More of Paul on Light and Darkness

In the last post, I explored some of Paul’s reflections on light and darkness, concentrating on the Thessalonian and Corinthian correspondences. Now more:

Romans

As is so often the case, ideas that appear in more rudimentary form in other letters get played out in detail in Romans. So, at an important turn in his argument that all human beings are equally vulnerable to evildoing, Paul warns those who have received God’s gracious promises, if they wish to be “light to those in darkness” – surely a commendable aim – to beware lest they also violate God’s gracious commands for living with others (Rom. 2:19). [1] He also encourages his hearers to “put away works of darkness and be clothed with garments of light” (Rom. 13:12). That imagery of being clothed with various virtues (or vices) is commonplace in Old Testament liturgical and quasi-liturgical texts, [2] and Paul is certainly thinking “biblically” in using the idea. In the Old Testament, however, garments of light belong to God (Ps. 104:2) rather than human beings, and so Paul is encouraging his hearers to enter into the realm of God even while they remain in this life. They should live as children of promise rather than as fearful, angry creatures of the night.

Romans also provides the only two examples of Paul’s use of the verb skotizesthai (“to be dark”). He speaks of pagans outside the people of Israel as having their understanding heart “darkened” (Rom. 1:21). In this view, sin becomes a sort of second self, with those suffering under its yoke being unable to control themselves fully. Similarly, at another crucial point in his argument, he insists upon the certainty of God’s promises to the Jewish people (and, therefore, the need of Gentiles to be integrated – grafted – into those promises). He explains the failure of some Jews to embrace Jesus as the promised messiah as a result of “their eyes being darkened so they cannot see” (Rom. 11:10). This line quotes Ps. 68:23 in the Greek Septuagint (which correlates to Ps. 69:23 in English translations of the Old Testament). Here Paul picks up the old prophetic theme of the people of God struggling to see what God wants for them, and therefore who they should be. He goes on to warn Gentile believers not to presume themselves to be beyond such failure. Baptism may put us on the road to life, but it does not guarantee that we will stay on it, or even that we will always know which way the road leads. That knowledge requires deep practices of trust in God that draw upon the promises made to us in baptism. In short, then, darkness can befall any believer, Jew or Gentile.

Colossians

A view close to that in the Corinthian letters appears in the beautiful summary of salvation in Col. 1:13-14. The text describes God as “the one who rescued us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of his beloved son.” Not only does the text pick up the “son of his love” language first describing Isaac (Gen. 22:2), but it also shares the early Christian understanding of Jesus’s status, which uses the same language (see the stories of Jesus’s baptism and transfiguration: Matt. 3:17; 17:5; Mark 1:10; 9:7; differently, the parallels in Luke 3:22; 9:35; as well as John 1:34). Colossians understands darkness as a past reality for the followers of Jesus. It invites them to give thanks (1:12) to God for that deliverance.

Ephesians

The final Pauline references to “darkness” occur in Ephesians. In its call to the Christians to abandon the most degrading forms of immorality, using the language of dirtiness, the epistle tells the readers that they “were once darkness but now are light in the Lord” (Eph. 5:8). Since they have experienced life transformation, they should not be hitched together with “unfruitful works of darkness” (similarly, 2 Cor. 6:14). These uses of darkness imagery closely resemble those in other Pauline epistles, but with small twists. Here, the followers of Jesus are not living “in light.” They “are light.” To use some of Paul’s core theological language, they have begun to experience the transforming work of God that will ultimately enable them to live not just “in Christ” but “with Christ.”

In that hopeful context, the final reference to darkness in Eph. 6:12 takes on a slightly different meaning. This verse is part of the letter’s remix of Isa. 59’s description of the armor that a saving God has donned – in Ephesians, however, humans are the ones wearing the armor. The letter enjoins readers to “put on the panoply of God” because “your warfare is not against blood and flesh but against rulers, powers, and cosmocrators of this darkness, spiritual beings of evil in the heavens.” The book opens with a description of Christ as the “one who fills all in all,” the cosmic lord. It ends with the notion that the stage on which we enact our small roles in the drama of redemption is a cosmic stage, embracing all things. This viewpoint invites the readers of Ephesians to rethink their position in the world, to leave behind the fear of human beings who seem “other,” and to see themselves as part of God’s gigantic work of redeeming the cosmos. In other words, Ephesians lives worlds away from modern notions of spiritual warfare or the Christian life as a struggle with forces that may overwhelm us.

So far, then, we have begun to see the richness of Paul’s thinking. In the final piece, we will see still more and draw a few conclusions pertinent for today’s church.

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[1] All translations are mine.

[2] For example, Job 8:22; 29:14; 40:10; Pss. 35:26; 93:1; 104:1; 132:18; 139:9; Prov. 31:25; Isa. 51:9; 52:1; 59:17; and 61:10.