Creativism and Christianity 

This essay explores similarities and differences between Creativism and Christianity and asks whether Creativism is just a modern form of Christianity or an entirely separate set of beliefs and way of living.  A corollary question is whether Creativism, devised around 2012, is more fit for life in the 21st century.  This is a question that has to be asked in response to the challenges facing contemporary Christianity.

Matters of definition

The central tenets of Christianity are widely known in a rough kind of way, with the Apostles’ Creed being perhaps the most accessible and accepted summary.  This creed emphasizes narrative: the creation, the birth and death of Jesus, and so on.  There is of course a wealth of discourse and debate around the narrative.  The Nicene Creed sets out more of the dogma which deeply committed Catholics and others embrace, and there are further lesser-known creeds which enlarge the body of belief.  But Christianity is not united on these matters, and there are branches of the faith and free-thinking individuals who have their own views.  Despite measures designed to preserve unity and discipline, there are differences.  Often these differences seem relatively minor, but they become significant on issues where is a political element, for example the role of women in the church and the recognition of same sex marriage.

Creativism is somewhat akin to Process theology in that it has been inspired by Christianity though it concerns itself with philosophical concepts rather than the Bible.  (Process theology, it will be remembered, grew out of Process philosophy).  Being a relative newcomer on the landscape, and unrecognized, Creativism does not have an organization cementing in place its tenets.  There are attempts to define beliefs, including careful definitions of terms, but it is essentially a non-creedal body of thought, all captured within the evolving website www.banishingboundaries.com.  Where Christianity derives from a very large body of history and thought, Creativism has been shaped by one person only.  This is not to say that elements of its thought are not shared by other people, including people without religion, but simply that it is a much smaller enterprise and therefore perhaps easier to define.

A broad observation that can be made here, with elaboration later, is that Creativism is less interested in holy narrative and more interested in concepts, such as the meaning of divinity, the process of creation, and the philosophical construction of the universe.  It works very much from the lived experience and thinking of ordinary people.  Like Christianity, Creativism honours the Divine (God) though it has its own understanding of the Divine which is different and distinctive.  Narrative, as in the Bible, is agreed to be significant but only as a starting point for our quest for a broader and deeper understanding of existence.

Sources

Any religion needs authoritative sources, be they documentary, oral tradition, personal experience or something else, like places which are recognized as sacred sites.  A range of types of sources, as in the Bible, is likely to carry more weight.  There is also weight in sources which span a long period of time or reflect some other kind of diversity.  Multiple sources can mean inconsistencies but also mutual reinforcement, and this certainly is the case with Christianity, not only within the Bible but also between the Bible and its many interpretations.

An important issue we have to face is whether criticism from our time is up to the task of bringing the Bible into the 21st century.  Major advances were made in the last century, but conservatism in churches prevented these advances from gaining traction.  The work of Paul Tillich, widely praised but otherwise left to gather dust on bookshelves, is an example.  Guardians of the faith have been preoccupied with defending traditional interpretations of the Bible, leaving new and more adventurous interpretations to fend for themselves.  Secularists meanwhile are having a field day.

The story is not all gloom and doom, however, for some Christians have come to realize that there are merits in alternative schools of thought, including science and other branches of religion.  Acceptance of these remains cautious, partly because traditional beliefs have become institutionalized and thus hard to change.  There’s a sad irony in the fact that Jesus, one of the most revolutionary leaders in the history of thought, has a following that is so conservative.  Even changes like priesthood for women and same-sex marriage, long a non-issue amongst other parts of society, are major theological sticking points in a number of churches.

Creativism is more flexible.  Being a product of modern times, it draws heavily on one of the modern virtues of scholarship, namely openness to a wide range of other (non-Christian) sources.  It recognizes that religious truth is too vast and complex to be accessed through one set of doctrines or traditions alone.  Each faith has characteristics that are special, for example Hinduism with its accommodation of diversity, Buddhism with its exploration of possibilities within the human being, and Taoism with its insight into cosmic patterns of existence.  So while the Bible is accepted as a major sourcebook, perhaps the major sourcebook, other texts such as The Upanishads or the Tao Te Ching are also held to be important sources of wisdom.

