Natural and Cosmic Theodicy

This book presents a third way to envision the Creatorship of the Triune God who is both compassionate and eschatologically redemptive in providential presence, rather than biasedly gravitating toward the openness of a self-limiting God or God's all-determining sovereignty. Not only is God in, with, and under creation, God's kenotic presence invites creatures to participate in the self-giving love of God through both general and special divine action in a top-down-through-bottom-up mode. Creatio continua is God's own journey of fulfilling the eschatological promise for creation. This redemptive presence of God in creation is a Trinitarian co-protesting against the power of death, sin, and evil, considering the cosmic dimensions of the eschatological hope promised in the resurrection of Jesus. The new creation is the ultimate fulfillment of creaturely freedom and contingency divinely granted in creatio ex nihilo. In arguing this, Shin engages in a comparative and critical study of natural and cosmic theodicy advanced by Catherine Keller, Arthur Peacocke, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Robert Russell.