''LIGHT FROM LIGHT'', A NICENE PHRASE AND ITS USE IN THE EARLY CHURCH

 

 Dr Maria Munkholt Christensen,  research fellow in the Faculty of Protestant Theology, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, and a member of the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches.The Ecumenical Review published by  World Council of Churches, Volume75, Issue2 April 2023 Pages 249-262.

Abstract

This article examines the phrase “light from light” in the 4th-century Nicene and Nicene-Constantinopolitan creeds. The article begins by presenting the earliest use of light as a metaphor for Christ and his agency, as well as examples of similar language outside “orthodox” Christianity. It goes on to examine the meaning and use of “light from light” in the orthodox creeds and the debates that accompanied them before discussing the more popular use of “light from light” in Late antiquity/Byzantine piety. The article concludes by considering the contemporary potential in the formulation “light from light.”

The 4th-century Nicene and Nicene-Constantinopolitan creeds have, for their time, an innovative vocabulary that was introduced into the Christian tradition to settle specific intellectual debates concerning trinitarian theology. The most famous and controversial concept was “consubstantial” (ὁμοούσιος), which was used to describe God the Son in relation to God the Father. According to the Nicene faith, the two are consubstantial, that is to say, they are “of the same substance/essence.” Other formulations in the creeds served a similar ontological purpose of emphasizing not the likeness or the similarity but the sameness of Father and Son in several regards. However, whereas “consubstantial” was a relatively foreign element coming into Christian vocabulary, other phrases in the creeds had a more familiar biblical and poetical ring to them. One of these formulations is the description of the Son as “light from light” (φῶς ἐκ φωτός); this formulation is the focus of this study.

Today, many or even most people may not be familiar with the “Arian controversy,” and many not even be familiar with the orthodox creeds that resulted from it. If they reflect on the Nicene faith today, they might not understand that these formulations originally arose as part of what at that time was a very sophisticated debate. Today, people tend to think of the world in a radically different way. For modern human beings, the main issue might be to come to terms with a concept of God or the divine, not to speak of the incarnation that let us glimpse the “light from light.” Thus, in the study document Confessing the One Faith, produced by the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches, the authors ponder how people today may interpret “light from light”: “Because of its several biblical references Christians associate the phrase ‘light from light’ in the Creed also with their experience that they have found in Jesus an illumination and orientation for their lives in the ‘darkness’ of the world. In Jesus who is the light of the world (John 8:12), the Creator and Redeemer is present and active, who separates the light from the darkness, saying ‘let there be light’ (Gen. 1:3).”1

This article is organized into three parts. The first presents the earliest use of light as a metaphor for Christ and his agency, as well as examples of similar language outside of “orthodox” Christianity; the second investigates the meaning and use of “light from light” in the orthodox creeds and the related debates; and the last part sheds light on a more popular use of “light from light” in Late Antiquity/Byzantine piety. The conclusion considers the contemporary potential in the formulation “light from light.” The examples below regarding the meaning and use of “light from light” do not exhaust the available source material of the credal history, but they are representative of the use of “light from light” in early orthodox theology as well as in popular piety. The aim is to show the development and varied use of “light from light.” We can find the formulation in intellectual and philosophical reflections on God's being but can also find “light from light” in practical use as a direct address to God, with a prayer for protection.

1 Use of the Metaphor of Light before the Council of Nicaea 325

Using a metaphor of light to describe God and divine interaction with the world was not an innovation of the “318 fathers,” who, as tradition has it, met in Nicaea in the year 325 to settle disputes on various topics. The idea of describing God and God's being as light is a profoundly biblical notion that can also be found in Platonic philosophy and in so-called Gnostic theology; both of these traditions of thought existed in the proximity of the orthodox Christian councils. Here I refer to “light” as a metaphor for God's being, although in the texts we shall encounter, “light” is more than a metaphor: it is a symbol, an analogy, and a divine reality, that is to say, at the very least, an ontological metaphor.