Christian scholarship has done remarkable work in elucidating the ancient texts which together constitute the Bible.  The issues are numerous, especially those relating to apparent conflicts of meaning.  Peter Enns in his masterly book How the Bible Actually Works (Harper Collins 2019) has characterized the Bible as a compendium of ideas and experiences rather than a coherent set of propositions that we should unquestioningly adopt.  As he shows, we may find there material that, properly used, increases our wisdom without confining us in one or other straitjacket of belief.  This is not just a matter of expert scholarship, for Creativism too has come to the table of spiritual life trying to free us all from mindsets that have tied believers up.  Mindsets like the anthropomorphic God, original sin, and the existence of Heaven and Hell have weakened to a degree, for we in this century are more sceptical than our predecessors; yet new ideas have not filled the void, except in the minds of a dedicated few.  For sadly, many people today have switched off religion completely.

The Bible comprises many kinds of source material, from plain narrative to poetry, meditation, and sermon or liturgy.  Overwhelmingly, however, it is a story or collection of stories.  Critical minds in our century may relate better to other modes of communication, notably essay or dialogue about the great existential questions (why we exist, who pulls the strings, etc.).  So while the Bible is still read and absorbed in conventional ways, other ways are developing as well.  Above all, this includes a desire to avoid literalism and look instead for other types of meaning, such as metaphor or symbolism.

The Other

Religion is about many things, but perhaps above all it is about relationships with “the other” in our lives: other people, other things, other selves that we can be, and the ultimate Other whom we call the Divine or God.  Christianity and Creativism alike see all these as connected; so, for example, we can experience the Divine through the various other aspects of being, and our relationship with the Divine necessarily involves those others.  If you want to prove your love for me, said Jesus to Peter, simply “Feed my sheep” (John 21:17).  In other words, care for other human beings is a gateway to God.

Each religion has its own way of dealing with the Divine.  Australian Aboriginal religion, for example, puts an emphasis on the natural world or “country.”  Christianity thinks in terms of different kinds of individual: God as the first individual, then the individuals of humankind (Adam, Eve and their kind), and finally the individuals of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  The Divine itself is seen as three in one, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  More recent theology has God in abstract terms as the all-encompassing ultimate reality which is the source of the universe, the ground of all being.  Creativism does not reject this characterisation but finds it to be unhelpful in daily living.  It is too broad.  Daily living requires us to narrow our concept of God to ultimate goodness – the highwater mark that should always be our aim.  This equips us better to meet the challenges of life.

Creativism holds that, strictly speaking, the Divine, cannot be limited in any way.  To do so would be a breach of the very idea of divinity, which is transcendence, that is, transcending all categories of existence that we might have in our minds.  Thus, it is necessary to see the Divine as completeness: just as much bad as good, just as much rest as motion, just as much she as he, and so on.  Inevitably this is difficult for our limited human minds to grasp, for we are ill equipped to deal with such paradox, and so we have to accept that the Divine is part of the mystery of existence.  He/She/They/It are mystery because we intuit their presence and may engage intellectually and/or emotionally but without being able to fully know them.

Christianity traditionally has thought of God as personal, though a number of modern Christians would appear to disagree.  Creativism allows the Divine to be seen as both personal and impersonal, or even transpersonal.  There are times in people’s lives when the closeness of a personal God is felt to be necessary, and there are other times when this is not the case.  We should be mature enough to understand that this is so.  A middle ground is simply to relate to the Divine as a presence, without being fixed as to what kind of presence.  Another approach is to think of the Divine in process terms, that is, not as someone (who might seem essentially the same all the time) but as something that is constantly changing: as indeed creation is.  A further possibility is to think of the Divine as Providence, where Providence is understood to be that which keeps us going and completes us when we fall short.  Arguably we cannot – should not – tie ourselves down to any one or even two notions about the Divine; for the Divine is beyond any measure rich in meaning.  It is hardly surprising that Asian cultures have developed religions that quite explicitly reflect this multiplicity, while still acknowledging the overall oneness that binds all their deities together.

