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DiggIn God's Image: A Theology of Creativity
By Mark Bozzuti-Jones
A Jesuit friend of mine used to say, “God created us in God’s own image and we turned around and returned the favor.” There is no limit to our ability to create and be creative as human beings, and God is forever in danger of being remade by human beings.
I would suggest that the first step in reflecting on a theology of creativity is to understand that one of our fundamental creative acts is to create our conceptions of divinity. The tasks, then, of theology and the mission of the Church invite us to examine the concepts we create and how we carry out the call to be co-creators of goodness, truth, beauty, and holiness. Our ideas and thinking about God form the backdrop of all that we do and all that we create.
In the words of Miles Davis, one of the world’s greatest musicians: “I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life.”
Our faith in God rests on our belief that God is the Creator — the Uncreated Creator. As people interested in the power of creativity, we know deeply that we were created, are created, in the first place. And we believe we were created in the image of God.
I suspect that to be made in the image of God has to do with our ability to be rational, to be stewards of the earth, to represent God to each other. Called into covenant with God, the covenant could be read this way: I set before you life and death. Choose to create life, choose to create goodness, choose to create the beautiful, and choose to create the truth through the art of your actions. Sadly, human history reflects both the positive and negative aspects of human creativity.
The Bible shows two forms of creation: making and doing. The creation story is all about God making things and making them out of nothing. One could say the rest of the Bible is God’s creative act of doing: liberating the people, sending the prophets, and creating an environment where belief in God makes sense. There are two very different theological understandings of human creativity: sacramental and dialectical.
Sacramental creativity posits that human beings participate in the ongoing creative acts of God and continue the works of creation by being the presence, the voice, and the action of God in the world. Through their creative activities, human beings demonstrate that the world echoes the goodness God first saw in the world (Gen. 1). In the sacramental understanding of creation, human beings are viewed as co-creators. Psalm 8:5 points to this most clearly: “Yet you have made [humans] a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.”
In the dialectical understanding of creativity, human beings are incapable of participating in God’s ongoing act of creation. Through and because of sin, human beings lost their place as co-creators: we are no longer capable of independently doing anything good. Human beings stand in need of God’s ongoing creation and recreation through grace, and by themselves are capable of doing nothing to bring about the new creation. Psalm 22:8 speaks of the lowly estate of humans, “I am a worm,” and the prophet Isaiah writes that even our righteousness is like “filthy rags.”
In sacramental creativity, we are called to be co-creators with God, and as such we are called to participate in the ongoing work of God. The exponents of dialectical creativity would point to the weapons of war, and the pursuit of pleasure and power, as what happens when human beings start creating. In this theological view, human beings create one thing well: havoc.
It is possible to reconcile the sacramental and dialectical understanding of creation. One of the ways that we can be most creative in our understanding of God is to imitate God by creating communities of love and mutual respect. Take a look at the Trinity. In the Trinity we see a perfect community. A place of peace, love, co-existence. This is what human beings are called to create.
It is not quite enough to say that we are most like God when we seek to create. Rather, we are most like God when we work to create a world that resembles the world of God, imbued with goodness. It is what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer: Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Create away, O human, be yourself, but be your best self. I think that is what God would say to us.
I will leave you with a radical thought: God may even rely on our creativity.
Look at the Incarnation, the second act of creation. What Jesus did reminds all humanity that God’s glory and life can be made manifest in and through what we do.
I wonder what life would be like if Christians woke up every day with a desire to create something good, true, and beautiful? What would it be like if we made a commitment every day to create or do something that resembled God’s image?
I can imagine Jesus throwing down the gauntlet by saying we human beings will do even greater things than he did. May our theology be one in which every day we find something creative to do with our lives—something that moves us beyond the chaos and the darkness.
Imagine that. Create that.
The Rev. Mark Bozzuti-Jones is an author and priest for pastoral care and nurture at Trinity Wall Street.
Soundtrack: Miles Davis, Blue in Green
