Spencer Heath Archive

Item 424

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It is a premise of Christian doctrine that all men fundamentally and potentially are of equal worth; that in his creation out of the dark and void man was specially endowed with the spiritual power to continue the creation and thereby take dominion over the natural world. The Creation was the first technology in which man was concerned. In it the word (logos) was made flesh, a part and chapter of that endless cosmic creation in which the infinite Creator manifests forever His transcendent dreams.

      Man, in all this, was unique. Part of the creation he was, rude and crude in his genesis, but no mere creature was he. In the image of his maker, he took also the image of His mind, the gift of endless dreams. And with this gift, implicit in it and long hidden, was the germ, the seed of a mighty power — the power not only to share in the divine conceptions but also to put them into effect. Deep in the crude nature of man was hidden the creative power, the spiritual power, when realized and developed, to take up the drama of Genesis and as God’s delegate continue the creation of the world. Such was the gift, not only to inherit the earth — all of God’s other work — but the promise and the potency to build into it “the music and the dream,” “to mold it ever near to the heart’s desire.”

      Such was the transcendent power, implicit even in the crude creation of man. But the cosmic creation moves on and with it man, unconscious for the most part of its unimpeachable ways. In his primitive nature his desires are crude and but poorly realized. He knows no goal but to exist. Empirical technologies raise his power to utilize environment. Folkways tend to make life more secure and men begin to dream. A few sense beauty in the order of nature and seek not merely to use but to understand. A time comes when physical knowledge is grasped and marvels are wrought. Greater marvels await the like understanding of the large relationships among men.

      It has been the task of man to develop use of his high endowments and thus emerge from the state of creature to his destined high estate as participant in the cosmic creation. But to be creators men must be free. Necessity spurs them to actions that sustain and preserve life, but never to advance it. Under pressure of danger or necessity only the animal faculties are aroused. The whole effort is to escape or attack, never to create. Only as men rise above necessity, up from slavery to circumstance or to fellow men, do they find acceptable alternatives of action none of which they need escape or beat down. Only where there is choice without necessity or compulsion is there any free choice. Quality, value and beauty spring from selection; they are highest where the field is wide and rich. Under freedom alone can they be chosen; under freedom alone can there be creation, whether it be mediately human or directly divine

      Thus for men to act divinely — creatively — it was essential that they be free, that they have increasing alternatives without compulsion. So men were given freedom to choose, free will in all things not compulsory or necessitous, that they might become creators in the degree that their compulsions diminished and their options enlarged.

      When man descended from his infinite perfection in the divine mind into his aboriginal state, when the perfect dream of him, the word (logos), became flesh, he took on the limitations, the necessities and compulsions of other created forms. But his dawning gift of dream gave him, however minutely, the power to create as well as to destroy and with it some measure of freedom from the compulsions and necessities of merely animal existence. Thus was the dual nature of the primitive man. The clay in him, the animal nature, could only deplete and destroy, but the divine in him, the free dream, could in its limited way create. The choice was his own. He could yield to the animal urge and mightily destroy and consume, or express in measure his divine prerogative to create and conserve. Such is the conflict between the animal and the spiritual, the unregenerate and the regenerated man. Yet by the compelling dominance of the spiritual the conflict is self-resolving; for the way of destruction leads ever towards extinction while the way of creation, the spiritual process, gives abundance and ever lengthening days towards immortal life.

      The unregenerate man today is he who is not aware of his creative divinity, his genetic unity with his Origin nor of his divine potentialities; his choice of alternatives tends towards destruction and thus towards extinction. The spiritual man is he who moves under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the continuing creation of the world. Exalted in his conscious unity with the divine, his works and ways tend ever life-ward. He dwells in ecstasies. This is his individual salvation.

 

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Commentary by Alvin Lowi:

 

/MAN – THE CREATURE AND THE CREATOR/

 

SUBJECT: Examination of equality element of Christian doctrine; viz. the spiritual power to create in the cosmic sense and his origin out of the cosmic creation. Implications of this gift in terms of transcendence and freedom.

     The spiritual man dwells in ecstasies, exalted in his conscious unity with the divine, free of the compulsions of circumstance attains individual salvation.

 

REMARKS:  Really beautiful, moving piece – one for the humane studies.