St. Athanasius the Great disclosed the truth of “homo-ousion” not in a condition of humility, but in a condition of creative ascent and illumination, although too humility preceded this. Creativity presupposes the characteristic spiritual ascesis, creativity is a not-allowing of its passions. Creativity presupposes self-denial and sacrifice, a victory over the power “of the world”. Creativity is a disclosure of love for God and for the Divine, and not for this world. And therefore the way of creativity is also a way of surmounting “the world”. But creativity is a different quality of spiritual life than humility and ascesis, it is a disclosing of the God imaged nature of man. Sometimes they reason it out thus: at first man needs to be saved, to conquer sin, and then to create. But such an understanding of a chronological relationship betwixt salvation and creativity is in contradiction to the laws of life. Such has never occurred nor will occur. I require all my life to be saved and until the end of my life there is no succeeding ultimately to conquer sin. Therefore never will there onset a time, when I shall be able to begin to create life. But thus still, just as man needs all his lifetime to be saved, man needs all his lifetime to create, participating in the creative process in accord with his gifts and his vocation. The relationship between salvation and creativity is ideational and inward a relation, but it is not the relation of a real chronological bodily sequence. Creativity assists in and does not impede salvation, since creativity is a fulfillment of the will of God, an obeying of God’s call, a co- participation in the acting by God in the world. Whether I be a carpenter or a philosopher, I am called by God to create constructively. My creativity can be distorted by sin, but a complete lack of creativity is an expression of the ultimate stifling of man by Original Sin. It is not true, that only ascetics and saints are saved, — they likewise created, and were artists of human souls. The Apostle Paul in his own spiritual type was to a greater degree by religious genius more so a creator, than saint.
V.
