As the Fox Chases the Rabbit, Whose Side is God On?

As the Fox Chases the Rabbit,

Whose Side is God On?

"If I had been in a position to design and create a world, I would have tried to arrange for all conscious individuals to be able to survive without tormenting and killing other conscious individuals. I hope most other people would have done the same."

- Jeff McMahan, The Meat Eaters, On the Human blog

Robbery

Life feeds on life. Continuously, all the time, everywhere. We creatures are food for one another. Such is the metaphysics of eating.

At least this is the case on our planet. In every single second on Earth, an unimaginably vast multitude of predator–prey interactions is unfolding - from the microscopic world of viruses infecting bacteria, to insects hunting other insects in grasslands and forests, to the life-or-death chases in the oceans, to the hunts of lions, wolves, foxes, and, of course, humans. How many are occurring in a single second?

I turned to Open AI with this question. Some of the language in this paragraph and the essay that follows comes from AI, albeit edited by me; and I am grateful for the help. Counting every kind of predator–prey relationship, from microbial to animal, Open AI suggests that we are talking about an order of ten sextillion to one hundred sextillion (10²³–10²⁵) such encounters each second. We live in a very busy and very agonistic world. If harmony means non-aggressive, then there's not a lot of harmony - except when "nature" is viewed from a distance, without attention to struggle.

From the perspective of process theology, each one of these predator-prey encounters is felt and shared by the Soul of the universe, by God, and woven into the very life of God as part of God's ongoing journey. This history is what Whitehead calls "the consequent nature of God." Moreover, says Whitehead, the encounter is received in a spirit of love. The consequent nature of God receives all that happens sharing in the suffering of creatures involved. and weaving what it felt into a larger tapestry of a harmony of harmonies which includes the suffering and loss: a tragic beauty. This beauty then floods back into the world in divine love - not a love for the suffering and loss, but for the creatures who undergo it.

We humans are part of, not apart from, this tragic beauty. We are agents of predatorial interactions—fishing, farming, hunting, fighting disease, washing our hands —but also victims, subject to predation by bacteria, viruses, parasites, and even the cancers that arise within our own cells. We are within, not outside of, the metaphysics of eating, We take the lives of others in order to live.

In Process and Reality, Whitehead describes this dynamic as robbery, Here is how he puts it:

"Another characteristic of a living society is that it requires food. In a museum the crystals are kept under glass cases; in zoological gardens the animals are fed. Having regard to the universality of reactions with environment, the distinction is not quite absolute. It cannot, however, be ignored. The crystals are not agencies requiring the destruction of elaborate societies derived from the environment; a living society is such an agency. The societies which it destroys are its food. This food is destroyed by dissolving it into somewhat simpler social elements. It has been robbed of something. Thus, all societies require interplay with their environment; and in the case of living societies this interplay takes the form of robbery. The living society may, or may not, be a higher type of organism than the food which it disintegrates. But whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification."

AN Whitehead, Process and Reality

If there are forms of life on other planets or in other dimensions of the space-time continuum, we do not (yet) know whether, for them, too, life is robbery. It may well be the case that wherever there is life, there is also the need to destroy other societies—other organisms—in order to survive. Perhaps aliens, angels, devils, and spirits also “eat” in their own ways, drawing on the vitality of others to sustain their own. In order for one entity to compose itself, something else must be decomposed. What we do know is that, on our planet, such is the norm. Even plants, seemingly passive, engage in this dynamic: they decompose other plants through soil interactions, draw nutrients from decaying matter, and compete relentlessly for light, space, and water.

Struck by the fact and inescapability of robbery, humans have often imagined—and hoped for—a sphere of existence in which life does not have to feed on life - in which lion lay down with lambs. A realm of deep peace, tenderness, and love, where symbiotic relations are the norm and nothing is killed against its will. In the following essay, I take the image of a fox chasing a rabbit as my point of departure to explore how God, if at all, can be reconciled with such a predatory world. I assume at the outset that God is not all-powerful in a classical sense. God does not create the world through unilateral or one-sided power. Rather God is one influence among many that shape the unfolding of the natural world, ourselves included. A "lure" so to speak, and a powerful one at that, but one among many. A lure whose nature is love.

A Fox Chases a Rabbit:
Whose Side is God On?

