Did the natural world go wrong? Christopher Southgate Abstract: This chapter considers a range of explanations of the disvalues in the non-human world. It goes on to explore how an explanation lacking a fall-event or rebellion against divine intentions can be integrated into a Christian narrative of creation and redemption. Keywords: creation; evolution; suffering; original sin; theodicy; Fall; eschatology; atonement. Biography: Christopher Southgate is Professor of Christian Theodicy at the University of Exeter, UK. Trained originally as a biochemist, he has since worked as a house-husband, bookseller, lay chaplain, and a trainer of Christian ministers. He has taught the science-religion debate and its application to ecological issues since 1993. He is also a much-published poet. It is both a pleasure and a great honour to contribute to this collection remembering Denis Edwards. Denis and I were at many meetings together, and his infallible courtesy and quiet kindness left a deep impression on me, as did his ever-humble, ever-searching enquiry into the things of God and the world. In August 2012 a group of us walked most of the way up a South African mountain – Denis making fine pace despite less than ideal equipment. Only when it came on to snow did he judiciously point out that we were without map, food or mobile phone and it might be wise to settle for reaching the waterfall. With Denis there was always wisdom and judiciousness, and there was always a waterfall – the healing torrent of his strong sense of the compassion of God and the strength of the Holy Spirit. I want to honour Denis by picking up an old exchange of ours, and using it to develop my current thinking in dialogue with his work. Some years ago we were at a colloquium on ecological issues and a colleague remarked, almost in passing, that whatever formulations were attempted, there always had to be a fall-event at the centre of the narrative. Denis and I smiled quietly to one another, because in both our minds was a sense that the dominant Western Christian position - that a primal human sin disorders the whole creation - is no longer sustainable, and that an ecological theology must be developed out of an evolutionary narrative that can find no place for such a sudden, late-onset disordering of the cosmos into its Darwinian state. 1 1 See Edwards, Denis, The God of Evolution: a trinitarian theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1999) for a durable account of the possibilities and challenges of this sort of theology. Also Southgate, Christopher, ‘Cosmic Evolution and Evil’ in The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil ed. Chad Meister