Chapter 9

Communion and dynamic

of creativity

Juan de Dios Larrú4

The term “creative minorities” seems to go back to the English philosopher and historian Arnold

J. Toynbee (1889-1975), who defends the thesis that the destiny of every society always depends

on a few minorities that he calls creative. As an example of what he understands by these

minorities, this author relates how the promoters of Chinese civilization emerged from those

sectors that resided along the Yellow River rather than from the numerous groups of inhabitants

that occupied the vast regions of the south and the southeast. The aforementioned river was not

navigable during most of the year. During the winter it froze over or produced great quantities of

floating ice-packs which caused devastating floods in the spring, once the river started to thaw.

The inhabitants of that region had to develop mechanisms by which to navigate by that almost

frozen river, and at the same time to control the floods and produce food for the population.

From this creativity the Chinese civilization was born.

4
Dean and Professor of Fundamental Moral Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage

and Family, Valencia, Spain. Professor of Philosophical Ethics on the Faculty of Theology at the Universidad

Eclesiástica “San Dámaso,” Madrid.

 As is well known, Toynbee belongs to the current of historiography that broke with the

traditional way of understanding history. The novelty lay in its observation that the protagonists

of history are not States but rather societies. The latter are the result of the bonds between their

members as they aim to deal with the difficulties and obstacles confronting them, first the

external ones, then the internal.

Invariably, according to this thinker from London, all societies throughout history, whatever

their origin and the circumstances of their appearance may be, face continual threats or

difficulties, which he designates specifically as challenges or incitements. These are the obstacles

that societies face in continuing to grow, and their responses are the solutions. When the

response not only resolves the difficulty but also produces new challenges, then creativity

emerges and, through it, growth.

Creative responses normally come from a minority sector, which furthermore continues to

orient and guide the actions of the broad social majority. Geniuses, mystics, wise men, great

politicians, and exemplary men work as yeast in the dough of ordinary humanity. Clearly in

continuity with these considerations, it is necessary to recall that the binomial “select minority /

mass man” is one of the main axes of the thought of Ortega y Gasset. This Ortegan distinction

between minority and mass is not primarily of an ethical or legal nature, but rather belongs to the

essential constitution of every society (Sánchez Cámara, 1986, 233).

This common humanity follows the creative minorities by a process of mimesis. Mimesis is

caused by suggestion, charm, or the spontaneous adherence of the multitude to the actions,

gestures, and vital channels pointed out by the creative minorities. The majority adopts the

responses of the minorities by way of imitation. A society is growing only when the members of

said society are able to be creative and innovative (creative minorities) or else are able to adopt
and incorporate the creative forms that other members develop (social majorities). In other

words, growth is understood as a result of new responses to the difficulties that societies

encounter in their life cycle.

Growth is the work of creative personalities and minorities; they cannot flourish unless they

bring along with them in their advance the non-creative sectors of humanity, which are always

the overwhelming majority. In this way, the dynamic interplay between creative minority and

social majority is part of the progress and the decay of a society. This dynamism runs a twofold

risk: the first is when a creative minority comes up with an optimal solution to the incitements

that caused it to arise, then slackens its efforts and rests on its laurels. This excess of self-

confidence, resulting from the idolization of the solution that has been achieved, causes the

minority to lose sight of the whole and to concentrate its full attention on one part of society; the

second risk is the opposite, that is, becoming involved in frantic activity so that there is an excess

of the minority’s own efforts, far beyond any reasonable limit. Toynbee uses the Greek

expression hubris to explain this phenomenon.

In order to overcome this twofold risk, there has to be an adequate connection between

creative minority and social majority. As Bergson states in his work The Two Sources of

Morality and Religion, “A society may be called civilized when you find in it such a power to

lead and a willingness to be led” (Bergson, [1948] 1977, 171). Initiatives of a creative minority

and docility on the part of the majority are the two elements that can make creativity spring up.

The second condition, docility, is more difficult than the first, the French philosopher remarks

pointedly.

One last introductory observation may be useful. In view of the cyclical concept of culture,

Toynbee proposes a model of growth in a spiral; in other words, on the foundation of a

disintegrated society a new civilization can appear. The process of the civilization’s growth, in

his view, is like an ascending spiral. The dynamism consists in the fact that every challenge

provokes a response and a triumph, which at the same time generates another challenge. The

figure of the spiral, in contrast to that of the circle, helps us to understand that human creativity is

never absolute, but rather always emerges starting from something previous.

