Fear holds a paradoxical status in Scriptures—it is regularly treated both as a positive and a negative; as fruitful and as destructive. 

Positively, wisdom is a crucial moral outcome for those who “fear the LORD”.  On one occasion in Genesis God is even personified as “fear” when Jacob twice addressed his hostile father-in-law, Laban, with a vow based on his father Isaac’s relation to God: “If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty handed.” And, “So Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac…” [Genesis 31:42& 53]  Yet in the next stage of Jacob’s story he faced the threat of meeting his embittered brother Esau whose last announced intent had been to kill him, and so Jacob was both “afraid” of and in “fear” of him. [32:7 & 11—as a technical note: separate but largely synonymous Hebrew terms for fear are used in the separate chapters] Later in the Old Testament we find that Saul was “afraid” of David; David was “afraid” of King Achish; and David was also “afraid” of God. [1 Samuel 18:12; 21:12; 2 Samuel 6:9—same Hebrew word]

This paradoxical quality of fear is also a New Testament reality.  It often speaks of the productive fear of God, as in the Old Testament [Acts 9:31; Romans 3:18; 2 Corinthians 7:1].  And also of the fear of Christ [Ephesians 5:21].  So, too, there is a negative fear as in the fear felt by the guards of Christ’s tomb when he was raised [Matthew 28:4]; and the fear of death the devil uses to rule the world. [Hebrews 2:15]

What, if anything, do these apparently competing versions of fear have in common with each other?  Certainly one feature is that fear is affective: an emotion; a heart-based, visceral response to something or someone we encounter.  And, as such, fear is a powerful motivator—it tightens the gut, creates sweat, arouses our fight-or-flight reflexes, and—applied negatively—is able to undermine the soul over time through emotional exhaustion, depression and destructive doubts.  Fear will also reshape our priorities.  It follows us until its source is overcome or resolved.  Peace evaporates in the presence of fear.

How, then, does a fear of the Father and the Son relate to our call to live by faith as those devoted to God?  The question is crucial to faith.  An Old Testament text can help us here.

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your god, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good?  Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth and all that is in it.  Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their seed after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.  Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.  For the LORD your god is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.  Deuteronomy 10:12-17

Moses juxtaposes fear and love in this text in the same sentence, along with the activities of walking in his ways, serving him, and obeying his commandments: these are what the LORD “requires” of us! 

But how are these seemingly dynamic emotions of fear and love related to the other elements in the text?  One answer, offered by the Christian Stoics in church history, is to reinterpret the emotion of love to be an act of the will.  Any command implies a capacity to act, they tell us.  And actions are initiated by choices—that is, by the human will.  Only the activities of the will, they believe, account for the list of behavioral features linked to love and fear. 

That means, in turn, that the pairing of fear and love together also assigns fear to the realm of the will.  It explains why some Bible translators take the underlying word for “fear” to mean “reverence”—as in calling people to the act of “giving reverence” to God.  By adopting this solution the Stoic goal of reaching “apatheia”—i.e. self-control—is met, and with that any notions that spirituality operates through frothy emotions are set aside.

Let me suggest, instead, a reading based on a relational—heart-based—theology and anthropology.  In this understanding the heart is taken to be the motivational center of both God and his human creatures.  To be created in his image is to share in the relational character of the Trinity.  That just as God lives in an eternal mutuality of shared devotion and delight—such that “God is love”—so, too, the first man-woman union was bonded by love.  That is, the inaugural marital love of Eden represented the overflowing font of God’s love flowing into and through the marriage union.  It was also reciprocated by the partners as they responded with shared delight to their Creator’s overflowing care.  So, when Moses wrote that the “LORD set his heart in love” on his people, Moses was speaking of God’s affective devotion to his people as an outflow of his own being. 

But what about fear?  How does it fit in the same sentence with love?

