The Light Shines in the Darkness

Scripture assures us that “God is Light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). He's “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17). The Psalmist says God is “clothed with splendor and majesty, covering [himself] with light as with a garment” (Psalm 104:2), while Paul adds that God “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16). In his very eternity and essence, God is Light. But in his eternity and essence, we also meet one whom the Church describes as “Light from Light, true God from true God.”¹ We hear of “the eternal generation of uncreated Light from unbegotten Light.”² And this is God's eternal Word, his only-begotten Son, “the True Light” with whom God dwells in that unapproachable light (John 1:9). So eternally, as the Father looks on the Son in the Spirit, and as the Son looks back in the Spirit on the Father, eternally they see each other as the True Light  and see that they are Perfectly Good! “Light is beautiful in itself,” and of no light is that truer than the Eternal Light which is God, the inspiration for all light.³

Before anything else, then, when we read “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3), we think of “God's own light,” the “pre-existent light,” “a primordial divine brilliance” that's now “made perceptible in the created world.”⁴ Here, now, by and through and with his Word which is Light from Light, God reveals his Eternal Light to his creation in time, from the beginning, for “light is the beginning of creation.”⁵ God is Light, because God is Truth and Goodness and Beauty; God is Light, because God is in himself perfectly clear, perfectly simple, perfectly pure; and God, as Light, manifests himself to his creation. It's the first act of revelation.

And in his light, creation discovers light. Jewish tradition had it that “on the first day, he created... all of the spirits which minister before him.”⁶ Christians throughout the ages debated exactly when angels were invented, but nobody seems to think the angels showed up after God said 'Let there be light' and there was light. After all, angels could be defined as “secondary spiritual lights that possess their illumination from the First Light that has no beginning.”⁷ So God “made for himself hosts of glorious beings in the high place..., a chamber of light with children of light who delighted within..., and there was light, and the hosts were moved to shout out.”⁸

But no sooner were they created in the light than, the very next instant, they were given a choice: either they could turn themselves fully to God and receive a fulfillment beyond themselves by grace, or they could try to dig up a fulfillment for themselves out of their own nature, as if they were lights in themselves.⁹ Would they thrive best supernaturally or naturally? Choosing the first option would be an act of love – love for God, love that takes them out beyond the limits of themselves. And most did that. They were “light that had turned back to [God],” and so God gave them “a confirmation of their blessedness,” instantly granting them eternal life in the light of God – they came to see God as God really is, and with that beatific vision, they could never fall.¹⁰ “Thus the angels, illumined by the Light that created them, themselves became light.”¹¹

On the other hand, the angels – in that first instant after their creation – could have chosen to react by turning to themselves to seek their fulfillment. That would not have been love for God. It would have been pride. And some of these spiritual creatures took that path. One instigating angel, followed by a vast number of others, freely and pridefully chose not to abide in God's Light, but to try to light their own way naturally instead.¹² And when an angel chooses anything, there's no reverse course, only full-speed-ahead. Confirmed in their rebellion, they instantly turned from the First Light which is God, and so became darkness. “Then the separation of the holy and the unclean angels took place where Scripture says: 'And God separated the light from the darkness' [Genesis 1:4].”¹³ For, as Paul asked, “what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14).

Speaking of darkness, when it comes to the material creation that popped into being at God's command, we last Sunday discovered that there were three problems that needed to be ironed out with this raw world as it initially existed: the darkness, the inhospitability (tohu, 'formless'), and the vacancy (bohu, 'void'). And the whole story of creation Genesis 1 tells is, from here on out, all about how God goes about remedying those characteristics of the raw world.

So to begin, “the Creator of all things by his word instantly put the gracious gift of light in the world.”¹⁴ God just willed that the initial darkness be fixed. So suddenly, with God's wish being his command, there was light, just as he wanted. Now, to be honest, we even today don't totally get what light is. On the one hand, light is an electromagnetic wave, a propagating disturbance that oscillates the fields it passes through. So each wave of light has a wavelength, a distance over which it repeats, the inverse of which is its frequency. What we see as light is electromagnetic waves with wavelengths between 380 and 750 nanometers. Radio waves are the same kind of thing as the light we see, the only difference being they've got much longer wavelengths and hence lower frequencies. And X-rays are the same thing, too, just on the other side – shorter wavelengths, higher frequencies. On the other hand, electromagnetic interactions are carried by particles called photons. These are some of the most basic particles there are. A photon isn't built of anything, doesn't weigh anything. Nothing's faster. And any time a particle drops to a lower energy level, it rids itself of that excess energy by throwing off a photon or two.

