Light (2) in the darkness
jay_emm
Kerygmania Host
in Kerygmania
Context:
The general theme of light was bought up, as being an interesting topic. We rapidly decided it was a massive topic and needed to split it up. @Jengie Jon provided some topics and as it's the run up to Easter.
So this is week '2', it's Ash Wednesday which seemed to fit a more somber theme (the thread will still be here for Good Friday, and the first thread is still active).
No one's jumped in yet.
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I'd picked this topic for this week because Darkness is 'obviously' used for sin, or separation from God. But during the week I did question it.
So is it actually the case?
Psalm 139 has "Surely the darkness will hide me...even the darkness will not be dark to you". Which, even if you take it as trying to sinfully hide, the darkness is only a tool, and a failing one.
Exodus 20, "Moses approaches the thick darkness where God was" for the commandments.
And Psalm 18 after the psalmist calls for help, God comes down with the darkness of a thunderstorm. "He made Darkness his covering".
So here we see Darkness being used as a sign of God's presence.
Isaiah 9 (and quoted by Matthew) has the people walking in Darkness seeing a great Light. People living in darkness sounds a bit penitental, maybe.
A mildly annoying thing for the thread is the more familiar darkness passages naturally contrast with the great Light passages I want to be referenced later (although if that is the way the thread goes, so be it).
The general theme of light was bought up, as being an interesting topic. We rapidly decided it was a massive topic and needed to split it up. @Jengie Jon provided some topics and as it's the run up to Easter.
So this is week '2', it's Ash Wednesday which seemed to fit a more somber theme (the thread will still be here for Good Friday, and the first thread is still active).
No one's jumped in yet.
---
I'd picked this topic for this week because Darkness is 'obviously' used for sin, or separation from God. But during the week I did question it.
So is it actually the case?
Psalm 139 has "Surely the darkness will hide me...even the darkness will not be dark to you". Which, even if you take it as trying to sinfully hide, the darkness is only a tool, and a failing one.
Exodus 20, "Moses approaches the thick darkness where God was" for the commandments.
And Psalm 18 after the psalmist calls for help, God comes down with the darkness of a thunderstorm. "He made Darkness his covering".
So here we see Darkness being used as a sign of God's presence.
Isaiah 9 (and quoted by Matthew) has the people walking in Darkness seeing a great Light. People living in darkness sounds a bit penitental, maybe.
A mildly annoying thing for the thread is the more familiar darkness passages naturally contrast with the great Light passages I want to be referenced later (although if that is the way the thread goes, so be it).
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Comments
It sounded a good idea and I was wondering when someone would get the ball rolling.
I can see the difficulties it poses, though, as you have identified. It may also lead to contrasts or cross-references to the first thread.
I'm not sure I have any wise words to offer but I do have questions.
On Psalm 139, the idea that darkness is not actually dark to God appears to anticipate or echo (pre-echo?) the image in John's Gospel about Light coming into the world and the darkness not being able to 'overcome' it.
Darkness is the absence of light.
Surely if God is Light - 'and in him is no darkness at all' - then it is as though the darkness does not exist. God can 'see' or cut right through it, to speak anthropomorphically.
And of course I am not saying that God consists of light-waves and particles any more than if we say 'God is love' that the Deity is some kind of warm fluffy feeling we draw out at Christmas or on St Valentine's Day.
There are some scarily 'dark' passages in the OT. Exodus 20 as you say. Then there's the 'dreadful and great darkness' that accompanies the establishment of the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15:12.
This sounds counter-intuitive given the apparent predominance of light imagery elsewhere in the scriptures.
But it's unrealistic to expect a single 'authorial' voice as it were and what we might call editorial consistency... contra certain types of fundamentalist.
So what's going on?
Why the darkness passages as well as the light?
Well, I suppose a simple answer might be that whatever else they tell us these passages indicate that God is still God whether it is light or dark, day or night - metaphorically speaking.
God is essentially 'unknowable' unless or until he 'makes himself known' - hence the 'cloud of unknowing' as an image for that.
Obscurity or darkness are obvious images to use for things that are mysterious or beyond our ken.
What other characteristics does darkness have other than being dark?
I
I suspect that's something that will vary between theological light&dark, poetical light&dark, modern understanding and ancient understanding.
Thunderstorms are oppressively dark, I can kind of imagine it being beyond ansence of light to being it's own thing.