Rationality and creativity

Premise (2) of the creativity argument is a bit more controversial than (1), depending on how we understand the constituents of its consequent. Freedom and sovereignty in creation are rather uncontroversial, since theists are usually committed to seeing God as unconstrained or uncoerced in creating. The real controversy will arise when trying to get a handle on the claims that God rationally creates and ‘creatively creates’. Augustine famously argues that because God must have a rational plan in creating, there must be a plurality of ideas proper to each kind of thing that God might make.Footnote ³ Augustine here takes for granted the idea that rationality in creating requires God having antecedent ideas in mind that underly his specified intentions and serve as his creative blueprints. We find this same line of thought in later thinkers (e.g., AquinasFootnote ⁴) and even in thinkers that precede Augustine.Footnote ⁵ The common idea is that God’s creative act must be intentional and, if intentional, then directed at achieving some specific end. This seems appropriate. My neighbour’s live oak tree yields an abundance of acorns (to the detriment of my lawn), yet it doesn’t have an intention to do so, precisely because it has nothing in mind (including acorns). It also produces quite a bit of shade that is very pleasant in the summer months, but again, it obviously does not plan on doing this. We can’t fault or credit the live oak tree for what it produces. Yet, as is the case with artists, we want to credit God for the things he produces. The success of an artist or craftsman is at least partially assessed according to how well they’ve achieved their plans or intentions. So to give credit where credit is due, we should say that God’s creativity is rational insofar as it is intentional. And if intentional, he’ll have to have something (i.e., a plan) in mind.

It also seems God’s creative intentions must be fairly fine-grained. If a craftsman successfully produces an item with a plan in mind, that same plan couldn’t be used for an item of a different sort. A carpenter cannot make a chair and an ashtray with the exact same blueprint. Additionally, if a painter has a vague plan in his mind to paint something or other and executes that plan by haphazardly throwing paint on a canvas, even if by chance a beautiful face should appear, we wouldn’t credit this painter for producing this face; he simply got lucky. In order to produce a diversity of items with diverse natures, then, there must be diverse plans or ideas in God’s mind. Moreover, God can’t simply intend to create an item and for reasons outside the scope of his intention have a dog pop out on the other end. His idea will have to have a specific doggyness about it if it is to be relevantly connected to the production of dogs.

As for the notion of ‘creativity’ operative in the creativity argument, Gould relies on an analysis of creativity commonly found in recent scholarship, in particular in the work of Margaret Boden. This literature is immensely interesting and warrants further engagement among philosophers of religion, but I’ll be focusing mostly on those features Gould utilises in his argument. As already mentioned, Gould’s primary concern regarding Containment Exemplarism is that it appears to undercut God’s originality as a creator. The originality Gould is concerned to preserve is originality of idea. For example, it seems uncontroversial to say that if an engineer were to make the first ever successful and commercially viable flying car, they’ve accomplished something noteworthy and novel. And although it may take a bit of creativity to accomplish this feat, if it turned out they found the blueprints for this exact flying car in the attic of a dead relative, we would say their accomplishment was formulaic rather than creative. In other words, the process of acquiring this idea (and even realising it) is not characteristic of the creative mind, since the engineer merely took someone else’s pattern and executed it.

According to Boden’s analysis of creativity (which Gould appropriates), ‘Creativity in general is the generation of novel, surprising and valuable ideas’ (Boden Reference Boden2010, 1). The stipulation that the idea be ‘valuable’ is perhaps important since we wouldn’t want to say that a person who thinks up any odd item (e.g., a currency for dogs and cats to use) is creative. We don’t need to dwell on this aspect of the definition though, since it seems all parties to the current debate would concede that any of God’s ideas will be valuable. The real interest centres on whether the idea is surprising and new. We would obviously say that the first person in history to stumble upon a valuable idea is creative. But there are cases where a person stumbles upon an idea that is new to them even though (unknown to them) it had already been thought before (e.g., as is the case with Leibniz and Newton in developing calculus). We wouldn’t want to say that the person who developed an idea independently of their predecessor lacked creativity, since it’s a mere historical accident that they didn’t think of it first. For that reason, Boden suggests that we differentiate two kinds of legitimate creativity, historical-creativity (or H-creativity) and psychological-creativity (or P-creativity). An agent is P-creative if and only if they develop a surprising, valuable idea that is new to the person who comes up with it; an agent is H-creative if and only if they develop a surprising, valuable idea that is new to everyone (i.e., it is the first instance of that idea being entertained in history). H-creativity is therefore a species of P-creativity, such that a person is H-creative only if they are also P-creative (Boden Reference Boden2010, 30).

