A Procreative Paradigm of the Creative Suffering of the Triune God: Implications of Arthur Peacocke's Evolutionary Theology

Abstract

The question of right speech about the mystery of God in suffering has moved many to discuss theodicy and human freedom, and has persuaded many others to rethink the understanding of God in relation to the world itself. The article focuses on two key concepts in Arthur Peacocke's evolutionary theology to propose a new understanding of the creative suffering of the triune God. It considers this proposal in three particular contexts: feminist theology, ecological praxis, and pastoral ministry.I N HIS EXPLORATION of the influence of evolutionary science on Christian theology, Arthur Peacocke, Anglican theologian and biochemist, divides his evolutionary insights concerning creation into cosmic "being" or "what there is" in the cosmos, and cosmic "becoming" or "what is going on" in the cosmos. According to Peacocke, this distinction between cosmic being and becoming impels theologians "to reckon with their one God's relation to a continuously developing world," which implies "a continuously changing relation of God to the world . . . and to the further possibility that God is not unchanging in certain respects." 1 To demonstrate this possibility, he applies the distinction between cosmic being and becoming analogously to distinctions in the nature and attributes of God. He proposes that one consider God not solely in terms of being (defined by

Evolutionary Theory and Theology: A Mutually Illuminative Dialogue

“…These insights include evolutionary cosmology and biology; the freedom, autonomy, and self-creativity of the cosmos and its creatures; and the ubiquity of pain, suffering, and death inherent in the processes of evolution. Responding to some of Peacocke's most provocative panentheistic insights, my own work has developed a female procreative model of divine creativity, a model of midwifery for ecological ethics, and a trinitarian model of the suffering God (Schaab 2006;2007a, b, c).…”