The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

Many prominent theologians and clergymen spoke about the need to overcome the historically arisen gap between “religious” and “secular” culture and noted the mutual interest of the parties in such overcoming. This article attempts to substantiate the possibility of solving this problem by the example of understanding the phenomenon of creativity and man as a creator — a problem significant both for religious consciousness and for psychological science. 
A provision is put forward that any “strict” psychological research is based on one or another axiomatic, accepted belief about the essence of man. In this case, such a basis is the understanding of man as a creator by nature, whom the Creator of the world called into being to co-create with Him on the seventh Day of Creation. This does not replace psychological studies of the processes of creative development of a person in the conditions of his earthly life, but gives them a “vertical dimension”: it allows you to see what is actually manifested in the phenomena under study. From these positions, the article discusses some scientific studies that are significant for a general understanding of the creative nature of a person and the ways of its actualization (V. V. Zenkovsky, A. A. Ukhtomsky), as well as specially devoted to the study and description of the psychological cha­racteristics of people who are brightly gifted in various areas of activity (F. Galton, A. Maslow, etc.). Special importance is attached to the analysis of self-reports and statements of great scientists, teachers, artists. 
A comparison of these sources shows that ascetic features are manifested in the psychological appearance and life behavior of outstanding creators. In contact with the “superpersonal”, the egocentric qualities inherent in many of these people in everyday life are overcome. In their service to suprapersonal values, they approach the threshold of conscious religious experience in different ways, and often even cross this threshold. Their creativity in various forms of “secular” sciences and arts can become evidence of the presence of God, “producing everything in everyone”.