Within this general category of creativity (either H-creativity or P-creativity), Boden (and Gould) recognise three specific types of creative processes: combinatorial, exploratory, and transformational. Combinatorial creativity involves generating novel combinations of already familiar ideas (Boden Reference Boden2010, 31). This could involve, among other things, developing novel chimeras or thinking up new metaphors or analogies for common experiences. Exploratory creativity involves bringing to light possibilities existing within and permitted by a given conceptual space that have previously been unrecognised (Boden Reference Boden2010, 73). A person discovering the Ruy Lopez for the first time (either in history or in their individual life) displays this sort of creativity. Transformational creativity involves thinking up new possibilities that do not leave the prior conceptual space intact or unaltered (Boden Reference Boden2010, 73). The new possibility is not merely a dormant possibility in the existing conceptual space that has been brought to light; rather, the new possibility constitutes a paradigm shift and the restructuring of possibility space. This we see at least in certain conceptions of scientific advancement.Footnote ⁶

So according to premise (2) of Gould’s argument, in order for God to be considered a totally original artist, he must not only be free, sovereign, and rational in his creative act but also display a paradigmatic creativity marked by novelty and surprise. Put another way, for Gould, paradigmatic creativity for God minimally requires God possessing P-creativity. In order for God to make a novel contribution in his creative act, God must have ideas that are at least new and underivative to God. If God does not possess P-creativity in the possession of his ideas, then God is not paradigmatically or ‘creatively’ creative (Gould Reference Gould2024, 318).

God as copy-machine?

At this point, we can now understand premise (3) of the creativity argument and how Gould sees Containment Exemplarism conflicting with this notion of creativity. Since Gould argues against Containment Exemplarism by focusing on Ward’s account, we’ll analyse premise (3) primarily with this version of Containment Exemplarism in mind.

Ward agrees that God is a totally original artist, but his primary concern is securing God’s rationality as a creator. As discussed earlier, for God’s creative act to be rational, it looks as if God must have ideas in mind. But where does God get his creaturely ideas? And given the intentional nature of ideas, what are these ideas about? For Ward, bruteness is ruled out, since it is all things considered preferrable to have explanations than not (Ward Reference Ward2020, 15, 40). We also cannot adopt a sort of demiurgic model whereby God has his ideas by knowing a co-eternal realm of abstract objects, as this would violate aseity (Ward Reference Ward2020, 13) (and also for our present purposes, it would make God’s ideas derivative and his manner of having them less than perfectly creative). God also cannot have them by knowing himself as imitable, since knowing himself as imitable requires knowing himself in relation to creatures. And since relations are plausibly posterior to their relata, ideas analysed in this manner will no longer have the explanatory priority needed to function as divine blueprints for creation (Ward Reference Ward2020, 24–25). This leaves only two options: either God makes these ideas up by spontaneously thinking them up, or God has his ideas simply by knowing himself (and not by comparing himself to creatures). Gould adopts the former option as the better of the remaining alternatives. However, Ward argues that there is no viable analysis of the former that allows us to preserve divine rationality, given that, at the logical moment of God thinking things up, there is nothing else on the scene for God’s ideas to be about (Ward Reference Ward2020, 17). Therefore, in order to preserve rationality and the intentionality of God’s ideas, Ward argues that we should instead say that God has the diversity of his ideas simply by knowing himself, whereby God’s ideas are about himself (i.e., Containment Exemplarism).Footnote ⁷

This proposal is problematised by Ward’s commitment to divine simplicity. If God is lacking all composition, how is God’s thinking of himself supposed to yield or explain a multiplicity of diverse creaturely ideas? To overcome this challenge of getting a Many out of the One, Ward adopts a modified conception of divine simplicity that makes use of Duns Scotus’s notion of the formal distinction (Ward Reference Ward2020, 35–36). Simply put, formal distinction for Duns Scotus strikes a middle ground between real distinctions (which imply the possibility of separation in reality) and mere conceptual or mental distinctions (e.g., the distinction between the ‘Morning Star’ and the ‘Evening Star’). Two items are thus formally distinct if they are definitionally distinct but not really separable. A key example of this for Duns Scotus is the relation between genus and species.Footnote ⁸ But we could perhaps also think of Wittgenstein’s famous duck-rabbitFootnote ⁹ as displaying a formal distinction, whereby ‘duck–ness’ and ‘Rabbit-ness’ are definitionally distinct, and yet the duck-aspect of this picture cannot be separated from this picture’s rabbit-aspect. ‘Duck-ness’ and ‘Rabbit-ness’ can therefore be considered distinct formalities of one and the same really identical item.