The dark side

The dark side refers to anything that detracts from happiness or wellbeing.  Predominantly here we are speaking of evil and suffering, though there are other elements like fear and apathy.

Christianity as taught in churches remains, even after all these centuries, remarkably unhelpful in its explanations of the dark side.  Genesis 2:17 speaks of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and elsewhere there is the myth of Satan as the proud angel who in his rebellion against God is the embodiment of wickedness (and thereby also the author of suffering).  Through the story of Adam and Eve, Christianity blames humankind – our own kind - for the disobedience which it sees as underlying evil.  But this in no way accounts for the existence of evil and suffering in the first place.  Thus it is that critics ask why an apparently good and omnipotent God should have allowed evil and suffering to exist at all.  A related question is why evil and suffering appear so random in their operation, unfairly targeting people who are fundamentally good or at least innocent.  The answers from church people are never – or rarely – convincing.

Creativism says this is simply the way things are and we need to accept it as part of the overall mystery associated with the Divine.  The universe, in its completeness, has both harmonies and conflicts, or contrasts, which must be held in balance.  Balance is an imperative.  The world needs difference and diversity if it is to have the energies necessary for creation, but this difference and diversity must be kept in check in order to keep the whole machinery intact.  Taoism recognizes this through its theory of the Tao where yin and yang are in a constant counterpoise.  In everyday life, it is evident that we need the energy of goodness and its negation, just as the Tao needs the energy of both yin and yang.  How individual lives get caught up in this cosmic dance is another matter; there are factors like genetics and circumstance that make certain outcomes possible if not probable; then there is freedom which unleashes its own forces, and chance, which is the great wildcard that operates at will.  From out of all this we inevitably have bad situations arising, and we must of course do all that we can to end them; however we must understand as well that bad situations are spurs to different kinds of improvement.  In short, we have to acknowledge both the good and bad aspects of evil and suffering.

Creation

Christianity tells us that God created the universe, then the Earth, the basic forms of life, and finally humankind.  At the end of this labour God saw everything that had been made and considered it “very good” (Genesis 1:31).  Evil, it appears, was present in the world, or at least the potential for evil, but nothing is said on this score.  Only when human beings arrive on the scene and their desire gets out of control does the question of evil, together with suffering, arise.

The Bible has nothing to say on issues surrounding existence as such, e.g. why anything should exist in the first place.  Indeed, we could be forgiven for thinking that the Genesis story is little more than background for the Old Testament saga that follows, where humans repeatedly allow their worst selves to prevail and are corrected by God as a result.  Over time, God makes covenants with his people which can be interpreted as the unfolding of a divine plan.  Laws are proclaimed and instructions given, but these are broken, to the point where the people of God have to be sent into exile, captivity and deep suffering, waiting for salvation.  Thus the stage is set for the unfolding of events in the New Testament, where salvation comes - though not in the way expected.

While Christianity focuses primarily on the unfolding narrative of our relationship with God, Creativism begins with the unfolding process of creation, in which we all share.  Neither of these two approaches is necessarily better; they are simply products of different times and to a degree they complement each other.  Creativism has arisen in an age when science is more influential than ever before, and so it is natural that we look now with an eye to questions like how and why certain things happen and how they connect with the qualitative aspects of human existence.  Creation is explained as the fulfilling of a latent potential which is a form of truth.  This fulfilment cannot occur without an effort of will; for example, a teabag and water constitute potential for cup of tea, but there has to be an act of will to bring this potential into life.  Creation comprises not only conception and birth but also flourishing, which then moves into decline and death – and the potential there for something new to arise.

Creativism, being deeply philosophical, sets in place a structure of carefully defined concepts that are designed to guide us through the complexities of living.  At base and flowing through everything, we might say there is the mystery of the Divine, which we experience through Providence.  Providence rests on necessity, for example the necessity that we inhabit a world of harmonies and, when harmonies are absent, balance.  Necessity can also be understood as the continuation of the creative mode, without which our world would collapse.  Another core concept in Creativism is truth, which roughly equates to necessity and thus should be our guide through life.  It follows that our lives should be dedicated to the ascertainment and promotion of truth.

