Tag Archives: The Holy Trinity

From Uncreated Light to electrics.

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For it is the God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
-II Corinthians 4:6

My priest mentioned in a homily recently that the verse above was his favorite; of course that made me pay close attention to it. Soon afterward I read an article by the iconographer Aidan Hart, “Lighting in Orthodox Churches: Liturgical Principles and Practical Ideas,” which has kept me thinking on this Light … and I’m certain I could benefit from further meditation on Hart’s ideas — because they flow from the truth that Christ Himself stated, that He is The Light of the World.

How do we reflect this reality symbolically when choosing physical lighting for our churches? And how might lighting help us to worship or distract us? If any of these questions is interesting to you, you might like to read the whole article, which I have linked above and below. Or skip the text and look only at the more than two dozen photographs of most beautiful churches and monasteries — and one mosque — illustrating the principles that Hart discusses. I especially loved the photo showing alabaster windows such as this one:

Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna

Hart reminds us that “The Church is ultimately a community of persons and not a building.” It follows that “Its light should illuminate the personal rather than the abstract.” He compares the needs of monasteries to those of parish churches, and The Blue Mosque to Hagia Sophia. The pros and cons of natural light, candles, oil lamps and electric lights are discussed; he explains how an environment with quiet light can help us to “learn the art of stillness, watchfulness, interiority.”

I’ll close with one paragraph that is rich with theological principles worth musing on, and leave you to click on the link for the whole article:

The second century neo-Platonist Plotinus wrote that “beauty is symmetry irradiated by life”. This was interpreted by the Byzantines as symmetry irradiated by light, for light was regarded an image of divine, animating and transfiguring life. But this Byzantine aesthetic of moving rather than static light was ultimately rooted in Trinitarian theology. The uncreated light of divine love is One, but it is also dynamic, moving within the Trinity and moving down to creation. Of course the term moving is a human concept and is ultimately inapplicable to God, who has no need to move from place to place. But the term is applicable inasmuch as it reminds us that God is not a single monad, that God is love because He is Three. Christian beauty is therefore rooted in relationship rather than an abstract and static ideal. And this can be reflected in church lighting.

-Aidan Hart, “Lighting in Orthodox Churches: Liturgical Principles and Practical Ideas”

St Demetrios Church, Thessaloniki (not taken by me)

The confluence and the leaping forth.

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“The highest light is God, unapproachable and ineffable, neither grasped by the mind nor expressed in language. It illumines every reason-endowed nature. It is to intelligible realities what the sun is to sense-perceptible realities. To the extent that we are purified it appears, to the extent that it appears it is loved, to the extent that it is loved it is again known. It both contemplates and comprehends itself and is poured out but a little to those outside itself. I speak of the light contemplated in the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, whose wealth is the confluence and the leaping forth of this radiance.”

-St. Gregory of Nazianzus (The Theologian), Oration 40, on Baptism

Transfiguration of Christ, Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, Russia, 1497

Milk white as light – and honey.

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“For in the deepest sense God the Father is Himself the promised land which -– as the Holy Spirit has promised us -– the gentle and the upright in heart will inherit (cf. Matt. 5:5), as they strive in hope to attain it. The honey and milk that flow in that land, which is the Father, are the dawn luminaries, the twin rays, the Son and the Spirit, that are the life and delight and purification of the whole world.

“For the Son, who was begotten from the Father and who is inseparable from Him, may be called ‘honey,’ since He has become incarnate in human nature as in a honeycomb; and through this enhumanization He has sweetened and gladdened everything human in a miraculous way with -– how should one express it? -– extraordinary teachings and graces and countless other blessings and bounties.

“The ‘milk’ is the Holy Spirit, who is simple and uncompounded. He is not the offspring but the ‘going forth’ or procession from the Father. He is white as light, and He feeds with divine nourishment the intelligent beings who are still immature, thus initiating them, as the Lord said, into the kingdom of heaven (cf. I Cor. 3:1–2).

“Thus the ‘land flowing with honey and milk’ is rightly considered to be the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and it is to this land that the intellect which ‘crosses over’ is conducted through the guidance, power and energy of the Godhead in three Persons.”

— The Philokalia Vol 5, by G.E.H. Palmer

What springs from unity.

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St. Gregory Nazianzus (or Nazianzen), also known as St. Gregory the Theologian, is one of the Three Holy Hierarchs of the Orthodox Church, along with St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom; and one of The Cappadocian Fathers, along with St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Basil the Great (of Caesarea). He has been called The Trinitarian Theologian, and you can read a snippet of such theology below. I was intrigued by his also being called The Minstrel of the Holy Trinity, evidently because of his poetic style, and spiritual poetry. I will be looking more into that.

“The opinions about deity that hold pride of place are in number: atheism, polytheism and monotheism. With the first two the children of Greece amused themselves. Let the game go on! Atheism with its lack of a governing principle involves disorder. Polytheism with a plurality of such principles, involves faction and hence the absence of a governing principle, and this involves disorder again. Both lead to an identical result — lack of order, which, in turn, leads to disintegration.

“Monotheism, with its single governing principle, is what we value — not monotheism defined as the sovereignty of a single person (after all, self-discordant unity can become a plurality) but the single rule produced by equality of nature, harmony of will, identity of action and the convergence towards their source of what springs from unity — none of which is possible in the case of created nature.

“The result is that though there is numerical distinction, there is no division, there is no division of the substance. For this reason, a one eternally changes into a two and stops at three — meaning the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In a serene, non-temporal, incorporeal way the Father is parent of the ‘offspring’.”

―St. Gregory of Nazianzus, d. 390, The Five Theological Orations

I’ve been plugging away at reading The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, in which Vladimir Lossky gives a history of Christian understanding of God as He has revealed Himself, in which story St. Gregory’s doctrine plays a major role. It’s a stretch for my untrained mind to follow the thoughts of these venerable fathers of antiquity, who who were not only extraordinary scholars, but holy men: St. Gregory often emphasizes that even to begin to think well about God it is most necessary to have a repentant heart. So I will close with his exhortation to those who might think more highly of their theologizing than they ought (from Oration 20), which I find heartening right now:

“If you trust me, then — and I am no rash theologian! — grasp what you can, and pray to grasp the rest. Love what already abides within you, and let the rest await you in the treasury above. Approach it by the way you live: what is pure can only be acquired through purification… Keep the commandments, make your way forward through observing the precepts: for the practical life is the launching-pad for contemplation. Start with the body, but find joy in working for your soul.

“… the most perfect of all things that exist is the knowledge of God. Let us, then, hold on to what we have and acquire what we can, as long as we live on earth; and let us store our treasure there in heaven, so that we may possess this reward of our labor: the full illumination of the holy Trinity—what it is, its qualities and its greatness, if I may put it this way—shining in Christ himself, our Lord, to whom be glory and power for the ages of ages. Amen.”