Christians tend to believe in two distinct paths toward truth. The first is divine revelation. The second is reason.
Divine revelation comprises the truth God has revealed directly to man from above. Man arrives at reasoned truth empirically through his senses. As far as most Christians are concerned, there is no other viable way for man to access truth. Man receives it directly from God or figures it out via his senses. The first enlightens the second, and the second reveals the reality of the first.
The big problem for Christians is the treasured belief that empirical truth – truth arrived at by reason – always leads to the reality of God. In actuality, empirical truth has all but rejected divine truth and the reality of God.
The truth man has gathered from his senses has informed him that God does not exist. This conclusion is then reinforced by the apparent centuries-long absence of divine revelation. This apparent centuries-long absence of divine revelation has led empirical man to conclude that earlier divine revelations were untrue, in the sense that they never occurred.
Now, Christians will argue that the reasoned truth man has employed in the past two or three centuries is not reasoned at all because it is insincere and skewed. The argument is not wrong, but its correctness misses the larger point of how and why man’s use of empirical reason has become so insincere and skewed.
I suggest that the insincere and skewed use of reasoned truth is rooted in man’s inability to recognize a third form of truth, which I will refer to here as divine-human revelation.
To my knowledge, it was Berdyaev who coined the term, and he used it to describe another, as-of-yet, largely unacknowledged path toward truth, which he called creativity (bold added in all passages):
Creativeness is something mysterious and hidden. The revelation of creativeness does not come from above but rather from below – it is an anthropological, not a theological, revelation. God revealed His will to sinful man in the law and granted man the grace of redemption, sending into the world His Only Son. And God awaits from man the anthropological revelation of creativity; in the name of man's god-like freedom, God has hidden from him the ways of creativeness and the justification of creativeness. (Meaning of the Creative Act)
Berdyaev’s introduction of an anthropological revelation turns the conventional Christian belief about revelation on its head and reveals a new and largely unexplored path toward truth. Instead of passively absorbing or waiting for God’s revelation, man must realize that he must actively reveal himself to God via creativity. Moreover, he should be pursuing creativity from within himself, from the core of his agency and freedom, rather than relying upon external sources:
Man's creative activity has no holy scriptures: its ways are not revealed to man from above. In the Holy Scriptures which reveal to man the will of God, man always finds absolute truth, but it is another kind of truth and about something other. In creativeness, man is, as it were, left to himself, alone, and has no direct aid from on high. And in this fact the great wisdom of God is evident. (The Meaning of the Creative Act)
Creativity does not negate divine revelation or reasoned truth, but merges them, thereby ending the errant dichotomy that has been established between the two truths and, subsequently, affirming the existence of the form of truth simply through the conscious act of seeking it:
Truth is not objective, ordinary reality, reflected in the knower and entering into him from outside, but rather the enlightenment, the transfiguration of reality: it is the introduction into the world's data of a quality, which was not there before truth was revealed and known. Truth is not conformity with what we call being, but rather the kindling of a light within being. I am in darkness and seek the light; I do not yet know truth but I seek it. By this very fact, I affirm the existence of Truth and light, existence in another sense than the existence of the world's realities. My seeking is already the dawning light, and truth already beginning to reveal itself. (Truth and Revelation)
And what is the overall purpose of the third truth? According to Berdyaev, the divine-human revelation of creativity sets the stage for the continued development of human consciousness and the fulfillment of God’s divine purpose for man:
The opening of a new epoch of the Spirit, which will include higher achievements of spirituality, presupposes a radical change and a new orientation in human consciousness. This will be a revolution of consciousness which hitherto has been considered as something static. The religion of the Spirit will be the religion of man's maturity, leaving behind him his childhood and adolescence... (The Divine and the Human)
And the core of God’s divine purpose within the third truth involves raising man up to the level of co-creator:
The creative act will create new being rather than values of differentiated culture; in the creative act, life will not be quenched. Creativity will continue creation; it will reveal the resemblance of human nature to the Creator. In creativity the way will be found for subject to pass into object, the identity of subject with object will be restored. All the great creators have foreseen this turning point. Today, in the depths of culture itself and in all its separate spheres, this crisis of creativity is ripening. (Meaning of the Creative Act)
Divine revelation comprises the truth God has revealed directly to man from above. Man arrives at reasoned truth empirically through his senses. As far as most Christians are concerned, there is no other viable way for man to access truth. Man receives it directly from God or figures it out via his senses. The first enlightens the second, and the second reveals the reality of the first.