The Christ

As stated previously, Christianity is more reliant on narrative for its messaging.  Creativism, while looking always for solid ground in lived experience, is cautious about attaching itself too much to narrative or supposed fact, historical or otherwise.  It recognizes the importance of narratives, especially in specific cultural contexts (as in the story of the Jews), but it recognizes too that there are additional meanings, often symbolic, which make the whole business of narrative rich but potentially a minefield of errors and confusion.  An example is the story of the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.  Christianity and Creativism alike recognize the massive upheaval in outlook represented by the Jesus story, namely that the good that is achieved in the world happens through values like truth and love, not through earthly power.  This fulfils the promise inherent in the notion of Jesus as the Word, that is, the true expression of the divine purpose that the world (and humankind) flourish through truth and love, exercised to their fullest extent.  But it is a narrative so complex and context that much of its value is lost, even amongst practicing Christians.

The story of Jesus is so central to Christianity that there are prophecies about him from at least the middle of the Old Testament, and of course he is part of John’s vision in the Book of Revelation.  Jesus was an exceptionally gifted young man, recognized in his own time as a rabbi.  He taught a higher standard of living than the prevailing standard which derived from the law of Moses (or at least it is perceives as such).  Jesus got beyond the outward signs of godliness to the reality of the heart; for example, he said, lusting for someone not one’s spouse is as bad as actually going to bed with that person (Matthew 5:28).  His two great commandments (Matthew 22:37-40) got to the essence of the ten commandments of Moses (Exodus 20:1-17).  But best of all, Jesus lived his own teaching inasmuch as he obeyed God completely and gave himself in sacrifice on the cross.

Different interpretations of the crucifixion and subsequent events are possible, though the Biblical text appears to limit these possibilities.  At the very least we can say that Jesus died as a sacrifice, believing himself to be the Messiah if not the kind foretold by the prophets.  What happened after that remains wrapped in mystery.  Christians believe that Jesus died as a sacrifice for all humankind and as the Messiah who would liberate not just Jews but all believers.  Christians also believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and, spiritually at least, ascended in glory to be with God.  Yet another interpretation is that the crucifixion-resurrection-ascension story is symbolic truth, for it represents the concept of giving, especially self-sacrificial giving, being ennobling to the point of entering new life.

Nothing satisfactorily explains the resurrection or ascension, which the Bible presents to us as physical acts.  For a sceptical (but open-minded) modern person, the best explanation is that these were transformations that took place in the minds of Jesus’ followers, but this may or may not be the case.  Peter Enns (p. 243) has observed that “God raising from the dead wasn’t a remarkable idea at the time”, though raising just one person was unusual.  It was so especially when added to the notion that all the faithful would be raised from the dead at the Last Judgement.  An additional view might be that, in the grand scheme of things, death is never the last word.

How we should live

Christianity and Creativism have different starting points but finish together, valuing the spiritual life above the material and emphasizing qualities of love and kindness.  Christianity begins with reverence to God and, through Jesus, love of other people as the path towards a right relationship with God.  Where exactly this idealism comes from is not clear, for Jesus was strong in declaring his vision for the world but not so strong in explanation.  Was his vision the product of instinct or of reason or of his understanding of the will of God?  Whatever the case, the vision is a strong one, thoroughly consistent and distinctively different from that of the Roman conquerors or the keepers of Jewish law, the Pharisees and Sadducees.  By the force of his personality and his preaching he was able to impress this thinking upon his own followers.

Creativism is different, for Creativism believes it must argue the case.  In a world of materialism, self-interest and refusal to accept authority, even divine authority, it is necessary to persuade people that a certain way of living is superior.  This case holds that everything, including our spiritual life, begins with creation; secondly, creation happens through an interaction of truth and will; thirdly, our lives should be patterned on this interaction, so that we too can join in the cosmic process of creation.  The benefit then is to the world as a whole and to ourselves as individuals.

