Human Creativity

But now, thus says the LORD, your creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine!”  Isaiah 43:1  NASB

Jacob/ Israel – Where should you put the punctuation?  That’s always an issue in translation because the original has no punctuation.  So, va-yikra Rabbah 36:4 (a rabbinic midrash on Leviticus) places the punctuation like this:  “Who created you: Jacob.  Who formed you: Israel.”[1]  In other words, the rabbis thought that God handed over the creative process to human beings, specifically the children of Abraham.  God creates the world in partnership with the efforts of men.

If you read Isaiah 43:1 in translation, complete with the translator’s punctuation, you would never see the possibility expressed in this midrash.  But if you realize that the midrash merely rearranges some of our common understanding, a rearrangement that is perfectly legitimate given the original text, then you will have gained an enormous insight into the Jewish way of looking at this world and the world to come.

Let’s consider these implications.  First, if God enters into a creative partnership with His children in the formation of the world, then we bear responsibility for what we do here on earth.  We affect the creation, not simply by altering what is already there but by actually bringing into being the fuller purposes of God.  We are active, essential participants in creation.  Abraham Heschel teaches the same thing when he suggests that God is in search of Man, that God needs Man to finish the work God began.

This idea stands in utter opposition to the usual Christian concept of creation.  For Christian doctrine, creation is entirely God’s enterprise.  Man uses, enjoys or abuses what God has created.  At the very best, Man manipulates, alters and produces from already existing material.  But God ultimately creates everything.  Notice that this view relegates creation to the material world.  It is physical creation that is the subject of Genesis.  Now notice that the Jewish view is much larger.  Yes, God creates physical reality, but not everything is to be found in physical reality.  The creation of righteousness is not entirely God’s work.  To bring about God’s purposes, His total creation, Man must be engaged in acts of righteousness.  And, by the way, acts of righteousness, just like evil acts, affect the physical reality as well.  Furthermore, there is a sense in which Man really does create new reality, both physical and spiritual.  Man’s choices alter the face of the cosmos, bringing into being or excluding from being physical entities.  When God condemns Cain’s murder, He notes that the generations that should have been born to Abel are now forever removed from reality.  An evil act wipes away physical human beings.

Once we grasp the possibility that Man is actively involved in creation, then we can understand the Jewish focus on this present world.  This is where creation is occurring daily.  This is where God’s purposes are being executed with human cooperation.  In the Christian-Platonic dualism, this world, already fully formed, has no eternal value.  It is not in the process of becoming.  It is in the process of decaying.  Therefore, the Christian looks toward heaven in the hope of a new world.  His focus is not on restoring this earth to its original state but rather on escaping this inevitably doomed earth.  In the Christian dualism view, there is no reason to worry about what is happening here.  It is all going away.

Zornberg’s comment on the Genesis text is appropriate:  “To ‘make’ the world is the charge that God left man with at the end of the original creation process, when ‘God ceased from all the work of Creation that He had done.’  La’asot, translated here as ‘that He had done,’ is actually the infinitive form, ‘to do’; the world is created open-ended, open to the doing, the making of man.”[2]

Perhaps Leviticus Rabba’s insight is an important one for us to deal with.  Perhaps we need to be a bit more creative with our punctuation.

Topical Index:  Isaiah 43:1, va-yikra Rabbah 36:4, dualism, creation