1. Creative minorities

in light of the mystery of the Church

According to this historian from London, the Christianity that burst onto the scene within the

powerful Roman Empire was the creative minority that performed the prodigious feat of making

a new civilization spring up from its ashes: not only the Eastern Roman Empire (the Second

Rome) with its later prolongation in Russia (the Third Rome) but also Europe, bestowing on it a

profoundly Christian identity.

In clear contrast with the deterministic pessimism of Spengler, the interest of Toynbee’s

theory is rooted in the fact that it sets up a scenario that is more open and hopeful. The crisis of

Western culture can find in the energies of the creative minorities a light and a regenerative

power capable of making God present among the masses, rescuing them from their decadence.

While still a Cardinal, Benedict XVI accepted Toynbee’s central idea that the destiny of a

society always depends on creative minorities. Starting from there, and using an analogy, he

proposed that believing Christians should think of themselves as a creative minority that can help

Europe to recover once again the best of its heritage, in this way placing themselves at the

service of all humanity. (It is worthwhile reading attentively his conference, “Europe: Its

Spiritual Foundations, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.”)

 Designating the Church as a creative minority involves an internal tension—we even venture

to say, using one of Henri de Lubac’s favorite terms, a “paradox” with respect to the

contemporary mentality. As the Jesuit theologian declared, a paradox is the search for or the

expectation of a synthesis, a provisional expression of an ever-incomplete perspective which

however is oriented toward fullness (De Lubac, 1987). The paradox and the mystery are closely

related.

The term “minority,” which is derived etymologically from the Latin “minor,” means the

lesser, smaller, minimal part of a whole. To the common way of thinking, minorities, due to their

irrelevance and insignificance, occupy the private space sociologically. Majorities, in contrast,

for diametrically opposite reasons, occupy the public space. Thus, although on the one hand

pluralism is exalted as a highly positive value, at the same time minorities are looked down on,

then are reduced to an exotic, decorative, expendable role.

The paradoxical structure of the Church is reflected in various binomials. These three are

especially important: the Church proceeds from God and is formed for the sake of mankind, is

both visible and invisible, is simultaneously earthly-historical and eternal-eschatological. The use

of the expression “creative minority” to designate the Church highlights the inherent tension

between the part and the whole, between the one and the many, between the particular and the

universal. The terminology “creative minority” helps us, in the first place, to overcome the

quantitative illusion. Fascination with numbers is characteristic of our scientific-technological

society. Nevertheless, the essential things are never found in numbers or in initial appearances.

Quality is always more valuable than quantity. The mystery of the Church, consequently, cannot

be quantified, subjected to a simply numerical measure. But together with the temptation of the

fascination with numbers there is also the temptation to ignore the numerical factor, as if it were
not an element that must be taken into account in every human reality. The Church cannot be

reduced to a self-enclosed ghetto, an esoteric sect, turned in on itself and having nothing to do

with the course of historical development.

For Benedict XVI, the Church must understand itself as a creative minority that determines

the future, since it contains a very vital and active heritage (Benedict XVI, 2011). Thus the

concept of time and of history appears as an element intrinsically united to the creative minority.

It does not nostalgically take refuge in the past, shutting itself away in the private sphere, but

neither does it flee toward a utopian, spiritualist future; rather it is capable of thinking for many

generations, living the newness of a tradition with its treasured wisdom, and producing excellent

practices that make all of life relevant, since in them it is possible to experience the whole in the

fragment. For this reason, Benedict XVI describes the creative minority in these terms: “human

beings who in their encounter with Christ have found the pearl of great price, which gives value

to all of life (Mt 13:45-46), and precisely for this reason, make their decisive contributions to the

elaboration of a culture that is capable of outlining new models of development” (Benedict XVI,

2010). The importance and transcendence of these persons is unquestionable, since nothing

constructive is done without these human forces that experience the richness that they find in a

way that is convincing for others, too. Hence the priority and the first imperative should be to

form people who keep their sights set on God, because God can go back to living among human

beings only by means of persons who have been touched by Him.

In this sense it is interesting to observe how the impulse toward the Christian faith, the

beginning of the Church of Jesus Christ, was possible because in Israel there were persons who

were not content with customary things, but rather looked far off, searching for something
greater that their hearts already hoped for, and thus could recognize in Jesus the One sent by

God. Even today this posture is the prerequisite for a living encounter with Christ in the Church.

In fact, the Church is the place where the contemporaneous character of Christ with respect

to human beings in every age is demonstrated. This question about being contemporaneous with

Christ originated in the work of the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. In his book Philosophical

Fragments he radically opposes an historicism in which nothing is permanent, and defends the

affirmation of a transcendence which every human being finds himself confronting and in

reference to which he can acquire definitive firmness. Temporality and historicity are,

consequently, the place where a creative minority’s creativity is communicated. Christianity,

therefore, is not a doctrine of evasion, but rather a concrete salvific event.

