This paper will explore the significance for animal ethics of an ongoing debate in Christian theology about biological evolution, natural evil, and the goodness of God. While this theological debate has received much scholarly attention over the past two decades, its ethical implications have not been as fully explored as other aspects.
Christians who wish to both accept the theory of evolution by natural selection and affirm the natural world as God’s good creation are faced with a challenge, apparent to those reflecting theologically on evolution since Darwin’s own exchanges with Asa Gray (Sollereder 2010). Natural selection, as theorized by Darwin and his successors, depends on scarcity and a violent “struggle for existence.” Pain, suffering, death, and species extinction are intrinsic to the evolutionary process that has generated the rich variety of life on planet earth. There seems to be a dissonance between the violence and suffering baked into this process and Christian faith in a God who loves what God has created. What does it mean, then, to speak of the goodness of God the Creator in light of biological evolution?
Christopher Southgate (2011) has written of “a key fault-line” between two kinds of theological response to this problem. On one side is his own view: evolution by natural selection is the only way in which even an all-powerful God could create complex life, and God willed the evolutionary process with all its “disvalues” (as Southgate calls them) as an unavoidable means to realize the goods of creaturely life. On the other side is the position favored by this paper: while the disvalues are indeed intrinsic to the evolutionary process, this state of affairs does not accord with God’s good and loving purposes for creation. It is better understood as reflecting in some sense a kind of “fallenness” or “brokenness” (distinct from human sin) in creation (Deane-Drummond 2018; Hoggard Creegan 2013; Messer 2020: ch. 3). Recent efforts at dialogue across the fault-line (Southgate 2022; Southgate et al. 2025) have achieved relatively little rapprochement between these conflicting views. The striking exception to this judgment is eschatology: some on both sides of the divide share the hope of eschatological fulfilment for other-than-human creatures and an end to the suffering, struggle, and destruction of the present age (compare, e.g., Sollereder 2019: ch. 6 and Southgate 2018 with Clough 2012: chs. 6, 7).
What of the ethical implications of this debate? Southgate (2015) has argued that an eschatological ethic for our treatment of animals and nature is needed, and the proposed paper will follow his lead by reflecting on the ethical significance of this recent rapprochement concerning eschatology. The paper will endorse Southgate’s call for such an ethic to be kenotic in character, and will work out the practical implications of this with reference to two particular issues. It will however disagree with Southgate’s own practical proposals about both.
The first issue is killing animals for food. While acknowledging the ethical problems with much present-day meat production, Southgate (2015) considers meat-eating in itself ethically unproblematic, for reasons not unconnected with his evolutionary theodicy. By contrast, this paper will argue that the form of eschatological hope now affirmed by Southgate (e.g. 2018) mandates Christians to refrain from avoidable violence toward our fellow-creatures – including, for many westerners, benefiting from the killing of animals for food. The second issue is the human response to species extinction. Southgate (2008) has called for humans to be “co-redeemers,” sharing with God in the healing of the evolutionary process, including efforts to combat both anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic species extinction. This paper will critique his claim that humans are called to be co-redeemers, for reasons akin to those of Eva van Urk-Coster (2023). While in practice it may be difficult to distinguish between anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic species extinctions in our time (van Urk-Coster 2023), the paper will in principle endorse attempts to address the former, since such attempts can be understood theologically as a form of repentance for the sins of ecological destruction in which many humans are implicated. It will however express much greater wariness on both theological and practical grounds about attempts to counteract the latter.
Clough, David. 2012. On Animals, vol. 1. T & T Clark.
Deane-Drummond, Celia. 2018. “Perceiving Natural Evil Through the Lens of Divine Glory? A Conversation with Christopher Southgate.” Zygon 53 (3): 792-807.
Hoggard Creegan, Nicola. 2013. Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil. Oxford University Press.
Messer, Neil. 2020. Science In Theology: Encounters between Science and the Christian Tradition. T & T Clark.
Sollereder, Bethany. 2010. “The Darwin-Gray Exchange.” Theology and Science 8 (4): 417-32.
Sollereder, Bethany. 2019. God, Evolution and Animal suffering: Theodicy Without a Fall. Routledge.
Southgate, Christopher. 2008. The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil. Westminster John Knox.
Southgate, Christopher. 2011. “Re-Reading Genesis, John, and Job: A Christian Response to Darwinism.” Zygon 46 (2): 370-95.
Southgate, Christopher. 2015. “God’s Creation Wild and Violent, and Our Care for Other Animals.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 67 (4): 245-53.
Southgate, Christopher. 2018. “Response with a Select Bibliography.” Zygon 53 (3): 909-30.
Southgate, Christopher. 2022. “God and a World of Natural Evil: Theology and Science in Hard Conversation.” Zygon 57 (4): 1124-34.
Southgate, Christopher, et al. 2025. God, Struggle, and Suffering in the Evolution of Life. T & T Clark (forthcoming).
Van Urk-Coster, Eva. 2023. “Ending Extinction: A Critical Assessment of Christopher Southgate’s Notion of Humans as Co-Redeemers in the Context of the Anthropogenic Biodiversity Crisis.” Journal of Reformed Theology 17: 172-99.
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.