Abstract
In this article the concept of God as creativity (rather than as “the Creator”) is explored. Though creativity is a profound mystery to us humans, it is a plausible concept today because of its interconnectedness with the belief that our cosmos is evolutionary: new orders of reality come into being in the course of time. Three modalities of creativity are explored here: the initial coming into being of the universe (the Big Bang); the creativity manifest in evolutionary processes; the human creation of culture. It is suggested that this creativity itself should be thought of as God: God is creativity. Thus God-talk is given a referent that is specifiable in terms of today’s understandings of the world and the human. God remains a profound mystery here, but one with a significant place in our modern understanding of the world and human life.
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References
Hawking, Stephen W. 1988. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. New York: Bantam Books.
Kaufman, Gordon. 2004. In the beginning...Creativity. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress.
Pelikan, Jaroslav. 1960. “Creation and Causality in the History of Christian Thought.” Journal of Religion 40: 246–255.
Taylor, Mark C. 2001. The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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This article includes text and ideas taken from my book, In the beginning…Creativity (Kaufman 2004).
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Kaufman, G.D. Special Topic: Confucian and Christian Conceptions of Creativity. Dao 6, 105–113 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-007-9012-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-007-9012-2