The forecast that the Pope glimpsed can be summarized in this passage: “From the crisis of

today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. She will become small

and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to

inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes,

so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much

more as a voluntary society, entered only be free decision. As a small society, she will make

much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members.... And so it seems certain to

me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to

count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the

Church of the political cult, which is dead already with Gobel, but the Church of faith. She may

well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently, but she will

enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond

death.” (Ratzinger, 2007, pp. 116, 118).

 In the book-length interview God and the World, too, then-Cardinal Ratzinger declared that a

Church of the masses can be something very beautiful but is not necessarily the only modality of

being the Church. Recalling the Church of the early centuries, he insisted that it was a little

Church without being for that reason a sectarian community, since it was not partitioned off and

self-enclosed. Persons who did not feel prepared to identify completely with the Church could

approach in some way so as to weigh the definitive step. This awareness of not being an

exclusive club, but rather of being open to society was always an insuppressible component of

the Church. The process of numerical reduction that the Church is going through today, mainly

in the West, must go hand in hand, therefore, with a careful exploration of new forms of

openness toward those who are not part of the community of believers.

2. The logic of superabundance

“God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should

have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). This verse from the Gospel of John plainly states the origin of every

creative community. God’s gratuitous initiative and the “excess” of his love, for the sake of

which the Son gives himself up for us, are the initial root of this wonderful communicative

dynamism. The Trinitarian communion is diffusive, and this diffusive character of the good of

communion reaches its summit in the communication of eternal life through the self-gift of the

Only-begotten Son in the Paschal mystery.

The Easter event can be interpreted as a new creation. The covenant, the communion

between God and mankind is prefigured in the innermost depths of creation. Already in its basic

structure, life produces millions of seeds so that one living being might be born. Therefore

abundance is the characteristic sign of God, even in terms of creation. God is magnanimous and
will not be outdone in generosity; as the Church Fathers said, He “does not distribute his gifts

according to a measure.” Creation can be contemplated, in this way, as a mystery of God’s

superabundance.

Abundance is also the most suitable definition for salvation history which, when all is said

and done, is nothing but the event through which God, in his incomprehensible liberality, not

only gives the universe, but gives himself in order to save a grain of sand, man.

Christ understands his human actions in terms of the key theme of superabundance: “I came

that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). The word “superabundance”

(perísseuma) appears in the Sermon on the Mount, and recurs also in the story of the miracle of

the multiplication of the loaves; here the Gospel reports that it “filled [to overflowing]” seven

baskets (Mk 8:8). The account of the multiplication of the loaves introduces the idea of the

reality of abundance, beyond what is needed. It also recalls the miracle of the water changed into

wine, related by John in his account of the wedding in Cana (Jn 2:1-11). Although the word

abundance does not occur here, the passage still clearly reflects everything signified by it.

Moreover, in the mind of the evangelists, both accounts have something to do with the Eucharist,

the central form of Christian worship. Thus the Eucharist is presented as the divine abundance

that infinitely surpasses all needs and legitimate demands. Superabundance is the expression and

language of love. God does not give just anything. God gives himself. Christ is thus the infinite

profusion of God. (Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 257-262; idem, 1990, 55-58; Benedict

XVI, 2007, 252-253.)

Superabundance is also the distinctive hallmark of the disciple’s action when it is penetrated

by the Holy Spirit with all his power (Melina, 2008, 113-128). Through the writings of the New

Testament it becomes quite clear that the experience of receiving the gift of friendship in the
encounter with Christ is not an end in itself, but rather is joined with a promise of growth: “you

shall see greater things” (Jn 1:50). This growth consists of manifesting in one’s own actions the

new presence from which they spring, the new love in which they grow, and the glory for which

they prepare us. “That they may see your good works and give glory to your Father” (Mt 5:16).

A clear and eloquent example of this logic of superabundance in human action is found in the

scene of the Anointing at Bethany (Mt 26:6-13; Jn 12:1-11). It highlights simultaneously the

disproportionate good that is offered, which can be appreciated only within the affective union

between this woman and Christ, and also the intrinsic communicative dimension of that good.

The generosity of the woman’s gesture and the unexpected prophetic value of her action help

us to understand that magnanimity is the most characteristic virtue of the creative majority. Saint

Thomas Aquinas showed how this virtue of magnanimity involves the greatness of a soul that is

adorned with all the virtues (II-II, q. 129, art. 4 ad 3), since working magnanimously increases all

the virtues, raising them to the level of heroism.

