God’s Creation Wild and Violent, and Our Care for Other Animals

Abstract

In this article I give examples of violence, and ingenuity in the service of violence, in predation in the natural world. I consider various types of argument that ascribe this violence to different types of fall-event, and show that these arguments are to be rejected on both scientific and theological grounds, and that an honest theology of wild nature needs to concede that God is the author of an ambiguous world. I further reject, however, the idea that violence in nature licenses human violence, and propose instead an eschatological ethic of Christian care for creation, based on ethical kenosis after the example of Jesus, and the values of the Kingdom, an ethic much influenced by Rom. 8.19f.