A New Anthropodicy is Needed
The first bits are from a comment exchange with Dr. Charlton from this post:
Bruce: By my understanding, creation of everything from nothing means that actual human beings are of negligible significance - since we are all merely contingent aspects of the one creator; because there is nothing else we can be.
This seems to me a mere variant on the idea that our mortal reality is illusory - and since it is futile, it is an evil illusion.
The whole underlying tendency of Christianity is thereby denied.
For my mind, unless beings, including human beings, are primary realities, they cannot be the focus of creation.
Me: The sad thing is most human beings do not want to be primary realities or foci of creation. For many, it's far too burdensome to contemplate. Better to be of negligible significance. After all, contingency is far more comforting and palatable than freedom.
Bruce: Seemingly not - and neither do most religions encourage them in the slightest. Even so great a creative, and creation encouraging, Christian as Tolkien, got himself (and readers) terrible confused about the nature and importance of human creating, because of the ex nihilo assumption he accepted from the RCC. No matter how many words JRRT expended on praising creation - the bottom line would always be that none of this was necessary, and none of it made any ultimate difference - since creation had already been wholly accomplished and was wholly God's.
The comment exchange reminded me of Berdyaev's “anthropodicy”—his justification of man. Berdyaev posits that human beings are not just creations of God, but also co-creators in God's ongoing work of creation. He highlights the creative act as the crux of human existence.
For Berdyaev, the creative act is not limited to conventional forms of creativity via the arts but a vivid expression of freedom and spiritual striving in which human beings are able realize their potential and contribute to the divine purpose.
This justification of man is rooted in Berdyaev’s insistence on the fundamental significance of every human being, emphasizing the unique and unrepeatable value and dignity of each human person as a spiritual being.
I think Berdyaev was looking in the right direction with his anthropodicy; however, his metaphysics could not properly flesh out the significance of man, and all beings, as primary realities.
Bruce: By my understanding, creation of everything from nothing means that actual human beings are of negligible significance - since we are all merely contingent aspects of the one creator; because there is nothing else we can be.
This seems to me a mere variant on the idea that our mortal reality is illusory - and since it is futile, it is an evil illusion.
The whole underlying tendency of Christianity is thereby denied.
For my mind, unless beings, including human beings, are primary realities, they cannot be the focus of creation.
Me: The sad thing is most human beings do not want to be primary realities or foci of creation. For many, it's far too burdensome to contemplate. Better to be of negligible significance. After all, contingency is far more comforting and palatable than freedom.
Bruce: Seemingly not - and neither do most religions encourage them in the slightest. Even so great a creative, and creation encouraging, Christian as Tolkien, got himself (and readers) terrible confused about the nature and importance of human creating, because of the ex nihilo assumption he accepted from the RCC. No matter how many words JRRT expended on praising creation - the bottom line would always be that none of this was necessary, and none of it made any ultimate difference - since creation had already been wholly accomplished and was wholly God's.
The comment exchange reminded me of Berdyaev's “anthropodicy”—his justification of man. Berdyaev posits that human beings are not just creations of God, but also co-creators in God's ongoing work of creation. He highlights the creative act as the crux of human existence.
For Berdyaev, the creative act is not limited to conventional forms of creativity via the arts but a vivid expression of freedom and spiritual striving in which human beings are able realize their potential and contribute to the divine purpose.
This justification of man is rooted in Berdyaev’s insistence on the fundamental significance of every human being, emphasizing the unique and unrepeatable value and dignity of each human person as a spiritual being.
I think Berdyaev was looking in the right direction with his anthropodicy; however, his metaphysics could not properly flesh out the significance of man, and all beings, as primary realities.
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