A fox is chasing a rabbit. The fox is hungry; the rabbit is terrified. The subjective aim of the fox is to catch, kill, and eat the rabbit. The rabbit's aim is to escape the fox. If one wins the chase, the other must lose. Whose side is God on?

Here are five possible answers:

Atheism: Neither side, because God doesn’t exist. The dynamics of predator-prey relations unfold in a cosmic vacuum of indifference.
Pantheism: Neither side, because God is the sacred universe itself, including predator-prey relations. (This resembles the first option, but sees nature itself as divine.)
Big Picture Theism: Neither side, because God is the Soul of the universe with consciousness of God’s own, but is concerned only with the whole of the universe and with a satisfying of divine pleasure,. not with individual creatures.
Anthropocentric Theism: Neither side, because God is the Soul of the universe with consciousness of God’s own, but is concerned only with human beings, not with other creatures.
Process Theism: Both sides, because God is love and is concerned with the flourishing of each creature, including the individual fox and rabbit.

Many open and relational theologians will choose #5. God feels the feelings of the fox and the rabbit, desires the flourishing of each, and shares in the tragedy of the situation: either the fox catches the rabbit and the rabbit dies, or the rabbit escapes and the fox goes hungry. God’s initial aim for the fox is to catch the rabbit, and God’s initial aim for the rabbit is to escape the fox. Thus, there is conflict—a certain kind of tragedy—in the very life of God. God shares in the hunger of the fox and the terror of the rabbit.

This leads to further questions: Why does this tragedy exist? Who is responsible? If God is a “luring” presence in the evolutionary process, and God has been such a lure within the history of life on earth, did God lure the world into such relations?

If did seek such relations, it can seem as if God was not very loving. Adventurous, yes; hungry for intensity and variety, yes; but not loving. God's hunger for novelty was more important, at least to God, than tenderness for individuals.

On the other hand, if was not in favor of such relations, if God was luring the world toward harmony, this means that the divine lure—God’s own desires for a harmonious world—were frustrated, such that the world is in a “fallen” state, that is, fallen away from the initial aims of God?

On this view, predator-prey relations were not part of God's original intentions. They are tragic in a way, even to God. The natural world is not a mirror of divine aspirations.

The Primordial Nature of God:
An Appetite for Intensity

However, and to complicate matters further, there is a side of God which is indifferent to the situation of foxes, rabbits, and, for that matter, human beings. Whitehead speaks of it as the timeless side of God’s primordial nature—that dimension of God which orders eternal possibilities out of what Whitehead calls a primordial appetition, a hunger for intensity of feeling that is indifferent to the preservation of any particular creaturely society. Whitehead puts it starkly:

“The primordial appetitions which jointly constitute God’s purpose are seeking intensity, and not preservation. Because they are primordial, there is nothing to preserve. He, in his primordial nature, is unmoved by love for this particular, or that particular; for in this foundational process of creativity, there are no preconstituted particulars. In the foundations of his being, God is indifferent alike to preservation and to novelty. He cares not whether an immediate occasion be old or new, so far as concerns derivation from its ancestry. His aim for it is depth of satisfaction as an intermediate step towards the fulfilment of his own being. His tenderness is directed towards each actual occasion, as it arises. Thus God’s purpose in the creative advance is the evocation of intensities. The evocation of societies is purely subsidiary to this absolute end.” (Process and Reality, 161)

Make no mistake: This side of God is "indifferent alike to preservation and to novelty." It does not seek to preserve the fox or the rabbit; its tenderness is directed only toward the moments of experience in their lives (the actual occasions) as they evoke intensities in the divine life. The rabbit and the fox, as societies, are but means to this end. In terms of the option above, this is "big picture theism." They are subsidiaries.

The Consequent Nature of God:
A Tender Care that Nothing be Lost

And yet Whitehead does not stop here. He claims that this side of God is itself incomplete and not yet fully conscious until enriched by the pluralities of the world. If we think of the primordial appetition as divine eros, it is incomplete without divine empathy. This tenderness is described in many places of Part V of Process and Reality, including this famous saying where Whitehead speaks of the revelation of God in Jesus:

There is, however, in the Galilean origin of Christianity yet another suggestion which does not fit very well with any of the three main strands of thought. It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralist, or the unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is [521] a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate present.