According to Ward, there is a plurality of formalities or distinct formal aspects within God, which (though definitionally distinct) cannot be separated from God or one another. And given that God and his Lion-aspect (for example) are really inseparable, they are really identical. As Ward says, God is the Lion (that is, the paradigmatic Lion), the Eagle, and the Human (Ward Reference Ward2020, 42), given that God is really the same as the various aspects intermingled within himself. And for Ward, God has his diverse creaturely ideas in mind by knowing his various aspects (Ward Reference Ward2020, 7). Moreover, for Ward there is an exact similarity between a given divine aspect and God’s idea of that aspect, where the only addition made by God’s idea is the added intentionality that would otherwise be lacking (Ward Reference Ward2020, 43). And if God decides to make a creature in conformity to a given divine idea, that creature will bear an exact similarity to that divine idea and therefore its respective divine aspect (Ward Reference Ward2020, 48). God has an idea ‘dogness’ by cognising his Dog-aspect, and the content of God’s Dog-aspect is the same as that of his idea ‘dogness’. And any dog that instantiates ‘dogness’ will likewise duplicate that content. Thus we see the content of divinity predetermines the scope of creaturely ideas God has in mind and therefore predetermines the domain of creaturely possibility. This version of Containment Exemplarism (as well as any other version of Containment Exemplarism) is therefore a ‘deity theory’, to borrow Brian Leftow’s term (Leftow Reference Leftow2012, 143–144).

At this point, Gould’s concerns should be apparent. According to Gould’s thinking, if Containment Exemplarism is true, then God’s ideas are models or copies of himself or one of God’s aspects. And if so, since God’s ideas and his aspects bear a symmetrical likeness relation to one another, there is an identity of content between God (or his aspects) and his various ideas. If there is an identity of content between God’s ideas and his aspects, then God’s ideas are derivative and not original. Moreover, since the individual creature made in conformity to the idea bears a symmetrical resemblance to the idea, nothing novel enters at this point in God’s creation either. According to Gould, God on Containment Exemplarism is merely model-copying rather than artistically creating (Gould Reference Gould2024, 318). In which case, God does not come up with surprising, valuable ideas that are new to God. In other words, if Containment Exemplarism is true, then God is not P-creative (Gould Reference Gould2024, 318–319). And since P-creativity is essential to paradigmatic creativity, Containment Exemplarism appears to disallow the possibility of God being creatively creative. In this situation, it appears God lacks an essential part of the creative process we expect of the creative mind. Hence, premise (3) of Gould’s argument.

Before moving on to potential replies, it should be noted that although Gould focuses on Ward’s version of Containment Exemplarism (and builds the aspectival language of Ward’s account into his definition of Containment Exemplarism), it is not obvious that this is the only defensible version of Containment Exemplarism. There could no doubt be non-Scotistic alternatives according to which (i) God has a plurality of ideas simply by knowing himself, (ii) the content of God’s nature pre-determines the scope of creaturely ideas, and (iii) the plurality of God’s ideas are about God. A version of Containment Exemplarism committed to divine simplicity will have a harder time than one not committed to divine simplicity, since the latter (but not the former) can bypass the many-from-one problem and simply maintain that the diversity of God’s ideas are about God’s various parts.Footnote ¹⁰ Moreover, a version of Containment Exemplarism that excludes Ward’s identity-of-content assumption (but retains everything else) should also be able to bypass Gould’s argument entirely. I won’t venture to offer such an alternative in this paper. But if we can defend Ward’s version of Containment Exemplarism from the creativity argument, then alternative versions should be safe as well. Lastly, although Gould describes his own preferred account as a ‘partial deity theory’ (Gould Reference Gould2024, 326), his argument against Containment Exemplarism is just as much a challenge to what Leftow calls ‘deity theories’, whereby the divine essence virtually contains and predetermines the scope of creaturely possibility. In which case, we now have two independent cases against deity theories, one based on concerns regarding God’s unsightly dependence on ‘secular truths’,Footnote ¹¹ and now another based on concerns regarding God’s status as paradigmatically creative. The following reply will therefore have application beyond a mere defence of Ward’s particular account.

P-creative enough

We should start by remembering that on Boden’s analysis of creativity, H-creativity implies P-creativity. If Joe happens upon the idea of ‘zogness’ before anyone else in history (for simplicity, we’ll assume ‘zogness’ is valuable), he displays H-creativity. And since this episode of Joe having ‘zogness’ in mind is the first instance of ‘zogness’ being entertained by anyone in history, it must also be new to Joe, thus securing his P-creativity.

Before God, nobody had any ideas about anything. Now, Gould argues that because Containment Exemplarism maintains God’s ideas are copies or models of himself or one of his aspects, his ideas aren’t new or original. But we should wonder about this. No doubt, God’s idea of ‘dogness’ perhaps draws on some ‘given material’ found in God (e.g., a part of God or God’s Dog-aspect) and there may be shared content. But notice, God’s idea of his Dog-aspect is not identical to his Dog-aspect, any more than my idea of myself is identical to myself (i.e., this concrete individual). For even if we assume identity of content between an idea and a divine aspect, a given idea is the content of that aspect plus added intentionality (Ward Reference Ward2020, 43). Prior to any idea (i.e., ‘dogness’) of God’s Dog-aspect, there is no idea of God’s Dog-aspect. And since, presumably, no other mind had any ideas about God or any of God’s aspects before God did, God’s idea of his Dog-aspect is the first of its kind in the history of reality. There is evident newness or novelty to God’s ideas, then, even if he forms them simply by thinking of himself. In which case, God has H-creativity insofar as he has his idea of his Dog-aspect. And if God is H-creative, by implication he is P-creative as well.Footnote ¹³ In other words, it looks as if Containment Exemplarism does not rule out God’s being P-creative.