Genesis 3 offers the link.  Fear was introduced in the Fall.  In the moment that Adam and Eve were captured by the vision offered them by the serpent—to be “like God” even if it violated God’s bond of mutual love—they discovered fear.  They had taken up the mantle of defining good and evil for themselves; so their reference point in life was no longer God’s love for them, but their love for personal needs, wants, and welfare.  Their bonds of love were shattered and in the place of love came fear: “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked.”  Adam’s nakedness was nothing new.  But when he declared his independence from God it became an issue: his shame revealed his new self-focus—as a lover of self rather than a lover of God—which exposed his terrible inadequacy and unholiness in the presence of the only true God.

What, then, is the ultimate DNA of fear?  It is the shiver of living death exposed to the consuming fire of the Triune life of God—an emotion of the condemned in the presence of the one who will not allow any rebellion in his kingdom!  Fear is a naked shame in the presence of the One who calls out: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.” 

Against God—in the stance we held with Adam—we used to pretend that we could manage life from within our stubborn self-sufficiency—to still be “like God” in watching out for our own welfare and living on our own terms.  In Adam’s scheme God was meant to be our helper, and not our Lord.  That may appear to work for us for a time, but it shatters when God comes and speaks: “For the LORD your god is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.”  God’s love brings to us a full exposure to his moral holiness.

Faith is our response to God’s love: we return to him in repentance.  Within our newly birthed faith Adam’s ambition is seen to be corrupt—a pretence of life despite being dead in trespasses and sins.  We respond to God’s wooing because his love is poured out in our hearts and we are awakened to his goodness.  We no longer trust ourselves to be “like God” but we rejoice that God is God and that he is our God!  We come to the love of the Triune communion—the glory the Son invites us to share with him in the great prayer of John 17.

How then is the fear of God a positive reality?  The emotion of fear that comes with our life upheavals; or as the Spirit exposes our souls to God’s words and ways, will always be a barometer in our soul.  Fear is the meter that tracks our continuing independence.  As we progress from our Satanic self-confidence into a Spirit-led devotion, the presence of fear signals a continued self-reliance and, with that, nakedness.  Fear points to that part of us that has yet to be consumed by the flames of God’s loving presence.  In our new standing as believers our moments of fear are like the small terrors of our youth when one of our parents needed to scrub the dirt out of the wounds in our knee or elbow after we crashed a skateboard or a bicycle.  The cleansing needs to be done and we want the benefit—and it’s the love that stands behind it that makes us willing to come in for our needed treatments.  But it’s never enjoyable.

A healthy fear of God is rooted in our confidence that every sordid thought, every ungodly word, deed, or attitude will be consumed, ultimately, by God’s holy presence before we enter our eternal state.  He disciplines us in this life because he loves us. He hates our sin; and he loves us.  The woman at the well had her sins exposed and she came to love Jesus.  The woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears was forgiven and she loved Jesus.  And the more we love him, the less we sin.  And perfect love leaves no room for sin at all!  Until that day of perfection comes—at his appearing—let us fear God by looking more and more to his love, a love that turns our hearts away from evil.

It is my pleasure to introduce a second guest entry by Dr Peter Mead of OM, in London.  His first posting, published here on January 4—“Preaching and Affective Hermeneutics”—was a compelling call to engage any given Bible text with a lens of spiritual and personal affectivity in order to capture and then to offer the transformative substance of that text in our proclamation.  In what follows here Peter presses the point back to the bedrock reality of our personal response to a God who calls for us to love him as a full-life response—and to discover a God who will properly “wreak havoc” on our former selfish ways!

Preaching is at the center of the life of the church.  This is not only true practically, in schedule and in logistics, but it is true theologically.  Speaking the Word of God is central because our God is a God who has spoken, a God who speaks.  Christianity stands apart from all religions in that in Christianity we have a God who initiates, who makes the first move, who speaks first.

All too often, sadly, churches are centered around a weak word.  The loving God who speaks through His Word is considered essentially silent.  Some churches look to the Bible for an ancient word that must be brought to bear on contemporary listeners’ minds through truth in proposition form, or with a skillfully generated attempt at “making that old truth relevant to today” (the skill varying from pulpit to pulpit).  Others treat the biblical revelation as a starting point for their own message.   Still others as a set of accepted vocabulary for a more contemporary attempt at speaking into the lives of those gathered – either by means of essentially new revelation (“as I was preparing, God told me . . .”), or the increasingly common lists of hints for living birthed out of human wisdom and then pasted onto a biblical narrative.

