ABSTRACT
This chapter begins the three-chapter exposition of the themes of creation and the nature of God in relation to non-human animal suffering. The author begins with the premise that God created the world in love, through love, and for love. Love involves vulnerability, precariousness, and an allowance of radical freedom of the other. The implication of this love is that God’s action in the world involves various kenotic self-limitations that prevent a simple overpowering of the natural causes that lead to disvalues. Sollereder argues that God’s love for non-human creatures requires granting them degrees of autonomy in order to “selve.” Creatures can follow their desires into behaviours that do not always reflect God’s loving character. Choices may involve strategies of survival that, as in the case of parasitism, capitalise on disvalues. The author does not consider these free desires of creatures that lead to disvalues to be “fallen” because they are an integral part of one of God’s aims: for creatures to develop the capacity to love. Love cannot be created de novo but must develop out of the “raw materials” of evolutionary desires.