This would undermine premise (3) of Gould’s argument. But even if there is a newness of idea, insofar as God is the first in history to have any of his ideas, the natural response is to say that there must be a creative process by which God has his ideas. But which of Boden’s three types of creative processes does God display in having his ideas on this suggestion? It seems to me that Containment Exemplarism can be accommodated to any of Boden’s three kinds of process–creativity.Footnote ¹⁴ For combinatorial creativity, God (in having an idea) yields a combination otherwise unrealised: the content of a given part or aspect plus intentionality. We could also say that insofar as God forms an idea of himself (or one of his parts or aspects), he is displaying exploratory creativity by spotlighting or revealing a possibility that would otherwise be unrevealed. However, I think there’s a stronger case to be made for transformational creativity. It’s tempting to think (as I just did) that the discrete divine aspect or part is what yields (on its own) the discrete type of creaturely possibility (i.e., so long as the aspect is there, so is the possibility for dogs). But we should instead say that God’s having a distinct creaturely idea is ultimately what’s responsible for a unique type of creaturely possibility. After all, a dog can exist only if God creates it, and God creates it only if he rationally creates it. And since God (on the current account) rationally creates only if he has an idea of the thing to be made, God can create a dog (i.e., dogs are possible) only if God has the idea ‘dogness’. In other words, God’s having the idea of himself (or his part or aspect) transforms the possibility space, to the extent that his idea grounds a discrete possibility that would otherwise be lacking had God not had this idea.Footnote ¹⁵

Now, Gould dismisses the possibility of God displaying process-creativity of any kind on Containment Exemplarism. His reasons for doing so appear to centre on God’s omniscience and eternality. As Gould argues:

Here we can see Gould offering a sweeping dismissal of the possibility of God displaying even exploratory creativity on Containment Exemplarism, and he is evidently applying the same line of thought developed in his summary of Meghan Page’s argument against the ‘World Actualization Model’ (WAM).Footnote ¹⁶ As Gould summarises there:

Evidently, the only basis Gould seems to offer in the text for thinking there is no room for God on Containment Exemplarism to creatively contribute is the fact that God is eternal and has perfect knowledge of all possibilities. In particular, the only reason Gould would seem to offer for ruling out exploratory creativity on Containment Exemplarism (which would involve God discovering possibilities hitherto undiscovered but that are already present in himself, a suggestion I discussed earlier) is that a previously hidden possibility is not new to God given that God is omniscient and has eternally considered that possibility. And since Gould does not treat each kind of process-creativity in turn here, it appears he intends the same line of thought to work against the other kinds of process–creativity as well (i.e., combinatorial and transformational).

For Gould, then, omniscience and eternality (coupled with Containment Exemplarism) imply that nothing is new to God’s mind. From this, Gould appears to conclude that God on Containment Exemplarism does not ‘creatively contribute’ to the content of creaturely possibility (Gould Reference Gould2024, 319). This seems to prove too much, however. If we want to maintain the plausible view that the domain of possibility is necessarily fixed (regardless of how it is fixed), then if God is eternal and omniscient, then he necessarily knows whatever creaturely possibilities there are. But then even for someone like Leftow (whose framework Gould models his own approach on; Gould Reference Gould2024, 326), who both maintains S5 modality (Leftow Reference Leftow2012, 406; Reference Leftow2014, 3) and sees God as determining the domain of possibility by thinking it up (Leftow Reference Leftow2012, 278), God would (given eternality and omniscience) necessarily and perfectly know the entire domain of possibility such that nothing would be new to God’s mind. And by Gould’s argument here, we would then have to say that God does not creatively contribute to the domain of possibility even on this account. But at this point, we don’t have an argument from ‘creative creativity’ against Containment Exemplarism; we instead have an argument from creative creativity against either S5 or eternality and omniscience being jointly possessed by God. But since we’re not currently occupied with defending S5, eternality or omniscience, we should instead say there’s at least some logical space on Containment Exemplarism to say God displays some form of process-creativity in having his ideas.

No doubt, there is no sense in which God goes from a state of not having a given idea to having that idea on the current proposal. Surely, human artists will fit Boden’s analysis much more neatly, since they evidently do go from states of not having ideas to having ideas. On this basis, Gould and others sympathetic to his argument could therefore say that, despite my best efforts, God does not legitimately undergo any creative processes on Containment Exemplarism. But again, this would have the effect of re-rendering Gould’s creativity argument against Containment Exemplarism as an argument against either eternality or immutability. And if we could maintain this conception of divine creativity only at the expense of abandoning these doctrines (doctrines that many will find more plausible than Gould’s preferred account of creativity), then so much the worse for God’s being ‘creatively creative’.