What does a Trinitarian and affective theology have to offer in the arena of preaching?  Much in every way.  If God is a loving God who speaks through His Word, then the church is to be a listening and responding community.  Listening to His Word and responding to His love.  The Father gives the Son and the Spirit, the object of our preaching and the source of its power.  The community of God’s people is called by a captivating love to be lovers: lovers of God and lovers of others.  The “Great Commandment” must be given freedom to wreak havoc in our individualized and self-centered lives as believers, but it also must be given freedom to run riot in our preaching.  What might this look like?

Preachers Loving God

To perhaps oversimplify the preaching process, it first involves the passage study phase, which focuses on the biblical passage.  Then it involves the message formation phase, in which the listeners are considered as the message is formed that will faithfully, clearly and relevantly present the teaching of the passage to them.

So, the preacher must consider carefully the study phase as a lover of God. This cannot be merely cold exegesis, original language study, commentary consultation and the derivation of a proposition statement.  The study phase should involve a prayerful, interactive and relational dynamic as we fellowship with our God in the study of His Word.  This is not to say that we are freed from the burden of the finest exegesis our skills will allow.  Surely a heart gripped by the love of a God who gives of Himself through His Word will earnestly desire to understand that Word as effectively as possible?  The goal here is not some sort of a mystical study phase divorced from the rigorous study of the revealed Word, but a spiritually sensitive study that is fired to rigorousness by the captivating love of God.  Paul urged Timothy to be a worker who rightly handles the word of truth (2Tim.2:15), having already told Timothy of his goal in all things – the goal of love (1Tim.1:5).

Equally, the preacher takes the fruit of that study of the passage and maintains the same God-captivated motivation when it comes to forming the message.  The goal here does not suddenly shift from the sublime to the pragmatic, from the spiritual to the practical matters of simply being ready to preach when Sunday comes.  The formation of the message is to be an act of responsive love in which the preacher seeks to bring pleasure to God by the diligent care poured into this aspect of ministry.  After all, when Sunday comes, this message will be spoken as a Word from God.  Inasmuch as it accurately reflects the teaching and relevance of the biblical text, it is spoken with an authority that is not the preacher’s, but is God’s Himself.  So, the preacher is looking to a God who is delighted to work in lives through this message.  A message that is at one and the same time both an act of worship, a form of doxological speech in which the preacher makes much of God, yet at the same time it is an applicational message of relevance to the lives of the listeners.  It is applicational and relevant because God loves them and cares about the specifics of their lives today. 

To preach effectively, a preacher must love God passionately.  But this is not enough.  In preaching the preacher stands between heaven and earth and in that moment not only loves God, but also represents (that is, re-presents) the love of God to the people.  In preaching there is potential for great reciprocity between the love of God extending out beyond the Trinity to the people that are His own, and the love of those stirred to respond to Him in that moment.  So the preacher must love God, but the “second commandment” also applies to preaching.  We are to love God, and to love others:

Preachers Loving Others

How does the preacher preach out of love for the listener?  Surely, a loving preacher would not merely preach to scratch itching ears, while at the same time failing to present the fullness of God’s message in His Word?  A loving preacher will give what is needed, not just what is wanted.  Surely, a loving preacher would not deign to offer his own nuggets of life skill in place of the grandeur of God’s self-revelation?  Surely, a loving preacher would not simply bruise listeners with the pressure of duty, after himself being warmed and delighted by divine captivating love in his own times with God?  How sad that so many churches perceive repeated tirades of guilt-inducing duty to be so spiritual (appealing to the flesh), while others seem satisfied with tips for living only ornamented by reference to an apparently now silent God. 

