A Phenomenology of Christian Life by Murchadha Felix

Author:Murchadha, Felix
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Night and Light

Night is ambiguous. Faith is in the night, but in night there is no safety, there are no guarantees, only confusion and danger. The relation to night is expressed in the following passages:

“His [Yahweh's] covering he made the darkness / his pavilion dark waters and dense cloud.” (Psalms 18:11)

“Night is the time for sleepers to sleep and night is the time for drunkards to be drunk, but we belong to the day and we should be sober.” (Paul: 1 Thessalonians 5:7–8)

“Your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:4)

Darkness, secrecy, and clouds seem to be the elements of this god. He hides himself from view and seeks that those who glorify him do so in secret. If the account of glory indicates a god of radiance, this is at the same time a god of the night. And yet Paul speaks of the followers of Christ as belonging to the day. To ‘belong to the day’ (hemera) is not to belong to the ephemeral, the passing days of the world, but rather to belong to the day in the sense of Genesis: the day as light of god, not light of the sun. Paul speaks of the “day of our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9), the day as eschaton, as ending of the world. Belonging to the day, then, is belonging to divine radiance of glory, which breaks with day as the time of the sun, the time of clarity and of what can be grasped in a glance. The day of the Lord “is coming like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). It is a day which is as night. It is for this reason that being of the day requires an instruction not so much in terms of activities of the day, but of the night. To belong to the day is to live as not belonging to the day, but rather as belonging to the night. Belonging to the night means not to live in the night as that which is secreted from the day—by sleeping or by drunkenness. In terms of those belonging to the world it is right to sleep and wrong to be drunk in the night. But for Paul these activities are equally to be avoided because the night is not a respite from the day, but rather the time when the true day appears. The true day appears as night, because it appears in the darkening of the intellect and the senses—both of which perceive only through the light of the sun. As such the ‘glory of the Lord’ is a glory of the night:3 In the Elohistic tradition in particular the divine is hidden in darkness. The very core of the divine appearance is a deep and sometimes oppressive and threatening darkness (cf. Exodus 20:16, 19:21).4

Night, then, is not the opposite of day. The god of night is also the god of day; darkness itself is not god's creation. But the light

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.