The distinguishing feature of magnanimity is this tendency of the will toward great things

(“extensio animi ad magna,” II-II, q. 129, art. 1), aspiring to great enterprises, excellent actions,

and bringing them to completion. The magnanimous person is one who has a creative mission:

for him, to live and to be is to achieve great things, to produce high-caliber works. Life is

thought of as an overflow from within oneself. Magnanimity must not be confused with

delusions of grandeur, since it is always joined with humility, fortitude, and hope. The ability to

make sacrifices and to practice self-denial is innate to the magnanimous person, who always

seeks to broaden his horizons, which makes him ever more far-sighted.

Although vainglory, presumption, and immoderate ambition indicate an excess of

magnanimity, faint-heartedness is the vice resulting from a deficiency of it. In order to vaccinate
himself against this vice of faint-heartedness, the playwright José María Pemán in the verse

drama El divino impaciente puts on the lips of Saint Ignatius of Loyola these words addressed to

Saint Francis Xavier: “When you are greeted with applause, you start to think that you are

reaching your higher destiny. Don’t you see? Your destiny is divine, and with that attitude you

stop midway on your journey!”

The Church as a creative minority cannot stop aspiring to grow, to spread the life that she

receives from Christ. The impulse of the virtue of hope leads ultimately to the virtue of

magnanimity, which finds its channel and protection in humility. Thus hope, magnanimity, and

humility are the three intertwined virtues that must undergird the task of a creative minority.

3. Witness as a way to communicate

the experience of communion

One of the most important questions for evangelization, in terms of the peculiar character of

Christianity, is to ask oneself how to communicate the experience of communion with Christ that

is lived out in the Church. More than purely intellectual information or communication, the

Gospel consists of a “per-formation,” a vital process that radically transforms persons and that

calls for purification on a common journey. In this way, being a Christian is a gradual

participation in the mystery of the Incarnation, death, and Resurrection of Christ.

The love of communion, as we saw in the previous section, is transmitted through the logic

of superabundance. In order to express this logic, the notion of witness has been increasingly

important since Vatican Council II to this day (Prades, 2010, pp. 355-370). Paul VI already

declared that to evangelize is, above all, to give witness, simply and directly, to the God revealed

by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit (Evangelii nuntiandi, nn. 26; 41). This Exhortation made
famous and proverbial the remark that contemporary man prefers to listen to witnesses than to

teachers.

Witness (or testimony), in the primary sense of the word, means the very structure of

Revelation and its transmission starting with Jesus Christ as the first faithful and true Witness

(Rev 3:14) and the Holy Spirit as the One who guides believers into the fullness of truth (Jn

16:13). In the second place, the term is understood as a singular reason for credibility, in the

sense that its truth content is indissolubly bound up with the person who gives witness and with

the relation of trust that he establishes with those to whom his testimony is directed. The truth of

love is inseparable from the person who loves and from the person who is loved. The revealing

and the accrediting dimensions of witness must always be united inseparably. Thus witness is

that peculiar communication in which truth and freedom and joined. All true communication is

born of silence and leads to silence. This circular relation between word and silence is the sign of

the mysterious and inexhaustible character of all human expressivity.

What matters in Christian witness is not so much the number of witnesses as the quality of

them, the closeness of the witness to the reality to which he bears witness, and the transparency

with which the witness becomes a true sign of that reality. Holiness, understood as the perfection

of charity, is the most eloquent sign of credibility in this world. The holy witness introduces the

one who receives the message to the dynamism of receiving a reality that goes beyond oneself.

The witness is thus characterized, according to the etymology of the Latin word for it, testis

(from ter-stis), by the presence of a third party within a dialogical dyad (Martinelli, 2002, p. 7).

The martyrs and the saints always take a position as witnesses to a genuine greatness and thus

become keys to understanding why creative minorities form around them—groups that possess
this attractiveness and permanent creative newness. In their presence one breathes in the

freshness of the action of the Holy Spirit, source of creative love.

It should be noted that the Greek root for the term witness, mártir, comes from an Indo-

Germanic root (smer) that means to remember, to think, and also to linger, to remain. The Latin

memor and our word memory are derived from the same root. From this etymology we can

understand better that the witness confirms a truth that preceded us and that must remain as a

sure foundation for the present time (Angelini, 2008, p. 136, note 57). The creativity of

communion is not an ephemeral, passing fashion, but a living memorial capable of enduring and

remaining in time. Hence the necessity of institutions that lend stability and continuity to the

communication of the Gospel, although this does not mean that they become absolutes, since

they are permanently at the service of a greater reality and are relative to the culture, the setting,

and the concrete situation in which they are found.

