But when John in his First Letter says that God is light, it is not God as infinite he has in mind but God as love. If one asks what it is about God that Calvin thought light was the most adequate symbol for, the answer is, surely, God’s infinity the uncircumscribability of light makes it the best symbol available to us for God as infinite. We told our architect that he had to design a building that gave one the sense of coming into the light upon entering.
Nonetheless, I and my fellow committee members felt in our bones that darkness was all wrong.
To enter them was to enter darkness.Īt the time I had not yet met Lee Wandel and had not thought about the significance of the fact that the historic Calvinist churches are chock full of light. In almost every case these new churches were dark inside, the darkness usually alleviated with a shaft of light from a light-scoop. As preparation for our work, our subcommittee visited a number of churches that had recently been built to see what ideas we could glean. I was on the subcommittee charged with composing the program for the architect-guidelines for him to follow in the design process. Some fifteen years ago I served on the building committee of my congregation back in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Full of light, as chock full of light as a building could be before the days of steel framing. These buildings are not empty but full, chock full, full of something else, of course, than statuary, carvings, and paintings. True enough, says Wandel but this misses the point in almost ludicrous fashion. Some carvings do remain, on the pulpit, for example and there is some decorative painting on panels displaying the Ten Commandments. Some Calvinist church historians argue, defensively, that this is an exaggeration. The West Church-Westerkerk-in Amsterdam, for example, and the early Congregational churches in New England.Ī person familiar with Catholic church buildings will, without even thinking about it, interpret these Calvinist churches as empty-stripped of statuary, of carvings, of paintings, the whole lot. Most of the early Calvinist churches in central Europe were taken over from the Catholics it’s the later churches which the Calvinists themselves built that she has her eye on. Having noted this claim on Calvin’s part about symbolism for the divine, Wandel goes on to argue that Calvin’s thought on this matter had a profound influence on Calvinist church architecture. Light has no boundaries that one could draw around, scribe around, circumscribe. Wandel notes that John Calvin, in a few passages, argues that the best symbol we have for God is light, and the best metaphor, the word “light.” Calvin’s argument for this position is that light is uncircumscribable. Light everywhere.Ī friend of mine, Lee Wandel, teaches Reformation history at the University of Wisconsin. In God “there is no darkness at all.” No shadows, no dark places.
The English translation obscures this identity from us-the identity of that which characterizes God with that whose negation God cleanses us from.
The preface “a” in Greek means the same as the preface “non” in English in fact, we sometimes substitute the Greek “a” for the English “non”-as in “atemporal.” What God cleanses us from is the lack or negation of that very thing which characterizes God. But the Greek word translated as “just” is dikaios, and the Greek word translated as “unrighteousness” is adikias. In the NRSV translation, verse 9 of First John 1 reads as follows: “If we confess our sins, is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This translation invites the thought that what characterizes God, namely, fidelity and justice, is something different from what God cleanses us from, namely, unrighteousness. Let me preface my meditation with an issue of translation.