1.1 Examples from the Bible

One of the most famous biblical sayings that identify divinity and light is found in John 8:12, where Jesus gave, as one of his seven Johannine “I am” designations, the following statement: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”2 In Hebrews 1:3, we find a statement which in thought, if not in wording, is even closer to the later Nicene description “light from light.” In Hebrews, Jesus Christ (the Son) is described as a “radiance of God's glory.” The full quotation found at the very opening of the Letter to the Hebrews is “The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”3 The author thus underlines from the opening statements of the letter that the Son comes from God directly as a “radiance” (ἀπαύγασμα) and reveals God's being. Similarly, the Wisdom of Solomon from the mid-1st century spoke about God's Wisdom as “radiance” and a mirror or image of God: “For she [Wisdom] is the radiance of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness.”4 Both Hebrews and Wisdom of Solomon use the concept of “radiance” to describe the close similarity between God the Father and God the Son as well as to underline the revelatory character of the Son. Nonetheless, the idea of “radiance” leaves a certain space for interpretation. The use of the word “radiance” to describe Christ thus does not fully exclude a subordinator understanding of the Son (the emitted radiance) in relation to the Father (the source of light). That particular interpretation of the Son's being became increasingly intolerable to the orthodox church.

1.2 Gnostic and Neoplatonic examples

In the 2nd-century “Gnostic” Apocryphon of John, a Coptic text, we encounter a peculiar cosmology. In the narrative, different agents take part in the creation of the world and in the begetting of the Son of God. Elements familiar to the Christian tradition are present, namely a “father of pure light,” about whom it is said, “He begot a spark of light with a light resembling blessedness.” However, immediately after describing this divine “begetting,” the author of the Apocryphon goes on to underline that the created light is not as great as the creator. The author compares the begotten light with the creator and states: “he does not equal his greatness.”5 The text continues to describe the spark of light: “This was the only-begotten One of the Mother-Father who had come forth, he is his only offspring, the only-begotten One of the Father, the pure Light.”6 Obviously, there are strong similarities with more mainstream Christian ideas of the only-begotten Son resembling a spark of light. The Apocryphon of John gives the impression that in the context of so-called Gnostic theology, it was not the existence of the divine in itself that was a provocation for the sound mind in antiquity. The unimaginable was, rather, the idea that the divine could be present in the world without losing some of its divine quality. In fact, already before the controversies of the 4th century, Clement of Alexandria had defended the full divine reality of Christ in opposition to such Gnostic theories about the Son's inherent inferiority. Stressing Christ's unchangeable nature of light, Clement wrote: “For on high, too, he was Light and that which was manifest in the flesh and appeared here is not later than that above nor was it curtailed . . . But he was the Omnipresent, and is with the Father, even when here, for he was the Father's Power.”7 Rowan Williams comments on this: “The light which is seen in the incarnate Christ at his transfiguration is not a transient and created phenomenon, not a reduction or copy of his eternal glory, but the same reality, the light of the Father's eternal dunamis which is the eternal Son.”8 Clement is thus an example that early on, there were very divergent ways of describing the nature of God's only-begotten Son. Posterity labelled some of these traditions “Gnostic,” some as “Arian,” others as “(proto-)orthodox,” and so on.

The Platonic tradition ran as a dominant philosophical current through Late Antiquity, underlining especially the radical difference between the Sublime and the physical world, where the divine can be encountered only to a certain degree. Already, the 3rd-century Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus used the exact formulation “light from light,” but in contexts in which he underlined the subordinate character of some souls and the creation as such.9 Furthermore, he characterized “The Sublime” or “the One” as unmoved but creating:

How did it [the second after the One] come to be then, and what are we to think of as surrounding the One in its repose? It must be a radiation from it while it remains unchanged, like the bright light of the sun which, so to speak, runs round it, springing from it continually while it remains unchanged.10

Plotinus pondered: “And all things when they come to perfection produce; the One is always perfect and therefore produces everlastingly; and its product is less than itself.”11 Rowan Williams has characterized this intrinsic division between the Supreme and its manifestations in the following way: “During the third century those whom modern scholars call ‘neoplatonists’ increasingly insisted on the transcendence of the One over all other things and developed accounts of participation in which lower realms of being can only paradoxically image features of higher realms: they represent the character of the activity of those higher realms but not their essence.”12 In other words, in dominant streams of thought, developing within and around Christianity, we find a similar vocabulary (God as light that creates light), but not an equal theology (the light created is explicitly described as minor and clearly subordinated in relation to the Father and creator).

1.3 Arius and the “Ario-maniacs”

At the dawn of the 4th century, the Christian church in the Roman Empire was in many ways still coming into being. It had long been preoccupied with pressure from the surrounding society. The church had not yet defined how the Son of God ought to be described in an orthodox fashion. Disputes ensued around the year 318, when the presbyter Arius, and with him many from within the church's own ranks, propounded a theology according to which the Son was markedly subordinated to the Father. These controversies within the church led to the two first ecumenical councils of Christian history (the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Constantinople in 381) and to the Nicene and Nicene-Constantinopolitan creeds. Within a century, orthodox faith thus came to be defined by the church, but the road to this clarification was filled with challenges.

