Virtue in traditional Christianity, indeed in traditional religion, is about obedience to external deity - service to the will of a deity.
Creativity is in fact the product of deity; and it may be regarded as the monopoly of deity.
Traditional religion does not have a central place for creativity by Men...
Especially not by individual Men...
Especially not by all individual Men.
Indeed, within ancient religions; creativity may regarded as be an impossibility, and the belief in the possibility of creativity as a delusion...
Given that everything has already been done (or conceived of) by the deity. There is simply no space for individual creativity to exist when God is regarded as omni-everything.
Even when regarded as a genuine possibility; creativity is seen as, at best, an "optional extra".
But more often it is at least a significant temptation to sin; and the impulse for creativity may even be itself regarded as a sin (e.g. by pretending to, usurping, displacing the divine prerogative).
Yet, if is is acknowledged that creativity is an innate and inevitable fact of agency or "freedom" (properly understood as a positive phenomenon); then trivialization, denial, or demonization of creativity has a dreadful and distorting effect on religion.
At best this leads to a self-contradicting double-think; in which creativity is so framed as to deny its reality.
At worst it leads to a tyrannical attempt to thwart innate humanness and crush all individual people into becoming functional-parts of a social machine - a machine that is asserted to be dedicated to divine service.
Then this crushing, and all which it entails, is labelled as Good! And insofar as the soul cries against it and yearns for more and better... Well, that is just more sin!
My interpretation is that there always was human creativity; because, for me, creativity is what each individual Being brings to divine creation, simply by virtue of his uniqueness participating in the ongoing work of creating.
So, there always-was creativity; but it used to be unconscious, implicit - unidentified as such - hence deniable, hence relabelled as obedient service.
What happened increasingly through the "modern" era, and by now is almost universal; is that individual creativity has become conscious, and therefore often deliberate and purposive.
So that when creativity is trivialized, denigrated, thwarted, excluded, or suppressed nowadays by any religion - modern individuals are much more likely to realize, and be aware why, they feel crushed; why they feel fundamentally dissatisfied.
Tis is one deep reason why any such religion feels... wrong.
Traditional and Orthodox Christian theology does not take human creativity seriously enough to account for it; nor to recognize that creativity is absolutely central to the nature of Christian salvation.
For example: an after-life without creation is not Heaven but something else.
In a sense creativity is what resurrection is for: resurrection retains our individuality (hence agency) of self; whereas "the self" is explicitly discarded (and indeed vilified) by many other religious or spiritual afterlives.
A self-styled Christianity that lacks a proper place for individual creativity, will likewise end up discarding - and demonizing - "the self".
Resurrected eternal life in Heaven is for creation - when creation is understood as an intrinsic aspect of "Love".
Love is of and between individuals - and creativity is part of what we do about this!
Put differently: creativity is each individual Being participating in the purposes and processes of divine creation, harmonized by a spirit of love.
Because traditional Christian theology was devised in a world where creativity was unconscious; the fact it has no place for personal creativity went unnoticed for many centuries.
But now it is evident that traditional Christian theology is wrong; exactly because it does not allow for the central necessity (and goodness) of individual creativity.
We therefore need a new metaphysical understanding of Christianity; one in which creativity is explicitly recognized as occupying a central and vital place.
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