Why Write about Illumination?

As is well known, the twentieth century elevated the doctrine of revelation to a kind of first theology. It did not, however, extend the same courtesy to the doctrine of illumination. And yet, if God is light (1 John 1:5), illumination is not a marginal theological issue. Illumination is at the core of God’s self-communication to us. It is God’s loving call “out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). Moreover, if we do not understand God’s revelation and how we receive it, what good does revelation do us in the first place?

The doctrine of illumination is the solution to this problem precisely.

With such a crucial aspect of the divine-human relationship before us, the commitment of the task before us is to provide an exegetically faithful dogmatic account of illumination. In so doing, we will draw out all that is entailed in this proposal for a new definition: illumination is human participation in the Son’s knowledge of the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit. In language more attuned to the language of illumination, it is human participation in the light of the divine life.

A review of the literature reveals that a treatment like the present one is long overdue. Full-length monographs on the doctrine of illumination number in the single digits and the little attention that illumination has received has focused narrowly on its purely cognitive dynamics. Possibly the greatest offense has been neglecting to incorporate the pre-Reformation contribution to illumination. Both Lydia Schumacher’s Divine Illumination and Ronald Nash’s The Light of the Mind make great strides toward understanding the Augustinian theory of illumination but neither are dogmatic constructions. Bernard Ramm’s The Witness of the Spirit may very well be our closest comparable work, though some may distinguish illumination from the internal witness of the Holy Spirit. John Owen’s magisterial Pneumatologia (or, A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit), which John Webster praises as “the greatest Reformed treatise on the Spirit,” remains among the most influential works on the doctrine of illumination today.

Owen’s work, published in 1674, addresses the doctrine of illumination as an aspect of regeneration, as preparatory for conversion, as supernatural revelation, and as enlightening our minds to the understanding of Scripture. As a result of his comprehensive approach, his work is often taken as the benchmark in terms of theological development around the Holy Spirit in general and the doctrine of illumination in particular. In spite of all that Owen contributes to the discussion, a tenuous point of Owen’s proposal is the distinction between illumination and revelation. Within two paragraphs of one another, he writes both that Scripture is “the only external means of divine supernatural illumination” and that Scripture is “the only external means of divine revelation.” The context of these statements suggests the two terms are being used synonymously and interchangeably. However, Owen communicates that revelation is both a cause of illumination, and at the same time, that revelation comes under the “denomination of illumination.”3 There is a lack of clarity in his thought around the relationship of illumination and revelation that demands the kind of clarity this treatment will offer.

What we need is an account of illumination that fully incorporates both its cognitive and its affective implications, includes both the regenerative and the revelatory aspects of illumination, and retrieves a fuller voice from the theological witness prior to the Reformation. Augustine, in particular, helps us understand that illumination transcends modernity’s preoccupation with cognition and knowledge—it is about more than understanding and application. Augustine helps us understand that illumination is about participation in the “Divine Light.” In order to address this vacuum and the underappreciation of the doctrine of illumination in contemporary theology, I intend to construct an “economy” around illumination—an economy that gives an account of the divine light’s being, action, and effects in the world. Fortunately for us, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the German Protestant theologian Franz Overbeck located just such an economy in the Gospel of John. There is an “economy of divine light in the world” that captured for Overbeck the entirety of the divine light’s being, actions, and effects in the world. It also accounted for a system of witnesses and relationships that the Fourth Gospel suggests is necessary for communicating that divine light. From the very beginning of John’s Gospel, this economy of divine light is front and center as the light of the world dwells among us in the flesh of the Logos. This economy expands to capture the full range of implications in the Johannine confession, “God is light and in him is no darkness at all”  (1 Jn 1:5). These implications are: (1) The nature of God’s being is light. (2) The communication of this divine light to his creatures involves the whole community of divine persons. (3) Given that the nature of God’s being is light, then in this economy his actions are illumining, and its effect is illumination.

