Blog Archives

Co-Creation Is Not Obviously Subcreation

1/31/2022

Man lives within God’s Creation. Man is also a creator within God’s creation and can freely create within Creation. This is often referred to as subcreation.

Within subcreation, man is free to rearrange, modify, and complexify Creation. Put another way, man can add to and expand Creation using the elements God has provided.

Those who believe man to be a creature of God rather than a pre-existing being that God has “created” into His Creation of pre-existing beings posit that because man is within Creation and using the “stuff” of Creation, his subcreation is also *obviously* co-creation – that is, when man creates, he is by default, creating with God.

Man is certainly within God’s Creation, and man certainly participates in subcreation, but that does not entail that all subcreation is *obviously* co-creation.

Subcreation that aligns with God and Creation – is in harmony with truth, beauty, virtue, goodness – is a form of co-creation. Man can pour his energy into creative activities that increase, add to, expand, or refine truth, beauty, virtue, goodness in Creation.

In these cases, God likely co-operates in man’s creative activity to some degree – through motivation, inspiration, providence, guidance, communication, grace, and so forth. In other words, God takes an interest in the endeavor because He sees the potential of man’s creative act adding to and expanding Creation.

Yet man is also capable of creative activities in subcreation that are not aligned with God. In subcreation, man can and does use the elements of God’s Creation in to bring forth creative acts that are hostile to and opposed to God and Creation.

This kind of subcreation is *obviously not* co-creation. It may use the elements of God’s Creation, but it is difficult if not impossible to imagine God freely choosing to co-operate in such an endeavor. On the contrary, I believe God would refuse to act as a co-creator in such a "creative" undertaking.

After all, why would God actively aid man in the co-creation of anything that intentionally undermines, corrupts, inverts, or reduces Creation?

To do so would imply that God freely co-operates with forms of subcreation that could be termed demonic or diabolical creation – forms of “creation” whose purpose resides solely in the weakening or destroying of Creation.

I do not believe God would freely engage in such co-creative efforts with man.

In sum, subcreation may place man on the side of God and Creation. Co-creation, on the other hand, definitely places man on the side of God and Creation.

This dispels all notions that subcreation is *obviously* just co-creation.

12 Comments

Co-Creation Does Not Diminish God

1/30/2022

6 Comments

Co-creation presents a major sticking point for many Christians. The core of the difficulty can be summed up thus: If co-creation is possible, then God is not truly God with a capital “G”, but at best a lesser, small “g” god, or, worse, a mere Being among other beings. These possibilities immediately bring the whole nature of Divine Creation into question.

This sticking point arises primarily from what Christians believe God to be – and most Christians believe God to be OmniGod or Supergod -- an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Creator who created everything from nothing and is the originator of everything but Himself.

Within this conceptualization, man is a creature whose capacity for creation is limited to subcreation – more specifically, the rearrangement and modification of God’s Creation. Man and all of God’s creatures are limited to subcreation by the simple fact that everything in Creation is of God. Unlike God, man is incapable of creating something out of nothing, which entails that man – and all other creatures – can never really create anything original or add to Creation in any way beyond the limits of modification and rearrangement.

This understanding of Creation is heavily steeped in Classical rationalism and Medieval Scholasticism, and Christians who adhere to this understanding of Creation declare it as evidence of God’s unquestionable glory, power, and supreme reign over Creation – a supreme reign that does not require nor desire co-creation – not only because it is impossible, but because it would be superfluous.

Within this conceptualization of Creation, God neither yearns for nor desires any real creativity or origination from his creatures because such creativity or origination would pose a direct challenge to his own status as prime and sole creator.

The idea here is simple – original creative activity is limited to God and God alone. If it were not, God would not truly be God, but something less-than-God.

Any sharing or expansion of original creative activity – were it possible – would not only shake the very foundations of Creation, but would also immediately diminish the stature of God.

Thus, instead of a God who actively yearns to share original creativity, rational theology arrives at a conceptualization of a God who contains all original creativity within Himself and is, ergo, perfectly content to engage in what amounts to a game with Himself.

However, if the conceptualization of God as OmniGod who created everything from nothing is set aside, it becomes possible to conceive of Creation as constantly evolving, developing, and expanding rather than as something complete. Within this continuously evolving, developing, and expanding Creation, co-creation not only becomes possible, but desirable as the ultimate purpose of divine Creation, which becomes voluntaristic rather than intellectualistic in nature.

