Work has been getting in the way lately, leaving me little energy to compose original posts. Though I anticipate some reprieve in the coming days, I have used whatever spare time I have had in the past week or so to revisit the works of Nicolai Berdyaev (1874 - 1948).
I first read Berdyaev about a decade ago and was moved by his engaging and unorthodox ideas about creativity and Christianity. The overarching theme in much of Berdyaev's work centers upon the belief that "we are called to be collaborators with God in his continuing creation of the world."
Below are two excerpts from Berdyaev's seminal work The Meaning of the Creative Act. The excerpts provide good insights into Berdyaev's belief in human creativeness as complementary to God's creativeness - that is, Man as a creature who is a co-creator in God's work of creation.
(Bold added by me.)
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But in God there is a passionate and anguished longing for man. In God there is a tragic deficiency which is satisfied by the great gain of man’s birth in Him. The mystics taught the mystery of God’s birth in man. But there is another mystery; that of man’s birth in God. There is a summons, a call in man, for God to be born in him. This is the mystery of Christianity, the mystery of Christ, which is unknown to the Hindu mystics, to Plotinus, or to any of the abstract monistic mystics. God and man are greater than God alone. The substantial multinomial being revealed in One is greater than a One undifferentiated. Only the myth of God’s longing for man and for man’s love can bring us near to the final mystery.
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Without Christ, God is terrible and far-off and cannot be justified. Christ is the only theodicy. Non-Christian theism, without the Trinity and without Christ, is terrible, dead, and useless. We cannot believe in God if there is no Christ. But if Christ is, then God is not master, not lord, not an autocratic commander – God is near us. He is human. He is in us and we in Him. God Himself is Man – this is the supreme religious revelation of Christ. With Christ, God’s autocracy ceases, for man as the son of God is called to immediate participation in divine life. The management of the world become divine human.
In divine-human religion, God reveals his Will. But man’s will must be revealed by man himself. The divine-human religion predicates man’s activity. If God created man in His own image and likeness, and if the son of God is Absolute Man, this means that man as a son of God is predestined to be a free creator, like his Father-Creator. Christ the son of God, Savior and Redeemer, restores man’s creative powers, which had been undermined and weakened. The way of Christ is the true birth of man. According to God’s idea of man, a concept which cannot be revealed by God alone but must be revealed by man as well, man is called to continue God’s work of creation. The creation of the world was not finished in those seven days. What was finished in those seven days is the limited, Old Testament aspect of creation, for which the whole mystery of creation was not revealed. The stamp of sin’s oppression lies on the Old Testament cosmogonic consciousness. But the New Testament religion of Christ reveals a new aspect of creation. God’s work of creation is continued in the incarnation of Christ the Logos.
The appearance in the world of the God-man marks a new moment in the creativity of the world, a moment of cosmic significance. In the revelation of the God-man begins the revelation of the creative mystery of man. The world is being created not only in God the Father but in God the Son.
I first read Berdyaev about a decade ago and was moved by his engaging and unorthodox ideas about creativity and Christianity. The overarching theme in much of Berdyaev's work centers upon the belief that "we are called to be collaborators with God in his continuing creation of the world."
Below are two excerpts from Berdyaev's seminal work The Meaning of the Creative Act. The excerpts provide good insights into Berdyaev's belief in human creativeness as complementary to God's creativeness - that is, Man as a creature who is a co-creator in God's work of creation.
(Bold added by me.)
__________________________________________________________________________________________
But in God there is a passionate and anguished longing for man. In God there is a tragic deficiency which is satisfied by the great gain of man’s birth in Him. The mystics taught the mystery of God’s birth in man. But there is another mystery; that of man’s birth in God. There is a summons, a call in man, for God to be born in him. This is the mystery of Christianity, the mystery of Christ, which is unknown to the Hindu mystics, to Plotinus, or to any of the abstract monistic mystics. God and man are greater than God alone. The substantial multinomial being revealed in One is greater than a One undifferentiated. Only the myth of God’s longing for man and for man’s love can bring us near to the final mystery.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Without Christ, God is terrible and far-off and cannot be justified. Christ is the only theodicy. Non-Christian theism, without the Trinity and without Christ, is terrible, dead, and useless. We cannot believe in God if there is no Christ. But if Christ is, then God is not master, not lord, not an autocratic commander – God is near us. He is human. He is in us and we in Him. God Himself is Man – this is the supreme religious revelation of Christ. With Christ, God’s autocracy ceases, for man as the son of God is called to immediate participation in divine life. The management of the world become divine human.
In divine-human religion, God reveals his Will. But man’s will must be revealed by man himself. The divine-human religion predicates man’s activity. If God created man in His own image and likeness, and if the son of God is Absolute Man, this means that man as a son of God is predestined to be a free creator, like his Father-Creator. Christ the son of God, Savior and Redeemer, restores man’s creative powers, which had been undermined and weakened. The way of Christ is the true birth of man. According to God’s idea of man, a concept which cannot be revealed by God alone but must be revealed by man as well, man is called to continue God’s work of creation. The creation of the world was not finished in those seven days. What was finished in those seven days is the limited, Old Testament aspect of creation, for which the whole mystery of creation was not revealed. The stamp of sin’s oppression lies on the Old Testament cosmogonic consciousness. But the New Testament religion of Christ reveals a new aspect of creation. God’s work of creation is continued in the incarnation of Christ the Logos.
The appearance in the world of the God-man marks a new moment in the creativity of the world, a moment of cosmic significance. In the revelation of the God-man begins the revelation of the creative mystery of man. The world is being created not only in God the Father but in God the Son.
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