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Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil

2021; American Scientific Affiliation; Volume: 73; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.56315/pscf3-21schneider

0892-2675

John R. Schneider,

Religion, Ecology, and Ethics

ANIMAL SUFFERING AND THE DARWINIAN PROBLEM OF EVIL by John R. Schneider. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xii + 287 pages. Hardcover; $99.99. ISBN: 9781108487603. Kindle; $60.49. ISBN: 9781108767439. *In Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil, John Schneider seeks to tackle four interconnected difficulties of reconciling evolution with a Christian understanding of God's creation: (1) deep evolutionary time and the startling reality that there have been hundreds of millions of years of violence; (2) the "plurality of worlds," the masses of now-extinct life that once inhabited our planet; (3) the discovery of "anti-cosmic micro-monsters," the realization that microbial life shares the violent and competitive world that macro scale life experiences; and (4) "evil inscribed," the discovery that natural selection is the very driving mechanism of creation, if evolution is to be believed. *Schneider does not set out to create a theodicy, in the technical jargon of the field, but follows Michael Murray's lead in his 2008 Nature Red in Tooth and Claw and seeks a "causa Dei": a possible reason for God to allow animal suffering that is more plausible than not. Schneider does not claim to know the actual reasons for natural evil, but only suggests probable reasons. The central suggestion is that, in line with Marilyn McCord Adams's work, evil must be defeated for God to be justified. Evil is defeated when it is "a constitutive part of a valuable composite whole that not only outweighs the evil but could not be as valuable as it is without the evil" (p. 7). *Schneider spends the first six chapters setting out his space in the existing literature. He gives convincing reasons for avoiding animal theodicies that depend on a human or Satanic fall, which he finds "implausible in the extreme" (p. 100) for philosophical, scientific, and biblical reasons. He also rejects the "only way" approach developed by Christopher Southgate. Rather, he sees chaos (symbolized by the figure of the serpent in Genesis 2) as "incorporated into the original, 'very good' cosmic design" (p. 107). To defend this thesis, he develops an aesthetic approach to the problem of evil. God should be viewed as an artist, in which natural good and evil "create an overall picture of evolution as something like a larger story" (p. 155). Both the beauty and ugliness of nature call us to recognize a tragic sublime that helps us "see" a sense of divinity in the world. Schneider draws on biblical texts--in particular, the book of Job--as a source of theodical insight. Surprisingly, Schneider makes no use of Southgate's 2018 Theology in a Suffering World or Joel C. Daniels's 2016 Theology, Tragedy, and Suffering in Nature which might have been helpful dialogue partners for this approach because they offer aesthetic explorations of seeing God in the tragic side of creation. *Schneider presents two last interesting thoughts. First, that Jesus's death takes the place of the sacrificial animals in Hebrew tradition, not as a symbolic gesture, but so that in the purification rites of Yom Kippur, the one animal is not slaughtered, and the scapegoat does not have to be exiled and die in the wild. "On the cross, Jesus assumes both these animal roles--for the sake of the animals themselves" (p. 240, italics original). In so doing, Jesus enters "symbolically into the place of nonhuman and human alike, and thereby 'declaring' that responsibility for the suffering of animals inscribed into the design of nature finally falls on God" (p. 240). While not dissimilar to Southgate's suggestion that, in the Cross, God takes responsibility for all suffering, human and nonhuman, this more literal exchange brings a particularity to the instances of animal suffering that is directly linked to Jesus's death. *Second, Schneider takes seriously the idea of animal resurrection, but holds that the usual solutions for that do not do enough to defeat the evil that animals experience. Schneider suggests instead that animals should be elevated "to a high heavenly standing analogous to the venerated position enjoyed by human martyrs" (p. 264). They are honored for the part their suffering played on Earth and enjoy the admiration of others for their sacrifice. *As with any good book, there are things to quibble with. Schneider follows the work of Carol Newsom and Samuel Balentine closely in his reading of the book of Job. Newsom's assesses Job's gain in the all-important divine speeches as "tragic