There is also this video from the BioLogos conference.
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I feel ok with denying suffering in the moral sense to nonhuman organisms, even up to the precursors of modern humans (“Adam and Eve” being the point in human evolution where full consciousness-- ability to doubt, possess capacity to know good and evil-- occurred). I don’t think there is natural evil per se; nature as it exists is what it was created to be. But as conscious arbiters bearing God’s image, we act on our conscience and bring order where it is needed. There is subjective fluidity in this but I don’t see it as being problematic or essential to faith. We ascribe suffering to nature to the degree that we experience empathetic pain, and I think there is moral utility and benefit in projecting these properties to nature.
There was also the Biblical/cultural designation of clean and unclean animals, which was for human benefit and not due to animals being actually clean or unclean.
I like the charts that Sollereder presents in the video. In the paradigm I align with:
- Denial of animal suffering
- Human agency in fall (i.e. humans are inherently sinful as imperfect beings and the blame is on us, but our fall is not necessarily relevant to rest of nature).
- Theodicy without fall (in nature): package deal, free form, cross-centered— they all sit well with me. But the cross-centered idea resonates strongly as truth— in Christ is the culmination of ‘ideas’ and yearnings forecast throughout evolution.
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