Webster defines a creature as ‘a created being’. We cannot be created without having a Creator. The Creator is greater than the creature. If the creature is greater or equal then it would not need the creator to create it. This is the difference between reproducing and creating. The creature reproduces something that is (or will become) equal to it, but the creator creates something that is not as great as itself. Francis Schaeffer expands on this concept:
"…every man must be a creature. He can be nothing else but a creature I this life or in the life to come. Even in hell, men will still be creatures, because that is what we are. Only one is self-sufficient in himself, and he is God. But now as Christians we are introduced to the great reality: our calling is to be creatures in this high, tremendous, and glorious way, not because we must be, but by choice… I am a creature, it is true, but I have a calling to be the creature glorified. I must be the creature, but I do not have to be the creature like the clod in the field, the cabbage which is rotting in the field as the snows melt. I am called to be a creature by choice, on the basis of Christ’s finished work, by faith: the creature glorified."
Schaeffer designates two distinct types of creature. The first type, which we all are, like it or not, is a creature in its natural state which we will call creature natural. The second is a creature submitted (Romans 6:16-19) to our true authority. This creature is one that contributes and not merely consumes, and Schaeffer terms it ‘creature glorified’. Through its contributions and not its consummations, the creature finds joy.
The creature natural is our natural state. It is not above the other animals of the earth, it is within them. It is our instincts to eat, to mate, to fear, and to defend our territory and all other instincts that we share with animals. All of these instincts simply consume and contribute nothing.
The creature glorified is our original state. It is the state of man when he was whole. Though now he is the creature natural he was once the creature glorified. In speaking of what we are calling the creature glorified, Pascal notes:
"The greatness of man is so obvious that it can be deduced even from his misery. What is natural in animals is seen to be wretchedness in man. From this we can recognize that since his nature today resembles that of the animals, he has fallen from a better state, which in former times was more appropriate to him. Who does not feel unhappier at not being a king except a king who has been deposed? Did not people think that Paulus-Emilius was unhappy at no longer being consul? On the contrary, they all though he had been fortunate to have been consul at all, because it not an office one has for life. Yet people thought Perseus was unfortunate when he was no longer king, because it is natural for a king to remain so the whole of his life, and it was strange that he could bear to go on living without kingship. Who considers himself unhappy because he possesses only one mouth? Yet who would not be unhappy if he had only one eye? No one, perhaps, has ever taken it into his mind to fret over not having three eyes. But man is inconsolable if he has no eyesight."
The creature glorified is not natural but it is original. The fact that we are no longer in our original and whole state is what drives us to consume, to fill the hole. But the creature glorified is whole and has peace and joy (though it is not permanent until death) and with that wholeness it sees beyond the desire to consume. The creature glorified, does not envy and does not seek to hoard this peace and joy; it seeks to share this fullness and is thereby led to contribute and create and not to seek his own in consumption.
