The Role of Subcreation in the Divine Narrative

Tolkien talked about “subcreation” - this thing we do when we take something God has made and create with it. When we try to make creation about ourselves—our pride, our desire for affirmation, and so on—we only make things harder. But when we understand it properly, our subcreation is a middle act between God’s first creation and His second—and the culture we build together becomes, as Andy Crouch put it, part of “the furniture of eternity.” In this episode, Matthew Clark explores this second of three aspects of our creative task as humans (cultivation, subcreation, and naming).