Every Sparrow that Falls to the Ground
The Cost of Evolution and the Christ-Event
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ecot.2006.11.1.103Keywords:
evolution, natural evil, redemptionAbstract
Contemporary biology presents us with a 3.5 billion year story of life, a story in which there is a great deal of pain, death and extinction of species. For theology, this means an intensification of the old problem of natural evil. This article argues that God does care for individual sparrows. It proposes that we can think of the Spirit of God as being present in love to each creature here and now and of each creature finding redemption in Christ. It explores possible ways of understanding the meaning of redemption for individual sparrows.
References
Barbour, Ian 2001 ‘God’s Power: A Process View’, in Polkinghorne (ed.) 2001: 1-20.
Congar, Yves 1986 The Word and the Spirit (London: Geoffrey Chapman).
Conradie, E.M. 2000 Hope for the Earth (Bellville: University of Western Cape Publications).
‘Resurrection, Finitude and Ecology’, in Peters, Russell and Welker (eds.) 2002: 277-96.
Dodd, C.H. 1935, 1961 The Parables of the Kingdom (Glasgow: Collins).
Evers, Dirk 2002 ‘Memory in the Flow of Time and the Concept of Resurrection’, in Peters, Russell and Welker (eds.) 2002: 239-54.
Goodenough, Ursula 1998 The Sacred Depths of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Haught, John 2000 God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).
Gregersen, Niels Henrik 2001 ‘The Cross of Christ in an Evolutionary World’, dialog: A Journal of Theology 40: 192-207.
Johnson, Elizabeth 1998 Friends of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints (London: SCM Press).
McDaniel, Jay 1989 Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press): 41-49.
Moltmann, Jürgen 1990 The Way of Jesus Christ (London: SCM Press).
The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (London: SCM Press).
Page, Ruth 1996 God and the Web of Creation (London: SCM Press).
Peters, Ted 1992 God—The World’s Future (Minneapolis: Fortress Press).
Peters, Ted, Robert John Russell and Michael Welker (eds.) 2002 Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).
Polkinghorne, John (ed.) 2001 The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).
Rahner, Karl 1961 On the Theology of Death (New York: Herder & Herder).
‘Dogmatic Questions on Easter’, in Theological Investigations 4 (New York: Seabury): 121-33.
‘Resurrection’, in Rahner (ed.), Sacramentum Mundi 5 (New York: Herder & Herder): 331-33.
‘The Festival of the Future of the World’, in Theological Investigations 7 (New York: Herder & Herder): 181-85.
Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Crossroad).
Reid, Duncan 2001 ‘Enfleshing the Human’, in Denis Edwards (ed.), Earth Revealing—Earth Healing: Ecology and Christian Theology (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press): 69-83.
Rolston, Holmes, III 1987 Science and Religion: A Critical Survey (New York: Random House).
Genes, Genesis and God: Values and their Origins in Natural and Human History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
‘Kenosis and Nature’, in Polkinghorne (ed.) 2001: 43-65.
Russell, Robert John 2002a ‘Bodily Resurrection, Eschatology, and Scientific Cosmology: The Mutual Interaction of Christian Theology and Science’, in Peters, Russell and Welker (eds.) 2002.
b ‘Eschatology and Physical Cosmology: A Preliminary Reflection’, in George F.R. Ellis (ed.), The Far Future Universe: Eschatology from a Cosmic Perspective (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation): 266-315.
Schillebeeckx, Edward 1980 Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World (London: SCM Press).
Southgate, Christopher 2002 ‘God and Evolutionary Evil: Theodicy in the Light of Darwinism’, Zygon 37: 803-22.
Teilhard de Chardin 1955 The Phenomenon of Man (London: Collins).
Thomas, Gunter 2002 ‘Resurrection to New Life: Pneumatological Implications of the Eschatological Transition’, in Peters, Russell and Welker (eds.) 2002: 255-76.
Tracy, Thomas F. 1998 ‘Evolution, Divine Action and the Problem of Evil’, in Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, S.J. and Francisco J. Ayala (eds.) Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory; Berkeley, CA: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences): 511-30.
Whitehead, Alfred North 1929, 1957 Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York: Harper & Row).