Today’s post is an interview with Ronald E. Osborn, author of Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, a critique “scientific creationism” and wrestles with questions of divine goodness in the light of harrowing realities of animal suffering.

In my opinion, this is one of the more perplexing, and even unsettling, issues for any person of any faith who believes in a Higher Power, regardless of where they are on the evolution-spectrum.

Osborn is an adjunct professor in the Department of International Relations at the University of Southern California. His articles have appeared in a variety of popular as well as scholarly publications including Commonweal, First Things, Sojourners, Review of International Studies, and Politics and Religion. Osborn’s writing has been shaped in important ways by his experiences growing up in Thailand, Taiwan, and Zimbabwe to missionary parents. His first book, Anarchy and Apocalypse: Essays on Faith, Violence, and Theodicy (2010), defends a distinctive form of nonviolent nonconformity with power or Christian anarchism.