Evolution, Eschatology, and Animal Ethics: Attending to Creaturely Suffering and Struggle

This paper explores the ethical implications of a current debate about evolution, natural evil, and the goodness of God. There is an ongoing “fault-line” (in Christopher Southgate’s words) between those who believe God willed the evolutionary process with all its struggle, suffering, and destruction, because this was the only way to create complex life, and those who regard the struggle, suffering, and destruction as opposed to God’s good purposes. Yet some on both sides agree strikingly on the shape of eschatological hope for other-than-human animals. Following Southgate’s own call for an eschatological ethic of animal care, the paper explores the ethical implications of this recent eschatological convergence across the fault-line, focusing on two issues: killing animals for food, and responding to anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic species extinction. While endorsing much in Southgate’s proposed eschatological ethic, it disagrees with his practical conclusions about both these issues.