Religious education and psychology of creativity

The article is devoted to the problem of interaction of clerical and secular culture, particularly - Christian anthropology and psychological knowledge of man. The main obstacle on the way of such interaction is said to be the orientation of traditional psychology towards causal logic and determination which renders an adequate understanding of human creativity basically impossible. But the very ability to create, being teleologically orientated, is the generic attribute of man and the seal of his God-likeness. A belief is expressed that the teleological approach conduces not depreciation, but rethinking of the mass of knowledge gathered by science in causal research paradigm. Artistic and creative experience is viewed as the optimal way for a child to actualize the “inner activity of soul” (V.Zenkovskiy) and as the fundamental principle of soulful kind-heartedness. Artistic creativity has as its base the positive valuable experience of unity with the world and universality of life which is akin to religious experience and which leads in the following to development of religious consciousness.