Rather than being an originator of everything from nothing, God becomes the primary creator of a Creation consisting of pre-existing beings that voluntarily agree to be a part of His Creation so that they can participate in the opportunity to align with God’s will by choosing good over evil, creation over destruction, and, ultimately, divinity over death.

A big part of choosing divinity over death entails the motivation to become divine, which implies that God does not view divinity as something static, as something only He is capable of possessing, but as something that He can share with and expand to others. The motivation to become divine lies in the essence of co-creativity, which is a higher spiritual achievement than subcreation. Co-creativity increases the divine within man without the expense of any diminished divinity in God.

On the contrary, any increase in the divinity of man adds to and ennobles the divinity of God because man can only approach divinity by freely aligning himself with God’s Will. Rather than elevate man at the expense of God, co-creativity – as a divine-human operation – elevates both man and God.

Co-creativity not only represents a higher spiritual pursuit than subcreation, but it is also a higher expression of freedom and love. God proves his love for man by freely offering and sharing the potential for original creativity within Creation, which is based in freedom and love.

Man proves his love for God by answering God's call and helping to add something original to Creation that God could not have added alone. This not only adds to evolution and expansion of Creation, but it also adds to evolution and expansion of divinity via the evolution and expansion of freedom and love.

Note: Freedom presents difficulties to the Classical rationalistic/Medieval Scholastic definitions of God as an omni-everything. If God created freedom and freedom is wholly within God, then the freedom we experience is not really freedom, but a sort of partial freedom or psuedo-freedom. One possible solution to this dilemma is to posit that freedom is uncreated. If freedom is uncreated, it is outside God, which raises the possibility that God does not and cannot control freedom. If this is the case, the Classical rationalist/Medieval Scholastic conceptualization of God as omni-everything becomes riddled with inconsistencies. Freedom as the primordial foundation of being is another idea I've come across. This idea appears mostly in sources written by Christian mystics.

6 Comments

Stupidity: It's The Other Way Around Today

1/28/2022

2 Comments

The lights are on, but no one's home.

This expression -- meant to denote someone's stupidity -- was ubiquitous when I lived in the Anglo-world. I imagine it still is today. However, I don't think it really applies anymore. In fact, I think the inverted form of this expression represents the current state of the world far more accurately:

Someone's home, but the lights are out.

Or, more even accurately:

Everyone's home and the light is on, but nearly all have blinded themselves to it.

2 Comments

Nikolai Berdyaev: The Other Reason For My Profound Respect

1/27/2022

12 Comments

Readers of this blog are probably aware of my deep respect for the Russian Christian philosopher, Nikolai Berdyaev -- specifically for his ideas on freedom, objectification, personality, creativity, and the further development of Christianity.

Though I often explore Berdyaev's ideas and themes on this blog, I don't profess to be a Berdyaev expert. In fact, I'm certain that I don't really "get" many of Berdyaev's ideas. All the same, most of his work resonates with me -- some of it quite deeply.

Having said that, my respect for Berdyaev extends past his philosophy and goes all the way to the man himself. He spent most of his life concentrating on Christianity, but unlike so many others who do the same, Berdyaev was one of those rare souls who actually practiced what he preached when it mattered most.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn refers to Nikolai Berdyaev a few times in The Gulag Archipelago. The philosopher's name first appears in the second chapter of Gulag in which Solzhenitsyn painstakingly outlines how the secret police went about rounding up suspected enemies and counterrevolutionaries in the early 1920s. Appropriately enough, Solzhenitsyn called this harrowing chapter The History of Our Sewage System, and in the opening pages of this chapter he devotes some time to the arrests and persecutions of religious figures (bold added):

Men of religion were an inevitable part of every annual "catch", and their silver locks gleamed in every cell and in every prisoner transport en route to the Solovetsky Islands.

From the early twenties on, arrests were also made among groups of theosophists, mystics, spiritualists. (Count Palen's group used to keep official transcripts of its communications with the spirit world.) Also, religious societies and philosophers of the Berdyaev circle. The so-called "Eastern Catholics" -- followers of Vladimir Solovyev-- were arrested and destroyed in passing, as was the group of A.J. Abrikosova. And, of course, ordinary Roman Catholics -- Polish Catholic priests, etc. -- were arrested, too, as part of the normal course of events.