insight," a view that points to the limits of dialogue and the end of anything left to be said (Carol Newsom, The Book of Job [Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009], 253). Yet Schneider says, "I must depart from her conclusion on what Job 'saw,'" instead forwarding a view that offers a "transfiguration of tragedy into faith" (p. 191, italics original). Schneider maintains that if one is to create a causa Dei, or a defense, one must meet a "seeing condition": that is, must "provide a perspective in which one can at least begin to 'see' that God is engaged in the defeat of evil now" (p. 195). Schneider's insights on the book of Job as meeting that condition depend on his departure from Newsom's interpretation. Yet he defends the strength of his larger theodical argument because it is based on an interpretation of Job that is "grounded ... in the scholarship of specialists on the historical and literary character of the book" (p. 199). Schneider's appeal to authority here is questionable given that he differs from those authorities on the key hermeneutical issue of the book. *I also was glad for Schneider's extended treatment on my own work, God, Evolution and Animal Suffering, which overall, was fair (he is right, for example, on p. 257, that my proposals do not meet the seeing condition). However, his assessment of the moral-justificatory concerns on pp. 259-60 caused me to raise an eyebrow of surprise, as my example of how the death of dinosaurs could be seen as a meaningful part of the beauty of Bach's music was taken in a direction I never anticipated. Schneider took me to mean that "if God's aim all along was to bring forth mammalian and distinctly human life, then the dinosaurs had to be exterminated by some means" (p. 260). So, the death of the dinosaurs, and indeed of all prehuman life, was an engineered steppingstone to humans. This could not be farther from what I intended, as I hoped my engagement with Ruth Page's concept of "teleology-now" would show. Instead, I meant that God could link two seemingly unrelated historical events in a way that each created meaning for the other. If dinosaurs had not died in an asteroid strike, perhaps God might have created creatures in God's image among the descendants of the velociraptors. By no means do I think that God engineered animal death for particular historical ends, but rather that God creates ways of redeeming all suffering by an act of creation of meaning. *Regarding Schneider's thought that animals should be thought of as martyrs, the odd thing about this proposal is that martyrs are honored, not for dying, but for dying willingly for the sake of Christ. Schneider writes, "martyrs do not have to pass tests for entry into Heaven" (p. 266), but this overlooks that the very imagery he is drawing on in the book of Revelation assumes that they have already passed tests in what they suffered by refusing to recant Christ (Rev. 2:10, 6:9). This puts martyrs in quite a different place from the suffering experienced by animals, which is always unwilling even if equally innocent. Martyrs are honored for their choice to suffer when the option of being spared was presented to them--just like Jesus did. Animals are given no such choice, so it is difficult to see how being honored for an unwilling death undoes the injustice of putting them through suffering in the first place. *Yet, despite the ongoing quibbles, this is a concise and insightful book. It sets out a valid set of criteria and goes a long way toward achieving arguments that meet those criteria. I think it will become a staple of animal theodicy courses and is appropriate for upper-level undergraduate reading. It engages well with the other books in the field, and while it takes a more analytical and philosophical approach to this question compared to Christopher Southgate's The Groaning of Creation or my own God, Evolution and Animal Suffering, it does so with rich engagement with biblical texts and theological tradition. *A comment on the physical copy of the book I received: the printing was done with extremely rough pixilation, which has resulted in rather crude lettering. The book uses a serif font, but these were not printed in their totality and many letters have small gaps in them. While reading, this makes the letters look blurry and out of focus, or as if the printer ran out of ink. It is disappointing that the printing quality is so poor in a book that costs so much. Readers who will be bothered by this should opt for the digital edition where the letters are fully present. *Reviewed by Bethany Sollereder, a Research Fellow at the Laudato Si' Research Institute at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, and a lecturer in Science and Religion at Oxford's faculty of Theology and Religion.