The Groaning of Creation

Book excerpt: Pain, suffering, and extinction are intrinsic to the evolutionary process. In this book Christopher Southgate shows how the world that is very good is also groaning in travail and subjected by God to that travail. Southgate then evaluates several attempts at evolutionary theodicy and argues for his own approachan approach that takes full account of Gods self-emptying and human beings special responsibilities as created cocreators. Christopher Southgate is Honorary University Fellow in Theology at the University of Exeter, England, and Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Originally trained as a biochemist at the University of Cambridge, he is the general editor and principal author of God, Humanity and the Cosmos (3rd ed.).