The creativity of the Spirit

God is creative. But that's like saying Jacques Yves Cousteau liked fish. Vern Poythress, in Redeeming Science, calls it a Trinitarian creativity-the Father is "Author" who conceives an "Idea," the Son is the Word or "Energy" who articulates it, and the Spirit is the "Power" or concrete application of the creative plan. I am not so fancy. I just say, God is creative.

You and I are creative because God is creative. We are able to put together unlikely things, even link things that no one ever thought to link before, because of God in us by his Spirit (Just the way God decided to put blue and green together, in sky and leaves, and it "works").

This creativity applies to (among other things) the way we read and interpret his Word. When we stay close to the heart of God in prayer and devotion to His Word, He goes on His creative spree again and makes us see links between parts of His Word that perhaps no one in the world ever conceived of precisely in that way before, in ways that are analogous to His own ex nihilo creativity.

In a recent blog post in which I wished out loud for more sympathetic understanding among Christians, God brought to my mind the verse "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus."

I was taken aback when a responder took issue with my yanking the verse out of context. But see, this is what the Spirit does! He fires creative connections left and right. He takes our seminary training wheels and blows the doors off our academic paradigms. He proves over and over that He is both too big and too small for our net.