Research Scholar at St Johns Anglican College in Auckland; and is the Program Director for an online Masters in Theology and Leadership out of Roehampton University in the UK. She worships at an Anglican church and enjoys tramping and walking in New Zealand and other countries.