There is newness in God, too.įor many religious people, part of what is given for experience is a sacred text: Qur’an, Torah, the New Testament, for example. God knows the many possibilities available for response, and God knows what the probable response may be, but God does not know the response itself it actually happens, because prior to its happening, there is no actual response to be known. How a person responds to what is given for experience is not known or unknowable, not even by God, until the response occurs. This freedom is part of the very essence of that person in the moment at hand. They are part of what is given for experience.Īnd yet, on the other hand, the act of improvisation also contains within itself an element of decision, of freedom, of self-creativity that is not fully determined by these many factors. They are part of the “many” that “become one” in the act of experience. Even if a person is sitting alone in a study, or in a forest, he or she is influenced by these factors. Moreover, it is partly determined by social conditions, by other people, by the earth, by the past actual world, and by the spirit of creative transformation at work in the world: that is, by God. On the one hand, the improvisation is an act of responding to what is given for experience in the moment at hand. We are improvising.Īn act of improvisation is inherently relational and self-creative. Consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally, constructively or destructively, happily or sadly, we are creating something new out of a settled past. And so it is with a person’s life, moment by moment.
The philosopher Whitehead proposes that the universe itself is a creative advance into novelty. Even if the improvisation is a repetition of the past, it is still different from the past and in this sense new. A daily routine, interacting with others, spending time alone, reading or listening to music, working at home or elsewhere - always there are decisions being made, at a small level, on what to do, where to turn, what to say, when to act. Every moment of a person’s life is an act of improvisation: creating something new out of a settled past.
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