The Radiance of God

Christian Doctrine through the Image of Divine Light

Douglas M. Koskela

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781725261075
  9781725261082
• eBook ISBN:
  9781725261099
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The image of God as light abounds in Scripture and the Christian tradition. In The Radiance of God, Douglas M. Koskela explores the theme of divine radiance across the span of Christian doctrine. The book develops a constructive account of the Christian gospel that traces the journey from darkness into the marvelous light of God. Drawing on an ecumenical range of voices in the tradition, Koskela frames the discussion in terms of three central concepts: allure, movement, and joy. The image of divine radiance suggests the sheer beauty of God that captivates the attention of God's creatures in wonder, love, and praise. The brilliance of this light initiates a process of movement toward it as the Holy Spirit transforms us in the image of Christ, the light of the world. The culmination of this journey is inexpressible and unending joy as we are immersed in the divine light. By following this threefold pattern through the classic loci of Christian doctrine, this volume offers a sustained and coherent treatment of the economy of salvation from creation to consummation.

1

God the Father

“His Radiance Is Like the Sunlight”

When one steps into the world of theology, a problem emerges quickly and sharply: what does one say? How does one dare to speak of the transcendent God in a way that gets us closer to the truth? This is perhaps the fundamental theological problem, and the Christian tradition is not without many helpful points of guidance. One bedrock guideline is to remain close to what God has revealed about Godself. If the very possibility of speaking truthfully about God only arises because of God’s self-disclosure, then that disclosure must shape theological speech at every turn. Another guideline is to keep in mind that theology makes regular use of a mode of discourse known as analogical predication. That is, the ways we use language when speaking of God are both like and unlike the ways we use that same language in everyday conversation. Many theologians would suggest that this applies not only to images we use to talk about God—like a rock or a shepherd—but also to attributes like goodness and justice.1 Suffice it to say that when we are using obvious images to say something about God, it is clear that those images are both like and unlike the divine reality to which they point.

These two principles—and there are certainly more, but these two hold us on course at present—lead us naturally to the image of light. As we will see, to speak of God in terms of radiance is to attend to an image that is used extensively in Scripture and the Christian tradition. And, true to analogues in general, light is both like and unlike the God to whom it points. The usefulness of this image has been recognized in the tradition because there are so many points of likeness: light suggests glory, draws our attention, enables vision, brings hope, reveals truth, and symbolizes joy. And yet precisely because of the power of this image, we must keep in mind that the reality of God transcends what any image is able to capture. Irenaeus perhaps overstates this point when he writes: “He may most correctly be called Light, but He is nothing like our light.”2 Our experience with light can point us in a helpful direction, but only when we keep its discontinuities with the divine reality firmly in mind.

A couple of interesting puzzles emerge when we turn our attention to this image. One arises when we try to identify the referent of the claim that God is light: is it the Father, the Son, the Spirit, or the Trinity as a whole? A second puzzle is that language of both light and darkness appears in the Christian tradition in reference to God. How can we make sense of the material on darkness, given our guiding image of God as light? We will explore both of these questions in this chapter. As is the case in each chapter of the book, our discussion will proceed in three main progressions: allure, movement, and joy. In the section on allure, we will explore the sheer attractiveness of God as light. Along the way, we will take up the question posed by our first puzzle above. Our exploration of movement will consider the transformative effect of an encounter with the radiant God on God’s creatures. In that section, we will examine the place of the theme of darkness raised in our second puzzle. Finally, our account of joy will focus on the culmination of that encounter; namely, the blessing of knowing God as light.

Allure: Drawn to the Radiant Glory

One of the more vivid biblical instances of the image of divine light is found in Isaiah 60. At the beginning of that passage, the city of Jerusalem is addressed as the locus of God’s radiance: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn” (v. 1–3). The brilliance of God’s glory shining over the holy city is so attractive in this vision that even the nations and their kings are drawn to it. And the appeal of that radiance is not mere spectacle; the very promise of salvation is implied in this vision of light. As Arthur Michael Ramsey suggests in his classic treatment of the glory of God, the post-exilic vision of the last part of Isaiah brought together God’s attributes, God’s salvific action, and God’s sheer appeal: “Indeed, in the kabod [glory] of Yahveh radiance, power, and righteous character are inextricably blended; and the word thus tells of a theology in which the attributes of God in Himself are inseparable from His attractiveness and saving activity in the world.”3 The God who saves is not a mere warrior; rather, God is a source of light and an object of beauty to behold.

Beyond its immediate historical context, the Isaiah 60 passage points to an enduring feature of the image of light: its sheer attraction. In a state of darkness, recognized or unrecognized, we are drawn to light as a source of hope and joy. It is thus natural for God’s people to turn to this image to articulate their experience of delight in encountering God in the midst of darkness. But given its use in explicitly Christian theology, just what or whom are we seeing when we behold this light? That is, how can we think through this image in trinitarian terms? There is, to be sure, plenty of biblical support for the idea that the image is best focused on the person of the Son. In chapter 3, we will explore these texts—and the particular importance of the Johannine material to this end. There are also good reasons for thinking first and foremost of the person of the Holy Spirit, not least of which is the prominent place that illumination holds among the works of the Spirit. We will consider more along these lines in chapter 5.

But what about God the Father? On the one hand, Christians have understandably been hesitant to speak of the direct perception of God the Father. The recognition of the incapacity of finite creatures to see the transcendent God is reflected in Israel’s faith practices, perhaps best crystallized in the commandment against graven images. Caution about depicting God the Father in Christian iconography—rooted largely in the care with which the Seventh Ecumenical Council expressed the christological basis of iconography—is an echo of the same instinct. The most direct access we have to apprehension of God the Father is through the Son’s incarnation in Jesus. One thinks immediately, for example, of Jesus’s reply to Philip in John 14:9: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” On the other hand, that very claim, grounded in Jesus’s insistence that “the Father is in me” (v. 10), suggests that the Father is not entirely hidden from our perception. The incarnate Son is not to be thought of as a mask that covers the true face of the Father, but rather the Son reflects the likeness of t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: God the Father
• Chapter 2: Creation
• Chapter 3: Jesus
• Chapter 4: Salvation
• Chapter 5: The Holy Spirit
• Chapter 6: Church
• Chapter 7: Christian Hope
• Afterword
• Bibliography