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Divine Creation and Human Creativity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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Like the man who gathered from the vicar’s sermon on sin that ‘he were agin it’, one gathers from reading the literature that ‘creativity’ is something to be approved of. Exactly what this creativity consists in, however, and how it relates to the concept of divine creation on the one hand, and the spheres of art and work on the other, is far from clear. It is the purpose of what follows to investigate these relationships.
The terms ‘creation’ and ‘creativity’, as opposed to more mundane alternatives such as ‘making’ and ‘productivity’, seem to be used in many contexts because of the positive feel they carry over from the idea of divine creation. It is much harder, for example, to disagree with an activity called ‘wealth creation’ than to object to the same process labelled ‘making money’. ‘Creation’ and ‘creativity’ are thus not merely neutral, descriptive terms; they alter our attitude to the activities that they designate. To designate an activity ‘creative’ is—for good or ill—to legitimate it, not just to describe it.
In some cases, however, the activity so legitimated is less obviously wholesome than is divine creation itself, and the designation then serves to conceal dubious aspects of human behaviour. In such a case, the use of language acquires ideological overtones. In what follows I shall examine three examples of the use of the idea of creation, or the use of the terms ‘creation’ and ‘creativity’, in recent literature. In the first two I shall detect tendencies towards such a descent into ideology. The examples chosen are deliberately extreme in order to make my point.
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- Copyright © 1986 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
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