From the beginning of the so-called Arian controversy, there were various opinions which can be difficult to distinguish precisely: there were Lucianists, Eusebians, and the Ario-maniacs (as bishop Athanasius pejoratively labelled the Arians). With time, many further divisions evolved. Arius, with his opinion that there was a time when the Son was not, became the personification of the whole controversy, an archetypical foe of orthodox theology. Few of Arius’ own writings have survived, but interestingly, his main opponent, Athanasius of Alexandria, transmitted part of Arius’ Thalia (Banquet), in which we happen to encounter the light metaphor. In Thalia, Arius summarized his faith about the Son (according to Athanasius):

So the Son, not existing [eternally] (since he came into being by the Father's will),

Is God the Only-begotten . . .

“Wisdom” came into existence as Wisdom by the will of the God who is wise,

And so it is thought of in countless manifestations, spirit, power, wisdom, God's glory, truth, image, and Word.

You should understand that he is thought of as radiance and light.

The Higher One is able to beget an equal to the Son,

But not one more renowned, higher or greater than he.

By God's will the Son is such as he is . . . 15

In this pre-Nicene version of Arian theology, we see that Arius used the biblical language of radiance and light (ἀπαύγασμα καὶ φῶς) to define the Son, while at the same time not defining the Son as co-eternal or equal with the Father.

It is obvious that the Late Antiquity period, which is the formative phase of much Christian doctrinal thinking, was dominated by metaphors involving light. Clearly, the question was not whether this metaphor was appropriate for God but rather which qualities of light were suitable to describe God's nature and engagement with the world. Describing the Son as a radiance could be a way to underline the close proximity of the Son to the Father, but likewise it could be used to distinguish the Father as primary from the Son as someone minor and secondary. The orthodox theologians could obviously not accept the language of the Son as “radiance” in the authoritative creeds. At least, we can note that it is a different formulation altogether that we find in the orthodox creeds.

2 “Light from Light” in the Nicene Tradition

The first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 famously agreed on the Nicene Creed, including its definition of “the Son of God.” This article of faith reads in part: “[We believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”16

In the context of the raging Arian controversy, the composers of the Nicene Creed wished to underline the close ontological connection between God the Father and God the Son. As mentioned, it was the word “consubstantial” (ὁμοούσιον) which caused the most immediate controversy. It stood the test of time, however, and was used also in the revised17 Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed from the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 381. A row of descriptions was mentioned in the Nicene Creed alongside “light from light” to further explain the being of the Son. Among these definitions, we find two more “X-from-X” formulae: God from God – light from light – true God from true God. Such X-from-X formulations were part of “the grammar of creeds” at the time. Just like “consubstantial,” so also “light from light” and “true God from true God” were included in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in 381. Its paragraph on “the only-begotten Son of God” reads in part: “[We believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”18

We can note a few modifications from one creed to the other. In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the pre-existence of the Son is underlined, as his existence “before all ages” as one of the first statements about the Son of God. Thereafter, two phrases follow which describe the nature of the Son in relation to God the Father, namely, the Son is “Light from Light” (φῶς ἐκ φωτός) and “true God from true God” (θεὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκ θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ).

“Light from light” was used to describe the Son's participation in the divine nature and existence of God. It was also for that reason that not all parties in the extensive “Arian Controversy” could accept the formulation. In between the two ecumenical councils and their authoritative creeds, several creeds were proposed from different parties. It is noteworthy that the so-called Homoian Creed of Niké from 359 dropped the wording “light from light” altogether.19 The Homoians are the designation of those who – as the Greek name “Homoian” suggests – believed that God the Father and God the Son were of a similar or like essence, but not of the same essence:

Homoians argued that the Son is “like” (homoios) the Father although distinct and ontologically inferior. They increasingly claimed to reject any explanation of the Father/Son relationship that used any form of “essence” terminology. This attempt to ban essence terminology was not an irenic move, but one which tried to rule out some readings of some traditional terminologies (such as describing the Son as ‘light from light’) in favour of a more strongly subordinationist picture.20

However, we also do encounter the formula “light from light” where we might not have expected it, including in The Second Creed of Sirmium, a Western Homoian Creed from 357.21 It reads:

No one is ignorant that it is catholic doctrine that there are two persons of Father and Son, and that the Father is greater, and the Son has been subordinated to the Father together with all things which the Father has subordinated to him [cf. 1 Cor 15:28]; and that the Father has no beginning, and is invisible, immortal, and impassible; but that the Son has been born from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, and that his generation, as was said previously, no one knows, except the Father alone . . .22