Christianity in its worldview talks in terms of sin, sacrifice and salvation.  Humankind is seen as being capable of living a good life but forever seduced by temptations to do wrong, which it labels as sin and which must be punished or at least corrected accordingly.  Creativism has a lighter touch in its assessment of the human being, for it accepts that the universe at large is made up of good and bad things which must be forever held in balance, with we humans contributing to that drama.  The issue for us is not so much overcoming our propensity to sin but finding ways to flourish; for the natural course of life is that all creatures grow and in their own way flourish, while also in due course decaying and slipping towards death.

How do we flourish?  The answer is that we learn to live creatively, recognizing and putting aside our imperfections – our tendencies to egotism, greed, fear, apathy and so on – and replacing them with the disciplines of truth, love (or goodwill), courage and perseverance.  If we are looking for role models, there are plenty, though Jesus of Nazareth stands out as the single most inspirational such person.  Through Jesus and his gritty life of giving, culminating in the cross, we learn the meaning of uplift.  We learn the meaning of reaching our potential as fully developed human beings.

Christianity holds that Jesus died for all sinners; he died to redeem or save and to enable a new kingdom to arise thereafter.  Creativism accepts that he died to save others, at the very least the people who were following him.  However, the precise nature of this motivation is not the most important thing.  The important thing is that he gave of himself to the absolute limit of his being.  Giving is the key.

Giving has different aspects.  It is giving oneself firstly to the truth of God as expressed in God’s law, whether the physical laws of the universe or the social laws of human society.  Secondly, however, it is giving oneself in loving or respectful relationships with other people – and as we now in the age of environment and artificial intelligence understand, other things, whether in the natural world or the created world.

Creativism takes very seriously the development from the Ten Commandments to the two great commandments of Jesus: to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself.  Creativism has four commandments, which build on these two:

• Honour the creator, the constant giver, for all that is good comes from the creator, and creation – endless giving, endless outpouring of self – is the basis for our existence.  From creation too comes our happiness, and in times of hardship our ability to cope.

• Accept with humility your limitations while seeking always to do better.  Accept even then that there are things that cannot be known and things that cannot be done, for humanness is by nature limited.  It partakes of the divine but is not itself divine.

• Respect all people and all things for the part they play in creation, but restrain those who do harm and seek to turn their harm into good.  For in this lies the seeds of ongoing creation, the constant drive to make things better.

• Give in all ways possible, to others as to yourself.  Give too through the pursuit and promotion of truth, for in doing so you are one with the creator who is constantly giving.  While allowing that life requires us also to take, make giving your default mode.

Giving is the keynote of both Christianity and Creativism.  This is crucial in our understanding of religion as being about relationships.  Giving initially is the outpouring of self by God or the unknown Creator, but it is also the outpouring of self by human beings in our interactions with the world.  Giving can be painful, indeed intensely so - the crucifixion was the most painful experience imaginable – but it is also an unparalleled source of uplift.  And the uplift is felt by giver and receiver alike.

Religious practice

Jesus said that “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20).  This is the beginning of religious practice in the Christian church.  Practice may of course be entirely individual, as in the case of solitary prayer or contemplation, but here we are thinking rather of institutional forms of religion.  These forms are not confined to designated religious spaces.  Christian churches have built a huge series of edifices, physical and spiritual and organizational, giving effect to their beliefs, including out in the community.  A school or nursing home would be just one example: a set of structures staffed by people giving effect to principles like care and compassion, providing for spiritual needs in the way of chaplaincy and church services, with an administration that links them in all sorts of ways with other arms of the faith, such as local parishes and diocesan councils.

In a cruel irony, significant elements of this history have turned out to be harmful rather than helpful.  The abuse of children by priests and others in holy orders is just one example among many.  Christian doctrine gives no warrant for this sort of thing, however the door to it is opened when the church moves into the world, as it must in order to fulfil its mission.  Creativism, if it were to grow, would most likely be subject to the same pressures; for belief and practice are often at odds, especially when tested by the temptations of “the world.”  Religion must enter the world to convey its message, but in so doing it runs the risk of having the message corrupted, either in word or deed or both.