God copying off his own homework

Some might find this manner of reconciling Containment Exemplarism to ‘creative creativity’ unsatisfying. To see why, consider the following thought experiment. Suppose Joe is exploring remote corners of the Amazon rainforest. Out of sheer luck, Joe discovers a rare and previously undiscovered species of flower. By knowing the flower, Joe forms an idea of the flower that is completely isomorphic to the nature of the flower. Moreover, Joe’s idea is the first of its type in history. And yet, intuitively, we wouldn’t say that Joe’s idea is original or that he was creative in forming this idea. Rather, he’s simply translating the essence of the flower (as it exists individually in the flower) into an abstract conception of the flower’s nature. In other words, to the extent that Joe has this idea (which is the first of its kind), it seems more appropriate to say Joe is a discoverer rather than a creative thinker.

Now, I suspect what is going on behind our intuitions (at least my intuitions) regarding this case is the fact that Joe’s idea is completely derivative and dependent on something other than himself, which is not the case for God on Containment Exemplarism. But there’s also the possibility that Joe’s having his idea in this situation is not altogether surprising. Remembering P-creativity requires having a surprising idea that is new to the person in question, Joe would thus not display P-creativity. Similarly, Gould or someone sympathetic to his argument could argue that, although God’s idea ‘dogness’ may be new to God, it is nonetheless not surprising to God on the current proposal.

The Containment Exemplarist could respond either by saying (i) in some sense, the idea God forms is surprising to God, or (ii) God cannot be surprised (for reasons independent of Containment Exemplarism) and so God’s nature on its own rules out the possibility of P-creativity. If option (ii) were the case, then the creativity argument falls through (or at least is significantly diminished), since the concept of creativity Gould seeks to apply to God is simply incompatible with God (at least, as he is understood on many traditional accounts). If one has antecedent commitments to the doctrines of aseity, immutability, and impassibility, God’s undergoing a state of surprise seems to conflict with these doctrines. Again, to reiterate the point made previously, P-creativity at this point seems to be incompatible with theism and not simply Containment Exemplarism.

We should begin to reconsider the plausibility of premise (2) of Gould’s argument. For in seeking to include God’s paradigmatic creativity (or artistry) within the current conception of ‘creative creativity’, we may be overextending this concept. By all appearances, the authors in the creativity literature Gould cites seem primarily concerned with picking out the essential features of human creativity, where Boden herself explicitly frames her work in this way (Boden Reference Boden2004, 1). If that’s the case, it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect God to satisfy every feature of ‘creative creativity’ in a manner typical of finite humans. If we allow for a more permissive application of the model of ‘creative creativity’, then perhaps we can include God under this heading. However, if in attempting to undermine Containment Exemplarism, we require a more restrictive application of ‘creative creativity’, we undercut independently plausible, traditional doctrines of God. This is a significant theoretical cost that many will find unacceptable. No doubt, some might find the conception of creativity under consideration compelling enough to abandon these traditional doctrines (or replace them with weakened versions of these doctrines) to make room for this version of creativity. Obviously, people will differ in how they weigh the respective theoretical costs of either option, and some will no doubt be comfortable with the prospect of significantly revising or omitting traditional doctrines of God.Footnote ¹⁷

Since some are not committed to these traditional doctrines of God and are thus unmoved by these considerations, we should consider option (i). Accordingly, we could say that, in some sense, the idea (the first in the history of reality) is surprising to God. As far as I can see, apart from aseity and impassibility concerns, there is no argument that shows that the idea (e.g., ‘dogness’) is not surprising to God on the current proposal. The only one I could imagine is that, given the content of ‘dogness’ is already encoded in God’s nature prior to his thinking of it, God would not be taken off guard by the arrival of this idea. God would in a sense expect that this idea will be thought up. But this obviously won’t do. After all, how could God be cognisant of the fact that this content is present in himself prior to and without his having an idea with that content? In expecting that an idea of God’s Dog-aspect could be had, God is already thinking ‘dogness’, since this idea just is God’s thinking of his Dog-aspect. In which case, even if there is identity of content between an aspect or part of God and ‘dogness’ (i.e., God’s idea of this aspect), logically prior to God’s thinking ‘dogness’, God could not be anticipating or expecting ‘dogness’. In other words, the arrival of ‘dogness’ is unexpected for God, and thus surprising.Footnote ¹⁸

