Michael Murray has written what I believe to be the only book-length study in English of theodicy and animal suffering in the philosophy of religion. The problem is so obvious and so clearly important that a book like this is long overdue. Philosophers of religion, theologians, and, indeed, anyone interested in the intellectual credibility of classical theism will find this book stimulating and helpful.

Murray's purpose is neither to offer a single, integrated theory of animal suffering nor to provide a simple survey of available positions, but rather to engage critically with a range of accounts of animal suffering, sifting the wheat from the chaff and highlighting in each case elements that might survive reflective scrutiny. He recognizes that ‘the task of deflecting the evidential worries raised by evil can look quite different depending on one's starting point, varying as we vary which claims one reasonably accepts and which claims the reasonable acceptances warrant one in rejecting’. Thus, his goal throughout is to examine the availability of varying accounts as ways of either ‘preserving reasonable belief in God in the face of evil (for theists)’, or ‘showing that evil does not provide evidence sufficient to make it reasonable to deny theism’ (for non-theists) (39). Distinguishing the kind of explanation of evil designed to accomplish one or both of these tasks from both theodicy and defence, he proposes, using a phrase drawn from Leibniz (‘referring to the case offered at trial on behalf of a defendant's innocence’), that it be called a ‘causa dei’ or CD (40).

After providing an expert overview of recent philosophical discussions of the problem of evil in general (1–40), Murray systematically considers a range of CDs. He begins with what he terms ‘neo-Cartesian’ approaches – ones that suggest that animals suffer significantly less than we might think given the occurrence of pain behaviour (41–72). Then, he examines CDs that explain animal suffering with reference to the fall of humans or of supra-human creatures (73–106). He goes on to consider CDs in accordance with which animal suffering is justified by way of benefits accruing to suffering animals themselves (107–129). Then, he evaluates CDs that focus on the links between animal suffering and benefits to humans, including (i) the existence of a regular, predictable backdrop for rational action (130–165), and (ii) the value of evolutionary movement from chaos to order (166–192). He concludes by assessing the possibilities for integrating insights from various successful CDs into a cumulative account that blunts the force of anti-theistic criticism even if it does not provide an indubitable explanation for the nature and extent of animal suffering (193–199). While defending the merits of several of the CDs he considers, he concludes, modestly:

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw is both careful and comprehensive. Murray systematically develops and critiques multiple arguments in each of the categories of CDs to which he attends. Alert to nuances and distinctions, he is in no sense an uncritical booster: while he believes that some CDs can, indeed, contribute to the intellectual credibility of classical theism, he is very much aware that others cannot.

Perhaps the most interesting discussion contained in the book is the one concerned with neo-Cartesian accounts of animal suffering. While Descartes sometimes seems to have believed that non-human animals lacked consciousness entirely, neo-Cartesians do not tend to deny that such animals lack, say, experiences of bare sensation. But they are inclined to suggest that the mental lives of many animals are so constituted that suffering is far less bad for them than we might think. While unpersuaded by some recent neo-Cartesian approaches, Murray believes that Descartes himself may have pointed toward a plausible view by implying that humans differ from other animals in the possession of reflective, second-order thought. He spells out a range of accounts of the place of pain in animal mental life which might prove defensible in light of this Cartesian distinction. He argues that, in virtue of the potential plausibility of these accounts, there is more reason than we might at first think radically to discount the moral relevance of animal pain. He acknowledges ‘that few will find the neo-Cartesian position to be compelling or even believable’ (71), opining that perhaps this just reflects a pervasive human inclination ‘to attribute intentional states’ (72) to non-human creatures that exhibit the right sorts of behaviors.

Murray attends not only to philosophy but also to theology and the sciences, and Nature Red in Tooth and Claw is littered with interesting arguments about both central and subsidiary issues. It would not be realistic in a brief review to assess Murray's individual arguments. Certainly, he acknowledges that CDs which might, indeed, undermine the force of anti-theistic arguments concerned with animal suffering may not be equally persuasive for everyone. Different assumptions (e.g. about the philosophy of mind, 58) and the assignment of different weights to various considerations (e.g. 194) may well lead us to different conclusions regarding the merits of various CDs.

While the book is excellent, it is not, of course, flawless. Readers familiar with developments in twentieth-century philosophical theology may be amused to find the Benedictine monk Illtyd Trethowan's title, Dom, treated as if it were a first name (98). And it is not clear to me that Murray is right that ‘process theists argue that God increases both in power and knowledge over time and that these limitations preclude God's preventing all evil’, or that it is open theists' conviction ‘that it is impossible for God to know many truths about the future’ which provides, from their perspective, the principal explanation for the fact ‘that some evils will not be preventable by God after all’ (13). The process theist supposes that it is metaphysically impossible for God to override the freedom of creatures; it is this metaphysical impossibility that explains both changes in the contents of God's knowledge (I know of no process thinker who would maintain that God increases in metaphysical power over time) and the persistence of evil. And the theist who maintains a classical view of divine omnipotence while maintaining that future free choices are, in principle, unknowable, even to God, need not rely on this view of God's knowledge of the future as the key component of her understanding of the problem of evil. Rather, such a theist (Richard Swinburne and Keith Ward are obvious examples) is free to draw on the same judgments (as, for instance, about the value of a predictable, impersonal backdrop for creaturely action) that can be employed by the theist who believes the future is knowable by God to explain the occurrence of natural evil.

More broadly: this argument or that encountered in Murray's book may obviously fail to convince. But among its evident merits is that, while Murray considers ways in which they might be seen to offer each other mutual support, he treats the varied arguments to which he attends as independent. He is willing to review an enormous range of possibilities and to consider the relative merits of a diverse array of assumptions.

For many theists, animal suffering constitutes one of the most troubling aspects of the problem of evil. While Murray would be the first to admit that he has not resolved the problem of animal suffering, his rigorous and comprehensive analysis has shed a great deal of light on what has often been thought to be an intractable difficulty for believers in God. He will not convince everyone even that the modest conclusion he defends is beyond question. But even readers who disagree with his judgments regarding the merits of individual arguments or who are inclined to opt for philosophical and theological approaches to which Murray might seem to give short shrift will have a great deal to learn from this book. In Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, Murray has set the standard for the discussion of animal pain as a problem in theodicy.