Later, in Chapter Three -- The Interrogation -- Solzhenitsyn intensely explores the psychological and spiritual implications of being interrogated after arrest and succinctly illustrates the manner in which Nikolai Berdyaev dealt with interrogation after he was rounded up by the secret police:

So what is the answer? How can you stand your ground when you are weak and sensitive to pain, when people you love are still alive, when you are unprepared?

What do you need to make you stronger than the interrogator and the whole trap?

From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: "My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die -- now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me.

Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogation will tremble.

Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.

But how can one turn one's body to stone?

Well, they managed to turn some individuals from the Berdyaev circle into puppets for a trial, but they didn't succeed with Berdyaev. They wanted to drag him into an open trial; they arrested him twice; and (in 1922) he was subjected to a night interrogation by Dzerzhinsky himself. Kamanev was there too (which means that he too was not averse to using the Checka in an ideological conflict). But Berdyaev did not humiliate himself. He did not beg or plead. He set forth firmly those religious and moral principles which had led him to refuse to accept the political authority established in Russia. And not only did they come to the conclusion that he would useless for a trial, but they liberated him.

A human being has a point of view!

12 Comments

Human Dignity Alone Does Not Save a Human Being From Becoming a Thing

1/26/2022

5 Comments

In a recent post titled Satan’s Scheme, Dr. Charlton noted the following:

Maybe the goal is to convince all people that they are things.

(Once that's done, the work of damnation has been achieved - and the rest is just Satan having fun.)

To do this by making the world on that treats all-of-reality as things - only things are really-real.

I believe that effectively and succinctly captures the essence of what could be referred to as the satanic agenda. Furthermore, I believe “convince” is the key word in Dr. Charlton’s observation. People are not really things, but if they can be convinced that they are in reality nothing more than things, then they will act like things and allow themselves to be treated as things.

On the surface, the satanic goal of convincing people that they are things appears to be an abysmal failure. If asked, I sense nearly all contemporary people would vehemently reject the idea that they are merely things and would instead insist on the reality that they are human beings. In other words, very few moderns appear open to the idea that they are just things.

Yet these same moderns also insist upon the un-reality of God, transcendence and the supernatural – which is all discarded as delusional supernaturalism – and choose instead to believe in life as nothing but the random, unguided, accidental, and self-existing evolutionary material “reality” of the natural world, of which they are an integral – but essentially inexplicable and fundamentally meaningless – component.

The problem with this humanistic life stance of being immersed solely in the unguided “flow” of the material, natural world is simple – it does diminish human beings to the level of things. Which immediately raises a question – How do modern people reconcile their rejection of being classified as “merely things” with their humanist, reductionist, positivist, leftist assumptions about their place in a reality that is nothing more than the flow and interaction of unguided things?

Well, primarily by clasping onto a progressive nontheistic worldview that keeps humanity firmly confined within the limits of the natural world yet somehow magically elevates humanity above the laws and forces of the natural world via “humanity”; more specifically, human reason, which strives “to be good without God” through the implementation and pursuit of ethical values informed by scientific knowledge. These scientifically informed values then give birth to the desire to defend civil liberties, establish secular governance based on justice, compassion, and equality as well as the motivation to affirm the dignity of every human being by ensuring their real needs, here and now.

It is the inherent belief in the dignity of every human being that appears to block people from thinking of themselves or other people as things, but this immediately reveals a contradiction. On the one hand, modern people have willingly accepted the belief that they are simply a part of a reality that fundamentally amounts to nothing more than the random unfolding of the natural world. On the other hand, modern people continue to assert that they possess some sort of dignified status within this unguided natural process.

I posit that the inherent dignity of every human being that modern people continue to insist upon is rooted in the divine world – the very world their opposing metaphysical assumptions conspire to deny. With this in mind, it is worth noting that the devil’s greatest tricks are the ones he manages to slip past people undetected. By convincing people that the dignity of human beings originates solely in the natural world rather than the “non-existent” divine world, Satan has shrewdly convinced to humanity to sidestep the spiritual issue of overcoming duality.

In reality, a human being is a bridge between two worlds – the natural world and the divine world, which together form the cosmos. These two worlds are not actually divided because everything in the material, natural world belongs to the world of the divine, but human nature falls into the trap of perceiving the two worlds as distinct from each other as a dualism of existence. A big part of human spiritual development entails uniting the two worlds within man, which can only be achieved through spiritual freedom and creativity. Uniting the two worlds allows for the possibility of a cosmic perspective – a true religious consciousness that experiences the two apparent worlds in their full extent as unified cosmos. But for this cosmic perspective to be born, the natural world must first be overcome.

