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Although freedom establishes the potential for creativity, and the imago Dei enables the person to engage in creative acts, Berdiaev believes that there is an expectation, a „calling‟ for creativity from God as well. “What God expects from man is not servile submission, not obedience, not the fear of condemnation, but free creative acts.”41

Hence God‟s calling is the third foundation of the creative act, a „silent expectation‟.

This assertion mirrors the thought in Berdiaev‟s theory of freedom that God expects freedom from the person.42 As previously stated, there is a necessary relationship between freedom and creativity in Berdiaev‟s thought. Thus, if God expects freedom from the person, God must also expect creativity. Because of this expectation we can say that the person is not only capable of creativity, creativity has a vocational status. Sabant writes, “. . . Berdyaev perceives another duty for man: the duty of creativeness.”43

The problem for Berdiaev is that he is proposing an idea – God expects the person to create – that has no explicit reference in scripture. Indeed, the exact opposite can be

argued.44 The lack of scriptural mandate would appear to seriously weaken Berdiaev‟s idea that God calls the person to create. Berdiaev attempts to overcome this difficulty by

proposing that the call to create within scripture is actually a „hidden‟ call. “We feel the holy authority of the Gospel‟s silence about creativeness. This absolute silence of Holy Scripture about man‟s creative activity is divinely wise.”45

One must recall his hesitation to define the creative act – any definition would result in an objectification of the act. He applies this same principle to his view of scripture. The call to create is intimated within scripture, but creativity cannot be explicitly stated without

40 _{MH, 154-155.} 41

TR, 119. 42 _{FS, 126-127.}

43 _{Sabant, “Christ, Freedom and Salvation,” 488. See also Lampert, The New Middle Ages, 48.} 44 _{The Hebrew writers were very exacting in attributing the word create (ארב) to God alone. For the} writers of the Hebrew Bible, where Berdiaev draws his support for God‟s creative activity and the imago Dei, attributing the faculty of creation to the person is not supported. The verb (ארב) is used forty-five times in the Old Testament, and in each case it is used singularly as God‟s action. Gerhard von Rad writes, “The verb (ארב) was retained exclusively to designate the divine creation activity. . . . It means a creative activity, which on principle is without analogy.” Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), 43-44.

108 objectifying the act itself.46 Thus there is “silence” regarding the call to create and that

silence is “divinely wise.” He writes, “If the ways of creativeness were indicated and justified in the Holy Scriptures, then creativeness would be obedience, which is to say that there would be no creativeness.”47

Since God‟s expectation is veiled and the calling to create is not specifically defined, how each person responds will be subject-determined as the person exists in union with God and others. This means that the freedom necessary for creativity is not impinged upon and the creative act can become the act “that constitutes man‟s relation and response to God.”48

Berdiaev does not find this view of a silent expectation problematic since, in his understanding of scripture, “The solution of many vital and fundamental questions, however, is not made obvious in the Gospel, but is, as it were, veiled.”49

He is not only convinced that there is a calling to create, but also that failure to understand and recognize this veiled call has dire consequences for the person, the Christian community, and the created order. Sabant writes, “In Berdyaev‟s view, the failure of the Church to see the religious meaning of the creative urge in man has been at the root of mankind‟s progressive estrangement from God.”50

God expects the person to create (to participate in the “eighth day of creation”51), and with God‟s help fulfill what has not been completed, which is the Kingdom of God on earth.52 Berdiaev recognizes that this idea is in tension with various perspectives within theology. “The official theology which regards itself as orthodox denies that man is a being with a capacity to create. Capacity for creation belongs to the Creator alone who is pure act, and the creature is incapable of it.”53

Even though his view of „orthodox‟ theology is

46

Berdiaev interprets the imago Dei as an intimation of God‟s expectation for the person to create. God expects creativity from the person since the individual is created with the ability to create, by virtue of being made in the image of the true Creator. The New Testament has a similar, if veiled, reference to God‟s expectation for the person. Berdiaev: “The Gospel constantly speaks of the fruit which the seed must bring forth if it falls on good soil and of talents given to man which must be returned with profit. Under the cover of parable Christ refers in these words to man‟s creative activity, to his creative vocation. Burying one‟s talents in the ground, i.e. absence of creativeness, is condemned by Christ. The whole of St. Paul‟s teaching about various gifts is concerned with man‟s creative vocation. The gifts are from God and they indicate that man is intended to do creative work.” DM, 162.