Now, in order to avoid this particular rejoinder as well as my overall proposal, those sympathetic to the creativity argument could modify how we understand P-creativity. In the first place, we could revise how we read the surprise condition of Boden’s definition of P-creativity. Returning to the case of Joe discovering the rare flower, we wouldn’t say Joe’s forming an idea of this flower (although it is the first in history and new to Joe) is H-creative given that, although Joe may be surprised at finding the flower, his having an idea of the flower given its discovery is not surprising to Joe. Given what Joe knows about how his mind works, he knows that upon seeing the flower with that nature it’s to be expected that he will have an idea of that flower. This fact of having an idea is not surprising then. And so, even though he couldn’t have anticipated finding that flower and forming an idea of it (since such anticipation would presuppose the idea already in mind), his having that idea is not surprising to him. In the same way, although God couldn’t anticipate his having the idea ‘dogness’, once he considers the situation of his having an idea of his aspect (from a ‘God’s eye view’), given the identity of content, he isn’t surprised at the fact that he has this idea. In which case, the response goes, we wouldn’t say that God is H-creative, let alone P-creative.

In this case, the exact similarity in content between idea and object is what undercuts the surprise condition for P-creativity. In the case of Joe, the flower’s nature or essence (with all of its built–in content) is a complete given, and Joe’s idea having the content it has is completely dependent on something utterly outside of Joe’s control. For Joe to take credit for the idea of this flower (in addition to taking credit for its discovery) would seem to be a sort of plagiarism or creative theft. Even if Joe’s idea is the first of its kind in history, its content is not original. Not originality of idea, but originality of content is at stake, then. And since on Containment Exemplarism the contents of any of God’s ideas are pre-contained within God, even if God’s ideas are new, their contents are not. With that in mind, the following revised definitions could be given:

If these revised definitions for creativity are adopted, then a revised understanding of premise (3) of the creativity argument can avoid my rejoinder. For if God is ‘creatively creative’ only if he is P-creative*, then given that the contents of God’s ideas on Containment Exemplarism are not new to God, it would follow that God is no longer ‘creatively creative’ on Containment Exemplarism.

So much for ‘creative creativity’

This strengthened conception of creativity will secure premise (3). It may even be that this strengthened conception of creativity, which includes P-creativity* and a strengthened ‘surprise condition’, just is what current writers mean by creativity.Footnote ¹⁹ If all other premises of Gould’s argument remain intact, then Containment Exemplarism is in bad shape. However, despite my best efforts to maintain the anthropocentric conception of ‘creative creativity’ in its application to God, at this point we are no longer justified in maintaining this understanding of creativity for God (thus undercutting premise (2) of Gould’s argument).

This is particularly apparent when considering the strengthened surprise condition just discussed. For this reading, for a person to exhibit creativity in having an idea, they must be surprised at the fact that they have the idea. In other words, creative individuals will be caught off guard by their ideas. This highlights the emphasis placed on spontaneity in the current literature on creativity. Gould himself places great emphasis on the supposed playful and spontaneous nature of God’s thinking things up, and takes this emphasis on the spontaneous to be essential to what he calls the ‘standard definition of creativity’ (Gould Reference Gould2024, 319). And this spontaneity is what is supposedly incompatible with Containment Exemplarism.

But this spontaneity, although perfectly acceptable and to be expected for human artists, seems unfitting for God, at least on many traditional conceptions of God. To see why, consider what C. S. Lewis says about the spontaneous nature of thinking up Narnia:

Taking this testimony for granted, we see that the idea is surprising precisely because Lewis has no conception as to how or where his idea came from. The content is original, but its origination is involuntary. There is certainly a non-rationality or so-called madness to this process, and Gould looks favourably upon this aspect of spontaneous creativity.Footnote ²¹

But this tradition of understanding creativity, which Gould recognises originates in certain parts of Plato’s writings (Gould Reference Gould2024, 315), sees this part of the creative process as outside the control of the human artist (a fact Gould does not adequately appreciate). In the Phaedrus, for example, there is certainly a spontaneous ‘madness’ to the poet that adds to the value of their contribution. And yet Plato makes clear this madness consists of the human poet being possessed by the Muses (Phaedrus, 245a; in Plato Reference Cooper1997) or perhaps some other god (Phaedrus, 249e; in Plato Reference Cooper1997). The human artist is captured and temporarily used as a sort of instrument or conduit through which the divine communicates. The artist is inspired and thereby has an idea. Kant (whose work also shapes the current literature on creativityFootnote ²²) also maintains that it is not within the artist’s power to think things up voluntarily or ‘according to plan’.Footnote ²³ It is a chance happening, something a person happens upon or undergoes. Some of the authors Gould cites in defence of spontaneity and madness (in contrast to rationalityFootnote ²⁴) as characterising creativity themselves characterise this process of having ideas as abrupt and involuntary (Gaut Reference Gaut2012, 262), occurring even when the person who stumbles upon the idea is not engaged in thought (Boden Reference Boden2004, 25), and even apart from any intention.Footnote ²⁵