Overcoming the natural world is not a rejection of it. On the contrary, overcoming the natural world entails redeeming it as part of the cosmos, which requires the recognition of human beings as both essential parts of the cosmos as well as little cosmos in and of themselves.

Overcoming the natural world, overcoming the apparent dualism of existence, and attaining a cosmic perspective are acts of spiritual integration through which the fear, suffering, violence, oppression, objectification, alienation, entropy, and evil of the natural world are transcended.

It is from this spiritual potential and responsibility that human beings derive their dignity. It is here that a human being knows himself to be more than a mere thing. However, a true understanding of this dignity requires a firm belief in God and Creation.

Satan’s scheme offers a faux solution to the dualism of existence. Instead of striving to unite two worlds within themselves as cosmos, people become convinced that cosmos cannot exist and that there is only one world – the monism of the natural, material world in which everything is just a thing. After this conviction settles into place, Satan diverts the call of the divine – which continues to appear in “natural” man as the need for “dignity” – by convincing people of the nobility of natural human-all-too-human-only-human humanity, which is somehow above the natural “thingness” of everything else.

This shift in consciousness locks human beings in the external, material, object world. Stripped of its spiritual aspects, the natural world quickly becomes the “given” world of pure externalities, which is a non-cosmic condition of atomization, alienation, and enmity. Stripped of their spiritual aspects, human beings begin to disintegrate rather than integrate. Instead of overcoming the natural world, man is consumed by it and, in short time, enslaved by it.

Having no foundation in cosmic transcendental values, humanity’s human-only-human values of dignity quickly deteriorate. They are subverted, perverted, and inverted and steadily degrade until they become anti-human values. When the spiritual reality of humanity is openly rejected, it is only a matter of time before the “natural” dignity of humanity is ceremoniously debased, devalued, and dehumanized until it becomes “just a thing” and, eventually, “no-thing”.

When people convince themselves that they are things, the spiritual beings they fundamentally are cannot have a genuine "human" experience in this mortal life. They lose the freedom needed to do what they have been incarnated to do. Instead of unifying the natural world and the divine world into the reality of the cosmos that is God and Creation, our divine selves are dragged down into a dehumanized experience of "thingness", which is at once a major obstacle to spiritual learning as well as a certain path to damnation.

Note added: I have drawn some of the ideas I have expressed here from Dr. Charlton's thoughts on cosmic perspective and Nikolai Berdyaev's ideas of creativity.

5 Comments

Caspar David Friedrich's "Metaphysical Dimension"

1/25/2022

5 Comments

Though he is considered the most important German painter of his generation, I sense many people are not really all that familiar with the works of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).

No, wait a minute -- that's not quite right. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say most people are familiar with some of Friedrich's famous creations, but are largely unaware of Friedrich himself.

For example, I imagine almost everyone has come across an image of this painting at some point . . .

Der Wanderer Über dem Nebelmeer (Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog) - circa 1817

. . . but I sense that only a handful of people who have encountered this painting can name the artist.

I know I couldn't when I first saw it . . . and then saw it again . . . and again.

Friedrich was primarily a landscape painter. Even better, he was a Romantic landscape painter, which means his landscapes communicate a subjective and emotional response to the natural scenes he depicted. He was also fond of including human figures in his landscapes, but in a way that, according to Wikipedia, set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension."

The Friedrich landscape that sparks the biggest subjective and emotional response in me is his The Evening Star -- for the simple reason that it so very much resembles the landscape I currently inhabit here in western Hungary, which makes the whole "metaphysical dimension" aspect of the painting easily accessible and comprehensible.

Der Abendstern (The Evening Star) - circa 1830

5 Comments

A Dominant Song in My Personal Birdemic Era Soundtrack

1/24/2022

2 Comments

This is neither here nor there, but I recently became fully aware of a subconsciously selected set of songs that have been cycling through my mind since the spring of 2020. Taken altogether, these songs have formed what I now refer to as my own personal "birdemic era soundtrack."

A dominant song in this personal soundtrack has been La Villa Strangiato by the legendary Canadian power trio, Rush.