In process theology the tender side of God is called "the consequent nature of God," because it is consequent to the world itself, as felt in the divine nature This is the side of God that feels the hunger of the fox and the terror of the rabbit and weaves them into whatever harmony can be woven, with a "tender care" in which the lives of each are remembered and cherished forever in a divine beauty—a beauty that includes the tragedies of the world in transmuted form. There is a dynamic peace in this side of God, a harmony of harmonies, says Whitehead - but it is a tragic beauty that includes the suffering and losses of the world. Thus there is, in this sense, a resurrection of foxes and rabbits in the very life of God. And of all individual creatures with sentience, humans much included.

Let "foxes and rabbits" be a symbol for all sentient beings caught up in the tragedies of life, both willed and unwilled - who are known and felt, and whose lives are woven into God's own everlasting life.

Life After Death for Rabbits and Foxes?

Do they themselves experience this resurrection? Are they subjectively immortal in some way, enjoying a continuing journey after death, within God's consequent nature? And might this be a context in which whatever form of flourishing they lacked in planetary life, they realize in post-planetary life? Or are they simply objectively immortal, their experiences and lives cherished in the divine memory but without ongoing awareness of their own?

Whitehead does not say, and process theologians may hold different views. I have a hope that, in some way, foxes and rabbits do experience their own resurrection in God - and that people do the same It is a messianic hope shared by biblical authors and others. Jeff McMahan, quoted above, writes:

Certainly this and related ideas have been entertained since human beings began to reflect on the fearful nature of their world — for example, when the prophet Isaiah, writing in the 8th century B.C.E., sketched a few of the elements of his utopian vision. He began with the abandonment of war: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation.” But human beings would not be the only ones to change; animals would join us in universal veganism: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and the little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” (Isaiah 2: 4 and 11: 6–7)

Whitehead's vision of the consequent nature of God is a version of this messianic hope. It does not suggest that there will come a time in the history of our planet when lions will lie down with lambs, or foxes with rabbits, but it does suggest that there is already a time—indeed, always a time—when peace between sentient beings is achieved, at least in the divine life, in such a way that the value of each creature, on its own terms and for its own sake, is known and cherished.

Whitehead hints, at the end of Process and Reality, that this peace, woven by God, floods back into the world in whatever love we humans can extend to one another and to other creatures. Here is how Whitehead puts it:

What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes into the love in heaven, and floods back again into the world. In this sense, God is the great companion—the fellow-sufferer who understands.

What kind of love is this? What kind of divine love floods back into the world, again and again, and still again, without ceasing. As I read this passage, I think of the words of Austin Pounds in "Creation and the Crossroads of Evolution: Rethinking Evil, Love, and Flourishing." Click here. Of divine love he writes:

This kind of love makes room for creatures to “selve”—to grow into their own nature—even when that selving goes wrong and causes harm. It is a patient love, unwilling to override creaturely freedom, yet always working within the contours of creation to draw it back toward the good. Love’s refusal to control does not mean indifference; it means a deeper, more costly commitment to walk alongside creation as it matures into the life it was made for. (Austin Pounds)

It seems to me that Pounds well describes the non-coercive love that plays a role in life on earth: a love that walks with each creature, seeking its own flourishing, whatever that is - a love walks alongside, or better, walks within and in each creature, as its companion in the journey, leading it into the very heart of the divine, on its own terms and for its own sake.

Awakening: Divine and Human

The primordial nature of God is a timeless appetite for satisfying intensity of experience, whatever its source, while the consequent nature of God holds a tender care that nothing be lost. The primordial nature is about hunger and desire; the consequent nature is about empathy and tenderness.

These two sides are mirrored in human life: the appetitive side of life that seeks and delights in intensity of experience, and the receptive side that finds its deepest intensity not in conquest or self-centered pleasure, but in kindness, mutuality, and tenderness, in Love.

Can appetition and love be reconciled? In Whitehead's philosophy, the primordial nature is incomplete—and not even fully conscious—without kove. In this sense, Love takes priority over appetition. Love wakes God up. Or, to put it another way, the deepest satisfaction of the appetitive side of life is Love. With help from a world to be loved, and the activity of loving the world. God becomes God.

The same applies to us. We are made in the image of God, and in us as in God. love is what awakens us to our humanity. As the fox chases the rabbit, we want both to win, and we do our best to carry the joys and suffering of all beings in our hearts flooding our own energies back into the world in a spirit of love. When the fox chases the rabbit, we want both to flourish, This is our humanity. Like God, we take both sides.