This somewhat surprising compilation of formula might indicate that certain formulations could be rendered with or without certain theological meanings, and the meaning of “light from light” could range from “essence from essence” to “emission from a source.” In other words, “light from light” could be understood as a parallel to “consubstantiality” but could also take on a vaguer meaning. Some theologians, however, made it very clear that they understood “Light from Light” as one way of praising the Son and underlining his “sameness” with the Father. Theodore of Mopsuestia felt an urge to underline the wide-reaching sameness of Father and Son in his explication of the Creed and expanded the row of “X-from-X” formulations:

one [is] his true Son, the only-begotten God Word, connatural, coeternal, consubstantial, the equal [of the Father], in nothing different from the Father, except in [not] being the Father of the only-begotten Son, true God from true God, Almighty from Almighty, Lord of all from Lord of all, light from light, unique from unique, perfect from perfect, complete from complete, who impassibly and eternally was begotten from the hypostasis of the Father, without being created; the support of all [cf. Col 1:14], the making and maintaining power, he to whose “kingdom there will be no end.” [Luke 1:33].23

Concerning trends in the development of orthodox credal language, we can conclude with Lewis Ayres: “Some of these trends emphasized the closeness between Father and Son and the Son's sharing of the Father's being by the deployment of unitarian language and with often strongly material analogies (e.g. the Son as light from light).”

3 Popular use of the Nicene “Light from Light”

As we have seen until now, it was theologians and office holders in the early church who decided on a certain vocabulary that would become (and remain) acceptable within orthodox Christianity. Eventually, this Nicene language also made it into liturgical books and into the celebration of the mass. As a part of the liturgy, the Nicene formulations became widespread.25 Interestingly, this language also made it into more popular expressions of Christian faith, in accordance with its original meaning, to a greater or lesser extent.

3.1 Life of Thecla

In Late Antiquity, at the time when the Arian Controversy was raging, the female martyr Thecla was a popular figure. She had been known at least since the Acts of Paul from the second century, in which she appeared as a companion of Paul. According to the story, she was about to and was willing to suffer martyrdom twice but was miraculously saved at the spot of her execution. In the centuries that followed, Thecla remained in vogue as a female saint, and in the 5th century, an unknown author of remarkable rhetorical skill decided to compose a lengthy biography and miracle collection about her based on the original story told in the Acts of Paul. Interestingly, the author did not shy away from an anachronistic feature in his text on Thecla, such as letting both Paul and Thecla preach Nicene theology, which had not yet been formulated in their reported lifetime. For instance, in a rather long speech, Thecla summarizes all that she has been taught by Paul and says: “For through you I have come to know God, the king of all, and his Son, the Only-begotten who reigns with the father and is Creator of all, and the Holy Spirit who reigns with the Father and the Son and sanctifies and perfects all, a consubstantial (ὁμοούσιον) Trinity of equal honor and status.”26

Already, this willingness to put the word “consubstantial” in the mouth of Thecla tells us that the Nicene theology quickly became dominant, even in more popular forms of literature, and was inscribed into Christian history for the future – and the past. Even a figure like Thecla, who was not as such a theologian but rather an ideal for a pious life, became fully Nicene in her biography. Also, the opening of the Life of Thecla, which in a few lines describes the Christian history leading up to her lifetime, is dominated by Nicene thinking. Thus, in Life of Thecla, Chapter 1, we read:

The Word of God was born from God and the Father from the beginning and from the time when he was the Father – for there was never a time when he was not the Father, being eternally with the Son and eternally abiding with each other, the Father with the Son, the Son with the Father, light with light, eternally living water with eternally living spring; and he was born and became incarnate from the holy Virgin Mary, eternally unwed, and he dwelled on earth for the salvation of the human race, which is why he became a human.27

Interesting for our topic is the slightly modified use of the Nicene formula “light from light,” here rendered as “light with light” (τὸ φῶς τῷ φωτί). If anything, the change of grammatical structure seems to underline still further the equality of Father and Son, even though the two surrounding descriptions of the divine relationship, Father-Son and water-spring, could be interpreted differently, if they were not found in the context of Nicene formulations. The ancient reader would probably not know that it was ahistorical that the adored Thecla in this particular text became a carrier of Nicene theology.

