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| Inquire
from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything been done like this great thing [God's creative act], or has anything been heard like it? (Deut. 4:32 NASB) |
Moreover, in both the Old and New Testaments bara
creativity is power theology. It urges a rethinking of
everything, a transformation of one's worldview to
acknowledge God:
| That
they may see and recognize, And consider and gain insight as well, That the hand of the Lord has done this, And the Holy One of Israel has created it." (Isa. 41:20 NASB emphasis added) |
Bara creativity is illustrated in Numbers chapter sixteen
where the sons of Korah were rebelling against the
divinely instituted leadership of Moses. God instructed
Moses to tell the people to separate from the tents of
these rebels:
| "Do
not touch anything belonging to them, or you will
be swept away.... If these men die a natural
death and experience only what usually happens to
men, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the
Lord brings about something totally new,
and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them,
with everything that belongs to them, and they go
down alive into the grave, then you will know
that these men have treated the Lord with
contempt. As soon as he finished saying all this, the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them...They went down alive into the grave with everything they owned; the earth closed over them and they perished and were gone from the community" (Num 16:26, 29-33, emphasis added). |
The words translated "totally new" in the above
passage are a rendering of two successive bara words
("bara beriah"), the only time this succession
occurs in Scripture. A strictly literal translation would
be the Lord "creates a creation." The word-play
is doubly explosive and appropriate. What occurs is an
entirely unprecedented phenomenon-- not even an
earthquake, because no shaking of the earth is described.
The earth's surface opens and closes! The example also
illustrates the performance dimension of bara activity.
Two main dimensions characterize Biblical creativity, the
constructing dimension (as in the making of the universe)
and the performing dimension (as in the doing of
miracles). By way of human analogy, to make something in
the construction dimension is to take material and shape
or reshape it into a book, a sermon, or a composition. To
do something in the performance dimension, however, is to
perform on the piano or deliver a sermon. An action
results, not a new form. The performance dimension is
also clearly illustrated in Exodus 34:10 where
"do" and "performed" appear together.
God is speaking:
| I
will do such miracles as have never been
performed [form of bara] in any nation or in all the world." (NEB) |
The meaning of words,
however, can change over time, and the word create has
undergone extraordinary change over the centuries. In the
Bible, man is referred to as a maker or fashioner, but
never as a creator. A comprehensive examination of the
word "create" in the Scriptures reveals that in
all 86 cases it refers to activity performed exclusively
by God, never humans. Moreover, researcher Tigerstedt
(1968) could not find in the writers of Christian
theology or classical philosophy any reference to the
metaphor of a human creator. The first recorded
articulation of a human creator occurs in Landino's
exaltation of the poet to the status of a creator in 1482
A.D. God, he said creates out of nothing and the poet
produces "great and admirable things nearly out of
nothing." Art historian Erwin Panofsky (1960)
similarly observed: "The words creare, creator,
creatis and their vernacular equivalents...seem not to
have been applied to artists until the sixteenth century,
and in Italy not before ca. 1540-1550."
However, the trickle of references to humans as creators
in the Renaissance gradually becomes, by the 20th
Century, a torrent. By 1710 Shaftesbury extols the master
poet as a "second maker," who can "imitate
the Creator." In the19th Century theoretical work in
linking divine and human creativity occurs in Coleridge,
Wordsworth, and Blake, and the idea of "artistic
genius," a Scripturally alien concept, is
popularized as individuals like Franz Liszt are exalted
to the point of cultish worship. By the 20th Century the
concept of a "creator like unto God" is the
"most pervasive image of the artist" and is
"at the root of much of the thought and practice
that takes place today." Picasso echoes that
thought: "The important thing is to create. Nothing
else matters; creation is all." And Paul Gauguin in
a letter dated 1888 says: "Creating like unto our
Divine Master is the only way of rising toward God."
Statements like these are a breath away from the euphoria
of stardom and Hollywood marketing techniques which now
infect our own local and TV church cultures. But, it
wasn't always this way!
Believing it invites pride or rebellion against God, Reformed theologians (those Calvinistically inclined) view the idea of man as a creator as dangerous:
| "the
more the artist attains to the ideal of free,
untrammelled creativity, the more likely he is to
be disobedient to God...Human creation thus is
seen not as stewardship, but as a competition
with divine Creation. |
The competition motif, indeed, is struck when the serpent persuades Adam and Eve that the prohibition on the forbidden fruit obstructs them from achieving God-likeness and exceptional awareness:
| ...[for]
when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God...(Genesis 3:5) |
When Barnett Newman seductively links the concept of man as creator to the allurement of the forbidden fruit, he justifies the warranted apprehensions of these theologians:
| It
was inconceivable to the archaic writer that
original man, that Adam, was put on earth to be a
toiler, to be a social animal.... man's origin
was that of an artist and he set him up in a
Garden of Eden close to the Tree of Knowledge, of
right and wrong, in the highest sense of divine
revelation. The fall of man was understood by the
writer and his audience not as a fall from Utopia
to struggle...[nor] as a fall from Grace to Sin,
but that Adam, by eating from the Tree of
Knowledge, sought the creative life, to be, like
God, "a creator of worlds," ...and
was reduced to the life of toil only as a result
of a jealous punishment... What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against man's fall and an assertion that he return to the Adam of the Garden of Eden? (emphasis added) |
Many artists today aspire
for the creative state at any cost. Creativity for them
leads to a higher state of consciousness. Defiant of any
limits, any responsibility to live obediently under God's
authority, they are a law to themselves.