Listeners don’t need tips for living independent lives better, they need God.  Listeners don’t need guilt-stirring pressure to pull their acts together, they need God.  They need to be able to engage with Him in a faith response to His Word.  They need to experience in community the joy of God’s wonderful giving of Himself through the Word – both written and in the incarnation.  They need messages that are highly biblical, for the Bible is where God speaks.  They need messages that are communicated clearly, for what other standard is fitting for a God of such effective communication?  They need messages that are relevant in deeply spiritual and practical ways, for God is not pleased with irrelevant historical lecture, lofty theological ramblings or petty practical tips.  God loves these people, so our preaching of His Word should reflect that in its biblical content, effectual communication and genuine emphasis on relevance.

We must preach the Word as those genuinely captivated by the love of God in the Word of God.  We must preach contagiously as those who enjoy delightful engagement with this God.  Our listeners will subconsciously mimic our leadership in their own “spirituality” – the question is, what kind of spirituality will they mimic?  Will theirs be an intellect-only spirituality?  Or will it be a purely pragmatic, self-concerned spirituality?  Or will it be a pseudo-spiritual flight of fancy unearthed in the truth of God’s revelation in His Word?  Or will it be relational, Word-based, heart-level, real?

Conclusion

Perhaps many of the weaknesses of the church today reflect the weaknesses of the pulpit. It is easy to look back to reformers, puritans and other famous pastors of days gone by.  But the truth is we do not need the greats from previous generations: Luther and Calvin, Sibbes and Edwards, Spurgeon and Lloyd-Jones.  What we need are preachers greatly gripped by God in this generation.  We need preachers who are captivated by the love of God, gripped with a passion for God, and prepared to thoroughly preach the Word of God to the listeners of today.  

A Trinitarian and Affective consideration of the preaching ministry has much to offer the church today.  The only sadness is that what we have described in this article should really be the baseline from which to build, rather than a standard so often unreached in the contemporary pulpit.  God is a God who speaks through His Word.  He is a God who speaks because He loves.  We dare not stand and speak for Him if we are not captured by that love – a love responding to Him, and a love overflowing to others!

The heart is mentioned throughout the Bible—used as a term that summarizes the motivations of both God and humanity.  Anyone who reads through the Bible very boldly, say in five to six weeks—or less—will be struck by the role the heart plays in God’s conversation with his people. 

So much so that when I encourage others to take up a lifestyle of fast-paced Bible reading it isn’t a call to the spiritual equivalent of an ironman competition.  Instead I’m hoping they read fast enough and with a heart open enough to be captured by the music of the heart-to-heart communion God invites us to share with him.  To be invited into the eternal love of the Father, Son, and Spirit—a communion of mutual glory and delight—is to discover joy, peace, patience, comfort and every other splendid quality of God’s own heart.   As in the time of David, God is still looking for men and women after his own heart—for those who will taste and see how good he is!  No earthly concert should be listened to in five minute segments over a year’s time; nor does the Bible captivate the reader who only nibbles at it and picks out a few favorite snacks.

So here’s the point for today: to hear God’s own heartbeat is the ultimate joy of life.  Having ears to hear that heartbeat is what characterizes a true Christian from a mere pretender.  Jesus said as much to a group of false disciples in John 8 when he told them “if God were your Father you would love me!”  A love for the Son is the birthmark of the Spirit in our hearts.  To know Christ is to encounter the one who is the eternally “beloved” of the Father.  And in knowing Christ—not just knowing about him—we come to him as those drawn to him by the Father. 

What startles us is that when we meet him in the Scriptures he emerges as a living Personality shimmering under the words we read.  His compassion for us is the most compelling vision we find there.  The Bible exposes our sin.  It brings us to tears.  And it tears away the old attitudes that otherwise rule us.  As a caring parent who knows when diapers need changing, he doesn’t leave us in our filth.  His is the love of a mother scrubbing a muddy child in the bathtub in order for the happily-dirty child to be fit for the coming of company for dinner. 

The words of God confront us, console us, and cleanse us.  His open-heart will always shock us by how different it is to our sin-entangled hearts.  We thought he would be impressed by our righteous zeal as we build impressive new ministries, organizations, churches, all in order to become the best and the brightest of our generation—for his sake, of course.  Then we finally begin to hear his gentle whisper as a heart-to-heart confrontation: “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned your first love.”  Only then do we look back and see the debris of broken relationships our zeal for success caused us to leave in our trail.

