The Mind of the Maker
by Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Sayers explores the intricacies of the creative mind, connecting how our creativity functions with how the Creator God also works within the Trinity. She examines the nature of art and why mankind feels the urge to create, just as God created us. We ask questions about life and death, free will, and what it means to be created in the “image of God”.
This book made me think about the Trinity in a completely new light! Every chapter blew my mind with such perceptive insights and charming wit. Each argument builds on the previous one with steady foundations of logic until you can see the whole wide picture. Being a highly creative person myself, I was delighted with the analysis of the creative mind and found many parallels to my own experience.
First, she talks about how impossible it is to know God, but that we can know Him through what He has revealed to us, and especially in the way He has created us in His own image. Through our own experiences, we can understand a small portion of the greatness of God. And through understanding our own small ability to create, we can understand a little bit of the great creative power of God.
The main premise of the book is what Sayers calls the Idea, the Energy, and the Power, and she uses this as a metaphor to describe our own creative process and also the Triune nature of God.
The Idea is pure spirit. It does not have a body or a material expression. It is timeless, seeing the whole of the work at once, whether that is a fantasy world in a book or a piano sonata. The Idea is always existing outside of the time of the work, just as God the Father exists outside of the timeline of the universe He created. This is like the Idea of a book, before the book is ever written.
The Energy is the physical manifestation of the Idea, just as Jesus Christ is the incarnate God, or as a book after it has been written down and printed. This is where the action takes place within time, but always obeying the higher Idea, just as Christ obeyed the Father. The Energy is always looking up to the Idea to make sure that the actions taken correspond to the proper revelation of the Idea.
The Power is the response of the reader when they read the book, and the response of the Christian when they are empowered by the Holy Spirit. In this Power, we find a lasting meaning and purpose through the connection of Idea and Energy with the receiver of the Power, or the connection with the reader of the book. If there is a book that no one reads, then it has no meaning for us. We have to connect and respond for the Power to do its work in us.
All three of these – Idea, Energy, and Power- have to exist for any creative act to come to fruition. You can’t have one without the other, and they must all be in equal balance. Once the Idea has been revealed in the actions of the Energy, then the Power evokes a response.
This metaphor of Idea, Energy, and Power works for all creative acts, not just ones that we think of as “the arts”- music, painting, dance, architecture. We are doing creative acts all the time in our lives, whether you think of yourself as a creative person or not. Every human is always taking some material that falls into their hands and rearranging that material into something new. But the trinity of the creative mind is always there – Idea, Energy, and Power. There is no sense in making up a recipe (Idea) and cooking something (Energy) if you aren’t going to eat it and enjoy it and maybe share the meal with others (Power).
Next, Sayers tackles the problem of evil. When something is created, the very act of a “something” being there also suggests that there is a “nothing”. Sayers uses the example that since Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, we can describe other plays as being “not Hamlet.” The creative act of Hamlet also inadvertently created a parameter by which to describe “not Hamlet”. Before Hamlet was written, the category of “not Hamlet” didn’t exist. Just as before “good” was created, the category of “evil” didn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that a good God created evil.
“Evil has no reality except in relation to His Good; and this is what is meant by saying that Evil is negation or deprivation of Good.” pg. 102
When a writer is trying to set words on paper, he searches for just the “right” word, suggesting that there are also “wrong” words that should not be used in that particular sentence. That doesn’t mean that the writer created “wrong” words, but that their “wrongness” is contingent on the comparison to the “rightness” of another particular word.
The creation of anything good – a beautiful poem, a delicious recipe, a pleasant chord progression – carries the possibility of a badly written poem, a disgusting recipe, or a dissonant chord progression. God is the yardstick for all that is good, and He gives us free will to choose the good, but that also means that we have free will to choose the opposite – the not-good, the “not Hamlet”- if we are rebellious and destructive enough to wish it.
Sayers goes on to explore the many ways that the human creative mind can lose the balance between Idea, Energy, and Power, and how the Triune God has a perfect balance as each role is perfectly fulfilled.
She talks about how the creator interacts with its creation in each of the stages of the creative process. A creator loves the creation in a unique way, wanting the creation to be independent and take on a life of its own, but also constrained to the original scope of the Idea, so that the creation can fulfill its own unique purpose and return in Power. This was a really meaningful way of looking at the way in which God loves us, as it is often compared in Scripture to the way we love our children.
There is also a whole chapter that examines why humans want to think of life as a problem to be solved, instead of as a creative venture to be enjoyed. The truly creative mind is feared by bureaucrats and governments, because the creative person will debunk the entire premise of “problem” by suggesting that it doesn’t need to be solved. The creative person will utterly throw out the limiting terms and parameters of the problem. There is no answer, because you are asking the wrong questions. Politicians love to sell us a problem and claim that they have the answer. But the creative mind doesn’t deal with problems and solutions, but with a creative vision to make something entirely new. Just as God doesn’t just forgive our sins, but completely transforms us into a new creature.
There isn’t enough room to talk about all the amazing theological concepts that are examined in this book. You will just have to read it for yourself to explore further! I can’t wait to read more from Dorothy Sayers, and reading about her own creative writing process has given me a new appreciation of her mystery novels as well!
Luminous Libro 