Christian art, architecture, music, literature, liturgy (and more) have developed over centuries to points of almost unparalleled refinement and beauty.  Layer on layer of meaning draw us in to the vision splendid – the glory of God accessible through his kingdom, on Earth as in Heaven.  Our secular age has little interest in these things, however, and little ability to engage with them, for the simple truths of the faith are no longer being taught as they should, and the noise of other messaging drowns out those things that should be heard.  This is why Creativism is keen to simplify and maintain relevance to the needs and circumstances of ordinary people today.

The life course and beyond

Christianity and Creativism alike see us as essentially free to live as we choose, while being subject to myriad constraints and influences.  These start with factors around our birth and affect every aspect of our lives.  Thus, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, “Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains.”  The word “chains” has many meanings, of course, for there are many kinds of freedom.  Freedom is in some sense a reality but it is also an illusion.  Christianity holds that it is a sign of God’s love for humankind that we have free will.  This is an interesting supposition but like so many ideas in religion no more than that.  Creativism prefers to do no more than accept the fact of freedom as given, something that “is” but can’t be explained, yet another part of the unfathomable divine mystery.  What counts more is what we do with this freedom and how we respond to the consequences, which are so unequal.

With that we come to the problem of equality.  In this age when inequality seems to be increasing around the world, such injustice is a huge challenge to religion (though of course inequality is a problem in any age).  The response by Christianity and Creativism is essentially the same, to accept (because we have no choice) our current state but equally to recognize the power of our own goodness, aided by God or Providence, to rise above adversity.  In the language of Creativism, Providence (the goodness of God) is never beaten by the Pit (evil and suffering) though they remain locked in apparently never-ending conflict.  Often enough there are times when evil and suffering seem to triumph, but the triumph is never permanent.  Like yin and yang, these forces go on and on, locked in their symbiotic relationship – their enduring conflict but also inspiration – forever, without likelihood of resolution.  Unless, of course, one believes in an overriding power such as the Christian God which eventually will win.

How outcomes are actually reached in everyday life – the mechanics of good and evil - is as much a mystery as the nature of the outcomes themselves.  Christianity mostly rejects the prosperity gospel teaching that virtue will bring about material reward - often in fact it doesn’t - and Creativism would agree.  Nor is the principle of karma accepted, attractive though it is up to a point.  Christianity’s belief in a personal God means that God can extend grace to individuals such that their souls live on as part of the ongoing kingdom of God; however the theology of grace is complicated and disputed within the different branches of the faith, beyond explanation here.  Related is the issue of divine intervention in human affairs, which some affirm and others deny.  The Bible tells many stories where God acted to achieve desired outcomes, most notably the resurrection of Jesus, but 21st century minds tend to doubt this kind of divine interventionism.  Creativism waves the whole business away as being – again - part of the divine mystery, beyond the power of human minds to know.  At the same time it gives special recognition to chance, seeing chance as a special (and important) feature in the overall design of things.  Chance is a wildcard in the drama of life, and most importantly not subject to direction of any kind, from anyone.  For chance is chance, pure and simple.  It is a key part of the machinery that keeps existence, or life, forever in a state of question, unresolved.

When we look at death and the possibility of an afterlife, Christianity and Creativism part company more emphatically.  Christianity looks to death as something that is only temporary, reversible at the time of Last Judgement.  The extent to which adherents of the faith actually believe in this vision is questionable, but it is fixed doctrine, and in any case we have to admit that life after death is a fundamental belief in most religions.  Creativism has a more modest outlook, regarding death as final though acknowledging that each life has effects that last well beyond death.  In other words, things that we have done live on after us, one way or another.  They live on as facts, like the designing of a bridge, or as influence, like the inspiration that Martin Luther King has engendered in the minds of so many, religious and non-religious alike.

Christianity looks to a future which will be unveiled in the fullness of time.  The Book of Revelation is a poetic expression of this future, where – after much travail - goodness prevails over evil.  One way or another we should be seeking uplift, though ideas about the nature of this uplift differ widely.  Creativism affirms strongly the example of Christ (as well as heroes in other religions) who has shown us the absolutely transformative power of giving, even to a seat at the right hand of God.  In this central fact or metaphor of Christianity, Creativism shares one hundred per cent.

