ABSTRACT
The Darwinian picture of life’s long struggle and travail gives unprecedented breadth to the so-called problem of theodicy, that is, how to “justify” God’s existence given the fact of suffering and evil. The idea of “intelligent design” is too restrictive, theologically speaking, to capture the deeper and ultimately more compelling meaningfulness that a robust theological vision may discern in an evolving universe. Hence Darwin’s idea will indeed prove to be dangerous after all—dangerous not to theology as such but certainly to all the shallow theologies of order that ignore the divine attribute of co-suffering, or com-passionate involvement, in the life-process. The image of a vulnerable, defenseless, and humble deity may seem shocking to some, but it is crucial to the primordial Christian sense of the nature of ultimate reality. The image of a self-emptying God lies at the heart of Christian revelation and the doctrine of the Trinity.
