Christian Solar Symbolism and Jesus the Sun of Justice

Kevin Duffy

• Editore: T&T Clark
• Anno: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780567700124
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Theology & Religion
• Categoria: Theology

This pioneering study of Christian sun symbolism describes how biblical light motifs were taken up with energy in the early Church. Kevin Duffy argues that, living in a world of 24/7 illumination, we need to reconnect with the sun and its light to appreciate the meaning of light in the Bible and Christian tradition. With such a retrieval we can appreciate Pope Francis's insistence that, like the moon, the Church does not shine with its own light, and assess the claim that the Eucharist is to be celebrated 'Ad Orientem', that is towards the rising sun in the East. Liturgy, architecture, poetry and the writings of saints and theologians such as Augustine, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, and Thomas Traherne offer abundant resources for a much needed ressourcement. While Christ was preached as the True Sun among sun-worshipping Aztecs, and the consecrated host was placed in a solar monstrance on Baroque altars, in the modern era solar themes have been neglected. In this accessible work, the author suggests that we rebalance a spiritual symbolism that has over-emphasised darkness and cloud at the expense of light and sun. He proposes a creative retrieval of the traditional title of Christ as the Sun of Justice. This title blends the personal, the social and the cosmic/ecological, and speaks powerfully to a secularising era that contemporaries Friedrich Nietzsche and Thérèse of Lisieux both described as one where the sun does not shine.

Part I

RETRIEVAL

Chapter 1

SCRIPTURE

Light and darkness

The light of the sun

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and the darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

(Gen. 1.1-5)

God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night – and the stars … And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

(Gen. 1.16-19)

In these passages from Genesis, and in the Old Testament in general, light and sun are good and created by God. They are intimately connected without being identical. Light is daylight – ‘God called the light Day’ – and comes from the sun – ‘Why is one day more important than another, when all the daylight in the year is from the sun’ (Ecclus 33.7)? All the same, the Genesis account has the sun created three days later than light, probably to rule out idolatrous sun worship. The sun is not divine but a creature serving God’s purposes as ‘the greater light to rule the day’ determining the diurnal rhythms that mark the lives of humans and animals (Ps. 104.20-23).

In possibly the first writing of the New Testament, Paul encourages his readers in the Greek port city of Thessalonica: ‘You are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness’ (1 Thess. 5.5). His readers were mostly recent Greek converts, and Paul was not presuming that they had a deep knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures. There are no parallels in Greek texts for Paul’s expression ‘children of the day’¹ which seems to be an expression he coined meaning ‘day people’ or ‘children of daylight’.² His Greek readers will have understood it in terms of their daily experience of daylight and sparkling created sunlight. According to Paul, for Christians to avoid wrongdoing is, metaphorically, to live in daylight (Rom. 13.13) and to wake up into daylight is to cultivate joy and thankfulness (1 Thess. 5.16-18), with the risen Christ shining on them (Eph. 5.14). For the peoples of the ancient Middle East, the sky was fascinating, populated with heavenly bodies seen as living beings and often as gods. By New Testament times, however, the divinity of the sun was not an issue for the Jewish world the converts of Thessalonica had entered, and when the Jewish Christians addressed by James looked upwards at the sky, they saw the sun and other ‘lights’ as changing, created things in contrast to the unchanging ‘Father of lights’ (Jas 1.17).

Two varieties of darkness

In the Genesis narrative, light is brought into existence from the primaeval chaos; like darkness, it is part of creation.³ Both light and darkness provided metaphors to talk about God with light the dominant motif. God wears light like a piece of clothing (Ps. 104.2), light dwells with him (Dan. 2.22), and his brightness is ‘like the sun’ (Hab. 3.4). While light is positive, darkness has two connotations, one positive and the other negative. Moses draws near to the thick darkness where God is (Exod. 20.21) and God speaks from a cloud (Exod. 24.16). ‘Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundations of his throne’ (Ps. 97.2). This positive darkness complements the primary symbolism of light. It was not a major theme in the New Testament, but was taken up in Christian theology, in Origen for instance, who would talk about a ‘good darkness’, and in Dionysius the Areopagite and John of the Cross. A second metaphor is of darkness as evil and ignorance: ‘The way of the wicked is like deep darkness’ (Prov. 4.19). ‘The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness’ (Eccl. 2.14). This negative darkness is the primary metaphor of darkness in the New Testament, where created light is a metaphor to express the very nature of God who ‘dwells in unapproachable light’ (1 Tim. 6.16) and in whom ‘there is no darkness at all’ (1 Jn 1.5).