While Christianity explores the life course and its prevailing forces through story, a more abstract approach is equally valid, as in Creativism.  We have to see a bigger picture here.  The endpoint of religion at large has to be some sort of accommodation of the different forces involved: creative energy and rest, wholeness and singularity or uniqueness, harmony and contrast, balance (and so on).  Peace is not by itself the endpoint, for there has to be the energy of giving as well, and the exaltation of the soul.  Perhaps then the exact nature of the endpoint is not the most important thing.  What’s most important is that we affirm that somehow there is a power in goodness – or we might say divine goodness - which will survive.

Conclusion

Creativism and Christianity are distinct in their worldviews but converge on certain key issues, especially in regard to the way we should live.  The essence of both is that we should constantly be giving.  Here are the salient differences:

• Christianity is first and foremost a narrative, with characters (including God) who are personalized.

• Creativism, being more modern, is not a narrative but a body of metaphysics and ethics: a generalized interpretation of the way things are and the way they should be.

• Creativism acknowledges that certain things in the Bible narrative might have happened but regards them more as symbolic or metaphorical truth than literal truth.  An example is the resurrection and ascension; Jesus is not thought to be alive today.

• Creativism makes a clearer distinction between the whole God and God the loving father of his people.

• Creativism does not believe in original sin, but simply the reality that humankind is mixed in its embrace of the good things in life and the bad.

• Creativism, like Christianity, attaches great importance to the Christ story but with somewhat different emphasis and meaning.  The keynote for Creativism is giving of the self without limit.

• Creativism has a theory of creation which links explicitly with virtue, i.e. truth and love.  Christianity can be aligned with this but only if we see Jesus the Word of God as the human expression of God’s will for creation.

• Creativism has an acceptance of bad things – like evil and suffering - that Christianity (largely at any rate) does not have, even though these bad things were clearly part of God’s original creation.

• In regard to conduct of life, Christianity begins with love of God and love of other people, even to the point of the supreme sacrifice.  Creativism is similar but with additional expectations addressing concerns of our times, such as the natural and artificial environments and containment of wrongdoers (including war criminals).

• Creativism hopes for a positive future but does not go as far as Christianity which proclaims a Second Coming and the Kingdom of God.

A number of points might be made in summary.  Firstly, Creativism does not attach itself to a specific narrative, preferring to deal only in generalities.  Secondly, it accepts that divinity must inevitably go outside the everyday and inhabit the realm of mystery, which is not necessarily the same as being supernatural.  The consequences for doctrine are that certain things are declared not knowable and therefore beyond the realm of speculation.  Thirdly, Creativism maintains a degree of detachment from things which on scientific grounds are questionable, accepting rather that they may be symbolic or metaphorical rather than literal truth.  Fourthly, Creativism offers a more robust and down-to-earth view of the dark side of life, accepting that the dark side is as much part of the Divine as the loving and merciful God of Christian folklore.  The loving and merciful God remains as our gold standard but cannot be claimed to be the totality of the Divine.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Creativism has an integrated set of beliefs which links philosophy with theology and ethics, all wrapped around creation.  If creation is will to activate truth, we too (so it is argued) should bend our will to activate truth, and this can only happen through love and goodwill.  This is consistent with the vision of Christianity, the Kingdom of God where love and truth are triumphant.

Any religion worth its salt has to respond to the demands of its own time and place then adapt as necessary.  Christianity grew out of dispossession by alien forces – the earthly powers of Babylon, Rome etc. and spiritual pressures such as ego and greed.  Creativism faces the same spiritual pressures plus pressures of secularism, environmental hostility and encroachment by technology.  (Secularism is to religion is what climate change is to the human race).  Christianity flourished over centuries for reasons that were largely wrong and now seems like a fading star.  Creativism offers itself as a rising star more grounded in reality and therefore more fitted for life today - a claim that remains untested, however.  Undoubtedly the two could learn from each other, though how this might happen in practice is difficult to see.