If we were to expect God to display this sort of spontaneity (without revising our concept of spontaneity), we would have to say that God is ‘inspired’ and captured by ideas, or simply undergoes various states for which he has no control. But accepting this is a high theoretical cost to maintain this model of creativity, given that it would require us to reject important traditional doctrines of God (including aseity). At this point, it would be preferable to reject this model of creativity and allow for the viability of Containment Exemplarism (for now). Interestingly enough, despite emphasising the spontaneity of God’s thinking things up, Gould departs from the current creativity literature and maintains that God’s thinking things up is intentional and guided by reasons. And yet, in order to bypass Ward’s argument (Ward Reference Ward2020, 17) that God’s ‘thinking things up’ fails to be rational, Gould argues that God need not have anything in mind when thinking up his various ideas (Gould Reference Gould2024, 324).

But this won’t work. On the one hand, despite his best efforts to bypass Ward’s original argument that Gould’s ‘thinking things up’ option entails irrationality on God’s part, Gould’s proposed solution is still susceptible to this challenge. Gould insinuates there is no forthcoming argument for thinking God must have anything in mind for ‘proto-creating’ creaturely ideas (Gould Reference Gould2024, 324), but we can think of one. In the first place, Gould says God’s ‘proto-creation’ of creaturely ideas is a species or instance of creation (Gould Reference Gould2024, 326). Gould also acknowledges creation is a rational act (Gould Reference Gould2024, 316). Moreover, calling an action ‘rational’ (in the relevant sense) is synonymous with calling it ‘intentional’. And as discussed earlier, intentional actions require having something in mind. Since proto-creation is a kind or instance of creation, and creation is supposed to be rational (i.e., intentional), it straightforwardly follows that God must have something in mind to proto-create if it is to be rational. Now, Gould is perhaps correct in pointing out that God’s proto-creating without an idea may not be irrational (despite Ward concluding this; Ward Reference Ward2020, 17), but is instead non-rational (Gould Reference Gould2024, 323). However, this just concedes the point that God’s proto-creating without anything in mind is not rational (even if it doesn’t rise to the level of irrationality). In which case, on Gould’s account, God’s act of creation is not in all instances rational. At this point, premise (2) of Gould’s argument is undermined.

The suggestion that God spontaneously yet intentionally thinks up the domain of creaturely ideas faces another important challenge. Remember, P-creativity* requires the content God thinks up to be new to God. Consequently, at best, Gould (who’s following Leftow’s lead; Gould Reference Gould2024, 326) can only say that God has a vague intention to think up something that utterly lacks any specifying content. For if the new, specifying content were there specifying God’s intention to think up ‘dogness’ (for example), then the content is in fact not new. If we instead say that the specifying content is not a part of God’s intention prior to the generation of the new idea, then the fact that this new content is included in God’s idea is beyond the control and intention of God. Leftow himself acknowledges that this process would not be fully intentional and would be at least partially outside of God’s control (Leftow Reference Leftow2012, 459). And so, even if God intends to spontaneously think up something or other, any new idea (which will include its specific content) will simply ‘pop’ into reality apart from God’s plans or intentions. We thereby reintroduce bruteness, an option we’ve already set aside.Footnote ²⁶

Lastly, by suggesting that God has some degree of control over his process of spontaneously thinking up his ideas, Gould has already significantly revised the conception of spontaneity (and therefore creativity) he is seeking to appropriate. As discussed earlier, the spontaneity in question is seen by current writers as a non-voluntary, unintentional process that a subject undergoes, rather than something an agent performs. Gould has therefore already departed from what he identifies as the ‘standard’ view of creativity he attempts to use against Containment Exemplarism. At this point, despite salvaging premise (2) by modifying the received view of creativity, the Containment Exemplarist is now likewise entitled to revise the concept of creativity to accommodate Containment Exemplarism (as well as the traditional doctrines of God). This undermines premise (3) of Gould’s argument, once again allowing the Containment Exemplarist to bypass it.

Whither creativity?

God is the totally original artist. At least, this is what I’ve sought to maintain. But by discarding the popular model of creativity (or at least, rejecting a certain understanding of it in its application to God), it looks as if I have undercut the prospects of understanding God’s creativity and artistry. But we have no good reason to think this. Although the model of creativity we’ve been considering is certainly displayed in many instances of artistic creativity, to assume all artistic creativity must meet this standard is unduly restrictive. At least some writers in the creativity literature acknowledge alternative, more rationalistic models of creativity, especially when considering God’s creativity.Footnote ²⁷ Perhaps God is creative in some other way, then.

