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4 God is Light Darkness and the Light of God Having reviewed the physics and language of light and thus setting up a theoretical foundation for Aquinas’s use of light, we can now turn to his actual application of light language in his theology, some of which we have hinted at already. In the remaining chapters we will roughly follow Aquinas’s outline from the Summa, though we will do so in constant dialogue with his commentaries on scripture and other writings. We will begin, then, with God in both his essential attributes and in his Trinitarian relations, with the normal Thomistic apophatic disclaimers about the former and mysterious depths with regard to the latter. We will also begin with God for the simple Thomistic reason that God is the final end of humans, and for Aquinas final causes are the causes of all other causes.1 To understand what something is for or the end it tends toward is to understand the form it must take, the matter necessary for it to exist, and the things that cause it to move toward that end. Since all human existence is from God and all humans are made for God as their final end, we can best understand all that follows from God—creation, humans, morality, and salvation—by first understanding their divine source. We will look at God as light under both the essential and Trinitarian aspects, then turn our attention to the beatific vision and the key role that the light of glory plays in the final human experience of God for the blessed and conclude with some brief Christological reflections. But before we do that, we should first look at a rather startling claim that has been made by several theologians to which this chapter is, in part, a response. There is a recent trend among theologians to talk about “the darkness of God,” and the darkness in which God dwells. I will argue that this is a 1. Phys II.5.186: “The final cause causes the other causes.” 95 theological mistake, for “God is light and there is no darkness in him” (1 John 1:5), and to claim that Aquinas sees darkness in God is to misunderstand where the darkness resides and where the light is to be found. I will point to a variety of texts that show that for Aquinas, God’s perfect light represents God’s continued work to make himself manifest to the world. To claim God’s darkness is partially the result of contemporary efforts to recover apophatic theology and, with regard to Aquinas, partially the result of one of his early texts, which is worth quoting in full: The reply to the fourth is that all other names mean being under some other determinate aspect. For instance, “wise” means being something. But this name “he who is” means being that is absolute, i.e., not made determinate by anything added. Therefore Damascene says that it does not signify what God is—rather, it signifies an infinite (as though not determinate) ocean of substance. Hence when we proceed to God by “the way of removal,” we first deny to him corporeal aspects; and secondly, also intellectual aspects such as goodness and wisdom, in the way they are found in creatures. Just “that (he) is” remains then in our understanding, and nothing more—hence it is, as it were, in a state of confusion. Lastly we remove from him even this very being itself, as present in creatures—and then it remains in a darkness of ignorance. In that ignorance, as far as the wayfaring state is concerned, we are best joined to God; and this is a dense darkness, in which God is said to dwell.2 Most of this is familiar Thomistic thought where Aquinas uses remotion to avoid anthropomorphic understandings of God based on material realities and then to avoid univocal concepts of goodness and wisdom. When only “being” is left, we have nothing left to anchor our ideas of God upon, and when we remove even that idea, we are in the darkness of ignorance. Aquinas says that in this life we are best joined to God in ignorance, and “this is a dense darkness, in which God is said to dwell.” Gregory Rocca picks up on this passage and adds one from the Summa Contra Gentiles, where Aquinas follows the thought of Dionysius to argue that we are completely unable to know God’s essence...

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