CH. i] The Triunity of God 37 



great whole. Revelation and evolution are the obverse 

 and reverse of the medal. The life-process is not deter- 

 mined from without; its end may be, indeed is, but not 

 itself. The individual can respond to his environment in 

 many ways, choosing his future path. And when the 

 choice is conscious, the responsibility of choice rests 

 upon the chooser. The individual creates, as well as 

 God creates his own future, and adds to the environ- 

 ment of others; himself becomes a source of tractation; 

 a causative Reality. This aspect of the process of 

 Creative Evolution, or, to use the suggestive term in- 

 troduced by Cunningham 1 , of Creative Finalism, has 

 been dealt with at some length in my Evolution and 

 the Need of Atonement and Evolution and Spiritual Life. 

 The purpose of the present book is rather to attempt 

 an examination of the other side, and to consider, from 

 the standpoint of the Christian conception of God, what 

 is the nature of the Causative Reality, and what is the 

 foundation of the tractative force that makes for crea- 

 tive finalism. If it be objected that to do this is to offer 

 a recension of the Roll of our metaphor, and that to dare 

 to make such a recension is bold and even impious, we 

 must agree to the first in some measure, and in part also 

 to the second. 



Such an examination does involve a critical corre- 

 lation of all the evidence, if not a recension. It does 

 involve an apparent, though not a real, reduction of 

 revelation to the level of other evidence, because of the 

 human and fallible medium of that revelation, and be- 

 cause of its partial and progressive nature. And un- 

 questionably the attempt is a bold one, foredoomed to 

 partial failure. It cannot approach completeness, and 

 the purview of one man is very limited and one-sided. 

 But yet we dare to believe that no such attempt is im- 



1 An Introduction to the Study of the Philosophy of Bergson. by 

 W. A. Cunningham, 1916. 