Gould’s objection to Containment Exemplarism centres on the fact that things resemble or represent God at all levels of reality, whereby things represent God’s ideas and God’s ideas in turn represent God or one of God’s aspects (Gould Reference Gould2024, 326). Because of this, Gould argues there would be no point at which God could introduce novel content, reducing God’s creativity to mere ‘model-making’ or ‘model-copying’, lacking spontaneity and playfulness (Gould Reference Gould2024, 318). But there are many artists (e.g., representational artists of a more realist disposition) who are not interested in generating novel content. Evidently, Gould’s preferred way of understanding creativity stands in opposition to this kind of representational art (i.e., one that does not involve or require the introduction of novel content). But to categorically declare these to be instances of mere ‘model-making’ or ‘model-copying’ simply because they introduce no novel content would be dismissive. Granted, not all art is representational in this way. Music (that is, purely instrumental music) does not depict or represent anything. But some art is representational in this way, and it would be odd to dismiss it as not displaying creativity. At the very least, we should be able to acknowledge that these kinds of representational artists exemplify artistry.

It seems the representational mode of artistry (when successful) does not negate but rather displays and is amplified by an artist’s creativity. The goal of representational art is not merely to copy content, but to present it, where the object to behold in a painting of a chair (for example) is the chair as presented.Footnote ²⁸ For representational artists (especially of the realist sort) content is no doubt duplicated. And yet, such an artist’s artistry is manifest in their amplifying some aspect of the subject matter. Sunsets hardly ever look so dramatic. But sunsets as presented take on a dramatic quality whereby some features (e.g., the colour and delicacy of the setting sun’s appearance, the intense shadows of the figures in the foreground) are accentuated. Notice, the features are not added; they are already there in the scene as they exist. But the artist’s artistry is on display by presenting them to the viewer in a manner otherwise unrealised, drawing our attention to a perspective worth noticing. This holds even in cases where the representation in question displays the highest degree of realism (as is the case with many forms of photography). Surely, certain photographers are creative in some respect. They appreciate and spotlight aspects of visual reality that would otherwise go unnoticed. Certainly there is genuine creativity in an artist’s noticing or drawing the audience’s attention to and eliciting an aesthetic appreciation for some part or aspect of reality.Footnote ²⁹

Moreover, the painter seeing a beautiful scenery is not only content-duplicating while also amplifying aspects of the object they are displaying; they are also not totally surprised at the fact that they have the idea (i.e., the conceptualisation of the scene they are painting). They see the landscape and have their idea of it, and like Joe with his flower, they are not surprised at this fact. If we overemphasise novelty of content and spontaneity (along with the stronger surprise condition discussed earlier), we’d have to say painters of this sort fail to be genuinely creative. This is unintuitive, and fortunately, we need not say this. This sort of painter has not been spontaneously captured by a spirit to drum up something new. Rather, they have been captured by the beauty of the item (or rather, the beautiful item) they behold. It seems an overreliance on spontaneity for giving an analysis of creativity or artistry may cause us to overlook another equally important aspect of artistic creativity: the love for the Beautiful and a desire to behold and present it so that it might be loved and beheld.Footnote ³⁰ To denigrate this as mere ‘model–copying’ or ‘model–making’ is unfitting and unfair.

Perhaps God’s artistic creativity is on display in this way. By forming ideas of himself or his aspects, God’s artistry is manifest by presenting, spotlighting, or amplifying himself (or an aspect of himself) in a manner otherwise unrealised. God’s Dog-aspect exists intermingled with all of God’s other aspects; but being thought by God, ‘dogness’ now stands apart as a pronounced, unique divine blueprint displaying the divine beauty in a distinct manner. And in creating in conformity to this and other ideas, God further displays the Beautiful and occasions the possibility of it being loved and beheld (by both himself and others). God is thus acting as the paradigm artist, and insofar as he doesn’t steal his ideas from others or rely on something other than himself, he is utterly original as well. Is this to say that all instances of creativity for all individuals (including humans) will look like this? No. But some instances do, and this is a mode of creativity that seems appropriate for God and is moreover consistent with Containment Exemplarism.Footnote ³¹

So God is a totally original artist, and his being so does not require him to display ‘creative creativity’, in the sense that we need not think of God as a sort of Jackson Pollock on a cosmic scale. Admittedly, the preceding has only been a tentative outline of an alternative model of God’s creativity and artistry. This alternative model of divine artistry deserves to be unpacked at far greater length, but space unfortunately does not permit this here. For now, we can at least acknowledge that we have better reason to reject premise (2) of the creativity argument (as it is understood by Gould). If we were to revise our concept of creativity to include the version of creativity just discussed, then premise (3) again is undermined, since God on Containment Exemplarism arguably displays this kind of creativity. With the addition of the other case I’ve made against premise (3) of the creativity argument, it has been reasonably shown that Containment Exemplarism escapes Gould’s presented challenge. There are other ways that other versions of Containment Exemplarism could bypass Gould’s argument that are worth exploring (e.g., eliminating Ward’s assumption that the content of God’s ideas and God’s aspects are identical).Footnote ³² But the preceding discussion will suffice for now.