In the standard scientific model of the early universe, a whole lot happened before the universe's first second had wrapped up. The first tiny particles of matter and antimatter kept wiping each other out, with surviving matter barely a billionth of what could've been, what had been. Everything else went kaboom, releasing photons each time they did. Before that first second was up, scientists think, it was literally a trillion degrees out there everywhere; and not only that, but the entire universe was “aglow with an unimaginable brilliance.”¹⁵ After all, for every proton or neutron that managed to form, there were about ten billion photons.¹⁶ So in every direction you'd have “seen only a glowing fog... bright as the surface of the sun.”¹⁷ And that stayed the case, scientists say, for hundreds of thousands of years, until finally energy levels dropped enough to let actual atoms survive. They cleared the way to let the light pass through, dispersing it and bringing about a 'cosmic dark age' until the first stars.¹⁸ Or, to put all that more simply: “There was evening, and there was morning: one day” (Genesis 1:5). But even so, the stretched-out remainder of the original light of creation's dawn is still out there, faintly soaking the entire universe, even right here. Scientists found it in '64 and called it cosmic microwave background radiation – the light of creation running wild forever.¹⁹

As much as we know, or think we know, “light is simultaneously familiar and mysterious.”²⁰ Which, when you think about it, is pretty fitting, if the light all around us points us to the God who is also always simultaneously familiar and mysterious. We struggle to wrap our minds around how light is both particle and wave, without there being a contradiction; we struggle to wrap our minds around how Eternal Light is three persons in one God, without a contradiction. But he engages us, shines on us, becomes intimately familiar with us.  And “it is this God alone who made light from darkness, who brought light out of his treasuries,”²¹ who “uncovers the deeps out of darkness and brings deep darkness to light” (Job 12:22).

And so God “has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness” (Job 26:10). To this day, the alternation of light and dark keeps going, and for the kind of existence we live, both times of light and times of dark are essential. Up in the Arctic Circle, they deal with conditions called midnight sun, where during the summer the sun never quite sets below the horizon, and polar night, where during winter the sun never quite rises above the horizon. The midnight sun's constant light can provoke anxiety, restlessness, inability to sleep, to the point where the most violent suicides in Greenland happen in summer.²² Similarly, people who've lived in total darkness for extended periods risk messing with mood and metabolism, dealing with hallucinations, even strokes.²³ As one early Christian summed it up, the light of day “assists humans with work and industry, brings visible things to their attention, and prompts them to sing the praises of their Maker,” while the dark of night “gives rest and renewal, and relieves the weariness caused by labor.”²⁴

Early readers of Genesis commented especially on how light is a prerequisite for recognizing beauty.²⁵ If you doubt it, tour an art museum with a blindfold on, and see how impressed you are. We might add that without the gift of light, none of the forms of life we're familiar with can grow. Extinguish all light, and soon you won't have plants; and when you don't have plants, you won't have animals, and you won't have me and you. In all these things we take in to survive, we're eating the fruit of light, and that light becomes our life.

In a similar way, down through the ages, the Eternal Word of God continued to be, like John says, “the True Light who gives light to everyone” (John 1:9). In all human culture, wherever there's ever been anything true and good, any beauty or life anywhere, that light comes from the True Light. That's why, even in the most depraved societies and most disturbed religions, there are always traces of light – and some early evangelists appealed to these lights to remind pagans of the True Light, and held that those who'd lived and died reasonably in the light they had were thereby following the True Light, and hence Christians without knowing it.²⁶

But in a very special way, though giving light to everyone, the True Light called himself “the Light of Israel” (Isaiah 10:17). For they, as the chosen people to whom he revealed himself personally, could profess him by name as “my light and my salvation” (Psalm 27:1), and say: “With you is the fountain of life: in your light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9). They could find no higher blessing than to wish the LORD's face to graciously shine on you (Numbers 6:25). Theirs was a spirituality of striving to “walk before God in the light of life” (Psalm 56:13), and that meant living by his lawful word, “for the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light” (Proverbs 6:23), “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). And “the path of the righteous” who follow it is “like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day” (Proverbs 4:18).

