Carnegie Samuel Calian

Carnegie Samuel Calian (born July 1, 1933) was the president of Pittsburg Theological Seminary until his retirement in 2006.

Quotations

The Significance of Eschatology in the Thoughts of Nicolas Berdyaev (1965)

• What is underlying Berdyaev's thinking is the fact that the creative impulse must be generated from a dissatisfaction with this world. The creative impulse wishes in its original outburst to see an end to this world; it is the beginning of a different world. In short, creativity is eschatological.
  • p. 66

• There are two views which present themselves before the creative act. "The first is the end of this world and the beginning of a new; and the second is the process of strengthening and perfecting this world. They are respectively the outlook of revolutionary eschatology and that of evolutionary construction." The former is the way of transcendence, and the latter is the way of objectification. "By way of objectification the creative act is adjusted to the circumstance of this world and does not reach its final state, it is cut off short. By the way of transcendence the creative act breaks through to noumenal reality and sets its bearing upon the final transformation of the world." The way of objectification, however, so occupies our thoughts, cooling down the creative energy, that man loses sight of the way of transcendence; hence little attention is given to the eschatological side of creative activity.
  • p. 66