Henri Bergson was born in 1859, the same year as John Dewey and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published. His major works were Time and Freewill (1889), An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), Creative Evolution (1907), and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932). Bergson taught at the University of Paris for most of his career, but he was well-known all over the world. Bergson died in 1941 at the age of 82.
At the core of his evolutionary philosophy was the distinction between two entirely different ways of knowing reality, that of objective external analysis and that of internal, direct intuitive experience. The former provides relative, limited knowledge of its subject while the latter, according to Bergson, yields absolute knowledge of its subject. Following the objective analysis of a phenomenon we obtain factual and physical knowledge of its nature, but in following our intuitive knowledge of a phenomenon we gain direct knowledge of its essential nature. While the former method provides us with an external, scientific understanding of its nature, the latter provides us with an internal, deeper understanding.
Our objective knowledge of an object or situation is relative and subject to error, while our intuitive, direct knowledge of it goes directly to its essential situation in time and space is always limited to our perspective and position in the world, while our direct, intuitive knowledge engages the reality in question as it is in itself, not in relation to any observer. Our knowledge of both time and space, as well as the realities in them, is thus always subject to error and misunderstanding.
When moving from epistemological questions to those of metaphysics Bergson focused on that which he contended characterizes the basic nature of reality, namely a driving force, which he labeled elan vital, at the heart of all existence. Bergson taught that at the core of this driving force is a power which seeks to eternal extend itself beyond the present toward self-fulfillment in the future. He claimed that this elan vital is clearly seen at work in the process of evolution as it displays itself down through history. This process has produced a vast display of life forms and developments here on earth, culminating in humans.
Thus, we see that Bergson’s philosophy bears a striking resemblance to the evolutionary science developed and propagated by Charles Darwin’s evolutionary works. However, where Darwin failed to see any moral dimension at the heart of the evolutionary process, Bergson sought to ground the understanding in both morality and religion in it. In his book The Two Sources of Morality and Religion Bergson argued that human moral and religious thought arise from the powerful dynamic created by two contrary human tendencies. One, the drive to preserve what human societies have always sought, to codify whatever insights and directives have been established in the past as providing guidelines for a society’s future.
Secondly, these same societies have always found a need to drive beyond these very standards and directives to establish what are thought to be higher, better standards by which to live. Bergson labelled the former efforts the static drive or dimension within human culture and society, while the latter he labelled the dynamic force within the development of cultures. Human history, according to Bergson has and will be driven by the dynamic relation between these two behavioral forces.
Bergson seemed not to have believed that either of these two forces is more worthy or important than the other: both are necessary and both are inevitable. Thus, he did not seek to establish any moral value to the various stages or levels of the evolutionary process. In this sense he did not seem to believe in any notion of moral progress or development within human history. I had a friend who wrote his doctoral dissertation on just this issue, and he concluded that Bergson was entirely without any views concerning the superiority of any value system over another. So, this raises the question as to whether he was really an evolutionary thinker.

I put three question marks in the title because very few people off-hand know anything about this little four-chapter story buried deep in the Old Testament. Ruth is a kind of love story set in the land of Judah “in the time of the Judges”. A famine arose in the land and so Naomi and her family left the Bethlehem area for the land of the Moabites in hopes of finding a better place. Things did not go well and in a few years the men died, and Naomi decided to return to Judah and try her luck there.
One of the widows of Naomi’s sons decided to stay on in Moab, but the other, Ruth, pledged herself to live wherever Naomi chose to live and to join her people in Bethlehem. It is important to note that the Hebrew people of Judah would have had very strong negative feelings toward a Gentile woman from Moab. Nevertheless, Ruth remained with Naomi’s family and began to work as a gleaner in the barley harvest. Gleaners were allowed to follow behind the harvesters and gather left-overs from their efforts. This was a long-standing practice among Jewish farming people.
As things would have it, Ruth chose to work in the fields of one Boaz, a kinsman of Naomi. Slowly one thing led to another and after a good deal of the traditional rig-a-ma-roll necessary in such cases, Ruth became betrothed to Boaz. It is important that we readers be aware of the complex Hebrew traditions regarding courtship and marriage because this is only the beginning of an important story in what was to become the lineage of Jesus of Nazareth. For these same folks appear in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3.
In short, Jesus was in the lineage of David and is said to have been born in Bethlehem, the very town where Ruth and Boaz met. As interesting and romantic as the story of Ruth marrying Boaz is, for our specific purposes here what matters more are the socio-political ramifications of the connections between these two main characters of our story. It turns out that this gentle and romantic story has much to tell us about the socio-political drama of those days.
To begin with, it is highly significant that Ruth was a Moabite, a race much hated by the Hebrew people for the way they had been treated by the Moabites down through the centuries of Jewish history. Secondly, this story shows that Moabites were in Jesus’ lineage, a rather radical thing in its own right. Moreover, here we have a story of an inter-racial marriage, one lying at the very heart of the lineage of Jesus himself. Thirdly, this story clearly explores Jewish marriage and engagement customs in a more realistic yet sensitive manner than one might have expected.
Finally, all of this drama is said to have taken place in “the time of the Judges”, a time which according to the book of Judges itself was a chaotic and war-torn period in Israel’s history. This fact has caused some scholars to suggest that the events in the Book of Ruth have really been misplaced and belong to a later, more peaceful time. Be that as it may, the fact remains that this little book has endured just as it is for centuries seemingly without causing any scholarly or religious upheaval.
In conclusion, I can only conclude that this beautiful little story carries more than its weight with respect to the genealogical heritage of Jesus himself. When Matthew and Luke both connect these facts pertaining to Jesus’ heritage to his Davidic and messianic heritage it would seem that the book of Ruth itself must be included in whatever one uses to form a full picture of that time and of the Jesus story.