Israel was chosen for a purpose: to be “a light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6). And they were promised that “if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness” (Isaiah 58:10), “and nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising” (Isaiah 60:3). But although they postured as “a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness” (Romans 2:19), the recurring scandal of their sins meant that they failed to be much light to the nations. Yet the righteous among them never stopped praying to God, “Send forth your Light and your Truth!” (Psalm 43:3).

Then, nine months after the Spirit of God hovered over Mary's womb (Luke 1:35; cf. Genesis 1:2), “those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone..., for to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:2,6). That was when “the True Light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world” (John 1:9). The True Light had become flesh. “I have come into this world as Light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (John 12:46). “As long as I am in the world, I am the Light of the World” (John 9:5). “While you have the Light, believe in the Light, that you may become sons of light” (John 12:36). But “this is the judgment: the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil” (John 3:19). “We must work the works of the One who sent me while it is day,” Jesus said, because soon “night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4).

For when Christ was crucified, “there was darkness over all the land” (Mark 15:33). Yet even from the cross or tomb, Jesus could've prayed the words of Micah: “When I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me.... He will bring me out to the light” (Micah 7:8-9). And so, just as light was born on day one, so “the first day of the week” found Jesus no longer in death's darkness (Luke 24:1). On Easter morning, it became clear just how “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5)! And “by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light” to the whole world (Acts 26:23).

After the Light had risen to heaven, a persecutor of the Light was on the road to Damascus, when he “saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me,” he said (Acts 26:13), and in that moment, “God, who said 'Let light shine out of darkness,' shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). The voice from this glorious face tasked Paul's with a mission: to go “turn [people] from darkness to light” (Acts 26:18), much as the other apostles were doing. But until Paul was at the brink of baptism, “darkness fell on him” (Acts 13:11), illustrating his spiritual condition until that light from above would make him new (Acts 9:18).

And what came to Paul on the Damascus Road comes to you, too. “At one time you were darkness,” he says, “but now you are light in the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8), when “God supplied the Spirit to the water as... a baptismal font, and immediately thereafter commanded, 'Let there be the light of illumination,'”²⁷ because the Spirit there infuses a gift of a supernatural faith, and “faith is the first light of the soul.”²⁸ “Delivered from the domain of darkness” (Colossians 1:13), now “you shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15), “for you are all sons of light, sons of the day..., not of the night or of darkness” (1 Thessalonians 5:5). And so the Church is now “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14), “chosen... that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). So “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them..., for anything that becomes visible is light” (Ephesians 5:11,14). “If we say we have fellowship with [God] while we walk in darkness, we lie” (1 John 1:6). Instead, “walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true” (Ephesians 5:8-9), and “if we walk in the light as [God] is in the light..., the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). “Let your light shine before others,” then, “that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

And now “the night is far gone, the day is at hand” (Romans 13:12) – “the darkness is passing away, and the True Light is already shining” (1 John 2:8) – for “when the Lord comes” again, he “will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness” (1 Corinthians 4:5). Then, as in bright heaven above, you'll be welcomed to “share the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:12). “You who have experienced pain: Fear not! For there shall be a healing medicine for you: a bright light shall enlighten you, and a voice of rest you shall hear from heaven.”²⁹ To the children of light will then come true the ancient promise that “the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory” (Isaiah 60:19). At last “night will be no more,” having hit the end of its usefulness, “for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5). That's how the Bible ends, much as it began: with the Eternal Light being all in all, shining as one eternal day – only, this time, with us basking in it in perfect bliss, made brilliant to gaze forever on the True Light and radiate his own glory!

See, that's what this has promised from the beginning. Who knew such familiar verses held so much revelation, so much guidance, so much unsurpassed hope?  In hearing “Let there be light,” the whole mystery of salvation has been set in motion!

