Christ whose glory (4)
Triumph o'er the shades of night;
The association of the powers of evil with darkness and night is found
frequently in the NT; thus Romans 13:12 says "the night is far gone, the
day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the
armour of light." 1 Thessalonians 5:4-5 has, "But you are not in darkness,
brethren, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all sons
of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness." A
characteristic of heaven is that "there will be no night there" (Rev. 21:25).
This contrast of light and darkness is celebrated most vividly at the Easter
Vigil, which begins in darkness on Easter Eve. The Paschal Candle is lit,
piercing the darkness; all those present have candles, which are lit from
the Paschal Candle, so that the church becomes a blaze of light. The
symbolism is of Christ rising from the dead, scattering the powers of
darkness and bringing new light to the world. Wesley's church would not
have celebrated the Easter Vigil, but the association of light with
resurrection would have been perfectly familiar to him through many
scriptural texts, among them Ephesians 5:8-14,
"for once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as
children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and
right and true), and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no
part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it
is a shame even to speak ot the things that they do in secret; but when
anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible, for anything that
becomes visible is light. Therefore it is said, 'Awake, O sleeper, and
arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.'"
This frequent contrasting of light and darkness may strike one as a form of
dualism, but actually it is not. Only one principle is involved, that of
light. There is no such "thing" as darkness; it is merely absence of
light. You can switch on the light, but you cannot switch on the darkness;
only switch off, or exclude, the light. Darkness, unlike light, has no
"being", no "substance". We recognise the whimsy of Peter Pan losing his
shadow and having it sewn on again by Wendy precisely because we know that
shadows are not like that; they are merely the result of an obstruction to
the light. Much the same could be said of heat and cold: there is no such
"thing" as cold, only absence of heat. There is such a thing as "absolute
zero", when there is no heat present at all.
Darkness serves very well then as a symbol for the Christian view of evil,
which is, basically, that it does not "exist". This may seem a very strange
assertion, when we see so much evil around us; but Christians do not
believe in any real principle of evil. There is in Christian theology no
evil god opposed to the good god. As the Nicene Creed states "We believe
in one God [not two gods] . . . creator of heaven and and earth, and of all
that is, visible and invisible." If it exists, God created it. If God did
not create it, it does not exist; and yet, in a sense, it may still be
"there". God did not create darkness or shadows; they are simply spaces
where his creation, light, does not penetrate.
Darkness, like cold, can however be deadly. Evil, though it may not exist,
can do us a great deal of harm. It is all very well to say that evil does
not exist, but how then can we talk about it harming us? Theologians have a
fancy word, "meontic" to describe evil; it derives from Greek "me on", "not
being".
John Macquarrie, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford, states the
matter as follows in his "Principles of Christian Theology":
"In denying to evil any kind of positive being of its own, we likewise turn
away from any ultimate dualism. There is a dualism of sorts between Being
and nothing, but not an ultimate dualism, since we do not have two positive
principles opposed to each other. Since the Christian faith rejects an
ultimate dualism . . . then it would seem that a Christian view of evil must
represent it as negation, as 'privatio boni' [taking away of good]. This is
the view to which St. Augustine came after having passed through a
Manichaean phase in which he had accepted that evil expresses a distinct
will in the universe, contrary to that of God; but the negative character
of evil had already been succinctly expressed by Christian writers, notably
by St. Athanasius, who wrote: 'What is evil is not, but what is good is.'
[De Incarnatione iv, 5].
"To understand this statement, however, we have to set it in the context of
St. Athanasius' view of creation. Evil is not simply to be identified with
nothing or what is not, for presumably this nothing is neutral and without
any characteristics at all, either good or evil. As St. Athanasius
understands the matter, evil is rather 'lapsing into nothing' or 'ceasing to
be' (both of these expressions translate his word 'phthora' which is a
standing threat to all created beings. these beings have been created out
of nothing, and it is possible for them to slip back into nothing or to
advance into the potentialities for being which belong to them. Evil is
this slipping back toward nothing, a reversal and defeat of the creative
process."
(John Macquarrie, "Principles of Christian Theology", London, Revised
Edition 1977 p. 255)
Enough!
The Supple Doctor.
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