SHOULD WE DROP THE FALL? ON TAKING EVIL SERIOUSLY Gijsbert Van den Brink The Fall Above All is the Place Where Biology and Theology Conflict 1 Van de Beek on Creation in the Light of the Cross “The roaring lion and the lethal bacteria are God’s creatures, as is the laboring human being with his deadly sufferings. That is the way God cre- ated the earth, not as a world that was alien to Him, but as his own world, with which he was as familiar as with the cross on which He was nailed.” 2 Viewing creation through the lens of the cross of Jesus Christ, Bram van de Beek offers an account of creation which is sensitive to the fact that the natural world we inhabit has been a world “red in tooth and claw” (Alfred Tennyson) from the very beginning of its existence. Rather than being at odds with what might be expected from a loving God, the myriad forms of predation, waste, suffering and death in the natural world are reflected in the suffering and death of Jesus at the cross—which according to the Christian faith tradition is at once a shocking cruelty and the supreme revelation of God’s love. Van de Beek’s doctrine of creation is very much in line with theologi- cal accounts of Christian science-and-religion thinkers who take seriously the ramiijications of evolutionary theory. Many of them—among others, Arthur Peacocke, John Haught, George Murphy, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Christopher Southgate, and Celia Deane- Drummond—resort to Christol- ogy and especially to the cross of Christ in an attempt to come to terms with the problems of theodicy with which an evolving creation con- fronts us. 3 As far as I know, however, Van de Beek nowhere in his work 1 R.J. Berry, “Did Darwin Dethrone Humankind?,” in: R.J. Berry & T.A. Noble (eds.), Darwin, Creation and the Fall. Theological Challenges (Nottingham: IVP, 2009), 72. 2 Bram van de Beek, Toeval of schepping? Scheppingstheologie in de context van het mod- erne denken [Incident or Creation? The Theology of Creation in the Context of Modern Thought] (Kampen: Kok, 2005), 183. 3 Cf. e.g. Arthur Peacocke, “The Cost of New Life,” in: John Polkinghorne (ed.), The Work of Love: Kenosis as Creation (London: SPCK, 2001), 21–42; Niels Henrik Gregersen, “The Cross of Christ in an Evolutionary World,” Dialog 40 (2001), 192–207; George L. Murphy, The Cosmos in Light of the Cross, (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 2003); John F. Haught, God after Darwin, 2nd ed., (Boulder: Westview Press, 2008), 49–60; Christopher Southgate, The 761-778_VAN DER BORGHT_F51.indd 761 761-778_VAN DER BORGHT_F51.indd 761 9/23/2011 5:47:06 PM 9/23/2011 5:47:06 PM