God in Creation: A Consideration of Natural Selection as the Sacrificial Means of a Free Creation

Abstract

If the Christian God is creator of all things and revealed in Christ to be costly love, then how can divine agency in creation be understood in light of scientific discoveries revealing that biological warfare undergirds Darwinian evolution by natural selection? To explore this challenge, I look to Philip Hefner’s teleonomic axiom as a measure for divine agency in the fulfillment and survival of natural structures and processes. Drawing on this criterion and the feminist writing of Judith Plaskow, I conclude that Hefner’s attempt to understand divine immanence using the metaphor of sacrifice with John Hick’s Irenaean Theodicy can support a risky model for the human as made in God’s image by justifying the instrumental subjugation and exploitation of creaturely life and specifically women. Considering the God crucified in Christ, I recommend the metaphor of a fallen creation to acknowledge the inexplicable and unacceptable magnitude of harm suffered by individual creatures.