Partly inspired by some nightmares guitarist Alex Lifeson had experienced, La Villa Strangiato is a nine-minute instrumental divided into twelve distinct parts that combined tell a unified story complete with a plot and characters,

Part adventure, part fantasy, part nightmare, the song contains as many twist, turns, and transitions as the birdemic era itself, which is likely why it has found a place in my personal soundtrack over the course of the past two years.

The first video is a live performance. The second is the studio version of the song complete with chapter titles for those interested in following Strangiato "plot."

Note added: My personal soundtrack is exactly that -- a soundtrack that reflects my own personal, internal experience of the birdemic era; it is not meant to represent the birdemic era itself.

2 Comments

A Creator of Co-Creators

1/23/2022

12 Comments

All Christians agree that God is the Creator. But what kind of Creator is the Christian God?

A Creator of creatures and things or a Creator of (potential and actual) co-creators?

Much depends on how one understands Creation.

Is Creation a one-time event in the distant, nebulous past over which God presides as an omnipotent judge and clocksmith?

Or is Creation an ongoing process in which all beings have the potential to freely strive to achieve and add qualities and values to Creation -- a Creation in which God is the ultimate locus of creative action and purpose?

12 Comments

They Will Do Everything in Their Power to Ensure the Choice is Yours

1/21/2022

7 Comments

Getting people to willingly and actively choose their damnation has been the dominant theme of the birdemic since 2020.

Yes, there has been much persuasion, propaganda, and pressure -- and yes, there have been manipulations and machinations aplenty.

Terror tactics? Sure.

Bold-faced lying and devious dishonesty? Certainly.

Coercion? Oppression? Harassment? Arm-twisting? You betcha!

What about straight-up force?

Though there has been some compulsion here and there, evil has generally avoided the blatant use of force whenever possible for the simple reason that it wants to ensure the choice is yours.

Evil has generally left some room for choice, even when it has mandated and compelled. Granted, the choices it tends to offer barely seem like choices at all -- penalties, fines, job-loss, etc. -- but they are choices all the same.

Case in point, the looming peck mandate in Austria. Parliament there has recently enacted the mandate into law. In a few weeks time, Austrians will have to get pecked or face hefty fines. Not much choice there, especially not in the long run. Sounds like a done deal, right?

Well, not exactly. You see, minutes after the mandate became law, the Austrian government announced the implementation of a peck lottery -- more specifically, unpecked Austrians will now have a one-in-three chance of winning five hundred euros if they voluntarily choose to get pecked before the mandate goes into effect.

Why would the government initiate such a lottery? Why not just wait for the mandate to go into effect and simply force people to get pecked and fine them heavily if they refuse?

Well, why not?

Because they don't want to make the choice for people. They really don't. They want people to make the choice themselves. And they want people to own that choice.

Note added: Choices can be repented, especially choices made under coercion, but I imagine evil is banking on a majority of such choices remaining un-repented. Even better, such coerced choices could become a fertile breeding ground for resentment, rage, and despair.

7 Comments

Berdyaev on the Misinterpretation of Creativity

1/20/2022

0 Comments

An interesting video that briefly outlines Berdyaev's views concerning man's misinterpretation of creativity in the modern world since the Renaissance. The main points:

the Renaissance released an unprecedented outburst of freedom and human creativity, personified most notably by DaVinci
the creativity itself was good, but it was misinterpreted; thus, it cut humanity off from its "organic center" and distanced man from God
"humanism may have liberated human energies, but it cannot be said that it lifted man up spiritually -- it emptied him"
of DaVinci, Berdyaev notes: "He was responsible for the mechanization and materialization of modern life, for its dead-ness and for the loss we have suffered for its highest meaning."
for Berdyaev, the source of humanity's creative force is the spirit of God. This source is not within the physical, organic nature of humanity itself -- which is the message of pantheism and of secular humanism -- rather the creative source is a spiritual source, one that is not quantified and material-based. It is not discernible through scientific study. It is a mystery, and it is within that mystery, within the embracing of that mystery that its strength lies."
Humanity and its relationship to its Creator and the creative force beneath that creation is steeped in mystery and awe and creative power. This is the image of God within homo sapiens, and it is within this mystery that our true, unique creative power lies.
"The night is coming and we must take up spiritual weapons for the fight against evil. We must make more sensitive our power for its discernment. We must build up a new knighthood.

0 Comments

<<Previous