3.2 Justinian's Hexamillion inscription

On an inscription from the 6th century, we encounter again the Nicene formulation “light from light,” but this time taken out of its credal context. On a marble block from the Isthmus, the formulation serves in itself as an address in a prayer- or incantation-like text. The text, which is surrounded by crosses, reads: “✝ Light from Light, True God from True God guard the Emperor Justinian and his faithful servant Victorinus along with those who dwell in Greece according to the God who lives. ✝”28

This inscription was originally found on the Hexamillion Wall, which was a fortification of huge strategic value between the Western and Eastern Mediterranean, guarding the only land route onto the Peloponnese peninsula from mainland Greece.29 The Byzantine Emperor Justinian had a strong interest in fortifying this piece of land, and it was possibly he himself who ordered a marble block erected on this strategic spot to call on God to protect the land and people living there. Obviously, “Light from Light” was understood as a kind of name for God, a description so powerful that it could serve an apotropaic function of defence. William R. Caraher sees in the choice of wording a sign that liturgical language had become widespread in the late Roman/Byzantine Empire.30 Apart from making us aware of an extensive “liturgification”31 of Late Antiquity, the inscription reminds us of the close connection between the emperor, empire, and (Nicene) God in Late Antiquity Christianity.

3.3 A personal prayer for health

A final example of a rather mundane use of elevated Nicene language was found on a peculiar sheet of papyrus from the 6th century, which today has unfortunately been lost. However, in the late 19th century, Ulrich Wilken found and transcribed a prayer text written on this now lost piece of papyrus. Interestingly, the papyrus is in itself a small artefact, as it was folded into a tiny piece (2 x 1 cm) and had strings attached to it so it could be worn around the neck. It apparently served as an amulet, which was not unusual in Late Antiquity.32 In the text, decorated with crosses, we again encounter “Light from Light” being used to address God in prayer. A certain Silvanus asks God to keep him free of demonic influence and sickness. After the description of the request, the Lord's Prayer follows; toward the end, the text reads: “O light from light, true God, grant me, your servant, the light. St. Serenus, supplicate on my behalf, that I may be perfectly healthy.”33

Again, we can make a note of the Nicene ring to the address of the prayer. The text is not otherwise about trinitarian theology, so the address seems to be understood as an efficient invocation even without its original literary context. It is the God of the Nicene Creed who is being invoked to protect a person from sickness and demons in their everyday life. I suggest that the use of credal language in an individual prayer shows some kind of awareness and knowledge of the God that is invoked. In other words, one can consider if, even for a lay person, there was an experiential quality and not “only” theological knowledge embedded in the creed.34 However, of course, we cannot know what the otherwise anonymous Silvanus actually believed or thought about his amulet.

4 Conclusion

In this article, I have traced the early development and use of one of the Nicene descriptions of Jesus Christ, “light from light.” It is easy to ascertain that the formulation has its roots in the biblical texts (even though no direct use of this phrase can be found in the Bible); likewise, it is obvious that such a formulation was familiar to a Late Antiquity audience and as such was understandable at least semantically. Furthermore, we can conclude that the formulation soon became a relatively stable element of the Nicene tradition. “Light from light” was used regularly in parallel to “consubstantial” and “God from God.” In fact, there are many references to these formulations in patristic literature, which I have only very briefly touched upon here. Instead, I presented instances where “light from light” appears in more popular and everyday forms of Christian texts from Late Antiquity, such as in a hagiographical text, on a marble slab, and on a papyrus amulet. This brings us close – as close as we can come – to “ordinary” Christians in the early church, who from time to time had to engage with the creed. Apparently, “light from light” was seen, in itself, to hold a kind of power with the ability to protect. It tells us something about how “light from light” was understood, namely as not (only) an intellectual definition of God, but also as a powerful invocation of the God who is light from light.

For the ancient mindset, it was not primarily God or the divine as such that posed a problem or conundrum but rather the idea that the divine in its sublime essence became human. The default attitude in ancient religion and philosophy was to assume that the mediator of the divine had to be lesser and inferior in nature and essence. It was unthinkable for pagan intellectuals and for many who identified as Christians that Christ was “God from God.” Today, as I noted at the beginning, most modern people are not familiar with the Arian controversy and the creeds that resulted from it, and they think of the world in a very different way.

Nevertheless, we can always learn from history. Tradition has taught us that “light from light” is a positive and, ultimately, mysterious definition of God: a definition of the inexplicable. There is a certain almost apophatic, open-ended character to it. In itself, this formulation does not draw sharp doctrinal lines but to this day reminds us of the biblical narrative and Jesus’ self-definition: “I am the Light of the World.”

Biography

• Dr Maria Munkholt Christensen is a research fellow in the Faculty of Protestant Theology, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, and a member of the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches.