Creativity, Orthodoxy & The Christian Mind
by Steven Faulkner
I grew up as an independent, fundamentalist Baptist and maintain respect for those who defend biblical truth and try to live thereby. They have a certain lively sense of orthodoxy. But occasionally, one bumps into the sort of “fighting fundamentalist” who, without sufficient caution or reason, drops visor, lowers lance, and rushes blindly upon anyone suspected of theological creativity. To such persons (though I realize they do not compose the whole fundamentalist camp), the sight of creative ensigns fluttering in the breeze signals man’s manipulation of a divine gift. They rightly argue for a Word of God “the same yesterday, today, and forever,” a “faith once for all delivered to the saints”; unfortunately for them, it is set like concrete and about as fertile. They fail to realize that although divine truth is indeed changeless, the Church has developed her understanding of that truth over the last two thousand years, and her expression of that truth varies with time, culture, and individual genius.
The human mind was created with this capacity for a godlike creativity. Creativity is at the heart of the human experience. We must not surrender its legitimate place to bombast and vituperation. We can no more shut out creativity than we can stop thinking. And thinking about God, a subject who is mysterious and transcendent, requires a great deal of creativity.
For, as St. Paul has said, we are dealing with a type of knowing which surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:18)—not exactly a routine and prosaic endeavor. Malcolm Muggeridge put it this way:
I understand that something more important, more tumultuous, more passionate, was at issue than our good causes, however admirable they might be. Something to do with the deep, inner nature of life itself—mine, and all life. Something inescapable, pursuing and pursued, forever beyond my reach and yet under my hand; part of the air I breathed, and lost in the wide firmament above.1
And he quotes William Blake:
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.2
To explore the limitless Being of God and the truth which he reveals is the proper objective of theology. And I see this with orthodox reflection and study specifically in mind. Such a study calls for three things: 1) a grasp of the content of the Christian faith, its doctrines and history, 2) a searching imagination—not to redefine the faith, but to discover new insights and to express it, to communicate it in new ways to each generation; and 3) a divinely sanctioned connection with the Person of God. For in this last regard the Christian mind believes in and seeks a spiritual communion with the very Mind of God. As St. Paul has said, we Christians have received “the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.” For who can search the Mind of God but he who receives the Spirit of God? (1 Cor. 2:11-16)
Even more to the point, Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” We see immediately that Christian theology is an encounter and a journey with a Person, not with a set of definitions. And such a personal encounter must be, if anything, creative.
Moreover, faith in transcendent values, rooted in a moral and personal God, in a reality greater than ourselves, not only requires some measure of creativity, it is logically and historically the best ground and guarantee of creativity, for it gives meaning to our creative efforts and opens the widest possible vistas.
Yet for all of this, many conservative Christians (Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox) fear creativity when applied to theology: they fear speculative theology. Man naturally seeks security. A precisely defined theology, engraved in granite, the meaning explained, the application prescribed—this is comforting—for it not only provides man with a reliable system, but it confines God to a manageable size. Man shapes a structure to house his God and house himself. It is all very convenient. Theologians and clergy erect a reasonable facsimile of the infinite, ineffable Being and gladly bow before this comfortable, dependable, immobile structure. Man reads his scientific descriptions of the sun, fails to raise his eyes to the dazzling light: the book eclipses the sun. Jesus himself condemned the religious leaders of his day for searching the Scriptures but missing the Messiah who stood in flesh and blood before them.
Steven Faulkner teaches creative writing at Longwood University in southern Virginia. He is the author of Waterwalk: A Passage of Ghosts (2007) and Bitterroot: Echoes of Beauty and Loss (2016). Both books are memoirs of father-son journeys that followed the paths of missionary priests: Marquette (in Waterwalk) and De Smet (in Bitterroot).
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