Physics and Cosmology: Scientific Perspectives on the Problem of Natural Evil

The essays in Physics and Cosmology: Scientific Perspectives on the Problem of Natural Evil resulted from the seventh international research conference co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory Foundation and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. It is the first in a new series on the problem of natural evil―on reconciling suffering caused by natural processes with God's goodness.

The editors have divided this volume into four sections. The first includes history of the issue and a critical analysis of how the history has often been understood, followed by two chapters that provide typologies: one of types of suffering, the other of the various “shapes” of defenses. The second section comprises chapters that address the problem of suffering head-on, with resources from science, theology, and philosophy. The third section contains essays that address the issue by offering reformulations of typical understandings of the relation between God and the world. Finally, essays in the fourth section claim, in one way or another, that the question of the volume needs to be reframed.

Contributors: Niels Christian Hvidt, Terrence W. Tilley, Wesley J. Wildman, Christopher Southgate, Andrew Robinson, William R. Stoeger, S.J., Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, Thomas F. Tracy, Philip Clayton, Steven Knapp, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, Denis Edwards, Brad J. Kallenberg, and Don Howard.

Nancey Murphy is professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary and co-editor of Neuroscience and the Person, also published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

Robert John Russell is the Ian G. Barbour Professor of Theology and Science in Residence at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. He is the author or co-editor of seventeen books, including Cosmology From Alpha To Omega: Theology and Science in Creative Mutual Interaction and Resurrection: Theological And Scientific Assessments. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.

William R. Stoeger S.J. (1943-2014) was an American astronomer and theologian. He studied theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. He was a staff scientist for the Vatican Observatory Research Group in Tucson, specializing in theoretical cosmology, high-energy astrophysics, and interdisciplinary studies relating to science, philosophy and theology. Fr. Stoeger was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1972, and earned his Ph.D. in astrophysics in 1976 at Cambridge University, where he was a student of the Astronomer Royal, Baron Martin Rees, and a classmate of Stephen Hawking.