47 _{MCA, 97.}

48 _{DR, 207. See also Wernham, Two Russian Thinkers, 33.}

49 _{DM, 161. For another example of Berdiaev‟s view of scripture see chapter 3, 9-10.} 50

Sabant, “Christ, Freedom and Salvation,” 488. 51 _{MCA, 158.}

52 _{Berdiaev, “СПАСЕНІЕ И ТВОРЧЕСТВО,” 40-41. See also BE, 193. Although no mention of the} Social Gospel movement or Walter Rauschenbusch is found in Berdiaev‟s writings, his thought here bears a striking similarity to that of Rauschenbusch. See, for example, Walter Rauschenbusch, The Righteousness of the Kingdom, ed. Max L. Stackhouse (Nashville & NY: Abingdon Press, 1968), 110.

109 equivocal, he accurately asserts that for many theologians the idea that “the person‟s calling is to be a creator, a co-participant with God for world-creation and world-arrangement . . .”54 is highly problematic. For Berdiaev, this is not an issue, since he is not concerned with an adherence to an established orthodoxy; rather, his goal is an outlook in which both God and person create, and are therefore exalted. He is convinced that if theology denies the calling for the person to create this will only lead to atheism. “The idea, so widely spread in theology, that the existence of God is incompatible with man‟s creativeness is a source of atheism.”55

To summarize our analysis thus far: creativity begins with a self-willed act that is brought about through the person‟s free actions and results in some form of newness within the created order. This beginning stage of creativity I have termed a novel act. For a novel act to develop into a creative act, foundational elements must exist. The foundations for creativity can be found in the following: the existential liberty that exists in all forms of embodied freedom, God creating the person with the imago Dei (which means, among other things, the capability to create), and God‟s expectation for creative acts from the person. From this point we can now begin our examination of how the creative act can occur within the „natural‟ world.

§

As with his vision of freedom, one must consider Berdiaev‟s concept of creativity from a developmental perspective. If novelty is to develop into creativity not only must there be elements external to the agent in place, the agent himself must engage in certain steps to create. This section will outline these various steps and examine how Berdiaev pictures creativity taking shape within the „natural‟ world.

Berdiaev envisages the development of the creative act taking place in a two-part movement: inner creativity and outer creativity. Each part is comprised of a series of sub- movements that, while not linearly understood, are required for the creative action to develop and maintain its integrity. Berdiaev:

Creativeness has two different aspects and we describe differently according to

whether we dwell upon one or the other. It has an inner and outer aspect. There is the

54 _{Berdiaev, “СПАСЕНІЕ И ТВОРЧЕСТВО,” 41.} 55 _{DM, 192.}

110 primary creative act in which man stands as it were face to face with God, and there is the secondary creative act in which he faces other men and the world.56

The distinction between „inner‟ and „outer‟ acts is critical to Berdiaev‟s thought on creativity. The „inner‟ creative act is also referred to as the „primary‟ act, and the term „primary‟ more clearly reveals Berdiaev‟s thought. As with freedom, Berdiaev‟s fear of objectification leads him to assert that any association with the phenomenal world must be considered as

secondary, or inferior, to the noumenal. The phenomenal can never achieve what is possible in the noumenal. “In that primary act man stands before God and is not concerned with realization. . . . This alone is first-hand knowledge, my real philosophy in which I am face to face with the mystery of existence.”57

The inner creative act is the moment when the person develops a vision and begins to imagine what is possible; it is the primary form of creativity. Everything that follows in the creative process represents a „cooling down‟ (objectification) and cannot equal the original vision.58