This is due to what Hegel calls "the error of viewing God as free."
[Footnote: Logic, Wallace's translation, first edition, p. 213.]
In reply to certain criticisms of his book L'Evolution creatrice made
by Father de Tonquedec, Bergson wrote in 1912: "I speak of God as the
source whence issue successively, by an effort of his freedom, the
currents or impulses each of which will make a world; he therefore
remains distinct from them, and it is not of him that we can say that
'most often it turns aside' or is 'at the mercy of the materiality that
it has been bound to adopt.' Finally, the reasoning whereby I establish
the impossibility of 'nothing' is in no way directed against the
existence of a transcendent cause of the world; I have, on the contrary,
explained that this reasoning has in view the Spinozist conception of
Being. It issues in what is merely a demonstration that 'something' has
always existed. As to the nature of this 'something' it is true that
nothing in the way of a positive conclusion is conveyed. But neither
is it stated in any fashion that what has always existed is the world
itself, and the rest of the book explicitly affirms the contrary."
[Footnote: Tonquedec: Dieu dans l'Evolution creatrice (Beauchesne), and
Annales de philosophie chretienne, 1912.] "Now the considerations set
forth in my Essai sur les donnees immediates result in bringing to light
the fact of freedom, those of Matiere et Memoire point directly, I
hope, to the reality of Spirit, those of L'Evolution creatrice exhibit
creation as a fact. From all this emerges clearly the idea of a God,
creator and free, the generator of both Matter and Life, whose work of
creation is continued on the side of Life by the evolution of species
and the building up of human personalities. From all this emerges a
refutation of monism and of pantheism." [Footnote: Tonquedec: Dieu dans
l'Evolution creatrice (Beauchesne), and also Etudes des Peres de Jesus,
Vol. CXXX, 1912.] To this it was replied that, for Catholic theology,
God is not merely the source from which the river springs, God does
not develop Himself to a world but He causes it to appear by a kind of
creation quite different from that of Bergson. Bergson's God is not the
God of pantheism, because, for him, the Deity is immanent in nature,
not identifiable with it. A true account of the Absolute would, for him,
take the form of history. Human history has a vital meaning for him.
God is not omnipotent; He is a fighter who takes sides. He is not a
"potter-God" with a clay world. The world involves a limiting of God,
and theology has always found this its most difficult problem, for the
evils or defects against which the Creator is waging war are evils
and defects in a world of His own creating. Speaking in 1914, at the
Edinburgh Philosophical Society, Bergson remarked that God might be
looked upon as "a Creator of creators." Such a view, more explicitly
worked out, might bring him into line with the religious attempt to
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