God’s heart does not offer a flow of syrup but a flow of blood.  For us to experience the Trinity as a union of God’s communing Persons is to discover the love that sent the Son to die on the cross.  We simply cannot fathom how the indivisible One who is God could engage in a division for our sakes.  This is the most profound expression of love ever offered: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  The cost of that heartfelt gift was expressed in the terrible cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  But it was also followed some moments later by the Son’s ultimate entrustment to the Father’s heart in creating a pathway for us to come into his love.  He whispered this final reality of union-within-division with his final breath, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”  God’s heart is both terrible and tender: full of wrath towards spiritual adultery, and full of compassion to forgive.  Jesus shared in both for us.

I write this posting as a sinner living among sinners.  I know from statistics given to us by counselors—and from some heart-breaking confessions—that many of the men around me are captured by sexual addictions.  And that any number of women are living in empty delusions as their imaginations travel to ungodly places.  I also know that the socially embraced addictions of greed, glory, and power have damaged our world in ways deeper than we ever imagined possible.  I know that television, video gaming, internet chatting, and more, have consumed countless souls with the sticky sugar of empty stimulation and social violence. 

Why this captivity?  Because our hearts are not on fire.  God offers himself as a consuming fire who will burn away all our empty pursuits.  To use the imagery offered at the end of the book of Malachi and in 1 Corinthians 3, we can come to that fire as those delighted to be warmed in the sunshine of God’s glory; or we can have the many works done in this life apart from the substance of faith finally consumed by fire on the day of judgment.  Which will it be?

The advice offered in Proverbs 4:23 is critical to us, “Guard your heart with all vigilance, for out of the heart flow the springs of life.”  And how shall we guard our hearts?  Let me suggest that we can guard them in turning away from evil by seeking God’s heart.  Leave behind the popcorn and sawdust we eat so freely, hoping to fill our spiritual appetites.  Turn, instead, to God. 

How?  Try reading through the entire Bible in just a few weeks.  And as you read, underline every use of the word “heart” and see what happens to your own heart.  That’s a challenge some of us—by God’s Spirit nudging us—will be ready to accept.  I look forward to hearing what you discover!  As David invited us, “Oh taste and see, the LORD is good!”

Creativity is a gift.  And everyone is gifted with creation.  The two are united in expressing God’s overflowing goodness.  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  This through the Son’s creative work:

In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Even now the Son’s work of creation extends to us and through us, something Paul affirmed in his exposition of grace in Ephesians 2, and especially verse 10: “For we are his [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Also, in Galatians, Paul wrote of our new life in Christ, that we are now to walk “by the Spirit” and become people able to “do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” [Galatians 5:25; 6:10]

Now let me raise a question in this context—the context of God’s creativity—about our own makeup.  Is our creativity a feature of love, finding its meaning only as we create gifts for others?  Or can it exist as an independent quality?  As something we own and maintain as private property?  I ask this in light of God’s relational being—as the one who exists eternally as Father-Son-and Spirit in mutual love and shared glory.  It is, after all, from this reality of God’s overflowing goodness that the creation came into being.  It expresses God’s love as a centrifugal outflow to and through the creation.  So creative love is the basis for God’s creation purpose and it explains our own existence and aesthetic sense.

Another facet of the same question is to ask whether beauty exists apart from any observer.  In recent years scientists have been able to peer deeper than ever into the micro and macro realities of the universe.  Remarkable features have come into view.  On the macro scale the Hubble telescope, with others, have offered dramatic images that combine visible light and infrared light to display galaxies and stellar displays of incredible beauty and unexpected artistry. 

Their aesthetic qualities have been present from the beginning yet we are only now discovering them.  And in that discovery we properly stare in delight: by any measure we find the universe to be full of beauty.  But can we speak of still-unseen features of the universe as beautiful before we actually view them?  Are the vast number of undiscovered star formations lacking any aesthetic quality until we, the viewers, find them and call them pleasing and delightful?  Or is beauty an independent quality of being?

