I have often written here that the purpose of this mortal life must account for the extended nature of life - the fact that our life may continue for many decades.
This implies that it is not enough to regard mortal life as a matter of what happens at the end of it - i.e. for Christians a matter of attaining salvation - although it is partly that.
Also that mortal life is not just a matter of having experience of incarnating, of "getting a body" - although it is partly that.
If salvation was the only reason for being alive, then we would die as soon as we had accepted the gift of Jesus, and determined to follow Him.
Given that we all must die eventually; this implies to me that God always has reasons for sustaining us alive.
If we are alive, now - there is divine work for us to do, now.
In other words, that for as long as a person lives, he has something (at least one thing) he ought to do, something that he would benefit from doing.
I have usually expressed this in terms of learning from our experiences. The idea here is that God shapes our lives such that we have experiences from which we can learn significant (perhaps vital) life lessons.
These life lessons include making the choice of salvation; and that is my understanding of why so many Western people have been living such long (indeed "over-extended" lifespans in recent decades.
Such people are being kept-alive for longer than in the past (despite increased decrepitude of body and/or mind) because they have so far rejected salvation. Their living experiences are being shaped to give them individually-tailored further opportunities inwardly to reject (i.e. repent) their false and self-harming ideologies; and to embrace a future of everlasting resurrected life in Heaven.
I continue to regard this analysis as correct, but it is not the whole story - because it makes the purpose of life almost entirely passive; a matter of God setting the curriculum, albeit a curriculum unique for each individual - and then each person trying to do as well as possible to learning what this curriculum dictates.
But life is not supposed to be a wholly passive business of dealing with the experiences that life brings to us.
As each of us are Beings who existed as spirits for an eternity before we were incarnated into this life; we all bring our unique natures and possibilities into this mortal life...
In other words; just as God has an agenda, a curriculum, for each of us in this mortal life - towards which we have a formally negative and reactive role...
In a complementary fashion; we also each have a positive agenda that we bring into this life.
Because every individual Being has potential to add his own unique perspective and qualities to the growth of divine creation.
It is important to recognize that we are all unique beings, and the fact is therefore that it is our nature that each can, in principle, add something to divine creation that - if we do not contribute it - cannot therefore will-not be contributed by any other Being.
Put different; we are each, by our nature, unique creators - and because unique, our creative engagement with reality will necessarily make an irreplaceable difference that reality.
In engaging our life and the world; our innate creative potential will enlarge divine creation in ways that otherwise will not happen
I don't mean to assert this positive creative engagement as "a duty" - because that would just be another external curriculum item!
But we don't just "react to" - we also have potential to "act-upon".
I mean to emphasize that this mortal life is not just a matter of us "negatively" learning from life experiences that are presented to us; but also a matter of our divine-selves entering-into and engaging positively with this mortal life...
Us, our-selves; having thoughts, grappling with understanding, engaging in loving relationships, making and doing, freely committing to purposes etc. - each in our innately distinct way; and from the depths of our ultimately divine natures.
And thereby making a positive difference, a better reality; and not just to this mortal world and while we are alive; but a difference to divine creation and therefore eternally.
4 comments:
“As each of us are Beings who existed as spirits for an eternity before we were incarnated into this life; we all bring our unique natures and possibilities into this mortal life...”
It has been my experience that without this assumption the sort of creativity you describe here does not make sense in mortal or post-mortal life, as demonstrated by conventional Christian perspectives that tend to limit creativity to subcreation and procreation. In fact, strict orthodox views suffocate virtually all notions of creativity and render them impossible. After all, only God can truly create something new.
In connection with that, it is crucial to know that creative activity in mortal life is not limited to artistic creativity but is foremost spiritual in nature and can extend into anything—thinking, relationships, you name it. Berdyaev often refers to it as a spiritual upsurge.
As you know, I have found Berdyaev extremely helpful on the topic of creativity and regard him as a sort of trailblazer in that department. All the same, I feel that his penetrating insights into the creative act remain too hemmed in by some of the orthodox assumptions of which he could not let go. I often wonder how his views on creativity would have deepened had he assumed the existence of eternal Beings rather than simply eternal, uncreated freedom sans Beings.
Nevertheless, like you, Berdyaev did understand that creativity provided "the" positive motivation for mortal life, as noted in The Meaning of the Creative Act:
“Salvation from sin, from perdition, is not the final purpose of religious life: salvation is always from something and life should be for something. Many things unnecessary for salvation are needed for the very purpose for which salvation is necessary - for the creative upsurge of being. Man's chief end is not to be saved but to mount up, creatively.”
@Frank Yes, is does seem that to make sense of "creativity" as a positive (and universal) possibility, requires *several* different assumptions than orthodox theology.
Another I would add (and make explicit) is that each Being is, always has been, unique.
This has implications for the project of God's divine creation, in that the purpose and tendency through time is to produce a free and conscious choice of harmony between Beings that originally did not have this disposition - this choice is a consequence of what Christians mean by "love".
In other words, to make simple sense, the "functional" (or rather metaphysical) role of Love in divine creation needs to be made explicit - that Love is not "just a feeling" but the whole basis of creation.
And it is the weak and partial nature of our love, that limits creation here and now - but this is what Jesus has cured in Heaven!
"And it is the weak and partial nature of our love, that limits creation here and now - but this is what Jesus has cured in Heaven!"
Yes, that's well put.
Perhaps a helpful way to regard creative engagement in mortal life would be to think about it as an opportunity to do/think -- however partially, however weakly, however inconsistently -- the sorts of things aspire to do with other Beings in Heaven, fully, consistently, completely.
@Frank - A good deal of work on this was done by Joseph Smith and some of the other early Mormon theologians, a long time before Berdyaev!
However, the Mormons have not worked through this aspect of the creative implications of pre-mortal life; because they have been so focused on the pro-creative aspects.
This was accurate - we may develop post-mortally to become divine procreators - but this is a too restricted understanding of creativity and of love; and the emphasis on children apparently excludes *a lot* of (for many reasons) non-procreative people from the main business of living. .
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