The big problem for Christians is the treasured belief that empirical truth – truth arrived at by reason – always leads to the reality of God. In actuality, empirical truth has all but rejected divine truth and the reality of God.
The truth man has gathered from his senses has informed him that God does not exist. This conclusion is then reinforced by the apparent centuries-long absence of divine revelation. This apparent centuries-long absence of divine revelation has led empirical man to conclude that earlier divine revelations were untrue, in the sense that they never occurred.
Now, Christians will argue that the reasoned truth man has employed in the past two or three centuries is not reasoned at all because it is insincere and skewed. The argument is not wrong, but its correctness misses the larger point of how and why man’s use of empirical reason has become so insincere and skewed.
I suggest that the insincere and skewed use of reasoned truth is rooted in man’s inability to recognize a third form of truth, which I will refer to here as divine-human revelation.
To my knowledge, it was Berdyaev who coined the term, and he used it to describe another, as-of-yet, largely unacknowledged path toward truth, which he called creativity (bold added in all passages):
Creativeness is something mysterious and hidden. The revelation of creativeness does not come from above but rather from below – it is an anthropological, not a theological, revelation. God revealed His will to sinful man in the law and granted man the grace of redemption, sending into the world His Only Son. And God awaits from man the anthropological revelation of creativity; in the name of man's god-like freedom, God has hidden from him the ways of creativeness and the justification of creativeness. (Meaning of the Creative Act)
Berdyaev’s introduction of an anthropological revelation turns the conventional Christian belief about revelation on its head and reveals a new and largely unexplored path toward truth. Instead of passively absorbing or waiting for God’s revelation, man must realize that he must actively reveal himself to God via creativity. Moreover, he should be pursuing creativity from within himself, from the core of his agency and freedom, rather than relying upon external sources:
Man's creative activity has no holy scriptures: its ways are not revealed to man from above. In the Holy Scriptures which reveal to man the will of God, man always finds absolute truth, but it is another kind of truth and about something other. In creativeness, man is, as it were, left to himself, alone, and has no direct aid from on high. And in this fact the great wisdom of God is evident. (The Meaning of the Creative Act)
Creativity does not negate divine revelation or reasoned truth, but merges them, thereby ending the errant dichotomy that has been established between the two truths and, subsequently, affirming the existence of the form of truth simply through the conscious act of seeking it:
Truth is not objective, ordinary reality, reflected in the knower and entering into him from outside, but rather the enlightenment, the transfiguration of reality: it is the introduction into the world's data of a quality, which was not there before truth was revealed and known. Truth is not conformity with what we call being, but rather the kindling of a light within being. I am in darkness and seek the light; I do not yet know truth but I seek it. By this very fact, I affirm the existence of Truth and light, existence in another sense than the existence of the world's realities. My seeking is already the dawning light, and truth already beginning to reveal itself. (Truth and Revelation)
And what is the overall purpose of the third truth? According to Berdyaev, the divine-human revelation of creativity sets the stage for the continued development of human consciousness and the fulfillment of God’s divine purpose for man:
The opening of a new epoch of the Spirit, which will include higher achievements of spirituality, presupposes a radical change and a new orientation in human consciousness. This will be a revolution of consciousness which hitherto has been considered as something static. The religion of the Spirit will be the religion of man's maturity, leaving behind him his childhood and adolescence... (The Divine and the Human)
And the core of God’s divine purpose within the third truth involves raising man up to the level of co-creator:
The creative act will create new being rather than values of differentiated culture; in the creative act, life will not be quenched. Creativity will continue creation; it will reveal the resemblance of human nature to the Creator. In creativity the way will be found for subject to pass into object, the identity of subject with object will be restored. All the great creators have foreseen this turning point. Today, in the depths of culture itself and in all its separate spheres, this crisis of creativity is ripening. (Meaning of the Creative Act)
RSS Feed