The Bible suggests an answer for us in Genesis 1.  As the author surveys the works of creation we find a repeated refrain—“it was good”—that within our Trinitarian faith offers an ultimate aesthetic grounding.  It is an appreciation of goodness voiced by God; the Creator speaking within the context of his triune works; the Father celebrating the creativity of the Son at work with the Spirit.  And with this beginning we find that no aspect of the creation is unseen or unknown to the Father who, upon seeing it, declares it “good”.  It all reveals the glory of God, a glory the Son longs to share with us, even as he shared it with the Father from the beginning.

Certainly we must believe, too, that in the words offered by Jesus to the rich moralist—that “no one is good but God alone”—he was offering not only a moral axiom but a creation principle: that God’s moral-aesthetic being—his goodness—is the basis for our own ventures into good deeds and winsome aesthetics.  And, with that, we meet up with the moral dimension of artistry.  The Father’s declarations that “it is good” reveals the Son’s basis for creation: his ambition to please his Father with his creativity!

By asking earlier whether creativity is a feature of love, I anticipated the truth of 1 John 4 that “God is love”.  And with that bedrock relational reality in view I take the discoveries of the Hubble telescope to be signs of God’s eternal creativity now unveiled to us as an expression of that love.  It was and is the love of the Godhead—the mutual joy of creativity and response—that accounts for what we are only now able to enjoy.  In the Trinity there has always been a creator and an observer—and therefore a relational basis for aesthetics.

But what of our own creativity?  Are we independent agents of aesthetic creativity?  Or are we extensions of Christ’s creativity who are at work within our status as his created ones?  Has the Son, perhaps, used a unique palette of creativity in forming us?  Are we all “new” in the sense that no one has the same set of qualities and creative capacities “in Christ?”

I take that to be true—that each human is “fearfully and wonderfully made” from the moment of conception—as a continuing creative expression of the Son, with the Spirit, for and before the Father.  We who love God love him because we were chosen in Christ even before the world was formed, with a view to be the Son’s holy, blameless, and beautiful bride.

So it is that in the embrace of the Father and Son, by the Spirit, we too are embraced.  And as we experience the centripetal attraction of God’s eternal love we also become part of the centrifugal outpouring of God’s creative impulse.  We share a partnership with Bezalel and Oholiab who were filled with the Spirit of God “with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs” in order to have a setting appropriate to the worship of God. [Exodus 31:1-6]

What, then, of artistry apart from God?  Of beauty treated selfishly?  The biblical answer is that apart from Christ we can do nothing.  Not even in the realm of aesthetics?  No, nothing.  That’s not to say that a mimicry of true art will not be generated.  Or that echoes of the music birthed by angels won’t be heard on earth when human savants overhear their melodies and repeat them.  But it will be an artistry of rebellion, not meant to delight God and others but to declare independence and selfish glory. 

We see this in the tragedy of Aaron’s two sons, Nadab and Abihu, who were leading in the worship of God as his priests.  In every feature of a sacrificial event they were instructed in the ways of God: the paths to God’s pleasure.  Yet in the flow of events they became independent from God—offering “unauthorized fire before the LORD” [Leviticus 10:1]—and God’s fiery glory consumed them.  We don’t know the specifics of the event except that God treated their creativity as warfare against his realm and reality.

This fits the bipolarity of the Bible as a whole—of good versus evil—and it reminds us that true artistry is God’s gift given to us and through us.  It is a gift with moral dimensions.  God is a lover, yet a jealous lover.  And the focus of his love is the Son in whom he finds beauty and where our own sense of beauty was birthed.  Our delightfulness to the Father comes in our embrace of the Son—as in Psalm 2—where his ongoing creative love pours out to us and through us.  Creativity is the impulse of God in us, by his Spirit gifting us to gift others.  The creativity need not be narrowly conceived, but it must be birthed in love—a love for God and then for others.  And most of all our creativity is meant to delight the Father as we enjoy the beauty of the Son.  Creativity is a gift.  And everyone is gifted with creation.  The two are united in expressing God’s overflowing goodness.