The memory of the martyrs is always linked with the creativity of forgiveness. It consists in

bridging the disproportionate gulf between the depth of the offense and the height of the

forgiveness. This essential polarity is what the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur describes as the

equation of forgiveness (Ricoeur, 2003, p. 598).

Insofar as it is truthful, witness is always creative. Creativity springs from man’s

acknowledgment of who he is: a human being who recognizes his own measure and the

greatness of God, and is humbly open to the newness of God’s work. Creative minorities find the

source of their fruitfulness in true humility, in the grace of being little and of proclaiming in their

littleness the mystery of God’s love which has touched the innermost depths of their hearts. In

this way, as Saint Matthew declares in his Gospel, the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed

which, although it is the smallest of all seeds, grows up to become a tree, and is the largest of
shrubs (cf. Mt 13:32). As Benedict XVI affirms in the second volume of his book Jesus of

Nazareth in speaking about the Resurrection of Christ: “Jesus’ Resurrection is improbable; it is

the smallest mustard seed of history. This reversal of proportions is one of God’s mysteries. The

great—the mighty—is ultimately the small. And the tiny mustard seed is something truly great”

(Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol. II, chapter 9, p. 247).

Conclusion

We started our reflections with the example proposed by Toynbee concerning a creative minority

like the one that lived in the inhospitable region of the Yellow River in China, thus originating a

great civilization. In a conference given on the occasion of a congress about Communications

and Culture (November 9, 2002), Joseph Ratzinger cited a commentary by Saint Basil the Great

on Isaiah 9:10 (“the bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have

been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place”) in which the great Cappadocian Father

declared: “the sycamore produces abundant fruits, which have no flavor unless a little cut is

made into them, so that the juice comes out and they can ripen well. For this reason we consider

the sycamore as a symbol of the pagan peoples: they are many, but at the same time they have no

flavor. This is the result of the way of life among the pagans. However when a cut is made with

the Logos, their life is transformed and becomes useful and flavorful” (St. Basil, In Isaia IX, 228:

PG 30, 516d-517a).

Toynbee’s example and the passage by Saint Basil have one point in common: a view of

creation that invites us to transform it, to raise it to its completion and fullness. The mystery of

creation is an expression of the divine creativity and at the same time an invitation to collaborate

in its growth toward its definitive fulfillment.

 The novelty that shines through in the patristic commentary is that only the Logos, Christ,

can make an incision into the culture and into its fruits for the purpose of purifying what

formerly proved to be useless, and it becomes not only valuable but also flavorful. To bring out

this precious flavor that every culture contains is, therefore, an eloquent image for what is meant

by evangelizing it. The necessary transformation requires an active intervention of the cultivator.

The Gospel is, consequently, this cutting that requires patience, depth, and understanding, as

well as a great sensitivity in understanding the culture from within, with its dangers and also with

its hidden or obvious opportunities. The encounter between Christ and cultures is always

mediated by the service of believers, of the creative minorities that introduce the logic of the

creativity of love and of superabundance, communicating the testimony of having been contacted

[alcanzados] by Christ, of living in a vital communion with Him in the Church.

The Church has an intrinsic missionary dimension which always transports her further

beyond herself, so as to witness to the love of Christ and to communicate the communion with

Him that she has received as a gratuitous gift and cannot stop transmitting. The dynamism of

mission work always lives in this tendency from the “few” to the “many.” So as not to stay in the

insignificance of individualistic, privatizing isolation, the creative minority has to cultivate this

art of living the whole in the fragment.

Therefore it is necessary for the creative minority to generate and to learn to live in the logic

of superabundance, in which the communicability of creativity is not foreign to excellent

practices. These practices, as Macintyre understands them, i.e., as forms of socially established

human activity, are the place where one can fashion this original composition in which the part

and the whole are harmoniously joined since, even though the practices are directly related to

concrete human goods, at the same time they systematically open the door to other higher goods.
When the communicability of the good is integrated into the truly interpersonal dimension, the

gift of harmony is experienced as an expression of a community that is expanding.

Thus the communication of a communion is an event that always has as its fundamental

reference the gift of the Holy Spirit. Its unitive force proceeds from God’s love, which through

the self-gift of the Heart of Christ pours out the Paschal newness of the gift of the Spirit, which

continually and simultaneously generates the Church as the People of God, Body of Christ, and

Temple of the Spirit.

Translated by Michael J. Miller

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