Against this backdrop, Reformed theologians insist man's calling is not to create, but to work with the materials of creation responsibly and obediently for the delight of mankind and benefit of all creation. They see in Genesis chapter one a "cultural mandate," a broad directive for focusing human energy:
| God
blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful
and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue
it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the
birds of the air and over every living creature
that moves on the ground. (Gen. 1:28, emphasis
added) |
Reformed theologians take
this passage as a command, a charge, to subdue not only
all living creatures, but to discover and use the
potentials in all materials, including their macro and
micro structural dimensions. This enlarged scope appears
justified from these words addressed to man elsewhere:
"you put everything under his feet " (Ps. 8:6);
"God left nothing that is not subject to him"
(Heb. 2:8). In uttering this mandate, God dignified
mankind's work, and "crowned him with glory and
honor" (Ps. 8: 5).
To subdue means to tame, master, humanize, impose order,
develop technique-- to place our imprint on creation in a
positive way. This takes effort, wisdom, and experience
and infers mankind is invited to work and to extend God's
creation. In that sense "creation" is
uncompleted, unfinished. For Jubal this meant tuning,
ordering tones and rhythms in order to play the harp and
the flute (Gen. 4:21). For some musicians today it means
exploring the potentials in digital instruments and MIDI.
Moreover, God in His creativity has demonstrated a love
for immense variety without sacrificing quality! This
variety and plentitude of materials on our planet offers
an extraordinary range for mankind's field of action.
Notice that verses 28 to 30 read "every living
creature," "every seed bearing plant, "
"every tree," and every green plant."
Moreover, scripture teaches us to respect the materials
of creation:
| God
saw all that He had made and it was very good.
(Gen. 1:31) |
Additionally, the following helpful Scriptural metaphor teaches us to lovingly care for the created order.
The kind of "subduing" and "ruling" that Scripture envisions is not that of raping the environment or squandering or suppressing human potential. The image appropriate to subduing, says Wolterstorff, is "that of gardening. Man's vocation is to be the world's gardener."
| Now
the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in
Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And
the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of
the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye
and good for food...The Lord God took the man and
put him in the Garden of Eden to work
["cultivate''] it and take care of it." |
The devoted gardener
learns the secrets of good management-- when to water,
when and how to prune the trees for the benefit of all.
It is not difficult to see how the image of a gardner
could further apply to pastors and those who work the
arts. "The artist takes an amorphous pile of bits of
colored glass and orders them upon the wall of the
basilica so that the liturgy can take place in the
splendor of flickering colored light and in the presence
of the invoked saints." Similarly, pastors take
ideas, order them, and express them eloquently in words.
Like the trees in the garden, these ideas need to be
pruned and shaped. The gardening image also elicits the
thought of preservation and conservation, of appreciating
and building upon forms of the past while at the same
time aggressively reaching toward the future.
The kind of artist balance we need is projected in the
charge Moses gave to Bezalel, chosen to head the team
making the furnishings for the tabernacle. Bezalel!
Master gardener of the arts! The excerpt below from
Exodus has the feel of the Genesis passages. It begins
with his calling, enumerates his qualifications, then
goes on to put emphasis on the materials themselves, and
the great variety of specific skills he mastered.
| Then Moses said to the sons of Israel, "See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel...He has filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge and in all craftsmanship; to make designs for working in gold and in silver and in bronze, and in the cutting of stones for settings, and in the carving of wood, so as to perform in every inventive work. He also has put in his heart to teach... to perform every work of an engraver and of a designer and of an embroider, in blue and in purple and in scarlet material, and in fine linen, and of a weaver...Then Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every skillful person in whom the Lord had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him, to come to the work to perform it." (Exod. 35:30-36:2, emphasis added) |
Veith says this passage is "incisive in its analysis
of what artistry involves--indeed, it is the most
comprehensive analysis of the issue I have ever
found." He says whereas human theories about art
tend to be partial and narrow--some emphasizing talent,
some training, some technique--it is characteristic of
Scripture to be comprehensive.
Let's examine the qualities that Bezalel
possessed--wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and
craftsmanship--in more detail. Notice the progression
from the general to the specific. The Hebrew word for
"wisdom" means to have insight or perspective
into the overall plan, to see how everything fits
together. It means to have the big picture, to understand
the rationale of the whole. It also relates well to the
idea of conceiving the designs and innovating the
settings of particular abstract, decorative art pieces.
The word "understanding" suggests intelligence
or ability in practical problem solving.
"Knowledge" has to do with "know-how"
knowledge, the knowledge of particular crafts. Bezalel
had to know his materials. He needed to know how to
prepare acacia wood, cast bronze, beat gold, and make
dyes. "Craftsmanship" relates to workmanship.
Craftsmanship involves working in a specific medium, and
requires the mastery of technique in the act of embodying
an idea. The emphasis is on the quality of the product.
"Skill" here is more associated with wisdom.
Note finally, Bezalel is designated as a maker, not a
creator.
(c)Copyright 1999 Dr. Barry Liesch