God and the sun

Sun worship

The Old Testament expresses belief established at the time of the Babylonian captivity, after 598 bce, in Yahweh as the only God, the Creator we see in Genesis. This belief was the result of a long process of development through various forms of polytheism. Yahweh was not identified with the physical sun⁴ which is itself to offer worship: ‘Praise him, sun and moon;/praise him, all you shining stars’ (Ps. 148.3). When Joshua gives the sun orders – ‘Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and Moon, in the valley of Aijalon’ (Josh. 10.12-13) – it obeys. Sun worship was, nevertheless, an issue. For Jeremiah, the bones of practitioners should be exhumed and scattered like dung to bake under the sun they have worshipped (Jer. 8.1-2), while Ezekiel inveighs against those who turn their backs to the Temple to prostrate themselves before the rising sun (Ezek. 8.16-18). Heavenly bodies were so fascinating that they could be a source of temptation: ‘And when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, do not be led astray and bow down to them and serve them’ (Deut. 4.19). Examining his conscience, Job asks himself: ‘If I have looked at the sun / when it shone, / or the moon moving in splendour, / and my heart has been secretly enticed, / and my mouth has kissed my hand’ (Job 31.26-27).

Yahweh and solar motifs

Sometimes, however, God seems to be identified with the sun: ‘The Lord came from Sinai, / And dawned from Seir upon us; / He shone forth from Mount Paran’ (Deut. 33.2). Israel gradually took over motifs from various cults, including solar cults, and applied them to Yahweh. Shamash, a Mesopotamian sun god, was a source of light, warmth and justice. In the Babylonian Shamash Hymn, he is the all-seeing eye and the guardian of justice whose ‘beams are ever mastering secrets’: ‘The meek, the weak, the oppressed, the submissive,/ Daily, ever, and always come before you.’⁵ Israel transferred solar epithets and images from Shamash to Yahweh, without identifying the two deities. The result is a God of justice who is not literally solar, but who is described figuratively using the light and sun he created – ‘For the Lord God is a sun and shield’ (Ps. 84.11). The glory of the sun was a source of wonder. In Psalm 19, the sun is a marvel that ‘comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strongman runs its course with joy’ (Ps. 19.5). The people of Israel in turn can shine with reflected light: ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you’ (Isa. 60.1).

This solar religiosity was part of the general culture of the Middle East, from the late Bronze Age (c. 1600–1200 bce) when solar language for monarchs and for divinities spread from New Kingdom Egypt to other areas including Israel.⁶ There were solar themes in both Canaanite and Mesopotamian cults. Probably, they were applied first to human rulers; the just ruler ‘is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land’ (2 Sam. 23.3b-4). In a second step, they were applied to pagan deities, and eventually to Yahweh⁷: ‘Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved’ (Ps. 80.7). There may have been a solar cult in the Jerusalem Temple itself (see 2 Kgs 23.5, 11 and Ezek. 8.16). Perhaps the sun was reverenced as a being in the host of heaven or even for a time with parallel cults of Shamash and Yahweh in the Temple.⁸ Whatever the details of the process, the result was a non-solar Yahweh described with appropriated sun metaphors.

The Sun of Justice (Malachi 4.2)

Sun and justice

‘But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness [justice] shall rise, with healing in his wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall’ (Mal. 4.2).⁹ This verse from the sixth-century prophet Malachi was taken up with enthusiasm by early Christians, at the latest from the third century, and applied to Jesus the Messiah. Now, sometimes expressions come loose from their moorings in a literary text and take on a life of their own, as with ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.¹⁰ A biblical example is Yahweh treading the winepress in anger in Isa. 63.3 which detached itself from its original context and lodged in the American consciousness figuring, for example, in the Battle Hymn of the Republic and in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. Did something similar happen to Mal. 4.2 since, in its original meaning, the verse was not messianic? It seems not. Christians were tapping into a vibrant visual tradition and into Old Testament currents of thought where God is associated with a holistic or connective conception of justice, establishing and defending right order in areas as diverse as law, wisdom, nature, cult and kingship.¹¹ Israel used solar symbolism to link law with light, in such ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I RETRIEVAL
• Part II REVIVAL
• Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Biblical Reference Index
• Index
• Imprint