We'll end today with this blessing from St. Basil: “May the Father of the True Light, who has decked the day with the heavenly light..., who has made ready the peace of the future age with a spiritual and never-ending light, illumine your hearts in a knowledge of the truth, and preserve your life without offense, allowing you to walk becomingly as in the day, in order that you may shine forth... in the splendor of the saints for my exultation in the Day of Christ – to whom be glory and power forever! Amen.”³⁰

Prayer
Bright Father of All Lights, you who are Eternal Light begetting Light, you who have created lights spiritual and physical: Send forth your Spirit of light and truth in us today!  Task your angels of light, we beg, with our guidance and protection, and brighten and intensify them in their holy endeavors in your service.  Shine your own great light onto our hearts from above, and fill our whole selves, soul and body, with your light.  Make us children of light, entirely light in you, as your angels above are light in your light.  Let us see all light in this world around us by your light from above.  Let us walk in the light as you are in the light; and as we walk with you in light, lead us to your full light eternal.  We ask this only in the name of the True Light who came into the world for us and for our salvation, who is truly Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the brilliant unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever.  Amen.

1  Nicene Creed (fourth century).

2  Robert Grosseteste, Hexaemeron 1.3.3, in C. F. J. Martin, tr., Robert Grosseteste: On the Six Days of Creation (Oxford University Press, 1996), 50.

3  Robert Grosseteste, Hexaemeron 2.10.4, in C. F. J. Martin, tr., Robert Grosseteste: On the Six Days of Creation (Oxford University Press, 1996), 99.

4  Mark S. Smith, The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 (Fortress Press, 2009), 74, 78.

5  Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 2.11 (second century), in Robert M. Grant, tr., Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum (Oxford University Press, 1970), 41.

6  Jubilees 2:2 (second century BC), in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:55.

7  John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith 17 (eighth century), in Popular Patristics Series 39:100.

8  Jacob of Serugh, Homily 71.179, 250, 466 (sixth century), in Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 27:28, 36, 56.

9  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.62, aa.1-2 (thirteenth century), in St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 9:219-221.

10  Robert Grosseteste, Hexaemeron 2.7.2, in C. F. J. Martin, tr., Robert Grosseteste: On the Six Days of Creation (Oxford University Press, 1996), 95.

11  Augustine of Hippo, City of God 11.9 (fifth century), in The Works of St. Augustine I/7:10.

12  John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith 18 (eighth century), in Popular Patristics Series 39:102-103; Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.63, aa.3-6 (thirteenth century), in St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 9:257-267.

13  Augustine of Hippo, City of God 11.19 (fifth century), in The Works of St. Augustine I/7:18.

14  Basil of Caesarea, Hexaemeron 2.6 (fourth century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 46:32.

15  Neil Degrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith, Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution (W. W. Norton, 2004), 53.

16  Helmut Satz, Before Time Began: The Big Bang and the Emerging Universe (Oxford University Press, 2017), 69.

17  Neil Degrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith, Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution (W. W. Norton, 2004), 53.

18  William P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder (Oxford University Press, 2010), 58.

19  Helmut Satz, Before Time Began: The Big Bang and the Emerging Universe (Oxford University Press, 2017), 77.

20  Steven S. Andrews, Light and Waves: A Conceptual Exploration of Physics (Springer, 2023), v.

21  Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 1.6 (second century), in Robert M. Grant, tr., Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford University Press, 1970), 9.

22  See, e.g., “Midnight Sun Too Much for Some,” ABC Science, 11 May 2009, <https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/05/11/2566391.htm>.

23  See, e.g., Kerry J. Byrne, “Cave-Dwellers Emerge After 40 Days in Darkness for Scientific Study,” New York Post, 24 April 2021, <https://nypost.com/2021/04/24/cave-dwellers-emerge-after-40-days-in-darkness-for-research/>; “How a Week in Darkness Really Impacts Your Health...,” Daily Mail, 14 April 2023, <https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11972593/How-week-complete-darkness-REALLY-impacts-health.html>.

24  Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 7.1 (fifth century), in Library of Early Christianity 1:21.

25  Ambrose of Milan, Hexaemeron 1.9 §33 (fourth century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 42:38.

26  Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 46.2-4; 2 Apology 13.2-5, in Denis Minns and Paul Parvis, trs., Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford University Press, 2009), 201, 321.

27  Anastasius of Sinai, Hexaemeron 1.11.3 (eighth century), in Orientala Christiana Analecta 278:41.

28  Peter Damian, Letter 49.7 (eleventh century), in Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation 2:276.

29  Epistle of Enoch (first century BC), at 1 Enoch 96:3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:76-77.

30  Basil of Caesarea, Hexaemeron 2.8 (fourth century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 46:35-36.