This economy of light and what it means for God’s creatures captures the subject matter of this book. The term economy will be deployed both according to its theological definition and its more general sense. In its theological usage, “economy” encompasses the works of God in his dealings with his creatures. In its more general sense, an economy orders all the components comprising a system. In this sense, an “economy” of the divine light must properly order both the cognitive and affective aspects of illumination. Drawing on the work of Karl Barth, we will make the case that subjective revelation is inextricably bound up with Christ’s work of reconciliation and the Spirit’s work of regeneration.8 In this way, illumination is not purely epistemological. Illumination is also a matter of cognitively and affectively “coming to see the light of Christ” and, ultimately, participating in it.

In order to fully clarify the intersection of revelation and regeneration at illumination, I will bring together Augustine’s work on illumination with Barth’s work on revelation. Both emphases are necessary to rightly handle the issues of Word and Spirit involved in the economy of divine light. More specifically, Augustine’s and Barth’s concerns converge in their readings of the Gospel and letters of John. They intersect here because both expressed immense interest in John and offered sustained theological treatment of his Gospel and letters. Moreover, Augustine exercised tremendous influence over Barth’s own interpretation of John. Case in point, almost the entirety of Barth’s introductory lecture is a rehearsal and reflection upon Augustine’s own Tractates. Finally, Augustine and Barth intersect here with illumination because the writings of John are themselves permeated by the language of light and present matters of regeneration and revelation as integral to the economy of divine light.

The Gospel and letters of John are of particular interest here for two key reasons. First, John is unique in his focus on so many of Jesus’ encounters with individuals. In fact, compared with the other Gospels, much more of John’s Gospel is consumed with long narratives of engagements with single individuals. Many of these passages present us with an individual encountering Jesus in life-transforming ways. Second, this Johannine material places a strong emphasis on Jesus as the light (Jn 1:9) and as the light of the world (Jn 8:12). This challenges us to consider the christological and trinitarian aspects of illumination in addition to its grounding in pneumatology. Augustine’s and Barth’s exegesis of John will show that illumination, in its intersection with revelation and regeneration, is ultimately about divine selfcommunication. This self-communication happens through our participation in Christ—the light of the World. This participation in Christ is made possible in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, as stated at the outset, illumination is a participation in the Son’s knowledge of the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The practical theological upshot of this definition is its bearing on the human experience of illumination. The denial of such a human experience in illumination implies a theological anthropology in which humanity does not really participate in the divine life. On the other hand, the affirmation of human experience of the divine risks a headlong fall into the absolute subjectivity and relativism (my experience of the divine vs. yours). The objective is to chart a way between the Scylla of dismissing human experience and the Charybdis of rampant subjectivity. In doing so, we will articulate an account of illumination in the reading of Scripture and in human experience that charts just such a course. Through this engagement with Augustine’s and Barth’s theological exegesis of the Gospel and letters of John, we see their understandings of how God makes himself known. The most relevant texts are those that depict in dramatic fashion the event of coming to see the light of the Logos (Jn 1:1-18; 3:1-21; 4:1-42; 9:1-41; 20:11-18; 21:12-13).

In understanding the biblical text to be a witness to “God’s presence and action in history,” it follows that these encounters give us a view into the ways and works of God in the events of revelation, illumination, and regeneration. The intent here is to uncover and comprehend that moment when someone “gets it”—the aha moment, as it were. The Spirit works in these events of illumination to enlighten humankind by healing fallen intellectual faculties, pouring light into darkened understanding, and rescuing humanity from ignorance toward the things of God. In this way, the economy of divine light involves the work of regeneration because the Spirit works to heal, repair, and renew human faculties and capacities in order to restore them fellowship with God the Father. Facilitating this fellowship with the Father is precisely the work of the Son in the Gospel of John. This is where the concept of economy comes into its own. God executes his decree to enlighten a person in the Son through the Spirit.

Ultimately, the aim here is to understand what it means for someone to come to see the light of God, revealed in Christ, through the Gospel and letters of John. Through a treatment of the economy of light as it is depicted by the conversion narratives and the language of light in the Gospel and Letters of John, and particularly through the eyes of Augustine and Barth, we will arrive at a more robust account of illumination. It is an account in which we see God by means of his own light.

Seeing by the Light, part of the Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture Series, is published on the 18th of June. The Doctrine of Illumination informs much of IVP's work, particularly our conviction that (and selection of series on!) the Bible Speaks Today.